Dostoevsky vs. Tolstoy, which is greater?

Started by Dry Brett Kavanaugh, December 30, 2021, 05:11:51 PM

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Dry Brett Kavanaugh

When I was a teenager, I was a big fan of Tolstoy and my fav literary work was Resurrection. I liked Dostoevsky, but he was not one of my favorite writers. However, since I reached the late 20s, the realism, aesthetics, plots, psychology and novel expressions in Dostoevsky's works keep shaking my heart (and intellect). In contrast, Tolstoy appears to be a little too preachy and focusing on ethics/norms too much. Any thoughts?

Karl Henning

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on December 30, 2021, 05:11:51 PM
When I was a teenager, I was a big fan of Tolstoy and my fav literary work was Resurrection. I liked Dostoevsky, but he was not one of my favorite writers. However, since I reached the late 20s, the realism, aesthetics, plots, psychology and novel expressions in Dostoevsky's works keep shaking my heart (and intellect). In contrast, Tolstoy appears to be a little too preachy and focusing on ethics/norms too much. Any thoughts?

The only Tolstoy I've read is War & Peace, so I'm not competent to weigh in on the question. Dostoyevsky has drawn me in more.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Florestan

#2
Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on December 30, 2021, 05:11:51 PM
the realism, aesthetics, plots, psychology and novel expressions in Dostoevsky's works keep shaking my heart (and intellect). In contrast, Tolstoy appears to be a little too preachy and focusing on ethics/norms too much. Any thoughts?

Agreed. Dostoevsky for me too.

Still, Tolstoy is a giant.

Btw, have you read Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer? As massive as his novels and no less interesting, it shows what a deeply humane, gentle and humorous (sic!) nature he had. He touches a lot of topics and the way he presents them and the arguments he makes are compelling and hard to refute even when he makes the case for Slavophilia, lambasts the Russian liberal intelligentsia and praise the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-79.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

vers la flamme

I have gotten more out of Dostoevsky thus far, but I haven't read much Tolstoy—just The Death of Ivan Ilyich (amazing) and Anna Karenina (also amazing, but I haven't read it since high school). So I'm not going to make this call just yet.

Mandryka

#4
Quote from: Florestan on December 31, 2021, 03:43:37 AM
Agreed. Dostoevsky for me too.

Still, Tolstoy is a giant.

Btw, have you read Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer? As massive as his novels and no less interesting, it shows what a deeply humane, gentle and humorous (sic!) nature he had. He touches a lot of topics and the way he presents them and the arguments he makes are compelling and hard to refute even when he makes the case for Slavophilia, lambasts the Russian liberal intelligentsia and praise the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-79.

Yes I have and I agree. For a long time this was a book at my bedside.

Re Tolstoy, who could fail to love Pierre? He's totally adorable, the way he's always losing his glasses.

The word "slavophilia" is one that hasn't crossed my mind for many years! Clearly it was a big thing, I think it comes up in Tolstoy too somewhere - Poles verses Russians. Or was it Russia versus Europe, I can't remember. All very exotic from little England.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Jo498

I read more Dostoevsky and even one or two critical books with titles like "Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?" pitching them against each other but that was decades ago. I always preferred Dostoevsky although Tolstoy might be in some ways the more complete and technically better writer. He is certainly better at short prose, I think (but he simply wrote far more important short story or novella length pieces, like the mentioned Death of Ivan Ilyich which is stunning and one of the best pieces of its type ever). And also usually better when he is not preachy (whereas FMD can pull off the preachy bits of "Brothers Karamasov" or "The idiot" well enough).
There could also a case be made that although FMD is psychologically "deeper", he is dealing to much with mystics, madmen, perverts whereas the more subtle constellations (often almost asides) by Tolstoy are closer to most people's everyday life. There is one rather famous scene (not even sure in which book) where a guy messes up declaring his love to a woman while picking mushrooms in the forest just by his bloody awkwardness and it's deeply moving to realize along with the characters that the chance is just gone. She would have said yes but the situation somehow makes a future marriage impossible and everyone knows it.

As I am like most reading this in translation there are doubtlessly some aspects lost. Someone like Nabokov revered Tolstoy and thoroughly trashed FMD, but one should not heed other writers comments on writers...
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Ganondorf

#6
I used to think Dostoevsky but now definitely Tolstoy, especially after reading Anna Karenina. With Dostoevsky some of his views annoy me and unlike with Tolstoy, with Dostoevsky it is much harder to follow some of the thought processes of his characters and often he seems deliberately enigmatic and cryptic. Not that it is necessarily in itself a bad thing but it often makes me think whether all the analyses that people have made about his books were what the writer had in mind and whether he's really as skillful in playing mind games as he is credited for.

Florestan

Quote from: Jo498 on December 31, 2021, 06:11:41 AM
There could also a case be made that although FMD is psychologically "deeper", he is dealing to much with mystics, madmen, perverts whereas the more subtle constellations (often almost asides) by Tolstoy are closer to most people's everyday life. There is one rather famous scene (not even sure in which book) where a guy messes up declaring his love to a woman while picking mushrooms in the forest just by his bloody awkwardness and it's deeply moving to realize along with the characters that the chance is just gone. She would have said yes but the situation somehow makes a future marriage impossible and everyone knows it.

I think (just think) that you might (just might) confuse Tolstoy with Melnikov-Pechersky. I vividly remember a scene exactly like that in an excellent TV series made after the latter's novel "In Mountains and Forests".  :)

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Florestan

Quote from: Ganondorf on December 31, 2021, 09:06:57 AM
unlike with Tolstoy, with Dostoevsky it is much harder to follow some of the thought processes of his characters

In my book this is a plus on Dostoevsky's side: his characters seem to have a life of their own, independent of what he might have intended them to be or think.  :)

And I disagree that he is preachy in the same way as Tolstoy: whereas the latter often inserts his own sermons into the novels, in Dostoevsky's works it's always the characters that do the preaching, never the auctorial voice --- which means that, for me at least, FMD had a finer and deeper understanding of literature as an art than Tolstoy.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Florestan

To be completely honest. though, I think I might prefer Turgenev to both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. I've always found his characters and general atmosphere of his novels much closer to, and understandable from, the Romanian mindset. Plus his novels are much shorter.

In any case, Russian literature is quite possibly my favorite of them all.

I'm quite the paradoxical guy actually: a staunch russophobe in the political sphere and a devoted russophile in the cultural one (literature, music, painting, cinema).
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

BasilValentine

#10
Quote from: Ganondorf on December 31, 2021, 09:06:57 AM
I used to think Dostoevsky but now definitely Tolstoy, especially after reading Anna Karenina. With Dostoevsky some of his views annoy me and unlike with Tolstoy, with Dostoevsky it is much harder to follow some of the thought processes of his characters and often he seems deliberately enigmatic and cryptic. Not that it is necessarily in itself a bad thing but it often makes me think whether all the analyses that people have made about his books were what the writer had in mind and whether he's really as skillful in playing mind games as he is credited for.

It's not that Dostoyevsky is enigmatic or cryptic about the inner lives of his characters, it's that he himself didn't claim to fully understand what his characters thought or what motivated them. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, Dostoyevsky didn't adopt an omniscient creator stance to his characters, but rather a dialogic one. He heard them as fully autonomous voices, discourses standing on an equal footing with his own. There is evidence of this in Dostoyevsky's diaries, like a note to himself that he needed to clarify Raskolnikov's motivation for murder, acknowledging that he didn't fully understand it himself. He never did clarify it, and that was his genius. Characters that can be fully dissected and classified by an author are inherently unrealistic because, arguably, it is impossible for any person to understand another to that extent. In a similar vein Philip Rhav described Dostoyevsky as the first novelist to comprehensively explore the indeterminacy of characterization (paraphrasing from memory).

I love both authors and have read all of their long fiction, most of it more than once. I'm less keen on Tolstoy because he is a bit too obvious in his moral judgments. One knows, for example, that Constantine Levin (from Anna Karenina) is Tolstoy's ideal aristocratic land owner. I tend to find such characters tedious and unconvincing.

Quote from: Florestan on December 31, 2021, 09:47:10 AM
I'm quite the paradoxical guy actually: a staunch russophobe in the political sphere and a devoted russophile in the cultural one (literature, music, painting, cinema).

Me too. That describes me perfectly.

vandermolen

I like both 'War and Peace' and 'Crime and Punishment' but I think that the latter is the greater novel.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Florestan

#12
Quote from: BasilValentine on December 31, 2021, 10:06:39 AM
It's not that Dostoyevsky is enigmatic or cryptic about the inner lives of his characters, it's that he himself didn't claim to fully understand what his characters thought or what motivated them. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, Dostoyevsky didn't adopt an omniscient creator stance to his characters, but rather a dialogic one. He heard them as fully autonomous voices, discourses standing on an equal footing with his own. There is evidence of this in Dostoyevsky's diaries, like a note to himself that he needed to clarify Raskolnikov's motivation for murder, acknowledging that he didn't fully understand it himself. He never did clarify it, and that was his genius. Characters that can be fully dissected and classified by an author are inherently unrealistic because, arguably, it is impossible for any person to understand another to that extent.

Agreed on all points, especially on the highlighted ones --- and one should bear in mind that Dostoevsky's favorite characters were Don Quijote and Mr. Pickwick.

Quote
Me too. That describes me perfectly.

Welcome to the club!

No, really, we should start one!
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Jo498

Quote from: Florestan on December 31, 2021, 09:26:58 AM
I think (just think) that you might (just might) confuse Tolstoy with Melnikov-Pechersky. I vividly remember a scene exactly like that in an excellent TV series made after the latter's novel "In Mountains and Forests".  :)
I have never heard the name of the other writer, so while I cannot exclude confusion, it cannot be with this one. It must be Tolstoy and I am pretty sure that it is a minor scene in Anna Karenina or War and Peace. I think the guy's name is Sergei but I am not sure.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Florestan

Quote from: Jo498 on January 01, 2022, 06:12:15 AM
I have never heard the name of the other writer, so while I cannot exclude confusion, it cannot be with this one. It must be Tolstoy and I am pretty sure that it is a minor scene in Anna Karenina or War and Peace. I think the guy's name is Sergei but I am not sure.

You made me very curious --- next time I read WAP or AK I'll be very attentive to mushrooms.  :D

As for Melnikov-Pechersky, I had never heard of him either until I watched that TV series, which is superb in every respect --- there's nothing like a Russian ecranisation, save an English one.

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: Ganondorf on December 31, 2021, 09:06:57 AM
I used to think Dostoevsky but now definitely Tolstoy, especially after reading Anna Karenina. With Dostoevsky some of his views annoy me and unlike with Tolstoy, with Dostoevsky it is much harder to follow some of the thought processes of his characters and often he seems deliberately enigmatic and cryptic. Not that it is necessarily in itself a bad thing but it often makes me think whether all the analyses that people have made about his books were what the writer had in mind and whether he's really as skillful in playing mind games as he is credited for.

I enjoyed reading your opposing view. I find your opinion very reasonable. Thank you for the insightful post, and Happy New Year.

Dry Brett Kavanaugh

Quote from: Florestan on December 31, 2021, 03:43:37 AM
Agreed. Dostoevsky for me too.

Still, Tolstoy is a giant.

Btw, have you read Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer? As massive as his novels and no less interesting, it shows what a deeply humane, gentle and humorous (sic!) nature he had. He touches a lot of topics and the way he presents them and the arguments he makes are compelling and hard to refute even when he makes the case for Slavophilia, lambasts the Russian liberal intelligentsia and praise the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-79.

Happy New Year, Andrei. I read Diary of a Writer decades ago. I will re-read the work. As for Russian politics I find Boris Yeltsin and Peter the Great fascinating. I like reading about Russian politics, but I am glad I wasn't born in Russia/USSR.


Dry Brett Kavanaugh

#17
Quote from: Jo498 on December 31, 2021, 06:11:41 AM
I read more Dostoevsky and even one or two critical books with titles like "Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?" pitching them against each other but that was decades ago. I always preferred Dostoevsky although Tolstoy might be in some ways the more complete and technically better writer. He is certainly better at short prose, I think (but he simply wrote far more important short story or novella length pieces, like the mentioned Death of Ivan Ilyich which is stunning and one of the best pieces of its type ever). And also usually better when he is not preachy (whereas FMD can pull off the preachy bits of "Brothers Karamasov" or "The idiot" well enough).
There could also a case be made that although FMD is psychologically "deeper", he is dealing to much with mystics, madmen, perverts whereas the more subtle constellations (often almost asides) by Tolstoy are closer to most people's everyday life. There is one rather famous scene (not even sure in which book) where a guy messes up declaring his love to a woman while picking mushrooms in the forest just by his bloody awkwardness and it's deeply moving to realize along with the characters that the chance is just gone. She would have said yes but the situation somehow makes a future marriage impossible and everyone knows it.

As I am like most reading this in translation there are doubtlessly some aspects lost. Someone like Nabokov revered Tolstoy and thoroughly trashed FMD, but one should not heed other writers comments on writers...


I mostly agree with you. As for writing skills and technicalities, I think Dostoevsky is superior. His expressions are picturesque and the proceeding of stories are thrilling. Plus, the characters are lively and realistic. I like many characters in his novels. Ie. Sonya's alcoholic father and Svidrigaïlov in C&P; Nastasya and Rogozin in Idiot.


Brian

I don't feel qualified to answer the question but can happily offer up a personal preference!

It's an interesting question because they are both clearly great but also both clearly flawed. Both wrote passionate moral fiction, using their novels to debate the most profound questions of how we should live our lives. Moral fiction is somewhat out of style now - the author David Foster Wallace lamented this in an extraordinary 1996 essay reviewing a new book about Dostoevsky - here's a quote:

"What makes Dos­toevsky invaluable is that he possessed a passion, conviction, and engagement with deep moral issues that we, here, today, cannot or do not allow ourselves. ...any seri­ous American reader/writer will find him­self driven to think hard about what ex­actly it is that makes so many of the novelists of our own time look so themat­ically shallow and lightweight, so impov­erished in comparison to Gogol, Dosto­evsky, even lesser lights like Lermontov and Turgenev. To inquire of ourselves why we — under our own nihilist spell — seem to require of our writers an ironic distance from deep convictions or desperate ques­tions, so that contemporary writers have to either make jokes of profound issues or else try somehow to work them in under cover of some formal trick."

Wallace, for what it's worth, thinks better of Dostoevsky than Tolstoy because Tolstoy is more overtly preachy, while Dostoevsky lets the philosophical struggle take place within his characters. Both of them do have a tendency to create characters who are stand-ins for ideas but not especially interesting as characters; e.g. the saintly brother in Karamazov and Levin in Karenina. But Tolstoy happily inserts his own ideas straight into the narrative, most of all in the philosophy chapters of W&P, while Dostoevsky uses his characters as pieces on a chess board, and he uses the plot to prove which characters he thinks are right.

Ultimately, my own preference is for...Tolstoy. Because Dostoevsky bakes his philosophy right into the plot, there is sometimes a feeling that the book is "rigged," that the plot will go to his preferred outcome to prove his point. Since I often disagree with him, I often get frustrated.  ;D I disagree with Tolstoy too, but there is much more consolation for me because of his wit and charm and gift for minor comic characters, like all the society strivers in the peace parts of War & Peace.

But Wallace is much smarter than I am, so trust him instead  ;D

Karl Henning

Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot