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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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". :)
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.
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).
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.
I like both 'War and Peace' and 'Crime and Punishment' but I think that the latter is the greater novel.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 (https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/07/04/feodors-guide-joseph-franks-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
Interesting, Brian. Happy New Year!
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on January 01, 2022, 07:45:00 AM
Interesting, Brian. Happy New Year!
+ 1. Food for thought.
Straight away, I strongly disagree that Turgenev is a "lesser light". Heck, Wallace himself prefaces his article with a Turgenev quote...
Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on January 01, 2022, 06:44:15 AM
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.
Happy New Year to you too, Manabu!
Had I been born in Tsarist Russia in 1872 on the same social level I was actually born, ie educated lesser "bourgeoisie", I would have probably emmigrated immediately after 1918. :D
Quote from: Brian on January 01, 2022, 07:16:27 AM
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.
Never heard of this Wallace guy but I'd gladly buy him a
beer vodka shot or two.
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.
I seem to recall a mushroom picking scene in Anna Karenina. Then again, I have never completely read War and peace.
Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on January 01, 2022, 06:42:14 AM
I enjoyed reading your opposing view. I find your opinion very reasonable. Thank you for the insightful post, and Happy New Year.
Thank you and likewise! :)
Further above someone claimed that Dostoevsky's characters are actually not planned through and have a live of their own... So they are not merely chess pieces. As with most good authors there is a spectrum of some characters developed more than others. Alyosha was supposed to become the hero of a sequel, so he remains comparably one-dimensional in the (first and only) book; I don't think Dmitri and Ivan are one-dimensional.
I'd say (and I have not read either authors complete works but most of the better known ones) that at his best Tolstoy has more well rounded characters (incl. minor ones). Everything is more well rounded, whereas FMD's novels are sometimes more like dramas with only dialogue and hardly any background, descriptions etc. Vignettes like those hunts in "The Cossacks" or even shorter prose are examples of Tolstoy's supreme skill.
But with some others, probably worst in "Kreutzer Sonata" (and the parallel novella about adultery whose name I forgot, it's not quite as dark and more biographical) they are a preacher's puppets.
Quote from: Ganondorf on January 01, 2022, 08:51:41 AM
I seem to recall a mushroom picking scene in Anna Karenina. Then again, I have never completely read War and peace.
This is non-definitive, of course, but offhand I do not recall any mushroom-picking (popularly called
Quiet Hunting in Petersburg) in
War and Peace.
I think that in the context "greater" actually means "I like his work more".
Both are giants of literature which have been rarely equalled and never surpassed --- and this is a mere figure of speech: otomh I can't think of any writer post-Dostoevsky-and-Tolstoy who equalled them.
I think it is in Anna Karenina. They are both minor characters but the scene fits with the "relationship" theme of the whole book, as it is failed attempt at a relationship.
I don't think it is nitpicking to point out aspects where one artist seems more successful than the other one, even when "faults" or failures don't mean that these are not great works nevertheless. It's ages that I read it but I was always quite convinced by the critique against Tolstoy's "Resurrection" that he tried something (roughly a variant of guilt and redemption) where Dostoevsky was much better, including *having actually been banned to Siberia himself*.
Quote from: Jo498 on January 01, 2022, 09:10:37 AM
It's ages that I read it but I was always quite convinced by the critique against Tolstoy's "Resurrection" that he tried something (roughly a variant of guilt and redemption) where Dostoevsky was much better, including *having actually been banned to Siberia himself*.
There is a musical counter-argument to that:
Verdi. He never ever experienced in his life even a quarter of what his characters experience on stage.
Si vis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi is not a prerequisite of art,
pace Quintius Horatius Flaccus. ;D
Quote from: Florestan on January 01, 2022, 09:06:05 AM
I think that in the context "greater" actually means "I like his work more".
Both are giants of literature which have been rarely equalled and never surpassed --- and this is a mere figure of speech: otomh I can't think of any writer post-Dostoevsky-and-Tolstoy who equalled them.
No. My question is asking which produced better works in the art of literature and which is a better author in general.
Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on January 01, 2022, 10:07:39 AM
My question is asking which produced better works in the art of literature and which is a better author in general.
And my answer is Dostoevsky because and only because I enjoy his works more than Tolstoy's.
I do not --- emphatically do not --- think there are any objective and measurable criteria upon which to decide which produced better works in the art of literature and which is a better author in general. As I said before, I am not aware of any writer born after them who equalled, let alone surpassed, them.
Btw, have you cast your vote in my Mozart vs. Beethoven thread? ;)
Quote from: Florestan on January 01, 2022, 09:16:20 AM
There is a musical counter-argument to that: Verdi. He never ever experienced in his life even a quarter of what his characters experience on stage.
On the other hand, Verdi did say he worked like a galley slave during 1840s. :D No offense meant, no matter how much of a hard worker Verdi was, that can never amount to The actual lot of a galley slave.
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. 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.
Me too. That describes me perfectly.
Michel de Montaigne said that great artworks possess some intention other than that of the artists.
Quote from: Florestan on January 01, 2022, 08:28:19 AM
Never heard of this Wallace guy but I'd gladly buy him a beer vodka shot or two.
Unfortunately, he is no longer on this earth, or I would too. He was a genius of criticism and analysis who also tried very hard (with of course mixed results) to revive the kind of philosophical fiction the Russians produced.
Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on January 01, 2022, 06:22:43 PM
Michel de Montaigne said that great artworks possess some intention other than that of the artists.
Truer words rarely spoken!
-
I do think I need to revisit Dostoevsky especially, because my last interactions with him were in the clunky Pevear & Volokhonsky translations, and I remember enjoying Karamazov especially a whole lot more in a different translation back in college. The translation issue really vexes any attempt to decide which of these novelists were "greater" for an English speaker, especially since the two translators who did them all in a consistent translated style - Garnett and Pevear/Volokhonsky - are really idiosyncratic and weird.
Translations seem to be particular vexing in the case of Russian authors, maybe because so few people (including prominent critics and journalists) in the West read Russian and can have a really informed opinion, compared with English, German and the Romance and Scandinavian languages. I sometimes get the impression that prejudices or judgments on translation are just echoed for years or decades by semi-knowledgeable people. (I have no idea about the English translations of the Russian classics, but I read German translations by half a dozen translator or so and some books in two translations and never found this to be such a huge difference, despite German feuilleton writers claims, but most of them don't know Russian, so their opinion is as good/bad as mine.)
Quote from: Brian on January 02, 2022, 06:50:58 AM
I do think I need to revisit Dostoevsky especially, because my last interactions with him were in the clunky Pevear & Volokhonsky translations, and I remember enjoying Karamazov especially a whole lot more in a different translation back in college. The translation issue really vexes any attempt to decide which of these novelists were "greater" for an English speaker, especially since the two translators who did them all in a consistent translated style - Garnett and Pevear/Volokhonsky - are really idiosyncratic and weird.
Imho, Karamazov is somehow close to the Tolstoyian style and least/less Dostoevskyian.
I'd go with Tolstoy, just because he managed to avoid writing such sentimental abomination as the ending of the Brothers Karamazov.
They are both enjoyable writers. I'd definitely recommend The Idiot and The Demons as well as War and Peace and Anna Karenina to anybody. It is very easy to avoid Tolstoy's philosophy and just enjoy his characters and atmosphere, but I find it very difficult to relate when Dostoyevsky tries to push the pity button in his work.
Vladimir Nabokov's very opinionated lectures on Russian literature are worth reading. Here's a bit on Fyodor:
QuoteDostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked - placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos... Dostoyevsky's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human English words expressing several, although by no means all, aspects of poshlost are, for instance, ''cheap,'' ''sham,'' ''smutty,'' ''highfalutin,'' ''in bad taste.'' dignity - all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ''sinning their way to Jesus'' or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ''spilling Jesus all over the place.
Quote"Dostoyevsky characterizes his people through situation, through ethical matters, their psychological reactions, their inside ripples. After describing the looks of a character, he uses the old-fashioned device of not referring to his specific physical appearance anymore in the scenes with him. This is not the way of an artist - say Tolstoy - who sees his character in his mind all the time and knows exactly the specific gesture he will employ at this or that moment".
Admittedly, I have not read the two or three early Dostoevsky novels (Poor People etc.) but in the mature novels the main plot points are not virtuous people in pathetic situations, with a few exceptions (like Prince Myshkin or Sonya Marmeladova, and even they are not quite like Oliver Twist or Little Nell). He places morally dubious and psychologically complex people in conflicting situations, e.g. Raskolnikov, Rogoshin, Nastassya in "The idiot", Dmitri and Ivan Karamasov, almost everyone in "The Demons" and "The gambler".
Quote from: Brian on January 02, 2022, 06:50:58 AM
I do think I need to revisit Dostoevsky especially, because my last interactions with him were in the clunky Pevear & Volokhonsky translations, and I remember enjoying Karamazov especially a whole lot more in a different translation back in college. The translation issue really vexes any attempt to decide which of these novelists were "greater" for an English speaker, especially since the two translators who did them all in a consistent translated style - Garnett and Pevear/Volokhonsky - are really idiosyncratic and weird.
Interesting. I remember those translations were touted as being so much better. I never read them. I don't know what I would have read in college. So, what ARE the best translations?
As a kid, I preferred Dostoyevsky's wild world even though the endings never made sense.
I like them both but if it's 'greater', it has to be Tolstoy, although my opinion is based almost entirely on War & Peace.
I've read a lot of Dostoevsky's novels, though - years ago. My passion burned most brightly between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one and I feel rather that I've outgrown him.