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“The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

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Re: “The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

#41

Post by _blz2 »

joshjkim wrote: post #12
_blz2 wrote: post #6

This novel, along with 'Crime and punishement' deal with completely opposite personalities. One has a very optimistic view of the world, the other, Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, despises it and justifies violent crime with this mentality. Wonderful works, both of them. Unlike many, I read TBK first and decided to read Dostoevsky's other works and fell in love. Notes from the underground will always hold a sp…

i immediately fell in love with dostoevsky's work (just finished my third read of TBK), but it took me a long time to get into david foster wallace - now, i think of them as very similar. DFW is known for a lot of things (long books, footnotes on footnotes, early death) but to me at the end of the day both infinite jest and the pale king (his posthumous novel) are both incredible works that ultimately deal with exist…

I gave up reading Infinite Jest after getting 10-15% into it. I decided to come back to it later but never got back to it. It was somewhat difficult for me (not American). But this was a few years ago. Will try it again sometime soon.

Re: “The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

#42

Post by _blz2 »

jbattle wrote: post #8
_blz2 wrote: post #6

This novel, along with 'Crime and punishement' deal with completely opposite personalities. One has a very optimistic view of the world, the other, Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, despises it and justifies violent crime with this mentality. Wonderful works, both of them. Unlike many, I read TBK first and decided to read Dostoevsky's other works and fell in love. Notes from the underground will always hold a sp…

I think you would like Dead Souls by Gogol. It has the same kind of biting criticism as the idiot, but it's a bit darker (if I remember right) - not as dark as C&P, but darker than the idiot

Thanks. Yeah am not really looking for dark themes but as you said, 'biting criticism' of society and 'the human condition'

Re: “The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

#43

Post by drunkenmonkey »

sp332 wrote: post #21
tgragnato wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The oxymoron "idiot savant" was used for the first time by John Down during his studies. The etymology is in the scientific literature. Today we would use a less controversial term like "savant syndrome"... It seems appropriate given the title of the book (and the plot). I always took it as an eulogy to the plasticity of the human intellect: we always have something to learn from anybody.

I think the title is playing on the phrase "idiot savant" to indicate Dostoevsky himself, as the savant who wrote "The Idiot".

I think the main character is a Savant, who others view as an idiot. The title and its characterization are ironic. He is the smartest character in the book, but viewed as an idiot, due to a consistently ignorant society.

Not unlike, for example, Sufi poets who claim to be gods and then are humiliated and executed for heresy. His label of “idiot” is his execution. A crowd crying to crucify Christ.

Re: “The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

#44

Post by darepublic »

joshjkim wrote: post #12
_blz2 wrote: post #6

This novel, along with 'Crime and punishement' deal with completely opposite personalities. One has a very optimistic view of the world, the other, Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, despises it and justifies violent crime with this mentality. Wonderful works, both of them. Unlike many, I read TBK first and decided to read Dostoevsky's other works and fell in love. Notes from the underground will always hold a sp…

i immediately fell in love with dostoevsky's work (just finished my third read of TBK), but it took me a long time to get into david foster wallace - now, i think of them as very similar. DFW is known for a lot of things (long books, footnotes on footnotes, early death) but to me at the end of the day both infinite jest and the pale king (his posthumous novel) are both incredible works that ultimately deal with exist…

How do you figure C&P as the cynical work and the idiot as the optimistic one? Wouldn't it be the other way around

Re: “The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

#45

Post by darepublic »

jbattle wrote: post #8
_blz2 wrote: post #6

This novel, along with 'Crime and punishement' deal with completely opposite personalities. One has a very optimistic view of the world, the other, Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, despises it and justifies violent crime with this mentality. Wonderful works, both of them. Unlike many, I read TBK first and decided to read Dostoevsky's other works and fell in love. Notes from the underground will always hold a sp…

I think you would like Dead Souls by Gogol. It has the same kind of biting criticism as the idiot, but it's a bit darker (if I remember right) - not as dark as C&P, but darker than the idiot

The idiot is darker than crime and punishment...

Re: “The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

#46

Post by pandaman »

westoncb wrote: post #37
pandaman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GEB (Hofstadter's book) has a chapter about exactly this. Using Crime and Punishment as an example it is shown how different translations struggle with the lack of context.

Haha—this is the first thing I've heard about GEB in years that makes me again somewhat interested in reading it. There was a point when I was a teenager where it seemed like probably the most interesting book on the planet, and I'd read a decent bit of it then; but years later—after studying a bunch of math, CS, and philosophy stuff—when I'd consider reading it there just didn't appear to be enough new meaty stuff o…

If you are interested in the context analysis in Crime and Punishment then you can read just those few pages. He goes over just the first couple sentences of the book if I recall correctly. It's not an explanation of the context for the entire book by any means but an example of how much context could be needed to read a simple sentence.

Re: “The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

#47

Post by mping »

_blz2 wrote: post #6

This novel, along with 'Crime and punishement' deal with completely opposite personalities. One has a very optimistic view of the world, the other, Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, despises it and justifies violent crime with this mentality. Wonderful works, both of them. Unlike many, I read TBK first and decided to read Dostoevsky's other works and fell in love. Notes from the underground will always hold a sp…

Do a deep dive on Saramago. You can start with Blindness. I'm biased because I'm from Portugal but the man was a genius. In the end you may leave with more questions than when you started the book,but you will be satisfied!

Re: “The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

#48

Post by throwaway84742 »

_blz2 wrote: post #25
throwaway84742 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Russian, I don’t understand how Americans can “get into” Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. The cultural background required to understand them is simply not there, so you’re getting maybe 50% of what’s there, and that’s an optimistic estimate. Likewise, I’m not sure I fully understand Hemingway, Steinbeck, etc. I enjoy their work, to be sure, but I’m afraid not to the extent Americans enjoy it. Thus far I have not found an…

I am Indian. You're right, one can never experience Russian literature in a way that a Russian does. But there are quite similarities in cultures shaped by religion because there are similarities in religion.

Please don’t take this as a put down or anything. I’m sure much of the meaning in Indian literature is culturally inaccessible to me as well. The problem is 100% symmetrical, one just needs to be aware of it.

Re: “The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

#49

Post by throwaway84742 »

dalacv wrote: post #17
throwaway84742 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Russian, I don’t understand how Americans can “get into” Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. The cultural background required to understand them is simply not there, so you’re getting maybe 50% of what’s there, and that’s an optimistic estimate. Likewise, I’m not sure I fully understand Hemingway, Steinbeck, etc. I enjoy their work, to be sure, but I’m afraid not to the extent Americans enjoy it. Thus far I have not found an…

You are not the first Russian I have heard say that about Dostoevsky.

That’s because Russians themselves find it difficult to fully contextualize Dostoevsky. A couple hundred years from now they may not be able to do so at all, and the full depth will become inaccessible to anybody other than historians of the period in which Dostoevsky lived. Russia is still similar enough to that so a Russian of today can fill in the gaps as she reads the books. Not just what happened, that part is trivial, but how the characters really _felt_.

Re: “The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

#50

Post by throwaway84742 »

pandaman wrote: post #33
clipperton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of cultural points might be missed on a non-Russian person reading Dostoevsky? I just finished Crime and Punishment a couple months back and am curious, if you have the time.

GEB (Hofstadter's book) has a chapter about exactly this. Using Crime and Punishment as an example it is shown how different translations struggle with the lack of context.

His essay about machine translation is quite illustrative of the issues of cultural context as well. Even the best translations lose a substantial chunk of meaning, because it’s often not just what the author said, but also how he said it, which particular words were used, and subtle other meanings and gradations attached to that particular choice of words (and, in Russian, the word order as well).

When I was growing up I read a ton of sci-fi. One of my favorite works is “Stranger in a strange land” by Robert Heinlein. I had two different translations of it. One was good, another one was a turd, and neither came anywhere close to living in the US for 15 years and _then_ re-reading the book in its original form. And that’s sci-fi, a relatively “shallow” literary genre.

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