Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer's perspective

> Their works don't feel new, novel, and original: I've seen parts and pieces of it, reflections of its essence, expressed all over the average Slavic person.

The problem with the classics is they become so inspiring to future artists and readers that the themes, parts and other things disseminate into the culture to become stereotypical and boring. It's a big chicken and egg problem often enough. What was slavic art like before these people I wonder. Something impossible to separate.

OK article is touching on the issue that no book will learn you how to live.

You have to live your life and make the mistakes on your own.

Reading books helps maybe only with getting "AHA" moment of realization - after or just before you do something stupid ;)

I think the basic impulse is correct, actually. There's a very good chance that a person with this kind of attitude is a poor reader—of literature, at least, if not in general. If you drop them right into the heavy stuff, they'll probably bounce off really fast.

It's a skill you have to develop, like when you encounter a new musical genre. Lots of people get stuck at the "this sucks and is probably bad and overrated anyway" stage and don't open their minds and challenge themselves to understand why people like it, when encountering literature early on, similar to how many people get stuck in that same place for any musical genres they didn't learn to appreciate by age 25.

At best, they end up reading very light fiction for the rest of their lives—perhaps even YA, which is widely read among adults, in fact. At worst they decide the whole thing's a pretentious sham and they're smarter for not having engaged, which seems to be closer to the case here.

Not sure I'd go with YA if you're trying to convince someone of value in literature beyond entertainment, though. But lighter high-school tier literature, maybe. Salinger (but probably not Catcher in the Rye) or Vonnegut are decent choices, being at about the lightest end that'll still (if the reader's open to it) work those muscles. Gotta start small to develop the skills & taste to appreciate the sublime when it's expressed in written words, and to find meaning, enjoyment, and new mental tools that novice readers largely miss—which is why they often think well-regarded literature is boring and stuffy.

Here's how I understand it.

First, there's a famous Tyutchev poem from 1866 which is known by pretty much every Russian

    Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone,
    No ordinary yardstick can span her greatness:
    She stands alone, unique –
    In Russia, one can only believe.

(This is essentially word-by-word translation.)

So Tyutchev claims that Russia is so unique it cannot be analyzed. I think "The Russian Field ..." represents an analysis of Russia's uniqueness through enumeration of paradoxical archetypes which Russian culture holds, which makes Russian history/existence itself paradoxical, and thus uniquely fucked up.

The song mentions elements of the following archetypes/themes:

1. greater aspirations - God, etc. 2. lust 3. brutality, desire for destruction 4. desire for greatness/domination

Of course, they are present in every human culture. However, song combines them in a paradoxical way. It's as if different layers which are supposed to be distinct are brutally mixed. And the resultant mix is not pretty.

How did it happen? The song does not answer directly, but we can figure from the history: Russia's societal development got delayed, particularly, in XIX century. It was still an agrarian country with deeply religious population, but at the same time it got aspirations to play a global role.

So e.g. suppose you're a peasant. In Church you've heard there's God, God set Tsar to rule Russia, you're supposed to love your Tsar or you're a bad man. Then you're recruited into an army and go to war and shoot at other people. Why? I guess nobody would explain, but presumably God wants and because you love Tsar you have to do it.

The song might reference this retarded societal development in line "On the patriarchal landfill of obsolete concepts", "patriarchal" referencing Orthodox Christianity and Tsar-father as a head of everything.

Thus we have a mixture of 'greater aspirations' layer with 'brutality of war', e.g. in song this paradoxical mixture is referenced e.g. in "Laws of etiquette for mortars" line. There the word for "etiquette" is actually more vague term which can be found in Bible teachings, so it hints of mixture of ethical teachings with howitzers.

But then Russia went from insanity of Orthodox monarchism straight into the insanity of communism, famous for its double-think, etc. So Russia's collective unconscious never had a chance to clean up and unmix different layers, but got even more confused.

As a result, greater aspirations did not become a guidance, but merely a veneer hiding the brutality.

You can see this happening now - Putin talks about God, unity, saving brothers, etc. But people are brutally killed and raped. And for Russians it makes sense, it is a part of an archetype - God. Greater good. Howitzers go BOOM. They are used to this.

I asked my friend "So you want to save Russian-speaking people in Mariupol from "nazis". Why are you bombing the city?!" He replied: "Of course, it makes sense - that's how liberate a city from nazis, you gotta bomb it, that's how they did it in WWII". For him, it makes sense, he saw that in movies.

So anyway, I don't think it's nihilism. Letov describes some dark fucked-up archetypes under a veneer of Russian culture, but he doesn't make predictions about the future here (aside from a possibility of these archetypes materializing - which we see, unfortunately).

Ah, gotcha. Yes my risk assessment was prehensile.