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Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

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Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#161

Post by konart »

ReptileMan wrote: post #121
ventana wrote: post #81

As a Russian native speaker who graduated from the high school in Russia many years ago, one thing that I don't really understand is why these great works of Russian literature are included in the school must read list. An average teenager, myself included, always has some better things to do than reading a huge novel, barely understanding characters' motivations, because neither of these books were ever intended for…

Russian literature is based on suffering. Someone always suffers - either the protagonist, the author or the reader. If all of them are suffering you have a masterpiece of Russian literature. I guess it is because it prepares you quite well to suffer endless corporate memos.

I understand where you coming from, but both Russia classics Soviet and modern authors have decent comedy pieces.

Not to mention works that are just not about suffering but life.

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#162

Post by coldtea »

zxexz wrote: post #153
coldtea wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An average teenager, myself included, always has some better things to do than reading a huge novel, barely understanding characters' motivations, because neither of these books were ever intended for teens. Bookish teens have been reading these books since they came out. And the average teenager has way worse things to do than reading a classic novel. As for "barely understanding characters' motivations" that's ho…

Bookish teens will read them anyway. Giving them the option to do so in school, I would imagine would be met thankfully by them if done well, and a "no thanks" from the less-bookish - who very possibly will go on to read them later on in life.

Part of the point of school however is to not let teenagers just learn only what they care about, because most of them don't care about anything except consuming and gaming and media slop.

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#163

Post by ReptileMan »

egormakarov wrote: post #157
ReptileMan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian literature is based on suffering. Someone always suffers - either the protagonist, the author or the reader. If all of them are suffering you have a masterpiece of Russian literature. I guess it is because it prepares you quite well to suffer endless corporate memos.

> suffer endless corporate memos I think classic russian literature can be everything, but not an exercise in formal double-speak incantations.

True. But reading low density, dry material that you don't want to and feeling mental and physical exhaustion from the process sums up both war and peace and corporate communications.

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#164

Post by fleebee »

hk__2 wrote: post #130
Forgeties79 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried to break into the brothers K two or three times and it’s just been so difficult for some reason. I know it’s kind of a joke at this point, but keeping track of all of the names is just so dizzying and distracting.

I read War and Peace recently, is it the same amount of characters? At some point I almost started a genealogical tree of the characters.

Regarding Brothers, I don't think it's that much more than the average novel of that length. What I think trips foreign readers up the most is the constant use of Russian diminutive names e.g. substituting Alyosha for Alexei or Mitenka for Dmitri.

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#165

Post by ReptileMan »

konart wrote: post #161
ReptileMan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian literature is based on suffering. Someone always suffers - either the protagonist, the author or the reader. If all of them are suffering you have a masterpiece of Russian literature. I guess it is because it prepares you quite well to suffer endless corporate memos.

I understand where you coming from, but both Russia classics Soviet and modern authors have decent comedy pieces. Not to mention works that are just not about suffering but life.

Yes, but the people that have read Moscow 2042 count in the numbers of fingers on the hand of carefree bandsaw user compared to the people that have read Crime and Punishment. Which when I read it I understood that I was punished, but had not idea what my crime was.

The only widely known fun book outside of Russia is Master and Margarita.

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#166

Post by 6LLvveMx2koXfwn »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #83
SugarReflex wrote: post #63

I was blown away by Crime and Punishment. I truly felt like I was the main character, and I read it with feverish sweat and dread for my impending doom. I cringed and felt terrible sadness at the poor little lives of certain individuals. So much woe and tragedy. I was glad to see how it turned out though. I'm currently reading Karamazov and it's good to have something a bit more jovial and dry witted. The main diffic…

Read Crime and Punishment ~25 years ago, the Idiot ~20 years ago. I read Karamazov last year and Demons early this year. I still think C&P is the best of his books with Karamazov a close 2nd. Demons is very dark, but also it seems prophetic - it's like he foresaw some of what would happen in 1917 way back in 1870. He's even got a character in there that's short and bald and likes to wave his arms around wildly as he'…

I'm an Idiot man, myself

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#167

Post by alexejb »

kakacik wrote: post #131
ReptileMan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian literature is based on suffering. Someone always suffers - either the protagonist, the author or the reader. If all of them are suffering you have a masterpiece of Russian literature. I guess it is because it prepares you quite well to suffer endless corporate memos.

[flagged]

> effectively enslaved by invading russian forces for decades to serve as nuclear battlefield with the west

seems like western germany, which was also considered to be a nuclear battlefield with the warsaw pact, but the marketing was nicer, I suppose.

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#168

Post by Forgeties79 »

orthoxerox wrote: post #135
Oreb wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The problem with the names in Dostoyevsky (and Russian literature more generally) isn’t that the names on their own are difficult to remember, it is that all names also have familiar forms, which are sometimes very different from the formal name. On page you get introduced to a character named Alexander, a few pages later the text talks about Sasha. For non-native speakers, it’s hard to guess that it’s th…

> For non-native speakers, it’s hard to guess that it’s the same person. Like "Mrs. Thatcher", "Margaret" and "Peg"?

More like “Richard” and “Dick.” You have to be explicitly told that Dick is a nickname for Richard at some point in your life or you’d likely never figure it out.

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#169

Post by slackfan »

jallmann wrote: post #59
slackfan wrote: post #53

The Pevear and Volohonsky "translations" are an affront to english prose, russian literature, and the craft of translation in general. A heavily quantized LLM with an aneurism would provide the reader with a better translation than that trash. (I used to be a professional translator for the relevant languages, so I have opinions™)

Which translations would you recommend for Crime and Punishment or Dostoyevsky in general? When I'm starting to read a non-English novel, the process of deciding which translation to use is half the fun. The Kent and Berbera (revised Garnett) version of Anna Karenina was mesmerizing.

Garnett (and editions of) are (quelle suprise) just fine.

Re: Dostoyevsky isn't difficult

#170

Post by gf000 »

kelnos wrote: post #134
usrnm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called empathy, we don't have to experience exactly the same thing as other people to be able to understand them. The author himself never experienced the things he's writing about. Do teenagers lack empathy? Of course, but this is education, after all

I don't think you can educate kids about certain types of emotional matters and certain types of empathy, at any age. Their brains just have not developed to the point where it's possible or useful. "Empathy" doesn't really fully cover it, though. Yes, someone of any age can emphasize with someone in a tough situation, but actually having experienced something similar, or have seen others in similar situations, or ju…

I mean, most of us will probably never actually experience having murdered someone.

Yet we still can enjoy the though process of such a person through the book. I don't see why "paying rent" is any more difficult to experience through reading than "murdering" - if anything the general era/geography/social differences are much more significant than these (I live in an ex-Soviet country and read it as a teenager, twice - it had such a profound effect on me. Even still seeing the Russian reality of the time was harder for me (but still easier than I believe it would be for a US teen), than all the intricate internal monologues).

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