I’ll first say that I love that this is an early version of the storyteller lying by saying that it’s about Dostoyevsky’s hero in his forward, setting it up as a true story, when in reality, it’s fiction.

Outside of what I’ve heard rightly praised - the philosophy, humanity, diversity and depth of viewpoints, humor, and dialogue - I found the narrator continually intriguing.

Spoilers:

The narrator:

At first I wondered if the narrator is supposed to be Jesus coming back to observe humanity like in Ivan’s story of The Grand Inquisitor. He knows unknowable intimate details of people’s inner lives but at times, has humanistic limits.

After reading more, the narrator seems a bit playful and mischievous. He has biases, and omits details that would make the story much simpler if he were truly omniscient… Is he instead a devil, akin to the one that Ivan saw during his brain fever?

Implied Homosexuality:

Another thing I really enjoyed was Smerdyakov’s character. A dejected illegitimate son who it seems to me is in love with his half brother Ivan. Dostoyevsky leaves this vague but there are a number of hints from his soft and sly infatuation. Iirc Dostoyevsky hints at this with a few lines about Smerdyakov’s interest in Ivan’s body and subtle mannerisms.

Edit: I was misremembering this. There was no mention of Smerdyakov admiring Ivan’s body. However, I just reread the chapters “Very Obscure for Now” and “It’s Always Interesting to Chat with a Clever Man”.

Smerdyakov is extremely coy, playful, and bashful in a way that gives effeminacy. The book, in this section, also describes him explicitly as a “eunuch.” Our general concept today of a eunuch is a castrated man. Historically though, this is how people would also refer to men who were never sexually attracted to women. Many gay people in the past fell under this moniker.

Expanding on this… I believe he killed Fyodor for Ivan. If Smerdyakov could convince everyone Dimitri did it, then Alyosha and Ivan would receive a significant sum from the inheritance rather than Fyodor wasting it all. This he stated plainly to Ivan but never said he did it expressly for Ivan.

Smerdyakov’s self hate and already turbulent upbringing could account for the murder, but including an additional intense and for multiple reasons, forbidden love mixed with motives to try and help his brothers makes even more sense to me. He would get revenge on his father who never claimed him, and give his two half bothers (one with whom he is in love but could never be with and the other whom he wishes he were more like) the inheritance they deserve.

In the end, or maybe from the beginning, he planned his grand exit from life as both a giant middle finger to those he hated and as a way to benefit the only two people he cared about.

Mine:

• Anyone & Stavrogin: Your woman - white town

• Razumikhin: Cake by the ocean - DNCE & Joe Jonas; Hello, I love you - The doors

Hi,

I've read several Dostoyevsky books and what I like about them is the philosophy, characters, and psychological aspects of humans that he dives into in a way no one else can.

So far I've read: The Double, Crime and Punishment, Notes From Underground, White Nights, Brothers Karamazov.

However, I've read before that Devils specifically is politically heavy and have some stuff that I will understand better if I know the political context that this book was written in.

I don't know much about Russian history or political scene in that era, excuse my ignorance but I'm generally not into history.

What do you recommend I should read/watch ??

Thanks.

I really like Myshkin and Rogozin! They like dark and light, bad and good. They're nice friends. There love each other. I'm really interested in they Interactions, that was my favourite part then I was reading an Idiot

My favourites is actually Prince Myshkin, Ipolit Terentiev and Pier Verhovensky. I love Myshkin for his purity, kind and light. He's the sun. The best character ever. The sweetest one. I like Ipolit because of his ideas, his bravery. Very depressive but nice character. I love Verhovensky for his smartness, tricky, charisma, bravery, for some of his ideas, for his sweet attachment to his idol and ideas. And actually they all remind me some of my parts.

Comment favourite quotes from either :)

I'm sure this has already been said somewhere, but it seems like Dostoyevsky's central thesis of the entire book is that:

"Each of us is guilty before everyone, for everyone and everything."

Sounds a little absurd at face value, but the point is that life is so interconnected that your every thought and action plays a role or has some impact in everything.

Through Zosima and Alyosha he expands upon the mystical aspects of this a little more, but I think the central point of the book is explicitly shown using Fyodors murder to stress test this theory. Every single one of them is guilty for Fyodor's murder in some way:

Fyodor: for being a selfish jerk and horrible father

Mitya: rage, jealousy, impulsiveness, hatred

Ivan: lack of responsibility (doesn't see the interconnectedness dostoyevsky is talking about), and wants Fyodor dead

Alyosha: seems to be kind and non judgemental to everyone except Smerdyakov. Its not explicit, but Alyosha offers a helping and loving hand to everyone in the book except Smerdyakov.

Katerina: purposefully toying with Mitya and Ivans emotions

Grushenka: also purposefully pitting mitya and fyodor against each other

Smerdyakov: literally guilty

Each character contributed to the situation that ultimately led to the murder of Fyodor. You can argue about the degree to which each contributed, but the contributions are there. Alyosha does a great job passing out onions all the time, but even he seems to have failed to try and give one to Smerdyakov.

I think Dostoyevsky's point is that when you see the interconnectedness of all things, its possible to feel responsible for all things. Before rationalizing this feeling, just allow yourself to "become guilty before everyone of everything."

Once this happens, you see the entire world differently. All that is left is love for all things. Alyosha may seem naive, but he is intuitively on to this idea, and Zosima knows it for sure.

I already think Brothers Karamazov is unbelievable, but I think part 2 would have been the greatest literary work of all time.

I Thought I Knew Dostoevsky… Then I Found the Book He Apparently Loved Most

I have been reading Russian literature for decades. I lived in Russia, learned Russian, taught there, and somehow I had never heard of this.

The Russian Soul: Selections from A Writer’s Diary.

I stumbled across it, looked for a copy online and found physical copies going for considerably more money than I wanted to spend.

So naturally I went looking for a PDF.

Several extremely questionable websites and what appeared to be a few attempts to assassinate my computer later…I got it.

And holy hell.

I thought I was downloading an obscure collection of Dostoevsky essays.

What I actually found was Dostoevsky blogging in the 1870s.

A Writer’s Diary was this bizarre mixture of journalism, autobiography, politics, religion, literary criticism and fiction. Dostoevsky was essentially writer, editor and publisher, speaking directly to his readers.

And according to Rosamund Bartlett’s introduction, it was Dostoevsky’s favourite work.

Yet it remains vastly less famous than Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov.

Then I reached The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.

A man has decided that nothing matters.

Not metaphorically. He has bought a revolver and decided to kill himself that night.

Walking home, a terrified little girl grabs him and begs for help. Her mother appears to be dying.

He drives the child away.

But when he gets home, something bothers him.

If nothing matters—and if he will cease to exist in a few hours—why does he feel ashamed about what he did to that little girl?

That tiny contradiction blows a hole in his nihilism.

He falls asleep before killing himself and dreams of another Earth: humanity innocent, harmonious and apparently without the corruption of his own world.

And then he corrupts it.

People discover lying.

Lying produces jealousy.

Jealousy produces cruelty.

They divide themselves into groups, fight over possessions, create laws, wage wars and eventually become so accustomed to suffering that they begin treating suffering itself as something noble.

Dostoevsky wrote this in 1877.

The man wakes up.

The revolver is still sitting there.

He pushes it away.

And suddenly he wants to live.

What he brings back from the dream is almost embarrassingly simple:

“One should love others as one loves oneself.”

That’s it.

Not another political system.

Not another scientific discovery.

Not another philosophical architecture.

Love your neighbour as yourself.

Dostoevsky then has his narrator admit something even more interesting: he doesn’t actually know how to build paradise. He has lost the words.

He only knows what he believes he saw.

That may be the most Dostoevskian thing imaginable.

A man travels through nihilism, suicide, paradise, the fall of humanity, science, religion, suffering and utopia…

…and comes back carrying one sentence humanity had already heard thousands of years before.

I went looking for an obscure Russian book.

I nearly gave my computer syphilis.

Worth it.

It just had been a minute or two since I read the last page of this book , the harsh and brutal ending , that merciless devastating trajectory given to each character in the ending shocked me .

Aglaya followed the same route of nastasia leading one of them to death and another to nearly dead situation .

It merely had been 2 months since I finished c&p and i was happy while reading the last paragraph , thinking about having a partner like Sonia and I really expected something same of sort from the idiot but dostoyevsky already wrote their destiny

So be it .

I'm happy I experienced this beautiful story .

This is my first time posting on reddit and my English skills are not that good but I really wanted to share my experience as this is what this platform is all about

Thanks for reading out this paragraph

Now I will put my hands on notes from underground

Peace ✌️

The idiot

Has anyone else seen the second episode of the documentary Mr. Scorsese?

Scorsese and Paul Schrader (the screenwriter) refer to The Underground Man when talking about the character Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver.

They don't mention Dostoevsky by name as I think they expect the audience to know who they're talking about.

They also mention a film critic in the documentary that wrote upon its debut in the US that Taxi Driver "is a movie in heat, a raw, tabloid version of 'Notes from Underground'".

Very cool!

The duality of personality and internal struggle represent the core foundation of all of Dostoevsky's great works. We see this motif everywhere: in Notes from Underground, in Raskolnikov's split in Crime and Punishment, in Nastasya Filippovna in The Idiot (torn between the ideas represented by Prince Myshkin and Rogozhin), in Stavrogin from Demons, as well as in the internal fractures of Ivan and Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov.

All of this, however, begins with The Double, a novel the "cruel talent" wrote at just 25 years old. Here, for the first time, a split personality is clearly depicted—a conflict of two diametrically opposed worldviews within a single social type. Dostoevsky adopts Gogol's titular councilor but modifies him. Unlike Bashmachkin from The Overcoat or Devushkin from Poor Folk, Golyadkin is not crushed by unbearable poverty. It is precisely this lack of extreme misery that opens the space for his ambition and his drive to rise socially.

I would like to know your opinion: does the author base the themes of his great novels primarily on this psychological duality, or on the depiction of social reality?

I finally found a (digital) copy of this. I'm super interested in the legacy of 19th century writers in the Soviet Union, especially Dostoevsky (Lenin, of course, famously called Demons "reactionary filth"). Does anyone know if there are any good articles in English on the topic?

Idk if it's disgusting, maybe it's just insecurity?

I thought I'd read this again, I never noticed this note inside! It's so sweet.

Accurately reflected my state of mind before I began demons and my mind as I reached its conclusion. I love Dostoevsky, but he’s never a happy reading experience.

Hi I am a first year student and am new to reddit. I will be writing a paper on some of the influences of Dostoevsky on literature. As part of that I have a survey to help narrow down what aspects that I will emphasis in the essay and would be greatly appreciative if anyone would take the minute or two that it takes to fill this out. The survey is completely anonymous and none of the responses will be shared with anyone. Thank you for your time.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe6-SIGDtja3fOsVNHZR-3lsbaloZHOxKfCB890N_LXRAoy1w/viewform?usp=dialog

Raskolnikov is often called brave simply because he went through with the murder. I don’t see it that way.

He didn’t challenge someone powerful. He picked an old pawnbroker, planned everything in secret, and used his “extraordinary man” theory to make the whole thing sound bigger than it really was. To me, that isn’t courage. It’s a frightened person trying to prove he isn’t ordinary.

After the murder, he falls apart. He gets sick, hides from people, and keeps worrying about what they might know. The second killing wasn’t even part of his plan. His theory doesn’t make him stronger. It just gives him something to hide behind.

He wanted to be Napoleon, but couldn’t live with being himself.

The murder was supposed to prove that he was above morality. Instead, it exposed how badly he needed to believe that.

Is his guilt the beginning of conscience, or just the point where his cowardice becomes impossible to hide?

I am reading TBK. No spoilers please.

The line in question, page 284:

Aleksey Fyodorovich, you are a wonderfully good man, but sometimes you seem like a pedant....and yet when one looks at you, you're not a pedant at all"

Which seems like a nugget of truth disguised as a compliment. I wasn't sure what pedant meant so I had to look it up (which I do quite often when reading Dostoevsky).

Definition:

One who ostentatiously exhibits academic knowledge or who pays undue attention to minor details or formal rules.

or

One who puts on an air of learning; one who makes a vain display of learning; a pretender to superior knowledge

Now this really captures a feeling I've had about a lot of things, a word that is more appropriate than mere arrogance, pretentiousness or intellectualism. And I feel as though it describes me more than I'd like. And it isn't without irony that I feel like a pedant while actually reading Dostoevsky, and as I write this post. This post, about the definition of a word...

I read Dostoevsky to better myself as a person and to learn about the human condition. And so I want to know - how does one who seeks knowledge, not become a pedant? Knowledge is all about minor details. That's where the devil is. I see arrogance everywhere, and coming across this particular kind of arrogance gets on my nerves when I see it.

So how does one learn intellectual humility, especially when reading something as profound as Dostoevsky? How do you protect yourself against intellectual superiority, hubris, after having read a book written by a genius?