I came across a passage from The Brothers Karamazov (in an Elden Ring lore video lol) that I enjoyed so I have been considering reading it. I’m not particularly great at interpreting literature and I also read a bit slowly, so I wasn’t sure if I would be better off starting with something shorter and simpler that he wrote. The passage in the video, a conversation between Ivan and Alyosha (mostly Ivan recounting stories of the suffering of children) seemed fairly straightforward to me, but I don’t know about the rest of the book.
Also I see there are a number of different English translations available for his works, are any of them particularly good or bad?
I remember this as Dostoevsky complaining for like 80 pages about Euclid.
its been a long time since i read it but i thought it was mostly about chernyshevsky. i'd like to read What Is To Be Done (the novel not the one by lenin (but also the one by lenin)) but my library had a really shitty copy so i never did it.
all that aside if the underground man does complain about euclid that sounds funny and i might prioritize rereading it
Revleft Radio had an episode on Dostoevsky that discusses the order, context, and meaning from the books. So you can go sequentially from there.
Liked Crime and Punishment. Was a good take down of "ubermensch" bs when I was in my early 20s
Also it's an interested example of an inversion of a "whodunnit". Maybe the first novel to do that? Idk, not a lit history expert
Tangentially related, but check out Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. It’s a musical that takes a chunk of ‘War and Peace’ and sets it all to music. It’s more opera than musical so you can just listen to it and get everything. I think there are maybe 2 lines of dialogue
Feel free to disagree with me everyone, this is just my opinion, but I still agree with Nabokov (White Russian that he is) when he says that Dostoevsky is the worst of the great Russian writers. The Brothers Karamazov goes on forever. I’ve actually read the entire thing, think it’s good, and still remember many scenes after many years. But still, Gogol is the best Russian writer imo and also the most fun and most accessible. Anything you read by Gogol will be enjoyable.
pevear and volokhonsky are my go to
their stuff flows better and is more readable but is less literal
I tried and failed to read BK twice, first with Constance and second with Magarshack. Picked up the P & V version and couldn't put it down. Definitely my rec as well.
Crime and Punishment is one of the best books of all time imo
notes from the underground is short, the first half is kind of weird because it isn't completely understandable without understanding the intellectual context the book was written in but like, you can probably still read it. The second part is basically just a narrative.
I liked demons a lot but its been a long time since I read it. Crime and Punishment was cool, very good example of a psychological novel which is basically what dostoyevsky is famous for. I read half of The Idiot and didn't like it so I gave up on it the other day. I've also read The Gambler which was cool but not as memorable, I've never read BK but i'd like to at some point.
I've read different translators for different books, the only one i know is that Crime and Punishment and The Idiot were pevear and volokhonsky. people on 4chan and shit love to say oh P&V sucks but i imagine that almost no one has read dostoyevsky in the original and in multiple translations, so i would just get one and as long as the writing isn't like annoying to you its probably fine. Only note i would make is that Constance Garnett was the standard for a long time but some of her translations have small parts of the book changed or missing.
This is only seen through the view of translations but difficulty with dostoyevsky isn't really in his language in itself, like ive never noticed a ton of long complicated sentences, but some stuff is unclear without a vague knowledge of social and cultural context, but a lot of translations will have notes explaining these. The other problem is that his characters are in many cases fucking weird as shit and it sometimes takes some thinking to follow their motivations and stuff. I have always liked thinking about books but even if you don't have a ton of practice I don't think that would prevent you from getting any enjoyment/fulfillment from his books, there's plenty there to go deeper into but a lot of it is pretty straightfoward.
Dostoyevsky was a conservative christian but i don't think it ruins his books for me or anything. Demons especially deals a lot with anarchists, i have no idea how reasonable his portrayal of anarchists in 1860s russia or whenever is but it's pretty interesting.
Also if you are just generally interested in russian literature, Dead Souls by Gogol is literally one of the funniest fucking books ive ever read. Completely different mood than dostoyevsky but absolutely recommend. He's more famous for his short stories which I haven't read but I'm sure those are good too.
o one more thing about difficulty, maybe the most difficult thing is keeping track of the different characters names because they might be referred to by their personal name + patronymic, their last name, or a shortening of their personal name. Might be some others too. But basically you need a list of the characters with their full names, but most editions ive seen have that.
also i keep thinking of stuff sorry, i don't think there would be anything wrong with just reading part of a book, i'm pretty sure there are places where you can find a particular episode or relatively self-contained chapter taken out of one of the really long books which could give you an idea of it. Maybe like an anthology of russian literature or something that needs to include dostoyevsky but can't have like the entirity of BK. Also you could just read the second part of Notes from Underground, it would probably be fine cause the first part is just a long rant and the second part is the actual narrative.
nooo you have to read the entirity of every book nah man thats foolish i played all the way through dark souls 1 and decided i didnt care about finishing the game so i never tried to beat gwyn. literally do what you want
also lol dostoyevsky has been one of my favorite novelists for a long time but a couple weeks ago i was reading the idiot and also reading some stuff by nietzsche and i was like god damn im an internet sigma grinder parody who thinks both authors are nihilists but then i stopped reading the idiot and finished the thing i was reading from nietzsche so im no longer an internet meme
I'm Russian and read almost all of Dostoevsky in, well, Russian. Can't say anything about translations, but if you (or anyone else) have a question about some passage, or cultural context - I'll be happy to help.
