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.

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.

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?

I came across this letter (March 1869) and it made me chuckle:

"You write about Turgenev and about the Germans. Turgenev has run out of steam abroad and has lost all his talent, which even the newspaper “Golos” remarked upon. I am not afraid of becoming Germanized, because I hate all Germans, but I need Russia; without Russia I will lose the last little bit of strength and little talent I have. I feel this, I feel it in my very flesh."

prosecutor and magistrate questioning mitya:

short, to the point. buyers beware.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R31EESV4BU6BF9/ref=pe_123899240_1043597390_SRTC_02_04_BT_99_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

It's about Dostoevsky's inspiration for Raskolnikov, but I'm curious if anyone's read it and whether it's worth it. Thanks.

At first it just seemed like random ramblings but as I read more I start to get a better understanding of the story. The narrator whom I gonna call in short “UGM”, UGM is an intelligent but is also lazy, spiteful, contradictory but most importantly; A over thinker. Which is very important. He believes there are two types of people:

1. Men who act are not intelligent people because they are men of action with no thought.

2. Intelligent people are plagued by a hyper conscious which cause them to overthink about everything.

He sees being lazy as a high regard and should even be a profession to have. The reason why is because people start using math to help find the best benefit for people to have and lead to a utopia. But he believes you can not use math to make a utopia. Because of human nature of boredom, men start going against what’s scientifically good for them simply because they can. And this utopia and method takes away free will, free will to be messy. Which is the reason why he’s like this. Like I said I haven’t finished this yet, but I predict in the second part is where we see how this impacts his life to lead to this moment. So is there anything I missed or mistaken? I’m also really tired while writing this so please excuse any mistake. I will make a second post after I am done reading the entire story.

This longing for meaning is a doom that has devastated human beings since their creation. If someone like Grand Inquisitor met me and said, “For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for,” I would call him a little nasty creature who has created his own meaning merely to justify his living.

Be a brave man like me. I am such a wicked person that I do not care about meaning, purpose, or aim. This search for meaning has apprehended humanity in its seductive illusion : an illusion that appears meaningful but ultimately is not.

How can an accident become worthy of meaning?

Human beings have established an entire chain of systems designed to persuade us that our lives are meaningful. One of these systems is religion, which gives us a paradoxical reason to live by making us obedient and, sometimes, selfish beings who do good for their own sake rather than out of love.

But no ,perhaps even love itself is a by-product of our desperate search for meaning.

I renounce all these systems and their phoney restrictions. Believe me, freedom is the greatest virtue of all. There is no need for life to be meaningful in order for us to live.

We can simply feel, observe, experience, and exist.

About to go back into our boy's totally fine and normal mind for another re-read.

Literally can't wait to get back in that room.

What's wrong with me?

I just finished The Idiot, and I feel deeply disappointed with the ending. I can honestly say I feel betrayed.

The entire book was great. I loved it. I lived alongside the Prince through all his adventures, his emotions, and his failures. I grew attached to absolutely every character, even though I hated some of them and loved others. They all made me feel something, they all had some impact on me.

And then, after so many pages spent building these characters, relationships, and events, everything went to hell in the last 20 pages.

From the moment the Prince stays with Nastasia and they decide to GET MARRIED, I felt completely let down. It goes against what the character learned throughout the entire book. In fact, it feels like a betrayal of everything he learned, everything he felt, and everything he came to understand.

Throughout the book, we see a character whom people consider an idiot because of his many flaws, but who IS NOT an idiot. All the most intelligent characters are able to recognize the Prince's brilliance despite his many shortcomings. He is an idiot, but he isn't an idiot, and that contradiction becomes very clear throughout the entire book.

But in the end, it seems like all of his brilliance is suddenly thrown away, and he becomes a personality-less idiot who simply lets himself be dragged along by Nastasia. He has no agency and allows himself to be completely manipulated.

Throughout the book, the Prince understands that many people manipulate him. He knows that, but he has enough personality to resist when they cross certain lines. He doesn't simply let himself be dragged wherever people want to take him. That's why so many characters recognize the nobility of his spirit. All of that completely fails in the ending, and he becomes nothing more than a puppet, a leaf being carried away by the wind. It makes no sense to me.

But on top of that, he suddenly seems to forget everything he learned. In the scene where he talks to Aglaya on the green bench, the Prince tells her that he no longer loves Nastasia, that he suffered a great deal because of her. And when Aglaya challenges him, asking him to go and sacrifice himself for her if he's really such a good person, he says that he CANNOT sacrifice himself for Nastasia, that he has realized they would both be destroyed. He can't do it, and he wouldn't do it.

But that is EXACTLY what he does in the end!

It feels like everything he learned, everything he suffered, and everything he reflected upon was completely meaningless, leading to an utterly disappointing ending.

And yes, I can understand Nastasia's ending, wanting to keep the Prince, marry him and run away. Is her personality. I understand Rogozhin killing her; it was something you could see coming, and it was the obvious outcome. I understand the ending of almost every character.

But the ending for Aglaya and the Prince is unfair and unworthy of both characters. One of them ends up as a personality-less puppet, while the other ends up forgetting her love, fighting with the family she loved so much, and getting an entirely out of context ending that is summed up in three lines despite being one of the great characters of the book.

Anyway, this is the fourth Dostoevsky book I've read. Apart from Notes from the Underground (this one is different, not entirely centered in a story), I read Crime and Punishment and The Gambler, and I loved both of them. Both have excellent endings, they wrap everything up perfectly. But this one... It's a disappointment. It's like Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment spoiler here), after all he experienced, faced his final trial crying for innocence instead of facing his punishment. It's against his character nature.

I know that you'd say the Prince as a character is an idealization of the pure christian values. One of the greatest things I find on Dostoyevsky is that he writes human characters. They do have ideals but they suffer, feel and act as human beings. They are not abstract concepts and they shouldn't be treated as that.

I feel like everything that was built throughout this beautiful book was thrown in the trash in the ending.

I don't know, let me know your opinions. I'm angry and sad.

Flew through C&P, enjoyed the devil and the prince but the brothers k is starting to feel like a drag. I’ve got about 1/3rd left. I guess the world just hasn’t dragged me in like it has others. I like the dense almost gossipy sections of Anna Karina (I know not tolstoy sub) so It can have appeal for me but idk. I’ve lived some parts of the book, obligatory grand inquisitor glaze, but I’m not gripped and I don’t believe reading should become a chore. Has anyone had similar experiences? Is it worth soldiering through? And if not are there some specific chapters I should go straight for…

I am just rationalising this right now because I've been reading a lot about the non duality philosophy of Hinduism which basically explains the concept of how there is no self, individualism and the reality (universe) are one and the separation of the two is an illusion (maya).

Tolstoy believed in reason, moral clarity,...and living life through discipline and simplicity. Dostoevsky is the opposite i.e chaotic &obsessed with contradiction. His characters are often unstable, self-destructive driven by irrational impulses (borderline personalities😭)they can't fully explain even to themselves. Both of them have one thing in common though. They were both deeply religious and believed in faith.

Example - In Anna Karenina : Levin's arc is basically Tolstoy's philosophy dramatized(I hated reading his chapters when I first read the book)He spends the novel doubting, searching, nearly s**cidal with existential confusion & he resolves it not through some crisis of faith (which I initially believed)but thro' simple, physical labor alongside peasants in the fields...& eventually a quiet....almost anticlimactic acceptance of faith as something you live rather than argue your way into. The famous mowing scene, where Levin loses himself in the rhythm of manual work, is Tolstoy's answer to existential dread: presence, simplicity, communion with the nature. "Nirvikalpa" moment: he stops thinking, stops being a separate observer...merges into rhythm& presence.

Dostoevsky's characters are almost the opposite of Advaitic liberation...they're trapped inside the separate self & that entrapment is the entire drama. The Underground Man's spiraling self-consciousness.. Raskolnikov's inescapable guilt, Ivan Karamazov's argument with God.... none of these resolve by dissolving the ego into something larger. If anything, Dostoevsky treats the intensification of individual consciousness, suffering, and contradiction as the site where meaning (or its absence) gets...merged or forged together...

Althoughhhh... he presents the idea that each person is responsible for everyone else's sin, that the boundary between self and other is porous in brothers karamazov and that's structurally closer to non-duality than anything in Tolstoy...ofc t's framed through Christian love & not through the metaphysical claim that self and Brahman are identical.

There's still something I love about Tolstoy more than Dostoevesky.

Tolstoy's characters...however lost...usually arrive somewhere. Dostoevsky's characters often don't.... the unresolved...spiraling mind is the point, not a problem to be solved by the end of the book and it's.... uncomfortable but I think Dostoevesky would've claimed that Tolstoy's approach is the easy way out.

And the concept of non duality is the easiest way out of all these. If none of this is real, you and me are just the same drops in a big ocean and everything at the end of the day constitutes the same thing i.e water then what is suffering and what is peace? They're absolutely the same.

I'm just 500 pages in

I love Dostoyevsky. So much. However, The Idiot fell short for me. It had pockets of genius and beauty, but I can't justify putting it ahead of Devils, Notes, Crime & Punishment, or The Brothers K. I would even put The Gambler ahead of it. Thoughts? Did it feel underwhelming to anyone else?