> While Crime and Punishment (1866) is frequently cited as the “quintessential Russian novel,” Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov (1880), is widely acknowledged as his greatest literary achievement.
I have to agree. It's unparalleled. Notes from Underground is really good too.
Speaking of Russian literature, I finally managed to finish rereading War and Peace recently after a decade+. It was long and slow, but easier this time around. I listened to The Cossacks on audiobook as well, and liked it quite a bit.
About 25 years ago, after being absolutely blown away by Crime and Punishment, I gave The Brothers Karmazov a try, and was disappointed to find it was very soap-operaish. I really couldn't care less who was sleeping with whom or about the other petty melodrama in the book.
I also recently came back to Crime and Punishment, and found that while it has some of the greatest passages I've ever read in any book, passages that are full of keen psychological penetration and empathy for deeply flawed people, there's also a lot of corny, cliche material in it: the murderer with a heart of gold, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the consumption poor mother sacrifices everything for her chldren, etc...
These sorts of characters might not have been cliche in the 19th Century, but they certainly are today.
Brothers Karamazov is supposedly really good, but it remains basically the only book I've started but never finished.
The beginning is sooo boring. It takes over a hundred pages for them to even get to be at the same place at the same time where something even could happen. I gave up right at that point, which supposedly is when it gets good.
If you liked war and peace, you should check out grossman’s life and fate, it’s WWII’s version, fantastic. And blacklisted by the soviet government because critical of it.
It would have been so helpful and on topic if this and every other comment on Russian literature had stated which translation they used, or if they read the original.
its hard to equate “quintessential Russian novel,” with the book Crime and Punishment, here... much closer to Kafka or Camus. Crime and Punishment is worthy literature for certain, but “quintessential Russian novel,” doesn't fit..
This article seems to end abruptly - it's written by the translator of a new edition, talks a bit about the history of the book, goes into alleged issues with two popular translations and then stops before ever explaining anything about the new translation or how and why it addresses those issues. Did I miss something?
I got the same feeling and the author being the translator of such exhaustive literary pieces, one wouldn't expect this to end so quickly and unfulfilling.
> "The reader will have to read the novel and decide the case as they see fit."
I never understood fascination with his books, especially on the west. I was forced through "Crime and Punishment" by our school system and tried (for the 3rd time) reading The Brothers Karamazov in my mid 30s - its all so boring and pointless and I was only driven by my curiosity to find what other people are finding there (and failing). So, a genuine question for the people that found "Brothers Karamazov" good - what was good about it? The linked article just sings pointless accolades.
It's his personal study on human nature fictionalized as a mundane story. The meat of the work isn't the plot, but the interactions between the characters, which each are supposed to represent various personality archetypes and world-views they subscribe to.
It's also interesting to consider each character (disregarding minor characters) all of as an orthogonal dimension of a single person (by no means scientific): the inner-monkey (Dmitri), hyper-intellect (Ivan), spiritual/altruistic (Alyosha). From this perspective, the work is a solipsistic study on how inner-conflict manifests outwardly into the world.
Writers and readers of literature trend as either character-oriented or plot-oriented. Literary critics, showing a traditional prejudice, call stories of the first type "literary fiction" and the second type "genre fiction". Dostoevsky’s works are definitely character studies, so looking for a well-structured plot is missing his aims. My own preference is for plot-based stories, so I find most of the great "literary" novelists, like D. H. Lawrence, rather unengaging.
Interesting point about the west. Apparently Dostoevsky wrote the novels in a western style, altering the Russian style to be more like his western contemporaries like Dickens and other readable novelists. (He still wrote in the russian language of course)
I don't think the intention was to appeal to the west but I think it does make it easier for westerners today to approach and appreciate his work.
The book (Karamazov) essentially deals with very fundamental moral and spiritual issues like pain, suffering, the problem of evil etc. You'd have a better time appreciating it if you put yourself within the context of when the book was written, and the religious sensibilities common at that time.
Maybe it's harder to appreciate it now, I can definitely understand why it would be.
Someone on /lit/ called Brothers Karamazov a "ghoulish rigmarole." I struggle to see the enduring value of the work. I got 100 pages into it on a 9-hr flight without wifi. There's nothing quotable or apparently salient. Kindle version had no popular highlights, unlike Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. I just hear vague proclamations about how great it is but no specific insights, passages, or takeaways. I can think of tons of quotes, characters in AK that resonated but nothing seemed to ever happen in BK.
Crime and punishment was riveting. “Brothers” was a slog. Maybe I didn’t make it far enough through. This comes from someone who lived in Russia and enjoys Russian culture.
Looking at other comments here and elsewhere, I believe with Dostoevsky's work, it's binary -- you either love him to death, or you are bored of him to death. Glad to be in the former camp.
I really love how Dostoevsky's novels seem so simple on the surface, yet as you keep reading, they keep getting better, and deeper, and more profound, without losing the simplicity or authenticity. Looking back, The Brother's Karamazov is the best book I've ever read. I was just recently thinking of giving it a re-read, will probably be great to do it in a different translation.
It has happened to me before that a book that I greatly admired felt not so great when re-reading it later (The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts, I still feel it's good, but having internalized the core concepts, it seemed way too repetitive on second read). Hope that doesn't happen when I re-read Dostoevsky's novels, I have a feeling I would like them even better, but who knows.
Not necessarily true. I don't find his books boring, but I activelly don't like them. Dostoevsky to me is a reactionary, a regressive religious ideologue to the core - despite all the psychoanalysis.
No, not binary. I love the House of the Dead and the Gambler, but Brothers is a soap opera with a few great chapters and passages hiding inside. They don't make the overall experience worth it though.
I read The Brothers Karamazov in my early 20s and after the first 100 / 150 pages or so, which as other have mentioned felt like quite a slog, I was blown away by it. I tried to read it again around 20 years later and it felt wildly overdone. As Borges said, if you get bored reading a book then it wasn't written for you, but I think that needs an addendum that it wasn't written for you at that point in your life. Perhaps I'll enjoy it again later on - the pressures of work and a family do mean that I find myself having very little time or patience for melodramatic people in my life, and I wonder if that has spilled over into my appreciation of novels!
I nearly lost my habit of reading novels, and it's been quite some time since I indulged in fiction. Recently, I decided to try Dostoevsky. I'm currently engrossed in Crime and Punishment, and I'm going to finish it today. absolutely addicting. my next read will be Notes from Underground.
House of the Dead was Tolstoy's favorite and it it was on his bedside table when he died.
The Gambler has a hell of a backstory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21152240. The book itself was one enormous real-life gamble, which he won by a hair. Since gambling was Dostoevsky's own addiction, the intensity in the book has a personal quality.
Also fabulous is The Double, which was the second thing he published, and still one of his best.
I did not care for Crime and Punishment. It takes forever getting in; you spend like six and a half hours... You know, I can't get through, I've never even finished the book.
The thing I hate about most "great" fiction is it's rarely made better by the theatrics of it. I'd much rather read the author's anecdotal opinion instead of an overdrawn lie that's subtextually getting to that same point, except taking more time and little entertainment along the way.
Maybe it's just a personal thing; maybe it's partly about the translation you pick. But I remember reading Crime & Punishment back in my 20s (without any expectations or background knowledge), and I found it absolutely gripping.
[eta:] On the other hand, some years later I got totally bogged down in Brothers Karamazov, and (rarely, for me) didn't finish the book.
I think the buildup in Crime and Punishment is what makes the resolution so good. I distinctly remember a point where the book delivered the most intense literature derived frisson I had ever experienced.
It was a bit of a slog and I’ve never been tempted to pick it back up, but it was worth it.
Given that Dostoyevsky spent four years in exile shackled the whole time for reading some anti-Tsarist literature, I'm quite sure he was not a supporter of the Russian government.
Edit: it turns out you've done this at least once before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36552205). Obviously the war makes for strong and legitimate feelings. But commenters here can be, and need to be, peaceful enough not to blame or put down entire countries/histories/cultures. Otherwise we're just propagating more war, which is certainly not what HN is for. That follows from the principle of curiosity which we're trying to optimize for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
Also, you've been breaking the site guidelines quite a bit in other places that have nothing to do with the war:
With HN’s fascination for fascist artists, I’m surprised Leni Riefenstahl isn’t featured more prominently on the front page. But it’s only Dostoyevsky.
Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot lately. That's not ok. I appreciate that you have deep reasons to feel strongly about the war, but you've been breaking HN's guidelines in plenty of other contexts too. If you keep this up, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to do that, so if you'd please take the intended spirit of the site more to heart and comment within that, we'd appreciate it.
[+] [-] SubGenius|2 years ago|reply
I have to agree. It's unparalleled. Notes from Underground is really good too.
Speaking of Russian literature, I finally managed to finish rereading War and Peace recently after a decade+. It was long and slow, but easier this time around. I listened to The Cossacks on audiobook as well, and liked it quite a bit.
[+] [-] pmoriarty|2 years ago|reply
I also recently came back to Crime and Punishment, and found that while it has some of the greatest passages I've ever read in any book, passages that are full of keen psychological penetration and empathy for deeply flawed people, there's also a lot of corny, cliche material in it: the murderer with a heart of gold, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the consumption poor mother sacrifices everything for her chldren, etc...
These sorts of characters might not have been cliche in the 19th Century, but they certainly are today.
[+] [-] Enginerrrd|2 years ago|reply
The beginning is sooo boring. It takes over a hundred pages for them to even get to be at the same place at the same time where something even could happen. I gave up right at that point, which supposedly is when it gets good.
[+] [-] globuous|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boredhedgehog|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmvdoug|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistrial9|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Arainach|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] l5870uoo9y|2 years ago|reply
> "The reader will have to read the novel and decide the case as they see fit."
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] artemonster|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _gmax0|2 years ago|reply
It's also interesting to consider each character (disregarding minor characters) all of as an orthogonal dimension of a single person (by no means scientific): the inner-monkey (Dmitri), hyper-intellect (Ivan), spiritual/altruistic (Alyosha). From this perspective, the work is a solipsistic study on how inner-conflict manifests outwardly into the world.
[+] [-] wrp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andyjenn|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jszymborski|2 years ago|reply
Karamazov was much harder for me to read than C&P or The Idiot, and I liked the other two best.
That said, it's well worth it to read the famous passages, they are incredible prose
[+] [-] thinkingemote|2 years ago|reply
I don't think the intention was to appeal to the west but I think it does make it easier for westerners today to approach and appreciate his work.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] SubGenius|2 years ago|reply
Maybe it's harder to appreciate it now, I can definitely understand why it would be.
[+] [-] carabiner|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] practice9|2 years ago|reply
Western scholars love him for some reason (as the study of the constantly ongoing brutality of Russian culture, perhaps?)
[+] [-] shortlived|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abhaynayar|2 years ago|reply
I really love how Dostoevsky's novels seem so simple on the surface, yet as you keep reading, they keep getting better, and deeper, and more profound, without losing the simplicity or authenticity. Looking back, The Brother's Karamazov is the best book I've ever read. I was just recently thinking of giving it a re-read, will probably be great to do it in a different translation.
It has happened to me before that a book that I greatly admired felt not so great when re-reading it later (The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts, I still feel it's good, but having internalized the core concepts, it seemed way too repetitive on second read). Hope that doesn't happen when I re-read Dostoevsky's novels, I have a feeling I would like them even better, but who knows.
[+] [-] suslik|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alexey-salmin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frereubu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rex_lupi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StanislavPetrov|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|2 years ago|reply
The Gambler has a hell of a backstory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21152240. The book itself was one enormous real-life gamble, which he won by a hair. Since gambling was Dostoevsky's own addiction, the intensity in the book has a personal quality.
Also fabulous is The Double, which was the second thing he published, and still one of his best.
[+] [-] yetihehe|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hotdogscout|2 years ago|reply
The thing I hate about most "great" fiction is it's rarely made better by the theatrics of it. I'd much rather read the author's anecdotal opinion instead of an overdrawn lie that's subtextually getting to that same point, except taking more time and little entertainment along the way.
[+] [-] jfk13|2 years ago|reply
[eta:] On the other hand, some years later I got totally bogged down in Brothers Karamazov, and (rarely, for me) didn't finish the book.
[+] [-] nanidin|2 years ago|reply
It was a bit of a slog and I’ve never been tempted to pick it back up, but it was worth it.
[+] [-] readthenotes1|2 years ago|reply
Teenagers had to read "non-western" novel for class.
Child's friend picked Crime and Punishment.
I steered child to Siddhartha by Hesse.
[+] [-] toinbis|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ternaryoperator|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wellanyway|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dang|2 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: it turns out you've done this at least once before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36552205). Obviously the war makes for strong and legitimate feelings. But commenters here can be, and need to be, peaceful enough not to blame or put down entire countries/histories/cultures. Otherwise we're just propagating more war, which is certainly not what HN is for. That follows from the principle of curiosity which we're trying to optimize for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
Also, you've been breaking the site guidelines quite a bit in other places that have nothing to do with the war:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36200386 (June 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36123130 (May 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36122929 (May 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36087689 (May 2023)
We ban accounts that post this way. I don't want to ban you! So would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this going forward?
[+] [-] theironhammer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jevgeni|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|2 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines a lot lately. That's not ok. I appreciate that you have deep reasons to feel strongly about the war, but you've been breaking HN's guidelines in plenty of other contexts too. If you keep this up, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to do that, so if you'd please take the intended spirit of the site more to heart and comment within that, we'd appreciate it.