Fyodor Dostoyevsky...
Topic started by Vishvesh (@ port113.net98.bignet.net) on Mon Jul 10 19:19:54 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky is perhaps the most complex writer that the world has ever seen. Great works of art, as T.S.Eliot somewhere observed, do have the tendency of hurting the reader's sensibility, for they are in their very essense " a criticism of life" itself and make one self aware and conscious of the falsities one is involved with. But with Dostoyevsky, this feeling reaches enormous proportions that it even creates the level of creating a feeling of nausea and strong feelings of pain.
Russian Literature is fascinating from Pushkin. We see the country in a profound intellectual turmoil from his times. Russia seems to have been intensely religious those times but the revolution in social thinking created by the European writers puts everything in jeapordy. We see a nihilistic trait of thought from Pushkin continuing later with Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Gorky and Checkov. It doesn't even spare Tolstoy. Everything, including the values of religion is jeered at. This sense of oblivion, which is charactarestic of the Russian thought of that time, which is so repulsive to read, is found at its peak in Dostoyevsky.
But then, one has to admit the content of realism that such a nihilistic trend of thought could bring in Russian Literature. Man as a social animal is dissected to the core. Dostoyevsky's works are all outwardly concerned with Man as an invidual against the society with its acquired values but in their essence with its real inward values. He tries to give psychological answers to socialogical issues and hence he becomes very complex and repulsive. Religion is one thing that baffles him often. He is intensely religious but at the same time as a great artist he is, he is clearly able to see how Man lost his inward freedom and his deeper sense of life from the beginning of christianity. He cannot help criticizing Jesus Christ himself for the vital life he took away from Mankind in the name of offering a better life here in earth. His well-known chapter from the "Brothers Karamazov" titled "The Grand Inquisitor" is a shattering piece of criticism of the long era of christianity. He raises the vital issues of Man's psyche in relation to the society. When does he get internally satisified? What are the two governing forces of it? Didn't he always had that internal craving that someone (not from the religious point of view) who was so physically and emotionally above to him to whom he could so willingly slave himself to? And is it not a great sense of wonder which could be created in such a feeling that has sustained his life? And didn't Jesus Christ killed that sense of wonder in his religion of false love? Ivan Karamazov from that great work questions Jesus Christ who comes again to the earth and that is one chapter of the book which would forever remain a kind of enigma.
Now this double stand is so striking in all of his works. But behind them, there is a portrayal of realism of life capable to be experienced only by such a passionate and intense soul as Dostoyevsky only had.
Hope to continue if someone else also could take interest in the subject....
vishvesh
Responses:
- From: Nadopasaka (@ aappp14.buffnet.net)
on: Mon Jul 10 21:23:39 EDT 2000
This might seem mundane but One of D's characters reportedly formed the basis for the immensely popular and classic 'humanitarian' TV detective Columbo.
- From: bookworm (@ 164.164.86.66)
on: Wed Jul 26 13:04:52 EDT 2000
The novels of D are so full of passion, of feeling and conflicting emotions as to engulf the reader fully into it. Those who have read some of his novels, such as Crime & Punishment, Notes from the Underground, The Gambler, etc will understand what I mean. Each story is so gripping, as to sometimes make us wonder whether we are reading the works of a mad man. Another thing you might have noticed is, you might either be an ardent admirer of D, or one with stong repulsion to his writings. His style of writing, the passion in it, is too Russian for the russians themselves. No wonder his writings are very much criticised by most popular English writers. But there are others, such as Galsworthy who went to the extent of saying that English writers could learn from D the art of writing honestly !!!!!
- From: Lily B (@ spider-tl014.proxy.aol.com)
on: Fri Aug 25 01:33:04 EDT 2000
Dostoevskii garnered his plots by reading the daily newspaper. What he did was to take reality and make it into something people, including those inclined to "art" would want to actually study and to learn. He stopped short of Gogol's surreality, but what he gives us is still tinged with that fevered friction of the world and its' many poseurs.
- From: bookworm (@ 164.164.86.66)
on: Mon Sep 11 14:03:19 EDT 2000
Have any of you read 'The Gambler' by Dostoevsky? I was simply enthralled by it....
- From: vishvesh (@ www.gltg.com)
on: Mon Sep 11 18:13:30 EDT 2000
You know what, D was himself a feverish gambler once...
vishvesh
- From: anu (@ 164.164.86.66)
on: Fri Oct 6 14:58:20 EDT 2000
Why is this thread no more active? I find very few posts on English literature nowadays??
- From: kristen (@ spider-mtc-tf071.proxy.aol.com)
on: Sat Oct 20 15:33:00
Dostoyevsky is good because he gets to the very root of things. You can't delve much deeper than questioning the terms for man's very existence and then questioning whether or not man has determined these terms himself. When one chooses to write on these subjects, they follow no code. There can be no method of describing fear and love for God. Rather, he simply speaks from his heart, from the very depths of his soul because he is compelled to. Indeed, if he would claim that a man may be so tormented by his own faith, as were the three brothers in "The Brothers Karamozov", then he would, without a doubt, be describing himself. When Dostoyevsky writes so wonderfully he is merely attempting to explain the world to himself. Dmitri, Aloysha, and Ivan are all representations of Dostoyevsky himself in his own collective consciousness. They are all dimensions of his psychology, fractions of dimensions, with regards to God.
And as readers, whether we know it or not, we sense Dostoyevsky's desperation. In questioning our very existence on such a blatant and serious level, he has made himself more vulnerable and we cherish him for this.
It is true that all artists succumb to some level of vulnerability when their work is evaluated by someone else, however it is rare that a person, whether by painting, singing, or playing a sonata, will so directly scrutinize the contents of their very own soul. Dostoyevsky was such a man who loved life enough to satisfy his mind with only its deepest questions. He even loved life and God enough to try to answer these questions and grow impatient at the mystery they presented him. And he was such an artist that he was able to transform his thoughts into print. Artist may spend their entire lives trying to strip away the layers, putting their own soul into their work, but few have submitted to their soul and art as willingly as Dostoyevsky.
- From: Charoo (@ lan-202-144-125-161.maa.sify.net)
on: Mon Oct 29 07:47:32
Hey guys,
Just a suggestion.
The postings in this billboard will make a more engaging read if we can bring in an element of discussion into it.I mean ; let s us read through what each other has to say and make an argument / discussion out of it weighing the prons and cons of the opinions;their merits and demerits,implications and upshots etc. rather than posting only independent views - Won t that make the discussion more lively and involving?
- From: Krishna (@ )
on: Sun Aug 8 09:31:04
Will it not be great if some good translators can translate dostoevsky's works into tamil language. His thoughts can improve the knowledge of the common Tamil people
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