Фёдор М. Достоевский

I am reading TBK for the first time and looking to get the most possible out of this novel. Does anyone know a good companion or guide I can read alongside it? I was thinking about “A Karamazov Companion,” but wondering if there is anything better/preferable out there. I’m looking for something offers some necessary historical and biblical context, and notes about Dostoevsky’s life and thoughts where it’s relevant. I’m already reading the annotated P&V translation. Thanks!

I am on a Dostoyevski reading spree: I started with Notes from the Underground and White Nights and then I moved on to Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, which I have just finished. I'm reading The Idiot now, but I can't stop thinking about the many philosophical questions in TBK. Is there any secondary literature on the book especially worth reading?

Dostoevsky reading Guide For those who have read Dostoevsky's work , what are your thoughts on this guide

I have a weird experience. Years ago I read crime and punishment and ever since that I have felt paranoid, like I have murdered somebody or committed similar serious crime. Anyone who was talking bad about someone else was talking about me. My favorite book of his is the brothers karamazov nonetheless. Regardless of the ideas, I feel my personality is very like the way he wrote, not specifically any character. Recently I have had serious symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia and finally almost cured by the help of medicine. I would like to share my experience and wonder what your thoughts on him. Nabokov said Dostoyevsky learned to portray his characters from a certain medical book. What about himself?

Same

I'm trying to find some D's character or maybe a page from his diaries who talks about mussorgsky's piece. Something about the soothing he finds the bell that sounds towards the end, when the dawn starts. I think it was from D but I also may be wrong about this. Thanks!

Hi there. As the title suggests, I have just started reading the book and it's taking a while in building the storyline. The story has reached Zossima's place where some kind of discussion is going to take place. I've heard this book is quite good. Please tell me what are your views and thoughts on this book. Do I continue? Is it going to be worth it?

I do not think this is a competence issue. I am only sixteen years old but I have read Blood Meridian (unsure if that says anything). This is my second Dostoevsky novel after White Nights.

I’ve read maybe twenty or so pages and I would say that, when I was fifteen, I was a lot like the Underground Man. I was depressed, cynical, directionless, anxious, and lived completely within my own head. I was also certainly over-conscious, doubting and questioning everything about myself. I had an extremely negative worldview and had no hope for the future, all due to my own person.

I have gotten out of this rut and adopted a reasonable, more positive world view where I have faith in myself and confidence that I will continue improving my life. I am no longer a social outcast, although I always had friends I have many more now whom I initiate bonding with. I also work on disciplining myself, via activities like working out and of course reading. I now feel disappointment in who I once was. So, I have blocked out such attributes of hopelessness and nihilism, seeing them as qualities that led to intense personal suffering, rationalizing them as irrational, burdensome, and self-destructive. I have vowed to never return to being a person of self-hatred, and in becoming a better person, I intellectually silenced such a voice.

Now I’ve reached this novel and was really excited to read it. I’ve found however, that because I’ve rejected and buried deep the side of me that relates to and understands the Underground Man, I have an almost impossible time connecting with anything he says. I do not have a difficult time relating to and understanding characters I disagree with—I absolutely love Succession, for example—but because his philosophy has been almost exiled from my headspace, immediately shut down whenever it rears its head, I have a genuine struggle both relating to the underground man and seeing his ideas as anything but irrational and childish. I’ve never had my own mental interfere with my ability to understand art before.

Essentially, I’m here to ask if anyone relates to this, if there’s anything I should do, etc. Should I just move on to another one of his books? Or, is it possible for me to disconnect who I am while reading? Any comments are appreciated, apologies for such a void post.

Title.

EDIT: Quote*

First of all the title "Great expectations" referred here is not of the book "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens but about the main character in the book White Nights.

I might be cooked in here but here we go-

I feel the book is mostly about expectations which can lead to disappointment most of the time if not always. The character as the book progresses falls in love with a young woman named Nastenka "hoping" that she would reciprocate the same in the end, but that does not happen.

Our hero is alone most of the time and maybe that could be the reason he always dreams and have a far more stretched and imaginative inner monologues very often like

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.

While reading the above I was sure the ending would make him more miserable because he expects a lot and great expectations lead to greater disappointments

“Oh, how unbearable is a happy person sometimes!”

He was maybe really unbearable to Nastenka maybe? That is why she chose a guy who was quieter over him? (She waited for the other guy for well over a year, but even if it was not the case I don't really think Nastenka would consider our hero as her boyfriend ever let alone marry him and the reason I think Nastenka chose him for a while was because she was sad and really needed a coping mechanism)

“Ah, Nastenka! Why, one thanks some people for being alive at the same time with one; I thank you for having met me, for my being able to remember you all my life!”

our hero was putting her in the pedestal most of the time which is bound to make her run away from irritation

“I sometimes have moments of such despair, such despair … Because in those moments I start to think that I will never be capable of beginning to live a real life; because I have already begun to think that I have lost all sense of proportion, all sense of the real and the actual; because, what is more, I have cursed myself; because my nights of fantasy are followed by hideous moments of sobering!...”

Even our dear hero knows overtly dreaming causes despair and disappointments

The book was so wonderfully written but I could not relate to the hero in the book, although I can empathize with him , and I feel the book is mostly about having less expectations and desires and that is not a topic mostly discussed while reviewing this book in the subreddit so I felt this has to be here - "Expect less, Be happy"

I’m currently half way through it and I’m so in love with it, and I was wondering what does this sub think about it since I rarely if ever see any posts about it

I read C&P as my first Dostoevsky book, and I really loved it. I decided on TBK, next, since everyone seems to love it and it's my sister's favorite book. Well, I'm at least 1/3 of the way through and I'm forcing myself to read, every time. I get so bored with the religious/moral philosophy. I mean, I get that it's a central theme and important to develop each character's own ideas, but it just feels so long winded. Also, why do we need Zosima's entire life story?? (That's where I am right now and I'm annoyed.)

Help me continue. I actually believe that it will be worth it to finish the book, but tell me, anyway. It's worth it, right??

I want to start this off by defining my "terms". First things first, I don't think the book reflects a love story, but the psychology of dreamers, people that don't have contact with modern society on a cotidian level. On a second note, I want to amplify the fact that this book was written after Dostoyevsky's confinement in Siberia, so I am taking any distorsion from his writings into consideration - I am taking Crime and Punishment for now.

At first, I was sure that the book was gonna have a happy ending or that the dreamer was schizophrenic, because we had only been told of his delusions and how he managed to portray it as something noble. Then, comparing it to other sceneries -like Fight Club-, I thought Nastenka was a delusion herself -as the dreamer describes the scenery to be foggy, and everything about Nastenka is like a dream (keep that in mind) come true for him-.
In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov's madness is amplified by his sickness and constant nightmares. He says that dreams are much more real when you are sick (as he dreamed of his father and himself witnessing the death of a skinny horse). We can see how dreams impact one's life, and what is worse for our dreamer is that he constantly oscillates between the two worlds. Therefore, at least for me, it was hard to tell when he was daydreaming or really participating in the day to day life.

The only moment we certainly know is reality is the morning. It's the only chapter that doesn't refer the night (their discussions). I can support my theory by the fact that the dreamer himself admits upon being sick all this time: "[...] it was dark in the room, it overcast outside. My head ached and was spinning; fever was stealing its way through my limbs.". We notice that every night, when the dreamer returns home, it's raining -probably the sign of him returning back to reality-. Instead of the rain, this morning, the factor of transition is Nastenkas letter.

...or is it? Was the letter and the wedding all in his mind, as he keeps on living the same boring life?

Our perception of weak is deadly.

i came across a tiktok that was apparently from a movie adaptation of white nights and found out there are a bunch of movies based on his works, are any worth watching? i usually don't watch movies about books i really love because i feel like it just wouldn't do the book justice, what do you think? do the themes or inner monologues translate well in film?

I just finished reading White Nights by Dostoevsky, and it’s been stuck in my mind. The way it captures loneliness, fleeting moments, and emotions we don’t always know how to express hit me hard.

Honestly, I’m struggling to put into words how it made me feel. It’s like I have all these thoughts and feelings swirling around, but I can’t seem to articulate them. I wonder if anyone else has been through this after reading the book? Or maybe you’ve read something similar and felt the same way?

I guess I’m just looking to connect with someone who gets it-who’s also sitting with those thoughts and wondering how to make sense of them. If that’s you, I’d love to talk!

I know they can't get it perfectly but how close is it to the real dostoevsky?

[this is more "personal anecdote" rather than any deep insight]

I finished my first time through The Brothers Karamazov (the Katz translation; excellent, btw) on December 2.

Noted weirdo Vladimir Nabokov said once that one doesn't read a book, one only rereads it. It's his fancy way of saying that the first time through a book doesn't really count, since the reader is mostly just trying to make sense of the scale and dimensions of the story. It's the reread where the book starts to really reveal itself to the reader.

So, I picked up the McReynolds translation (from Norton*) and started the introduction tonight (December 6 -- this will be relevant in two shakes).

[* The McReynolds is worth it if only for the "Names in The Brothers Karamazov," which goes into the etymological roots of the names.]

In the introduction she mentions two scenes that I have absolutely no memory of (both quotes come from p viii in the Norton Critical Edition):

1. "But we also share Ivan's indignation as he recounts the tale of Richard, whose life was taken away twice -- once, symbolically, by the biological parents who gave him away as chapel to some shepherds, and then by his social family, his fellow citizens of geneva, who chop off his head in brotherly fashion."

2. "We real from the vision of the naked, terrified little boy ripped apart by hunting dogs before his mother's eyes."

So, in conclusion: if you love a book once, it's probably worth reading twice, because what if you, too, don't remember two horrible deaths?

Hello all! I want to read Devils (Oxford Classics edition) on my Kindle but whenever I click the Kindle sign to buy it, the sample shows Constance Garnett's translation. While I respect her as a translator, I really want to read the Oxford version because the censored chapter is placed where it's intended. Can someone help me here?

Hello my friends, I write this post in an attempt to up my academic papers in response to some frankly harsh feedback from a professor of mine, especially when evaluating and reviewing important historical narratives. So I come to you, Reddit, in an attempt to help quell the question I shall be proposing in my latest academic paper. In Dostoyevsky's works, we often delve into themes of morality, suffering, and redemption, but I find myself intrigued by the concept of unintended symbolism-those moments where the mundane is imbued with meaning beyond the author's conscious intent. For instance, if Dostoyevsky had chosen, hypothetically, to include a recurring motif of a particular dairy product-say, a block of cheese or even cream cheese in a can-what might we infer?

Would such an object, in its practicality, represent the alienation of the individual from the divine struggle? Or might it serve as a subtle critique of industrialization and the commodification of human labor?

I invite you, my esteemed Redditor’s, to consider this: Could a seemingly absurd symbol, like a canned dairy product, hold a deeper philosophical significance in the Dostoyevskian narrative? Or does the very absence of such symbols reinforce his disdain for the trivial comforts of modernity? I am curious to hear your thoughts on this matter, as I believe it may shed light on the ways we interpret the ordinary in extraordinary works.

(Writing this on my phone in class formatting will not be great) My teacher (AP English lit & Composition), has had us read 4 rather boring books that I could just not stay interested in. He now assigned us our final... Where we must use those 4 books to write a 5-6 page argumentative essay defending whatever point we'd like that the books had in common.

Well I spoke with him and he told me if I'd like, I can not follow the instructions and see what I make (I take this on him agreeing and just doesn't want everybody to change their assignment).

I have read some dostoevsky, nietzsche, and kafka, I'd just like 4-8 books/stories that have similarities in their themes. Ask any questions, and I'll respond best I can (I have a short list of books I believe I can throw together for a thesis, but any more would be appreciated)

I've been reading Dostoevsky recently (Demons and Crime and Punishment) and noticed that some progressive characters (Lebezyatnikov and Verkhovensky) express an opinion about charity, considering it 'morally wrong' because it doesn't solve the problem of poverty but rather perpetuates it.

Could someone elaborate on this kind of philosophy in more detail?

just meant as a discussion starter, really. feel free to ask my thoughts on characters, themes, or scenes

Hi everybody,

I have recently become interested in reading Dostoevky's books. I have already read Crime and Punishment and admittedly I didn't really get it. It was a good novel and I see Raskolnikovs internal struggle. It is such a long novel that I think I just rushed through it without thinking too much, particularly I read before sleep and never considered what I read afterwards. Also,I think for starters I need to get better at critically thinking and understanding (literature and just things in general, aka get smarter), but also I went into reading this book with thoughts of some profound meaning that I could derive from it that would essentially be life changing given the things I have heard about Dostoevsky and Crime and Punishment more specifically.

Moving on I have started to read Notes from Underground. I already feel a relation to the main character that I overthink things a lot but idk how to approach reading. Do I just read the story? Do I try to empathize and place myself in the protagonists shoes? Do I think deeply about the meaning of what's being said and how to apply it to my own life?

What do you all think is best.

Thank you

Good night everyone 🙏 My first appearance here, I was embarrassed to post something useless, and not be able to connect with you. I started in the world of LR when I was 13 (now 18) I have already read almost all of Dostó's works, I have 2 current readings: Oblómov by Ivan Gontcharóv and A Mãe by Máximo Gorky. I would like to know if you can recommend me some non-fiction work with cultural history. I'm crazy looking, but I'm scared of acquiring some wordy stuff.

hi ! so i'm kinda new here please be considerate haha. question for all dostoevsky lovers who read the "white nights". i'm a film studies alumni, and one of our final assignement this year is to write a short movie script based on a litterary/narrative work. i immediatly thought of adapting the "white nights" and i wanted to get your opinion on this: could i use 'silver springs' in the short film ? does the song really match his work ? cause i feel like some of the lyrics go that way. would it be a good idea ? please let me know ! :)