Posted by surprisetalk 3 days ago
I'm currently reading Karamazov and it's good to have something a bit more jovial and dry witted.
The main difficulty is the names. The names make it so hard.
I love the Space Trilogy by Lewis but I lose my place when he describes a place. Dostoevsky is better at describing people (and bringing them to life in your mind) than Lewis is at describing a landscape.
I think that's an exciting part. When I am bored with names of similar kind, the names make the characters somewhat exotic. I don't know about you, but the name "Grushenka" adds to everything that is going on with that woman.
What's wrong with the names? I find Chinese novels much harder to read because everyone's named C{V[n[g]]|ei|ao|ou} C{V[n[g]]|ei|ao|ou}C{V[n[g]]|ei|ao|ou}.
So, Aleksandr-Aleksasha. The dropping of "Alek" is the only inconsistent part, on par with Agrippina-Agrusha-Grusha.
One of the potential diminuitives for "Aleksandr" is indeed "Lesha", although I think it's more common as a diminuitive for "Aleksei"?
I've been reading Tom Clancy recently, and that's basically the Jack Ryan books. Somehow, "Jack" is actually a nickname for "John".
That has never made one iota of sense to me. The whole "Dick" / "Richard" thing makes more sense than "Jack" / "John" to me (and it's nonsensical, too).
- Jehan (Old French form of "John") -> Jan
- Jan -> Jankin (diminutive)
- Jankin -> Jackin
- Jackin -> Jack
This does give me a reason to preserve some fact about one of my favorite cats ever in perpetuity (given the similarity of the John / Jack transition to Joe the Cat's life).
A friend's cat (who I knew as Joe the Cat) went from being called "Ivy" to "Joe" over the course of the cat's 15+ year lifetime by way of being called, successively: Ivy --> Jivey --> Jive --> Java --> Joe
Joe was calm and compliant, and arguably "a good kitty" (albeit I only knew him late in his life). My friend once described Joe as being more frantic in his youthful vigor but being "pacified through years of routine and systematic abuse".
No, my friend and his and his family didn't actually abuse Joe the Cat. He was much loved. I get to use the phrase "years of routine and systematic abuse" in my life (as often as possible!) now, though (often referring to my experiences with various pieces of software).
I'm bad with names to begin with, so I usually make a chart to keep side characters straight.
To add confusion, the choice of which to use is usually context-dependent (time period, age, status, situation, relationship between characters) but sometimes the author will switch between, say, title and surname within the same paragraph simply as a matter of style or to avoid repetition.
Ipso facto:
Bill = Billiam
Mutatis Mutandis:
Jim = Jimothy
Only issue I recall might be with female Aleksandra (abbreviated to Ola) and male Aleksander (abbreviated to Olo, or Olek).
Others usually (if I remember correctly) have similar prefix.
Wow, is this one common?
The author Jack London was originally John London. John F. Kennedy was familiarly known as Jack ("Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy"). The British racing driver John Stewart is far more commonly known as Jackie Stewart. In Patrick O'Brian's naval fiction, Captain John Aubrey is almost always referred to as Jack.
A non-Russian speaker is going to be confused when the same character is referred to as both Alexander and Sasha, for example, and will think they're different people.
(FWIW, it lists: Sasha, Sashka, Sashulya, Sashenka, Sanya, Sanechka, Sancho, San, Shurik, Sashunya, Sanyusha, Sanyok. I myself have heard native Russians use Sash - should be written as Сашь -, and e.g. Mish - Мишь -, which is a similar "lazy" conversational short form for Misha/Mikhail.
I've learned some Russian, and once you start sensing the endless magic they can do with verb prefixes and sufixes, you realize what a versatile language this is. Somewhat the same counts for first names, I guess.)
The recall of words you aren't familiar with tends to be pretty poor. This is also visible in how hard it can be to build vocabulary when learning a new language, and how you can completely mix up words at that stage - there's nothing about names that makes this any easier.
There are lots of similar names, and the seemingly random use of full names, first names, last names and nicknames, throws off new readers.
There are also just a lot of characters.
I did find Vonnegut and a small handful of others to be more engaging.
E.g. Dima (widely used in modern Russian, and it’s clear that it’s short for Dmitry) instead of Mitenka or Alex instead of Alyosha (Lyosha is commonly used in Russian, but Alex would be easier to make a mental connection... until you have an Alexander and have to shorten that to Sasha; that one is probably a more widely known diminutive though)
https://librivox.org/crime-and-punishment-version-3-by-fyodo...
https://librivox.org/crime-and-punishment-version-2-by-fyodo...
Of course, that "just" is doing a lot. I'm saying it's doable, not that it's easy.
If you really want a challenge, try the Malazan series:
Everyone who knew Lermonotov personally thought Michel was a massive asshole. His biggest hobbies were destroying existing relationships by seducing the women and badmouthing everyone in his vicinity.
Like "Mrs. Thatcher", "Margaret" and "Peg"?
(My first grade teacher in the 80s was named Margaret, but went by Peg with her students' parents, so I know this one. I wouldn't fault most native English speakers under the age of 35 or so if they didn't know it.)
Also, who doesn’t love Razumikhin?
Maybe I'll give it another go.
First time I started to read it, it was a slog and I didn’t get far.
Did a bit of research on translations and chose another one (can’t recall the exact translator).
The 2nd attempt’s translation used more contemporary language, which made it much more understandable and got through it.
if if would be mandatory school reading I would probably enjoy it much less
from classics I can recommend also 1984, Animal Farm and Catch XXII (if you served in army you will have better appreciation for it, it was exactly describing absurd situations happening when I served)
That said, being in the army might add an additional level of apprecation but it's a good book regardless.
/j
Those who find time later in their adult life will re-read the classics and appreciate it, but many will not, and that's probably a result of forcing the kids to deal with something most of them are not ready for.
Bookish teens have been reading these books since they came out.
And the average teenager has way worse things to do than reading a classic novel.
As for "barely understanding characters' motivations" that's how you understand characters motivations, and literature in general, by getting into even without understand it at first. That's true in almost every field in life.
Giving them the option to do so in school, I would imagine would be met thankfully by them if done well, and a "no thanks" from the less-bookish - who very possibly will go on to read them later on in life.
Isn't that exactly the idea? Ask everyone to spend time reading a book is a way to give them time to do it. So that some may discover they are bookish. As for the others, it doesn't exactly hurt to try.
There is also the role of simply communicating to the next generation that society values these books, and they are important for some reason. Even if you only get one shallow layer of meaning at the time. Same with history and everything else. It's a time to get a first taste of what these things feel like.
That's how you get to understand something you "barely understand". You dive into it, and gradually you understand it better.
I understood classic novels in high school just fine. Further experience reveals more layers, but you still get lots of life lessons, and poetic moments, and better grasp of people and life, and introduction into a culture that's not just consuming slop, from reading them as a teenager.
Technically they can handle the text and it may improve their reading and writing, I assume this is the justification for setting these texts.
Emotionally and socially they are nowhere near ready to deal with Dostoyevsky’s nihilism and angst and Austen’s witty social comedy of manners about a situation young girls no longer find themselves in.
Compared to Dickens or Shakespeare for example though they are unlikely to engage teenagers and very likely to actively put them off reading.
Today kids hide comics inside books to avoid Dickens; someday kids will hide something new inside books to avoid the mandatory comic reading.
I watched "Hamnet" last night, which was okay, but I dread to think what that film would have been like if I was made to watch it at school.
The whole point is to read the actual primary text that has been so done, re-done, overdone. And hopefully to recognize there's some real beauty and drama in there
The only problem is the language.
So, as a baseline, I think most people have or can understand internal monologues. That's not what I mean, though that is a prerequisite.
But many real-life people, especially those that have gone through phases in their life where they were Raskilnikov (not criminals, not necessarily egomaniacs, but the whole melodramatic shut in deal) would tell you that they both understand Raskilnikov type people and would tell them to shut up.
For me, it was honestly a bit depressing. Raskilnikov reminded me of me in my worst moments. Honestly, a lot of the characters did. Having these strong, abstract, high and lofty ideals is contrasted against the real, practical characters like Rahmuzkhin. Every single one of the lofty idealists (besides maybe the full commune living guy - what he says is weird, but not his actions) is contrasted with the people on the ground, doing good work. Even Sonya - she's devout, but not so devout as to become a pastor, abstractly preaching about goodness and kindness, but blind to the suffering around her.
And isn't that what the lesson is at the end of the book, anyways? (trying to be vague to avoid spoilers).
Though it's not like just "doing good work" will bring you the sort of the "ultimate" that many of these characters seemed to have wanted. Once you try to formalize it and intellectualize it, you can point to how Crime and Punishment is such an illogical novel. And yet it feels so real.
Ah whatever. Enough armchairing from me :)
Would I rather have waited until 35? No, but I’ll probably go back and reread a lot of those books I read when I was younger.
I was generally an avid reader as a child, regularly blowing through the (age appropriate) summer reading lists every year as far back as I can remember, and then finding new things to read. During the school year when I had a 9pm bedtime, I would regularly bring a flashlight to bed, pull my blankets over my head, and read until much later. But The Idiot was tough, and I don't think teens should read books like that.
I've considered re-reading it as an adult, but I still have some scars from my first read-through, even if those scars aren't fair to the material at all.
I am sure I'd find them different if I re-read them, but I could relate to characters and their struggles quite easily.
I do not necessarily think that those who wouldn't appreciate them as teenagers would ever appreciate them as adults either — maybe a small percentage would.
I only learned to appreciate Tolstoy as an adult though - it was extremely boring for me as a teenager barring some smaller pieces
The best part about Tolstoy is how he depicts the intricacies of human relationships, and that's a thing most people cannot appreciate until they hit like 30
On the other hand, some of the kids actually like the books they are given. I know I did. Not every single book, but a lot, and maybe that's the whole point- you find out what you like by trying a bunch of stuff that you don't
The classics are the cause of reading hate, not the victim.
With one exception (Musset's Lorenzaccio), every single book my teachers gave me to read felt like a boring chore.
But when I try Crime and Punishment at 17 by myself, I loved it so much that I immediately purchased The Brothers Karamazov (and loved it even more).
I can guarantee that if it had been a school assignment, I wouldn't have made it past page 50.
By my third reading, I'd decided Crime and Punishment was a Comedy-Horror; think American Psycho.
A student should be given the best examples of human art, not some watered down versions, otherwise there is a chance that people will never try to reach that level. A lot of them won't (and reading some books never was a guaranteed path to a good life anyway), but by deciding what is “good enough for the common person” you artificially limit their world on that path (thankfully, there are other paths).
Whether they realise it or not, people are shaped by their environment. A book that you don't like can still point that certain questions and ways of thinking exist. Its place can easily be taken by seemingly “more appropriate” pop cultural or pop psychological works that, unfortunately, don't reach that level in order to be as “accessible” as possible.
The problem here is the existence of “required reading” lists, and mass education in general. That institute is completely flawed, bureaucratised production process of “studying”, and only the heroic actions of individuals who have to fight it from the inside make it less dumb. A good teacher can teach why the good book is good, but where to find so many of them?
See, for example,
https://www.olgasedakova.com/Moralia/280
https://www.olgasedakova.com/ecclesia/2174
(in Russian)
https://www.olgasedakova.com/eng/Moralia/269
https://www.olgasedakova.com/eng/Moralia/264
(in English, excerpt)
I guess it is because it prepares you quite well to suffer endless corporate memos.
I think classic russian literature can be everything, but not an exercise in formal double-speak incantations.
It does unfortunately fit most of the examples I can think of. Even in comedy like Gogol people suffer.
Not to mention works that are just not about suffering but life.
The only widely known fun book outside of Russia is Master and Margarita.
I pretty sure Chekhov (as an example) is widely known outside of Russia and he's master of short fun stories, no?
In fact I'd even say he's somewhat more popular in the West than in Russia.
Some countries are a buffer zone between Russia and the West. Nothing worse then having western Agent Provocateurs having a base of operation right next to your country.
And somehow Iran, China and Russia have absolutely no experience in using their own Agen Provocateurs. Its always the West creating Coups and Rebellions.
seems like western germany, which was also considered to be a nuclear battlefield with the warsaw pact, but the marketing was nicer, I suppose.
I do love literature, but that is in spite of school not because of it. School did a lot to put me off some books. I was lucky to have read Golding's "Lord of the Flies" before our class did, because it gave me a better appreciation of it. I did read some big books as a teenager. I waited until my twenties to tackle Dostoyevsky though. "The Brothers Karamazov" was especially difficult.
When 90% of your mental effort is dedicated to understanding exactly what the hell he is saying, you aren't going to get a lot out of his work.
(It's not supposed to be read at all, in fact - it's supposed to be seen and heard. In a language that you intuitively understand.)
You can't learn two difficult things at once well. When you have to put significant amounts of mental energy into parsing the semantics of each sentence, it utterly ruins any enjoyment you might have from the work itself - and makes it much harder to clean any meaning or subtext from it.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase.
His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and
was more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who provided
him with garret, dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below,
and every time he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen,
the door of which invariably stood open. And each time he passed,
the young man had a sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl
and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and
was afraid of meeting her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary;
but for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable
condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely
absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded
meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed
by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased
to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical
importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady
could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs,
to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering
demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains
for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie—no, rather than that, he would
creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen.
"Empathy" doesn't really fully cover it, though. Yes, someone of any age can emphasize with someone in a tough situation, but actually having experienced something similar, or have seen others in similar situations, or just having lived longer and been exposed to the world at large... all of that changes how a passage like the GP quoted hits. Most children are not going to be able to really feel that passage. But I'd say most worldly adults would be able to, even if they hadn't lived with crushing debt.
Yet we still can enjoy the though process of such a person through the book. I don't see why "paying rent" is any more difficult to experience through reading than "murdering" - if anything the general era/geography/social differences are much more significant than these (I live in an ex-Soviet country and read it as a teenager, twice - it had such a profound effect on me. Even still seeing the Russian reality of the time was harder for me (but still easier than I believe it would be for a US teen), than all the intricate internal monologues).
Novels like these need some life experience to really shine. A 13 year old isn't going to go "how does this writer see so clearly through so many of life's finer details", because they have never experienced 90% of what's being talked about.
A good part of the value of some of these works basically comes from recalling similar feelings you felt in situations similar to the characters, maybe comparing your actions at such times to theirs, or the reactions of other people you knew, etc. It's simply not possible to experience this part of the work as a teen. Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this limitation is in Lolita - the nature of the relationship described, the power and life experience differential, the contrast with the reader's normal interactions with children - are impossible to be conveyed to or truly empathized with by teens.
Yes, absolutely. A kid can learn both of those things and understand them, assuming they have the proper foundational knowledge, taught to them in prior classes/years.
Most kids do not have the lived experience or emotional development to understand the complex adult themes written about in novels such as the ones being discussed. There's really no way to fix that aside from waiting until they're older.
Some people here argue that "math is also what kids don't like" but math and chemistry can be understood by a teenager even if he doesn't like it. But these "classic" books can't because much more life, adult problems and having children, deaths of parents and illnesses have to happen in order for one to comprehend this books.
It's like trying to force a 8 year old to read romance novels: since his sexual hormones are not yet activated, he won't understand why a boy all of a sudden likes a girl.
I hated it with passion, even got F's in my report cards, and could re-read it only in my late 20's. Still hate these "language and literature" teachers, all of them.
Tamil translators have done astonishing efforts in presenting the worlds and sentiments of Dostoyevsky, yet I cannot compare it with OG Russian versions as I do not know Russian. I might one day be in a position to read his classics in native versions (I want to learn Russian for this).
I didn't like the flow of translation of Bengali versions of "adult" books, and read them in English.
My favourite Russian writer has to be Bulgakov who fell from grace of the Party, and his work was not translated. I am yet to read Solzhenitsyn.
Nowadays, there are indie blogs that scan and preserve those Bengali books. A lot of people I know download and print those books. You can still find Moscow-printed Bengali books in used-book stores of book fairs.
Leftist parts of society looked up to USSR a lot, and a lot of humanities professors, teachers all over the world were left-leaning, and promoted these books as Russian culture.
This is one factor, and doesn't explain the whole thing, of course.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48673777. Neither our family nor I ever leaned towards the Party or any form of Leftism, but books are always kosher in our culture.
Do you have any sources for that? I'd like to read about it.
So the question really is how does one find out about classic writing overall? Outside of school?
My liberal arts classes in college didn't involve Russian lit either. My freshman year English I and II classes were very unserious, we read Philip K Dick and a (somewhat distasteful) book by the current governor of Maryland. I could have taken a Russian lit class but instead decided on Appalachian studies which was surprisingly interesting and probably helped shaped some of my politics. I did read A Day in the Life while I was taking summer classes. Admittedly, I was on Adderall at the time which led to me reading at a rate that matched when I was a kid and was tearing through books faster than I could get to the library. I listen to a lot of audiobooks now and miss when I had the attention span to actually crack a book (or at least use a kindle). I've got a copy of Crime and Punishment in my queue but I've been reluctant to start it.
Less famous authors? Everything you say and more - again, just like any other books and author.
so do the other literary traditions I guess. What's so special about Russian. It seems as if the interest in Russian literature comes at the expense of the others.
I’d like to say the story stayed with me, but alas it was the reaction of adults to my reading matter that I remember.
Part of growing up was realizing that being precocious really isn’t a thing anymore at some point.
I still have a bit of reticence toward admitting that I find some books hard or haven't finished them. I found the Iliad enthralling and the Odyssey very good, but basically any other English epic poetry or drama is such a grind and I've given up many times.
One of the best gifts I ever got was when my dad plopped down a big box full of old classical adventure novels (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, King Solomon's Mines, Captains Courageous, Three Musketeers, Count of Monte Cristo type of stuff) and I devoured all of them over the course of the next year or so. I'm sure I would appreciate a lot of different things about them if I read them now, but they certainly held up in terms of being engaging in spite of them all being 100+ years old by the time I got my hands on them.
I was a precocious reading kid too, and I sometimes wonder how much I understood of all the stuff I read. I feel like I remember it decently enough, but there must have been a lot going over my head.
I remember being most interested in Konstantin Levin's efforts to modernize his farm estate.
I think that at the time I thought that I understood the difficult books that I was reading fully, but looking back on it I must have missed so much. I'll need to have a re-read one of these days.
The scene where he commits the crime is an absolute stunner, edge-of-your-seat, thriller. Who does that? Who can pull that off? Dostoyevsky
A lot of 19th century novels were published as serials. The TV of their time I suppose.
With the final installment arriving by ship, crowds in New York shouted from the pier "Is Little Nell dead?" - https://www.charlesdickenspage.com/charles-dickens-old-curio...
I'm so glad I get to read the Russians and Kafka and Calvino and Murakami and Camus and Marquez and Homer and Plato and, heck, the Bible.
I do know the feeling. I struggled through the start of My Brilliant Friend because I ought to read it in Italian, because I speak it pretty well. So then I didn't read it for years. Finally I just read it in English and enjoyed myself.
Translation is an art I think equal to authorship. Someone below mentioned My brilliant friend which was originally written in a Neapolitan dialect but the English translation, at least for me specifically, is a monumental achievement.
Then again, so would reading Shakespeare in Spanish - even though I'm more comfortable reading in eng, I'm better in Spanish than i am 500 year old English
I loved excerpts of Karamazov (The Grand Inquisitor, Dimitry's troika ride, any passage with Grushenka) but I also found it rough to get through. I really don't think I was ultimately able to appreciate it as a whole.
C&P felt much smoother and finally I devoured The Idiot. Those novels felt like night and day compared to Karamazov.
With Karamazov, I feel like there is some subtext or context I'm missing and would have loved to have had a companion text or course to help me.
When I first Master and Margarita, it came with incredible footnotes, and rereading it again I found I sometimes recalled the footnotes more than the text. I recommended the book to a friend, but their edition didn't have the footnotes so they bounced right off it.
Anyway if anyone knows of an edition better than the Penguin Classic of BK I'm all ears.
edit: I read the Barnes and Noble translation. And I would encourage reading some passages aloud.
But if you're 600 pages in and it's a slog you might have lost the train of thought of the novel.
It is a lot to keep in your head!
To give you one idea of the approach - the accurately translated title is The Karamazov Brothers. Every other translator chooses the usual way because it sounds grander or eccentric or just because that’s how others did it before them, even though it’s simply incorrect as a translation.
P&V - one of them edits without even knowing Russian, a polar opposite
Karamazov is basically YA fiction though. Find other works if you’re not into it as an older adult, it’s fine
I also had the same reaction to Crime and Punishment as the OP did.
I’m sure it’s good but I don’t think I have it in me to try again.