/lit/ - Literature

>>21457868
The reader

Did they even acknowledge one another even once?

Both those mfers write some long ass books. Nobody got time for that shit

>>21457868
Tolstoy is garbage. But Dostoevsky was only marginally better. Either way only young men lose.

>>21457876

>>21457880
Dosto loved Tolstoy's works and wanted to meet him. But Tolstoy was critical of C&P saying that no student however poor will resort to murder for money.
When dosto died Tolstoy acknowledged him saying he felt like he lost someone close.
They never met each other.

the Doctor

>>21458146
Supposedly he was a great person too. Does anyone know any chekhov anecdotes they like?

Tolstoy was a much better writer, but he was also an irritating liberal heretic. Therefore, I say Dosto.

>>21457868
Both are the greatest 19th century writers so it doesn't matter who is better

>>21457868
Dostoevsky has more global appeal, so historically speaking, Dostoevsky won.

>>21458089
I always wished Tolstoy would have sent him some money but I guess he would have gambled it anyway

>>21458089
Tolstoy praised House of the Dead

Tolstoy is certainly a more refined writer I think, but dostoyevsky is was much more intelligent than he was. I love Tolstoy and think his heart was absolutely in the right place but I think his perspective was warped by his privileges and his (fairly understandable) compulsion to break from his upper class upbringing and everything that defined society as it was.
I dont exactly blame him though, and I could only hope to be as good a man as he was in the situation he found himself in. for all I know if I was born rich I would have just submitted myself to decadence and been a real piece of shit. He at least actually tried, even if he was naive and misguided about it.

>>21458258
A Confession might be the most sincere book that I've ever read. Lenin and everyone else agreed that his heart was true but didn't come up with the greatest solutions to worldly oppression

>>21457868
I prefer Tolstoy. Dostoevsky had too many ass-pulls and convenient circumstances to keep his stories going while Tolstoy needed less force in his novels and the story flowed better. I mean, you're telling me that in a city of ~550,000 people at the time, several people from the same village, with no prior knowledge of the others' lodgings, all happened to live within a couple blocks from each other and saw each other in passing...

>>21458266
thankfully he wasn't so fucked up that Lenin would agree with him

>>21458302
That was Virgo Tolstoy's big complaint about Dosto too lol

Also thank you I forgot this existed

>>21457868
Did they even acknowledge one another even once?

>>21458146
He was very self sacrificial. I will pick out a touching anecdote, note a painful one:
In 1904 a very sick man, he thus put in an appearance at the first performance of The Cherry Orchard. He had not been expected by the public and his appearance provoked thunderous applause. Then he was feted by the elite of Moscow's intelligentsia. There were endless speeches. He was so weak from sickness and it was so perceptible that cries arose in the audience, "Sit down, sit down....Let Anton Pavlovich be seated."
(Nabokov)

Dostoevsky was very good at weaving fever dreams, no doubt due to his own feverish temperament.
The sequence with the horse in Crime and Punishment is probably his best.
He's been (very aptly) denounced as didactic and as someone who can't reign in his novels or control the movement of its scenes.
The former weakness shows us the influence of Hugo, someone who moralized and crafted fables far more artistically than Dostoevsky.
The latter he owes most likely to George Sand.
His auto-fictional works, (Dead House, Underground, and possibly White Nights) are his most amusing (if you find obnoxious men amusing, and see your kindred in them) and his most artful, and also his most consistent in terms of rhetoric.
His longer works are too long, nonliterary at times.
It's perhaps crass of me to attack a writer's ideology, but that ideology is central to his long stuff and supersedes everything, so I pray you forgive my doing so.
Notice how after Dostoevsky intelligently and presciently destroys hiigh-schooler, Nietzschean ethics, wounds up forgiving, all too wishfully, all too hastily his feverish murderer. He lets him loose even before his prison sentence.
Tolstoy too, like many, if not most, great men of letters, could not succeed in taming the didactic in him.
Unlike Dostoevsky, however, he succeeded in taming the novel. His Anna Karenina, and even his War and Peace, with their few thousand pages, never stray. Not from their aesthetic mission, and not from the constraints and the fine form of a novel. Yes, even his dissertation on estate management is important and charming, even for this reader, who has never owned any estate. It reveals even more of Levin.
Even his hatred of the middle class - which this middle class-man objects to - never detracts from the artistic mission of his works, and the precision required of masterfully crafted novel.
Anna Karenina, and to a lesser extent War and Peace, almost encapsulate all that is admirable about the French realists and romanticists, and, in my opinion, with more artfulness and sensitivity.

>>21457868
Tolstoy was way better. Dosto's books aren't good. Cope.

>>21457868
Gachimuchi is always the winner.

>>21459113
I hope lovers of Dostoevsky do not suspect me of undervaluing him simple because of his Christian, and sometimes radical thought, and because it's incompatible with mine.
There is a man who, also like Dostoevsky, believed in the Hugolian idea of redeeming half-mad prostitutes.
(He, in fact, lived the dream, and drove his lover/prostitute mad in the course of a decade or two. A greater Raskolnikovian, a greater rascal, than the man who dreamt up Raskolnikov.)
He was twice the Christian, twice the radical, twice the reactionary. He was even more incendiary in temper than Dostoevsky. He did not have his own two decades of glory, he died in relative obscurity.
This is Léon Bloy, a man who constructed an ardent, Christian fiction, and imbued it with his own soul, and his own Christian metaphysics, in every sentence of his. He was a master of language, and a writer of very potent sentences. Even his essays are artful simply by virtue of his language. They, alongside his fiction, are part of the same literary canon (as we all know, not all essays are literature).
They too are imbued with the same philosophy, of the same soul, of the same aptitude for the most violent and the most moving phrase, and the capability for cruel, mean spirited comedy, mark of every capable writer.
I recommend him because
1 -If you love Dostoevsky, you will adore him.
2 -I hate being accused of not liking a writer because of ideological differences. I am not that vulgar.

>>21459140
Thank you for the recommendation.

>>21459163
No, thank (you) for not dismissing it.
Talking about Dostoevsky is really difficult.
I love exchanging recommendations and ideas. You can start with his Disagreeable Tales, see if you like them.

>>21459113
>Anna Karenina, and to a lesser extent War and Peace, almost encapsulate all that is admirable about the French realists and romanticists, and, in my opinion, with more artfulness and sensitivity

Is this a joke? Anna Karenina is no where, absolutely fucking no where as artistic and flowery as Madam Bovary. Either you don’t read Tolstoy or you haven’t read any good high French literature. Tolstoy’s writing is simple af in comparison.

Damn, /lit/ truly doesn’t read

>>21459309
>Either you don’t read Tolstoy or you haven’t read any good high French literature.
I've read both more times than you care to imagine. As a writer of poor, private fiction, I revisit Flaubert and Poe, whom I consider the supreme authorities of elegant structure, of the novel and the short story, incessantly.
But you're misguided if you think Flaubert has more feeling for his characters than Tolstoy. One looks at them from above, like God. The other inhabits each and every one of them. In Madame Bovary, Flaubert paints a very precise, a very masterfully rendered picture of human mediocrity. It is so precise that it is at once cringing painful to behold, in the greatest, most aesthetic sense.
But Flaubert does not pierce his characters' vulgar hearts. You remember them with condescension, scorn, and humour.
Tolstoy knows what drives his characters, in their depraved moments and in their loftier ones. He can render a convincing Rodolphe, but Flaubert can't render a convincing Oblonsky. He doesn't care to swoop to his level, to uncover his inwards character and to scoop out his more likeable traits, to understand him in other words. He is a greater, maybe the greatest observer of the 'exterior'.
I will say it again, Tolstoy grasps the essence of both realism and romanticism. Flaubert, only the former, but to a greater degree. His novels are better chiseled, yes, but they are not better than Tolstoy's better writing.
>Damn, /lit/ truly doesn’t read
Behave.

>>21459113
>>21459140
It’s the fact that he’s not conventionally artful and literary that lends to his appeal IMO. His idiosyncratic tangents and exposition isn’t always coherent but it feels very psychiatric and authentic. I see what you mean though, I’m a quarter through Notes From Underground and just the nature of the book allows Dosto to go full ham on his feverish tendencies. So far I have to admit it’s a little exhausting. Ironically I put off Anna Karenina precisely because of the estate chores and constant musings on nature. Also thanks for the rec, I’ll add it to my backlog…

Neither could write. Both were character worklets.

>>21457868
dosto mogs

People often make remarks about the overly intellectual, overly ideological aspect of Dostoevsky’s writings, the way that the characters seem to be proclaiming things to each other all the time. I will say, this in itself, has a kind of appeal to me. When I first read C&P, I had a longing for a reality where people could shout eloquent passages at each other for multiple minutes without stumbling or losing their energy. To me, this has its own appeal, and often the force and depth of the content of people’s rants keeps my suspension of disbelief in place. This is, of course, subjective, and I have still not re-read Crime & Punishment since high school (it was the first classic that I went out of my way to read).

>>21458919
Thanks for this informative and interesting post. Well written and intriguing.

>>21459752
You must love Shakespeare! And perhaps the opera?

>>21458089
>saying that no student however poor will resort to murder for money.

And yet people still bread for less. What a flimsy criticism.

>>21458089
>Tolstoy was critical of C&P saying that no student however poor will resort to murder for money.
Tolstoy had a huge boner for serfs and poor people in general. He thought they were wiser and more ethical than his fellow landed gentry. You can't really take Tolstoy's opinions on the issue as some sort of authority. Also, it's been a while since I read C&P, but isn't money just a side-motive to the murder? Isn't it really because he was disgusted or loathed the woman?

>>21459842
He wanted to prove his infantile thesis, hated the woman, and, most importantly, wanted to ensure the independence of his sister.
Money was an important motive.
He wouldn't have killed his landlady simply for her being a loathsome hag. That simply made it easier.

>>21459760
I do love Shakespeare. Opera not as much (for this reason) because I have to keep two very disparate tracks running in my brain between form and content. But the music itself is beautiful, along with the scenery and general story construction.

>>21459752
The dramatic dialogue is the best, it reminds me of how dramatic anime characters talk to each other

>>21457868
Tolstoy hands down.

>>21458089
Tolstoy was a narcissist.

>>21458146
Based, also incidentally Chekov had a very high opinion of Tolstoy.

>I fear Tolstoy's death. His death would leave a large empty space in my life. First, I have loved no man the way I have loved him. I am not a believer, but of all beliefs I consider his the closest to mine and most suitable for me. Second, when literature has a Tolstoy, it is easy and gratifying to be a writer. Even if you are aware that you have never accomplished anything, you don't feel so bad, because Tolstoy accomplishes enough for everyone. His activities provide justification for the hopes and aspirations that are usually placed on literature. Third, Tolstoy stands firm, his authority is enormous, and as long as he is alive bad taste in literature, all vulgarity in its brazen-faced or lachrymose varieties, all bristly and resentful vanity will remain far in the background. His moral authority alone is enough to maintain what we think of as literary trends and schools at a certain minimal level. If not for him, literature would be a flock without a shepherd or an unfathomable jumble.

>>21457868
They are both the different side of the same coin, and compliment each other quite nicely.

>>21458089
>Tolstoy was critical of C&P saying that no student however poor will resort to murder for money

Funny man he was.

>>21459140
Bloy is great, extremely underrated and rarely talked about nowadays, even on /lit/.

Tolstoy was a nobleman douchebag who essentially raped his virgin wife repeatedly, then tortured her by forcing her to read his diaries which contained all his youthful enterprises screwing hookers. Then he wrote a self insert book about how much he hated roasties, whilst describing some mawkish fairy tale happily ever after marriage between himself (Lev) and Kitty. He wrote puppets, not humans.

Dostoevsky was a degen gambler whose blood was shed ink to pay himself out of debts. He was prophetic, flawed, exasperating, and capable of creating absurdly correct depictions of humans, despite his clumsy attempts to design them as symbolic vehicles for his varied arguments and opinions. No, Dostoevsky couldn't have stopped from writing a real man into being no matter how hard he tried.

The answer to this age old question is Turgenev.

>>21461608
>He wrote puppets, not humans.
I would argue that war and peace deviates from this. all the main characters explore genuine, often universal aspects of the human experience

>>21459113
This was written by a fart sniffing Nabocuck no doubt.

>>21459113
AI response

>>21457868
Wins in what?

>>21458089
>But Tolstoy was critical of C&P saying that no student however poor will resort to murder for money.
Why was he so retarded bros

>>21459752
I like it too because I simply like big effortful displays of passion in general when it's coming from a place of honesty, that's my own personal bias. The 'fever dream' parts I've read from Dosto are one of those bits from books that can feel so vivid it sticks like glue. Getting to experience vivid moments that fire off the imagery part of my brain is part of why I even bother to keep reading. They're like little movie moments I get to stack in the back of my head and go back to when I want

>>21462457
No. This was posted by someone who can read critically, and who has outgrown the fable and the manfiesto.

>>21457883
Cormac McCarthy is one of your favorite writers, isn’t it?

>>21457876

>>21460670
Such a great quote, it's exactly how I feel about Tolstoy. His existence alone is a great comfort to me, that there is an invisible literary authority that sets the standard for all the writing and wisdom that other people can offer

>>21457868
Neither of them.

>>21464878
Is he wrong, though? How long is it worth deluding yourself with complacent lies? Sooner or later you'll eventually come to terms with the fact that niggers are niggers that'll keep on being niggers, not some elaborate beings with deep thoughts and motives, prostitutes are irrational empty husks (regardless if you rebrand them as sex-workers), not some devout and righteous victims, poor people are bound to be poor and even if they stumble upon wealth they'll regress in no time, so on.
I'm absolutely not saying you should become bitter and cynical but if you manage to realize and accept all the above and yet maintain a stiff upper lip, you're far better off than living in some sweetened make-believe alternate reality.

>>21464896
>Such a great quote
It reads like the ramblings of a deranged groupie. Sure, by all means appreciate the man, but go overboard on the feminine aspect and it starts to seem hyperbolic and insincere.