tolstoy or dostoevsky

Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? As I’m reading Tolstoy, I’m drawn into a dream of serfs and country estates, endless royal titles and army ranks. cause of his books . It is likely that these words express more about me than about Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. Gary Saul Morson, Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities, Northwestern University. Thanks for all the great suggestions and if anyone wants to make this list a work in progress, feel free to suggest more books in the comments.Update: Laurie suggests The Thin Red Line by James Jones. 23-24), “People may be divided into two types: those who are drawn to Tolstoy’s mind and those drawn to Dostoievsky’s, and we shall find that the ‘tolstoyans’ have great difficulty in understanding Dostoievsky properly; not only that, but they often dislike him. I hadn’t DONE anything. Each of the two offers profound insights about psychology. Surely, he thinks, he’d use her money more productively than she does. His true subject is how a spiritual being struggles — through love and action, history and family — to make a home in the material world. at all …. Tolstoy then gives a compressed description (the entire novella is roughly eighty pages long) of the deceased’s personal life and professional career, a familiar narration of youthful enthusiasms diffused by the demands of workplace and family until they’ve faded into a colorless and unfulfilling middle age, in which a “new apartment is always one room too small, and a new income always 50 rubles short.”. But I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing. As it turned out, I was not the first to consider the provocation. But if you imagine what an average person deliberates about inside their minds each and every second, you’ll realize that Dostoevsky is adding that intangible feature of each human being into his characters, making them more human than Tolstoy’s, whose characters are understood from a more limited upper class position. Thanks much and Happy 2015! Whereas his contemporary Tolstoy tried to write the world, charting a path toward unearthly empathy along itineraries that embraced life’s matter-of-factness at every step, Dostoevsky probed the interior lives of sinners and searchers and gave them a terrifying imaginative reality that would hold readers rapt. Sеriously wonderful articles ɑrе foᥙnd on this website, tһanks foг yоur contribution. He essentially crossed to “the other side” and came back from the dead after the full conviction that he would die during the mock execution. For a Russian view, try Life & Fate by Vasily Grossman, a thick novel on the siege of Stalingrad finished in 1959 that never saw print in Russia in his lifetime. Probablemente sí. The second is Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, a brilliant but cynical prince who joins the campaign against Napoleon (whom both Andrei and Pierre actually idolize), only to suffer grave wounds in battle. That is basic oversimplification but works for me. This implies that there is a winner and a loser. Movement is circular — “slipping and sliding,” — without progress. by Fred Sanders on April 4, 2008. (Compare fleshy old Fyodor Karamazov with his ethereal son Alyosha.) Tolstoy’s answer, on the other hand, is not as idealistic, but grounded in the earth itself. Dostoevsky is often given credit for being more “dramatic” (George Steiner, in Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?, calls Dostoevsky “one of the major dramatic tempers after Shakespeare”). He sees the world through the eyes of an upper-class, well-off person. But Dostoievsky is the greater thinker of the two, his awareness of things is more extensive, and he knows the eternal human contradiction which makes it necessary to take one step back for every two forward, while Tolstoy went straight on without turning his head. The book opens at a grand ball in Saint Petersburg, where all the talk is of Napoleon and his triumphant progress across Europe: Everyone knows that the French army is headed for the Russian border. Twice two is four, but twice two is five is a charming little thing too. Tolstoy, a morning writer, had the luxury of a palatial estate and storied name within Russia’s upper class. Each of the two writers describes crises in faith. Just another take on what is admittedly a silly, although fun, inquiry. I didn’t get it! Dostoevsky was an introvert. It’s Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin, the sincere, slightly awkward country landowner whose love for Kitty seems hopeless at first. « ofilhodameianoite, Links da semana « Blog da Companhia das Letras, Links to the Present – 4/24/12 | Verbal Infusion, Who's the Real Artist - Leonardo or Michelangelo? Is circumstance fate? Go Orange. by SporcleEXP Plays Quiz not verified by Sporcle . And his one-sided morality could in no case have been shared by such a seer of the human heart as Dostoievsky.” (pgs. Then, two scenes later, Kitty arrives at the ball, wearing a peach-colored dress, and sees Anna — in black velvet. The heart is uncontrollable. Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin (The Idiot), even though he is named after Tolstoy, is more virtuous than any Tolstoyan character could be, and so is Alyosha Karamazov. There it is all Pushkin – Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky-Pushkin. Tolstoy’s writing is easy-flowing, smooth, there’s hardly ever a splinter or a gap. Why didn’t he consider other paths, other solutions? En este sentido, muchos han preferido a Dostoievski. I can’t say I am an expert or have a great memory after reading these two great writers over a quarter century ago. It feels like my life again. Spectacular – Kerr hasn’t written anything close to this good since, but these are just fantastic. I was feeling for it in the window-curtains…We went down-stairs, one behind another. I’ve thought long and hard about this question and enjoyed Steiner’s eloquent and erudite book. Totally. Anna Karenina was written after War and Peace, but curiously the author called it his first novel. That flowering . Karamazov is Hillary’s favorite novel? But when reading Anna Karenina I felt disconnected from this very simple way of looking at humans. Tolstoy depicts crimes, such as the lynching of Vereshchagin (War and Peace) or uxoricide in Kreutzer Sonata, but not the pure malice embodied in such Dostoevskian characters as Stavrogin (Demons) or Smerdyakov (Brothers Karamazov). As for Tolstoy, I have read most of his short works, like “The Cossacks,” “The Raid,” “the Death of Ivan Illich,” and “The Kreutzer Sonata.” But when it came to “War and Peace,” I used to be intimidated by its sheer size. I don’t know what it is but I know it is beyond comparison in modern literature. Some fearfully ventured “the left,” others hesitantly offered, “the right.” The Great Helmsman then gave the right answer: “Both are worse.” I answer the question, “Who is the greater novelist, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky?”: Both are better. The book consists of the first two parts of what was intended to be a five-novel suite about the war in France. “I am a sick man . At one point Dickens summarizes Clennam’s thoughts in a way that seems emblematic of the novel: “Little Dorrit, Little Dorrit. He would have made Heaven’s Gate, except that his version would be good and interesting (and longer). And I’m always overpowered by the way his novels describe everyone from the inside, even the dogs and horses. I did some research and found something astonishing. Each of his sons seems to be implicated. I have the same reaction to Tolstoy’s writing as his sister-in-law, Tanya Bers, who was the model for Natasha in War and Peace: “I can see how you are able to describe landowners, fathers, generals, soldiers,” she told him, “but how can you insinuate yourself into the heart of a girl in love, how can you describe the sensation of a mother — for the life of me I cannot understand.” I think Tolstoy is better at “insinuating himself” than any other novelist. If you haven’t read a book in 30 years, you have nothing to compare it to, no? Move this mountain, and I will believe! One of the worrisome tendencies of contemporary society is its impulse to rank. But Dosteyevsky’s judge who could not come up for the word banana is my hero! “Of course I was in love with little Em’ly,” David Copperfield assures the reader of his childhood love. I have long ago given up on the idea of objective appraisal of literature: reading is a much more mediated process than we would like to admit. A Soviet anecdote has it that Stalin once asked the Central Committee: which deviation is worse, the right or the left? Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. When he wrote this bleak tale of immorality and desperate (and uncertain) redemption, Dostoevsky himself was teetering on the edge of financial ruin; he had recently returned from exile in Siberia, his magazine had folded, and he was under such tight deadlines that he had to write both this novel and The Gambler at the same time. I understand Dostoevsky now. Logic and words will get you nowhere: the more talk, the less truth. It’s easy and free to post your thinking on any topic. My own sympathies are with Tolstoy, and even my criteria for judging a work of fiction, I admit, are relentlessly Tolstoyan. The prime suspect is the eldest, Dmitri, a spendthrift playboy whose hatred of his father boils over when they become rivals for a woman named Grushenka. Life is always on the verge of imploding on itself. There is no other way than to face the hell itself. His severe yet sacramental attention to these mysteries makes the four-score pages of The Death of Ivan Ilych as riveting and unforgettable as the hundreds upon hundreds of pages that compose his larger-than-life masterpieces. For history, I lean towards Tolstoy, but I prefer Dusty’s writings. Spiteful, angry, self-obsessed, and neurotic in the extreme, the Underground Man has quit his job as a mid-level government functionary and lives, at forty, in a wretched room. Hence ethics demands: always treat another person as capable of surprise, as someone who cannot be explained entirely at second hand. With Dostoevsky you are in trouble. Dostoevsky digs deeply into the individual human psyche. That’s his uppermost quality…I feel I can praise this author all my life. My reading experience of Dostoevsky, on the other hand, is always fascinating. I will say, though, that Mahler is unquestionably a better composer than Bruckner, even though I like Bruckner very much. I can be innocent and guilty both. Tolstoy speaks more to the 21st century. Kevin Hartnett I am mildly surprised none of the experts above mentioned this work, I recommend it. Dostoevsky showed us just how real and wide this field of possibilities is. A Dostoevsky novel sitting on a shelf is a bowl of anxiety and confusion, a bundle of frustrations marked by a desperate need for redemption. Incidentally, TOLSTOY OR DOSTOEVSKY is sub-titled "An Essay in the Old Criticism", by which Steiner refers to the wrangle in the loftier circles of literary criticism over whether a critic/reader should evaluate a work of literature solely on the basis of the text itself (the "new criticism") or whether it is instructive or even permissible to also consider the historical-biographical context of the work (the "old criticism").

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