*The Idiot
The Idiot -Fyodor Dostoevski (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
My initial impression was that Dostoevski wrote a pointless novel. Which was a good impression. Especially after the obviously tendentious Crime and Punishment, and the ponderously philosophical, though it is one of the best books I’ve ever read, Brothers Karamazov. So, at first, The Idiot felt like ahh, here is a book without a purpose, not trying to prove that God is in all of us or disprove Hell or flick Earth off our shoulders like the midge that it is, but just letting Dostoevski play upon a theme, let him run with the darkness of his spine, harping over and again weakness, depravity, trembling, jealousy, epilepsy, impudent young men and murder. And I was thrilled. Distracted. Lost track of a few names. Mildly disappointed by the ending. Humdrum translation. And it seemed to me by the end, that indeed it was a pointlessly intended novel, which is beautiful, but there was an element of haste to the plot that didn’t let it soar like his other books. Which is unique, because in both Brothers K and Crime and Punishment, the climax comes early and there is a lot of repercussion that follows, but none of it ever bores. Yet in The Idiot, the text slowly churns forward and half-climaxes at the very end, which, somehow took away from all of the excitement.
Dostoevski the man, though, I love him.
“’they say something of the sort exists among the Japanese,’ Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn was saying. ‘An offended man there supposedly goes to the offender and says to him: “You have offended me, for that I have come to rip my belly open before your eyes,” and with those words he actually rips his belly open before his offender’s eyes.’”
“Roman Catholocism is even worse than atheism itself.”
“all this Europe of yours, it’s all one big fantasy.”
The Idiot is Mother Russia in full stride.
My initial impression was that Dostoevski wrote a pointless novel. Which was a good impression. Especially after the obviously tendentious Crime and Punishment, and the ponderously philosophical, though it is one of the best books I’ve ever read, Brothers Karamazov. So, at first, The Idiot felt like ahh, here is a book without a purpose, not trying to prove that God is in all of us or disprove Hell or flick Earth off our shoulders like the midge that it is, but just letting Dostoevski play upon a theme, let him run with the darkness of his spine, harping over and again weakness, depravity, trembling, jealousy, epilepsy, impudent young men and murder. And I was thrilled. Distracted. Lost track of a few names. Mildly disappointed by the ending. Humdrum translation. And it seemed to me by the end, that indeed it was a pointlessly intended novel, which is beautiful, but there was an element of haste to the plot that didn’t let it soar like his other books. Which is unique, because in both Brothers K and Crime and Punishment, the climax comes early and there is a lot of repercussion that follows, but none of it ever bores. Yet in The Idiot, the text slowly churns forward and half-climaxes at the very end, which, somehow took away from all of the excitement.
Dostoevski the man, though, I love him.
“’they say something of the sort exists among the Japanese,’ Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn was saying. ‘An offended man there supposedly goes to the offender and says to him: “You have offended me, for that I have come to rip my belly open before your eyes,” and with those words he actually rips his belly open before his offender’s eyes.’”
“Roman Catholocism is even worse than atheism itself.”
“all this Europe of yours, it’s all one big fantasy.”
The Idiot is Mother Russia in full stride.
posted by JohnWashington at 5:30 PM
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