First time reading Dostoevsky, specifically Crime and Punishment. What should I expect?

First time reading Dostoevsky, specifically Crime and Punishment. What should I expect?

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Rants, sickness, family gossip, pontificating characters and pure fucking literature.

A surprisingly fast paced read.

A great book. I hope you enjoy it.

just read it you fucking faggot

Based Dostoevsky BTFOs Nietzsche before Nietzsche was even born, also Sonya is my waifu
Yeah it didn’t feel like a 600p book at all.

>Raskolnikov, no
>Buddy what are you doing
>You poor fool you thought it would be easy to be evil and hardboiled
>Evil and hardboiled guy keeps bullying you
>Police chief is Russian sherlock holmes, also keeps bullying you
>The real punishment is the inability to live with what you've done

I just got to the final part. It’s absolutely based. Some of the dream sequences are the best imo. Get ready for a lot of dialogue, the talking is what Dosto is all about. Also I’m reading the original translation from that one Russian bitch, I’m not sure what other anons think of that. It’s a little rigid at times but the story seems to shine through just fine.

So much dialogue, bordering an unnecessary amount. But as it is a book - you have to imagine that the auther put every single dialogue in there for a reason. Sometimes the main character will rant for 3 or 4 pages, all stuff said in his head, which serves almost zero to the overall story BUT serves just about everything to paint the picture of our beloved Raskolikonv.

I would summarize it as.. “Go ahead and skip some of it” like the german ladies dialogue in the poilice station

i feel lonely when i say this but this is my honest opinion, after reading a few of his books. dosto's style of writing is not that great. i'm aware he was paid by the world and writing is what he lived by, so it's understandable, but there are a lot of portions in his works where it just seems like fluff, overexplanation, or repetition.
also, another thing i've noticed in his stories is how capricious 90% of the characters are (both male and female, but many of the female characters also tend to be 2x more annoying and flippant). is this a russian thing? there are exchanges of dialogue that leave me confused and i don't know whether it's the time period or the culture or translation- but i find it extremely annoying.
that being said, you can tell when dosto feels sympathy for different characters despite their flaws, and i think that's what i generally enjoyed.

Yeahhhhhhh it's really good

Sonechka ;-; pls protect her

I want to protect her too, why can’t she be real lads

So why did Svidrigailov killed himself?

30 :3.

*paid by the word, is what i meant to say

He had no one to love anymore and he was confused and frightened by the dreams

Because being alive meant nothing to him, and when he couldn't have Dunya he decided he was done hanging around. He's the "monster" that Raskolnikov assumes he can imitate if he just has the right mindset and stays rational.

like Plato's "gods or beasts", Svi is completely amoral, capable of manipulating society as he wishes, and has nothing to live for. he realizes almost immediately that raskolnikov is guilty, and pities him for being unable to act as he does

in fact you could say that the only "crisis" svi faces is his inability to rape dunya.

I'm 59% through Crime and Punishment right now. It's a long book, but you don't know it. It's one of those rare books where you don't even look at what page you're on. You just get wrapped up in the story.

I'm loving it.

are you fucking crazy?

this is one of the few books where every line serves the story in some way.

ignore this twat, OP. you don't skip over Dosto dialogue.

GODDAMN YOU, SPOILER

>What should I expect?

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uppity cunt should've put in to save a man's life. Women have always been selfish whores

Is it wise to read Dostoevsky you're not well read?

The great thing about Dosto is that you don’t have to be a professor of literature to understand or enjoy his books.

That's good to hear. My first book was at 18, so I'm retarded. Thanks.

Dostoevysky was arrested as a youth and sent to Siberia for four years, plus another six in exile. He was also contemporaries with the cream of the crop in Russian literature. He straddles both worlds; the world of the labor camp prisoners, and the world of the aristocracy. I think he's a fantastic choice for a beginner.

It's only implied. You see, people moving to America in the 19th century generally couldn't easily contact their friends on this side of River Styx… I mean, Atlantic.

I recently bought both Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. Which one should I start with?

C & P

I would say Crime and Punishment. The Brothers Karamazov can be too intimidating if you're wholly unfamiliar with Dostoyevski's writing style or the way how he unrolls his argument. There's an upbuilding element in his stories (especially starting from Notes from Underground), which may seem at times somewhat detached from the rest of the story.

If you expect a single-track type of narrative, these digressions can be very cumbersome to read. They're »literary essays« within a bigger whole so to say, and if you seek to understand Dostoyevski's argument, and appreciate it, these parts are indispensible to grasp the deeper motivations of certain characters - why they act and think the way they do. This is not so much the case in Crime and Punishment and that is why you should start with it.

I dont know what you personally expect but its fucking fantastic

Beating a dead horse.

Thank you!

Poors and prostitutes.

Dosto thought that every atheist had to kill themselves.

just started as well, just 100 pages in but its so good. the characters are so well written. i'm usually not a fan of older fiction because a lot of the struggles the ppl go through are a curse of their time and not relevant and relatable anymore but this is timeless.

Read the fucking book don't waste time making shit threads like this fucking hell

Objectively wrong

Dostoevsky deliberately made everything be longer than necessary because it meant he got paid more

Dostoyevsky's characters are all exaggerated. Someone likened his novels to being in a room full of people who won't stop yelling about their lives. It's not how Russians behave.

Marathoned the first five or so chapters of Brothers Karamazov recently, didn't learn a thing.

>there were once three brothers
>background on their mother
>background on their father
>background on the dude who raised two of them himself
>background on the youngest one joining a convent
>cut to action and it's one brother visiting his father and the son he lives with
>they visit a monastery where a feeble old monk talks to them and some local peasants

I mean what the fuck, it's so boring. All so Dostoesvky can shill Christianity and tell me that suffering is neat. lol no thanks sweetie, I'll just replay RDR2.

every line still serves the story, twat. just because the book is long doesn't mean it's full of filler.

You didn't find the monastery scene hilarious?

that's a broad brush you have there

It literally is full of filler and Dostoevsky would be the first to tell you that

>62 seconds apart
>not even pretending you're not samefagging

typical JBPcel being unable to handle anyone saying anything remotely critical of meme man's favourite writer

I'm reading the book.

and I don't see the filler. Lucky me, I guess. Must suck to be as smart as you.

That's not a rebuttal

Based quints

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>thinking Russian novels start before half way

Did r/books link to this place or something?

Him and Sonechka are just vehicles to show the two paths Raskolnikov can go down as a sinner.

Come on man

This book is exceptional, especially considering the fact that we are living in a time where his ideas are more relevant than ever before.
Also, it literally has a leftist cuck in in it, who wants a bull to fuck his wife.

>we are living in a time where his ideas are more relevant than ever before.
what do you mean?

We live in a time where nihilism is running rampant, god is dead, and traditionalism if becoming irrelevant. In a word, Crime and Punishment examines the dichotomy between modernism and traditionalism

but current times are between post-modernism and ???

I also just started reading it, raskolnikov is pretty hilarious

That's because he's a neckbeard living in the 1800s

same. i do remember another scene from Notes from Underground between Protag and servant.

I wouldn't get too caught up in the labels of things. Crime and punishment looks at how nihilistic thinking with no basis in objectivity is flawed, hence its relevant.

The actual reason (as Dosto wrote to Belov) is because to Dostoevsky the most vile and disgusting crime was to rape a little girl. Hence why despite bot Svidrigailov and Stavrogin (Demons) deepness as characters, ultimately had to go, shooting and hanging themselves respectively, crazed of remorse.

Since when raping is worse than killing?

>Literally states "because to Dostoevsky the most vile and disgusting crime was to rape a little girl."
> Can't fucking read nor comprehend two fucking lines of text.

You’re wrong

So just to be clear, Svidrigailov was a pedo right? That freaky dream he had made me real suspicious

Svidrigailov is meant torepresent the antithesis of Dostoyevsky's morality: a nihilist, atheist, (probable) murderer of his wife Marfa Petrovna, charming pedophile and rapist without scruples, committed toward the end of the book with a 16-year-old girl, dilapidating the fortune of his dead wife. So we are told in the first parts of the book of the monster that is our Arkadii, who discovers the secret of Raskolnikov and who seems to intend to harm him just because he wants to and for fun. The twist of his character is revealed after being rejected by Dunia: that he wants to be a good man and stop being a miserable son of a bitch, give away his fortune, marry her and ensure the flight of Raskol to America to avoid Siberia.
After that he decides to shoot himself, seeing everything lost, and his crushed morale ("Who knows if she would have made me a different man?") And on his last night he dreams of all his crimes, which torment him in the hotel where remains: the mute girl who raped and who hung on a tree and another worse, a 5-year-old girl who tries to seduce him as a final allusion to culminate with a deviant and perverted character, hated by life and himself and SHOW TO THE READER THE FRUSTRATED REDEMPTION, the fate contrary to that of Raskol at the end of the book.
For Dostoevsky, nihilism always ends in self-destruction (See Kirillov madness before death in Demons and Ivan (again) madness in Brothers K.

Brilliant
ty

I found Svidrigailov far more interesting a character than Raskolnikov, because of the mystery surrounding him. It's easy to say that he's a terrible person (and he is), but also keep in mind that there's no evidence that he's actually ever done something wrong— even at the end, they're dreams, just dreams. I see his character as an attack on the "it's not hurting anybody" people in today's society; the fact that he killed himself despite not having definitely hurt anyone shows the danger of that line of thinking to me. Morality was never supposed to be based upon merely actions, that's too easy to game as a system. Dostoevsky was probably trying to make an argument for the return of virtue- or God-centered ethics.

Just what I would expect out of someone who browses a literature forum

>But as it is a book
good point

Expect a long, boring and ultimately pointless book of wallowing in self pity

I've been thinking that all day. The quality of posts and the way people have been responding to things read almost exactly like reddit cringe screen caps

who? i don't remember? was it the rich dude?

Close, it was his socialist roommate

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Absolute kino. Beautiful ending.

Best quote in the whole book is "Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind."

Also, I do love the Lazarus metaphor. Parallels b/w the stone on lazarus's grave and the stone on rodions treasure

Thanks for posting the piece bro. I totally missed that, what chapter? I had to read the book in 2 days for ap Lit like 3 years ago in summer, and it's my favorite book.
absolutely kino. I cried at the end

Part 5, chapter 1, after Luzhin storms back to his apartment and starts talking to his roommate again after his conversation with Sonya

words nigga

This is your brain after being raised on a steady diet of anti-heroes and entertainment based completely on rejecting commonplace morality. 9/11 was truly the worst thing to happen to the Hollywood intelligentsia. All their attempts to prove religious morality is stifling only to end up siding with Islam, without a thoughtful examination of philosophy or nuance of themes like the social contract. This book is so important, especially right now. Before you go rambling about Christians just known i’m an atheist but far from the rationalists or neorationality of someone like Sam Harris ( an analogue to Chernyshevsky ) and preponderant of utopian humanitarianism. Fuck off, Lebeziatnikov (you cuck).

Thanks

Is the Pevear and Volokhonsky or David McDuff a good translation to read?

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Both are pretty good, just remember not to go for some translator (can't remember her name) but if I'm correct it's the only female one

>arrested as a youth and sent to Siberia for four years
why? i thought he was an engineer

This desu. You will probably desire to skip the entire novel once you recognise the archetypes, and the arguments they make. Ultimately a poignant admission in the canon and one that will come
Back at you for a long time.

Two go to the abyss
Only one can remain

can dosto be qualified as fiction?

The devil is mysterious and works almost unseen.

listen to the wreck and reference discography while you read it. crank it

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Butterfly I know you are rarely genuine, but I’m sure you can tell I’m an honest soul.

How old are you? :3

What’s better, the McDuff translation or P&V’s? I’ve heard good things about both but Penguins are sexy

He belonged to a socialist youth group/thought socialism was a good idea, so he was a political prisoner

Because he could. Because he was being in a weird way rational and because he realized it is too late for him. He played his cards, he was done playing. Raskolnikov on the other hand couldn't do it (and he tried til the very end), that's why he completely froze when he heard the news of his suicide - he realized he is not a monster.

Pevear and Volokhonsky can be pretty polarizing, the Norton Critical Edition (Jessie Senior Coulson translation) is my personal favorite.

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all literature is fiction

Constance garnett is good though

*tips tophat with axe in hand.

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fuck you

lol Raskolnikov eats my ass bc he's a napolean lolol kekek

Crime & punishment.

Dislike it intensely. Ghastly rigmarole.

Honestly wasn't expecting this book to have so many funny parts in it. That scene where Mitya is trying to collect money, the Poles, etc..

>Absorbing as Crime and Punishment is, it cannot be absolved of
>tendentiousness, which is Dostoevsky's invariable flaw. He is a
>partisan, whose fierce perspective is always explicit in what he
>writes. His design upon us is to raise us, like Lazarus, from our
>own nihilism or skepticism, and then convert us to Orthodoxy.
>Writers as eminent as Chekhov and Nabokov have been unable to
>abide him; to them he was scarcely an artist, but a shrill would-be
>prophet. I myself, with each rereading, find Crime and Punishment
>an ordeal, dreadfully powerful but somewhat pernicious, almost as
>though it were a Macbeth composed by Macbeth himself.

>Raskolnikov hurts us because we cannot cut loose from him.
>Sonya seems to me quite unendurable, but even Dostoevsky did
>nor have the power to create a sane saint; I wince before her.

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It's, good. I'm much too morally compromised for it to have affected me, but I see it's appeal to those who identify with Raskolnikov's identity of narcissism with a tad of talent. That aside, I have my own take on it but Dosto would probably disagree with me and say I'm reading too much into it.

Lebeziatnikov.
He is an episode character. Dostoevsky wrote him as a critique of mindless progressivism that doesn't want or can't adapt to the local environment's problems and ideals.

Expect an axe murderer who falls in love with a prostitute.

I don't know what is my problem but I can't stand dialogues in this book. I love everything except conversations. Maybe it's because of old fashioned way of speaking.

he was a pedo

sidney monas from signet

its the one I read...

disappointment

Read it and find out.

uhhh not true

Ellipses. So many fucking ellipses.

This is a straight ridicule of progressive fantasies in “What is to be done?”. Cf. modern rosy eulogies for polygamy in hip media.

Easier said than done!