Dostoevskyswife - Stars, Hide Your Fires.

you know that man vs bear conversation ppl are having? dostoy gets it

people will clown on me for this because he killed two people but I just love how sweet Rodya is. He is so cruel and mean and uncouth a lot or even most of the time, but then he does things like constantly thoughtlessly give the last of his money away to anyone who needs it more than him, cries when he’s in his psychotic episode and can’t remember who Razumikhin is, has that very sweet and tender moment with Polenka, begs the police to get a doctor for Marmeladov and says he’ll pay for it despite having nothing at all himself. At the same time he is capable of terrible things and is often terrible specifically to the people who love him and want to help, and oscillates wildly between the two. It’s that juxtaposition that holds so much of the interest of the narrative itself for me. A lot of people focus on how awful he is and while that is also honestly such a fun part of his character, that alone is not what makes him compelling to me. I have so much tenderness for his character despite what he’s done because he is just so mentally ill and has been through and been witness to so much hardship. He is not easy to love or understand but it’s so beautiful and sweet that Razumikhin, Sonya, his family and his other friends love him so dearly anyway. I truly think the suffering he is constantly surrounded by is the thing that has driven him to psychosis. Specifically I think of when he goes to the police station in part two and says he has been “shattered by poverty.” In these little moments of sweetness and lucidity towards others, even in the depths of his illness, we can still see the little boy in him who so desperately wanted to help that poor horse.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from "Short Story" in The Collected Poems

Bookstores always remind me that there are good things in this world.

— Vincent van Gogh

starting to think the amount of sleep you get has an impact on how much energy you have the next day. i’ll investigate more and get back to you

I don’t mean to interrupt people I just randomly remember things and get really excited I’m sorry

fuck it I’m drunk. The points being articulated in TBK are literally incoherent! Every single idea established is then torn down--- either parodied, deconstructed, inverted, or paralelled at some other point, to such a degree that it turns into idealogical and philosophical soup. "Pro and Contra", as is stated. The ending is bleak, underwhelming, and ineffectual! Alyosha's speech at the end is a failure. He is trying SO hard to follow the doctrine that Father Zossima gave him, that he is needed in the world, he is trying so hard to say the right thing to these poor children but his words pale in comparison to the great suffering that has transpired and will continue to transpire ceaselessly. These children then hear his words and exalt him and the Karamazov family name, that stands for all that is base and sick in the world. Ivan is still sick. His ideology and intellect, all he is and all he has, has failed him. He has a very long reckoning yet to come. Dmitry is still imprisoned and in purgatory. Absolutely everyone has completely failed to acknowledge that Smerdyakov was a human being and their family member, despite the entire idea being repeated, ad nauseum, that we are ALL meant to be "servants to our servants and servants to all men" and our brothers keepers. Despite or even because of all of this, the book is extraordinary. Though he had ideas that any particular reader may disagree with, this incoherence cannot be an accident. Dostoevsky can convey a point to exactness, in all it's complexity, to a degree that rivals any author who has ever lived. Then I am reminded that this was not even meant to be THE Book, this was only ever the PRELUDE to THE Book. This was all just the set up for something. And the payoff of whatever was supposed to be "The Life of a Great Sinner" was robbed from us by his death! And so Dostoevsky himself departs, and takes all the answers with him, into the great mystery. And we are left only with the endless questions, the ineffectual answers, the contradictions, the speculations, and the mystery. Exactly as we are in regards to the questions and ideas posed by all of religion itself. It's the kind of allegory that would be much too on the nose if you tried to put it into a film or a story.

"The Brothers Karamazov", Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)

Thinking about how when I started The Brothers Karamazov and had only read the first couple chapters so I wasn’t in deep enough yet I was like “ok, finally a Dostoevsky book I can be pretty normal about!” And here we are now. It’s pretty much my entire personality and I’m so obnoxious about it