Kim Addonizio, “The Singing”, Tell Me

hey sorry your boyfriend said that russian classics are about that life is bleak. yeah he meant dostoyevsky and tolstoy. no, he didn't look beyond any of the lowest lows of the stories. he didn't even see the overarching themes of beauty and hope and connection. frankly we have all been laughing about him and we're gonna beat him up now. sorry

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.

Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself, 1856

Anaïs Nin, from a novel titled "A Spy in the House of Love," published in 1954

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.

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

Neville Goddard, from The Power of Awareness

Text ID: The whole of creation exists in you, and it is your destiny to become increasingly aware of its infinite wonders and to experience ever greater and grander portions of it.

Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)

Simone de Beauvoir, from Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 1, 1926-27

Text ID: I myself keep my emptiness inside of me, and this certainty that I am alone, that nothing can satisfy me, that my happiness will have to be willed so strongly, so severely that it will be more of a fatigue than a peace.

dostoevsky was so funny in the sense that he’ll start a story/novel by saying “and please forgive me if i’ve omitted important details or facts, but if i mention everything with full explanation i would fill a very large volume!” and then describes every little thing, emotion, feeling and thought his characters are having like yes king !! go off the rails !! oh you’re saying 400 pages aren’t enough for your little story?? no worries!! cause we don’t mind reading a 700+ page retelling of a story !! people in their teens and 20 somethings yearn for your writings !!!