Dostoevskyswife - Stars, Hide Your Fires.

Denise Levertov, from This Great Unknowning: Last Poems; “Feet”

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.

“Compassion was the most important, perhaps the sole law of human existence.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

Megan Nolan, from her novel titled "Acts of Desperation," originally published in March 2021

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

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

wouldn’t it be nice if we were older then we wouldn’t have to wait so long?and wouldn’t it be nice to live together in the kind of world where we belong? you know it’s gonna make it that much better, when we can say goodnight and stay together. wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up in the morning when the day is new? and after having spent the day together hold each other close the whole night through?

— Anaïs Nin, from The Voice