If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.
I think his criticism is absolutely devastating to Dosto. If you read Dosto's novels, they are chock full of a grotesque macabre fascination with suffering and shame, with murder and sex and the subsequent groveling misery of those who find themselves in such situations. This type of tripe is 100% on the level of a typical harlequin romance novel, but because it's some old Russian who added Christian Orthodox themes as an accent to the sadomasochism, IQfy eats it up. It's perverse.
Dosto is essentially sadomasochistic, he loves dwelling on characters who revel in how depraved they are, but who also prostrate themselves in the just punishment or humiliation of their depravity. Again, sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes imply the exact situation he adored, all the violence and sexual intrigue he desired so much, but with the approval of his super ego since they ritualistically degrade themselves in a kind of spiritual fetishistic pleasure in confessing, being punished, and then being "redeemed". It's lurid and partakes of a sick kind of gratification in self flagellation.
Pasta or not, Dostoyevsky was in some sort of shady freemason circles, and he saw the dangers of new and scary ideologies. Old generation had their Christian values, but new college age generation takes up nihilism or something, and since it's so new to them, they run wild with it. Seeing how things turned out for Russia in the last century, Dostoyevsky was right about the influence of dangerous new ideas.
Friendly reminder he used that line both in letters and in Demons.
You can just imagine him in Siberia, all tied up in chains and thinking to himself: "Damn, Fedia, this is a fricking great quote, a great quote indeed! I'm gonna spam the shit out of it everywhere I can once I get out of here, I sure will!"
>use it twice >hurr durr spam
He probably wrote it in a letter and coopted it later for his story. Who wouldn't do the same with such an excellent phrase?
Uh huh. Tolstoy's stories are usually moral tales and I think that diminishes their beauty. Chekov wrote amazing impressions of real life. There is no explicit moral beaten into you, but you can still take something from them. Moral tales aren't necessarily bad, Tolstoy's stories are all worthwhile and great works of art, but in this case they are the inferior work of art.
1 month ago
Anonymous
His normal short stories and novellas are masterpieces, his parables and simplistic moralistic stories are of course not the caliber of someone like Chekhov
1 month ago
Anonymous
Have you read Tolstoy's novellas? I think they're great. What do you recommend by Chekhov specifically?
I believe I have read all of his novellas. Very few of Tolstoy's short stories are 'normal' as in not-moralistic. By moralistic I simply mean they have a set answer to a moral problem. There is an issue, Tolstoy gives us the answer through the story. Tolstoy himself recognised the problem with this, that the answers he gave were wrong. That's why he denounced his own works and started writing extremely simple moral fables for peasants. Chekov avoids this by giving no solution. He didn't have the answers and he didn't try to give any. He just wrote about life as it was. I think Anna Karenina is greater than anything Chekov wrote, even if you take issue with its conclusion like Tolstoy himself did. I am particularly fond of Father Sergius and I think Ivan Ilyich is better than A Boring Story, but in a shorter format Chekov wins out overall.
Have you read Tolstoy's novellas? I think they're great. What do you recommend by Chekhov specifically?
The Modern Library Selected Stories of Chekov is quite good. Ward No. 6, the Black Monk, the House with the Mezzanine, the Lady with the Little Dog, In the Ravine, the Bishop.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Tolstoy was a moralizer since day 1. I think the standard position that Tolstoy can be divided between moralism (his later works) and realism (his earlier stuff) is very narrow and silly. War and Peace depicts “life as it is” better than any work of art ever. But it also has didactic essays about history and power in it. The same goes for Anna Karenina despite all the intricate details about human life it still unambiguously tells the audience that adultery is bad and God is good. The only thing that changed in most of Tolstoy’s later works was that this became more unbalanced and he was writing mainly for instruction but with an artistic flair. Chekhov was always consistent and that’s why him and Maupassant (who Tolstoy also adored) are the best short story writers
1 month ago
Anonymous
Yes, I agree. His moralising wouldn't really be a problem if it wasn't wrong. Anna's story in Anna Karenina is fine. Levin's concludes with the revelation that fulfillment is found in the Church and Christianity. The Kreutzer Sonata shows how that turned out. At the very least Tolstoy was self aware about it. I believe that the length of his novels absolutely overcomes this shortcoming. So much of life is shown in such a true and beautiful way, something you can't do in 10 or 50 pages. Not the best short story writer ever, but definitely the best novelist. I haven't read Maupassant yet but I'm looking forward to it.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Maupassant reminds me of Chekhov. A lot of his stories are just random episodes of human life usually bereft of any core moral idea
1 month ago
Anonymous
Actually I read one story about a man drinking milk from a woman's breasts while they were on the train.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>Anna Karenina despite all the intricate details about human life it still unambiguously tells the audience that adultery is bad and God is good
In what way? I doubt you'd be able to find text to support that statement.
1 month ago
Anonymous
He doesn’t explicitly say the moral like he does in Kreutzer Sonata but you can see his line of thinking with the fact that Anna is condemned to death for her actions while Levin finds God through chaste marriage. It’s very much in line with his later writing, where sinners are commonly condemned to misery. In The Devil he has his protagonist kill himself just like Anna because he’s tempted to commit adultery.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Where do you draw the line between situations that would genuinely lead to ruin (realism) and saying some things are bad (moralism)? If Anna's arc is authentic and leads her to ruin and suicide, is it moralizing to allow that to play out in your story?
1 month ago
Anonymous
It is inherently moralizing, but I don’t see a problem with it as long as it’s conveyed artistically. Most art has a moral edge like this, it’s not a problem. The same goes for Dostoevsky and his obvious Christian views. The line is infamously drawn in something like the Kreutzer Sonata where Tolstoy creates a character who he uses to lecture someone about his verbatim views on sex and marriage. The first half of that book isn’t artistic, it’s a polemic. It’s literally just Tolstoy's own opinions.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Okay, that clears it up a lot, but you must concede that Anna Karenina does not employ that kind of polemic. That's the only bit I took exception to, he does not "unambiguously tells the audience" anything, if there is a moral message it comes from the realistic actions and consequences of the characters.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I guess “tell” is the wrong word but the message is still conveyed. And again I have no issue with it, I have issue with literary critics who complain that Tolstoy’s later works shove a message down your throat when most of his earlier stuff has some kind of overall moral just like most art in general.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I hate Dostoevsky. Clunky dialogue where people just spew vaguely interesting ideas at each other in an awkward manner. That man should not have been writing fiction. He should have been an essayist like Chesterton or something. Maybe I'm not mentally ill enough to get it but not one of his characters felt real. Notes from Underground was the only work of his that I found acceptable because I am a bit of an underground man myself. The 1st half was written more like an essay and the 2nd half has the underground man's misanthropic sperg monologues drive off everyone around him. I can't recall being put-off by his descriptions of environments so he mustn't have been too bad in that respect, but he can't have been very good either. I have no vivid impressions of any scene in a Dostoevsky novel whereas Chekov and Tolstoy remain in my head like a photograph or a painting.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>I have no vivid impressions of any scene in a Dostoevsky novel whereas Chekov and Tolstoy remain in my head like a photograph or a painting.
Sounds like a you-problem.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Dosto constructs very contrived and trite plots and his characters are notoriously melodramatic and caricatures of themselves.
1 month ago
Anonymous
> notoriously melodramatic and caricatures of themselves.
He's dickensian.
1 month ago
Anonymous
He wished. Dickens was streets ahead of Dosto.
1 month ago
Fledgling Investor
Wished what? He’s dickensian.
1 month ago
Anonymous
This is exactly how I feel. I remember trying to read C&P and the dialogue was really bizarre sometimes. Not the specific words necessarily but just the nature of the interactions. Like for example I think it was Raskolnikov being repeatedly very rude and dismissive to his buddy Razumihkin who just kept carrying on and on like nothing was happening. They just didn't feel like real people.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>for example I think it was Raskolnikov being repeatedly very rude and dismissive to his buddy Razumihkin who just kept carrying on and on like nothing was happening. They just didn't feel like real people. >That's because they're russian.
1 month ago
Anonymous
This problem is not found in the works of other Russian writers.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Skill issue
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Lots of Dosto is unbelievable, sure, but without those unbelievable and unrealistic actions or speech, nothing will happen. His characters dare to do or say what no real person would dare to do or say.
1 month ago
Anonymous
NTA but the adultery=bad moral is fairly realistic and doesn't present much of a problem to me. The world doesn't conspire to punish Anna because of her infidelity, ultimately it's her own psychological issues that cause her death. Was Vronsky really about to abandon her? That is up to personal interpretation. The issue is the finding God=goodness and enduring happiness moral. Levin is Tolstoy's self insert character and this conclusion is hollow and false.
If it's realistic and "life as it is", where is the line between "yeah, if you do this it leads to ruin" and just straight moralizing to the reader?
I think ultimately the line between acceptable and unacceptable moralisation is based on positives and negatives. Don't do this it's bad and here's a realistic fictional life that shows this often works well. Do this it's good and it will fulfill you and make you happy does not work. Anna Karenina does not do any straight moralisation. Tolstoy never dedicates a chapter to why adultery is bad like he does with the great man stuff in War and Peace. Even the extremely on the nose peasant parables show why something is good or bad and don't just tell you. War and Peace and the Kreutzer Sonata are the only direct ones that I can recall.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I guess “tell” is the wrong word but the message is still conveyed. And again I have no issue with it, I have issue with literary critics who complain that Tolstoy’s later works shove a message down your throat when most of his earlier stuff has some kind of overall moral just like most art in general.
Can you contrast this with an author who has no moral message in his work?
1 month ago
Anonymous
I don’t think they exist frankly but that’s just my opinion.
1 month ago
Anonymous
[...]
I don't think they exist either. Descriptions of nature? There is an underlying moral message. Beautiful. Brutal. Disgusting. Descriptions of human life? There is always a moral message that can be taken from it. Chekov has a moral message but he doesn't moralise. Ward No. 6 is probably the most famous example of this. I believe Lenin said he became a communist after reading it. It has a message but what you do with it is up to you.
So is the objection here the degree to which the events of the story are contrived to prove the author's moral message? Is that the real underlying criticism of "moralizing"?
1 month ago
Anonymous
That certainly occurs in Tolstoy's later stories. I liked the Forged Coupon, but the entire story is extremely contrived to show that bad things cause more bad things and good things cause more good things. A nice story, but not a great work of art. This is far less of an issue in his earlier works. The problem is more so that his conclusions are simply wrong. Would the story of Jesus still be beautiful if Jesus turned out to be just a man rather than God and a man? Maybe, but it would greatly diminish it's value.
1 month ago
Anonymous
The story of Jesus is not beautiful in either case.
1 month ago
Anonymous
If you're a big fan of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky I don't see how you could that opinion.
1 month ago
Anonymous
could hold that opinion.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I'm a fan of Tolstoy, not of Dosto. Personally, I don't care for stories about cannibalism, torture, and execution in service of a message which centers on inherited guilt. I see nothing beautiful there, in fact, I see the ugliest of humanity, both in what man can do to man, and the delusions man can convince himself and others of. Even the mere parables of Jesus tend to either contradict each other or offer plainly bad advice (such as "take no thought for the morrow"). It's the same repugnance I feel when reading about Muhammad or the ancient Aztec priests. These are expressions of humanity at it's worst, without question.
1 month ago
Anonymous
ywnbaw
1 month ago
Anonymous
You are not guilty for the actions of another man and you are not redeemed or saved by the execution of another man.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Yes, I am.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I’m not objecting to it, literary critics do. The objection is how didactic a story is in delivering a message. Anna Karenina’s messages are delivered with sensitivity while Resurrection bludgeons you with a Bible at the end to make readers know that reading the Gospels is good. At least that’s what they say.
1 month ago
Anonymous
“Many people approach Tolstoy with mixed feelings. They love the artist in him and are intensely bored by the preacher; but at the same time it is rather difficult to separate Tolstoy the preacher from Tolstoy the artist—it is the same deep slow voice, the same robust shoulder pushing up a cloud of visions or a load of ideas. What one would like to do, would be to kick the glorified soapbox from under his sandalled feet and then lock him up in a stone house on a desert island with gallons of ink and reams of paper—far away from the things, ethical and pedagogical, that diverted his attention from observing the way the dark hair curled above Anna's white neck. But the thing cannot be done : Tolstoy is homogeneous, is one, and the struggle which, especially in the later years, went on between the man who gloated over the beauty of black earth, white flesh, blue snow, green fields, purple thunderclouds, and the man who maintained that fiction is sinful and art immoral—this struggle was still confined within the same man. Whether painting or preaching, Tolstoy was striving, in spite of all obstacles, to get at the truth. As the author of Anna Karenin, he used one method of discovering truth; in his sermons, he used another; but somehow, no matter how subtle his art was and no matter how dull some of his other attitudes were, truth which he was ponderously groping for or magically finding just around the corner, was always the same truth — this truth was he and this he was an art.
What troubles one, is merely that he did not always recognize his own self when confronted with truth. I like the story of his picking up a book one dreary day in his old age, many years after he had stopped writing novels, and starting to read in the middle, and getting interested and very much pleased, and then looking at the title—and seeing: Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy.
What obsessed Tolstoy, what obscured his genius, what now distresses the good reader, was that, somehow, the process of seeking the Truth seemed more important to him than the easy, vivid, brilliant discovery of the illusion of truth through the medium of his artistic genius. Old Russian Truth was never a comfortable companion; it had a violent temper and a heavy tread. It was not simply truth, not merely everyday pravda but immortal istina—not truth but the inner light of truth. 1/2
1 month ago
Anonymous
When Tolstoy did happen to find it in himself, in the splendor of his creative imagination, then, almost unconsciously, he was on the right path. What does his tussle with the ruling Greek-Catholic Church matter, what importance do his ethical opinions have, in the light of this or that imaginative passage in any of his novels?
Essential truth, istina, is one of the few words in the Russian language that cannot be rhymed. It has no verbal mate, no verbal associations, it stands alone and aloof, with only a vague suggestion of the root "to stand" in the dark brilliancy of its immemorial rock. Most Russian writers have been tremendously interested in Truth's exact whereabouts and essential properties. To Pushkin it was of marble under a noble sun ; Dostoevski, a much inferior artist, saw it as a thing of blood and tears and hysterical and topical politics and sweat; and Chekhov kept a quizzical eye upon it, while seemingly engrossed in the hazy scenery all around. Tolstoy marched straight at it, head bent and fists clenched, and found the place where the cross had once stood, or found—the image of his own self.” 2/2
Nabokov wrote this.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I don’t think they exist frankly but that’s just my opinion.
I don't think they exist either. Descriptions of nature? There is an underlying moral message. Beautiful. Brutal. Disgusting. Descriptions of human life? There is always a moral message that can be taken from it. Chekov has a moral message but he doesn't moralise. Ward No. 6 is probably the most famous example of this. I believe Lenin said he became a communist after reading it. It has a message but what you do with it is up to you.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Notice how in this thread all the Tolstoy readers are giving fair, insightful, intriguing analysis of Tolstoy and his work but when people talk about Dostoevsky on this board it’s all copypastas and shitposting
1 month ago
Anonymous
Anna's life falls apart because of her adultery and she ends up committing suicide. Vronsky goes off to die in Serbia. Levin finds God and doesn't kill himself. He realises that he loves his wife and son and finds contentment chilling on his country estate with his beloved family. By the novels conclusion Oblonsky is running out of money to pay his debts. Dolly is having a great time with her family on Levin's estate. Oblonsky is nowhere to be seen and misses out on the wholesome pastoral scene where everyone is content and happy because he's a degenerate adulterer. I'm not quite sure how you could miss all of this.
1 month ago
Anonymous
If it's realistic and "life as it is", where is the line between "yeah, if you do this it leads to ruin" and just straight moralizing to the reader?
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
>its conclusion
You mean Anna's denouement or Levin's turn to faith?
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
Turn to faith.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Have you read Tolstoy's novellas? I think they're great. What do you recommend by Chekhov specifically?
Doestoevsky is much easier to read and is more approachable to those just getting into the Russian Classics. Tolstoy and especially War and Peace is something you have to put into to get something out. If anything I'm surprised Dostoevsky didn't win by more.
On IQfy I always find that the people who like Dostoevsky like him because of his work and I've had a few good threads on him down the years. When it comes to Tolstoy it's like a third of the people who post about him always have to bring up Dostoevsky, Nabokovspam troony included.
IQfy users can relate more to being a schizo screaming in a dirty basement than to being involved in a scandle that makes all the high-society ladies proclaim: "My word!"
>Total votes: 117
Low-effort tweets from 35-ear-old crackhead onlyfans prostitutes get thousands of times more engagement than this. This board really is a fricking graveyard.
I'd rather actually talk to three people about my favourite Russian author than have thousands viewing my posts and replying with their moronic drivel. One real person I can talk to is infinitely better than a million wojak posters. This board is my substitute for having real life friends and I find it works well enough most of the time.
If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.
You post this shit in every fricking thread about Dostoevsky, touch grass.
I think his criticism is absolutely devastating to Dosto. If you read Dosto's novels, they are chock full of a grotesque macabre fascination with suffering and shame, with murder and sex and the subsequent groveling misery of those who find themselves in such situations. This type of tripe is 100% on the level of a typical harlequin romance novel, but because it's some old Russian who added Christian Orthodox themes as an accent to the sadomasochism, IQfy eats it up. It's perverse.
It's funny how hard he goes against catholicks because he would have made a great catholic
stop copy pasting
Dosto is essentially sadomasochistic, he loves dwelling on characters who revel in how depraved they are, but who also prostrate themselves in the just punishment or humiliation of their depravity. Again, sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes imply the exact situation he adored, all the violence and sexual intrigue he desired so much, but with the approval of his super ego since they ritualistically degrade themselves in a kind of spiritual fetishistic pleasure in confessing, being punished, and then being "redeemed". It's lurid and partakes of a sick kind of gratification in self flagellation.
shitty pasta, plz stop
Pasta or not, Dostoyevsky was in some sort of shady freemason circles, and he saw the dangers of new and scary ideologies. Old generation had their Christian values, but new college age generation takes up nihilism or something, and since it's so new to them, they run wild with it. Seeing how things turned out for Russia in the last century, Dostoyevsky was right about the influence of dangerous new ideas.
Why was he hanging out in weird radical freemasons circles? Is that from back in his decembrist days?
Based. IQfyrannies whining below. Dosto is the greatest writer of all time.
Dosto was literally a brain dead schizo moron
Friendly reminder he used that line both in letters and in Demons.
You can just imagine him in Siberia, all tied up in chains and thinking to himself: "Damn, Fedia, this is a fricking great quote, a great quote indeed! I'm gonna spam the shit out of it everywhere I can once I get out of here, I sure will!"
>use it twice
>hurr durr spam
He probably wrote it in a letter and coopted it later for his story. Who wouldn't do the same with such an excellent phrase?
Sounds like /ourguy/
Standard plebian opinion, whatever. Tolstoy has short stories with more artistic intricacy than the next 100 writers you can think of can pull off
Chekov's short stories are better than Tolstoy's.
Facts
are you sure?
Uh huh. Tolstoy's stories are usually moral tales and I think that diminishes their beauty. Chekov wrote amazing impressions of real life. There is no explicit moral beaten into you, but you can still take something from them. Moral tales aren't necessarily bad, Tolstoy's stories are all worthwhile and great works of art, but in this case they are the inferior work of art.
His normal short stories and novellas are masterpieces, his parables and simplistic moralistic stories are of course not the caliber of someone like Chekhov
I believe I have read all of his novellas. Very few of Tolstoy's short stories are 'normal' as in not-moralistic. By moralistic I simply mean they have a set answer to a moral problem. There is an issue, Tolstoy gives us the answer through the story. Tolstoy himself recognised the problem with this, that the answers he gave were wrong. That's why he denounced his own works and started writing extremely simple moral fables for peasants. Chekov avoids this by giving no solution. He didn't have the answers and he didn't try to give any. He just wrote about life as it was. I think Anna Karenina is greater than anything Chekov wrote, even if you take issue with its conclusion like Tolstoy himself did. I am particularly fond of Father Sergius and I think Ivan Ilyich is better than A Boring Story, but in a shorter format Chekov wins out overall.
The Modern Library Selected Stories of Chekov is quite good. Ward No. 6, the Black Monk, the House with the Mezzanine, the Lady with the Little Dog, In the Ravine, the Bishop.
Tolstoy was a moralizer since day 1. I think the standard position that Tolstoy can be divided between moralism (his later works) and realism (his earlier stuff) is very narrow and silly. War and Peace depicts “life as it is” better than any work of art ever. But it also has didactic essays about history and power in it. The same goes for Anna Karenina despite all the intricate details about human life it still unambiguously tells the audience that adultery is bad and God is good. The only thing that changed in most of Tolstoy’s later works was that this became more unbalanced and he was writing mainly for instruction but with an artistic flair. Chekhov was always consistent and that’s why him and Maupassant (who Tolstoy also adored) are the best short story writers
Yes, I agree. His moralising wouldn't really be a problem if it wasn't wrong. Anna's story in Anna Karenina is fine. Levin's concludes with the revelation that fulfillment is found in the Church and Christianity. The Kreutzer Sonata shows how that turned out. At the very least Tolstoy was self aware about it. I believe that the length of his novels absolutely overcomes this shortcoming. So much of life is shown in such a true and beautiful way, something you can't do in 10 or 50 pages. Not the best short story writer ever, but definitely the best novelist. I haven't read Maupassant yet but I'm looking forward to it.
Maupassant reminds me of Chekhov. A lot of his stories are just random episodes of human life usually bereft of any core moral idea
Actually I read one story about a man drinking milk from a woman's breasts while they were on the train.
>Anna Karenina despite all the intricate details about human life it still unambiguously tells the audience that adultery is bad and God is good
In what way? I doubt you'd be able to find text to support that statement.
He doesn’t explicitly say the moral like he does in Kreutzer Sonata but you can see his line of thinking with the fact that Anna is condemned to death for her actions while Levin finds God through chaste marriage. It’s very much in line with his later writing, where sinners are commonly condemned to misery. In The Devil he has his protagonist kill himself just like Anna because he’s tempted to commit adultery.
Where do you draw the line between situations that would genuinely lead to ruin (realism) and saying some things are bad (moralism)? If Anna's arc is authentic and leads her to ruin and suicide, is it moralizing to allow that to play out in your story?
It is inherently moralizing, but I don’t see a problem with it as long as it’s conveyed artistically. Most art has a moral edge like this, it’s not a problem. The same goes for Dostoevsky and his obvious Christian views. The line is infamously drawn in something like the Kreutzer Sonata where Tolstoy creates a character who he uses to lecture someone about his verbatim views on sex and marriage. The first half of that book isn’t artistic, it’s a polemic. It’s literally just Tolstoy's own opinions.
Okay, that clears it up a lot, but you must concede that Anna Karenina does not employ that kind of polemic. That's the only bit I took exception to, he does not "unambiguously tells the audience" anything, if there is a moral message it comes from the realistic actions and consequences of the characters.
I guess “tell” is the wrong word but the message is still conveyed. And again I have no issue with it, I have issue with literary critics who complain that Tolstoy’s later works shove a message down your throat when most of his earlier stuff has some kind of overall moral just like most art in general.
I hate Dostoevsky. Clunky dialogue where people just spew vaguely interesting ideas at each other in an awkward manner. That man should not have been writing fiction. He should have been an essayist like Chesterton or something. Maybe I'm not mentally ill enough to get it but not one of his characters felt real. Notes from Underground was the only work of his that I found acceptable because I am a bit of an underground man myself. The 1st half was written more like an essay and the 2nd half has the underground man's misanthropic sperg monologues drive off everyone around him. I can't recall being put-off by his descriptions of environments so he mustn't have been too bad in that respect, but he can't have been very good either. I have no vivid impressions of any scene in a Dostoevsky novel whereas Chekov and Tolstoy remain in my head like a photograph or a painting.
>I have no vivid impressions of any scene in a Dostoevsky novel whereas Chekov and Tolstoy remain in my head like a photograph or a painting.
Sounds like a you-problem.
Dosto constructs very contrived and trite plots and his characters are notoriously melodramatic and caricatures of themselves.
> notoriously melodramatic and caricatures of themselves.
He's dickensian.
He wished. Dickens was streets ahead of Dosto.
Wished what? He’s dickensian.
This is exactly how I feel. I remember trying to read C&P and the dialogue was really bizarre sometimes. Not the specific words necessarily but just the nature of the interactions. Like for example I think it was Raskolnikov being repeatedly very rude and dismissive to his buddy Razumihkin who just kept carrying on and on like nothing was happening. They just didn't feel like real people.
>for example I think it was Raskolnikov being repeatedly very rude and dismissive to his buddy Razumihkin who just kept carrying on and on like nothing was happening. They just didn't feel like real people.
>That's because they're russian.
This problem is not found in the works of other Russian writers.
Skill issue
Lots of Dosto is unbelievable, sure, but without those unbelievable and unrealistic actions or speech, nothing will happen. His characters dare to do or say what no real person would dare to do or say.
NTA but the adultery=bad moral is fairly realistic and doesn't present much of a problem to me. The world doesn't conspire to punish Anna because of her infidelity, ultimately it's her own psychological issues that cause her death. Was Vronsky really about to abandon her? That is up to personal interpretation. The issue is the finding God=goodness and enduring happiness moral. Levin is Tolstoy's self insert character and this conclusion is hollow and false.
I think ultimately the line between acceptable and unacceptable moralisation is based on positives and negatives. Don't do this it's bad and here's a realistic fictional life that shows this often works well. Do this it's good and it will fulfill you and make you happy does not work. Anna Karenina does not do any straight moralisation. Tolstoy never dedicates a chapter to why adultery is bad like he does with the great man stuff in War and Peace. Even the extremely on the nose peasant parables show why something is good or bad and don't just tell you. War and Peace and the Kreutzer Sonata are the only direct ones that I can recall.
Can you contrast this with an author who has no moral message in his work?
I don’t think they exist frankly but that’s just my opinion.
So is the objection here the degree to which the events of the story are contrived to prove the author's moral message? Is that the real underlying criticism of "moralizing"?
That certainly occurs in Tolstoy's later stories. I liked the Forged Coupon, but the entire story is extremely contrived to show that bad things cause more bad things and good things cause more good things. A nice story, but not a great work of art. This is far less of an issue in his earlier works. The problem is more so that his conclusions are simply wrong. Would the story of Jesus still be beautiful if Jesus turned out to be just a man rather than God and a man? Maybe, but it would greatly diminish it's value.
The story of Jesus is not beautiful in either case.
If you're a big fan of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky I don't see how you could that opinion.
could hold that opinion.
I'm a fan of Tolstoy, not of Dosto. Personally, I don't care for stories about cannibalism, torture, and execution in service of a message which centers on inherited guilt. I see nothing beautiful there, in fact, I see the ugliest of humanity, both in what man can do to man, and the delusions man can convince himself and others of. Even the mere parables of Jesus tend to either contradict each other or offer plainly bad advice (such as "take no thought for the morrow"). It's the same repugnance I feel when reading about Muhammad or the ancient Aztec priests. These are expressions of humanity at it's worst, without question.
ywnbaw
You are not guilty for the actions of another man and you are not redeemed or saved by the execution of another man.
Yes, I am.
I’m not objecting to it, literary critics do. The objection is how didactic a story is in delivering a message. Anna Karenina’s messages are delivered with sensitivity while Resurrection bludgeons you with a Bible at the end to make readers know that reading the Gospels is good. At least that’s what they say.
“Many people approach Tolstoy with mixed feelings. They love the artist in him and are intensely bored by the preacher; but at the same time it is rather difficult to separate Tolstoy the preacher from Tolstoy the artist—it is the same deep slow voice, the same robust shoulder pushing up a cloud of visions or a load of ideas. What one would like to do, would be to kick the glorified soapbox from under his sandalled feet and then lock him up in a stone house on a desert island with gallons of ink and reams of paper—far away from the things, ethical and pedagogical, that diverted his attention from observing the way the dark hair curled above Anna's white neck. But the thing cannot be done : Tolstoy is homogeneous, is one, and the struggle which, especially in the later years, went on between the man who gloated over the beauty of black earth, white flesh, blue snow, green fields, purple thunderclouds, and the man who maintained that fiction is sinful and art immoral—this struggle was still confined within the same man. Whether painting or preaching, Tolstoy was striving, in spite of all obstacles, to get at the truth. As the author of Anna Karenin, he used one method of discovering truth; in his sermons, he used another; but somehow, no matter how subtle his art was and no matter how dull some of his other attitudes were, truth which he was ponderously groping for or magically finding just around the corner, was always the same truth — this truth was he and this he was an art.
What troubles one, is merely that he did not always recognize his own self when confronted with truth. I like the story of his picking up a book one dreary day in his old age, many years after he had stopped writing novels, and starting to read in the middle, and getting interested and very much pleased, and then looking at the title—and seeing: Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy.
What obsessed Tolstoy, what obscured his genius, what now distresses the good reader, was that, somehow, the process of seeking the Truth seemed more important to him than the easy, vivid, brilliant discovery of the illusion of truth through the medium of his artistic genius. Old Russian Truth was never a comfortable companion; it had a violent temper and a heavy tread. It was not simply truth, not merely everyday pravda but immortal istina—not truth but the inner light of truth. 1/2
When Tolstoy did happen to find it in himself, in the splendor of his creative imagination, then, almost unconsciously, he was on the right path. What does his tussle with the ruling Greek-Catholic Church matter, what importance do his ethical opinions have, in the light of this or that imaginative passage in any of his novels?
Essential truth, istina, is one of the few words in the Russian language that cannot be rhymed. It has no verbal mate, no verbal associations, it stands alone and aloof, with only a vague suggestion of the root "to stand" in the dark brilliancy of its immemorial rock. Most Russian writers have been tremendously interested in Truth's exact whereabouts and essential properties. To Pushkin it was of marble under a noble sun ; Dostoevski, a much inferior artist, saw it as a thing of blood and tears and hysterical and topical politics and sweat; and Chekhov kept a quizzical eye upon it, while seemingly engrossed in the hazy scenery all around. Tolstoy marched straight at it, head bent and fists clenched, and found the place where the cross had once stood, or found—the image of his own self.” 2/2
Nabokov wrote this.
I don't think they exist either. Descriptions of nature? There is an underlying moral message. Beautiful. Brutal. Disgusting. Descriptions of human life? There is always a moral message that can be taken from it. Chekov has a moral message but he doesn't moralise. Ward No. 6 is probably the most famous example of this. I believe Lenin said he became a communist after reading it. It has a message but what you do with it is up to you.
Notice how in this thread all the Tolstoy readers are giving fair, insightful, intriguing analysis of Tolstoy and his work but when people talk about Dostoevsky on this board it’s all copypastas and shitposting
Anna's life falls apart because of her adultery and she ends up committing suicide. Vronsky goes off to die in Serbia. Levin finds God and doesn't kill himself. He realises that he loves his wife and son and finds contentment chilling on his country estate with his beloved family. By the novels conclusion Oblonsky is running out of money to pay his debts. Dolly is having a great time with her family on Levin's estate. Oblonsky is nowhere to be seen and misses out on the wholesome pastoral scene where everyone is content and happy because he's a degenerate adulterer. I'm not quite sure how you could miss all of this.
If it's realistic and "life as it is", where is the line between "yeah, if you do this it leads to ruin" and just straight moralizing to the reader?
>its conclusion
You mean Anna's denouement or Levin's turn to faith?
Turn to faith.
Have you read Tolstoy's novellas? I think they're great. What do you recommend by Chekhov specifically?
Doestoevsky is much easier to read and is more approachable to those just getting into the Russian Classics. Tolstoy and especially War and Peace is something you have to put into to get something out. If anything I'm surprised Dostoevsky didn't win by more.
I would say the exact opposite. dostoyevsky is way WAY more dense and convoluted, while Tolstoy is really smooth, easy reading
Tolstoy is WAY more accessible. Are you gay?
On IQfy I always find that the people who like Dostoevsky like him because of his work and I've had a few good threads on him down the years. When it comes to Tolstoy it's like a third of the people who post about him always have to bring up Dostoevsky, Nabokovspam troony included.
Dostoevtroonys derailing Tolstoy threads
An actually moronic answer. Fair play anon.
Dosto is to Milton as Tolstoy is to Shakespeare. Anglo Saxons already have Shakespeare, so we abandon Milton and dabble in Dostoevsky.
IQfy users can relate more to being a schizo screaming in a dirty basement than to being involved in a scandle that makes all the high-society ladies proclaim: "My word!"
>plebian masses get filtered by Tolstoykino, prefer Dostoslop
We already knew that
Both of them are C.S. Lewis tier rubbish
i voted for dosto despite the fact that the only book by tolstoy i've read was the death of ivan ilyich and there's nothing you can do about it
>Total votes: 117
Low-effort tweets from 35-ear-old crackhead onlyfans prostitutes get thousands of times more engagement than this. This board really is a fricking graveyard.
I'd rather actually talk to three people about my favourite Russian author than have thousands viewing my posts and replying with their moronic drivel. One real person I can talk to is infinitely better than a million wojak posters. This board is my substitute for having real life friends and I find it works well enough most of the time.