Dostoevsky is not really celebrated for his prose, most people who think it is great are those that have no clue what prose is and generally reduce prose to some ineffable quality beyond understanding. Dostoevsky is mostly remembered because he changed how literature dealt with character and how the reader relates to character, and he did that part very well.
Im pretty sure that guy was bait because contrarians love to hate the lauded thing and this board is full of them.
In truth though P&V is the best English Dostoy, but its not like Garnett is a total frick up. The only vitals you are missing is some of the satire which comes off as serious in Garnett and she also fuddles up the syntax in dialogues between characters. But as far as dostoys odeas and philosophies you wont lose out by reading Garnett
9 months ago
Anonymous
>P&V is the best English Dosto
They're pretty shit, actually. Feels like Google Translate, not like a proper translation.
Dostoy is notoriously clunky in his original Russian though. If anything Garnett tried to polish him. Not saying Hem is wrong or you are wrong hes be more critical of p&v but dostoys prose is basically anti prose
9 months ago
Anonymous
P&V are especially bad at colloquial and figurative language and their word choices are worse than Garnett's. Just compare the beginning of their Notes from Underground to Garnett's.
9 months ago
Anonymous
No. P&V are better because I said so
9 months ago
Anonymous
You're objectively wrong btw
9 months ago
Anonymous
i remember reading war & peace at the same time as a friend of mine; i was reading rosemary edmonds and he was reading p&v. at one point he was like "why does this character talk like a fricking moron all the time, they put like a 'gh' (or something similar, i forget exactly what it is) at the start of random words?
and i was confused because in mine he had a speech impediment but because rosemary edmonds is not autistic and fricking stupid, she had rendered his russian speech impediment into an equivalent english one where he can't say Rs and says Ws instead whereas P&V just decided to try and force an impediment that really only works in russian onto a language where it makes zero sense because they are idiots and it just read as nonsense
9 months ago
Anonymous
Your friend cant understand phonetics without some mfa lib holding his hand therefore P&V are moronic? Kwab
9 months ago
Anonymous
They're autistically literal like that. They don't even translate figurative language that only works in Russian lol they're shitty overrated translators
9 months ago
Anonymous
Lol that’s Denisov. Anthony Brigg’s translation has the same R to W impediment. Love that lil homie.
>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
Nabokov got absolutely btfo by Dostoyevsky in Demons through the character of the pompous prose writer which is literally him and he never got over it
>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’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 English words expressing several, although by no means all, aspects of poshlost are, for instance, ”cheap,” ”sham,” ”smutty,” ”highfalutin,” ”in bad taste.” 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
Nabokov and Hemingway hate Dostoevsky because he was a bad stylist, which is true, but a very effeminate criticism. They also hate him because he was not stoic and let his character's emotions be messy and melodramatic, which is fair enough, it can be a lot to take. But then: what are you afraid of?
Totally agree. Dostoevsky is one of the shittest prose artists I've come across but also one of the greatest dramatists. His books are clunky and awkward but profound and touching. It's a strange paradox but it's also a testament to his sincerity.
Yeah you never see long dialogues in theater do you anon?
9 months ago
Anonymous
Not like Dostoy where a single vocal point would take half an hour to emphasize and often require long articles or letters to be read within. Ie how would Stavrogin at the monks work in a play, yet its one of the best things Dost ever wrote
Never felt anything from Dostoesvsky. The attempts at emotion are always so transparent; you can always see the wires.
Doesn't feel organic, just Fyodor preaching at you about le inevitable consequences of a character type which only exists in his imagination.
Dickens does the same thing, but at least he's always located in a larger than life fantasy world where you can get away with that sort of Piers Plowman thing
Nobody in real life is like a Dostoevsky character, any more than real people are like Scrooge. Yes, there are misers, but Scrooge is a cartoon, just like the Ivan Likesmoney or Father Goodpriest characters you get in Dostoevsky. And the dialogue they're given is equally narrow and didactic. He's closer to Dickens or Rand.
Nobody in his books acts or converses like a real person in the way Shakespeare or Jane Austen manage. Romeo and Juliet swapping couplets, even though the form is utterly contrived, still smacks more of actual life than Dostoevsky's arguments on rails
>says this >meanwhile every day of every year someone posts a Notes from the Underground thread saying the underground man is literally them >and they absolutely mean it
based moron
tell me you've never read Dosto without telling me you've never read Dosto
>how can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply
But Hemingway, you've never made me feel deeply...
Papa absolutely btfo’ing all the prose and vocab gays
Dostoevsky is not really celebrated for his prose, most people who think it is great are those that have no clue what prose is and generally reduce prose to some ineffable quality beyond understanding. Dostoevsky is mostly remembered because he changed how literature dealt with character and how the reader relates to character, and he did that part very well.
Kwab
>I hecking love prose!
Prose and style are nonsense and no one can objectively define good prose
>bad author projects his incompetency onto others
Sad. Many such cases
He sure is uppity for a guy best known for writing a short story about a fishing trip
homie probably read him only in English though
True. He read the Garnett translations. Shame he died long before P&V was available
Is P&V a lot better or is this something sort of joke? I'm 3/4 the way through the Garnett version. Don't tell me I fricked up this badly.
Im pretty sure that guy was bait because contrarians love to hate the lauded thing and this board is full of them.
In truth though P&V is the best English Dostoy, but its not like Garnett is a total frick up. The only vitals you are missing is some of the satire which comes off as serious in Garnett and she also fuddles up the syntax in dialogues between characters. But as far as dostoys odeas and philosophies you wont lose out by reading Garnett
>P&V is the best English Dosto
They're pretty shit, actually. Feels like Google Translate, not like a proper translation.
Garnett is quite terrible and not just because they made every character speak in wienerney English
Garnett is actually better stylist than P&V. P&V are too clunky that Hem's comments would probably be harsher lol
Dostoy is notoriously clunky in his original Russian though. If anything Garnett tried to polish him. Not saying Hem is wrong or you are wrong hes be more critical of p&v but dostoys prose is basically anti prose
P&V are especially bad at colloquial and figurative language and their word choices are worse than Garnett's. Just compare the beginning of their Notes from Underground to Garnett's.
No. P&V are better because I said so
You're objectively wrong btw
i remember reading war & peace at the same time as a friend of mine; i was reading rosemary edmonds and he was reading p&v. at one point he was like "why does this character talk like a fricking moron all the time, they put like a 'gh' (or something similar, i forget exactly what it is) at the start of random words?
and i was confused because in mine he had a speech impediment but because rosemary edmonds is not autistic and fricking stupid, she had rendered his russian speech impediment into an equivalent english one where he can't say Rs and says Ws instead whereas P&V just decided to try and force an impediment that really only works in russian onto a language where it makes zero sense because they are idiots and it just read as nonsense
Your friend cant understand phonetics without some mfa lib holding his hand therefore P&V are moronic? Kwab
They're autistically literal like that. They don't even translate figurative language that only works in Russian lol they're shitty overrated translators
Lol that’s Denisov. Anthony Brigg’s translation has the same R to W impediment. Love that lil homie.
This is incredible bait, have a (you) on the house.
Shouldn't it be "poorly"?
>he's so good at making you feel bros, even if he's wrote badly, just imagine if he wrote well too haha
>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.
Nabokov got absolutely btfo by Dostoyevsky in Demons through the character of the pompous prose writer which is literally him and he never got over it
You're thinking of Ivan Turgenev.
>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’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 English words expressing several, although by no means all, aspects of poshlost are, for instance, ”cheap,” ”sham,” ”smutty,” ”highfalutin,” ”in bad taste.” 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
Nabokov and Hemingway hate Dostoevsky because he was a bad stylist, which is true, but a very effeminate criticism. They also hate him because he was not stoic and let his character's emotions be messy and melodramatic, which is fair enough, it can be a lot to take. But then: what are you afraid of?
being bored out of my fricking mind by long tedious dialogues
Totally agree. Dostoevsky is one of the shittest prose artists I've come across but also one of the greatest dramatists. His books are clunky and awkward but profound and touching. It's a strange paradox but it's also a testament to his sincerity.
Another Nabokov diss is that Dostoyevsky was born to be Russia's greatest playwright but took a wrong turn and wrote novels instead
Lol this is just proof Nab doesnt understand Dostoyevsky. His stormgest writing is his long dialogues and in depth characterizations.
Yeah you never see long dialogues in theater do you anon?
Not like Dostoy where a single vocal point would take half an hour to emphasize and often require long articles or letters to be read within. Ie how would Stavrogin at the monks work in a play, yet its one of the best things Dost ever wrote
Never felt anything from Dostoesvsky. The attempts at emotion are always so transparent; you can always see the wires.
Doesn't feel organic, just Fyodor preaching at you about le inevitable consequences of a character type which only exists in his imagination.
Dickens does the same thing, but at least he's always located in a larger than life fantasy world where you can get away with that sort of Piers Plowman thing
Autistic
You need to meet and talk with more people if you don’t think the types he writes about exist.
Nobody in real life is like a Dostoevsky character, any more than real people are like Scrooge. Yes, there are misers, but Scrooge is a cartoon, just like the Ivan Likesmoney or Father Goodpriest characters you get in Dostoevsky. And the dialogue they're given is equally narrow and didactic. He's closer to Dickens or Rand.
Nobody in his books acts or converses like a real person in the way Shakespeare or Jane Austen manage. Romeo and Juliet swapping couplets, even though the form is utterly contrived, still smacks more of actual life than Dostoevsky's arguments on rails
>says this
>meanwhile every day of every year someone posts a Notes from the Underground thread saying the underground man is literally them
>and they absolutely mean it
based moron
tell me you've never read Dosto without telling me you've never read Dosto
D
He read a translation. Doesn't count.
Too bad Poland has less output than even Canada.
Where did you get that from? And where's that Canadian hatred coming from?
1. Frick canadians
2. Name literally one polish author in the canon
Potocki, Gombrowicz
Not true btw
sovl
I never liked Hemingway.
You ever read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hills_Like_White_Elephants ?
It's his best work imo