I am so thrilled about this! I read it once when I was 18 and once when I was 70. Dostoyevsky's parlor scenes are amazing, and like Van Gogh, D seems to be constantly channeling cosmic, crazy energy. It will be so cool to listen to someone who has gotten under the hood of this strange novel and has some sense and insight about how it works. Hedges is probably the best in the world right now (at least in English) at laying out reality on this planet. He truly pulls open the curtain and shows us how Oz works. What Dorothy saw when Toto pulled back the curtain was not an opinion but a fact, about how that world operated, and what she learned in that moment enabled her to regain her freedom.
I loved the Brothers and Crime and Punishment because of the complexity of their characters and the redemption they enjoy. When I began reading The Idiot I enjoyed Dostoyevsky's masterfull handling of language and the interest he allways brings from the reader. Initially I thought the idiot was Lebediev for his servility but later I realize that Michkin was the intended idiot for his lack of greed and interest in the goziping endemic to the russian high class and I understand that is the critic that the author renders to that society which behaves the same arround the world. Of course I was hoping for something deeper and at the middle of the book I kit and decided the Idiot was me for wasting my time on this novel, and returned to my usual historic novels by Mika Waltari and Jose Luis Corral.
Good Morning Chris, Just finished off the reading this morning! The phrase that keeps coming back is the one that Clara Mattei uses to describe for capitalism, "a prison we build for ourselves." Seems to me that's a good way to describe out world of conventions and social norms in general, but in spades for the rich, because they have little to work with besides the thin tread of their wealth. And as Dostoevsky explains, if you're dull, you think you're a genius and can't see the cage, but if you're bright, loke Aglaya and Natasya, you become insanely neurotic. The billionaires are a pretty dull-witted lot (see recent interview the Bezos), but I would say their islands and yachts are more like prisons than the freedom they imagine for themselves. Looking forward to q & a tonight. Thanks for doing it. Breathe of fresh air!
I have this nagging sense that there is a coyly deceptive sagacity to Myshkin ― that he sees and understands a whole lot more than he lets on. (In that way he’s a lot like another “hapless knight”/fool, Bashevis Singer’s Gimpel.) Everything he does and says in that totally ingenuous way of his gets distorted as it is refracted through the reactions of others. In this sense, he is like a bellweather or an unwitting mirror that, without meaning to, he holds up to the cupidities of his society. In short, there’s a lot of classical psychological projection going on all over the place.
If this is so, then the book is prophetically diagnostic of the dominant pathology of America today. Like Orwell’s doublethink and doublespeak, everything in (T)rump’s America gets inverted and turned into an allegation of its opposite. But this is just “telling it like it is.”
What is “The Donald,” after all, if not a bizarre, inverted inflection of Prince Myshkin’s unedited and spontaneous ingenuousness . . . but one in which every flaw, every vice, becomes projected onto an ‘other.’ (T)rump, is a ‘genius’ in the same sense in which Dostoyevsky diagnosed a psychopathology of self-assurance in those who believe that they “need only sense in [their] heart[s] the least glimmer of something positive and humane, immediately to assert that no one else is capable of such sensitivity.” Analogously, (T)rump has never found his equal in Nobel Prize-worthiness, nor in good solid smarts, and bounce-back-ability, after six bankruptcies. Project... project... project!
And consider how his conspiracy theory about the Democratic Party’s “secret cabal of child-abusers and sex-traffickers” served, similarly, to deflect the gaze away from his own culpability. Turns out, twas the president of the United States was good buddies with a bully billionaire who took him and some twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls up in his private plane for the ‘joy ride’ of their lives! Project... project... project!
What is your feeling about this? Do you agree that this was Dostoyevsky’s purpose in creating this feckless but winsomely honest and good man? To show us to ourselves in the then emergent capitalist funhouse mirrors of today?
Chris, The Idiot asks whether an exceptional moral individual can remain good in a corrupt society. It also raises another question for me: how does a society recognize moral originality while it is still emerging rather than only after history has validated it?
Listening to your work over the years, you've introduced many of us to extraordinary people whose courage history has since affirmed... Bonhoeffer, Howard Zinn, Ronnie Kasrils, Cecily McMillan, etc. Yet you also argue that unprecedented times require "creative revolutionists."
If that's true, shouldn't our criteria for recognizing transformative agency become unprecedented as well?
History is remarkably good at honoring extraordinary people after their sacrifice. I'm curious about the search process before history does the selecting. What do you look for today that allows you to recognize a genuinely new form of civic organization or collective action before institutions, public recognition, or history have validated it?
Thanks Chris, really important discourse........,, more viewers than you expected, happy for you and the team!
Greetings and Blessings from IRELAND - the Emerald Isle.
I am a Christian-Catholic socialist, among a sizeable minority of radical peace and environmental activists, here in the neo-liberal Republic of Ireland (current conservative, right-of-centre government has just assumed Presidency for next 6 months, with a pro-NATO, militarist agenda).
Having read your books, followed you frequently on Substack and Youtube, I greatly value your often profound, insightful and wise work and activism.
I think of you in the honourable tradition of the great John Pilger and Robert Fisk.
Yes, a learned, well-read and erudite citizenry matters - individually, collectively, social..........
So, your perspective on "The Idiot" is both intriguing and usefully-provocative.
I've just one modest criticism: Jesus of Nazareth was not an "insurrectionist" at you said,,, a few minutes after correctly describing him as "a pacifist"
That seems glaringly-contradictory, confusing and potentially misleading to uninformed viewers and readers. Words matter, as George Orwell warned us.
Maybe you were tired, but I fear the danger of misinterpretation; an "insurrectionist" in any empire, evidentially implies the use of violence means; unless explained as dissension or subversion of an unjus regime. So, I'm a bit confused: I know you're on the record for #Non-Violent Direct Action. So was Jesus Christ! Unending tables in the Temple was 'violating''; anger can get a 'bad press' (MLK was justifying, righteously anger). But we must be prudent in using words like "insurrectionist" and insurrection: witness January 6th violent assault of US Congress buildings, Washington D.C. Finally, what Jesus Christ most called for in all his #Spiritual Teachings was #Transformation of Consciousness #Action and Contemplation.
Regard action and contemplation, I can't recommend strongly-enough that you please INTERVIEW key people from
The Center for Contemplation and Action , Albuquerque, New Mexico : a truly ecumenical, compassionate and progressive U.S Christian movement and praxis founded in 1985, synthesising insights from The Perennial Tradition, Franciscanism ("alternative orthorpraxy"), modern psychology and Buddhism: http://www.cac.org,
@FR. RICHARD ROHR is the leading co-founder; I expect you'll have heard of Richard.
Also, in the same frame, I'd love to see you interview FR. JOHN DEAR S.J., the a well-know U.S #PeaceActivist,
whose book on THE BEATITUDES (written on foot of a trip to #PALESTINE speaks to some of the key issued covered in this video on 'The Idiot'; I safely assume John and you would connect well on common causes!
Constantine did not adopt Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, though he did decree in A.D. 313 that it be tolerated. It was Emperor Theodosius I who make it the official state religion some 67 years later with the Edict of Thessalonica.
And that much toleration by the end of the 5th century had demolished classic civilization and buried the west in the dark ages. I which the emperor Julian the "apostate" and nephew of Constantine had succeded in restoring paganism
Paganism was tolerant of other religions and ideas and during that time sciences, and philosopy advanced. It took only Christianity to end the Accademy and its philosophers and destroy the library of Alexandria and the legacy of centuries of progress.
It seems you selected this novel for this purpose for its relevance to the current state of our world—given its apocalyptic allusions and commentary on decaying society, overpopulation, nihilism, etc. Would you assert that barbarism is an inherent condition of humanity that cannot ultimately be overcome by the best of our human qualities, aspirations and collective endeavors? It seems Dostoyevsky is making this assertion via this novel.
On page 340 of my translation, the narrator declares, “Inventors and geniuses have almost always at the start of their careers, and often at the end too, been regarded in society as no more than fools.... If, for the sake of an example, people had been hoarding their money for decades in savings banks and had accumulated billions at four percent interest, then it follows that the day these savings banks were to collapse and everyone was thrown back on his own initiative, the vast proportion of this money would be bound to be lost in the stock exchange upheaval or pocketed by crooks – a likely outcome in the prevailing moral and cultural atmosphere of the day. Above all it is a moral question; if risk aversion and deliberate lack of originality have up till now by common consent constituted in our country an inalienable characteristic of a businesslike and upright person, it would have been altogether improper, nay unseemly, suddenly to swing too much the other way.... Hence, it was open to any Russian, to reach almost without any effort, the calling of a successful and practical person. If the truth be known, the only person in our country who wouldn’t be able to reach a high office would be a person with imagination and flair.... No, every mother putting her child to bed would say, ‘I’d rather you live in happiness and contentment than aspire to originality.”
I have the sense that Dostoyevsky is, here, mocking the entrepaneurial class, but I can’t quite put my finger on what he is saying. Is he being facetious when he says, “...it would have been altogether improper, nay unseemly, suddenly to swing too much the other way”? My suspicion is that Fyodor Dostoyevsky created Myshkin in his own image in order to configure a radical thinker ― but radical in what might be considered an “unorthodox radicality.” Despite that he was imprisoned for his revolutionary activites, Dostoyevsky was not a socialist or an atheist. He was a humanistic proponent of the Russian Orthodox Church. If I read The Idiot as a Christological query into human tendencies, Orthodox Christianity is, by this notion, progressive, socialism is recidivist. True brotherhood grows then from Christian faith, not from unions or worker self-governance.
Am I correct in thinking that Dostoyevsky’s radicalism is a dialectical response to the inroads that secular capitalist reforms were making into the Russian culture of the mid 19th century, newly emergent from feudal forms of governance? If so, then his work is very prescient and timely, for its critique of Western neoliberal speculative capitalism. I'm just not sure how relevant his seemingly communalist religious solution to the anomie of capitalism is, today.
One question I have is, what is Dostoyevsky saying in the passage on credit (p. 390 in the 2014 Alma Classics translation): His drunken ruffian, Lebedev, asks, “...all you atheists: how are you going to save the world and lead the way to a better life – you men of science, industry, trade associations, working wages and all the rest of it? How? By way of supplying credit? What is credit? Where will credit lead you?” And his character Ptitsyn replies, “Credit can at least bring about universal solidarity and a balance of interests.” To which Lebedev counters, “And that’s all, all it can do! Its only moral basis is the satisfaction of personal egoism and material need. Universal freedom, universal happiness – out of necessity.” “Surely,” retorts Ganya, “the universal need to live, eat and drink in the face of a firm scientific conviction that will not be satisfied other than by universal solidarity and balance of interests, is, to my mind, a sufficiently powerful argument to serve as a point of departure and a source of life for future generations.”
Is he siding with Lebedev, with Ptitsyn, or with Ganya? //
Also, what was Dostoyevsky’s position regarding progress? In multiple places he has one or another protagonist champion or disparage the development of the railway system. In broadest terms, was he only anthropologically chronicling the culture of Tsarist Russia or was he taking a position?
Thank you Chris! I bought the book and read it afresh just to enjoy your analysis afterwards. I was so taken aback with the complexity of the characters, I am looking forward to this session which I will watch recorded since I won't be able to join live at 2am my time..
I read it as a teenager, but don’t remember much except that I was enthralled by the characters. The women had many more dimensions, I thought, than those in English novels, e.g., Pride and Prejudice. It will be interesting to see if I have the same reaction well into adulthood. I ordered a copy of the novel to reread it in time for the discussion, but the only one I could find has very small print. It’s a struggle, but I will try to finish by Monday.
Because my eyes are failing, I prefer to buy Kindle books which usually are cheaper than paper ones and with the tablet I can adjust the size of the font to my needs. I've been reading from the complete Dostoyevsky's collection (in Spanish).
I love that you’re doing that — and in Spanish! I hope you got good translations. How was the discussion? I missed it because I was elected to chauffeur people home after an event.
I missed it too, and really I'm not too much into literature. I usually read in English but some years ago I realized that I had not learned the English language and instead I was forgetting my native Castillian, then I started to read in Spanish again. This translation is pretty good and even in Spanish I enjoyed Dostoyevsky’s domain of expression. You are right, translations lose many connotations of the language It happened to me. After watching that masterful movie "Onegin" I bought an English translation of the famous work of Alexander Pushkin and it was the cheapest possible limerick, so, knowing that Pushkin is the most revered poet in Russia I purchased a grate translation by James E. Falen and this one was great.
Yes, poetry what makes walking to feel like dancing. I believe that the beautifull geography of a country engenders poets. And Russia, Russia. Did you see the movie "Onegin" which renders a tribute to Puskin's lyricism? or Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago?
My old paperback was published in 1973, and it gave me bronchitis due to its disintegration.So I had to buy a fresh copy--Penguin edition, hardback. Whew! But I know what you mean about the dinky print. Ow.
Your public library always has these books in their Great Books section and can always request a needed copy from the State library or university libraries. Try them.
Yes I agree with your comment. I understand Stalin kept Dostoevsky’s own copy of The Brothers Karamazov by his bedside and wrote many comments and notes in the margins. If preserved, it would be interesting to know what he wrote. I met an American woman who visited the Kremlin with her husband, an industrialist, a few times and met Stalin. She found him to be a charming flirt. People are so compl complex
I am so thrilled about this! I read it once when I was 18 and once when I was 70. Dostoyevsky's parlor scenes are amazing, and like Van Gogh, D seems to be constantly channeling cosmic, crazy energy. It will be so cool to listen to someone who has gotten under the hood of this strange novel and has some sense and insight about how it works. Hedges is probably the best in the world right now (at least in English) at laying out reality on this planet. He truly pulls open the curtain and shows us how Oz works. What Dorothy saw when Toto pulled back the curtain was not an opinion but a fact, about how that world operated, and what she learned in that moment enabled her to regain her freedom.
You'll adore "The Brothers K!"
I loved the Brothers and Crime and Punishment because of the complexity of their characters and the redemption they enjoy. When I began reading The Idiot I enjoyed Dostoyevsky's masterfull handling of language and the interest he allways brings from the reader. Initially I thought the idiot was Lebediev for his servility but later I realize that Michkin was the intended idiot for his lack of greed and interest in the goziping endemic to the russian high class and I understand that is the critic that the author renders to that society which behaves the same arround the world. Of course I was hoping for something deeper and at the middle of the book I kit and decided the Idiot was me for wasting my time on this novel, and returned to my usual historic novels by Mika Waltari and Jose Luis Corral.
Good Morning Chris, Just finished off the reading this morning! The phrase that keeps coming back is the one that Clara Mattei uses to describe for capitalism, "a prison we build for ourselves." Seems to me that's a good way to describe out world of conventions and social norms in general, but in spades for the rich, because they have little to work with besides the thin tread of their wealth. And as Dostoevsky explains, if you're dull, you think you're a genius and can't see the cage, but if you're bright, loke Aglaya and Natasya, you become insanely neurotic. The billionaires are a pretty dull-witted lot (see recent interview the Bezos), but I would say their islands and yachts are more like prisons than the freedom they imagine for themselves. Looking forward to q & a tonight. Thanks for doing it. Breathe of fresh air!
Dan Lumpkin
News Blues, at upreadinglate@substack.com
I have this nagging sense that there is a coyly deceptive sagacity to Myshkin ― that he sees and understands a whole lot more than he lets on. (In that way he’s a lot like another “hapless knight”/fool, Bashevis Singer’s Gimpel.) Everything he does and says in that totally ingenuous way of his gets distorted as it is refracted through the reactions of others. In this sense, he is like a bellweather or an unwitting mirror that, without meaning to, he holds up to the cupidities of his society. In short, there’s a lot of classical psychological projection going on all over the place.
If this is so, then the book is prophetically diagnostic of the dominant pathology of America today. Like Orwell’s doublethink and doublespeak, everything in (T)rump’s America gets inverted and turned into an allegation of its opposite. But this is just “telling it like it is.”
What is “The Donald,” after all, if not a bizarre, inverted inflection of Prince Myshkin’s unedited and spontaneous ingenuousness . . . but one in which every flaw, every vice, becomes projected onto an ‘other.’ (T)rump, is a ‘genius’ in the same sense in which Dostoyevsky diagnosed a psychopathology of self-assurance in those who believe that they “need only sense in [their] heart[s] the least glimmer of something positive and humane, immediately to assert that no one else is capable of such sensitivity.” Analogously, (T)rump has never found his equal in Nobel Prize-worthiness, nor in good solid smarts, and bounce-back-ability, after six bankruptcies. Project... project... project!
And consider how his conspiracy theory about the Democratic Party’s “secret cabal of child-abusers and sex-traffickers” served, similarly, to deflect the gaze away from his own culpability. Turns out, twas the president of the United States was good buddies with a bully billionaire who took him and some twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls up in his private plane for the ‘joy ride’ of their lives! Project... project... project!
What is your feeling about this? Do you agree that this was Dostoyevsky’s purpose in creating this feckless but winsomely honest and good man? To show us to ourselves in the then emergent capitalist funhouse mirrors of today?
... constantly asking for our forgiveness.
Chris, The Idiot asks whether an exceptional moral individual can remain good in a corrupt society. It also raises another question for me: how does a society recognize moral originality while it is still emerging rather than only after history has validated it?
Listening to your work over the years, you've introduced many of us to extraordinary people whose courage history has since affirmed... Bonhoeffer, Howard Zinn, Ronnie Kasrils, Cecily McMillan, etc. Yet you also argue that unprecedented times require "creative revolutionists."
If that's true, shouldn't our criteria for recognizing transformative agency become unprecedented as well?
History is remarkably good at honoring extraordinary people after their sacrifice. I'm curious about the search process before history does the selecting. What do you look for today that allows you to recognize a genuinely new form of civic organization or collective action before institutions, public recognition, or history have validated it?
I wonder what you think Tarkovsky would have done with this novel. Have you seen the screenplay?
Thank you for doing this. I hope there will be more of these.
Thanks Chris, really important discourse........,, more viewers than you expected, happy for you and the team!
Greetings and Blessings from IRELAND - the Emerald Isle.
I am a Christian-Catholic socialist, among a sizeable minority of radical peace and environmental activists, here in the neo-liberal Republic of Ireland (current conservative, right-of-centre government has just assumed Presidency for next 6 months, with a pro-NATO, militarist agenda).
Having read your books, followed you frequently on Substack and Youtube, I greatly value your often profound, insightful and wise work and activism.
I think of you in the honourable tradition of the great John Pilger and Robert Fisk.
Yes, a learned, well-read and erudite citizenry matters - individually, collectively, social..........
So, your perspective on "The Idiot" is both intriguing and usefully-provocative.
I've just one modest criticism: Jesus of Nazareth was not an "insurrectionist" at you said,,, a few minutes after correctly describing him as "a pacifist"
That seems glaringly-contradictory, confusing and potentially misleading to uninformed viewers and readers. Words matter, as George Orwell warned us.
Maybe you were tired, but I fear the danger of misinterpretation; an "insurrectionist" in any empire, evidentially implies the use of violence means; unless explained as dissension or subversion of an unjus regime. So, I'm a bit confused: I know you're on the record for #Non-Violent Direct Action. So was Jesus Christ! Unending tables in the Temple was 'violating''; anger can get a 'bad press' (MLK was justifying, righteously anger). But we must be prudent in using words like "insurrectionist" and insurrection: witness January 6th violent assault of US Congress buildings, Washington D.C. Finally, what Jesus Christ most called for in all his #Spiritual Teachings was #Transformation of Consciousness #Action and Contemplation.
Regard action and contemplation, I can't recommend strongly-enough that you please INTERVIEW key people from
The Center for Contemplation and Action , Albuquerque, New Mexico : a truly ecumenical, compassionate and progressive U.S Christian movement and praxis founded in 1985, synthesising insights from The Perennial Tradition, Franciscanism ("alternative orthorpraxy"), modern psychology and Buddhism: http://www.cac.org,
@FR. RICHARD ROHR is the leading co-founder; I expect you'll have heard of Richard.
Also, in the same frame, I'd love to see you interview FR. JOHN DEAR S.J., the a well-know U.S #PeaceActivist,
whose book on THE BEATITUDES (written on foot of a trip to #PALESTINE speaks to some of the key issued covered in this video on 'The Idiot'; I safely assume John and you would connect well on common causes!
Yours in Solidarity
Aidan
________________________________________________________________..
Aidan J. ffrench , Registered Landscape Architect,
Nature-based Placemaking -- advocate, activist, consultant, Bray, County Wicklow IRELAND
Lnkd: www.linkedin.com/in/aidan-ffrench-naturebasedplacemaking/
And the NC Piedmont!
Constantine did not adopt Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, though he did decree in A.D. 313 that it be tolerated. It was Emperor Theodosius I who make it the official state religion some 67 years later with the Edict of Thessalonica.
And that much toleration by the end of the 5th century had demolished classic civilization and buried the west in the dark ages. I which the emperor Julian the "apostate" and nephew of Constantine had succeded in restoring paganism
Why do you like paganism?
Paganism was tolerant of other religions and ideas and during that time sciences, and philosopy advanced. It took only Christianity to end the Accademy and its philosophers and destroy the library of Alexandria and the legacy of centuries of progress.
Wow!
correction: "who made it" not "who make it"
It seems you selected this novel for this purpose for its relevance to the current state of our world—given its apocalyptic allusions and commentary on decaying society, overpopulation, nihilism, etc. Would you assert that barbarism is an inherent condition of humanity that cannot ultimately be overcome by the best of our human qualities, aspirations and collective endeavors? It seems Dostoyevsky is making this assertion via this novel.
On page 340 of my translation, the narrator declares, “Inventors and geniuses have almost always at the start of their careers, and often at the end too, been regarded in society as no more than fools.... If, for the sake of an example, people had been hoarding their money for decades in savings banks and had accumulated billions at four percent interest, then it follows that the day these savings banks were to collapse and everyone was thrown back on his own initiative, the vast proportion of this money would be bound to be lost in the stock exchange upheaval or pocketed by crooks – a likely outcome in the prevailing moral and cultural atmosphere of the day. Above all it is a moral question; if risk aversion and deliberate lack of originality have up till now by common consent constituted in our country an inalienable characteristic of a businesslike and upright person, it would have been altogether improper, nay unseemly, suddenly to swing too much the other way.... Hence, it was open to any Russian, to reach almost without any effort, the calling of a successful and practical person. If the truth be known, the only person in our country who wouldn’t be able to reach a high office would be a person with imagination and flair.... No, every mother putting her child to bed would say, ‘I’d rather you live in happiness and contentment than aspire to originality.”
I have the sense that Dostoyevsky is, here, mocking the entrepaneurial class, but I can’t quite put my finger on what he is saying. Is he being facetious when he says, “...it would have been altogether improper, nay unseemly, suddenly to swing too much the other way”? My suspicion is that Fyodor Dostoyevsky created Myshkin in his own image in order to configure a radical thinker ― but radical in what might be considered an “unorthodox radicality.” Despite that he was imprisoned for his revolutionary activites, Dostoyevsky was not a socialist or an atheist. He was a humanistic proponent of the Russian Orthodox Church. If I read The Idiot as a Christological query into human tendencies, Orthodox Christianity is, by this notion, progressive, socialism is recidivist. True brotherhood grows then from Christian faith, not from unions or worker self-governance.
Am I correct in thinking that Dostoyevsky’s radicalism is a dialectical response to the inroads that secular capitalist reforms were making into the Russian culture of the mid 19th century, newly emergent from feudal forms of governance? If so, then his work is very prescient and timely, for its critique of Western neoliberal speculative capitalism. I'm just not sure how relevant his seemingly communalist religious solution to the anomie of capitalism is, today.
One question I have is, what is Dostoyevsky saying in the passage on credit (p. 390 in the 2014 Alma Classics translation): His drunken ruffian, Lebedev, asks, “...all you atheists: how are you going to save the world and lead the way to a better life – you men of science, industry, trade associations, working wages and all the rest of it? How? By way of supplying credit? What is credit? Where will credit lead you?” And his character Ptitsyn replies, “Credit can at least bring about universal solidarity and a balance of interests.” To which Lebedev counters, “And that’s all, all it can do! Its only moral basis is the satisfaction of personal egoism and material need. Universal freedom, universal happiness – out of necessity.” “Surely,” retorts Ganya, “the universal need to live, eat and drink in the face of a firm scientific conviction that will not be satisfied other than by universal solidarity and balance of interests, is, to my mind, a sufficiently powerful argument to serve as a point of departure and a source of life for future generations.”
Is he siding with Lebedev, with Ptitsyn, or with Ganya? //
Also, what was Dostoyevsky’s position regarding progress? In multiple places he has one or another protagonist champion or disparage the development of the railway system. In broadest terms, was he only anthropologically chronicling the culture of Tsarist Russia or was he taking a position?
Thank you Chris! I bought the book and read it afresh just to enjoy your analysis afterwards. I was so taken aback with the complexity of the characters, I am looking forward to this session which I will watch recorded since I won't be able to join live at 2am my time..
Can you PLEASE post this Q&A replay on your podcast feed later and not just on Youtube. Youtube is plagued with constant and annoying ads.
I read it as a teenager, but don’t remember much except that I was enthralled by the characters. The women had many more dimensions, I thought, than those in English novels, e.g., Pride and Prejudice. It will be interesting to see if I have the same reaction well into adulthood. I ordered a copy of the novel to reread it in time for the discussion, but the only one I could find has very small print. It’s a struggle, but I will try to finish by Monday.
Because my eyes are failing, I prefer to buy Kindle books which usually are cheaper than paper ones and with the tablet I can adjust the size of the font to my needs. I've been reading from the complete Dostoyevsky's collection (in Spanish).
I love that you’re doing that — and in Spanish! I hope you got good translations. How was the discussion? I missed it because I was elected to chauffeur people home after an event.
I missed it too, and really I'm not too much into literature. I usually read in English but some years ago I realized that I had not learned the English language and instead I was forgetting my native Castillian, then I started to read in Spanish again. This translation is pretty good and even in Spanish I enjoyed Dostoyevsky’s domain of expression. You are right, translations lose many connotations of the language It happened to me. After watching that masterful movie "Onegin" I bought an English translation of the famous work of Alexander Pushkin and it was the cheapest possible limerick, so, knowing that Pushkin is the most revered poet in Russia I purchased a grate translation by James E. Falen and this one was great.
Onegin makes you want to read poetry again. The Russians!!!
Yes, poetry what makes walking to feel like dancing. I believe that the beautifull geography of a country engenders poets. And Russia, Russia. Did you see the movie "Onegin" which renders a tribute to Puskin's lyricism? or Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago?
Of course I did! I'm a Russophile !!!!!
My old paperback was published in 1973, and it gave me bronchitis due to its disintegration.So I had to buy a fresh copy--Penguin edition, hardback. Whew! But I know what you mean about the dinky print. Ow.
It's in every library's Great Books Collection!
Thanks. It hadn’t occurred to me to look for it at the library. I’ll check over the weekend.
Your public library always has these books in their Great Books section and can always request a needed copy from the State library or university libraries. Try them.
I will. I gave up on the small print. Forget reading glasses. I would need a magnifying glass.
why a Q&A about the Idiot? I'm glad you are doing it but just curious why and now?
Stalin loved Dostoevsky… why was that the case?
Probably because like many of us he was an appreciator of genius.
Yes I agree with your comment. I understand Stalin kept Dostoevsky’s own copy of The Brothers Karamazov by his bedside and wrote many comments and notes in the margins. If preserved, it would be interesting to know what he wrote. I met an American woman who visited the Kremlin with her husband, an industrialist, a few times and met Stalin. She found him to be a charming flirt. People are so compl complex
How much of Dostoevsky’s criticism of the Russian liberalism of that time can be applied to the American liberalism of today?