solitary_summer | Entries tagged with dostojewski

# *yawn* Tired. Braindead. Another ten days until my holiday.

# It's a good thing I don't have children, because playgrounds are so not for me. More precisely, playground conversations.

# Saw Die Frau mit den fünf Elefanten with my Russian teacher last week, which I probably would have missed otherwise, because sadly I apparently need people to more or less physically drag me to places, or nothing ever gets done. It was very much worth seeing, though. I'm always vaguely fascinated by the process of creation, and there's this 87 year old Russian lady, dictating her translations to an old German lady typing on an old-fashioned typewriter, and a musician who then reads it out loud to her, and they argue about the best expressions, commas or semicolons... it's really fascinating and all kinds of wonderful. There were of course also interesting and touching bits about her family, her life & history, as she travelled back to the Ukraine for the first time since the war with her granddaughter, about languages and the differences between them and the love for language and texts, but this is what really stuck out for me — these three old people between them recreating Dostojewski in a different language. Lovely.

(Trailer on YouTube that gives at least a bit of an impression.)

# Watched The Second Coming a couple of days ago, which IMO is brilliant with a very powerful ending, but also came with a bit of a déjà vu, because some of the ideas have totally been reworked in Ten's arc; very obviously in the last three specials, but it probably goes back much further than that. *thinky thoughts*, or rather when I'm a bit less tired, because right now my brain is more like *- - - - ? -*. And really, everyone who said that Adelaide's death in WoM is somehow rooted in RTD's alleged issues with women, older women, women in a position of power, or whatever it was people were complaining about at the time, should maybe watch this. Personally I always thought it was evident that she wins, that even if she dies, in the end the real power in that episode is hers, because she's standing up for free will, for human dignity and human autonomy in the face of someone who's in the process of taking that away, but the comparison with Judith really clarifies this beyond a shadow of doubt.

# On a maybe slightly related note, I think the reason why I'm so completely unsuited for fandom is that I'm never very interested in characters. I talked about this with my Russian teacher this week because one of the question in the textbook was about favourite literary figures, and I couldn't come up with one. I have favourite novels, favourite authors, but no favourite literary figures; for me it's almost completely impossible to separate a character from their story. What I most notice is ideas and authors' voices, not so much in the sense of writing style, but in the sense of the worldview and philosophy behind the books, and how they speaks through the story and characters; my bookshelves are full of (more or less) complete works by favourite authors. And it's the same for TV, really; I've never really identified with a character. If anything I connect to the characters and/or relationships that are most emblematic for a show's ideas, which also makes it really hard for me to keep watching a show for a character or aspect of the writing, when it doesn't work for me on a more profound level. And I guess this is also the reason why with maybe one or two exception the most fanfiction I've ever read was for fandoms where I've seen only a few episodes of canon, if that, and never really cared a lot about it. When I really like the original text, I stop being interested in alternative takes on it, because in my mind they're just... jarring, somehow, no matter how well they're written, no matter how canon compatible. Maybe especially when they're canon-compatible.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Сплин, Мы сидели и курили

~~Compulsory Dance is boring.~~ No really, it is.

[Holiday reading, continued]

I liked Der Idiot, I really did. I still have something of a problem with the way Dostojewski rushes one through the plot, always on the edge, always big emotional drama and bigger philosophical issues, with barely any time to simply take a breath, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, or could put it down. But still... after a few hundred pages I always get a little tired of the constant tension that just keeps building up and up and up, and long for something... not meaninglessly ornamental, but perhaps a simple descriptive passage, a break from the long, emotion-charged, almost over-excited dialogues, something that allows you to breath a little, look around...

But there is so much that is wonderful in there. The end. Oh my god, the end. It's terrible and lovely, strangely tender, and wholly unavoidable. Calm, finally.

I loved the Jepatschin family, Jelisaweta Prokowjewna and her three daughters, in all their beautiful, impetuous weirdness.

'Haben Sie meinen Igel erhalten?' No words.

Myschkin... I don't know. Initially there is something utterly compelling about his honesty, his belief in others. It does wear off a little, though, and his exalted outburst at the dinner-party in the end seemed slightly odd. And when he is caught up and destroyed by these events that he isn't in the least equipped to deal with, I couldn't pity him as much as I wanted. In the end I think there's a lot of truth in what Jewgenij Pawlowitsch says.

And again, love. It flares up, so very passionately, it destroys people, drives them to murder, but I don't feel it. Should I feel it? Is love important in this novel? The only emotional connection that truly works for me is between Rogoschin and Myschkin.

---

I give up, I can't write about Dostojewski. There's this huge rush of characters, emotions and ideas, and I never know where to look first, can't pick it apart enough to analyse and verbalise, make sense of it, at least not after one reading.

Current Music: apc, mer de noms

Finally finished Dosetojewski's 'Böse Geister' (formerly 'Die Dämonen', and what's with the re-naming...) last week, but can't really say anything coherent about it... I dragged it out for too long, lunch-breaks, underground rides, a few pages in the morning. It was not only laziness, although that certainly was part of it - this time of the year I just don't have the energy to focus on such books; Dostojewski's novels have an intensity, a level of emotions, of passion, a way of directly and addressing those big philosophic ideas, that at once attracts me and exhausts me - it's nothing I can read just randomly, I need breaks.

And maybe it's tiredness and avoidance, but this is one of the books I feel I don't even have the right vocabulary to discuss... perhaps it's that these days we're just not used to dealing with - and talking about - those big, existentialist questions?

The character I most felt for (emphasised with?), and whose death I most regretted was Kirillow, because I felt, if not for that promise given, and Pjtor Stepnaowitsch forcing him to go through with it, he needn't have died at all; he was only a few steps away from - (See? And already I hit the wall of 'not finding the right words'. Obviously this touches upon the religious aspect of the novel, but when I merely say 'religion', or 'God', it'll probably give wrong ideas, evoke wrong reactions. I'm mostly atheist, and yet I'm not uncomfortable with Dostojewski's religious angle, which is another discussion I'm too tired and uninspired to tackle at 22:30...) But if you can find beauty/happiness in an autumn leaf and a spider crawling on the wall, if you realise that while you create your own meaning, this meaning can be something good, something positive ('Der Mensch ist unglücklich, weil er nicht weiß, daß er glücklich ist; nur deshalb.') - then you would, in time, perhaps also realise that you needn't kill yourself to prove your freedom as a human being? That perhaps this freedom isn't the ultimate goal? I think his death caught up with him, when he'd already moved beyond it. He and Schachtow are the most interesting characters to me, because they both stand on a threshold. They're more human - Stawrogin, who is so central to both of them, remains somewhat elusive, his power, the way he draws others to himself, is never really tangible to me.

Anyway. I've started 'Der Idiot', regardless. (Also, Daniel Kehlmann, 'Die Vermessung der Welt', the lunch-break book; and Patricia McKillip, 'Ombria in Shadow', the bed-time book)

Current Music: aynur, keçe kurdan

Holiday, pt. 2

[ more pictures here ]

To sum up, and contrary to the evidence of the picture above, it rained. A lot.

In slightly more detail, I arrived in Maishofen. It started to rain. And went on raining. Thursday it finally cleared up and I managed a hiking tour, which was mostly pretty, but where I found out that despite the morning runs my form is still? again? sadly lacking. (Yes, it was kind of steep, and also a few days before my period started, but still...) Also, I need to do something against my cow-phobia. Saturday It started to rain again, and that pretty much was it. So it didn't really matter all that much that - Tuesday, I think - I ran against the door-frame and bruised and maybe, but probably not, slightly cracked my little toe. Trip to the hospital, X-ray, which at least killed an hour or so. Couple of days of hopping around, which was less than amusing. Saturday before I left if finally cleared up again, but by then I still couldn't wear my hiking boots without the toe hurting. Sat on the balcony in the evening with a glass of wine, watching first dusk fall, and then a thunderstorm approaching from the west, lightning flashing over the mountains... which was pretty much the only time I felt truly relaxed and almost happy.

And yes, I do realise that it's horribly self-indulgent and petty to whine about such minor irritations when a couple of hundred kilometers further west streets and houses were swept away by flooding and land-slides.

So what I did was try to at least get out on the bike for a couple of hours each day when/if the rain stopped, and read. A lot. Tolstoi's War and Peace, which for the greater part I liked very much. My only (very minor) issue is with the second part, where occasionally he gets a little too long-windedly didactic in his theoretical historic passages for my taste. The problem, I guess, is whereas his historic approach was probably ground-breaking and new when he wrote the novel, it is rather less so a century and a half's worth of historical and sociological theories later, and you occasionally get a little exasperated, when what you already understood and found interesting the first, second and third time, is explained over and over again. And there's the occasional over-dose of patriotism and partiality for Kutusow... Also while you get to like the characters so much you want them to be happy, the epilogue with everyone happily married and I don't know many children is a little too sweet for my taste, but, again, minor irritations. Great writing, great characters throughout, loved it. Cried through Andrej's death; he's perhaps the character I liked best, always searching for something...something more, something beyond, and never quite reaching it, never really finding peace, only in the end, 'waking up from life'.

Finished Dostojewski's Crime and Punishment this time, and was very impressed with it. The first time I got stuck somewhere around Marmeladow's death, because between the endless, all-pervading misery, the apparently pointless murder and Raskolnikow's constant mood-swings and near-hysteria, I found it rather tiring to read, but once Raskolnikow's motif is explained it and his true tragedy becomes apparent, that it is not remorse for the murder that tortures him, but the fact that he fell short of his own standards because he could not coldly commit and bear the murder that was supposed to prove him one of the few, great people set apart from the masses who for the good of humankind in his opinion are above rules, conventions and laws. The problem of course is that partly he is right, because history has double standards and allows people to spill a lot of blood and will still call them great, but the sheer arrogance of deciding that he is one of these people and committing a murder almost exclusively with the purpose of proving this is breathtaking, as is the hurt pride in the self-disgust at having failed. (It is rather symptomatic that he's convinced that his sister is willing to martyr herself for him, but when she does appear in person it turns out she's not quite the self-sacrificing suffering saint, but a woman with a brain, personality and standards, who's in fact perfectly capable of weighing her options and making decisions for her life.)

Somehow, this novel and Raskolnikow's character seem to be almost prophetic for a good part of the 20th century...

Aber wenn du Blutvergießen aus Gewissen erlaubst, so ist das entsetzlicher als eine offizielle, sanktionierte Erlaubnis zum Morden...

I can't put it into wordes, but there's something about both novels, the sheer scope and depth of emotions, the subjects adressed, that is... TM's 'heilige russische Literatur' makes a lot of sense.

Also read Gogol's Dead Souls, which was a good, amusing read, but I do hate ~~unfinished WIPs~~, so it's probably a good thing I didn't know that when I bought it...

Barbara Nadel, Belsazar's Tochter and Ake Edwardson, Der Himmel auf Erden, because they were on sale and you can't read Russian classics all the time.

Re-read a good part of TM's Doktor Faustus, still/again very much intrigued & noticed that TM is the first author in a long time whose books I actually re-read.

Gave up on Josef Winkler (too depressing) and Amos Oz (just couldn't get into it).

Current Music: Simpsons on tv

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life without a plot

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March 2013

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