The Brothers Karamazov had a massive impact on me ages 24 … I had already read Anna Karenin, which is good, but Dostoevsky blows Tolstoy’s bucolic romanticism out of the water. Almost 40 years later I’m still considering following Alyosha’s path.
As a child I went to many different schools. Once there, my first port of call was the library. Then the town or city library. Books were devoured. Dostoyevsky was a favourite, and he's also been revisited along with other classical authors. Many different schools, private and public, may be catastrophic in some ways but the libraries were, and still are, unfailing friends. One is left with the taste for undeniable quality which is lifelong.
The myths of religion should leave everyone thinking twice before adopting such a practice. Too many people have died for these synthesized realities. Personally, I say no thanks.
I would rather look at leaves on trees and think of their biochemistry rather than participate in a practice that has resulted in too many deaths, too many tortured, and too many excluded, none for a legitimate reason
Maybe if Dostoyevsky had encountered cell and molecular biology he might have found something worthy to ponder and hold up in awe. Instead he was a proponent of building one’s life on a pack of lies. How sad.
“That’s the genius of Dostoevsky. He takes everything we hide… everything polite society teaches us to bury… and brings it right to the surface. He exposes the ugly parts of the human soul, not to glorify them, but to show that without grace, without something higher to live for, we collapse into madness.”
Well said. And one of my personal favorite authors for that reason. The great Russian writers really had a way with that. Same with Solzhenitsyn and Rand.
A few years ago, I started genuinely reading Russian authors - primarily Dostoyevsky. At first, I really wasn’t sure what I was reading - but somehow I knew it was profound and I was discovering…something. I wasn’t sure what I was getting from it, but I indulged. It DOES make you uncomfortable. I was at an uncomfortable place in my life - Dostoyevsky showed me this phase if you will was universal. It just seems different to us because the circumstances (age, place, players, reaction) under which we experience it differ. Some of us use it for the better, others hide in societal wisdom.
I never knew how reading these stories impacted my mind until push came to shove in determining the value of my own life, and separating what was truly important from what I was supposed to want. I’m now truly grateful for much of the suffering I had to endure to get here. I think Dostoyevsky might have been prodding me from the corners of my own mind.
Dost wrote from The Universal. This is sorely missing in our contemporary, myopic, navel-gazing online writing culture today. Every writer needs to read Dostoevsky. He already did everything you think needs to still be done now. It's all there.
Great piece. Will dust down my Dostoevsky again.
One typo: he was not 'a century' before Nietzsche but just a few years. 'The Brothers K' was 1880 and 'Beyond good and Evil' was 1886.
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/dostoevsky-russian-wizard
Terrific essay. Thank you.
The Brothers Karamazov had a massive impact on me ages 24 … I had already read Anna Karenin, which is good, but Dostoevsky blows Tolstoy’s bucolic romanticism out of the water. Almost 40 years later I’m still considering following Alyosha’s path.
Brothers K is INCREDIBLE. Read it a couple times.
As a child I went to many different schools. Once there, my first port of call was the library. Then the town or city library. Books were devoured. Dostoyevsky was a favourite, and he's also been revisited along with other classical authors. Many different schools, private and public, may be catastrophic in some ways but the libraries were, and still are, unfailing friends. One is left with the taste for undeniable quality which is lifelong.
The myths of religion should leave everyone thinking twice before adopting such a practice. Too many people have died for these synthesized realities. Personally, I say no thanks.
I would rather look at leaves on trees and think of their biochemistry rather than participate in a practice that has resulted in too many deaths, too many tortured, and too many excluded, none for a legitimate reason
Maybe if Dostoyevsky had encountered cell and molecular biology he might have found something worthy to ponder and hold up in awe. Instead he was a proponent of building one’s life on a pack of lies. How sad.
8. ....... Formerly they had a heaven adorned with a vast
wealth of thoughts and imagery. The meaning of all that is,
hung on the thread of light by which it was linked to that
heaven. Instead of dwelling in this world’s presence, men
looked beyond it, following this thread to an other-worldly
presence, so to speak. The eye of the Spirit had to be
forcibly turned and held fast to the things of this world; and
it has taken a long time before the lucidity which only
heavenly things used to have could penetrate the dullness
and confusion in which the sense of worldly things was
enveloped, and so make attention to the here and now as
such, attention to what has been called ‘experience’, an
interesting and valid enterprise. Now we seem to need just
the opposite: sense is so fast rooted in earthly things that it
requires just as much force to raise it. The Spirit shows
itself as so impoverished that, like a wanderer in the desert
craving for a mere mouthful of water, it seems to crave for
its refreshment only the bare feeling of the divine in
general. By the little which now satisfies Spirit, we can
measure the extent of its loss.
From the Preface to Phenomenology of Spirit by G W F
Hegel, 1807.
(Trans. A V Miller, OUP, Oxford, 1977.)
“That’s the genius of Dostoevsky. He takes everything we hide… everything polite society teaches us to bury… and brings it right to the surface. He exposes the ugly parts of the human soul, not to glorify them, but to show that without grace, without something higher to live for, we collapse into madness.”
Well said. And one of my personal favorite authors for that reason. The great Russian writers really had a way with that. Same with Solzhenitsyn and Rand.
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/dostoevsky-russian-wizard
Excellent synopsis!
Very good article, but TBK did not come a century before Nietzsche and Freud.
Excellent illustrations, as well.
Excellent. The introduction of the essay can be used in so many circumstances having to do with the contemporary way of thinking, acting and reacting
Bravo!
A few years ago, I started genuinely reading Russian authors - primarily Dostoyevsky. At first, I really wasn’t sure what I was reading - but somehow I knew it was profound and I was discovering…something. I wasn’t sure what I was getting from it, but I indulged. It DOES make you uncomfortable. I was at an uncomfortable place in my life - Dostoyevsky showed me this phase if you will was universal. It just seems different to us because the circumstances (age, place, players, reaction) under which we experience it differ. Some of us use it for the better, others hide in societal wisdom.
I never knew how reading these stories impacted my mind until push came to shove in determining the value of my own life, and separating what was truly important from what I was supposed to want. I’m now truly grateful for much of the suffering I had to endure to get here. I think Dostoyevsky might have been prodding me from the corners of my own mind.
Great 👍🏻
What does it take to awaken those around you to the need of an inner life?
"Most people today can’t read Dostoevsky, not because they’re stupid, but because they’ve forgotten how to sit with discomfort."
Very true. LOVE Dostoevsky: https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/dostoevsky-russian-wizard
Dost wrote from The Universal. This is sorely missing in our contemporary, myopic, navel-gazing online writing culture today. Every writer needs to read Dostoevsky. He already did everything you think needs to still be done now. It's all there.
Bravo!