Why did Dostoyevsky write Crime and Punishment?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
There were times while reading the rationalizations/thought processes of the main character that I started to feel physically nauseous and had to take a break.
If you are at all interested in psychology, sociology, history, and/or philosophy, give it (or the audiobook) a go.
I just finished reading Crossroads, a new novel by Franzen. There are some similarities you might like. No murder, but Franzen has gotten quite good at inhabiting the mind of unsteady, sometimes unwell characters.
I do agree that we make a "Great Man" to be much more than they are: that the achievements we ascribe to them would be impossible without support, work, and desire by a great number of people for the thing the leader wants to do, and that this leader can't unilaterally substantially change the course of history without immense support.
Where I disagree is the idea that that person is completely inconsequential; that a similar person would rise just the same, given the circumstances of the time, and that the results would be of no difference.
I'm open to the idea that Tolstoy was just taking an absolutist approach as a method of rhetoric and that he didn't actually believe that leaders have no consequence.
A great, disturbingly accurate, representation of what happens when loneliness starts to eat away at a person's mind.
Under Western Eyes (1911) is a novel by Joseph Conrad. The novel takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva, Switzerland, and is viewed as Conrad's response to the themes explored in Crime and Punishment; Conrad was reputed to have detested Dostoevsky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Western_Eyes_(novel)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/feb/26/featuresreview...
The best Russian writers (Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy) were something like Russian chauvinists. They thought Russia -- in particular, culturally and religiously -- was above all other nations. There was propaganda in the 19th century about Russia being the "protector of the Slavic peoples" which the targeted countries didn't exactly want. It's an idea that still resonates both in Russia and among her ex-pats.
Skimming the Wikipedia page, Conrad seems to have taken offense to precisely this. The book looks fascinating.
The question is broad and difficult to answer but I can out a few examples of what I mean. [0] Lots of ideas about Russia's unique place in the world and why they're better than others (e.g. Dostoyevsky on why Russian Orthodoxy was better than other forms of religion). Most of these writers had spent time in the west, did not hold high opinions of it, and were vaguely Slavophiles. [1] There was a reason Dostoyevsky returned to Russia after living in France for some time, even after going to Siberia.
Solzhenitsyn did write about other ethnic groups in the Gulags and these often get misinterpreted in their English translations as "kind and meek" whereas their Russian originals would imply something more like "Good-natured simpleton." [2] He, of course, wrote far more controversial books, to put it mildly, but I won't link to those here.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_soul
And since we are talking about Conrad, Poland has/had a similar phenomenon at the same time, called “The Christ of Nations.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_of_Europe
Many of these ideas had roots in 19th century romanticism.
That's exactly it.
In retrospect, calling it Russian Chauvinism may be a loaded term on my part.
Such as drunkard Marmeladov (soon to be run over by a horse carriage) in a tavern, to Raskalnikov: “May I venture, honoured sir, to engage you in polite conversation? Forasmuch as, though your exterior would not command respect, my experience admonishes me that you are a man of education and not accustomed to drinking. I have always respected education when in conjunction with genuine sentiments, and I am besides a titular counsellor in rank. Marmeladov—such is my name; titular counsellor. I make bold to inquire—have you been in the service?”
I am by no means in to literature in any significant way, but russian literature truly is something special. I've read a few chapters of War and Peace as well. Very different styles, but there is clearly some commonality in the way the authors use elaborate descriptions to create very robust mental models for the reader. I never feel like I get that in western literature other than some of the stuff like Chatwin and Carra from the 70s.
You'd better to hurry. Historic districts are in a sad state and city administration wants do nothing about it. It's pretty depressive atmosphere but completely off comparing with Dostoevsky's time.
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/fyodor-dostoevsky/crime-an...
One thing that struck me: two of the translation samples included the (correct/reasonable?) names for the street and bridge (Stolyarnyi Lane, Kokushkin Bridge). The others replaced the words with S-----i Lane, and K------n Bridge (or S. Lane etc).
I think I understand the problem. Cyrillic alphabet doesn't map to Latin alphabet, and there was no established English-language translation for the names in question. The two that attempted it even had slightly different spellings, akin to the problem we see with many Arabic names in English today.
This makes a big difference in readability, to me. The setting is supposed to be foreign and a bit unfamiliar to excultural readers, but K-------n looks like an error, a misprint, or an "(unintelligible)" in a transcription. That becomes part of the story, and it isn't intended as such by the author.
For this and other reasons, my vote goes to Sidney Monas, 1968. I'll add that note to my long and ever-growing TOREAD list. :)
The first line of the original is (asterisks mine, indicating where Dostoyevski intentionally did not write the name of a street or bridge):
"В начале июля, в чрезвычайно жаркое время, под вечер, один молодой человек вышел из своей каморки, которую нанимал от жильцов в **С — **м переулке, на улицу и медленно, как бы в нерешимости, отправился к **К —** ну мосту."
In English:
"On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge."
I assumed that the redactions were not in the original, and that the translators were avoiding complexity by presenting the English-speaking audience with a digstible form.
I guess I underestimated the translators, or the reading public. Thanks for the correction.
PS: I did not mean that Dostoevsky intended excultural readers to feel unfamiliar, but that excultural readers should expect (and maybe prefer) a certain amount of unfamiliarity in foreign works. I thought the translators were insulating their readers from it, which felt inauthentic.
I'm even more bothered by the idea of the translators "filling in the blanks" that were intentionally placed by the author. Curious that both translators who did so, used roughly the same names for each -- perhaps they are the real names that we know the author was referencing? Still, that's a bit presumptuous, I think.
> “The reason English-speaking readers can barely tell the difference between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is that they aren’t reading the prose of either one. They’re reading Constance Garnett.”
> Garnett’s flaws were not the figment of a native speaker’s snobbery. She worked with such speed, with such an eye toward the finish line, that when she came across a word or a phrase that she couldn’t make sense of she would skip it and move on.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/11/07/the-translatio...
The big problem, though, is that we’re constricted by the supply of public domain translations. We simply can’t typically offer much more than Garnett, and if we could, they’re usually worse to read from a purely side-by-side English view, even if they’re more authentically Russian.
Certainly! If your reading is constrained to public domain works, you have basically no other option. I've read many books in translation and before I learned about the Constance Garnett controversy, I paid little to no attention to who translated the work that I'm reading.
I guess I'm trying to spread the word that the translation matters almost as much as the original work itself, and it may be worth doing research on various translations before picking one to read. And although the original works are still as great as ever, it seems to me that the translating profession has really come a long way since the 1800s. As a result I tend usually to look at more recent translations first.
> they’re usually worse to read from a purely side-by-side English view, even if they’re more authentically Russian.
I don't think I understand what you mean by this.
You can provide a sort summary of an argument you find compelling regarding Raskolnikov's motivations without adding about to the millions of words written on this subject. You are also free to describe your own interpretation without feeling obliged to add something novel or useful to what's already out there.
Considering how much I agree with you that Raskolnikov didn't "just need to keep his mouth shut" (a phrase that did show up in this thread), I'm actually and sincerely very interested in your interpretation.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translat...
And the article you cite is by David Remnick who was instrumental on spreading Iraq war lies at the New Yorker. Should we trust him now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Remnick
"A lot of the people who made those mistakes are still occupying prominent positions, their credibility undamaged thanks to a new legend best articulated by New Yorker editor David Remnick, who later scoffed, “Nobody got that story completely right.”
Nobody except the record number of people who marched against the war on February 15, 2003 — conservative estimates placed it between six and ten million worldwide (I marched in D.C.). Every one of those people was way ahead of Remnick."
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/iraq...
Source: I'm Russian and have read Dostoyevsky.
Crime and Punishment, on the other hand, I found utterly compelling, and will probably re-read some day (which is a status few books achieve in my world).
I also really liked David McDuff's translation years ago.
Any of these are going to be miles better then Garnett, though.
https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/pevear-and-volokhonsky-...
Or maybe I'm just not deep enough.
You could even write an article asking why that original article was even written, and it might make for more interesting content.
I'm going to stop reading them. Anything that starts with the word "Why" is clickbait to me now. I'm done. Also any "Top 5 blah," and any phone call where they immediately mention my car warranty.
The development of a sense of "right and wrong" is not a sure thing, even among intelligent, functional people. A sense of "conscience" (pick your definition) even less so. Consider this minute example - you walk into a garden and see a beautiful butterfly, you admire it, it seems nice, then as you watch, it flies into a spider's web, is caught and killed by the spider. Is this a moral situation? very likely, not at all..
Next example, a sports team at your school when you are 15. You do not play for that team, and do not care for the sport much. The team plays another school, and there is group support, yells, matching colors, perhaps name calling and villification of the opposing team. Do you support your school, about something you do not care about. What about the players on the other team - do you direct insults or hostility towards these others that do nothing to you personally? Is this a moral situation? How do you feel about the people yelling so much, either side?
You are on your own in a city, and it is clear you need money to pay bills. The people around you appear to be petty, flawed and self-interested. You can quickly find contradictions, "white lies" in their actions. Yet you must pay your bills to these people personally, or face expulsion. Is this a moral sitation? How do you feel about yourself when interacting with these people? Your own sense of self may be compromised, injured.. actually everyone's is in some way .. or you may have a larger kind of sight, to see the universal in the everyday, including these people and their ways. That warps your reactions..
at any rate, there are many gray areas, and ambiguities, possible in examples like this, and the sense of being lost, of confusion, of wilting in the face of contradictions.. are embodied in the tale. It has been a long time since I read that book, but a copy is sitting about ten feet from me now. Maybe it is worth a look.
> He had no choice.
Guess that works as a tl;dr.
But for what I read on HN, leetcode it's just a filter to get in like having harvard or stanford in your resume is too...
Once you pass the filters, however you do, I say there are much more important stuff to know than leetcode that can predit how well you will do... Also in any big company the size of those, it's literally a gamble as in the team you'll be working with will be the most important thing affecting you, besides salary or whatever... So you've a lot of variance on success on those big shops.
I've never tried/had a leetcode interview tbh, 4-8h take-home code challenges (in frontend positions I apply) are more abundant in my experience. But I'm not in the US so who knows...