June 2013
20 posts
“Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled, and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then God will send you life again. Will you go, will you go?”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment (via lesocialoutcast)
“There is always something, a remnant, which will never come out from your brain, but will remain there with you, and you alone, for ever and ever, and you will die, perhaps, without having imparted what may be the very essence of your idea to a single living soul.”
—The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (via normalhumanparanoia)
“Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then … Well, then I woke up.”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (via theperpetualflux)
“We were not asked, you see. We were made different, with different tastes and feelings without being consulted.”
—The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (via normalhumanparanoia)
“I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.”
—The Idiot; Fyodor Dostoevsky (via cranialdissection)
“Because such violent, wild love works like a fit, like a deadly noose, like an illness, and - as soon as you reach satisfaction - the scales fall at once and the opposite feeling appears: disgust and hatred, the wish to exterminate, to crush”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Adolescent (via lesocialoutcast)
“But I’m not lying. It’s all true. Unfortunately, truth is hardly ever amusing. I can see that you positively expect something big from me and, perhaps, something beautiful, too. That is a great pity, for I only give what I can.”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (via juliatherose)
“You ache with it all; and the more mysterious it is, the more you ache.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky (via nostorybook)
“the most offensive is not their lying—one can always forgive lying—lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth—what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying…”
-Vruzmihin, Crime and Punishment
“Pascal once said: He who protests against philosophy is
himself a philosopher.” —
himself a philosopher.” —
DOSTOEVSKY'S LETTERS
(via vorbadilitantului)
“…but it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur…”
—Notes from Underground §9 - Fyodor Dostoevsky (via the-conqueror-worm)
“Even there, in the mines, underground, you can find a human heart in the convict and murderer standing next to you, and you can be close to him, because there, too, it’s possible to live, and love, and suffer!”
—Brothers Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoevsky (via ephemeraldelights)
“[Dmitri Karamazov] experiences a purification of his heart and conscience under the storm of misfortune and false accusation. He accepts with his soul punishment not for what he did, but for the fact that he was so hideous that he could and did want to commit the crime of which he will be falsely accused through a judicial error. It’s a thoroughly Russian personality: if the thunder doesn’t rumble, the peasant won’t cross himself.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky in a letter to Nikolai Lyubimov, 16 November 1879 (via ivankaramazovs)
May 2013
24 posts
My New Translation of Dostoevsky's "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man"
(cover illustration by the wonderful lostflyingfish)
Kindle and Nook versions, each sold for $0.99 at Amazon and Barnes & Noble
“My loneliness can’t even be described: I’ve forgotten how to talk, and I surprise myself even if I accidentally say a loud word. For going on four weeks now I haven’t heard my own voice.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky in a letter to his wife, Anna Dostoevskaya, 28 August 1879 (via ivankaramazovs)
“I read with ecstasy your dear words about your loving me. You write: “Love me.” But don’t I love you? It’s just that expressing myself in words sickens me, but you could see a lot for yourself, but it’s too bad that you are unable to see. […] And my ecstasy and delight are inexhaustible. […] So as to finish this tirade, I swear that I am dying to kiss every toe on your foot, and I’ll achieve my goal, you’ll see. You write: “But what if someone reads our letters?” Let them, of course; let them be envious.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky in a letter to his wife, Anna Dostoevskaya, 28 August 1879 (via ivankaramazovs)
“There are terribly many flowers here and they sell them in bunches. But I don’t buy them. There’s no one to give them to; my tsaritsa isn’t here. And who’s my tsaritsa—you are. That’s what I’ve decided here, since while here I’ve fallen in love with you so much that you can’t even imagine.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky in a letter to his wife, Anna Dostoevskaya, 13 August 1879 (via ivankaramazovs)
“I know that - that I’m an invalid. I’ve been ill for twenty-four years, from my birth to my twenty-fourth year. You must accept that what I have to say now as coming from an invalid. I’m going presently, presently, don’t worry. I’m not blushing, for it would be to strange to blush because of that, wouldn’t it? But my place is not in society. I’m not saying this from vanity… I’ve been thinking it over during the last three days, and I’ve decided that I must tell you sincerely and honestly about it at first opportunity. There are certain ideas, certain great ideas, which I mustn’t start talking about, because I’m quite sure to make you all laugh. Prince Sh. has just reminded me of it… I’m afraid my gestures are not very graceful - I have no sense of proportion, my words don’t express my ideas, and that’s degrading - to my ideas. And that’s why I have no right to - besides, I’m so morbidly sensitive - I mean I - I’m sure that in this house no one would want to hurt my feelings and I’m loved here more than I deserve, but I know (oh, I know very well) that after twenty years of illness there must be some trace of it left, so that people can’t help laughing at me - sometimes - isn’t that so?”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
This passage crushed me when I read it. I find so much of myself in this that it’s hard to read. (via icebelow)
This passage crushed me when I read it. I find so much of myself in this that it’s hard to read. (via icebelow)
“It’s life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (via willbraham)
“The science of this world, having united itself into a great force, has, especially in the past century, examined everything heavenly that has been bequeathed to us in sacred books, and, after hard analysis, the learned ones of this world have absolutely nothing left of what was once holy. But they have examined parts and missed the whole, and their blindness is even worthy of wonder. Meanwhile the whole stands before their eyes as immovably as ever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
—Father Paissy (in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky)
“Even if she did not love me she ought not to have trampled upon my feelings, nor to have accepted my confessions with such contempt, seeing that she must have been aware that I loved her… At the same time, if my love was distasteful to her, why had she not FORBIDDEN me to speak of it to her? But she had not so forbidden me. On the contrary, there had been occasions when she had even INVITED me to speak.”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler (via orsomethinglikethatreally)
“… and I’m not afraid of a beating. Know, sir, that such beatings are not only not painful, but are even a delight to me. For I myself cannot do without them. It’s better: let her beat me. Let her ease her soul.”
—Marmeladov in Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky (via happycuckoldress)
“Indeed, there is nothing more vexing, for instance, than to be rich, of respectable family, of decent appearance, of rather good education, not stupid, even kind, and at the same time to have no talent, no particularity, no oddity even, not a single idea of one’s own, to be decidedly ‘like everybody else.’”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot (via nickdelo)
“In 1915, in Geneva, I avidly read Crime and Punishment in the very readable version by Constance Garnett. That novel, whose heroes are a murderer and a prostitute, seemed to me no less atrocious than the war that surrounded us. I imagined at the time that Dostoyevsky was a kind of great unfathomable God, capable of understanding and justifying all beings. I was astonished that he had occasionally descended to mere politics, that he discriminated and condemned.
To read a book by Dostoyevsky is to penetrate a great city unknown to us, or the shadow of a battle. Crime and Punishment revealed to me, among other things, a world different from my own. When I read Demons, something very strange occurred. I felt that I had returned home. The steppes were a magnification of the pampas. Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky were, despite their unwieldy names, old irresponsible Argentines. The book began with joy, as if the narrator did not know its tragic end.
In the preface to an anthology of Russian literature, Vladimir Nabokov stated that he had not found a single page of Dostoyevsky worthy of inclusion. This ought to mean that Dostoyevsky should not be judged by each page but rather by the total of all the pages that comprise the book.” —Jorge Luis Borges, prologue to Demons (via speakmnemosyne)
To read a book by Dostoyevsky is to penetrate a great city unknown to us, or the shadow of a battle. Crime and Punishment revealed to me, among other things, a world different from my own. When I read Demons, something very strange occurred. I felt that I had returned home. The steppes were a magnification of the pampas. Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky were, despite their unwieldy names, old irresponsible Argentines. The book began with joy, as if the narrator did not know its tragic end.
In the preface to an anthology of Russian literature, Vladimir Nabokov stated that he had not found a single page of Dostoyevsky worthy of inclusion. This ought to mean that Dostoyevsky should not be judged by each page but rather by the total of all the pages that comprise the book.” —Jorge Luis Borges, prologue to Demons (via speakmnemosyne)
“For you must know, my dear ones, that each of us is undoubtedly guilty on behalf of all and for all on earth, not only because of the common guilt of the world, but personally, each one of us, for all people and for each person on this earth. This knowledge is the crown of the monk’s path, and of every man’s path on earth. For monks are not a different sort of men, but only such as all men on earth ought also to be. Only then will our hearts be moved to a love that is infinite, universal, and that knows no satiety. Then each of us will be able to gain the whole world by love and wash away the world’s sins with his tears.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (via clockocean)
“Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881), “The Brothers Karamazov” (via lashes-and-moustaches)
“But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that along with happiness, in the exact same way and in perfectly equal proportion, man also needs unhappiness!”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Possessed (via man-of-prose)
“I am masterly at speaking without words. All my life I have spoken without words.”
—Dostoevsky - A Gentle Creature (via annekebab)
“Indeed, there is nothing more vexing, for instance, than to be rich, of respectable family, of decent appearance, of rather good education, not stupid, even kind, and at the same time to have no talent, no particularity, no oddity even, not a single idea of one’s own, to be decidedly ‘like everybody else.’”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot; p. 462, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Vintage). (via asthepoemsgo)
“Generally, in every misfortune of one’s neighbor there is always something that gladdens the outsider’s eye—and that even no matter who you are.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons (via blacktout)
“Suppose, gentlemen, that man is not stupid. (Really, it is quite impossible to say he is, for the sole reason that if he is stupid, who then is intelligent?) But even if he isn’t stupid, all the same he’s monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. I even think the best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (via deaths-and-entrances)
“And in fact I’m now asking an idle question of my own: which is better - cheap happiness, or lofty suffering? Well, which is better?”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (via deaths-and-entrances)
“What do you think?” shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, “you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That’s man’s one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can’t even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I’ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a man, in the second you’re no better than a bird. Truth won’t escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people’s ideas, it’s what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (via idlekid)
“Such were my reveries as I sat at home that evening, barely alive from the pain in my soul.”
—Notes from the Underground by Fyodr Dostoevsky (via dispirited-contrarian)
April 2013
26 posts
“If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions.”
—The idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (via substantia-nigra)
“And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better - cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground (via glorifythehour)
“Because I only talk a good game, I only dream in my head, but do you know what I want in reality? That you all go to hell, that’s what! I want peace. I’d sell the whole world for a kopeck this minute, just not to be bothered. Shall the world go to hell, or shall I not have my tea? I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (via morphinith)
“It is a pity that there was no Dostoevsky living near this most interesting decadent [Jesus], I mean someone with an eye for the distinctive charm that this sort of mixture of sublimity, sickness, and childishness has to offer.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, §31 (via gloomy-planets)
“…[T]he nastiest Christian I’ve ever met.”
—Turgenev on Dostoevsky (via hepshit)
