You love a prostitute with your whole heart but you respect her too much to touch her, talk to her, or learn her name.
You are in love with an earnest, loyal young man who adores you, so you’ve decided to marry a dissolute cad you despise in order to teach yourself a lesson.
You’ve been sitting in this tavern for hours hoping no one notices your clothes are covered in blood.
You are crippled by gambling debts, but that hasn’t stopped you from spending every penny you have buying brandy for itinerant musicians.
Every night Pontius Pilate berates you in a dream.
You dream of a contemplative life in a monastery, but first you just have to talk some sense into this violent, impoverished stranger you met on a footbridge.
Your feelings about peasants are warm, passionate, and a little condescending.
You’ve been standing in the snow on Nevsky Prospect for hours now, just waiting to say something really cutting to a bureaucrat.
At least once each day you stop in a stairwell to clutch the banister and cry out, “My god, how loathsome it all is!”
You have committed a grave crime and you are being sent to Siberia.
You have committed no crime and you are being sent to Siberia.
You live in abject poverty, but abstract moral principles prevent you from spending the large sum of money you have hidden underneath your floorboards.
You appear extremely agitated.
You’d gladly lecture an illiterate carriage driver about Schiller.
You are offered a place at university but you don’t show up because you are too ashamed of your boots.
Right now you’re busy getting dressed for a dinner party to which you were pointedly not invited.
An army captain has insulted you and so you will drink yourself to death to have revenge on him.
You sleep feverishly or not at all.
All of your happiest childhood memories include your mother convulsively crying.
You’ve often laughed out of indifference, contempt, or spite, but not once out of joy.
You are a beautiful young woman with flashing eyes about to send your lover a terrible letter.
You have thrown yourself at the feet of a dishonorable young cadet in order to save your little sister from consumption.
Absolutely everything in your life depends upon you boarding a train to Odessa, but it looks like you’re not getting on that train.
You have been run over by a coach and are suffering massive internal injuries. You plan to treat the injuries with nothing but a rag soaked in vinegar and water.
You bear a deep, expansive love for all of mankind, except for merchants, Jesuits, and Jews.
You’d murder your father without blinking an eye, but you’re moved to tears by the sight of a peasant boy kicking a horse.
You’ve become so worried about The Great Schism that you’ve developed brain fever.
God is dead and everything is permitted.
Tags: books, dostoevsky, how to tell what novel you’re in, russians, summer block
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Thank God, now I never have to read any Dostoevsky. I drew the line at Bulgakov.
All Bulgakov all the time!
Dostoevsky is the best! Start reading now!
Yourself and everyone you know each has sixteen fucking complicated multi-syllabic names that are used interchangeably and without any apparent context to foreign readers.
YES! The first time I read The Brothers Karamazov, I couldn’t figure out who the heck Alyosha was supposed to be and how he was related to the three brothers-whose names were clearly Dmitri, Ivan, and Alexei and nobody else. About halfway through I was like, dang, when is Alexei going to show up? And who’s Mitya again? And then I read the preface and learned about the confusing world of Russian nicknames.
EDIT to say that I also got confused every time someone was like “Ivan Fyodorovich, good morning!” because Ivan’s last name was clearly Karamazov?? I first read this when I was like 14 hence the confusion.
The first time I read The Master and Margarita, I was so confused and annoyed because it took so long for Margarita to show up and the character that I thought was the Master was in fact not.
Totally agree re the names, but IMO, The M and M was worth reading just for the description of Margarita flying across Europe naked on the back of a–what was it, a pig? Her elderly neighbor who’d been turned into a pig?
Yeah, Russian is a bit weird in that referring to someone formally involves using their person name and patronymic (middle name based on their dad’s) and not personal name and family name.
Welcome to fucking Slavic naming systems. For the longest time, I had no idea that half of my mom’s ancestors were related to us, because nobody ever told me about the women’s “ova” suffix.
I now make a chart for every Russian novel I read. They make good bookmarks and I always keep them on hand, but I have a sinking feeling that this is going too far.
Or…… not far enough? (whips out action figures with color-coded name tags)
This is amazing. I can already picture having friends over to my apartment:
“On the kitchen table you can see book three, chapter 17 of War and Peace and chapter three of Anna Karenina is just starting on the coffee table. Moving on into the bedroom you will notice the Soviet Era writers. Book two of The Master and Margarita has completely taken over the bed and Solzhenitsyn has colonized the bureau.”
Maybe minifigs would take up less space? (Also I have more of them than action figures, and they are somewhat customizable).
I’m reading War and Peace right now and I think I need to do this. 🙁 Esp. as I just got to the first “war” part and now I have to remember military titles too.
I do this, too! It is not too far, and you are not alone! But I’ve been keeping mine in a notebook…the bookmark idea is genius
I have enough problem with the names in Chekhov plays, and they only have like a dozen characters, and if you’re watching, you can at least tell who’s talking.
Hahah for this reason alone I love watching Chekhov but can’t find the patience to read him.
Yeah, Russian is weird in that everyone effectively has two names because “nicknames” are just what you call someone. It’s like everyone is named Jonathon, so of course everyone is going to call them John except for unique circumstances.
Formally, though, you’d do the full first name plus the patronymic (i.e. middle name based on your dad’s name) with people you don’t know.
…it makes sense if you grow up in the language? 😀
See, I kind of feel like everyone has THE SAME names. There are about 6 for dudes and maybe 3 for ladies? So the nicknames and patronymics actually help–because when everyone’s named Ivan it’s helpful to know whether it’s Ivan Pavlovich or Ivan Mikhailovich who’s talking. And like, is that Masha the countess or Masha the servant girl? If they don’t tell you how will you know???
y’all! check out the pevear and volokhonsky translations, if you are so inclined. they have name charts at the beginning and footnotes at the end and now i know all sorts of obscure russian cultural facts. p and v are how i figured out how to read russian classics.
I have some issues with p and v’s translation methods and accuracy, but I will admit their books are quite user friendly.
But if you ever want to read something and one of the translations has been done by Robert Chandler, there is no choice. You will never read a better translation than a Robert Chandler translation. (this has been my significantly truncated “Which Russian Literature Translations You Should Read” rant. Usually it involves more profanity and vehement gesturing).
You showed great promise as a divinity student, but the Donation of Pepin has driven you to a life of maddened vagrancy. Your father despises you.
You are in love with the beautiful woman that runs the orphanage, but are sent to war with the Cossacks before you can tell her. She marries your bourgeois oaf of a brother and has seven children.
You aren’t at all worried that someone will stop listening during your multiple-page screeds debating moral relativism.
Wait I thought that was Atlas Shrugged?
Oh God, DON’T CROSS THE STREAMS!
I mean, that’s probably where Ayn Rand got most of her early literary influences, so.
Wait was the Great Schism in Lemony Snickett books based on Dostoevsky? Mind blown!
p.s. Crime and Punishment is one long male novelist joke
Wonderful.
Upon meeting a charming new acquaintance, it takes you half a page to decide whether to use French or Russian to address them because the casual form of “you” would be overly familiar, but the formal form would make you seem too cold and distant. You decide upon French and the two of you converse in that language (which the translator chose not to translate) until you part. American readers will skip to the next chapter and miss the symbolic significance and subtle wit of the dialogue, which will definitely prove important later in the book.
See I always liked it when the French was untranslated, because I speak it and it felt like an inside joke. Except that whatever subtle and symbolic wit was going on in French still made almost no sense to me on account of I’m not Russian.
This sounds more like Tolstoy.
You interrupt a party with a dramatic reading of a 15-page essay outlining your reasons for committing suicide. Then you try to commit suicide, and fail. Later on you die of consumption.
POOR HIPPOLYTE i have never gotten over that
At least once each day you stop in a stairwell to clutch the banister and cry out, “My god, how loathsome it all is!”
Is it aesthetically acceptable to do this in an elevator if I’m too lazy to take the stairs?
I prefer to do mine in morning traffic.
…. actually, can I just stay on the couch and do it there?
You’d find yourself in Goncharov’s novel then
Do it clutching the banister on an escalator. That way you can stop and still be at the top by the time you are done lamenting.
‘You come across a dead bird in the street. It is a corpse. It is utterly dead. This makes you fall on your hands and knees, raise your hands to the sky, and doubt the miracle of the crucifixion.’
Every night Pontius Pilate berates you in a dream.
Is this not how all of Russia spends their sleeping hours? Russian literature has LIED to me.
This is EXCELLENT! Who are you? I’m a sadly neglected novelist. Assume you are doing better.
I assume you are gently teasing me- but alas! I wrote a couple of novels in high school before discovering the joys of literary criticism. As it turns out I’d much rather write an academic paper.
How are your novels coming?
You fear seizures with a massive dread, but at the same time you can’t stop and won’t stop talking about how badass and enlightening/borderline orgasmic it is to have a seizure.
You tell everyone you murdered your dog, for unclear reasons, and then got another dog that looks exactly the same but vehemently deny that it is the same dog. Later, you reveal that it is the same dog, but nobody is sure if they believe you or not.
You suffer from ennui, but like, violent ennui.
Dibs on Violent Ennui for my new punk band.
YEAH!
I’m doing Russian literature this semester and this entire post had me laughing out loud in the library like a lunatic. Spot on!
You lowkey revere Napoleon and would defend him to the ends of the earth..
Everything has a yellow tinge. This is indicative of the sickness within yourself.
You’re going to take a trip to America.
You do not have to go to Siberia, but you are going to go anyway for a man who has never said a single nice word to you.
A lot of these apply to Tolstoy novels too, especially the bit about the peasants (I’m looking at you, Levin)
Maybe minifigs would take up less space? (Also I have more of them than action figures, and they are somewhat customizable).
I took an entire course on Dostoevsky and it coincided with getting a bad concussion. Let me tell you that the combined fever dreams of these two afflictions still haunt me to this day.
Hold on. Is that Captain Kirk?
YES Shatner played Alyosha in a horrible adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov!! It’s pre-Kirk, though.
It actually makes a lot more sense than Dick = Richard or Bill = William 🙂
I truly understand the predicament with Russian names for foreigners, but hey, English names are no better! What is common between Robert and Bob? Or Wiiliam and Bill? Richard and Dick???
You were once a fragment of a character in The Life of a Great Sinner. In the novel in which you now appear, that character has been split into yourself and another more sinister character, to whom you feel a sinister attraction.
You are madly in love with a simple, pure-hearted, and likely consumptive prostitute. You refer to her as “the whore” repeatedly and with affection. Philosophy has driven you mad. Poverty has driven you mad. St. Petersberg has driven you mad. The color yellow has driven you mad and it’s everywhere, dammit, even the wallpaper is subtly jaundiced and mocks you. The Neva beckons, you stomp around in the cold waiting, just waiting for it all to make sense. You are superior to everyone so of course you must commit heinous acts of violence requiring punishment followed by redemption. You are redeemed. There is hope.