[HN Gopher] Dostoevsky in Love
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Dostoevsky in Love
Author : lermontov
Score : 86 points
Date : 2021-01-17 01:22 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| yunusabd wrote:
| Review of the book his second wife Anna wrote about their
| marriage (spoilers?):
| https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/02/15/anna-dostoyevsky-re...
|
| This part seems to be a direct contradiction of the Guardian
| intro:
|
| > [...] It was these mutual attitudes which enabled both of us to
| live in the fourteen years of our married life in the greatest
| happiness possible for human beings on earth.
|
| vs the Guardian:
|
| > His marriages were disastrous [...]
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| The Guardian seems one level above a tabloid at this point, so
| I'd be highly skeptical of their commentary.
| asplake wrote:
| How many tabloids do Dostoevsky?
| jmeister wrote:
| "One level above a tabloid"
| yunusabd wrote:
| Agreed, definitely took a turn for the worse, unfortunately.
| TLightful wrote:
| I understand the skepticism ... but if that's your view, you
| must not have read a tabloid in a very, very long time. To
| your credit.
| nograpes wrote:
| His marriages really were disastrous, and his second wife
| really did say that. She (and he) even really might have felt
| that way, despite the immense problems in their relationship.
|
| Just to give you a sense of the problems in their famous
| relationship, Dostoevsky was once lost all of her belongings
| while gambling.
|
| If you're interested further, Joseph Frank's five volume
| biography of Dostoevsky is a masterpiece in itself, and would
| give you a sense of how difficult, but also how strongly
| emotional their relationship was.
| yunusabd wrote:
| That does give a bit more merit to the Guardian's take,
| although I'm still not convinced that 'disastrous' is the
| right word to describe their marriage.
|
| Thanks for the recommendation! 2500 pages for the five
| volumes is quite the read, but it seems well worth it.
| NotPavlovsDog wrote:
| Russian surnames have gender. So a female surname would be
| Isaeva, but the male Isaev.
|
| English writers that want to avoid what happens to a Russian
| family name when involving several members (it's complicated)
| take the smart way out and do it like this: "after the Isaev
| family relocated" [1]
| https://theamericanreader.com/4-june-1855-fyodor-dostoevsky-...
|
| But the reviewer at the guardian (or is it the writer of the
| book?) goes for "When the Isaevas moved" when writing about
| husband and wife. If you can't get the surnames right, how much
| trust should a charitable reader extend towards the review?
|
| If you stumbled across "Hemingway she wife" in an essay on Papa's
| love life biography, instead of "Hemingway's wife" how much trust
| would that carry?
|
| Source: I first read the D-dude at nine years of age, in the
| original, and then went back to him on multiple occasions. What a
| downer. Also, genius. I prefer Pushkin, the only optimist of
| Russian literature, but you gotta respect Dostoevsky: how much
| ahead of the time his realism was, and what an influence he left.
| And then lots of people simply enjoy his work. If you haven't
| read "Crime and punishment", strongly recommended.
|
| As for his love life, I read many opposing viewpoints, but I
| prefer to limit my judgement to the work, not the person. Too
| messy. Unreliable sources.
| watwut wrote:
| The essey is in English so it seems to me fine to use
| convencion that sounds natural in English.
| NotPavlovsDog wrote:
| Most courses on Russian literature include at least some
| addressing of the whole Russian surnames thing. The
| misspelling may signal the writer has not read much on the
| subject. Russian literature is influential enough in world
| literature that the mistake is a big tell, feel free to
| consult any lit department.
|
| One of the common actions taken when analyzing a work of
| literature is writing out and mapping the main characters.
| Anyone that has done that has wondered about the "Russian
| females often get an a at the surname end" thing. It's
| standard to address it in Russian lit studies, because it
| confuses non-native speakers.
| watwut wrote:
| I speak English and two slavic languages. I dont speak
| Russian much, but I do understand some things in it.
|
| I was not confused by this essay in English at all. It was
| not just clear what it meant, it was completely usual way
| to express the familly name when talking in English about
| Russians.
|
| When talking about people from another country, it is
| acceptable to use grammer, specifically plural form, of
| language to are using.
| NotPavlovsDog wrote:
| If someone wrote a review on a book on Python, with the
| following statement: "as any algol-derived language,
| Python has array indexes start at 1", this would be false
| on 2 accounts and a significant tell on one.
|
| Falsity 1: Not all algol-derived languages have arrays
| start at 1. Falsity 2: Python has indexes zero-based.
| Tell : the person has not programmed in Python enough to
| have even basic experience such as familiarity with off-
| by-one errors and array basics. Although entitled to
| their own opinions, they should not be doing a review on
| the topic. (We leave out the complexity of lists / arrays
| being available in Python, NumPy etc from this
| discussion).
|
| Such a statement in a programming book review would be
| quickly called out by the programming community a)
| because it is false and b) potentially harmful
| information (for new-comers).
|
| Despite some opinions that literature, literature
| analysis and criticism are artsy-fartsy hand-wavy
| activities, there is significant rigor involved in
| studying literature seriously.This, as I wrote, involves
| character analysis.
|
| If the guardian reviewer, or whoever made the surname
| mistake, had done literature studies involving Russian
| literature, they would be aware of the surname usage
| specifics.
|
| It is as big a tell as the above programming example. It
| has nothing to do with being able to speak Russian. As I
| wrote, it is a common topic of interest to readers of
| Russian literature in translation.
|
| I have participated in multiple book-clubs and was
| briefly a TA on a Russian literature class (taught in
| English). We had a hand-out, updated from the 60s, on the
| topic, as it almost always got brought up by attentive
| readers.
| watwut wrote:
| The thing you did not noticed is that article is in
| English. The "When the Isaevas moved" is perfectly ok
| English sentence.
|
| It is not ok Russian sentence, but article is not in
| Russian language.
| evv555 wrote:
| >go for "When the Isaevas moved" when writing about husband and
| wife.
|
| As a Russian I can't recall this convention ever being used
| NotPavlovsDog wrote:
| that's my point. The reviewer or the book writer are doing it
| wrong.
| evv555 wrote:
| Oh I see
| lqet wrote:
| > The way he proposed to Anna, Christofi writes, "is so quietly
| bashful that you can't help wanting to hug him". He is quite
| right, but I won't give away the plot.
|
| Spoiler alert, this is how he proposed, it's quite sweet:
|
| Anna describes how Dostoevsky began his marriage proposal by
| outlining the plot of an imaginary new novel, as if he needed her
| advice on female psychology.[5] In the story an old painter makes
| a proposal to a young girl whose name is Anya. Dostoevsky asked
| if it was possible for a girl so young and different in
| personality to fall in love with the painter. Anna answered that
| it was quite possible. Then he told Anna: "Put yourself in her
| place for a moment. Imagine I am the painter, I confessed to you
| and asked you to be my wife. What would you answer?" Anna said:
| "I would answer that I love you and I will love you forever". [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Dostoevskaya
| mitchelldeacon9 wrote:
| > Christofi, also a novelist, describes "Dostoevsky in Love" as
| less a biography than a "reconstructed memoir". His method, he
| explains, has been to "cheerfully commit the academic fallacy" of
| eliding Dostoevsky's "autobiographical fiction with his
| fantastical life."
|
| Although I have not read Christofi's book, I am willing to admit
| that this could be a potentially fruitful method of interpreting
| the writer and his work. But for those interested in authentic
| history, I would recommend Joseph Frank's magnificent study
| "Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time" (2010), a fascinating yet
| critical biography that examines Dostoevsky's life, letters and
| philosophy.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Where is Mr. Golyadkin when we need him to defend us from being
| brutally trolled by the most feared woman on the Internet,
| Netochka Nezvanova?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mr_golyadkin
|
| https://www.salon.com/2002/03/01/netochka/
|
| Because she's back:
|
| https://twitter.com/antiorp
| mr_golyadkin wrote:
| You must have me confused with the other Mr. Golyadkin.
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