
Dostoyevsky's “Dream of a Ridiculous Man” (2014) - jedwhite
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/11/dostoyevsky-dream/
======
coleifer
> I saw and know that men could be beautiful and happy, without losing the
> capacity to live upon the earth.

This struck me as the revelation that changed the protagonist's perspective.
And Dostoyevsky presents this using the irrational, symbolic language of
dreams: a vision of human dignity. He concludes by quoting Christ's
commandment... showing that this isn't new knowledge. It's been known for a
very long time, but one must experience suffering and a spiritual death before
the full significance of the commandment can be understood.

Kierkegaard's book on Christian love provides an in-depth (and sometimes
tedious) discussion of the necessity of love of ones neighbor. Recommend
checking it out if you're curious to read _why_ one could come to view such
love as necessary for life.

~~~
erikpukinskis
“Works of Love” [https://www.amazon.com/Works-Harper-Perennial-Modern-
Thought...](https://www.amazon.com/Works-Harper-Perennial-Modern-
Thought/dp/0061713279) perhaps

------
Storiesofsome1
This was an incredible read! This is my first introduction to Dostoyesvky and
I’m engrossed.

So from these excerpts, his profound writing reminds me of another great
writer I admire the most; Poe. Poe’s writing has had a profound effect on me
and so has this story by Dostoyesvky.

I see the similarity in the sense that both of these writers seem to distill
such great truths about life and translate them into poetical and lyrical
writing.

The conventional plot is barebones in their stories but their focus lies on
the inner turmoil, revolving intensely around a lonesome nihilistic character
musing about the existence, human desires and the consequent suffering that
results thereafter.

I’m a fan now and will definitely be reading more of Dostoyesvky.

~~~
danbolt
It’s wordy and all over the place, but I loved the Brothers Karamazov in my
early twenties.

~~~
crazynick4
I think a lot of the parts in that book that seemed to be all over the place
would have later come together into something more cohesive by the end of the
second book.

It was supposed to be the first part of two books but he died before he wrote
the second. Which is why I think there was much more to the plot and there may
have been some more twists beside what was already revealed in the first.

------
kbuchanan
For anyone who loves Dostoyevsky, I’d recommend Alexander Solzhenitsyn too.
His writings have a stronger political bent, but his style is firmly in the
Russian tradition, with a mastery of the polyphonic voice—the ability to bring
life to many perspectives—and explores every aspect of life and humanity. A
Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich—a portrait of a gulag prisoner—is the
quickest introduction.

~~~
erikpukinskis
It’s harder to take this work seriously after the way it’s been politicized by
Jordan Peterson.

~~~
james_s_tayler
How does what Peterson have to say effect your opinion on the significance of
the contents of The Gulag Archipelago?

I bought a copy of it, so I could make up my own mind. Peterson brought it to
my attention and it was timely as I read Man's Search For Meaning this year.
That book is very widely read.

I had never even heard of The Gulag Archipelago. Peterson points out that it's
severely under-read in the West compared to how significant it is. He's saying
you should at least read it and judge for yourself and not let only the
ideology itself be the basis on which you judge the ideology.

That seems reasonably sensible to me.

~~~
erikpukinskis
He uses it as a boogeyman, which makes me less inclined to read it. But it
could be great. Just a slight variation in my inclination, I'm not making any
sweeping statement.

~~~
james_s_tayler
He does mention it an awful lot. Then again if he's right about what he's
saying that the ways of thinking that produced those kinds of outcomes are
alive and well and trying to advance their agenda either consciously or
unconsciously, then that seems significant to me.

I guess to that end it's one data point among many.

As I've grown ever more curious about history and have started to dive into
more and more parts of it I find that really reading through things deeply
yourself is a much richer experience than a crude surface level analysis or
taking someone's word for it. I had never heard of it prior to him bringing it
up and it's like holy moly here looks like the exact kind of thing I find
quite engrossing to read.

I think HN book recommendation thread from recently mentioned An Era of
Darkness which I haven't bought yet because I implement a moratorium on buying
books until I get through another 50, but I did add it to my list. That one is
an account of British Rule in India.

Id rather do my best to learn the lessons of history. I think it's a lost art
these days.

------
0ld
Russian literature in a nutshell:

[https://img0.liveinternet.ru/images/attach/d/0/142/711/14271...](https://img0.liveinternet.ru/images/attach/d/0/142/711/142711842_142175260_916D28D36B7C418EAB5D4894BF668387.jpg)

Translation:

Russian classical literature

New man | Odd man | Small man

SUFFERING

~~~
dovvdkc
Just the classical? Just the literature?

I thought that cycle was the nutshell of Russia. Then again I only know Russia
through her authors. Holy S*^% they’re brilliant!

------
pakpoi
Also noteworthy is the beautiful animated short film of the same title by
Aleksandr Petrov, painstakingly made in paint-on-glass animation:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_a_Ridiculous_Man_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_a_Ridiculous_Man_\(film\))

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIr7cs6eEAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIr7cs6eEAs)

------
acqq
Tangential: The picture used there "The 1845 depiction of a galaxy that
inspired Van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night" is attributed to the book which was
published in 2014, but the picture it actually public domain:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Parsons,_3rd_Earl_of_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Parsons,_3rd_Earl_of_Rosse#/media/File:M51Sketch.jpg)

The picture was made by William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Parsons,_3rd_Earl_of_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Parsons,_3rd_Earl_of_Rosse)

As the point in the sky what we today call the "Whirlpool galaxy" was
discovered in 1773 by Charles Messier and "in 1845, William Parsons, 3rd Earl
of Rosse, employing a 72-inch (1.8 m) reflecting telescope at Birr Castle,
Ireland, found the Whirlpool possessed a spiral structure."

Only during the last 100 years we have obtained proofs that a lot of these
objects that what were before called "nebulas" are the galaxies with many
billions of the stars in each of them, and that the Whirlpool galaxy is a
galaxy.

It seems that just the author of the mentioned book from 2014 claims that that
1845 picture inspired Van Gogh. While it's true that the picture was published
in the books at the times when Van Gogh could have seen it, it seems it's
still not proven, and I'm surely not convinced: in the painting of Van Gogh we
can't actually see any spiral star, all shine circularly, and the spiral
shapes are something else (air movements?):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starry_Night](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starry_Night)

so, beware of internets bearing gifts.

On another side, the awareness of the planets being planets and of comparable
size to Earth existed of course much longer, so Dostoyevsky's hero could write
in 1877 something that the readers would even then easily understand (as
quoted in the article):

"If I had previously lived on the moon or in Mars, and I had there been
dishonored and disgraced so utterly that one can only imagine it sometimes in
a dream or a nightmare, and if I afterwards found myself on earth and still
preserved a consciousness of what I had done on the other planet, and if I
knew besides that I would never by any chance return, then, if I were to look
at the moon from the earth — would it be all the same to me or not?"

------
huxflux
Dostoyevsky changed my life.

~~~
badcede
How?

~~~
dovvdkc
I can’t speak for the OP, nor can I express how D. changed my life.

Perhaps D. is the exact opposite of a self-help book at the airport. It’s hard
to read and emotionally devastating. You go into the depths of human
depravity. Sin is real. Modernity is fraught with contradictions, with danger.
Modernity offers mechanical band aids for what are sicknesses of our souls.
For Doestoyevsky the greatest man is Christ but he is what we would consider
an Idiot.

In the end you are offered catharsis. accept it and you are changed.

~~~
simonh
I like they way he challenges himself and his beliefs. If he presents a
character with a contrary position, he doesn’t cheat. He makes them powerful,
compelling, articulate characters and presents their arguments in the best
light. He’s incredibly tough on himself and his protagonists or sympathetic
characters.

------
ignorantguy
that was one of the best reads that I ever had! thanks for posting this.

------
meth2
one of the best readings that occurred to me on HN, I rarely comment on
anything here.

------
q-base
That was a very good read. Thank you very much. I purchased the Kindle version
of "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" after reading this.

I have never read Dostoyevsky before. Any recommendations on where else to
start?

~~~
SL61
Crime and Punishment is a wonderful deep dive into the mind of a really messed
up person. If you like the film Taxi Driver, it is sort of similar, but with a
lot more direct philosophical underpinnings. Raskolnikov has a whole
philosophical framework on why he's allowed to murder the pawn shop owner* and
he spends time explaining and discussing it.

The motif of the nihilistic, disaffected young man is something Fyodor gets a
lot of mileage out of, but he's the master of that genre. Notes From
Underground is similar, but a lot shorter. It's one of the few Dostoevsky
novels I haven't read, so I can't say much more than that. Its opening is his
most famous line: "I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant
man. I think my liver is diseased."

To go against the grain of most recommendations, I'll say that "Notes from a
Dead House" (the name differs depending on translation) is a good place to
start too. It's essentially his prison memoirs, slightly fictionalized to
avoid censors. There are a lot of little details that stood out and affected
me deeply. e.g: He recalls a small dog that was often abused by the other
prisoners, and was so timid that it would "sink to the ground on all fours and
start trembling all over" when he petted it. The book has so many small, human
details that really show the personal history that influenced his later books.
He has an eye for those details that most people would gloss over.

The thing to keep in mind is that, across Dostoyevsky's novels, there are a
lot of scenes where people stand around discussing philosophy. It's great and
engaging if you're into it, but it will kill your enjoyment if it's not your
thing. The Brothers Karamazov and Demons are books to avoid for your first
attempt; they include a lot of that. Fyodor is really preachy in general, but
this increases over time in his career, so his earlier books are more plot-
focused. And he's all about symbolism, like the hypothetical author in the
famous "curtains are blue" meme.

Finally, don't worry too much about translation. Pevear and Volokhonsky are
always the most recommended, but that is more due to current trends in
translation than their objective superiority. That's not to say they're bad,
but any modern translation is going to be fine. Constance Garnett is the only
one who's not so great, but I had a fine experience with her translation of
C&P as my first Dostoyesvky novel, so it's hardly unreadable.

*not a spoiler, this happens in the opening

~~~
badpun
Let’s not forget the context, too - Dostojewski was very worried about the
individualistic and nihilistic trends he noticed in the Western world and
which were slowly seeping through to Russia as well. He was worried they’ll
lead to a collapse of civilization, and was looking for an answer on how to
prevent that from happening. His books are an exploration of this subject.

------
throw-far-away
Yes.

And also: Chekhov, Nabokov. Of course: Tolstoy for those super-sized tomes
that give you a free workout.

