Thread: Dostoevsky
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Old 05.01.2006, 04:48 PM   #4
atari 2600
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i think i read The Brothers Karmazov (Garnett) after I read Crime & Punishment (Coulson) too...it's so cool to read about all these people reading Dostoyevsky.

TheDom, the next one you read really depends on what aspect of Dostoyevsky's dialectical polemic you want to further explore. If you want to get an idea of the tribulatory conditions that Raskolnikov lived through in Siberia (which is omitted at the end from Crime & Punishment...instead D. just cuts straight to the Epilogue) then you might want to check out Memoirs from the House of the Dead which is semi-autobiographical. In the book, Alexander Petrovich is the author of the memoirs & serves a narrator; he has been imprisoned (complete with fetters) for murdering his wife. Fyodor was sent to Siberia for having a printing press & as you probably know, narrowly escaped death by firing squad.
If you want to go into the dark recesses of Raskolnikov's feverish madness & nihilism further, you might want to read Dostoyevsky's most disturbing work, The Possessed. Go to a good used book store if you can & find a Modern Library Constance Garnett translation; all you can find in new book stores is a Penguin David Magarshack at best & as others have commented on, this is the Dostoyevsky (i always use the Garnett spelling) title that has the most variations of translations & is also known as The Devils & also as Demons. Or read the short Notes from the Underground about "the Underground Man" who is "a basement dweller" & an older, more bitter, burned-out version of the nihilist.
If you want to go in the opposite direction & read about self-sacrifice you can read "The Idiot" about Prince Myshkin who in many ways is an expanded earlier character study of Alyosha Karamazov.

If you want a little of everything, then Constance Garnett's translation of The Brothers Karamazov will do well.
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