It's beginning to look a lot like more Dostoyevsky. So, flowing chronology AND Brother C's wake, I'm going for The Double. I've never read this one before, but have read many references to it, and got the impression that it was pretty central to Dostoyevsky's thought & methodology.
Well see how THAT goes.
190 pages, so about six days' worth. 🏁
Day 1 (DDRD 2,232) December 11, 2023
Read to page 206 yesterday (20 pages), then read to page 236. So that's a pretty good start (50 pages diwn, about 1/4th of the journey). Sorry to say that it hasn't really hooked me yet...but there are still 140 or so pages to go, so we'll see.
"...he lay in his bed without moving, as though he were not yet quite certain whether he were awake or still asleep, whether all that was going on around him were real and actual, or the continuation of his confused dreams." (186)
Reminds me of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" opening. Instead of turning into a giant bug, Golyadkin splits in two.
Also, it seems that Mr. Golyadkin lives in a tiny room (reminiscent of Raskolnikov's in Crime and Punishment), yet he has 750 rubles and a servant. (Albeit a rather ridiculous looking servant: "He had on a much-worn green livery, with frayed gold braid on it, apparently made for a man a yard taller than Petrushka.")
His servant wears a negligé? Meriam-Webster has a secondary definition "carelessly informal or incomplete attire" (https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/negligee), but I'm thinking we have a FAILure to translate properly.
More on that thought: hast instead of haste?
"It’d let them all know" instead of "I'd"? (190)
"...he admired a fashionable and very toilet table for ladies’ use." (207) ?
In other news:
Funny: Dr. Krestyan Ivanovitch Rutenspitz is described as "elderly," and then we're told that his "whiskers...were beginning to turn grey" (194), which probably means he's in his late 40s or 50s. What I wouldn't give to be in my 40s. Or even 50s, for that matter.
On page 198, Mr. Golyadkin tells the doctor,"I’ve no taste for contemptible duplicity...." A bit of foreshadowing, that.
Hoopla had a copy of The Double translated by Evelyn Harden, so I thought I'd have a look at what she did with my Constance problems.
Instead of negligé, Evelyn had "the outfit in which he was wont to go to sleep." Which seems much less homoerotic. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
Instead of "huddled with almost panic-stricken hast into the darkest corner of his carriage", Evelyn has "hastily, and even fearfully, huddled into the darkest corner of his coach."
Instead of "It’d let them all know, if only...”, Evelyn has "I'd tell them all a thing of two, but...."
And instead of "...he admired a fashionable and very toilet table for ladies’ use", Evelyn has "regarded with pleasure a fashionable and extremely fanciful ladies' dressing table...."
Looks like Evelyn has all four rounds here. Oh, Constance. I was COUNTing on you.
Day 2 (DDRD 2,233) December 12, 2023
Read to page 266.
Day 3 (DDRD 2,234) December 13, 2023
Read to page 305. However..after a number of missteps like this...
At the beginning of Chapter 8, Constance has Golyadkin exclaim, "What does this new circumstance portend?” (267) Which was so awkward that I had to have a look at Evelyn did with this. She had, "What does this new occurrence mean?" Which is still pretty awkward, but is at least a little better. What the hack is going on with Ms. Garnett? I'm thinking that this must have been one of her earliest translations. Wikipedia? Nope. By the time she did this one, shed been translating Dostoyevsky for five years, and had already done all of his major works. Hmmm. So I've got nothin'.
...and various minor typos, I took a look at the hoopla translation by Even Harden. But it was rife with insertions directing that this be deleted and that be added in...which was even worse than the typos and awkwardnesses of Constance. So after searching unsuccessfully for another option, it was back to Constance.
Day 4 (DDRD 2,235) December 14, 2023
Read to page 340.
From Golyadkin's* dream:
"And all these precisely similar Golyadkins set to running after one another as soon as they appeared, and stretched in a long chain like a file of geese, gobbling after the real Mr. Golyadkin, so there was nowhere to escape from these duplicates — so that Mr. Golyadkin, who was in every way deserving of compassion, was breathless with terror; so that at last a terrible multitude of duplicates had sprung into being; so that the whole town was obstructed at last by duplicate Golyadkins, and the police officer, seeing such a breach of decorum, was obliged to seize all these duplicates by the collar and to put them into the watch-house, which happened to be beside him..." (309)
* Autocorrect insists that thus should be "Holy a skin's." You know, as in "I went to the grocery store, but they were all out of Holy a skin's." Do we REALLY have to worry about AI replacing us?
Addendum: read to page 375 = The End.
Have to say that this was not a great read. The premise was interesting--more so if you ignore the fact that it's been done to death since Dostoyevsky did this--but the story just didn't go anywhere. There wasn't enough ambiguity for the reader (or at least This reader) to be able to wonder if this was a mental health issue, and if it was supposed to be Real real, then that didn't really work out, either. And, though I'm loathe to say it, a great deal if this story just wasn't very interesting. Not to mention that the word "hero" was used way too often--365 times according to my text search. Sigh.
Onward and upward.
(1) Leviathan 63 days, 729 pages
(2) Stalingrad 27 days, 982 pages
(3) Life and Fate 26 days, 880 pages
(4) The Second World War 34 + 32 + 40 + 43 + 31 + 32 days = 212 days, 4,379 pages
(5) Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming 10 days, 572 pages
(6) The Great Bridge 25 days, 636 pages
(7) The Path Between the Seas 29 days, 698 pages
(8) Blake: Prophet Against Empire, 23 days, 523 pages
(9) Jerusalem 61 days, 1,266 pages
(10) Voice of the Fire 9 days, 320 pages
(11) The Fountainhead 15 days, 720 pages
(13) The Pacific Trilogy: The Conquering Tide 28 days, 656 pages
(14) The Pacific Trilogy: Twilight of the Gods 31 days, 944 pages
(16) Toward Jazz 18 days, 224 pages
(17) The Worlds of Jazz 13 days, 279 pages
(18) To Be or Not...to Bop 14 days, 571 pages
(19) Kind of Blue 4 days, 224 pages
(20) Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and his Masterpiece: 5 days, 256 pages
(21) Miles: The Autobiography 16 days, 445 pages
(21) A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album: 8 days, 287 pages
(22) Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest 8 days, 304 pages
(23) Living With Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings 11 days 325 pages
(25) Oliver Twist 16 days, 542 pages
(26) Nicholas Nickleby 27 days, 1,045 pages
(27) The Old Curiosity Shop 22 days, 753 pages
(28) Barnaby Rudge 24 days, 866 pages
(30) Martin Chuzzlewit 32 days, 1,045 pages
(31) American Notes 10 days, 324 pages
(32) Pictures From Italy 7 days, 211 pages
(33) Christmas Stories Volume I 10 days, 456 pages
(34) Christmas Stories Volume II 15 days, 472 pages
(1) Miscellaneous Papers Volume II 28 days (don't count, while reading BH), 494 pages
(2) Bleak House 37 days, 1,098 pages
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