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So...after this, there's Notes From Underground*, Crime and Punishment*, The Gambler, The Idiot*, The Eternal Husband*, Demons, The Adolescent, and The Brothers Karamazov*.
* Being books I've read previously, but ahmo go at them again...except for The Brothers Karamazov and The Eternal Husband, since those were the books I started this Dostoyevsky project with.
And then there are 18 short stories (according to Wikipedia)...4 of which I've read this cycle. So hey...I'm not far off from being able to declare that I've read The Complete Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Woot!
...oh, and A Writer's Diary, which is (1) long...about 1500 pages spread over two volumes, (2) expensive to buy...like $35 per volume, and (3) (Thank you, Lord) available at Internet Archive. For Free.
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Stopped by the library and they had a copy of Notes From a Dead House.
A little blurry, but yes, THOSE motherfuckers. But I decided I would give it a try, as I'm so annoyed by the many typos in the Kindle edition of Dostoyevsky's novels. If I hit too many absurdities in the P&V NfaDH, I'll just go back to the typo-riddled version.
So hey, maybe there's some hope for this book. We'll see. I knocked out the Foreword (xvi pages) and will start on the novel proper tomorrow. 311 pages...though that includes a six page bit from A Writer's Diary. But hey...I'm counting it. Making this one 327 pages, which should be an 11 day journey.
Day 1 (DDRD 2,270) January 18, 2024
Read to page 30.
Day 2 (DDRD 2,271) January 19, 2024
Read to page 80.
--and thought it quite fetching, so I thought I'd check and see what Constance had done with it. This was the reverse of my usual methodology, as previously I'd read a P&V line, thought it was terrible, and went to Constance to see what it should have been.
Constance said, "He looked down upon all around him from the height of his grandeur." (1629)
Hmm. On the one hand, Constance's version is more direct, no jibber-jabber. But once again I'm going to have to tip my hat do P&V. Is it possible that the fucked up shit I read from them was anomalous...maybe early work when they were finding their way?
Hmmm.
" Before my eyes, during my life in prison, A -v turned into and remained a piece of meat with teeth and a stomach, and with an unquenchable thirst for the coarsest, most brutish carnal pleasures, and to satisfy the least and most whimsical of these pleasures, he was capable of cold-blooded murder, cutting throats, anything so long as it left no traces." (75)
🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥
Constance?
"During the whole time of my punishment, he was never anything more in my eyes than a piece of flesh furnished with teeth and a stomach, greedy for the most offensive and ferocious animal enjoyments, for the satisfaction of which he was ready to assassinate anyone." (1652)
Um...point P&V.
Here's A bit of profundity:
"A prisoner is greedy for money to the point of convulsions, to a darkening of the mind, and if he does indeed throw it away like wood chips when he carouses, he dies it for something he considers on a higher level than money. What is higher than money for a prisoner? Freedom, or at least the dream of freedom. And prisoners are great dreamers." (79)
So if you've ever wondered why a poor kid wears $200 shoes, or why someone drives a car they can't afford, or name your thorn...well, that's why, ennit? To possess the illusion of freedom, fleeting though it might be. Illusory though it might be.
Day 3 (DDRD 2,272) January 20, 2024
Read to page 110...despite a day which included 4 episodes if Echo, a basketball game for Joe, a movie with Pat and Jacqueline, dinner at Chili's with Jacqueline, the second half of a Ravens playoff game, and a Packers playoff game. The pow pow pow pow power if positive reading.
Day 4 (DDRD 2,273) January 21, 2024
Read to page 150.
"Humane treatment may make a human being even of someone in whom the image of God has faded long ago." (111-112)
Well...that would be nice to believe, wouldn't it? It's essentially a denial of a concept of the intrinsically evil nature of human beings...or, if you prefer, an affirmation of the intrinsically good nature of human beings. Oddly enough, that's the antithesis of the Christian perspective. That would be scanned.
Day 5 (DDRD 2,274) January 22, 2024
Read to page 193.
Day 6 (DDRD 2,275) January 23, 2024
Read to page 220.
And since the text ends on page 304 (pages 305 to 311 are Notes), that means I have a mere 84 pages to go. I think I can do that in two days.
I feel compelled to take down this large section of text...but since I'm too lazy to write it all down, I found a different version on Project Gutenberg and did the old cut and paste. This is from a translation published by Everyman's Library in 1911, but I haven't been Scoble to identify the translator. Which is a shame, 'cause this guy / gal is good. Check this out:
"There are people who, like tigers, are greedy for blood. Those who have possessed unlimited power over the flesh, blood, and soul of their fellow-creatures, of their brethren according to the law of Christ, those who have possessed this power and who[Pg 229] have been able to degrade with a supreme degradation, another being made in the image of God; these men are incapable of resisting their desires and their thirst for sensations. Tyranny is a habit capable of being developed, and at last becomes a disease. I declare that the best man in the world can become hardened and brutified to such a point, that nothing will distinguish him from a wild beast. Blood and power intoxicate; they aid the development of callousness and debauchery; the mind then becomes capable of the most abnormal cruelty in the form of pleasure; the man and the citizen disappear for ever in the tyrant; and then a return to human dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible.
"That the possibility of such license has a contagious effect on the whole of society there is no doubt. A society which looks upon such things with an indifferent eye, is already infected to the marrow. In a word, the right granted to a man to inflict corporal punishment on his fellow-men, is one of the plague-spots of our society. It is the means of annihilating all civic spirit. Such a right contains in germ the elements of inevitable, imminent decomposition."
Oh. Just thought to check my Kindle version of this book, and found that the translator was Henry Sutherland Edwards.
ANYway...is that Trump and the MAGA G.O.P. or what?
Day 7 (DDRD 2,276) January 24, 2024
Read to page 260. So yeah, one more day ought to do it.
In some ways I think this quote sums up Dostoyevsky's whole philosophy:
"In prison it sometimes happened that you would know a man for several years and think he was a beast, not a man, and despise him. And suddenly a chance moment would come when his soul, on an involuntary impulse, would open up and you would see in it such riches, feeling, heart, such a clear understanding of his own and others' suffering, as if your own eyes had been opened, and in the first moment you would not even believe what you saw and heard."
In his world, no one is beyond hope of redemption.
You can even live an evil life and repent as you're dying on a cross and be forgiven.
Ahem.
Took a trip to the library today and picked up
That's a whole lot of love there. I don't know if I have it in me to take this on, but I'll nibble at it and see how it goes.
Day 8 (DDRD 2,277) January 25, 2024
Read to page 311 = The End.
The second half of this book wasn't as good as the first half, but I'd still rate this one as Worth Reading. And more than that. I'd say the chronologically speaking, this was Dostoyevsky's first Dostoyevskian work. It has shadows and nooks and cranies. It has faith in mankind, even as it spits its revulsion for him into its handkerchief.
(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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