IntravenousJava
05-22-2012, 04:12 PM
Having not read any Dostoevsky for some time, it was fun being transported back into the world of samovars and titular councilors. Scenes of poverty and despair were immediately reminiscent of Dickens (although perhaps not with as much comic relief to soften them). I couldn't help but reflect, as I always do, on the absolute necessity of reading, if one is to attain to a broader, deeper appreciation for life and its vicissitudes. I realize, of course, that my "experiences" while reading are vicarious at best, but experiences of a sort nonetheless. (Marcel Proust set forth some penetrating insights into this process in Swann's Way.) Poverty I understand conceptually and, at least to some degree, actually, but not nearly to the extent depicted in Poor Folk. I think this phenomenon represents what is, for me at least, the most rewarding aspect of reading: the quest to extrapolate what is familiar from what is unfamiliar. Since human reality is at once subjective and relational, there is an inductive logic at work in reading (as in life), whereby we move from particular phenomena to universal themes.
For me the most compelling theme of Poor Folk is the lifelong struggle to balance interior beliefs and principles with exterior events and circumstances. Definitions of success and happiness are intensely personal, albeit heavily influenced by one's society and its mores. Moreover, there seems to be a sliding scale in accordance with which these definitions are adapted to one's station and prevailing circumstances. Makar, our "hero" in the tale, struggles to content himself with his lot in life, and, at the same time, to preserve a sense of dignity and decorum. There is a clear sense of fatalism in most of his attitudes and actions. His conceptual model of the universe is deterministic and immutable. He affords himself little or no right to complain of his straightened circumstances, for, in his narrow view, everything is as it should be.
Herein lies the fundamental Comedie humaine, the lifelong struggle to actualize and articulate oneself in the context of conflicting forces within and without. There are often vast, seemingly unbridgeable gaps between what we would do to secure our dreams, what we should do according to society, and yet again what we must do according to our natural instinct to survive. I believe Dostoevsky has captured this completely, and with a degree of pathos remarkable in such a young writer.
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. --Francis Bacon
For me the most compelling theme of Poor Folk is the lifelong struggle to balance interior beliefs and principles with exterior events and circumstances. Definitions of success and happiness are intensely personal, albeit heavily influenced by one's society and its mores. Moreover, there seems to be a sliding scale in accordance with which these definitions are adapted to one's station and prevailing circumstances. Makar, our "hero" in the tale, struggles to content himself with his lot in life, and, at the same time, to preserve a sense of dignity and decorum. There is a clear sense of fatalism in most of his attitudes and actions. His conceptual model of the universe is deterministic and immutable. He affords himself little or no right to complain of his straightened circumstances, for, in his narrow view, everything is as it should be.
Herein lies the fundamental Comedie humaine, the lifelong struggle to actualize and articulate oneself in the context of conflicting forces within and without. There are often vast, seemingly unbridgeable gaps between what we would do to secure our dreams, what we should do according to society, and yet again what we must do according to our natural instinct to survive. I believe Dostoevsky has captured this completely, and with a degree of pathos remarkable in such a young writer.
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. --Francis Bacon