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Fyodor was a gambler, so his many books were written to pay off his debts, and were finshed in some short time, so He once said:''If I could have time like Tolstoy for a book, it would be so good that world would be talking about it for at least 100 years...''
P.S. Tolstoy was writing Ana Karenina for 7 years, Fyodor wrote Idiot, C&P and Possesed in only 6...
I just read about that on the introduction to The Gambler. Dostoevsky's works will be talked about for hundreds of years to come! :banana:
Dostoevsky is THE MAN.
He and the rest of the world knew he was the best. Tolstoy cried in his sleep because Dostoevsky haunted his dreams.
On a side note, for those of you who watch Lost, Ernest Hemingway was upset because he thought that Dostoevsky was the best novelist in the world and that he would never surpass him. . .dam right
Dostoevsky is the best writer of all time. Once he chooses a character, wither it is a murderer or a teenager, he analyzes it thoroughly, sinks deep in it, and encloses all the features of it, till u reach a point were u can't seperate him from the character he is dicussing, and you would wonder: did Dostoevsky ever committed a crime to be able to know all this thoughts and fantacies that a true murderer live in?
Damn straight.Quote:
Originally Posted by bazarov
Being a genius(Tolstoy) is hard,being a genius on demand(Dostoevsky) is why he is the best writer of all time.
Tolstoy is grand, big and huge. On the other hand Dostoevsky is profound, deep and complex. This duo can be compared in the same way as Michaelangelo and da Vinci or in Shakespearean terms Lear and Hamlet.
If we are silly to think the time to finish a book is relevant then Dostoievisky is Pale. Voltaire wrote Candide is 3 days.
Tolstoy is huge, with demands so big or even bigger than Dostoievisky. Check out his own Life, his commitments, his aesthetic theory. It is no wonder that if you think so well, Dostoievisky do seem like a Tolstoy character and Tolstoy like a Dostoievisky character.
Dostoevsky was a brilliant mind. The fact that he was not ignorant to the fact that the Jesuits, or sons of Loyola, were indeed a military organization, not a religious order, makes him ever the more likable.
“The Jesuits…are simply the Romish army for the earthly sovereignty of the world in the future, with the Pontiff of Rome for emperor…that’s their ideal. …It is simple lust of power, of filthy earthly gain, of domination – something like a universal serfdom with them [i.e., the Jesuits] as masters – that’s all they stand for. They don’t even believe in God perhaps.” - Dostoevsky
JCamilo, that's a popular rumor but I do not believe it to be true. Voltaire probably wrote the book in under a year, but 3 days? That's wishful thinking at it's best.
I really don't care who can write the books faster, if it Dostoevsky had 10 years to write Brother Karamazov, it couldn't be any better. Tolstoy is great, really really great, but as much as I love Anna Karenina, any of Dostoevsky's novels is better, and that doesn't relly depend on the time it took to write it. Neither of those two writers has to worry about his work being forgotten, people will talk about as long as literature exists, writers that great are very rare, books as great as Brother Karamazov even rarer.
Well he was right about one thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by bazarov
Was he wrong about something?
Well Dostoevsky infers that had he been able to write under more leisurely circumstances, as Tolstoy had, his novels would have been better than they are. However people do still talk about his great novels more than 100 years in the future.
I think that there are several styles of great authors, the ones who write one novel in their lifetime, spending their entire career to perfect a masterpiece, and the ones who shell out a book per year. I think there's nothing wrong with spending a long time on your work, though I tend to agree with Dostoevsky.
He didn't think that it should be written in short period; he just had no time to write it in longer period. He wanted it, but he couldn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathor
It's a genuine shame that he didn't have more time to write, one can only contemplate at how many more influential works he would have written and how much more incredible they would have been. I got to also admit man, I've been reading a lot of your threads and I have the upmost respect for how well read you are, it's refreshing to actually see someone who throughly enjoys literature hahaha.
However, not all his novels are written to pay debts and not everything Tolstoi wrote took years. Speed (rumor or not, Candide was written very fast and it is not the only work) does not mean anything. According the story, Ode to a nightingale was written in one afternoon as well and Flaubert once took 3 months to write 2 pages of Madame Bovary. It is a matter of style, only this.
Dostoevsky wrote some stories to earn money and распалтиться with debts, but its all novels were написанны not for money, I read his letters where he spoke time and again that though money is required to it now, but nevertheless it postponed a novel writing.
For example the novel the player, it perhaps its unique novel which he wrote for Money. And generally this phrase speaks not so much about that that he wrote something for money, how many about that that are necessary to it was to earn money and to contain a family. It as worked as the chief editor in magazine.
/ the Russian reader