Psycho Killer, The Russian Edition

[hellsapoppin]

Ignacy Hryniewiecki - his terrorist bomb attacked killed the Tsar:






His nickname = Kitten



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Communist VI Lenin adored and could not live without cats:












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Communist cats:












Beware of subversive ideologies and activities promoted by cats & their hoomans!!!

[bounty]

be back later in the day for Dostoevsky but in the meantime, those were good poppin. theres so much funny stuff out there with cats.

have you guys seen "owlkitty?" this is one of the better ones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3rQ3328Tok

[Danik 2016]

Poor cat, bounty! I hope all images were made by AI.

[bounty]

owlkitty is a real cat and her homepage actually has lots of clips of "the making of..." that you might enjoy danik.

[Sancho]

I do remember you pointing that out, Poppin. I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for it in the book. So far the only overt jewish references I’ve come across are when one of the characters referred to Alyona as “rich as a Jew,” and another when Raz’ refers to Luzhin as a Jew. I suppose the underpinning of Slavophilism is racism or xenophobia, which the Jewish diaspora would be keenly aware of.

Good side trip, by the way. I live in a house with a highly opinionated Siamese cat. His name is Neko-san. We wanted to give him an Asian name and that’s all we could think of. His superpower is peeing on the sofa.

[bounty]

that columbo connection was pretty neat. my mother was a big fan of that show and I remember it well.

i finished part II last night, which ended with his family in his room waiting for him, and am just about to enter into the conversation between raskol and dounia.

I was on a long walk in the woods this morning with an old friend and one of the things that came up in conversation is germane to both raskol and dounia, and raskol and raz---to what extent our we our brothers keepers.

off in a slightly different direction but also hearkening back to some earlier posts:

I think it might have taken phil liggett some years before he and some of his fellow cycling commentators figured out how to pronounce peter sagan's last name.

they still continue to mess up Jonas vingegaard to the point of me wanting to writing them a letter yelling at them all.

a few years ago a kazahkstani tennis player burst on to the women's tour, elena rybakini. views would go back and forth between hearing rye-back-uh-nuh and rye-buh-kee-nee. I had a Russian penpal at the time and asked her, if I remember rightly I think she nodded at the latter as correct. my goodness ask the girl!

for the occasional character in the book:

(I find myself wondering if there is phonetic consistency in name pronunciation. can maria Sharapova be a useful guide?)

theres "Petrovitch." petro-vitch or puh-trovich? seems like all the Russians in movies ive seen would have gone for the latter.

zametov: zah-met-off or zam-uh-toff? seems like the latter here too.

semyon zaharovitch marmeladov---"semyon" seems straight forward. the middle name seems easily phonetic but actually could be said two different ways too. and the last name allows for mar-muh-layd-off or mar-mel-a-doff.

[bounty]

someone lots smarter than me is going to have to explain how raz's behavior while walking raskol's mother and sister home was anything other than bizarre.

[hellsapoppin]

Raz led them to Zossimov who was Rascal's doctor. He appears to have some superficial insight into Rascal's state of mind and health. He attributes the bizarre behavior to difficult life circumstances and to certain outside influences. The "product of several material and moral influences ... certain ideas." He feels that the family presence will provide comfort and relief to the patient. No doubt this viewpoint represents Dostoyevsky's idea that traditional Russian values are the remedy for society's discord and for comforting malcontents like the Nihilists, socialists, and other dissenters in that society.

IIRC from past readings (again, going back 50+ years or so), socialists or other dissenters of that era were reputed to be anti-family. There was Freidrich Engels who wrote a treatise on families that supposedly taught how families emerged as a way to suppress the masses while elites governed and exploited all. Therefore, families were said to be some form of evil. Though Engel's book was written a few years after Dostoyevsky wrote C+P these ideas were floated around by other thinkers of that era.

Here Dostoyevsky is opposing such views by saying families bring about relief, comfort, and stabilize the social order.

[bounty]

i'll buy lots of what youre saying poppin, but I don't think Dostoevsky having raz behave like that towards raskol's mother and sister can be completely attributable to the author trying to make a case for the worth of family. that could have been accomplished with some simple and commonplace dialog---"im glad youre here, family is important and your son needs you." instead, he's saying things that are over the top---"you are a fount of goodness, purity, sense, and perfection....I want to kiss your hands here at once, on my knees..." and indeed he falls on his knees.

he barely knows raskol, barely has a relationship with him, raskol wasn't near death, and has never met the mother or sister before. his behavior is already obsequious, given these other elements, it becomes excessively so, and it makes raz out to be a bit of an over the top whack job.

so the question becomes to me---is Dostoevsky doing what youre suggesting, and if so, is it effective (im rather distracted by its absurdity), or contrarily, is he telling us something more about raz that's going to develop as the story goes along.

[bounty]

ah---there you go! (from later in the chapter):

razumihin, of course, was ridiculous in his sudden drunken infatuation for avdotya romanovna. yet apart from his eccentric condition, many people would have thought it justified if they had seen avdotya romanovna…

[Sancho]

That’s kinda what I thought about it. Raz’ was pretty polluted when he first met mom and sis, hence his emotions were all over the place.

I’ll also say, I see three broad levels of this story (so far). There’s the crime story level, the political commentary level, and psychological exploration level. The first is easy. The second and the third are gonna take some work.

[Danik 2016]

i'll buy lots of what youre saying poppin, but I don't think Dostoevsky having raz behave like that towards raskol's mother and sister can be completely attributable to the author trying to make a case for the worth of family. that could have been accomplished with some simple and commonplace dialog---"im glad youre here, family is important and your son needs you." instead, he's saying things that are over the top---"you are a fount of goodness, purity, sense, and perfection....I want to kiss your hands here at once, on my knees..." and indeed he falls on his knees.

he barely knows raskol, barely has a relationship with him, raskol wasn't near death, and has never met the mother or sister before. his behavior is already obsequious, given these other elements, it becomes excessively so, and it makes raz out to be a bit of an over the top whack job.

so the question becomes to me---is Dostoevsky doing what youre suggesting, and if so, is it effective (im rather distracted by its absurdity), or contrarily, is he telling us something more about raz that's gobe ing to develop as the story goes along.

Raz is drunk. But I think this exaggerated sentimental behavior has may be to do with him being Russian and certainly with him being a Dostoevsky character.

[bounty]

drunk and presaging wayne and garth: we're not worthy!

[Sancho]

Raz is drunk. But I think this exaggerated sentimental behavior has may be to do with him being Russian and certainly with him being a Dostoevsky character.

Haha. True dat!

[hellsapoppin]

ah---there you go! (from later in the chapter):

I was going to answer your question with that quote but you beat me to it.

Still the part about certain elements in that society foreshadowing Engels' anti family views is true. Sorry, but I just can't go into researching that part of history to prove the point. So, I'll leave the thought up in the air to be accepted or not as people see fit.