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Thread: Russian book club

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    Default Russian book club

    “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” – Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

    “Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself” – Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, The Brother Karamazov

    “Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.” – Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Vol. 1

    “Kindness. The only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You'll get nowhere with an animal if you use terror, no matter what its level of development may be. That I have maintained, do maintain and always will maintain. People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour – white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system.” – Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov

    “It is uncomfortable to ask condemned people about their sentences just as it is awkward to ask wealthy people why they need so much money, why they use their wealth so poorly, and why they don’t just get rid of it when they recognize that it is the cause of their unhappiness.” – Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

    “In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it.” – Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

    “Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.” – Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin

    “I have already several times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling – should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men. Yet, strange to say – though it is undeniable that the universal armaments and destructive wars which are ruining the peoples result from that one feeling – all my arguments showing the backwardness, anachronism, and harmfulness of patriotism have been met, and are still met, either by silence, by intentional misinterpretation, or by a strange unvarying reply to the effect that only bad patriotism (Jingoism or Chauvinism) is evil, but that real good patriotism is a very elevated moral feeling, to condemn which is not only irrational but wicked. What this real, good patriotism consists in, we are never told; or, if anything is said about it, instead of explanation we get declamatory, inflated phrases, or, finally, some other conception is substituted for patriotism – something which has nothing in common with the patriotism we all know, and from the results of which we all suffer so severely.” – Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy


    Thank you: Olga, Marina, Vera.

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    Ahh Russian novelist...why say in 3 words what can be said in 30,000!
    You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic!

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    "This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty -- shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and because she didn't ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child's groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to dear, kind God'! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am making you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I'll leave off if you like."

    "Nevermind. I want to suffer too," muttered Alyosha.

    "One picture, only one more, because it's so curious, so characteristic, and I have only just read it in some collection of Russian antiquities. I've forgotten the name. I must look it up. It was in the darkest days of serfdom at the beginning of the century, and long live the Liberator of the People! There was in those days a general of aristocratic connections, the owner of great estates, one of those men -- somewhat exceptional, I believe, even then -- who, retiring from the service into a life of leisure, are convinced that they've earned absolute power over the lives of their subjects. There were such men then. So our general, settled on his property of two thousand souls, lives in pomp, and domineers over his poor neighbours as though they were dependents and buffoons. He has kennels of hundreds of hounds and nearly a hundred dog-boys -- all mounted, and in uniform. One day a serf-boy, a little child of eight, threw a stone in play and hurt the paw of the general's favourite hound. 'Why is my favourite dog lame?' He is told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog's paw. 'So you did it.' The general looked the child up and down. 'Take him.' He was taken -- taken from his mother and kept shut up all night. Early that morning the general comes out on horseback, with the hounds, his dependents, dog-boys, and huntsmen, all mounted around him in full hunting parade. The servants are summoned for their edification, and in front of them all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought from the lock-up. It's a gloomy, cold, foggy, autumn day, a capital day for hunting. The general orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked. He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry.... 'Make him run,' commands the general. 'Run! run!' shout the dog-boys. The boy runs.... 'At him!' yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother's eyes!... I believe the general was afterwards declared incapable of administering his estates. Well -- what did he deserve? To be shot? To be shot for the satisfaction of our moral feelings? Speak, Alyosha!

    "To be shot," murmured Alyosha, lifting his eyes to Ivan with a pale, twisted smile.

    "Bravo!" cried Ivan delighted. "If even you say so... You're a pretty monk! So there is a little devil sitting in your heart, Alyosha Karamazov!"
    Wanna make America great, buy American owned, made in the USA, we do. AF Veteran, INFJ-A, I am not PC.

    "I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it." Voltaire

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mott the Hoople View Post
    Ahh Russian novelist...why say in 3 words what can be said in 30,000!
    For real!

    I blame it on the long, dark, cold Russian winters. Being trapped indoors for eight months a year either turns one towards vodka.... or it gives one lots of time to think about the human condition. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky were basically philosophers of a sort, and their massive tomes I believe give a false impression that Russian literature is by nature epic and vast. Anton Chekhov was, in fact, basically the inventor of the modern short story and writes in an economical, almost impressionistic way. Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy and others wrote many short stories which are quite good.

    But I totally know what you mean. It took me about six months to finish Brothers Karamazov. And a couple weeks ago I almost picked up Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, but it took two hands to even lift it! I was so intimidated by the size, I ended up getting some comic books instead!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    For real!

    I blame it on the long, dark, cold Russian winters. Being trapped indoors for eight months a year either turns one towards vodka.... or it gives one lots of time to think about the human condition. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky were basically philosophers of a sort, and their massive tomes I believe give a false impression that Russian literature is by nature epic and vast. Anton Chekhov was, in fact, basically the inventor of the modern short story and writes in an economical, almost impressionistic way. Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy and others wrote many short stories which are quite good.

    But I totally know what you mean. It took me about six months to finish Brothers Karamazov. And a couple weeks ago I almost picked up Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, but it took two hands to even lift it! I was so intimidated by the size, I ended up getting some comic books instead!
    Read Anna even if it takes months, it's well worth it. I read it going back and forth to work via public transportation and it did take a long time, but it's a great book... sad and depressing but great. Picture Vivien Leigh as Anna while you're reading. She was just so beautiful.



    “What greater gift than the love of a cat.”
    ― Charles Dickens

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    Quote Originally Posted by christiefan915 View Post
    Read Anna even if it takes months, it's well worth it. I read it going back and forth to work via public transportation and it did take a long time, but it's a great book... sad and depressing but great. Picture Vivien Leigh as Anna while you're reading. She was just so beautiful.

    Thanks, it is on my bucket list, and I appreciate the recommendation.

    Reading during the commute is the way to go.
    I like to read on my lunch break at work. Almost every day. That is how I finished Dostoyevsky tome, and that's how I finished reading all six bloody books in the Harry Potter series (p.s. I should punch myself in the mouth for being such a geek).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” – Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

    “Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself” – Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, The Brother Karamazov

    “Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.” – Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Vol. 1

    “Kindness. The only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You'll get nowhere with an animal if you use terror, no matter what its level of development may be. That I have maintained, do maintain and always will maintain. People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour – white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system.” – Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov

    “It is uncomfortable to ask condemned people about their sentences just as it is awkward to ask wealthy people why they need so much money, why they use their wealth so poorly, and why they don’t just get rid of it when they recognize that it is the cause of their unhappiness.” – Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

    “In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it.” – Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

    “Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.” – Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin

    “I have already several times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling – should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men. Yet, strange to say – though it is undeniable that the universal armaments and destructive wars which are ruining the peoples result from that one feeling – all my arguments showing the backwardness, anachronism, and harmfulness of patriotism have been met, and are still met, either by silence, by intentional misinterpretation, or by a strange unvarying reply to the effect that only bad patriotism (Jingoism or Chauvinism) is evil, but that real good patriotism is a very elevated moral feeling, to condemn which is not only irrational but wicked. What this real, good patriotism consists in, we are never told; or, if anything is said about it, instead of explanation we get declamatory, inflated phrases, or, finally, some other conception is substituted for patriotism – something which has nothing in common with the patriotism we all know, and from the results of which we all suffer so severely.” – Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy


    Thank you: Olga, Marina, Vera.
    Whimper and Wither

    There must be something seriously wrong with all that superficial wisdom, because it was followed by totalitarian Communist tyranny.
    On the outside, trickling down on the Insiders

    We won't live free until the Democrats, and their voters, live in fear.

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    Quote Originally Posted by The Sage of Main Street View Post
    Whimper and Wither

    There must be something seriously wrong with all that superficial wisdom, because it was followed by totalitarian Communist tyranny.
    So you would disregard the great intellectuals of Germany of the 19th Century because Karl Marx was one of them and because Hitler followed? Seems pretty small minded to me.
    You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    Thanks, it is on my bucket list, and I appreciate the recommendation.

    Reading during the commute is the way to go.
    I like to read on my lunch break at work. Almost every day. That is how I finished Dostoyevsky tome, and that's how I finished reading all six bloody books in the Harry Potter series (p.s. I should punch myself in the mouth for being such a geek).
    I read all the Harry Potter books and want to re-read them someday! Rowling's a genius IMO.


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    I'm reading a book on leadership. There seems like there is something wrong with that.
    You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mott the Hoople View Post
    So you would disregard the great intellectuals of Germany of the 19th Century because Karl Marx was one of them and because Hitler followed?
    Karl Marx Was the Sex Slave of a Patty Hearst Type Duchess

    It was a desperate, ignorant and aristocratic, preaching either academic Liberalism or religious Conservativism. To preserve its obsolete Birth-Class Supremacy after that failed, it had to try Communism or Fascism next. If you stubbornly refuse to hold your assigned heroes accountable, you won't count for much.
    On the outside, trickling down on the Insiders

    We won't live free until the Democrats, and their voters, live in fear.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mott the Hoople View Post
    So you would disregard the great intellectuals of Germany of the 19th Century because Karl Marx was one of them and because Hitler followed? Seems pretty small minded to me.
    Marx was not a great intellectual.

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    Quote Originally Posted by midcan5 View Post
    "This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty -- shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and because she didn't ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child's groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to dear, kind God'! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am making you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I'll leave off if you like."

    "Nevermind. I want to suffer too," muttered Alyosha.

    "One picture, only one more, because it's so curious, so characteristic, and I have only just read it in some collection of Russian antiquities. I've forgotten the name. I must look it up. It was in the darkest days of serfdom at the beginning of the century, and long live the Liberator of the People! There was in those days a general of aristocratic connections, the owner of great estates, one of those men -- somewhat exceptional, I believe, even then -- who, retiring from the service into a life of leisure, are convinced that they've earned absolute power over the lives of their subjects. There were such men then. So our general, settled on his property of two thousand souls, lives in pomp, and domineers over his poor neighbours as though they were dependents and buffoons. He has kennels of hundreds of hounds and nearly a hundred dog-boys -- all mounted, and in uniform. One day a serf-boy, a little child of eight, threw a stone in play and hurt the paw of the general's favourite hound. 'Why is my favourite dog lame?' He is told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog's paw. 'So you did it.' The general looked the child up and down. 'Take him.' He was taken -- taken from his mother and kept shut up all night. Early that morning the general comes out on horseback, with the hounds, his dependents, dog-boys, and huntsmen, all mounted around him in full hunting parade. The servants are summoned for their edification, and in front of them all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought from the lock-up. It's a gloomy, cold, foggy, autumn day, a capital day for hunting. The general orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked. He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry.... 'Make him run,' commands the general. 'Run! run!' shout the dog-boys. The boy runs.... 'At him!' yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother's eyes!... I believe the general was afterwards declared incapable of administering his estates. Well -- what did he deserve? To be shot? To be shot for the satisfaction of our moral feelings? Speak, Alyosha!

    "To be shot," murmured Alyosha, lifting his eyes to Ivan with a pale, twisted smile.

    "Bravo!" cried Ivan delighted. "If even you say so... You're a pretty monk! So there is a little devil sitting in your heart, Alyosha Karamazov!"
    Thank you for that, Midcan. The "Grand Inquistor" chapter from Bothers Karamazov?? I have read from literary critics that chapter is among the most famous in world literature, and I cannot argue with them. I found it to be a remarkable and unique intellectual and philosophical piece on the nature of God, truth, and the nature of humanity. A style of prose and philosophy that is uniquely Dostoyevsky.

    Here is another quote from Brothers Karamazov that is relevant to todays world. Why? Because this sounds like it was written about Donald J. Drumpf. It could even apply to a large contingent of JPP righty posters!

    Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea — he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility…

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cypress View Post
    “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” – Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

    “Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself” – Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, The Brother Karamazov

    “Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.” – Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, A Writer’s Diary, Vol. 1

    “Kindness. The only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You'll get nowhere with an animal if you use terror, no matter what its level of development may be. That I have maintained, do maintain and always will maintain. People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour – white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system.” – Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov

    “It is uncomfortable to ask condemned people about their sentences just as it is awkward to ask wealthy people why they need so much money, why they use their wealth so poorly, and why they don’t just get rid of it when they recognize that it is the cause of their unhappiness.” – Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

    “In my opinion it is harmful to place important things in the hands of philanthropy, which in Russia is marked by a chance character. Nor should important matters depend on leftovers, which are never there. I would prefer that the government treasury take care of it.” – Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

    “Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.” – Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin

    “I have already several times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling – should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men. Yet, strange to say – though it is undeniable that the universal armaments and destructive wars which are ruining the peoples result from that one feeling – all my arguments showing the backwardness, anachronism, and harmfulness of patriotism have been met, and are still met, either by silence, by intentional misinterpretation, or by a strange unvarying reply to the effect that only bad patriotism (Jingoism or Chauvinism) is evil, but that real good patriotism is a very elevated moral feeling, to condemn which is not only irrational but wicked. What this real, good patriotism consists in, we are never told; or, if anything is said about it, instead of explanation we get declamatory, inflated phrases, or, finally, some other conception is substituted for patriotism – something which has nothing in common with the patriotism we all know, and from the results of which we all suffer so severely.” – Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy


    Thank you: Olga, Marina, Vera.






    beautiful


    thank you

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    “Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Soloviev or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth, and they shun those whose sole concern is not the truth.” ― Boris Leonidovich Pasternak , Doctor Zhivago

    “I don't know a movement more self-centered and further removed from the facts than Marxism. Everyone is worried only about proving himself in practical matters, and as for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of their infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore the truth. Politics don't appeal to me. I don't like people who don't care about the truth.” ― Boris Leonidovich Pasternak , Doctor Zhivago

    “It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.” ― Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

    “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” ― Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

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