Why is russian literature so good

The title is sneaky—like the hidden depths of the novel itself, the words have more than one meaning, and the more we assume we know, the more we miss. While we gleefully purchase Oliver Twist and Anna Karenina , we might pass up a five-hundred-page novel titled Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov.

The novel tells the story of that very same Raskolnikov, a twenty-three-year-old former student who plans and executes a murder and robbery in St. However, the crime and punishment of the plot constitute only two examples of the many instances of crime and punishment in the novel. If Dostoevsky were a realist artist, the social injustices and the ensuing violence would be the theme.

The eternal reality exists, pulling and pushing at Raskolnikov, as he tries to make decisions solely based on reason and within empirical reality.

Thus, poor Raskolnikov suffers because he cannot understand the unknown he has dismissed. From the beginning to the end of the story, Raskolnikov is split between good and evil, between God and the devil, or between a world received as a gift and one composed by self-assertion.

For Raskolnikov, the stepping over refers to the moment he murders Alyona and her sister Lizaveta. He crosses a moral boundary from goodness to evil when he commits this crime, but he rationalizes such a decision as the transgression of an ordinary man toward the end of becoming an extraordinary one.

Raskolnikov thought that crimes were committed only by extraordinary men brave enough to step over the moral boundaries, but what he discovers is that crime is universal. It is more like a sickness or a poison than a virtue. Everyone seems infected by crime; thus criminals are not extraordinary but commonplace. When we read headlines about murder and theft, we feign shock and horror, but Dostoevsky forces us to see the scandal within our own hearts.

Perhaps this is the real reason American readers hesitate to pick up Russian novels: they fear such dark revelations about the human soul—that we are all capable of murder. It seems comic to me, later on, that I was thinking, in all honesty, that I could learn Russian and then read Gogol in his own language. It was not a good feeling, the severe failing of a challenge I set myself. So, in the bustle of preparing to leave college, I read The Idiot.

Much like my year-old self, I did not complete the book. My head was filled with a single question, one no reader should ever entertain: Who would ever act like this?

It is a question even I know has no rhetorical worth, for humans I personally know have acted far more impetuously, crudely, and simplistically than any one person in The Idiot. For an adult who otherwise understood jealousy and passion, to give up all those understandings up in favour of — in favour of what?

I returned the book, and I imagined burning it. Perhaps I did not understand jealousy and passion at all. And as that single thought occurred to me, I wanted to hug the book close and tight, and thank it for exposing to me this freedom of simplicity, this freedom in simplicity. Source: Unsplash. Consider Me Booked! Sayali was born in Bombay and is a student of English and German. Her chief interest lies in finding out if words are ever enough. She can be reached at palekarsayali gmail.

Russian literature is simply awesome, and Crime and Punishment is a good example of all that. Some Russian books are a prime example or communist propaganda while other expose the communist ideology for what it really is: corrupt, murderess and doom to fail. This post is very well written. I think I left at the first half. We live in the age of distraction, and finding the time to read these books has been a challenge for me.

Hopefully I will be able to get through them at some point in the future. The best literary content from around the web delivered straight to your inbox, every Sunday. Sayali Palekar. June 06, T he Russians, as they walk in, usher in exaltation through the door; everyone turns to look — the promise hangs heavy in the air. The Russians are a set of books, and yet they seem to have stronger limbs, firmer hearts, and more passionate brains than any human being we know.

First you've got folks like Gary Shteyngart who, born in the Soviet Union and later emigrating to Noth America, "inherited a folk memory of suffering, plus the minutely descriptive Russian language. The dying Soviet Union," Miller explains, "in which shortages could sometimes be overcome by ruses and yarns, was a natural breeding ground for fabulists. Though the country has since calmed down, Miller admits, "Russia's sheer eventfulness is still a pull.

Then he talks about how Russia's very starkness illuminates Western problems:. Yet just as travel writing chronicles the traveller's preconceptions as well as his journey, so for some novelists, Russia is not, or not only, a sort of moral zoo, which writer and reader can visit with a safe sense of superiority. It is also a place to test their moral pride and presumptions. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword.