Those who find time later in their adult life will re-read the classics and appreciate it, but many will not, and that's probably a result of forcing the kids to deal with something most of them are not ready for.
I am sure I'd find them different if I re-read them, but I could relate to characters and their struggles quite easily.
I do not necessarily think that those who wouldn't appreciate them as teenagers would ever appreciate them as adults either — maybe a small percentage would.
I'm currently reading Karamazov and it's good to have something a bit more jovial and dry witted.
The main difficulty is the names. The names make it so hard.
I love the Space Trilogy by Lewis but I lose my place when he describes a place. Dostoevsky is better at describing people (and bringing them to life in your mind) than Lewis is at describing a landscape.
Maybe I'll give it another go.
I’d like to say the story stayed with me, but alas it was the reaction of adults to my reading matter that I remember.
Part of growing up was realizing that being precocious really isn’t a thing anymore at some point.
One of the best gifts I ever got was when my dad plopped down a big box full of old classical adventure novels (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, King Solomon's Mines, Captains Courageous, Three Musketeers, Count of Monte Cristo type of stuff) and I devoured all of them over the course of the next year or so. I'm sure I would appreciate a lot of different things about them if I read them now, but they certainly held up in terms of being engaging in spite of them all being 100+ years old by the time I got my hands on them.
I was a precocious reading kid too, and I sometimes wonder how much I understood of all the stuff I read. I feel like I remember it decently enough, but there must have been a lot going over my head.
I still have a bit of reticence toward admitting that I find some books hard or haven't finished them. I found the Iliad enthralling and the Odyssey very good, but basically any other English epic poetry or drama is such a grind and I've given up many times.
I remember being most interested in Konstantin Levin's efforts to modernize his farm estate.
I think that at the time I thought that I understood the difficult books that I was reading fully, but looking back on it I must have missed so much. I'll need to have a re-read one of these days.
Same. TIL this is not just me being lazy.
I loved excerpts of Karamazov (The Grand Inquisitor, Dimitry's troika ride, any passage with Grushenka) but I also found it rough to get through. I really don't think I was ultimately able to appreciate it as a whole.
C&P felt much smoother and finally I devoured The Idiot. Those novels felt like night and day compared to Karamazov.
With Karamazov, I feel like there is some subtext or context I'm missing and would have loved to have had a companion text or course to help me.
When I first Master and Margarita, it came with incredible footnotes, and rereading it again I found I sometimes recalled the footnotes more than the text. I recommended the book to a friend, but their edition didn't have the footnotes so they bounced right off it.
Anyway if anyone knows of an edition better than the Penguin Classic of BK I'm all ears.
edit: I read the Barnes and Noble translation. And I would encourage reading some passages aloud.
But if you're 600 pages in and it's a slog you might have lost the train of thought of the novel.
It is a lot to keep in your head!
To give you one idea of the approach - the accurately translated title is The Karamazov Brothers. Every other translator chooses the usual way because it sounds grander or eccentric or just because that’s how others did it before them, even though it’s simply incorrect as a translation.
P&V - one of them edits without even knowing Russian, a polar opposite
Karamazov is basically YA fiction though. Find other works if you’re not into it as an older adult, it’s fine
Prefered Demons, personally. Probably becuase I read it when more mature.
I also had the same reaction to Crime and Punishment as the OP did.
I’m sure it’s good but I don’t think I have it in me to try again.
As he wrote to his brother the same day:
"When I look back into the past and think how much time has been wasted, how much of it wasted in delusions, mistakes, idleness, in the inability to live; how little I cherished it, how many times I sinned against my heart and my soul — my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute could have been a century of happiness. Si jeunesse savait!"
The murder scene itself is so vivid that it's easy to forget that the long middle of the novel is the cat-and-mouse game between him and the detective whose name I forget.
* I think I remembered. Thank you Roman! https://www.dignitymemorial.com/en-ca/obituaries/calgary-ab/...
The scene where he commits the crime is an absolute stunner, edge-of-your-seat, thriller. Who does that? Who can pull that off? Dostoyevsky
A lot of 19th century novels were published as serials. The TV of their time I suppose.
With the final installment arriving by ship, crowds in New York shouted from the pier "Is Little Nell dead?" - https://www.charlesdickenspage.com/charles-dickens-old-curio...
I'm so glad I get to read the Russians and Kafka and Calvino and Murakami and Camus and Marquez and Homer and Plato and, heck, the Bible.
I do know the feeling. I struggled through the start of My Brilliant Friend because I ought to read it in Italian, because I speak it pretty well. So then I didn't read it for years. Finally I just read it in English and enjoyed myself.
Translation is an art I think equal to authorship. Someone below mentioned My brilliant friend which was originally written in a Neapolitan dialect but the English translation, at least for me specifically, is a monumental achievement.
Then again, so would reading Shakespeare in Spanish - even though I'm more comfortable reading in eng, I'm better in Spanish than i am 500 year old English
* The joke being they do a huge running one upmanship sketch on how much they know about Dostoyevsky before the quiz.
Here's some of Norm's thoughts about Russian literature and how to read it:
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
Tolstoy is the best writer who has ever lived. Some people are intimidated
by that fact.
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
Read, in chronological order if possible, everything Tolstoy has ever
written.
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
People think Tolstoy would be too difficult to understand since he is the
greatest writer to ever have drawn breath.
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
Since I am asked about Tolstoy I will suggest all read him. Read all he has
written. Here's the thing about Tolstoy.
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
Tolstoy could write a massive book like War & Peace and have every word be
necessary.
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
Dosto is a fine writer. Better are Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev and
Pushkin.
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
To be a great writer you must be able to communicate with the reader.
Tolstoy communicates better than anyone else ever.
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
Dostoevsky was far the inferior to Tolstoy, he was inferior to most of the
great Russians.
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Feb 9, 2016
Agree completely. Should read both actually. and P&V have not translated
most Tolstoy, so then go to Constance.
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Feb 7, 2018
Well, Jocelyn, I don't know of what other authors you refer to, but Tolstoy
isn't a nihilist. X.com/FLEURdian_slip...
T.L. States @epmornsesh · Dec 21, 2018
@normmacdonald Any authors you would recommend that are writing killer
comedic fiction?
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Dec 21, 2018
Tolstoy, Chekhov, Philip Roth, Salinger, me.
Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald · Jan 21, 2019
@GaryGulman Read great works of Literature out loud. If you do not
understand what you are reading, stop, figure out what it means, then
repeat the exercise. Do this an hour a day and in time, your own voice,
your own thoughts will become the same as Tolstoy, Faulkner, Twain.That's like publishing Hamlet (2010), King Lear (2017), and Thus Spake Zarathustra (2022). I wonder what her thought process is in choosing these titles? And what will her next work be?
Edit: except for The Double.
Why are the classics classic? I doubt being a great read is sufficient or necessary; I struggle to read most classics, Dickens being the only exception.
I'm not reading to study, I want to be entertained! I want engagement, I want clarity, I want suspense! I don't want to wrestle with the author's intentions, I want to be gripped by the character and their situation.
(I used to be a professional translator for the relevant languages, so I have opinions™)
When I'm starting to read a non-English novel, the process of deciding which translation to use is half the fun. The Kent and Berbera (revised Garnett) version of Anna Karenina was mesmerizing.
I found Dostoyevsky a slog to get through and it might have been made worse because he was sold to me as this 'great psychologist' when psychological realism is often missing from his stories and characters become page-long megaphones for some version of Orthodox Russian nationalism or Christianity.
Looks like there are English subtitles that are quite decent.
The film is hilarious but probably hard to enjoy for someone who's not deep into the cultural context, it's not just the language.
If ever we needed you...
"Oh? Not even Dostoyevsky?"
"Oh come on now, he was the main offender."
- The Guard
I'm sure many books offer this experience, but War and Peace explores the human condition across a lifetime in a way few novels do.