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Cake day: November 27th, 2023

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  • from wiki:

    French and English translations were published in 1887, and a German translation in 1889. European critical response was also largely negative, mainly due to the novel’s apparent formlessness and rambling style.^([70]) Morson notes that critics saw it as “a complete mess, as if it were written extemporaneously, with no overall structure in mind—as, in fact, it was.”^([71]) Typical of the western critics was the introduction to the first French translation which, while praising the energetic style and characterization, notes that “they are enveloped in a fantastic mist and get lost in innumerable digressions.”

    Prominent modern critics acknowledge the novel’s apparent structural deficiencies, but also point out that the author was aware of them himself, and that they were perhaps a natural consequence of the experimental approach toward the central idea. Joseph Frank has called The Idiot “perhaps the most original of Dostoevsky’s great novels, and certainly the most artistically uneven of them all,”^([73]) but he also wondered how it was that the novel “triumphed so effortlessly over the inconsistencies and awkwardnesses of its structure.” Gary Saul Morson observes that “The Idiot brings to mind the old saw about how, according to the laws of physics, bumblebees should be unable to fly, but bumblebees, not knowing physics, go on flying anyway.”^([71])



  • I don’t consider finishing a book an accomplishment, any more than I consider viewing a great painting or sculpture as an accomplishment: the accomplishment is the creation of art, not the consumption. Many of the books mentioned here I’ve read multiple times: Ulysses, Moby Dick, some volumes of In Search of Lost Time, - etc, length does not a masterpiece make: Heart of Darkness is a short work that very much challenges the reader and some of Shakespeare’s sonnets are as challenging as his plays. Art is NOT a competition, consider yourself lucky to have the ability and the circumstances to be able to read great works (but don’t make it about yourself)