Tag Archives: RKS Russian Literature

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: Ideology a Virulent Plague (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. MenContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: Ideology a Virulent Plague (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: He Murdered for Himself (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

‘I didn’t do the murder to gain wealth and power and to become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply did it; I did the murder for myself alone, and whether I became a benefactor to others, or spent my life like a spider catching men in my web and sucking the life out ofContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: He Murdered for Himself (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: Daring and Murder (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

‘I divined then, Sonia’ he went on eagerly, ‘that power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the first time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no oneContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: Daring and Murder (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  A Tremendous Fall from Grace at a Funeral Dinner for Her Husband (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Perhaps the chief element was that peculiar ‘poor man’s pride’ which compels many poor people to spend their last savings on some traditional special ceremony, simply in order to do ‘like other people’ and not ‘be looked down upon’. It is very probable too, that Katerina Ivanovna longed on this occasion, at the moment whenContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  A Tremendous Fall from Grace at a Funeral Dinner for Her Husband (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  There Can be No Deception in a “Free Marriage” (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

“I understand it now where the unpleasantness is of being deceived in a legal marriage, but it’s simply a despicable consequence of a despicable position in which both are humiliated. When the deception is open, as in a free marriage, then it does not exist, it’s unthinkable. Your wife will only prove how she respectsContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  There Can be No Deception in a “Free Marriage” (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  The Clever Cross Examination of a Criminal (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

I believe it’s a sort of legal rule-a sort of legal tradition-for all investigating lawyers to begin their attack from afar, with a trivial, or least and irrelevant subject, so as to encourage or, rather, to divert the man they are cross examining, to disarm his caution and then all at once to give himContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  The Clever Cross Examination of a Criminal (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  Poor and Under His Thumb So He Would Like to Believe (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Dounia was simply essential to him, to do without her was unthinkable. For many years he had had voluptuous dreams of marriage, but he had gone on waiting and amassing money. He brooded with relish, in profound secret, over the image of a girl-virtuous, poor ( she must be poor), very young, very poor, ofContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  Poor and Under His Thumb So He Would Like to Believe (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  A Misconception About Eternity (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it’s one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that. FyodorContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  A Misconception About Eternity (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: Illness and Ghosts (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Ghosts are, as it were, shreds and fragments of other worlds, the beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see them, because he is above all a man of this earth and is bound for the sake of completeness and order to live only in this life. But asContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: Illness and Ghosts (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  All Men are Mad (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

‘There is some truth to your observation’ the latter replied. ‘In the sense we are certainly all not infrequently like madmen, but with the slight difference that the deranged are somewhat madder, for we must draw a line. A normal man, it is true, hardly exists. Among dozens-perhaps hundreds of thousands-hardly one is to beContinue reading “RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE:  All Men are Mad (Fyodor Dostoevsky)”