Fyodor Dostoevsky headquarters - all about the great Russian author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. The site contains forums, books, essays, a biography, a bibliography, quotes and pictures dedicated to Dostoevsky.
Flash movie failed to load.




Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
May 26, 2013, 12:09:59 AM
Home Help Search Login Register
News: The old forum has now been converted to the latest version.  Thanks for your patience during the process. 

  Show Posts
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5
1  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky's Major Works / Re: Alyosha Karamazov and Anders Behring-Breivek on: July 20, 2012, 05:09:15 PM
Were Batman shooter James Holmes trying to excel the exploit of Anders Behring Breivek and does he have anything common with Alyosha Karamazov again ehh?

    Well no, I've got him pegged as more of an Ivan, haha.  Speaking of which, I'm now in the process of re-reading Dostoevsky's entire repertoire...albeit in English...which I feel worse about as the days inexorably pass...
2  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky and Philosophy / Re: They have science! on: July 07, 2012, 02:53:17 PM
And Higgs Bison discovery proved?

    Yes, they're trying to build a Crystal Palace out of God.  Ridiculous, rationalism is a hydra.  One need look no further than Ivan Karamazov's billion-verst man to understand this.  He saw proof, incontrovertible proof, and continued to disbelieve out of sheer obduracy.  The more science tries to amalgamate religion, the more rhetoric seems to attest to the existence of a God, the more ardently people will sound off against it...just because they can.
3  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky's Major Works / Re: Alyosha Karamazov and Anders Behring-Breivek on: June 24, 2012, 10:44:07 AM
Breivik admitted in court that it was mostly other people's writings he had cut-and-pasted from the web. So what’s new ideas he had brought to in the new world? Killing 77 unarmed raw youths he’s the 1’st the record is yet to beat.
 As you remember Dostoevsky - "What tortures? Ah, don't ask. In old days we had all sorts, but now they have taken chiefly to moral punishments--‘the stings of conscience’ and all that nonsense. How’s Breivik going to feel himself quilty since he’s got no conscience, for how can he be tortured by conscience when he has none?


    Are you familiar with Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber?  I believe that Breivek's perspective towards ideology is very similar to his.  Specifically, Tim McVeigh was a reactionary.  He bombed the Murrah building in response to Ruby Ridge and Waco, two instances of what he perceived to be infringement on the rights of gun owners by federal officials.  Likewise, Breivek responded to something that he perceived to be an 'imminent threat;' specifically, the 'Islamification' of Norwegian culture.  His goals, like those of most militant extremists, were/are founded on three key precepts; establishment of a scapegoat or 'enemy,' a 'with me or against me' ultimatum-based mentality with little room for compromise, and belief in an imminent apocalypse unless immediate action is taken.  Breivek describes himself as a utilitarian, someone who believed that by executing a few people in the short term, he was in fact saving more potential 'victims' in the long term.  Whether or not he sincerely believed this or just used it as a veneer to justify his own mandate, I do not know.  But suffice to say, he does possess *a* moral code, albeit a very esoteric one. 
    Yeah, Breivek was a plagiarist, definitely.  He copied several Fjordman and Unabomber essays verbatim.  He was never very original, but most people are not.

On this particular case I am sure he would definately inform as if he wouldn't then the massacre would have occured. It forwards next question what would have made the man  the Dostoesvky alike known that man like Breivek is going to shoot down so much adolescents. Sounds like out of this world unless if they were friends somehow?Huh Kiss Who would have won between the two mind games?

    Quite possibly.  I see Breivek as the most 'Dostoevskian' of contemporary criminals, a sort of contemporary Nechaev.  Whether or not FD would have been in any way copacetic to his ideas is a matter for conjecture.  At the very least, I think that he would have been very interested in the case.
4  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky's Major Works / Re: Alyosha Karamazov and Anders Behring-Breivek on: June 22, 2012, 07:53:12 AM
Dostoevsky said he wouldn't go to police if he knew that the palace is going to have been bombed. Dostoevsky wouldn't want to have been reputed as an informer. and so on. They weren't talking about the Tsar assasination specifically at least I didn't see it in the Suvorin's letters. Also Dostoevsky speculates pros and cons.

 Shooting 77 innocent lives brought Breivek nothing. Still am wondering how he's still alive.

    He does speculate pros and cons, yes, as any reasonable person would.  Given his history as a convicted seditionist, he had long learned to err on the side of neutrality by that point.  But there can be no doubt that he was very struck by the character traits of these prospective assassins, and that he would have gone on to explore this concept a good deal more in his work had he not died when he did.
    Brought Breivek nothing?  The man's achieved everything he set out to do.  This entire trial was a media coup.  Breivek divided his 'operation' into three 'phases;' the 'manifesto' phase, the 'attack' phase, and the 'trial' phase.  He believed going in that the odds of his survival were almost nil, but isn't extemporizing any of this (or so he has led the public to believe).

 
It forwards next question. Were say Dostoevky alive would he inform the police if he knew Breivek is going to Utoya full armed pretending he's a policeman and everything as it went...

    Bearing in mind that his original objective was to assassinate the PM, I don't know.  Perhaps Dostoevsky would have informed, perhaps not, but the gist of this is that he would have been very interested in the factors which produced a Breivek.  Remember, Dostoevsky himself was fairly xenophobic (a popular attitude at the time).  He had no particular love for Muslims himself, and was known to deride Europeans and the foreigner question in his work.  I'm guessing that he probably would have seen Breivek in a similar way to the manner in which he perceived the assassins who arose from the Populist movement.  
5  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky's Major Works / Re: Alyosha Karamazov and Anders Behring-Breivek on: June 21, 2012, 06:59:14 PM
Proof. English/Russian irrelevant.

"The Mantle Of The Prophet," Joseph Frank, page 483: "Imagine that we were both standing at the window of a store and looking at some paintings.  Near us stood a person, who was pretending to look.  Suddenly another person hastened to him and said: 'the Winter Palace will soon be blown up.  I have placed the machine.'  Imagine that I hear this, and the men were so agitated that they did not take into account the circumstances or their voices.  Would we go to the Winter Palace to warn of the explosion, or would we turn to the police, or turn to a policeman on the beat to arrest them?  Would you go?'  'No,' (Suvorin), 'I would not go.'  'Nor would I,' (Dostoevsky), 'Why?  But this is terrible, it is a crime.  We could perhaps give a warning.  I was thinking of this just before you came.  I turned over all of the reasons that would cause me to do it.  Well-founded reasons, solid ones, and then considered all the reasons that would hold me back.  These reasons are-simply insignificant.  Simply the fear of being reported to be an informer."  Frank goes on to speculate at length at possible connections between this exchange and TBK.  You can read a considerable portion of the text here: http://books.google.ca/books?id=mQqonU-pweEC&pg=PA483&lpg=PA483&dq=Dostoevsky+Suvorin&source=bl&ots=xTzWIm5jcZ&sig=VEuQPupFcsNljH5XNHnShEglquo&hl=en#v=onepage&q=Dostoevsky%20Suvorin&f=false.  Also, if you haven't done so already, I would highly recommend picking up a copy of Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky biography.  An abridged version came out a few years back.  It's a really handy resource.
6  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky's Major Works / Re: Alyosha Karamazov and Anders Behring-Breivek on: June 21, 2012, 07:56:52 AM
    Breivek wanted to target the Norwegian PM, which was why he chose Utoya in the first place.  In fact, he didn't expect to survive the bombing in the government district, and saw Utoya as a contingency.  Shortly before he died, Dostoevsky was noted as having responded pensively to an attampt to assassinate the Czar via a palace bombing.  When asked if he himself would have planted the bomb, he said that he would have...which can't be interpreted as meaning anything in itself, naturally, no more than any of our motives can be divined through passing conversations with friends.  But, it does make me wonder about his plans for Alyosha.  We can't know if the fictional 'assassination' was meant to be just a regicide or a larger-scale thing, meaning a Breivek-style bombing or massive attack with lots of collateral damage. 
     
7  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky's Major Works / Alyosha Karamazov and Anders Behring-Breivek on: June 20, 2012, 08:54:20 AM
    In "Dostoevsky's Endgame," James L. Rice from the University of Oregon posits that, as indicated in the preface, "The Brothers Karamazov" was meant to be the first installment in a far larger book.  It is postulated that the Karamazov sequel was meant to take place 13 years after the murder of the Karamazov patriarch.  By this time, Alyosha would have married Lise Khokhlakov, and become the village schoolmaster.  Subsequently, he was to become a revolutionary leader at the head of the nihilist movement, execute the Czar, and be tried/executed for the crime.
    Probably the single most famous 'political' criminal of contemporary times is Anders Behring-Breivek, the Norwegian self-styled Templar 'janissary knight' who massacred 77 people last summer.  He released a 1500 page manifesto which indicted 'multiculturalism' and 'political correctness' as the main volitions behind his attack.  Breivek also purports to be a Christian, which was up for a lot of conjecture in the immediate aftermath of the attack.  It's difficult to tell if there is any credence behind this, whether he sincerely believes himself to be a Christian activist or if he cited Christendom in the same spirit as Ivan Karamazov did in 'The Tale of the Grand Inquisitor;" as a blank cheque through which to sedate the insensate masses.  If posed the question, there can be little doubt that Breivek would classify himself as a 'superman,' as one of the elect few to whom natural law does not apply.  Unlike Raskolnikov, I have no reason to believe that Breivek seriously 'wavered' or has relented of his convictions since. 
    Were Dostoevsky alive today, there is little doubt in my mind that he would have a very good deal to say about this case.  In fact, I'm convinced that, had he indeed finished "Life of a Great Sinner," we would have seen an Alyosha analogous to Breivek in essentials.  To begin with, they (would have been) exactly the same age at the time of their crimes; 33, the same age that Christ allegedly was when he was crucified.  In the spirit of kenoticism, there's been a fair bit of discussion on whether Alyosha would have *actually* murdered the Czar or simply taken the blame for it, like Nikolai tried to do on Raskolnikov's behalf in C&P.  We can't know for sure, but I'm positive that Dostoevsky never would have pussyfooted around things that way.  Alyosha and Breivek both tried to 'empty themselves,' to confer some semblance of meaning on their lifes through subjugation to a higher power; Alyosha through God and the institution of elders, Breivek through a 'martyrdom operation' and nearly ten years of Nechaev-like devotion to his revolutionary ideal.  Media reports are obviously very unreliable when it comes to ABB's childhood, but I get the impression that he was quite excitable/impressionable.  In his manifesto and later in his trial, he claims to have gone through a 'graffitti' phase during his teenage years.  His father, like the Karamazov patriarch, was very disinvolved; the man married three times, and Breivek claims in his manifesto that everybody was alienated from the father afterwards.  Breivek didn't bother much with formal education, likewise Alyosha, but both men are of above-average intelligence.  Both were recluses as early adults.  After being disabused during his brief flirtation with a monastic lifestyle, Alyosha seems like the type of personality to jump onto the opposite ship with unflagging energy, perhaps even under a veneer of his former ideals (a similar 'Christian' outlook to Breivek's). 
    Oh, and FYI, Breivek claimed to be a fan of Tolstoy's "War And Peace" in his manifesto, though he never mentioned anything about Dostoevsky.  I would be very interested in learning whether or not Breivek ever read FD.
8  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky's Major Works / Re: Parallels between the Movie Fight Club and the Demons/ Possessed on: June 19, 2012, 12:12:05 PM
Hubert Selby Jr. is the closest thing we have to a western Dostoevsky.
9  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky and Philosophy / Re: Is the whole world of knowledge worth child's prayer to dear, kind God? on: June 19, 2012, 10:20:28 AM
To never amount to anything is to have no ground under own feet? To decide anything one is to have ground to propell from?

    Actually, I'm more prone to considering this sort of torpor 'underground.'  I've amounted to absolutely nothing thus far in life in the sense of 'worldly action.'  It's the hubris of the Information Age man; I'm a spectator, I watch everything, I 'do' nothing and when the time comes for 'action' of some kind, I'm so bogged down in moral compunctions that it becomes impossible to do anything.  Example: take interpersonal conflict of any kind.  I rarely have this, because I am 'nice' to everybody, a form of passivity which in of itself is Underground, but never mind that.  Take the rare instances where somebody has assumed an antagonistic role in my life.  Let's say I have reasonable grounds on which to believe that the person is a jackass.  Most people would leave it at that and go in, horns bared, charging at the 'wall' and end up either winning or getting chucked out the window, either by the person they were fighting or the person who they were unwittingly trying to 'save.'  In my case, thought never translates into action, because I sit back and consider.  Though the person at hand could be the architect of 'my' misfortunes, perhaps this same person has been very kind to someone else.  In this spirit, it becomes impossible to assess a totality of character, and one is forced to become a smiling lackey by default. 
10  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky and Philosophy / Re: Is the whole world of knowledge worth child's prayer to dear, kind God? on: June 17, 2012, 01:36:32 PM
Let progeny decipher the shards, right?  Let 'action' hold its own today, because excessive thought only repudiates any kind of action...according to the reasoning of most of Dostoevsky's revolutionaries (which was spot on; the prolific revolutionaries of today, like Anders Behring-Breivek, still use this same rhetoric) anything up to and including apocalyptic violence is necessary *today* in order to create the possibility of a tomorrow in which it becomes possible to question the morality of what was done before.  According to the rhetoric of such people, the content of this banter is immaterial, because said banter would not exist if not for the actions of the speakers' ancestry.  Again and again we see this concept throughout Dostoevky...the old pawnbroker, Shatov, Fyodor Karamazov.  Sacrifice is the inevitable precursor of any form of action, you cannot have something without giving up something else.  The problem is that the question of progress gets convoluted by malcontents who don't really know just what it is that they want. 
    Would I do it?  No, I would not.  And that is why I will never amount to anything.
11  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky and Philosophy / Re: All Atheists eventually will have to stand up and go, proof! on: June 17, 2012, 10:20:55 AM
"There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see."
  Leonardo da Vinci  Wink

...what?  Ach!  See, I've categorized humankind into three other groups, and you've now upended that theory.  I've always believed that there are three types of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't.  Smiley
12  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky and Philosophy / Re: All Atheists eventually will have to stand up and go, proof! on: June 16, 2012, 07:31:22 AM
Unflagging 'proof' is impossible without at least a modicum of faith.  Dostoevsky knew this.  Meaning, to 'prove' that something is a fact and posit that it is in someone's best interests to act accordingly and propitiate to the idea will never bring about a change in the behaviour.  This is why 'miracles' are not prudent, why extant 'prophets,' if there are any left, don't go around raising people from the dead and levitating ten feet in the air.  Novelty does not make any one thing more of a miracle than something else, it's all a matter of perspective.  Nobody would believe in the most flagrant of 'miracles' any longer.  Were the sky to open up and rain forth hosannas, people wouldn't fall to the ground and smite themselves, they would call the police.  Likewise, if one has a homeopathic grain of faith, then you see miracles everywhere...in the faith that drives absolutely everything, in the most innocuous of human actions.
13  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky In General / Re: The 'worst' type of criminal according to Dostoevsky on: June 06, 2012, 12:48:55 PM
No doubt. 
14  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky In General / The 'worst' type of criminal according to Dostoevsky on: June 06, 2012, 11:47:59 AM
FMD had few compunctions about 'criminality' as most people describe it.  While there are no grounds to describe him or his literature as a proponent of criminal behaviour, he clearly and repeatedly expands on the criminal as a necessary type whose socially divergent behaviour leads to suffering and, ultimately, redemption.  In "House of the Dead," he asserts that prison is occupied by just as many 'good' and 'bad' people as anywhere else in the world. 
    Throughout his books, FMD makes mention of two criminal variants who, while they may not be 'beyond' redemption, are baser than the more garden variety thieves and murderers who he describes at some length elsewhere.  One of these types is mentioned in "House Of The Dead."  He is one of a small handful of 'upper class' prisoners (among whom the narrator and Dostoevsky himself also numbered) who are alienated from the rest of the prison population by virtue of their genteel backgrounds.  This man is described as a former state official, an ex-employee of the Third Department.  During his career, he committed numerous acts of perjury and falsely incriminated many individuals, resulting in lengthy prison stays and ruined lives for many of these people.  According to the narrator, this particular person doesn't have a single redeeming quality; he's slothful, devious, cunning, malicious, etc. 
    I associate this type with the modern idea of the 'white collar criminal,' someone who uses a position of legitimacy to illicitly divest others of money or other resources.  For a good while, I chalked Dostoevsky's bias towards this type as the sensible conclusion of a poor man who had been unduly taken advantage of himself by a corrupt state.  To him, this man probably embodied the enigmatic, corrupt apparatus which accused Dostoevsky of sedition and ruined his life.  One doesn't get the impression that this is meant to be a philosophical maxim so much as a personal polemic, basically.  I doubt that a more affluent writer...Tolstoy, say, or for that matter just about any of Dostoevsky's contemporaries...would have singled out this type as particularly reprehensible, certainly not 'more so' than, say, a man who murders a dozen people in cold blood. 
    The second sort is a lot more ubiquitous, though.  I'm referring to the Stavrogin type, which appears repeatedly in Dostoevsky's later work.  Specifically, the worst type of criminal was someone who 'prevents someone else from being able to love.'  Stavrogin's rape of a child was the ultimate embodiment of this, but the idea is recurrent...Svidrigailov, Prince Valkovsky, Totsky, Murin, etc.  The effect that these people have on other characters in the books is incomparably egregious because their actions produce a feeling of anhedonia; unfeeling, 'death in life.'  To me, this idea represents depression, an ultimate inability to accord life any sort of potential.  It would have been 'better,' from Dostoevsky's point of view, had such people killed their victims outright instead of reducing them to what is pretty well a literal form of hell on earth.   
15  Fyodor Dostoevsky / Dostoevsky and Philosophy / Re: The devil on: June 05, 2012, 10:20:32 AM
    We could second-guess the lexical entelechy of these words...'comprehend,' 'master,' for a good while.  Simply put, I don't believe that something's being 'great' has to preclude that thing's also being 'simple.'  Everything that is perceived as 'complicated' is a necessary impetus behind human thought, because if that perception did not exist...if people did not believe things to be 'complicated,' and thus full of potential, then there would be no sense in going on.   
    Why, of course I know his name!  He's me!  Did you suppose that a young devil can be bothered to fly through the cosmos at finger-snapping temperatures anymore when he can just use complimentary public Wi-Fi instead!?  I have known many promising young writers, one the author of a fine poem called "The Grand Inquisitor," but he has forbidden me from mentioning it, why, I do believe he wants to kick me!  Do I do nothing because I think, or do I think because I do nothing...what a fiasco! 
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5


Login with username, password and session length

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.14 | SMF © 2006-2011, Simple Machines LLC Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
The Forum  ::  E-Bookstore  ::  Literary Works  ::  Essays  ::  Biography  ::  Quotes  ::  Pictures  ::  Links  ::  Contact  ::  Advertising  ::  Home