I was blown away by Crime and Punishment. I truly felt like I was the main character, and I read it with feverish sweat and dread for my impending doom. I cringed and felt terrible sadness at the poor little lives of certain individuals. So much woe and tragedy. I was glad to see how it turned out though.
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.
> The main difficulty is the names. The names make it so hard.
What's wrong with the names? I find Chinese novels much harder to read because everyone's named C{V[n[g]]|ei|ao|ou} C{V[n[g]]|ei|ao|ou}C{V[n[g]]|ei|ao|ou}.
I think the problem with Russian names in particular is that a Russian name has three parts (e.g. Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky) and different parts get used in different contexts, depending on who's speaking, level of familiarity and so on. So it's like in an English novel where someone might be referred to as Smith by the narrator but John in dialogue, but with an extra 50%, at least, of confusion.
There are also the "canonical" nicknames that are not obvious to non-Russian speakers. E.g. Nikolai is Kolja.
With different transliteration that one at least makes sense. Nikolay = Kolya. But one that'll send most non-Russian speakers for a loop is Alexander = Sasha. It's like Richard = Dick, though there there's at least a rule that makes that one make sense (a rhyme with a shortened name so Richard -> Rick -> Dick, William -> Will -> Bill, etc). I wonder why it didn't just end up as Lexa, which would fit the other patterns for Russian names/diminutives.
The "-sha" pattern is relatively consistent: Pavel-Pasha, Mikhail-Misha, Natalya-Natasha, Nikolay-Nikolasha, Alexey-Alyosha, Mariya-Masha, Ilya-Ilyusha.
So, Aleksandr-Aleksasha. The dropping of "Alek" is the only inconsistent part, on par with Agrippina-Agrusha-Grusha.
Interesting, never heard 'Nikolasha' once
> Interesting, never heard 'Nikolasha' once
It's archaic, used in Peter I times. Modern one is Kolya
It is not common. Usually you say Kolya.
Ditto.
Lexa (to be more precise, Lyoha) is a shortened version of Alexey (Aleksei); but if it wasn't reserved for that, Lyoha sounds a bit rude (and a more gentle version akin to Sasha would be Lyosha).
> I wonder why it didn't just end up as Lexa
One of the potential diminuitives for "Aleksandr" is indeed "Lesha", although I think it's more common as a diminuitive for "Aleksei"?
Never heard anyone using "Lesha" for "Aleksandr". It is always "Aleksei".
Because Lexa is short for Alexei, not Alexander!
Sometimes people also confuse Vlad with Vladimir, but it's actually Vladislav. Vladimir would be Vova.
And then we add the diminutives like Kolichka. Though, admittedly, there's much more of a pattern there.
Russian diminutives, making nicknames much harder to track for those not familiar with the culture and language. Vladimir is Vova is Volodya, same person. Then other parts of their full name may have variations depending on use.
I've not read Dostoevsky, but there is a similar issue in Japanese literature. The same person might be referred to in as many as 4 different ways, and on top of that you are supposed to infer who the speaker is by the mode of address (and other context clues like personal pronouns), so dialog tags are seldom used.
I'm bad with names to begin with, so I usually make a chart to keep side characters straight.
The same thing happens in English literature of Dostoevsky's period - upper class characters might be referred to by substantive title (sometimes in two different forms), subsidiary title, courtesy title, surname, first name, job/rank/office, epithet, nickname, or even pet name.
To add confusion, the choice of which to use is usually context-dependent (time period, age, status, situation, relationship between characters) but sometimes the author will switch between, say, title and surname within the same paragraph simply as a matter of style or to avoid repetition.
> So it's like in an English novel where someone might be referred to as Smith by the narrator but John in dialogue, but with an extra 50%, at least, of confusion.
I've been reading Tom Clancy recently, and that's basically the Jack Ryan books. Somehow, "Jack" is actually a nickname for "John".
> Somehow, "Jack" is actually a nickname for "John".
That has never made one iota of sense to me. The whole "Dick" / "Richard" thing makes more sense than "Jack" / "John" to me (and it's nonsensical, too).
Wow, until this moment I didn’t realize that Lloyd Bentsen was talking about John F. Kennedy when he said “senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” to Dan Quayle! I was born in the mid 80s so it was just a quote I’d heard as a child and never thought of it much but thank you.
It's nonsensical unless we are seeing the "John (projectname)" meme in real life. "John" gets used as a placeholder, it gets Ctrl+F replaced in the final draft but Ctrl+F misses the spot with the formal variation, somebody pretends it was intentional, and now contradicting it is a loss of face so the name sticks. The process has given birth to another accidental John.
According to Wikipedia:
- Jehan (Old French form of "John") -> Jan
- Jan -> Jankin (diminutive)
- Jankin -> Jackin
- Jackin -> Jack
No doubt there are "reasons" for all of them, but it's so far in the past and so far removed from my cultural experience as to be irrelevant and functionally nonsensical.
This does give me a reason to preserve some fact about one of my favorite cats ever in perpetuity (given the similarity of the John / Jack transition to Joe the Cat's life).
A friend's cat (who I knew as Joe the Cat) went from being called "Ivy" to "Joe" over the course of the cat's 15+ year lifetime by way of being called, successively: Ivy --> Jivey --> Jive --> Java --> Joe
Joe was calm and compliant, and arguably "a good kitty" (albeit I only knew him late in his life). My friend once described Joe as being more frantic in his youthful vigor but being "pacified through years of routine and systematic abuse".
No, my friend and his and his family didn't actually abuse Joe the Cat. He was much loved. I get to use the phrase "years of routine and systematic abuse" in my life (as often as possible!) now, though (often referring to my experiences with various pieces of software).
And then some people call him Jack or Johnny
The obscure Russian nicknames! How is anybody supposed to know without being told that Sasha and Alexander are the same guy? (I do realize that while some English nicknames like Johnny for John are pretty self-explanatory, other like Jack for John or Dick for Richard are as opaque to foreigners as Alexander/Sasha)
I was in my 20's when I realized Bill and William are the same name
I read a lot of Enid Blyton in my youth; by ten I know bill/william and richard/dick, etc.
My wife had a grandfather with the first name Bill and middle William. After 12 years together, I'm still not sure if she's just messing with me.
Will = William
Ipso facto:
Bill = Billiam
Mutatis Mutandis:
Jim = Jimothy
The first time I worked with Polish people I had this problem a lot until I noticed the pattern. Someone told me to go and talk to "Maciek", it was only on asking Maciej where to find him that I found out they were the same person
Here there is at least same prefix.
Only issue I recall might be with female Aleksandra (abbreviated to Ola) and male Aleksander (abbreviated to Olo, or Olek).
Others usually (if I remember correctly) have similar prefix.
Are you sure? Olga/Olha and Oleg distinct names on their own.
Sasha and Alexander isn't that obscure thought. Very common example The real obscure diminutive for Alexander is Shura :D
The dialectal form Aleksasha (following the common pattern Mariya > Masha, Pavel > Pasha, etc.) might reduce the confusion somewhat.
> Jack for John
Wow, is this one common?
Traditionally, yes; these days, perhaps not so much.
The author Jack London was originally John London. John F. Kennedy was familiarly known as Jack ("Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy"). The British racing driver John Stewart is far more commonly known as Jackie Stewart. In Patrick O'Brian's naval fiction, Captain John Aubrey is almost always referred to as Jack.
Somehow nobody knows the ff. are the same:
Hahya Ivan Giovanni Shawn
I haven't read any Dostoyevsky since high school, and don't remember it at all, but I'd imagine it has to do with nicknames.
A non-Russian speaker is going to be confused when the same character is referred to as both Alexander and Sasha, for example, and will think they're different people.
Sasha may also refer to Alexandra, which is a feminine first name. What's more, there's like a ton of diminutive short names for these -- my first ever instagram link on HN, but: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTUeNn7iAit/
(FWIW, it lists: Sasha, Sashka, Sashulya, Sashenka, Sanya, Sanechka, Sancho, San, Shurik, Sashunya, Sanyusha, Sanyok. I myself have heard native Russians use Sash - should be written as Сашь -, and e.g. Mish - Мишь -, which is a similar "lazy" conversational short form for Misha/Mikhail.
I've learned some Russian, and once you start sensing the endless magic they can do with verb prefixes and sufixes, you realize what a versatile language this is. Somewhat the same counts for first names, I guess.)
>Shurik
This is a "meme" nickname that 95% of people called Alexander will get pissed over. It's a pretty old diminutive, but because of the movie a lot of people really don't like it.
> Сашь -, and e.g. Mish - Мишь
Note: these are written without soft sign a the end: Саш, Миш.
Thanks! I wasn't sure about this one, and guessed wrong. Considering pronunciation, it does feel that there should be a soft sign as well.
That's awesome, thank you
I think it's the translators' fault. I think they could've added some footnotes like *Sasha - diminutive of Alexander.
This could be an LLM based e-reader feature, replace names with non-native intelligible translations.
I've never understood this particular issue. My mother had it too with Russian literature. Many Russian books have a "cast list" at the beginning to get round this. I don't find it any stranger than William being called Will, Wullie, Bill or Billy; or Robert turning into Rob, Robbie, Rab, Bert, Bob or Bobby; or Elizabeth being turned into Liz, Lizzy, Beth, Betty, Liza, Lilbet etc. I found most Russian diminutives are formulaic so I picked them up fast.
I don't think it's conceptually difficult, it's just hard (for some of us, at least) to remember the names of a culture you haven't been exposed to. I speak a language with slavonic influence, so I didn't have this problem with Russian literature, but I remember vividly how hard it was to remember the names of characters in the first anime I watched, just because I was so unaccostemed to Japanese names (even though they were clearly very distinctive).
The recall of words you aren't familiar with tends to be pretty poor. This is also visible in how hard it can be to build vocabulary when learning a new language, and how you can completely mix up words at that stage - there's nothing about names that makes this any easier.
Yeah, it's easy once you pick up the formula, but for first-time readers, it's hard. My first piece of russian literature was The Idiot, and I remember consulting the front page quite often.
There are lots of similar names, and the seemingly random use of full names, first names, last names and nicknames, throws off new readers.
There are also just a lot of characters.
If I hadn't grown up hearing those nicknames I would find them confusing as well. It's not natural for a non-native speaker to figure out Dunya, Dunechka, and Avdotya are the same person.
Similarly, Dmitri Prokofych Razumikhin is referred to as Razumikhin 95% of the time, then suddenly people are referring to Dimitry Prokofych and I've got to look up who that is.
Yeah, Dick for Richard is my favorite!
Mostly Southern Chinese or Hong Kong.
> The main difficulty is the names. The names make it so hard.
I think that's an exciting part. When I am bored with names of similar kind, the names make the characters somewhat exotic. I don't know about you, but the name "Grushenka" adds to everything that is going on with that woman.
In my experience it's more the Russian diminutives across the language that cause issues. If you're familiar with the nickname variations then it's easy to follow. If you aren't you'll be taking notes and looking up why Vladimir is called Vova or Volodya, or why Anna becomes Anya or Ayn.
It takes an adjustment or familiarity.
Agree with that. But I also meant full-names.
With so many Williams, Johns, Franks, Bens, etc. reading a novel with exotic names is just breath of fresh air.
Also feel the same when watching non-English modern TV/web series. Like Nordic or Spanish stuff.
Same. Then I tried to read Brothers karamazov, “ooof”, it literally took 200 pages before I stopped hating the ‘pointless’ book with its plot that went nowhere. Then I got it. Only certain authors can do this I reckon, but how you’d get a doom-scrolling teenager to do it? Goooood luck.
Any teenager IMO. I sometimes wonder how I got through high school English. Whether it was The Great Gatsby or Candide or King Lear or The Crucible or Moby Dick it was all so tedious and utterly, utterly boring. And this was well before the internet; home computers were just starting to become popular but almost nobody was online yet.
I did find Vonnegut and a small handful of others to be more engaging.
I have tried to break into the brothers K two or three times and it’s just been so difficult for some reason. I know it’s kind of a joke at this point, but keeping track of all of the names is just so dizzying and distracting.
I read War and Peace recently, is it the same amount of characters? At some point I almost started a genealogical tree of the characters.
Regarding Brothers, I don't think it's that much more than the average novel of that length. What I think trips foreign readers up the most is the constant use of Russian diminutive names e.g. substituting Alyosha for Alexei or Mitenka for Dmitri.
I wonder if replacing those with more modern/“western” diminutives would help with that and whether it would hurt the writing style too much. It will definitely lack the vibe, but if you can’t read it otherwise, maybe it’s better than nothing?
E.g. Dima (widely used in modern Russian, and it’s clear that it’s short for Dmitry) instead of Mitenka or Alex instead of Alyosha (Lyosha is commonly used in Russian, but Alex would be easier to make a mental connection... until you have an Alexander and have to shorten that to Sasha; that one is probably a more widely known diminutive though)
In the French translation of War and Peace I read, the first use of every diminutive had a footnote explaining who was that person.
The edition I read had a map of characters at the beginning which was helpful
As a Russian native speaker, names were not the problem, but the dense boring prose of Dostoyevsky was. On top of this, I did not like Crime and Punishment at all. I believe a lot of it has to do with the degree of association of the reader with the main character. As a 14 year old, I could not understand what the whole fuss is about, the whole thing felt like a feverish dream in the pool of molasses.
Read Crime and Punishment ~25 years ago, the Idiot ~20 years ago. I read Karamazov last year and Demons early this year. I still think C&P is the best of his books with Karamazov a close 2nd. Demons is very dark, but also it seems prophetic - it's like he foresaw some of what would happen in 1917 way back in 1870. He's even got a character in there that's short and bald and likes to wave his arms around wildly as he's speaking, whipping the crowd into a frenzy - sounds a lot like Lenin who was born about the time Demons was written. Still, I wouldn't have made it through Demons if I hadn't read it in an online book group where once a week we met to discuss.
have you tried 'A hero of our time' by Lermontov. Upon reading it, I felt really sorry the author died an early death. I have not felt like that about any other European author.
> I felt really sorry the author died an early death.
Everyone who knew Lermonotov personally thought Michel was a massive asshole. His biggest hobbies were destroying existing relationships by seducing the women and badmouthing everyone in his vicinity.
Eh... I don't think a man capable of such poetry to be that asshole. He says as much in the second preface. I think he may have used the narrator in the first part of the novel as his own mouthpiece.
One of my all-time favorites. Still reads like a 'modern' book.
I'm reading Trollope these days. There's a massive difference between the two authors. Trollope is more psychological, focused on relationship dynamics (at least in the books I've read so far, such as "He knew he was right").
A bit dull at the start but it quickly ramps up and escalates to pitch fever excitement. Can't wait to see what Lizzie would do wrt to her diamonds. :)
I'm an Idiot man, myself
Similar, read Crime and Punishment earlier this year and it took me a few pages to realize two different names were the same character. Felt silly when I realized lol. Also just started Brothers Karamazov, but decided to switch translations and am waiting for new copy to arrive.
A thought but maybe switch to the Idiot instead. I think of all the Dostoyevsky works the Brothers is the least enjoyable one. Keep it to the end or else it may suffocate your interest and prevent you from reading some of his greater works.
Nothing silly about it. That’s a very common thing people have to get used to with Russian literature. People have several names they go by as well as nickname variations of those names, and different people based on familiarity will use different ones. So you can have a single character referred to by 3-4 different names in a single work! It also doesn’t help if one of their nicknames resembles somebody else’s name lol
Crime and Punishment is one of the very few school curriculum mandatory books that I enjoyed reading and actively got ahead of the required per week pages.
I only had the patience to read long books in high school; now I really want to but they're too difficult.
Have you tried audiobooks?
I found this Librivox audiobook to have a good narrator.
https://librivox.org/crime-and-punishment-version-3-by-fyodo...
I listened to the first third of the book while at work (the second Librivox version) [1]. I'm not sure if he pronounced the names right, because I've heard others pronounce them differently, and I'm not sure who's correct. In any case, having listened to the names, I found it quite easy to read the rest of the physical book, having the pronunciation and prosody of many the names already embedded in me. Having multiple names per person was quite confusing, still.
https://librivox.org/crime-and-punishment-version-2-by-fyodo...
You just have to build a habit. Nothing happens unless it becomes habitual.
Of course, that "just" is doing a lot. I'm saying it's doable, not that it's easy.
> The main difficulty is the names. The names make it so hard.
If you really want a challenge, try the Malazan series:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen
Heh, I find the downvotes for the above comment amusing. 100% expected, but amusing. It would be pretty interesting to hear someone rationalize precisely why for example Deadhouse Gates is a worse book than Crime and Punishment :) .
At a guess, I would expect descriptors like non-serious (unlike serious C&P), a lowly fiction fantasy (unlike a documentary C&P, heh), suffering used as a vulgar shock content (unlike being a masterful depiction of a soul's torment in C&P), banal themes of isolation used as a dumb plot device (unlike Raskolnikov's isolation being a brilliant metaphor for an agonizing human psyche), a chaotic cacophony of disjointed narratives and different points of view (unlike a beautiful orchestrated suite of intertwining and supporting themes in C&P), a mindless pulp suitable for teenagers (and an intellectual feast for a curious mind hungry for a proper stimulation in a sea of drivel, in C&P).
Reading Crime and Punishment gave me anxiety, I had to put it down.
The name problem totally disappears when you use any e-reader's built-in search on the highlighted name
Not really. The problem with the names in Dostoyevsky (and Russian literature more generally) isn’t that the names on their own are difficult to remember, it is that all names also have familiar forms, which are sometimes very different from the formal name. On page you get introduced to a character named Alexander, a few pages later the text talks about Sasha. For non-native speakers, it’s hard to guess that it’s the same person. An e-reader’s search function isn’t going to make this problem disappear.
> For non-native speakers, it’s hard to guess that it’s the same person.
Like "Mrs. Thatcher", "Margaret" and "Peg"?
I think Robert and Bob are better examples. Native English speakers of all ages today are going to know that they're the same person, but someone in Russia might have trouble with those names if they were to read a Russian translation of an English novel.
(My first grade teacher in the 80s was named Margaret, but went by Peg with her students' parents, so I know this one. I wouldn't fault most native English speakers under the age of 35 or so if they didn't know it.)
More like “Richard” and “Dick.” You have to be explicitly told that Dick is a nickname for Richard at some point in your life or you’d likely never figure it out.
I mean, yeah, if I wasn't a native speaker I'd find those confusing, especially Margaret and Peg
That sounds like a decision for the translator and editor, honestly
I read Crime & Punishment in high school and I was also blown away at how good it was. I did that teenage thing where I had a brief interest in “reading classics,” and found everything to be a little dense and full of “it’s something to appreciate not enjoy” energy. But not Crime & Punishment. That was a real page turner.
Also, who doesn’t love Razumikhin?
I've tried Crime and Punishment like three times but always stopped at some point because I wasn't feeling it.
Maybe I'll give it another go.
Try a different translation.
First time I started to read it, it was a slog and I didn’t get far.
Did a bit of research on translations and chose another one (can’t recall the exact translator).
The 2nd attempt’s translation used more contemporary language, which made it much more understandable and got through it.
If you are going to read in English, I can recommend the translation by Oliver Ready
I read it in the hopes of finding a written character I could relate to, but the dude in Crime and Punishment is just such a massive loser... I lack empathy too, but I would never murder anyone out of pity.
Look at this hotshot who can't relate to massive losers!
/j
Fair :D
same here, I remember it vividly reading while backpacking in my 3USD Bangkok guesthouse 20 years ago
if if would be mandatory school reading I would probably enjoy it much less
from classics I can recommend also 1984, Animal Farm and Catch XXII (if you served in army you will have better appreciation for it, it was exactly describing absurd situations happening when I served)
I was never in the army, and I still enjoyed and would recommend Catch 22 regardless. It (sadly) applies to the goofiness of companies and bureaucracies more broadly.
That said, being in the army might add an additional level of apprecation but it's a good book regardless.
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