ব্যক্তি

 I was listening to/ watching a booktube video where the presenter was talking about and reviewing long books she has read. One of them was The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. She loved it. She said it's both a 'page-turner' and a book that raises deep philosophical issues. I thought that was really interesting....of course it's a great book, and the consensus among literary scholars and critics is that it is Dostoevsky's best...everyone seems to agree about that, but for me personally, it's not his best. 

I prefer The Idiot and The Possessed. There's a similar thing with Dickens. The consensus is that his best work is Bleak House, but I just don't see it. I've started reading Bleak House at least twice, and didn't finish it. I just get to a point where I'm not interested in reading any more. I think I was almost at that point with Karamazov...actually, the first time, I didn't finish it, but on another attempt I did. But there was something about The Idiot and The Possessed that was electrifying and drew me in from the start. Those two seem to me to be works of passion, and that's what I like about Dostoevsky. It's different from Tolstoy. Tolstoy is like the master artist who works on a grand scale. So, Dostoevsky is characterised by fiery passion while Tolstoy is characterised by grandeur. 

Interestingly, when I did some research about why Karamazov is regarded as Dostoevsky's best work, that was a characteristic that stood out - that idea of grandeur. Joseph Frank, who wrote probably the best biography of Dostoevsky, wrote this about it: 

“No previous work [of Dostoevsky’s] gives the reader such an impression of controlled and measured grandeur, a grandeur that spontaneously evokes comparison with the greatest creations of Western literature. The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, King Lear, Faust—these are the titles that naturally come to mind as one tries to measure the stature of The Brother’s Karamazov.”

The idea - not just in that quote but among commentators in general - is that Dostoevsky deals with big, important themes and questions. I prefer the more human, less abstract, drama found in The Idiot and The Possessed. I'm not that interested in existential or ideological questions. Ideology does play an important role in The Possessed (or Demons as it is also known) but what I enjoy and find most interesting is the acute depiction of the individual human psyche - the portrayal of human nature, which is achieved by focusing on the strangeness of the individual. 

Maybe that's why I'm not that keen on Bleak House, because Dickens is definitely exploring social issues, and using characters to do that, but the portrayal of individuals is diffused. For example, episodes of 'Esther's narrative' apppear intermittently throughout the novel. The novels by Dickens that I really do like - David Copperfield and Great Expectations - are stories primarily of an individual. 

Maybe that's also why Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey is one of my favourite modern novels....it's a story that focuses on two very interesting individuals and explores human character through those individuals. The focus is on the characters not the issues.