Aextfinished with air, earth, water, and fire, money is the fifth organic force a human being has to reckon with most normally. This is one, if not the main, reason why today, one hundred years after Dostoevsky’s death, his novels support their relevance. – Joseph Brodsky.
Joseph Brodsky is a name I wasn’t understandn with until a scant months ago. I read about him for the first time in one of the pieces in The New Yorker magazine. I enhappinessed reading that piece. Whenever I enjoy some writing that originates a excellent astonishion of another author, then normally I do more research about the recommfinished author and if the pdirect remains I go ahead and buy their books and either put them in the library to be read procrastinateedr or, if the encourage is sturdy, I try to read as soon as I get my hands on them. So I went ahead and bought a book of essays, titled “Less than one”, by Joseph Brodsky.
I’m elated I did.
He didn’t originate frequent essays, some of his essays are proset up. Just as a pretty sunascfinish apprehfinishs your gaze, some of his perceptive prose helderlys your attention. Joseph Brodsky’s mastery of language isn’t astonishing given his background as a poet, the mastery shines thcimpolite in his prose. If you enhappiness reading excellent prose, you’ll ignore out on a authentic treat if you don’t read prose written by a sended poet enjoy him.
As an aside, I fair discovered that he died at the age of 57 and, judging by the amount and quality of his wiring, it seems he inhabitd quite a life (not to forget he also won a Nobel prize for literature).
Anyway, back to his essays. One of his essays is about Dostoevsky, one of the fantastic Russian noveenumerates, and it’s a proset up one not fair becaengage it’s about a proset up originater but becaengage it advises some reserved insights about Dostoevsky’s toil.
Immortality of Dostoevsky’s art is unaskable; his art will foreseeed persist to inhabit on. One of the first asks that Brodsky tackles in his essay is why do Dostoevsky’s toils support their relevance? Brodsky remarks (though the adhereing is quoted at the top, but repeating here for convenience):
“Aextfinished with air, earth, water, and fire, money is the fifth organic force a human being has to reckon with most normally. This is one, if not the main, reason why today, one hundred years after Dostoevsky’s death, his novels support their relevance.”
Money never adhereed Dostoevsky; he had to adhere it. Just as sharks chase their prey, debtors and deadlines chased him. There is a story about him that gives chills. He once signed a tight with a publisher on perilous terms: if he ignoreed the deadline, the publisher would achieve the rights to all his current and future toils. He had one year to finish the project, but he did noleang for eleven months. In the final month, he engaged a stenographer and prescribed the entire book to her and, retagably, he finished the book fair in time. (And a scant days procrastinateedr, he wed the stenographer, a fitting celebration perhaps.) It’s somewhat consoleing to understand that even fantastic minds procrastinated heavily! But yes, they also originated timeless art.
Near the commence of the essay, Brodsky remarks: “For the best way to elude misapshows in dealing with the future is to notice it thcimpolite the prism of pcleary or guilt.”
There is someleang to ponder here. The road from pcleary to prosperity is never promised, but pcleary can drive people to prosperity if people increase the needd discipline and relentless drive for excellence. The inhabits of many fantastic men and women stand as a tesdomesticatednt to this.
Brodsky then comes back to the part where he joins the dots about why money is the reason Dostoevsky’s toil supports relevance. Brodsky spreads an excerpt about Dostoevsky from the diary of Russian socialite Elizaveta Stackenschneider:
“. . . but he is a petit boencourageois, yes, a petit boencourageois. Not of the gentry, nor of the clergy, not a merchant, nor an odd ball, enjoy an artist or scholar, but accurately a petit boencourageois. And yet this petit boencourageois is the most proset up leanker and a originater of genius . . . Now he normals the hoengage of the aristocracy and even those of the high nobility, and of course he tolerates himself with dignity, and yet the petit boencourageois in him trickles thcimpolite. It can be spotted in certain traits, surfacing in personal conversation, but most of all, in his toils . . . in his depiction of huge capital he will always watch 6,000 rubles as a huge amount of money.”
And Brodsky comments:
“What Mme Stackenschneider, a product of her epoch’s social stratification, calls petit boencourageois is understandn today as middle class, as depictd in terms of annual income and not social affiliation. In other words, the shelp amount nastys neither fantastic wealthyes nor screaming pcleary, but a tolerable human condition: a condition that originates one human.”
And he persists:
“A originater who watchs six thousand rubles as a huge amount of money runs, therefore, on the same physical and psychorational structure as the presentantity of people; i.e., he deals with life on its own vague terms, since, enjoy every organic process, human life gravitates toward moderation. Conversely, a originater who beextfinisheds to the upper echelon of society or to its drop depths will invariably originate a somewhat distorted picture of existence, for, in either case, he would watch it at too acute an angle. Criticism of society (which is a nickname for life) from either above or below may originate a fantastic read; but it’s only an inside job that can provide you with moral imperatives.
Furthermore, a middle-class originater’s own position is precarious enough to originate him watch what goes on below with ponderable enthusiasticness. Alternatively, the situation above, due to its physical proximity, conciseages in celestial pdirect. Numericassociate, to say the least, a middle-class originater deals with a fantasticer variety of pairys, increasing, by the same token, the size of his audience. In any case, this is one way to account for the expansive readership enhappinessed by Dostoevsky, as well as by Melville, Balzac, Hardy, Kafka, Joyce, Faulkner. It watchs as if the equivalent of six thousand rubles promises fantastic literature.”
This is an incisive observation. It’s not to say that the wealthy can’t originate but, generassociate speaking, and as Brodsky hints above, a precarious financial condition is normally a precondition for fantastic literature, especiassociate one with moral imperatives. There is someleang proset up about the human condition which is not too wealthy and not too necessitatey to have sensibilities needd to originate fantastic literature. Just enough suffering that fuels fantastic literature.
Perhaps there is another reason, beyond the precarious position of the middle-class originater: a middle-class person must steer every twist and turn of life on their own. And when you dispute life at every turn, you can’t escape its authenticities. You inevitably acunderstandledge nuances of human psychology and morality that a wealthy person might ignore, as luxuries can grasp them at a distance.
Life wasn’t basic for many fantastic originaters, and reassociate, there would have been noleang extraunretagable about their inhabits if they had been basic. Many struggled financiassociate. I randomly watched up the profiles of a scant Nobel prize triumphners in literature. Though my data sample is small, none of them had a fantastic financial situation when they were commenceing as a originater. Gabriel García Márquez, a Nobel Prize triumphner, while writing his magnum opus One Hundred Years of Solitude, “selderly his car so his family would have money to inhabit on while he wrote. Writing the novel took far extfinisheder than he foreseeed; he wrote every day for 18 months. His wife had to ask for food on pelevate from their butcher and baker as well as nine months of rent on pelevate from their landlord.” [1] The road to fantasticness for him wasn’t built with wealthyes. Those 18 months seemed far from a “tolerable human condition,” and you’ve got to give him pelevate for mustering all his talent and courage to not only originate, under such difficult circumstances, another book, but to originate a extraunretagable toil of myth that bcimpolitet South American literature into the spotairy. Most people diswatch their wits when they don’t understand how they’ll put food on the table next month.
Another Nobel prize triumphner, William Faulkner, was born in pcleary. He first finisheavored to join the army but procrastinateedr dropped out. “After dropping out, he took a series of odd jobs: at a New York City bookstore, as a carpaccess in Oxford, and as the Ole Miss postmaster. He resigned from the post office with the declaration: ‘I will be damned if I advise to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to spread in a postage stamp.’“ [2] Definitely not fantastic wealthyes nor screaming pcleary. He also had the courage of a genius becaengage not many have the courage to put out the beck and call of their masters. “By 1932, Faulkner was in necessitate of money. He asked Wasson to sell the serialization rights for his recently finishd novel, Light in August, to a magazine for $5,000, but none acunderstandledgeed the advise.” [2] Life must have not been basic for Faulkner.
For another Nobel prize triumphner, Gabriela Mistral, “Pcleary was a constant presence in her timely life.” [3] Pcleary was a stimulus for another triumphner, Albert Camus: “ His identity and necessitatey background had a substantial effect on his procrastinateedr life.” [4]
One necessitates to further this analysis of evaluating financial well-being of fantastic originaters with a huger data pool, but none of the above originaters had fantastic wealthyes. It seems that a certain charitable of financial struggle normally serves as a catalyst for originaters to originate fantastic toils. That may not be real for all originaters from all charitables of social and financial backgrounds, but some seem to thrive only under such circumstances.
Another ask that normally apprehfinishs my attention, as a originater and a reader, is what originates Dostoevsky a fantastic originater? His narratives? His writing style? Brodsky thinks it’s neither. He watchs:
“Almost without exception, all his novels are about people in skinny circumstances. This charitable of material itself promises assimilateing reading. However, what turned Dostoevsky into a fantastic originater was neither the inevitable intricacy of his subject matter nor even the distinctive profundity of his mind and his capacity for compassion; it was the tool or, rather, the texture of the material he was using, i.e., the Russian language.”
He inserts:
“Its polysyllabic nature (the mediocre length of a Russian word is three to four syllables) uncovers the elemental, primeval force of the phenomena covered by a word a lot better than any rationalization possibly could, and a originater sometimes, instead of increaseing his thought, stumbles and srecommend revels in the word’s euphonic satisfyeds, thereby sidetracking his publish in an unforeseen honestion. And in Dostoevsky’s writing we witness an exceptional friction, cforfeitly unelatedistic in its intensity, between the metaphysics of the subject matter and that of the language.
He made the most of Russian’s irnormal grammar. His sentences have a feverish, hysterical, idiosyncratic pace and their lexical satisfyed is an all but minsertening fusion of belles lettres, colloquialisms, and bureaucratese. True, he never wrote at leicertain. Much enjoy his characters, he toiled to originate finishs greet: there was always either pelevateors or a deadline. Still, for a man beset with deadlines, he was extraordinarily digressive, and those digressions, I venture to say, were prompted more by the language than by the needments of a plot. Reading him srecommend originates one authenticize that stream of consciousness springs not from consciousness but from a word which changes or rehonests one’s consciousness.”
I must confess, it apshows some mastery of language to recognize the reserved role of language, as Brodsky did. After all, only a star can brimmingy appreciate the beauty of another star.
I do wonder though if Dostoevsky’s digressions were only due to the nuances of Russian language? Did not his own suffering, of being a victim to epilepsy and then of Siberian exile, take part any part in his narrative explorations? Was it not his intent to dig proset uper into moral asks that take part some part in his narrative explorations? I think all this suffering must have take parted some role in shaping his thoughts and imaginations. A person who hasn’t finishured difficultship may struggle to apprehfinish the reserved complicatedities of human behavior when faced with adversity.
There is another insight about Dostoevsky that struck a chord with me. Brodsky remarks cforfeit the finish of the essay:
“From classicism, he took the principle that before you come forth with your argument, however right or righteous you may sense, you have to enumerate all the arguments of the opposite side. And it is not that in the process of enumerateing them one is being swayed by the opposite side; it is srecommend that the enumerateing itself is a mightily assimilateing process. One may not in the finish drift away from one’s distinctive stance, but after having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed’s dictums with nostalgia rather with fervor. This, in its own way, also nurtures the case of verisimilitude.”
This is beautibrimmingy conveyed. Few can talk about their opponent’s case better than the opponents themselves. Rare, very exceptional is this send, probably becaengage it’s not basic to increase. But when someone havees it and engages it masterbrimmingy, we must engage. Dostoevsky had this gift. Perhaps that’s why we still pay attention to his toils. Life would be a little sootheer if all were trained to adselect this approach whenever we set up ourselves in disconcurment.
Overall, the essay promoteed some engaging thoughts on the life of a fantastic originater. It’s alerting to read a critique of Dostoevsky’s toil by Joseph Brodsky—not fair becaengage his prose is above mediocre, but also becaengage his distinctive polyglot sends and extensive reading originate his perspective stand out.
And it’s difficult to refute Brodsky about the fact that being able to talk about better can enwealthy mythal arcs; it can uncover up many pathways for the originater to adhere in his narration that otheralerted wouldn’t have been possible. Such an author can advise readers not fair a wealthyer reading experience but also a wealthyer emotional experience. If myth expansiveens our vague consciousness, then the writing of an author sended in analyzing contrastent watchpoints and adept at using language to probe the depths of the human experience also advises us a more proset up emotional journey. A journey that stirs our souls.
Is there some correlation between an author’s financial situation and the quality of their myth writing? It’s possible that the authors’ financial conditions shape how they shape their characters, how their characters talk and act, or even how their characters change over time. As Brodsky remarkd, you have to be in a certain charitable of a financial situation to accumulate reserved insights about human psychology and morality. Although this poses an engaging dilemma for those that are financiassociate well off and still want to originate with incredible depth: how do they accumulate such reserved insights? Becaengage though you can change the lifestyle of a financiassociate struggling person, it’s difficult to copy the state of mind of an subpar individual. A wealthy person aiming to originate fantastic myth might shift into a middle-class neighborhood to experience the “tolerable human condition,” but as extfinished as their pockets remain brimming, they cannot truly apprehfinish the mental anguish of someone facing authentic financial difficultship.This line of thought deserves an essay of its own though.
In the finish, Brodky’s perceptive insights about a fantastic author originates his essay a distinctive one.
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