Monday, June 28, 2010

oooh oooh teacher teacher I know!!!

[I read a short story, A Gentle Spirit, by Dostoyevsky, the other night. It depressed the hey out of me. It was unrequited love at its worst. To try to assuage my grief and disappointment I am going to post a favorite Dostoyevsky quote.]

This sort of character is met with pretty frequently in a certain class. They are the sort of people who know everyone - that is, they know where a man is employed, what his salary is, whom he knows, whom he married, what money his wife had, who are his cousins, second cousins, etc. etc. These men generally have a hundred pounds a year to live on, and they spend their whole time and talents in the amassing of this style of knowledge, which they reduce - or raise - to the standard of science.

-The Idiot, when Prince Myshkin was on a train inquiring of a seat-mate about his hometown. You probably have to read the whole character sketch of the clerk to get a kick out of it like I did.

3 comments:

  1. Dostoevsky apparently visited the rural South.

    Nice quotation.

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  2. Maybe that's why I'm not a Dostoyevsky fan--I still need to finish Crime and Punishment, which I began two summers ago. :/ It's no wonder you were depressed. I know you like the Brothers K though. :)

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  3. haha Jordan thanks. I thought the quote was random but if you approve...

    Ginny yes good call Brothers K is pretty much the only novel I've ever read. Oh, I read East of Eden last summer. It's one novel per summer so I don't know if I'll be contributing much to that blog:)

    And Dostoyevsky can be very uplifting. I just really don't know what happened in that short story it was awful.

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