Notes from a Dead House (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

As he lay dying, he said that he held no evil against anyone, but only wanted to suffer.

These types of men are so common in Dostoverse. W're gonna see them more here.

To complete the picture, imagine this philanderer, head shaved, fettered, in stripes, and under guard.

Even in fetters, sensuality will still corrupt. That'll come back in TBK too.

“What gentlemen, there are no gentlemen here; they’re just like us now,”

Man i kind love all of these pitiful prison men

a prisoner passionately loves money and values it above everything, almost on a par with freedom, and that it is enough to have it jingling in his pocket for him to be comforted.

This does sound frighfully like life. Let me have an analysis here. I said earlier that Dostoyevsky believed prison to be a sort of anti-life, but this perfectly desccribes many of us in freedom. That is the significance of this alive dead house; each man builds himself an anti-life within his life. A battle in many Dostoyevsky works is a search for the living life.

you can know a man by his laughter, and if from the first encounter you like the laughter of some completely unknown person, you may boldly say that he is a good man.

Хорошие и правые слова

The prisoners called him “grandpa” and never offended him.

)

He was weeping, and I heard him say from time to time: “Lord, do not abandon me! Lord, give me strength! Children, my little ones, my dears, I’ll never see you again!”

((((( Даже в тюрьме, есть любви.

a prisoner is by nature a being who yearns so much for freedom, and, finally, by his social position, is so light-minded and disorderly, that he is naturally inclined to suddenly “go all out,”

That is us. We are prisoners.

in many ways the prisoners were perfect children.

Such people have nothing left for capital, nothing intact but their hide;

Dostoyevsky fr said "ничего кроме их жопы" im dying

an extremely pretty boy, aroused a special curiosity in me.

Eyes looking around emoji

This Gazin was a terrible creature. He made a ghastly, tormenting impression on everybody.

So this is a foil of Sirotkin.

One killed as a vagrant beset by a whole regiment of pursuers, defending his freedom, his life, often dying of hunger; another cuts little children’s throats for the pleasure of it, to feel their warm blood on his hands, to enjoy their fear, their last dove-like trembling under his knife. And what then? They both go to the same hard labor.

a living man cannot be made into a corpse: he will be left with his feelings, with a thirst for revenge and life, with passions and the need to satisfy them.

Prison fails because it tries its beest to contradict the living of men. Goryanchikov already wrote about that in chapter one and it was Dostoyevsky's critique on the penal system.

Every convict, however bold and impudent he may be, is afraid of everything at hard labor. A prisoner awaiting judgment is another matter.

I'm not gonna go into lengthy dissections of quotes anymore now tha I've pointed out the main themes, motifs, and symbols. I will discuss everything new but fo developmets, I will just highlight.

But he was precisely counting on putting off the terrible moment of punishment for at least a few days, a few hours! He was such a coward that, in attacking the officer with a knife, he did not even wound him, but did it all for the sake of form, only so that there would be a new crime, for which he would again stand trial.

(I know I'm undermining my last note, but...) Dostoyevsky is just so good in portraying this. It shows especially in the thematic battle of Rodya vs Porfy in CNP. It is that inclintion to draw out the agony of the crime, if only to stall the punishment by the slightest moments.

spiritual torpor.

That's also such a common thing among Dostoyevsky men.

The flesh had won out over all his inner qualities so much that from the first glance you could see by his face that the only thing left in him was one savage craving for physical gratification, sensuality, fleshly indulgence.

Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov. Een the cowwardice of punishment is so Karamazovian.

His whole soul was expressed in his handsome—one might even say beautiful—face.

Eyes looking around emoji obligatory /srs note: i dont see gay in every instance of men admitring other men. any note of this nature is a joke

I am at peace about Alei even now. Where is he now?…

Okay but maybe this one...

when he smiled, he showed two rows of pearl white teeth, the beauty of which might have been envied by the most beautiful woman in the world.

MAYBE THIS ONE IM NOT BEING /J

Alei

Oh nah i can feel it. Im gonna love this prison twink

He took me behind the barrack, threw himself on my neck and wept. He had never kissed me or wept before. “You’ve done so much for me, so much,” he said.

AWWWW... WAAAAAHHHHHHH(((((

God will reward you, and I will never forget you

Where is he, where is he now, my good, dear, dear Alei!…

Please Dostoyevsky fandom let there be Alei/Sasha fanfic. Please. On a /srs note, Alei was a beautiful redemption :)

moral privations are more painful than any physical torments.

TRUE

But who knows? Maybe many years from now I’ll be sorry when I have to leave it!…,” I would add, not without an admixture of that gleeful feeling which sometimes reaches the point of a need to deliberately chafe your own wound, as if you wish to admire your own pain, as if the consciousness of the extent of your misfortune indeed affords pleasure. The

A great dostoyevsky motif in general.

then I already had a presentiment of the monstrous degree to which a man grows accustomed to things.

Didn't i say before that i won't discuss every development and only what is new? That is what i am doing. I'll just highlight these. This one is a devlopmeet of the third theme

amidst the hostile I had as yet to divine the comforting.

these people are not so much worse than the remainder, who remained there, outside the prison.”

HUGE development of the second theme. So the world outside bars is not so different at all.

“We now have so many shirts, our jacket is torn.”

He was there for communism

It was never possible to say anything too definite about him.

Well his identity is being ordered around

Sirotkin,

This was who Gazin was a foil of

Otherwise they’ll chew you to pieces. Beat you to death, maybe, or simply kill you, or at least scare the hell out of you.

Off topic but i TRIED to read a coontemporary mafia romance and got one (1) chapter done before i decided to stop wasting my time. And a great difference is that in everthing dark and vile, Dostoyevsky says it plainy while the book terribly romanticised it. I am talking about Kincaid's Dante.

“Alexander Petrovich … you think,” he began in a breaking voice, trying to look away, “that I … for you … for the money … but I … I … a-a-ah!”

Sushilov my favourite among Sirotkin and Alei. I love yall

He was the most repulsive example of the baseness and vileness a man can sink to, and how far he can go in killing all moral feeling in himself, with no effort and with no regret.

Development of third theme

“A convict is a convict; if you’re a convict, you can act meanly and not be ashamed of it.”

This was discussed in TBK. It was given as a reson for why the Church should be the state and take over even the penal system: if a man is convicted he is not just fettered by the law but by the repreesntative of Hevean itself; all crime is against the Church. Therefore there is much more weight on a sentence yet giving more space for genuine repentance.

What is higher than money for a prisoner? Freedom, or at least the dream of freedom.

Insane quote.

And prisoners are great dreamers.

I love how white nights is such early dostoevsky work and yet you can see its echo in all of his later works still

The whole meaning of the word “prisoner” is a man with no will; but in wasting money, he is acting by his own will.

And what will one not give for freedom? What millionaire, his throat squeezed by a noose, would not give all his millions for one breath of air?

So, perhaps, a man buried alive wakes up in his coffin, bangs on the lid and tries to throw it off, though of course reason could convince him that all his efforts will be in vain. But the point is that he is no longer reasoning: it’s convulsions.

OMG RASKOLNIKOV... But also rly good philosophy and major development of the third theme

Where the egoism was in all this, I fail to understand.

Lmao i always love it when dostoyevsky shades other authors

You slurp shchi from a bast shoe!”

HAHAHAHAHA

it’s like the devil’s feeding him cannonballs,”

STOP HE ALREADY GOT DESTROYED

Skuratov was obviously one of those voluntary jokers, or, better, buffoons,

Fyodor Karamazovvvvvv

“His head isn’t even his, it was handed out to him,” Luka mixed in again. “They gave it to him as alms when his party passed through Tyumen.”

PLEASE AHHSBAAJAH

It was a big assignment, but Lord, how they set to it! Where was their laziness, where was their perplexity!

He talked about this a lot before. It is just that a convict likes to have purpose

no matter where I tried to join in and help them with the work, I was out of place everywhere, I was a hindrance everywhere, they all but drove me away with curses everywhere.

:(

“How many thousands of days like this lie ahead of me,” I thought, “all the same, all just the same!”