Notes from a Dead House (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

whenever I came back from work, the first thing I did, before going anywhere, was to hurry behind the barracks with Sharik leaping ahead of me and squealing for joy, to hug his head and kiss it, kiss it, with some sort of sweet and at the same time tormentingly bitter feeling wringing my heart.

Pls dont let this end like Zhuchka from tbk did...

I remember it was even pleasant for me to think, as if flaunting my own hurt to myself, that now I had one being left in the whole world who loved me and was attached to me, my friend, my only friend—my faithful dog Sharik.

A free man has hopes, of course (for instance, for a change in his lot, for success in some undertaking), but he lives, he acts; the whirl of real life carries him away entirely. Not so the inmate. Here, let’s say, there is also life—the life of prison, of hard labor; but whoever the convict may be and whatever his term of punishment, he is decisively, instinctively, unable to take his lot as something absolute, definitive, as part of real life.

“We’ve still got a life to live!” he thinks and stubbornly drives away all doubts and other vexing thoughts.

He knows himself that those who have been chained up are kept in prison forever, till they die, and in fetters. He knows it, and still he wants terribly to finish his term on the chain.

Damn... This hope of life is definitely a fourth theme. And it is not so just for this book only but indeed for all of his post siberia works

“I want to live, and I will live.”

They all grew merry; they laughed, shouted, joked. They started throwing snowballs,

Little prison boys

But he was not much worried about money either.

So hes an exception to the convicts altogether

“I wanted to ask you about Napoleon.

Is this where that started...

“That’s in America, isn’t it? Don’t they say the people there walk upside down?”

HAHAHAHAHAHA YES THEY DO

You’re talking about the antipodes.”

NO WAY IM DYING

he was not particularly friendly with anyone, except for Sirotkin, and then only when he needed him.

Pls more sirotkin interactions i miss the twink.

Reason holds sway over people like Petrov only until they want something. Then nothing on earth can hinder their desire.

These people are born with one idea, which unconsciously moves them here and there all their lives; so they rush about all their lives until they find something they really want to do; then they are ready to risk their heads.

Verkhovensky. Raskolnikov. Rogozhin. Probably the Karamzovs

I often wondered what this bookish knowledge that he usually asked me about meant to him.

Love this men with книжности

“Eh, really!” he may have thought, laying hands on my goods, “what sort of man is he, if he can’t even protect his own goods!” Yet that seems to be what he loved me for.

A man may not be a murderer, but he may be more horrible than another who got there for six murders.

As if, having leaped over a line that was sacred to him, he begins to admire the fact that nothing is holy for him anymore; as if he feels an urge to leap over all legality and authority at once, and to revel in the most boundless and unbridled freedom, to revel in this thrill of horror, which it is impossible for him not to feel.

Rassssskolnikov

a man on a high tower

Nice biblical reference. Dmitry Karamazov also uses this language and i think i have very normal feelings about that

On the scaffold he whimpers—asks people’s forgiveness. He gets to prison, and you look: such a driveler, such a sniveler, so downtrodden you’re even astonished at him: “Can this be the same one who put the knife to five or six people?”

Luchka,

THE DISRESPECT LMAO

The prisoner himself knows that he is a prisoner, an outcast, and he knows his place before his superior; but no brands, no fetters will make him forget that he is a human being.

Humane treatment may make a human being even of someone in whom the image of God has faded long ago.

Alei,

Ah im hopeful for more alei now <3

As long as there’s God and money, it’s good anywhere.”

Agree

Petrov even helped me to undress,

This is NOT a homoerotic bathhouse scene

What induced him to tend to me like that?

Oh dear it might be

It occurred to me that if we should all wind up in the fiery furnace together, it would very much resemble this place.

Petrov soaped me up all over. “And now I’ll wash your little feet,” he added in conclusion.

IT DEFINITELY IS WHAT. WHAT IS THIS HOMOSEXUALITY AFTER THE CHAOS OF THE LAST TWO PAGES

“ ‘So you think I don’t dare?’ I say. “ ‘No-o!’ “ ‘I don’t dare?’

Im sorry but. "I killed to dare!" (cnp)

Besides innate reverence for the great day, the prisoner unconsciously felt that by observing the holiday he was as if in contact with the whole world, that he was therefore not entirely an outcast, a lost man, a cut-off slice, that things in prison were the same as among other people.

Awww thats rly what the nativity does tho

Once, once only in his life, had he attempted to follow his own mind—and he had landed in prison.

I will note here, incidentally, that after that he and I never had any relations and hardly ever said a word to each other up to my leaving prison.

It is so adorable. Even for convicts, xmas gives hope.

this was a gift of the poor to the poor, from their last.

Everything is so sweet. There is more kindness in christmas among conicts the there are among free ones.

balalaikas appeared.

He said it like they just spawned lmaooo

No one sees behind these walls The painful life we bear, But God the Father is with us all, We’ll not perish even here. Etc.

how oppressive and sad this day was for nearly every one of them.

Man it started off very nice but the prison is just so oppressive it ruins everything

“You’re all that’s left to me in the whole world now, do you hear? That’s why it’s to you alone I say: Me he dared!…”

Prison gays lol.. Actually theres alotta those

“I won’t let him lie!” Bulkin shouts, flashing his eyes and banging his fist on the bunk with all his might. “I don’t want him to lie!”

I think hes taking valamovs humanity on himself

Filatka’s bride would be played by Sirotkin

Ily sirotkin

What a strange gleam of childlike joy, of sweet, pure pleasure, shone on those furrowed, branded brows and cheeks, in the gazes of these people, until then gloomy and sullen, in those eyes which sometimes shone with a terrible fire!

The violins just screeched and squawked, the guitars were trash, but the balalaikas were superb.

AHHSHSJA IM DYING WHATT THATS HILRIOUS DOSTOYEVSKY

To tell the truth, until then I had no idea of what could be done with simple folk instruments; the harmony of sounds, the teamwork, and above all the spirit, the character of understanding and conveying the very essence of the tune, were simply amazing.

)))) happiness among poverty is also a dosto theme. But in here, it is in the third theme

Beside me stood Alei in the group of his brothers

YIPPIE ALEIIIII I LOVE YOU BBY

Alei’s sweet face shone with such childlike, beautiful joy that, I confess, I found it terribly delightful to look at him, and I remember how, each time an actor pulled some funny and clever stunt, and there was a general burst of laughter, I involuntarily turned at once to Alei and tried to see his face.

I dont blame him for kinda falling in love with Alei. How can u not honestly

Imagine prison, fetters, unfreedom, long sad years ahead, a life as monotonous as drizzling rain on a dreary autumn day—and suddenly all these downtrodden and confined men are allowed for one little hour to let go, to have fun, to forget the oppressive dream, to set up a whole theater, and what a theater: to the pride and astonishment of the whole town, as if to say, see what kind of prisoners we are!

And a HUGE developmnt of the third theme. It is a wonderful thing for the prisoners to have christmas and the these theatres because for once they are allowed to be humans as the were.

You might even wonder, watching these improvised actors, and involuntarily think to yourself: how much power and talent sometimes perishes in our Russia almost for nothing, in prison and in hardship!

Alei, without looking at me, tugs at my arm and shouts: “Look! The Brahmin! The Brahmin!”

Ily alei

These poor men were allowed to live in their own way for a little while, to have fun like other people, to spend if only an hour of unprisonlike time—and they were morally changed, even if only for those few minutes …

Exactly))))))

Alei is sleeping quietly next to me.

<3333