I can never decide whether I love or loathe Dosters. I love his writings - this is heaven. Didn't know it before - but loathe the man, I think. Imagine what infernal company he must have been.
I'm not sure - the ideas behind some of his writings are excellent, but his writing style leaves a lot to be desired in many of his works - he constantly seems to hve crowbar another huge idea in at the cost of being a wordsmith a la Tolstoi or Chekhov. His Diary of a Writer also has some of the most objectionable nationalistic/racist/slavophilic rantings ever committed to paper. Vile in fact, and quiet shocking that someone with such an apparent belief in the redemption of humanity should have such a flawed view of (non-Russian) people.
Did he and Rozanov ever chum up? (Just checking dates. Rozanov would have been 25 at the time of Dosters's death.) A similarly entertaining wordsmith, but god I was bored of his ranting about Jews after twenty seconds. (Do you remember the Fyodor we met in St. Petersburg? I'm convinced they'd both have been just like him.) (He did a Jew-rant once, which, drink taken, I decided to interrupt with the intelligence that I was a Jew. Which is bollocks, of course. He said there was no such thing as a Jew, whereas the Nazi present - can't remember if you met him - sneered.) (He wasn't majorly impressed with gayness either.)
Rozanov would have loathed Dosters - there is some criticism available (can't lay my hands on it at the moment) - he was incredibly pro-Jewish, pro-life (honeymoons in churches, anyone?), for immediacy - he wanted to catch his friends unawares, to see their true nature. Staunchly anti-Christian - he sw it as a religion of death and denial. Ahh! I knew all those hours reading this rubbish would come in useful one day...
But he went Christian and anti-Jew in the end, didn't he, before starving to death? I forced myself to read Последние Листья. It was all about Jews and sex. Even a gay-friendly moment, though I think he basically thought gays were cunts - is the c-word allowed here? - although he was hardly in a minority thinking that then. (Or now, perhaps.)
I have it in English somewhere. I find him difficult to read - maybe one in ten of the aphorisms grabs me, whereas Nietzsche has a far better hit rate. Now I sound like Jimmy Saville or DLT. Hello pop-pickers. Which philosophers will be in top ten this week?
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I can never decide whether I love or loathe Dosters. I love his writings - this is heaven. Didn't know it before - but loathe the man, I think. Imagine what infernal company he must have been.
I'm not sure - the ideas behind some of his writings are excellent, but his writing style leaves a lot to be desired in many of his works - he constantly seems to hve crowbar another huge idea in at the cost of being a wordsmith a la Tolstoi or Chekhov. His Diary of a Writer also has some of the most objectionable nationalistic/racist/slavophilic rantings ever committed to paper. Vile in fact, and quiet shocking that someone with such an apparent belief in the redemption of humanity should have such a flawed view of (non-Russian) people.
Did he and Rozanov ever chum up? (Just checking dates. Rozanov would have been 25 at the time of Dosters's death.) A similarly entertaining wordsmith, but god I was bored of his ranting about Jews after twenty seconds. (Do you remember the Fyodor we met in St. Petersburg? I'm convinced they'd both have been just like him.) (He did a Jew-rant once, which, drink taken, I decided to interrupt with the intelligence that I was a Jew. Which is bollocks, of course. He said there was no such thing as a Jew, whereas the Nazi present - can't remember if you met him - sneered.) (He wasn't majorly impressed with gayness either.)
Rozanov would have loathed Dosters - there is some criticism available (can't lay my hands on it at the moment) - he was incredibly pro-Jewish, pro-life (honeymoons in churches, anyone?), for immediacy - he wanted to catch his friends unawares, to see their true nature. Staunchly anti-Christian - he sw it as a religion of death and denial. Ahh! I knew all those hours reading this rubbish would come in useful one day...
But he went Christian and anti-Jew in the end, didn't he, before starving to death? I forced myself to read Последние Листья. It was all about Jews and sex. Even a gay-friendly moment, though I think he basically thought gays were cunts - is the c-word allowed here? - although he was hardly in a minority thinking that then. (Or now, perhaps.)
I've got Последние Листья, but only in Russian, if you want to toil through it.
I have it in English somewhere. I find him difficult to read - maybe one in ten of the aphorisms grabs me, whereas Nietzsche has a far better hit rate. Now I sound like Jimmy Saville or DLT. Hello pop-pickers. Which philosophers will be in top ten this week?
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