How can we possibly imagine a world without books? Well, there would be one glaring consequence of that: you wouldn’t be able to read what I’m writing (or really typing — which proves my point!) because if we live in a world without any physical media for written thoughts the internet would have never even crossed our minds. Reading, I think, is not only good for building a better self-knowledge and increase our critical thinking skills, but it also forces us to clear out the clutter of our minds to focus on plot, grammar, patterns, themes, etc., etc., etc.
Reading, however, is different from just wasting time on nothing. You are so involved in what’s going on with whatever you’re reading that you’re using your time quite well. Being absorbed in knowledge is far and away one of the best things you could do with your free time — and I am quite partial to philosophical works — since, as René Decartes says:
“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries who had composed them, or rather, taking part in a well-conducted dialogue in which such minds reveal to us only the best of their thoughts.”
(from “Discourse on Method and Medidations on First Philosophy”)
Of course, this sentiment isn’t just limited to works of the past, but can also resonate very well with the writers of today, offering up-to-date and relatable scenarios, ideas, and questions about myriad subjects or cultures. That is a very undeniable fact. Whenever I read, I seem to be focused usually on one or two books by classic authors and at least one from a more modern source (outside of required reading for classes). One book I’m currently reading includes Helen Macdonald’s “H Is For Hawk” about her journeys training goshawks and other birds of prey in the light of her father’s death, and I believe it to be fantastically written. You can really “get” a person’s feelings or emotions from a good grasp of a writing implement, and it most certainly shows even through I’ve only finished roughly a fifth of the book.
What I am really fascinated about, however, would be how literature and philosophy always coalesces at some point. I’d imagine that reading thinkers like Kant or Hegel — or really any German philosopher of that era — can get very dry very quickly (which might explain my aversion to reading their works for now) so spicing things up with a little literary flair always brings more vibrancy to someone’s ideas. Plato does this exact thing with Socrates’s Symposium or Dialogues, where Socrates isn’t analytical about his ideas but rather illustrative with them. From famous anecdotes like the “Allegory of the Cave” or the “Ring of Gyges” to his lively discussions with unabashedly literary figures like Eythyphro or his friends in the Phaedo, philosophy springs to life and dances like a Bacchant — minus the ripping of limbs part.
I think the reader might see why I prefer works that are set in a thematic rather than analytical way. Don’t fret, though; I like reading Hegel or Plato sometimes, too! Maybe not as much as Dostoyevsky or Thoreau, though.
Speaking of Dostoevsky, I’ll admit that it has taken me significantly longer than I expected to reach a book like The Brothers Karamazov.
Something on this magnitude has been part of my ever-changing bucket list of books as well as my pail of books I still need to finish (looking at you, Finnegans Wake). I’ve always been aware of Fyodor’s philosophical musings for a little while now, especially after reading short stories like The Grand Inquisitor and how he generally approaches theology, but I’ve never felt confident to fully dive into his deeper works like The Idiot or Crime and Punishent until now. To be honest, maybe it’s because I was intimidated by his œvre and the reputation it has behind it that I’ve been tempted to just say “yeah, it’s pretty good stuff” while not actually reading a word.
Yet what I have read of Karamazov has proven my instincts to be founded on very solid ground: he is dense. I feel that its density can befuddle who’s who at times, so do bear with me if I get names mixed up or positions wrong. The first book alone is filled with so much detail about Fyodor, Ivan, and Alyosha when it comes to their behaviors, backgrounds, and overall contexts in which they grow up. The density that Dostoyevsky is able to pack into a sentence can rival other fluent writers like Charlotte Brontë or James Joyce, yet still be an absolute joy to read about. That, I think, is one of the biggest charms of Dostoyevsky: he doesn’t pretend to know things he’s not experienced in. He hones in on what he does know and thus makes the lives of the drunkard, stoic, and monk so much more vibrant and relatable, not only to the reader but also to Dostoyevsky himself. His ability to hone in on specific aspects of a character (beyond their physical appearance, of course) is what I think should be the paragon for literary writing.
Wether it involves Fyodor’s drunken ramblings or the sobering backstory behind the separation of the brothers because of a father who behaved like Fyodor, Dostoyevsky has a unique attunement to how humans act or function. He doesn’t romanticise much in Karamazov, being his last published work before his untimely death, but rather makes the realism of the brothers quite stark, pointing out how self-serving Fyodor or Ivan is when meeting Zosima compared to the quiet demeanor of Alyosha. That there is extensive coverage of these characters is what makes a work like Karamazov still relevant to modern audiences, disgruntled in a society that separates rather than joins.
This brings me to the quote that motivated me to make this week’s post about this iconic writer, which is as follows:
“[People] are fond of reading and they read all sorts of books, even serious scientific books, but they usually lay the book down after reading two or three pages, for they feel completely satisfied. Their imagination, mobile, volatile, light, is already excited, their senses are attuned, and a whole dream-like world, with its joys and sorrows, with its heaven and hell, its ravishing women, heroic deeds … suddenly possesses the entire being of the dreamer … Sometimes whole nights pass unnoticed in undescribed joys; sometimes a paradise of love or a whole lifetime … is experienced in a few hours … The moments of sobering up are terrible; the poor unfortunate cannot bear them and he immediately takes more of his poison in new increased doses.”
Sometimes when life gets in my way, I hesitate about reading a book I’ve planned out and never get to finish them. But after reading something like this, I’ve realized that maybe I’m spreading my concentration too far. To only further his point, actually reading Dostoyevsky and how he deliberately stops himself from going too far just to concentrate on a single person is essential to building character (not only in a literary sense but also on a disciplinary angle) and enhance your storytelling, where when you reach a pivotal event in a work of literature you will more fully understand the motivations and emotions of a character more easily.
And I think deliberately spending long amounts of time with a character is directly within Dostoyevsky’s ethos: concentrating on the whys of a person instead of whats. Understanding why a person does something easily trumps what you should know about someone, not only for the benefit of comprehending the operations of the human mind but also for reflecting how we understand our whys. Philosophy, in essence, is just that: why?
You can definitely guarantee that I will be writing extra as I progress through Karamazov, but I want to challenge myself to deliberately take time to think things over — like Dostoyevsky — while simultaneously engaging my understanding of a text. I never want to convince myself of the illusion of gaining some sort of epiphanial knowledge from reading something I like, yet that option is quite tantalizing in this instance.
After all, understanding the human condition usually originates in how we fail. ❧
