I did it! I finished a really really long Russian novel without major glitches!!
Some background: I have tried (and failed) to finish The Brothers Karamazov at least four different times. One time, I was really making progress… and then my grad school classes resumed. Try focusing on Brothers K while your mind is trying to juggle 10 different theological texts at once… yeah, didn’t happen. The only other Russian novel that I remember reading is Demons (also by Dostoevsky) in my senior seminar with Dr. Roger Lundin (Wheaton College). It was a great class, but I still had a hard time connecting with that particular novel. I had assumed that enjoyment of the great Russian classics would simply not come naturally to me.
Crime and Punishment changed all of that. I loved it! I genuinely loved it and loved the experience of reading it. I’d like to read some critical essays on the novel so that I can delve deeper into some of the major themes of the novel — I don’t think this is a novel that you read once and say, “Ok, I’ve mastered that one.”
I found myself mesmerized by the characters in the book, particularly the protagonist, Raskolnikov, and the magistrate, Porfiry Petrovitch. (Side note — one advantage of my undergraduate foray into Dostoevsky is that I was prepared for each character to have a zillion names and nicknames that would be difficult to remember…). I also found it brilliant the way D. crafted the relationship between Sonya, a young girl who is forced into prostitution to support her family, and Raskolnikov. And to make Sonya the most “Christian” of the characters — also brilliant. The ending of the novel was perfect — if you haven’t read it, I’m not going to spoil it for you here. Just read it. (But don’t read it first — allow the book to build as D. intended!)
On a separate note, I read this entire book on my iPhone, using the Kindle app. I actually found it easier to read the book this way — I’m not sure why. Perhaps the fact that the text was broken up into shorter pages because of the small size of the iPhone screen helped encourage me that I was making progress — helped make it seem to go faster. Perhaps it was the fact that I could read the book in bed while my husband falls asleep without needing a light on…
So my next project is David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, another author whose works I sometimes struggle to finish. I am also reading this one on my iPhone, since I found I could download a free copy! So far I’m loving this book too — I’m on a roll!
Light and Shifting Shadows 