The impact of Fyodor Dostoevsky on me
I began my self-educating mission without me even knowing. The Internet and it’s resources had managed to drown me in themselves to such an extent in a short period of time that it was just the matter of desire.
I could have chosen to use these resources for money-making, name-making or whatever, but, being the Idiot I am, I chose to use it for learning. Whether I learnt or not is a different matter altogether!
But early in this unconscious drift on the ‘intellectual’ internet information, I stumbled upon quotes from this Russian bloke called Dostoevsky who said things like this —
The wisest of all, in my opinion, is he who can, if only once a month, call himself a fool — a faculty unheard of nowadays.
If there is no God, everything is permitted.
But most importantly, he said this:
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.
Since those were early days of self-education, I read a lot of quotes. Quotes must be the ABCD of internet-self-education. These kinds of quips really helped me, firstly, to come out of whatever crisis I was in and secondly, to understand and define myself.
I read and re-read a hell of a lot of quotes those days, hence I constantly came to this page: Fyodor Dostoyevsky — Wikiquote. I may have even printed a pdf.
Such was the impact! The more I read and tried to deeply understand what he said, the more it felt like my mental-pores were opening. My guilts and pains were healing. My self-respect increasing. The miserable-loser in me enjoyed what he was. My desire-to-learn also radically intensifying.
But more importantly, I started to feel good about myself on how I really was: It was okay to have no money, it was okay to have no name, it was okay to have no game, it was okay to suffer — as long as you are living to understand and talk about the misery of yourself and man.
The quotes in themselves made me agree to be just that. I won’t care about material things, I will just care about understanding humanity and its sufferings. Nothing else matters!
But I had to level up someday. Internet quotes and short stories were okay for casual learners. If I was a hardcore Dostoevsky reader, a seriously-miserable-genius, I had to own a book!
So I went and bought Crime and Punishment.
The self-image of miserable-suffering-intellectual I was modelling for myself, assisted by quotes and wikipediac biographies of guys such Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Devkota, etc., suddenly found a mega-booster from the first paragraph itself. As Dostoevsky kept describing the actions of dirty wearing, insecure Raskolnikov in third person, I kept turning pages taking the story in as if they were guidelines for me on how to think, behave and act.
I was in such a haste to finish the book that I turned pages at crazy speed all the while imagining myself in my space-time as a kind of Raskolnikov. It was not about the plot as such or learning anything about crime or punishment or russia or humanity for that matter, it was just about drinking the book in as if a cinema. I needed visions on how to think, behave and act. I didn’t care what happened. I was just ready to be a 21st century Nepali Raskolnikov.
So in that way, in a matter of a few days I finished the book. I was already feeling the way I had felt never before. Absolute pride in what/however I was. Absolute confidence in whatever I didn’t have. No care for money, looks, popularity, prestige. Desire-to-be-ill. Absolutely determined to look at the world and humanity in a general way: find loopholes, intellectually talk about them with ‘system-guys’. Write-Learn-Suffer-Write-Learn-Suffer. Hell, I may have even tried to find my own Sonya.
Although I may not have gone through the plot and characters in such detail that I could even write a short review about it, I had inspirationally-imitated Raskolnikov and what Dostoevsky had tried to say in such a way that I was suddenly tenfold more interested in knowing about Psychology-Society-Culture-Economics-Politics-Humanity. My hunger to learn was intensified by a margin I can’t even comprehend. Obviously, I then kept a photo of Dostoevsky as my phone wallpaper and proceeded to learn more and more of various subjects and think-behave-act in a Dostoevskian way.
In the following months, I read Notes from the Underground which provided me with the license to even be weird. House of the Dead and The Gambler followed. The former provided me with some more impetus towards my miserable-suffering-intellectual mission, while the latter made me want to be a bit materialistic, but just to throw it all away. SUCH WAS THE INFLUENCE! I read more of his biographies, short stories, quotes…I had found an image, a role model, a mission. From him and all his characters.
And then came the magnum-opus: The Karamazov Brothers.
I want to end this by talking about that work.
A strange thing had happened in my first reading of that work. While earlier reads of Dostoevsky had me overflowing with excitement due to the inspired-imagery-imitation thing, Karamazov gave me this strange quietness and calmness right from the outset. I immediately paid attention as Dostoevsky began the long tale.
Maybe it was because this time, he wasn’t making it at all about an erratic miserable-suffering-intellectual, he was taking a wide stance. He was talking about families, marriages, deaths. He was the widest possible lens for Psychological-Social-Cultural-Economic-Political-Humanity understanding. He was including everything. You could feel it right from the beginning. He was juxtaposing without taking much sides. He was bringing sensualists and spiritualists together. He was bringing miserable-suffering-intellectual like Ivan to such sensualists, opportunists and spiritualists. He was constantly testing the faith of this favorite character Alyosha.
He was talking about everything possible: from alcohol to women to cheating to money to God to Jesus to history to Russia to teenagers to dogs to everything possible. Without taking a side. I think it was this generality, this wide-wide view, this wisdom that really demanded my attention. Attention I gave and I earned in calmness and a first glimpse of wisdom. After all, Wisdom is about being able to keep diverse things inside our heads without freaking out.
If his earlier works had made me imitate and had given me an image to follow, this particular work made me dead serious on learning. It was not about posing as a miserable-suffering-intellectual anymore, it was now about seriously learning: Psychology-Society-Culture-Economics-Politics-Humanity.
I tried to follow that as much as my talent and will allowed me to.
And then last year, I opened that book again, after years. The same calmness returned (I am not exaggerating). While I was reading and semi-practising a lot of Vedic-spiritual stuff, a couple of pages in, the book took me to a peace of mind and calmness that none of that spiritual stuff could. I pushed away all spiritual stuff and drowned myself in that book. This time I went word by word, sentence by sentence. Slow as fk. I tried to chew, drink every word, and punctuation. As Bacon had said, ‘some books are to be tasted, some swallowed, some chewed and digested’. I did that. I even covered it with plastic lest it gets ruined. Such holy and sacred had it become for me.
There is another reason for it:
Hundreds of pages in, I had a strange all-of-a-sudden moment. I said at the beginning that I tried to self-educate myself. I have really tried to. With trust in random strangers on the internet as teachers, free ebooks, books — there was a huge risk and there is only so much one can comprehend. I was struggling. I had difficulty comprehending Physics and mathematical sciences, Shakespeare and Wordsworth poems. Marxism and Economics. I was struggling. BUT IT ALL CHANGED during that read. I found my comprehensibility increased. That is, during the course of a few minutes or so, I found myself understanding better. Understanding concepts I was struggling with before. A different sensation. I could feel it. The same group of words were meaning something else. It was a very vibrant and holy-shit few moments.
I was able to read between the lines like never before. I was figuring out the subtexts like never before: All during the course of that read. I could feel it. I was amazed.
I remember going through the mathematics of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. Both are difficult areas for me. Although I still didn’t get them completely, I did manage to get a lot out of them. During the course of the following few weeks, I easily finished Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure out of all works.
I am not saying it’s mystical. It isn’t.
We all learn to understand and this doesn’t just imply that we increase the quantity of our knowledge. We also become capable in the process of learning: capable to understand more and deeper, conceive more and deeper, create more and deeper, imagine more and deeper, think more and deeper — levels. Overall, increase in our mental abilities. I think the change I felt was just that. Me perceiving my level-up. The Karamazov Brothers with its high tolerance, generality, juxtapositions provided me with the vessel. Later I knew how much time and effort Dostoevsky had put in it. He used all his genius in it. He made it a vessel that could transport into others his mental ability and condition. So it’s fitting I felt such a moment during that read. If I think about it another way, What else could have?
I also know it’s an emotional phenomenon too. But whatever reasons there may be, the impact has been real and substantial. I owe Dostoevsky one. Whatever that means!
People tend to throw around the term Wisdom a lot. Making it its own contradiction. I will do that too.
My definition of Wisdom is — ability to know and understand diverse matters in such a way that they exist inside our heads without fucking ourselves or others up.
At this point, I would like to suggest a thing:
If you want to be wise, try to think the way Dostoevsky did.
P.S. While irrespective of race, religion, nationality, ‘wealth’, we’re all equally miserable out here, there is a difference between petty-fucked_up-miserable and profound-genius-miserable. Dostoevsky wasn’t the former. What about these guys:
https://medium.com/@ades_abcd/whats-up-with-these-uber-ambitious-billionaires-8e510f8f5b37
