Who is the greater writer and why is it Tolstoy?

Who is the greater writer and why is it Tolstoy?

тaк глyпo

Tolstoy wrote best doge character

Toad Soy had a better way with words
Jet Ski had deeper spychological insight

Dostoevsky wrote about what it is to be a human being.

Tolstoy wrote about wine, food, and chandeliers.

This is correct. Make your decision.

They are both trash, but Tolstoy more so.

t. plebs who need things spelled out for them

t. Someone who hasn't read Tolstoy

Because Nabakov says so.

You have a weird way of spelling Dostoevsky

Hope this is a meme.

Just because it's a meme doesn't mean it's not true.

top fucking kek

Has been a meme for over a hundred years user.

I like Dostoevsky a lot more, but Tolstoy certainly has his merits.

Dostoyevsky, because he never read Schopenhauer.

Having only read Dostoevsky and only in English, seems to me the way with words is down to the translator

Well that's an interesting opinion.

shit thread desu

Dostoevsky wrote about deep themes and messages

And he's also popular on patrician boards like /mu/ and Veeky Forums

Tolstoy just wrote about pleb things and was shit

Tolstoy is probably the most overrated writer in history.

>guiizzzz I read a rully lung buk, am i smrt?

cuz tolstoy was a francofag, and he didn't go back far enough to read the worthwhile french, so he suffered the bullshit aristocracy and people seem to eat that shit up so he got rather lucky. dostojewskii was firmly russian and so appealed to people who wanted to read russian things, much to the chagrin of russians themselves, who collectively despise dostojewskii, since he revealed the actions and manias deep within their culture at the time. these revelations for outsiders could be nothing good for those who have the pride of the russians. Tolstoy is nice and safe, he's bland and loves the french enough for it to spoil the brooding nature of the sick russian mind.

Huh? The Death of Ivan Ilych isn't long.

I have only read Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov, so take my stance with a grain of salt. Anna Karenina is the perfect novel as many have said, but TBK was an entertaining expose of existentialist thought/philosophy. I think Tolstoy was a better writer, but Dosto had more daring and wrote more entertaining books.

I realize this is vague. I'm not an English major or anything... so take it how you want.

The trial scene in TBK was pretty damning.. At first you find yourself convinced by the prosecutor, but then the defense uses his same psychology to paint his own narrative -- which turned out to be much more accurate than the self-proclaimed psychologist. It's especially funny because Dosto is renowned for is psychological insight yet he himself seemed to hate the field of study. I'm pretty sure Tolstoy hated it as well, but I can't come up with an example off the top of my head.

they're both good you faggots

You misspelled Stirner

Come on now yall, no one would EVEN compare these two if they weren't from the same country.

Dostoevsky is to Tolstoy as Låt Den Rätte Komma In is to Twilight.

>I like literature a lot more, but pulp garbage has its merits

In this case, you aren't hurting anyone's feelings by getting off the fence and choosing the greener side.

Underrated post. And the difference between translations is bigger than you would assume, especially now that their works are falling back into antiquity.

Dostoevsky mostly for the token self-insert epileptic characters

>yfw you realise the brothers Karmazov are all him, including Semerdyakov

kek I've never thought about Russians being embarrassed by Dostoevsky. I always assumed they embraced him because Muh International Acclaim. Your opinion is fresh & I like it.

I'm already a human being. I don't always have wine, food, and chandeliers handy, nor have I experienced being them. Thus, if I want to learn something, Tolstoy is the way to go.

Dostoevsky is a francofag too, worst parts of Karmazov are his descriptions of the upper class characters who somehow feel inauthentic

>Dostojewskii is a francofag
it's funny, i don't recall any of his works being rife with french lines, or even broaching the topic of dishonesty the french language implied when the russians used it in conversation, a deceptive sort of language to hide the truth of a sentiment, perhaps those characters feel inauthentic because he recognized that they were utter shit people because of their aristocratic sense. Dostojewskii was a man of the people, someone who perhaps aspired to the heights of popularity, but would not fit in them if he had the opportunity, and thus remained spiteful to them, letting his characterizations of them bleed through his work. He was russian in every way Tolstoy wasn't, an unpolished pebble on the Volga.

that's fucking bullshit, don't listen to him

he isn't as revered here as in the west, but he's still very highly praised

>muh polophony

Honestly, people here who are criticizing Tolstoy certainly have not read him. You people are very unfair and dishonest to offer definitive opinions about a writer that you have not even read. And no, to have read only a few initial chapters of Anna Karenina or War and Peace is not the same thing as having read the two novels in their entirety. And there are also the several short-stories of Tolstoy, that are among the greatest ever written.

As for the OP, both Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy are great, but there is no way of treating both as equals. Tolstoy is more varied, be it in different scenes, characters, environments and subjects; his prose is more beautiful and poetic; he pays greater attention to every kind of small details; he has a more comprehensive knowledge of female characters and of nature (animals, trees and flowers, different ecosystems).

To be just with Dostoevsky, he did not have the same opportunities in life that Tolstoy had, he didn’t had the chance of spending several years of calm work and research in his books, but was always pressured by money-demands, deadlines and everyday business. Who knows what he could have done if he had the time and comforts that Tolstoy had?

I have already posted copy-pastas about Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and will not bother you guys with it once again. But I find very offensive to see a lot of people here offending one of the greatest artists of all time without even having read his works. This shows a infantile and petty character.

>le they don't like it so they must not have read it meme

shuddap, pleb.

You have not read him, I am sure. Yet it is worthless to ask cowards like you the truth: you would certainly lie to us and then read Wikipedia articles to validate your answers if it we ask you to prove that you have read Tolstoy.

>To be just with Dostoevsky, he did not have the same opportunities in life that Tolstoy had, he didn’t had the chance of spending several years of calm work and research in his books, but was always pressured by money-demands, deadlines and everyday business. Who knows what he could have done if he had the time and comforts that Tolstoy had?

This is apparent in his characters, who are often impetuous, and frenzied. You can feel the desperation diffusing from the pages. He would have been a totally different writer had he lived in a different circumstance.

>He would have been a totally different writer had he lived in a different circumstance.

But nevertheless, he wasn't.
Oh well, into the trash he goes!

>both from Russia
>both wrote realist novels
>both Christian
>lived at the same period of time
>both influenced each other

Basically you're retarded.

Why's that?

>you haven't read him, and any attempts to prove it would be taken as a lie.

mkay, pleb. at least i don't accuse others of not having read something when i disagree with them, your lack of maturity regarding a dispute must be a marvel if something so irrelevant as this would inspire such deceptive practices.

We know what you are, friend: you are too predictable. Go read War and Peace and only post on Tolstoy threads again after you have finished.

Not only a coward and a liar, but also arrogant.

>such deceptive practices.

says the guy who judges writers without having read them

>greatest writer
>tolstoy

please, he's not even the greatest living writer

Not that guy, but how can you honestly think that someone would say things like:

If they really have read Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Kholstomer, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Devil, The Sevastopol Sketches, Father Sergey, etc.

Is obvious that those guys haven’t read this works.

>being this much of a pleb
>calling people cowards over something so irrelevant as "whos ur favrit author"
calm down, bruh.

maybe those particular examples, but people like that pleb getting so angry over trolls shitting on tolstoy is laughable. They're both exceptional authors. One is favored by one type of person, and the other, another. After scathing insults towards dostoevsky's writing, no one claimed that Nabokov had never read the works. It's just an immature and silly way to argue, and one that connotes a person's inability to survive dissent in their life, a weakling, a pleb of the highest magnitude.

I was the person you were fighting with. Now I understand that you don’t have anything against Tolstoy, but actually against the accusation that people haven’t read him.

I agree that it is stupid for me to get so angry about a “who is your favorite writer” discussion, and I apologize for that. But I have the same view as:

It is true I should not accuse others of not having read Tolstoy, but the level of their posts really makes me think they haven’t. Also, there was a time I make a guess and said that an user who was saying Tolstoy was shallow and unimpressive probably had only read just a few initial chapter of Anna Karenina, and he answered me with “lel, how did you know? I actually started reading but dropped after the first 5 chapters”, so I already found in the past people who were strongly criticizing a writer of whom they did not know anything about.

well, sure, there are plenty of people like that. I'd be lying if I said I had read everything of Tolstoy's, I've only read Anna Karenina and Ivan Ilych, both of them I had come into expecting something quite different, I don't think Tolstoy is a poor author whatsoever, though I did make the jest about him being a francofag (which i stand) but in all honesty, I'd take Tolstoy over any of the shit authors we have to deal with today. I definitely personally prefer Dostoevsky, but that's left up to tastes in the end. I understand the frustration that comes of people not reading a work that you're passionate about, and then coming along and pissing in your cornflakes, but in the end, those are the people with the least relevant opinion. I intend to read War and Peace, because I truly do love Russian literature, but I can't ever promise I'll love Tolstoy. I genuinely do think he had a lot of other cultures twisting around in him, and though I've only read a small portion of the wide array of Russian lit, I would have to say he stands out. I only noticed it recently when I had read the red and the black, by stendhal, and I kept having this feeling of nostalgia when I read the characters, and a hollowness resonated in me when I connected them with the characters in AK. I could feel the influence that he must have experienced from the french culture, and the tendency of the Russians to learn the french language, especially in aristocracy only cements the impression. now, whether or not french literature of that time is great or not is irrelevant, but rather that it's not to my taste, and I feel is flawed by lacking the same sensational, crummy, and ugly depth that Dostoevsky fed me page after page. I did feel one moment, and I know it's cliched by now, but when Levin is mowing with the peasants, it felt the most real I had read out of the entire novel. It felt like journalism instead of fantasy, a candid moment, and it gave me a nugget to hold onto when the story eventually returned to the shallow concerns of the rest of the characters. and dat epilogue. I have more hope for War and Peace.

A bunch of losers in this thread.

Tolstoy had much more elegant prose, but Dostoevsky was the much more profound thinker.

Losers on Veeky Forums?!

>Tolstoy
>christian

>I intend to read War and Peace, because I truly do love Russian literature,

Do it, you will not regret it. It is my favorite book. Shakespeare is my favorite writer, but as a single work War and Peace is the one I love the most.

There is everything in this novel; is hard to believe that a single mind was able to produce it.

eh, overwhelming praise can be a double edged sword. I'm not going into it expecting a masterwork like i did with AK, and ending up disappointed when it doesn't cut the mustard. I'm going to read it as I would any other book. I'm sure it'll be good, I doubt it'll end up being my favorite novel, but it's possible.

Fuck off Constantine, you should of only had one child

From as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a Christian. To me, being a Christian was better than being Caesar of the known world.

>both influenced each other
Tolstoy literally criticized Dostoevsky's writing for sounding too smart.

Basically you're Tolstoy.

I like Infinite Jest.

Wallace was Team Fyodor

its pushkin

gogol

bely

thought about writing this too but he is sort of the wrong generation

Tolstoy is a weird way of spelling Dostoevsky.

In addition to psychological depth, Dostoyevsky was more discerning than Tolstoy on religious matters. Whereas Tolstoy's faith became dominated by a highly subjective and emotion-fueled mysticism, Dostoyevsky was grounded not only in the Orthodox faith of his country but also its interaction/contrast with the faith of Europe (Catholic and Protestant alike). 'The Grand Inquisitor' is one of the most eloquent and convincing defenses of atheism in literature (and Smerdyakov and Ivan voice the skeptic perspective convincingly elsewhere too), but the (generally overlooked) Zosima section that follows it dismantles its argument completely.

Wallace focused on Dostoyevsky more than once but hardly (if ever) even mentioned Tolstoy. Also the parallels between Infinite Jest and Brothers Karamazov are numerous, the three brothers of course but also the prominence of Shakespeare's Hamlet for example.

Are you trying to make a point or is it just bait? Because if you're trying to discredit either one of these men you're not going to succeed

Would hardly call Tolstoy a man.

You can call him what you want but I find it unfitting to apply such normie-tier judgement in this case. He didn't go down in history as a bar fighter or a pussy slayer. You Hemingway-type man would not write what and how he wrote. So I guess youre right.. except for the bait

Do you know anything about his life, his youth?

I figured that the father was mostly what he thought of himself, and Alyosha was the goodness he hoped would come from his dead child.

Although I'm sure every author projects themselves onto every character a bit.

Except people who read Russian still knock Dostoevsky for terrible prose. I've even seen the opinion expressed that his writing style is so pedestrian that there is no art to it to be lost in translation.

I just finished War & Peace today and felt underwhelmed in part because of my expectations. I find myself agreeing exactly with what Nabakov said of it. Apologies in advance for the terrible formatting.

"War and Peace, though a little too long, is a rollicking historical novel written for that amor-phic and limp creature known as "the general reader," and more specifically for the young. In terms of artistic structure it does not satisfy me. I derive no pleasure from its cumbersome message, from the didactic interludes, from the artificial coincidences, with cool Prince Audrey turning up to witness this or that historical moment, this or that footnote in the sources used often uncritically by the author."