Lets settle this once and for all

Lets settle this once and for all

strawpoll.me/11941559

People who vote Dostoevsky haven't read Tolstoy.

People who vote Tolstoy haven't read Dostoevsky.

I voted Dostoevsky because I like him a lot more, but both are great.

Dusty is entry level af tbqh, my 16 year old sister has read Notes.

I would have likely voted Dostoevsky when I was younger, but as you age you grow to appreciate Tolstoy much more.

where's Gogol? i don't see Gogol

dostoevsky
>saints, sinners, drunks, gamblers, murderers, prisoners, prostitutes, sadists, masochists

tolstoy
>wine, food, chandeliers

Gogol is irrelavant to the question

Tolstoy is for plebs who cannot fathom what a human emotion is.

ok well Chekhov is my favorite so put Chekhov on the thing so I can pick him

I'd say Tolstoy is a lot more human than the personified philosophical ideas of Dostoevsky.

This

Of course Dostoevsky is going to be more popular on Veeky Forums because the characters in his novels are more neurotic and eccentric than Tolstoy's characters generally are, and therefore they are more relatable to more of the users on this site. From what I've read of both novelists, along with other scholarship around them, Tolstoy is the better writer overall, certainly a better writer aesthetically on a sentence by sentence basis. Still, they are both great so who gives a fuck?

Please don't swear. Say "h*ck" next time.

i don't read books

No.

Veeky Forums in a nutshell but you can vote anyways

Please, Rob. It's for your own good.

i read the appendix of war and peace and didn't like what tolstoy said about napoleon and i read the first few pages of notes from the underground and didn't think it was awful

i know that rasilonikov said something about napoleon but i've never read crime and punishment

so i will pick dostoevsky

Childhood is idolising Dosto

Adulthood is idolising Tolstoy

Childhood is [thing I no longer like as much as adulthood thing]

Adulthood is [thing I like more now]

congratulations you discovered true essence of the meme

Dostoevsky should have been a playwright. His novels are the best plays never written.

But it's Tolstoy. Tolstoy beats Milton. Tolstoy beats Virgil and Dante. Tolstoy can go toe to toe with Homer himself, his only competition in epic-writing, and even then, were it not for Homer's place in history, I would give Tolstoy the edge.

It's Tolstoy and there's no question of that.

>Adulthood
>Idols

Tolstoy has the prosaic abilities of George R R Martin

thanks for the analysis
Based on that information, I would say you probably would prefer Dostoevsky if you had read them both, but would completely misunderstand him

lol

what's there to misunderstand

your thoughts:
>wow le underground man in just like me!!! how is this possible?
>omg why did he include the epilogue in C&P it was so stupid
>i totally get raskolnikov though he just gets my tortured sole lol

TOLSTOY BTFO
O
L
S
T
O
Y

B
T
F
O

none of those are my thoughts or things i would think

prove me wrong then

Go back to /jp/, Tokiko

Thanks for the input, Rob.

Tolstoyfags are DEVISTATED

I read half of The Idiot before giving up.
Never read Tolstoy.
So I guess Dostoevsky wins.
I should really reread The Idiot again shouldn't I.

More than half the people on this board are 17-21. I guess that explains the poll results.

Yes you should, but read Crime and Punishment or Notes From the Underground first.

>more neurotic and eccentric than Tolstoy's characters

My twelve year old -- uh, classmate, technically -- has read the Odyssey. You gonna pile shit on Homer?

'[insert noun here]fag'fags are retarded.

Also: it's *devastated

>Tolstoy is the better writer overall, certainly a better writer aesthetically
But this is not true. Tolstoi is like an ice sculptor -- he scoops out all he can and leaves coldness. Dosto is dusty -- ugly and Biblical -- rough and uneven -- aesthetic af. One of my favourite authors for prose.

Though ofc I've only read translations.

For style: the two styles are so distinct as to be incomparable. They do different things for different objectives and they do them perfectly. But I prefer the Shakespearean ugliness of Dosto to Tolstoi's kinetic epics.

I have the Death of Ivan Ivanov by Tolstoy and The Idiot by Dostoyevski

which one should I read first?

>Dostoevsky fan
>Is a pedo

Colour me shocked

"Rich failure" is more precise. I'm retaking highschool exams.

12 year olds aren't in high chool

wrong

>Featued poll
>Who is your favorite reindeer
If you say Blitzen, you are a Nazi

now that i'm in the "war and peace" readalong, i can full-throatedly agree.

i thought tolstoy was too moralistic when i was younger, but with wife and kid, it's clear that he's tapped into the raw truth.

It's the difference between talking and having something to say
Tolstoy had more pleasing prose
But Dostoyevsky was insightful about psychology and about God among other things
This is also why Nabokov didn't like Dostoyevsky: he didn't care about substance, only style

I completely agree with you.

Tolstoy's there is much shorter. You should read Notes or Crime and Punishment before The Idiot, but if you're just going between the two read Tolstoy's novella and then The Idiot.

you spelled right wrong

Maxim Gorky

Blitzen did nothing wrong

sometimes i want to read dostoevsky. sometimes i want to read tolstoy. i find myself wishing to read dostoevsky more often, so i choose dostoevsky.

what else is there?
>muh projected objective values
i'm sorry, i just can't take that shit seriously anymore.

Brothers Kalishakov was garbage