Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I don't know much of anything about Dostoyevsky. He is someone I want to read in my lifetime. I know that hubby worked his way through several of D's major works several summers ago. My niece, who lived in Estonia for 2 1/2 years is reading Dostoevsky now. One of her Russian or Estonian friends told her that (in their opinion) the David McDuff translations are the best Russian-to-English translations of Dostoyevsky that they have found. This gives me hope! Dh had said how difficult a time he had reading Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamozov a few years back. He thinks it was not a good translation.

You see, I had reading difficulties as a child in school (probably undiagnosed dyslexia), although I could spell impeccably by second grade! Reading was difficult for me, even up through high school. and I still have to push myself to settle down and focus. Letters, numbers, or even words sometimes come out of my mouth in a swapped jumble, even though my brain was thinking the right thing. But I do enjoy reading, when I can fit it in. Maybe having a better translation will encourage me to tackle it sooner, rather than later!

side note: I do believe that learning foreign languages de-mystified reading the longer and more difficult classic works (for me, anyway). I learned Spanish first, German second, then dabbled in Italian and Latin. Possibly it has to do with learning to "de-code" the phonemes and grammar of other languages. It certainly made my English Grammar better, so that I Clepped out of College English 1 and 2. Cool, eh?

These days, my primary reading relates to and centers around American Lit., as my coffeehouse readers would note. If I ever settle in to read Dostoyevsky, you all will be the first to know, and be the readers of my narrations and research, such as they are.

Happy Birthday, Fyodor! (I should ask my Russian linguist brother, or his daughter, Estonian resident for a time, whose goal is to become a Russian linguist someday) how to say Happy Birthday in Russian!!

Javamom

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.” ~Dostoyevsky