>>>>>"Sobachje serdce"? ":)
>>>>
>>>>Wow... it's been years since I read that... and I can't remember a thing except the book's cover. I remember "Maestro and Margarita" much more vividly, probably because of the movie (Yugoslav made, at that).
>>>>
>>>>But this has triggered a nice memory - of "Journey of dilettantes" (Bulat O[unspellable]). That sounded like a lyrical version of something Dostoyevsky might have written had he ever had such a long streak of lyrical moods.
>>>
>>>What a bum. Couldn't write a lick.
>>
>>?
>>
>>.... [two minutes pass]
>>
>>Damn English. I thouhgt "damn, bummer, I couldn't write a lick"... then later I understood that you meant "he couldn't". Declensions and conjugations and word forms weren't such a bad idea, though, too bad the majority of Britons disagreed..
>
>I thought you were giving the back of your hand to Dostoyevsky. Since he is one of my favorites, I said something sarcastic in response. No big deal. There are many different literary tastes here and I am not vain enough to think mine is universal.

Actually I didn't really realize that Dostoyevsky was so serious and doom & gloom until I read this piece, which has all the environment in which Dostoyevsky's pieces go on, and many of similar situations - except that it's all seen through eyes of someone who watches the young couple with a sympathetic smile. Pretty much how Wong Kar Wai treats his characters - he likes them even when he mocks them. Dostoyevsky, OTOH, suffered together with his, and I don't remember much of any smile. Periods of altered states, parties with ominous backdrops, waiting for something bad to happen, a murder or a fight, or someone disowning someone else, or someone trembling in front of a higher bureaucrat waiting for the verdict on their further career... that, yes, a lot.

Someone back home once said that comparisons between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are unfair - count Tolstoy was rich enough to have time to study fashion for a week or two so he could waste another week writing the pages on Anna's ball dress, while Dostoyevsky was forever in debt, a gambler, and had epilepsy on top. His literary goal was mostly to get the damn thing finished by morning to make the deadline, get some cash and live to fight another book.