#mostly to study behind what grievances anglophone critics hide their ableism from themselves?? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

makeroomforthejolyghost · 8 years ago

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always so refreshing to return to dostoevsky, among whose characters the average life-story is "anyway so then i did this that and the other self-destructive thing, broke up w/ my s/o because pretending to be stable enough to keep up a relationship got too hard, and then went to bed for a month"

#romanticize ur mental illness 1k866 #i think i have read more litcrit of dostoevsky than of anyone else #mostly to study behind what grievances anglophone critics hide their ableism from themselves??#usually calling it Lurid and/or Sentimental of dostoevsky to write so many sickbats which like?#don't get me wrong; dostoevsky's books are SENSATIONAL certainly and #his combo of illness and religiosity gave him kind of a sentimental view of universal mercy too since. like.#dire attempts to Understand and Forgive every horrible thing you've seen happen is...#sorta what u do when ur too sick n traumatized for Good Deeds?#but. by lurid and sentimental most 20th-c critics seem to've meant #'these ppl's lives are Too Sad. i don't have TIME to deplore this many Lost Causes!#'therefore i find them slightly disgusting.'#WHICH LIKE the line btwn pity n contempt is where it is. just #that's what made this so instructive 4 me as a sickbat bc like?#these characters MAKE SENSE to me i find them CATHARTIC--#can purge bits a myself here that usually have to stay in the bottle #like? jfdafdjagh on page 9 of the idiot. rogozhin demonstrates 2 us by his inconsistent use of present vs. past tense!!#that in the last few hours he has so far overexerted himself that he's now too manic for the fact he is Terribly Ill to seem real anymore.#SELF-PROTECTIVE COGNITIVE DISSONANCE ABOUT HOW SICK U ARE. is a COMMON THEME in dostoevsky.#like shit like this just Casually Exists in every scene. i feel so at home???#and also a little smug to think that for healthysane readers this is Too Much At Once--#it's kinda like when ur the only person in class who says a word correctly #and u sit there wondering 'am i secretly wrong?'--only in this case u can't look it up it just.#feels like you were born knowing it (tho you know that's not true)#like the sense of relief when u return from Old Books to something written once refrigerators were a thing.

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