Best part of this is that Russians have three names (a first name, surname, and a patronymic) and they love using nicknames. So the main character is Rodion (first name) Romanovitch (patronymic) Raskolnikov (surname), but can (and is) called by any of those three names. He's also got nicknames like Rodya, Rodenka, and Rodka. So this deranged individual (who decided to call Raskolnikov "Pete" I guess) is going to be hopelessly confused when somebody starts referring to Rodya, and he'll think the book is filled with like five times as many characters as it actually is.
I’m reading What is to be Done? And idk what book this is, but I imagine it would be pretty hard to replace names like that.
YES. When I studied Rus Lit my prof dedicated a whole lecture to this! With slides! I honestly love this part of Russian literature, it gives it so much character, and anyone who complains about it doesn’t deserve to read it.
I mean you kinda just laid out why it's extra confusing to begin with
But that's kind of the rub; it's never actually confusing. In context of the story it's very clear when somebody is addressing Raskolnikov, even if they're using a nickname or a name you're not entirely familiar with. It's like when you hear somebody has a nickname in real life. You might not know why they have that nickname, but you know that nickname is theirs.
Could've at least went with "Rod" for Raskolnikov.
If your cracker ass can remember hundreds of pokemon names for the duration of a game, you can remember a dozen russian names for the duration of a book
Cursed monkey paw: "Damn, I can believe that Squirtle's brother got arrested by Tsar Lapris's secret police for spreading the seditious works of Koffing."
a dozen
There's probably over 100 characters in it tho, maybe 200
huh. I mean, I have made charts to try to keep track of families and shit in byzantine politics novels, but, uh... huh.
typical anglo L
when this is done by the author to obfuscate a fictional portrayal of real people, it's called a roman a clef https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_à_clef
For anyone that doesn't want to click but likes words, it's French for 'novel with a key', as in if you know the key you can understand the underlying allegory.
I'd love to see what he does with 100 years of solitude. There are only like 4 names for 15 different characters
If you don't give the characters racist caricature like names how can I keep them straight?
Cannot imagine your first reaction to name-memory difficulty being "imma give em white guy names"
I keep a digital copy on the side and Ctrl+F the character's name so I can get a refresher on them when I'm reading Dostoevsky.
Part of the problem is the 3 names as the other commenter said, and part of it is that the style of book has 100s of characters, much like a soap opera.
Doing rowling naming conventions:
Axe Mcprison-ov
Mona E. Lander-ov
Norm Horseaccident-ov
Fbi Copper-ov
Crime and Punishment is my second favorite book. That said, I was confused when Raskolnikov's friend's name was randomly switched up. That's when I learned that Russians and Latinos share the having four or five names thing in common. Absolutely based tradition, though I'm surprised I remember my own name sometimes.
It's also not best advised to read that book when you're a college-aged boy short on cash. Or maybe it is...
Crime and Punishment is my second favorite book.
What's your first favourite book?
Dune. 🪱
Liberals when the black guy isn't named "Kingsley Shacklebolt"
Also, I didn't make that shit up.
Cho Chang and Privy Patel Asian representation yay
Roger Raskolnikovjust Roger lmao.It's like a fucking mirror universe, i stopped reading the first book of their favorite series in half because i couldn't stand how absolutely idiotic the name convention was there.
Jowling Kowling Rowling has the laziest names
maybe like highlight the names with different colors or something until you get used to them
Recently read A Fire Upon the Deep were half the story takes place on a planet with dog like group mind beings whose names are the combination of every member and if members die and they get a new member the name changes to include the new member, but they also use nicknames for the group beings whenever they feel like it. This person would have a great time with that book. Also book was eh but fun.
also there were intelligent flowers that zoomed around in little gokarts and waved their leaves to talk
maybe the first book to envision racist shitposting leading to genocide
Oh yea they were fun to picture in my head. And yea the intergalactic genocidal shit posts were really something to enjoy reading in 2024.
Also racist butterfly people.
Also I just learned the author just died a month ago. Think he was some kind of AnCap, but was pretty good at writing weird SciFi tho.
Nah, this is a fine thing to do and I support it heartily!
Especially recommend stuff like this when reading theory, Lenin likes to call dudes out by name and hyper specific organizations and membership etc, when those details don't really matter much for my purposes reading this 120 years later
Ive never actually gone in and replaced names, but I kind of glance at them and go "this is guy 1" and move on
Or more specifically like "opportunist leader of anti-bolshevik faction guy" etc etc. It's really not worth remembering every single name
Also, some people find remembering names hard, let alone unfamiliar ones
This is however still a funny post lol
A novel is not a piece of political theory. The aims are different, also russian naming conventions are more complex than english ones.
Also I believe on should try and actually engage with the cultural context of a piece of art(the novel) and not just to actively remove it. Why read russian literature then?
In the Lenin texts I just sort of gloss over those names. Like you said, those people are long dead and their orgs have been dead and buried since before the russian civil war.
It's nice for historical purposes though, exact sourcing is just very good praxis, when writing any theory.
Yeah whatever makes reading more widely more accessible to people seems good.
Even when I'm reading stuff originally written in English it's not like I'm paying enormous attention to names. If you're not subvocalising names are sort of start letter-end letter-length-shape tags.
I really appreciate it when authors include dramatis personae anyway. Helps if you get busy and need to put a book down, it also means authors don't have to exposition in every new character which can kill pacing in complex stories.
Hello, I'm john smith jr
The content isn't difficult, however I did have difficulties with some of the content.
Isn't this pretty normal to do when translating though? I feel like a lot of books change names when they're too difficult to parse in the other language. For a super fast example of what I mean: Donald Duck isn't named Donald in other countries. His three nephews names are different as well.
Obviously if the translator didn't do it, then that's probably for a very good reason and doing bulk replaces are bound to mess things up, but the act itself seems relatively normal to me?Brb, doing this with The Silmarillion
old Feenie and his Simmys
Feanor (Fred), Beren (Barry), Turin (Travis)
Guan Yu, Liu Bei and Zhang Fei?
more like Gideon, Louis and Zachary
that said i do like the translation of the 3 main characters of the Journey to the West as Monkey, Sandy and Pigsy
