Reviews and Comments

Uncertain where to start with this one. I could copy paste a synopsis of the Book of Job and then claim the bible would have been better if written by Dostoevsky, but perhaps I shall instead attempt a review (except really it is an informal microessay on his reused themes…..)

This is one of the few books left in the ‘vesky corpus as first reads… I do not enjoy this fact and have been rereading each chapter of this for months and have morphed into the Pepe Silvia image.

In a way, this book was a quilt of the major themes of most of Dostoevsky’s preceding works—amplified. Childhood feels more potent a theme here than in ‘A Raw Youth/The Adolescent,’ which itself continued on from Dostoevsky’s experimentation with this in demons and Stavrogin’s upbringing—i.e., the Q of what shapes a man’s morals before he can even be considered a man? The Demons parallels extend to Kolya’s relationship with God, a relationship which only reads as a better developed version of Shatov’s relationship with God…

My favourite parallel, however, is the reappearance of idolatrous relationships like the one seen between Kolya and Alyosha, which mirrors Verkhovensky and Stavrogin to the extent I had to double check I was reading the right book.

“Hurrah! You are a prophet. Oh, we shall get on together, Karamazov!  What delights me most is that you treat me quite like an equal. We aren’t equals, you are better! But we shall get on. All this last month, I’ve been saying to myself, ‘Either we shall be friends at once, forever, or we shall part enemies to the grave!” (TBK)

“…They just don’t love idols, but I love an idol! You are my idol! You insult no one, yet everyone hates you; you have the air of being everyone’s equal, yet everyone is afraid of you—this is good…You are precisely what’s needed. I, I need precisely such a man as you. I know no one but you. You are a leader, you are a sun, and I am your worm…” (Demons)

He has this tendency (and unmatched execution) to embody ideologies into characters who are worshipped by his weaker, more meek archetypes that appear in almost every major piece of his. In the end, meek or assertive everyone loses themselves for an idea (Adolescent, Demons, TBK…).

Oh and not to mention the reemergence of brain fevers (Stavrogin - Demoms / Ivan - TBK).

Pirbal is the epitome of the Kurdish identity, an absurd, nonsensical existence that does not conform to its surroundings' expectations of it. You deny the Kurds their own box, soon enough they start condemning boxes all together—Pirbal goes as far as to leave the plane of geometry entirely... There's no way to describe the man coherently, he is incoherence embodied. If He Must Be Described: Public presentation wise he’s a Žižek, except he doesn’t have Tourette’s and is most certainly on drugs. Work wise there’s a strong Dadaist edge to his work but that, again, does not sum his style up with justice. Pirbal came back from Sorbonne with years devoted to the arts, years working through the greatest Kurdish poets as well as those of the West, all to be called a lunatic, imprisoned, committed to a psych ward, imprisoned again for arson, published just under a hundred pieces, impri—he’s really the full package.

For as much as Pirbal seems to struggle with the world he's in, I can't help but feel it's the world that's somehow fallen short of him.

Back to Actual Thoughts that (should) comprise a review:

I was initially quite hesitant about how this translation would turn out but I think (for the most part) it captures Pirbal's intent—it is far less literal than I expected, thankfully. That said, I was still compelled to grieve once reading Hajj Qadri Koye’s poem in English—which is devoid of almost all meaning. I wonder how much else l've lost in translation (cont. will Duolingo Russian ever be enough?)

The butchered poem: If you leave, every return is as if You’ve left home to arrive in Jabulqa*

Read this if you can. Learn the language if you can. Read the original if you can. (Purchase hashish and recite Lamaratine until he is conjured at the foot of your bed if you can, or don’t).

All fun and playful absurdities aside, reading Pirbal, knowing Pirbal, and witnessing Pirbal’s public persona are such extremely different experiences you get whiplash just trying to switch from thinking about one to the other. He has lost all will to convince the minority that speak his language and share his history that his work is of importance and that he is sane—it is almost admirable the bit he has committed to. He is still a prolific writer and the quality of his last pieces of work have only gotten better despite his theatric, batshit public persona having only gotten worse. 5/5