Rachel Douglas Jan 25, 2009:

This is to Alexondra, and I hope it's not against the rules to say something like this, but the discussion on this topic got so crazy, that I think it's in order, in response to remarks like "The asker ruminates on the subject of consciosness [sic] which grasps firmly propositions [grasps firmly propositions?] not relevant to the context provided" and "I have not translated the context which I find inappropriate to the words of Dostoyevsky." The asker was not asking a question about the philosophical views of Dostoevsky. He was asking for clarification on the grammar of a sentence containing "ставить [себе] чем" + "отомстить кому", and also asking for suggestions on translating that phrase as a whole. The phrase does NOT belong to Dostoevsky, nor does it summarize his ideas. It is a characterization of D's behavior by a 1947 Soviet polemicist against literary critics he considered to be soft on D's "betrayal" of his 1840s, pre-Siberia proto-socialist phase. We know this not because the asker provided that context here, but because of the preceding several questions, during the discussions which Alexei Chervinsky a few days ago took the trouble to locate and share with everybody the article at issue in EADB's questions. What I (with my not very subtle question about whether or not you're really a native speaker of English) and others were hinting, I think, is that your contributions to helping people find solutions to their translation problems might be more effective, if you took a moment to grasp what is being asked, rather than just sounding off. In other words, it's a good practice to think and consider carefully, before you hit the "submit" button. (Oh, and - no, I don't think I'm competing in your market. I was only concerned that some younger translators who are not native speakers of English, but are trying to write in English, might believe that some of your, shall we say, innovative grammatical constructions represent the normal usage of a native speaker.) I promise not to say anything more about this.

Alexandra Taggart Jan 25, 2009:

The closest, if such a thing is possible to say, the closest writer in thought to Dostoevsky is Nietzsche. The answer to your complex question can be found in L. Shestov "Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche":http://www.angelfire.com/nb/shestov/library.html

Alexandra Taggart Jan 25, 2009:

It is a very typical Soviet approach to say: Достоевский ставил задачей отомстить грядущим поколениям за "грехи" и "заблуждения" своей молодости. Soviets simply excluded the subject of inner punishment from their philosophy.