A Funny Man's Dream
1877 • 336 pages
Ratings4
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.5
"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" (Russian: Сон смешного человека, Son smeshnovo cheloveka) is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky written in 1877. It chronicles the experiences of a man who decides that there is nothing of any value in the world. Slipping into nihilism with the “terrible anguish” he is determined to commit suicide. A chance encounter with a young girl, however, begins the man on a journey that re-instills a love for his fellow man. It was first published in A Writer's Diary.
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As the ridiculous man found himself between the old, harrowing world and foreign utopia, I found myself in the dilemma of supporting Dostoevsky's dream on non-essential
rating scales or expressing my disappointment as such dream with all its religious sentiments and naiveté failed to turn into a sophisticated prose.
Science fiction was often an arena for the utopian blueprint of future society, and this carried on through the soviets to today. Eg: Chernyshevky's infamous “what is to be done” (which Lenin drew his communist ideas). Socialism was perceived as the sociological equivalent of Darwinism - and as Isiah Berlin argues, the logical endpoint of an application of enlightenment thinking. The Soviet view of human nature is that humans are wholly shaped by their environment - the idea of something so nebulous and ineffable as a “soul” is preposterous (I can go into this a whole lot more - soviet architecture was the reflection of Stalin's attempt to create a new type of human.)
Dostoevsky's science fiction tale, where the vision of salvation through scientific and material progress advanced by Chernyshevskt is dispelled in a dream of tulips on a perfect twin of earth: the cosmic paradise breaks down into a society of masters and slaves (ominously prophetic). The narrator wakes from his dream to see the only salvation lies through the Christian love of neighbours (how very Dostoevsky).
