Burakhovsky are insane. Daniil Is jealous that Artemy is on a first name basis with everyone except him, and Artemy calls Daniil by titles to show how important and special he is to him compared to everyone else.
because you've been mentioning russian literature a lot in your tags/posts lately i'd like to ask: if you could recommend one piece of russian lit to a patho fan what would it be? imagine the person you're recommending this to knows nothing about the genre smile :)
okay here goes nothing. summary first and longer thoughts under the cut Smile.
caveat that these are just from what i (american) have personally read and i definitely have not read anywhere close to the entire russian literary canon but these are my favs that connect to patho the most!<3
The Oynonrings Russian Lit Reading List Recs for the Pathologic Enjoyer:
tldr: fathers and sons (turgenev), devils (dostoevsky), the brothers karamazov (dostoevsky), the master and margarita and/or the heart of a dog (bulgakov), the death of ivan ilyich (tolstoy), the nose and nevsky prospekt (gogol)
bonus non-russian lit recs: the plague (camus), ecce homo/twilight of the gods/beyond good and evil (nietzsche), fear and trembling/the sickness unto death (kierkegaard), utopia (more), the trial (kafka)
THE LIST
fathers and sons (turgenev) is The One id rec the most. short and readable and very influential (coined the term nihilist). bazarov and kirsanov are straight up daniil and artemy. its about intergenerational political and philosophical conflict between the more conservative older generation and the younger nihilist revolutionary generation, hence the title. also (spoiler warning) bazarov (the daniil one) is a nihilist but he falls in love and angsts so hard over it that he dies of tuberculosis (EDIT: its typhoid/sepsis i misremembered im a fake fan) and if that isnt daniil coded idk what is
any and all dostoevsky. seriously hes peak. if you dont want to pick up a doorstopper, then notes from underground, the double, and the dream of a ridiculous man are three shorter ones i recommend. (i also recommend pevear and volokhonsky translations, but really anything thats not c*nstance g*rnett my sworn enemy will do.)
devils (dostoevsky) (also sometimes translated as "demons" or "the possessed") is a political satire about a town that goes insane and lights itself on fire while badly executing a bunch of assassinations and is the Most town-on-gorkhon shit without even having a plague. really great to get a feel of the beefs going on in russian politics/philosophical schools in the late 19th c. also has one of my favorite characters of all time, alexei kirillov, who (spoiler) kills himself to prove that free will is absolute and signs his name with a smiley face with the tongue sticking out. you get the vibe. also whatever the hell verkhovensky and stavrogin have going on is crazy.
the brothers karamazov (dostoevsky) everybody has already told you to read this book and im adding myself to the list. the brothers ivan, mitya, and alyosha are daniil, artemy, and claracoded and i could literally write an entire essay about this. ivan hallucinates the devil and argues with him which is the second most daniil thing next to dying of tuberculosis typhus/sepsis because you had a crush. there is so so so much more i could say but ill just say mitya was literally framed for killing his father over an inheritance
the idiot (dostoevsky) prince myshkin is claracoded beyond belief. christlike man returns to russia from mental institutionalization in switzerland, has to face how dark russian high society is with complete innocence and naivete and its sooo clara it hurts. ippolit terentyev is another favorite character of mine. also nastasya filippovna FUCKKKK GET BEHIND ME NASTASYA!!!
crime and punishment (dostoevsky) i mean just for good measure right
the master and margarita (bulgakov) satan et al. come to moscow and have a fun(?) time. absolute chaos, very town-on-gorkhon. political satire, talking cat who shoots at cops, very good book especially if you laughed as hard as i did at that could have been said as a metaphor
the heart of a dog (bulgakov) short silly novella about a dog who is turned into a man by the Hubris Of Science. very thanaticacoded
the death of ivan ilyich (tolstoy) really good morbid short story, my favorite of tolstoys by a landslide
the nose and nevsky prospekt (gogol) the absurdity of cities and bureaucracy and also trying to stick your nose back on but nobody will help you. and Literally The Atrium From Pathologic 3
BONUS NON-RUSSIAN LIGHTNING ROUND:
the plague (camus), im a big camus enjoyer and this is naturally the most pathopilled (god i want to write an essay on dr rieux and how he compares to daniil and artemy......) but ALSO deep cut: read "state of emergency", a play about the plague coming to a small town in spain. and yk read the fall and the myth of sisyphus but those arent even overtly pathocoded theyre just good
NIETZSCHE!!!! any nietzsche. but especially beyond good and evil, ecce homo, and twilight of the idols. sooooo good for understanding patho utopians ideology
fear and trembling and especially the sickness undo death (kierkegaard). existentialism that i think daniil would read and spiral over as an atheist
utopia (more) Obviously. but also interesting in the context of that one scene w the kids in p3
the trial (kafka) or really any kafka. every kafka (short) story is like a day in daniils life but the trial especially
also im going to tag in @plagueporn because he has more knowledge of pushkin and russian poetry in general than i do🫶
okay hii i've been called upon. I second everything above and would like to add:
The bronze horseman (Pushkin) honestly? anything by Pushkin. he's the founding father of russian lit, more or less anything after pushkin will be defined by pushkin. the bronze horseman is a good introduction to him and has some themes in common with patho such as rising above nature/big inventors and the price common people pay for it, often with their lives. nature vs man, ideals vs the people. etc etc. it's not a very long prose poem and less scary than you think i believe in you. i don't have any strong opinions on english translations but i'd recommend you try and find a translation that retain his rhyming scheme (last lines rhyming or every other line in a a/b/a/b pattern) since he really was a master of his craft.
the twelve by Aleksandr Blok for obvious reasons its pretty clear patho has taken inspiration from blok, this poem in particular was written in january 1919, very soon after the october revolution and the beginning of the russian civil war. Blok is otherwise known for being a very introspective and romantic poet and this is a pretty big step in another direction for him. it follows twelve red guard soldiers during the chaos of the russian civil war & its just a really good poem. same thing as for pushkin i'd recommend you try and find a translation that retain the rhyme scheme (he has an irregular a/b/a/b rhyme going) and tbh if you dont read much poetry or find it 'hard' i'd recommend to try, no matter how dumb it sounds, to read it out loud, even just under your breath to get a sense of the rhythm. at times it mimics gunshots, its cool.
Omon Ra (Victor Pelevin) okay here i'm jumping to more contemporary fiction. pelevin is one of the authors of the russian post-modernism and this is an early post-soviet novel. it takes up many themes recognisable from patho such as the possibility of multiple and contradictory truths being real at once, a higher power/authority that is hard to comprehend & even harder to see what your role is for their agenda. this is the book i read for class and really went insane thinking about its parallels to pathologic and reading it as a work of postmodernist, post-soviet literature/art/game. also the ending to this book is, in the most cryptically not spoiling way i can manage, pathocoded. smiles.
can add here that i have some pdfs about postmodernism in a russian/post-soviet context that i found interesting to read as a patho fan & one or maybe two about patho itself if anyones interested in those u can hit my line
i think those are my suggestions for now <3 i/we both might add or improve on this list but yeah. go read some books its great
i think its so funny that ipl accidentally made daniil look so old in p2 and oldmancoded him so hard that they had to smooth him out, give him some fuck ass bangs (affectionate), AND repeatedly remind the player that NO he isnt ACTUALLY OLD he is EXACTLY TWENTY-EIGHT (28) years of age STOP CALLING HIM OLD that is a FALSE ALLEGATION!!!!!!
stormborns
andulkaphoto
germansingergirl
discoholicmusic
baratheonpilled
kaledo-art
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
