Famous Authors Talking About Dostoevsky

Not just obsession, not just lust, people. That man was in LOVE. “…and love of the most exquisite kind.” What else could have prompted him to give up his one hope for life? It was an act of selflessness, aka divine love. Just read “The End of the Phantom’s Love Story,” I beg you; just look at that forehead kiss.

(Don’t even get me started about the plain gold ring.)

The Phantom of the Opera IS a love story btw. It's inherently a story about love. A lot of people still find it hard to accept it, probably because they're busy with their "I'm smarter than this beloved classic" Edgy Hot Take, this is why it's always important to remind.

It's a story about a man that, because he was abused and denied of love his entire life, he was forced to live with everything he knew about: survival.

It's a story about a man that craved so much for love, that he thought he could buy, or force it, throught talent and lies.

It's a story about compassion, redemption, and most importantly, love. Because Erik loved Christine. The ending is impactful because he loved her. His love for her didn't make him immune to be obsessive nor to hurt her. And if you don't believe Erik loved Christine, you're the one that misunderstood the relationships between these characters and why the story is the way it is in the first place.

I….am in love. SOMEONE UNDERSTOOD

Theme of this little book, The 8 Grecian concepts of Love.  A final project that I’ve forgotten the parameters of, for a class I cannot be bothered to recall, BUT I got two books out of it, one in English, and one in dubiously translated French.

Process pics are on my Patreon

From my College Illustration Thesis, Lesbian Phantom of the Opera

The original problematic fave: Erik, ze phantom of ze opera

So many tender and painful, sweet and bitter, emotions crowd in my soul—yes, there are painful and bitter ones. You cannot dream how bitter it is for me when people don't understand me, when they mistake what I say, and see it in the wrong light.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, from a letter to Mikhail Dostoevsky, written c. October 1832

Wh—….

….

ERIK?

It would be a lie to say I understood particularly much of the plot, but this figure from the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris 2024 was apparently the Phantom of the Opera.

This.

rip Raskolnikov you would've loved self check-out lines at the grocery store

Outside the Opera, Paris - Jean-Georges Béraud - 1879

I'm in the torture chamber

Probably people more coherent than I am have talked about this before, but I feel like the biggest difference between Leroux Erik and ALW Erik besides the deformity and the fact I think ALW Erik is supposed to be a little bit younger than Leroux's, is that Leroux Erik does everything he can to try appearing "normal" to Christine (the decor and fake flowers in the lair) while ALW Erik does everything he can to make Christine think of him as some supernatural force even after revealing himself as a Phantom instead of an Angel.

So while Leroux Erik desperately wants a normal life with a normal house and a normal wife he can take out on Sundays, ALW Erik wants to convince Christine that it's so much sexier and cooler to acutally hang out in the darkness with him as Hades to her Persephone. It's a contrast I appreciate.

Whoa

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from a diary entry featured in Rapture & Melancholy; The Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay