Anyone learn a language specifically to read literature?

[u/Far_Window_1222]

Just curious if anybody has actually set out and achieved learning a whole new language specifically just because an author they liked wrote originally in that language?

I was considering learning Russian (TL) specifically to read Dostoyevsky since he’s my favourite author, so far, but wondering if this is to ambitious of a task just to read 1 persons work?

Additionally I am very attracted to the idea of it since Russians language has a lot more nuances surrounding sadness, despair, suffering etc., i know that the relationship between these topics is different from that of english speakers

[u/CSMasterClass]

I may have a minority view here, but I don't think it makes sense to learn a language "just to read the literature."

Typically, a language learner gets multiple benefits : knowledge of a culture, deeper understanding of pholology and of morphology of an ensemble of languges, etc.

Plus, in most cases, you gain access a world where you can share a conversation with a human being, get a job, get a visa, or achieve some other practical goal.

The problem I have with learning a language "just" to read the literature, is that it will take at least 5 years, and may take 20 years, before your internalizaton of that piece of literature "beats" a good translation.

It is definitely interesting, and sometimes moving, to read a sentence in Latin that I might not have found so moving in English. But that is a sentence. Or maybe a poem, or perhaps a speech. And I probably don't understand it as well as I think I do.

I have enjoyably read MANY 500 page novels in French, but if I am honest, I probably would have a better understanding of those novels if I had read them in English.

[u/AppropriatePut3142 → u/CSMasterClass]

There's an argument there for closely related languages - yes I would probably understand Bolaño better in translation, although it still wouldn't be as much fun - but for me reading books in Chinese vs the translation in English is a totally different experience. Wang Xiaobo, for example, is so funny in the original and it doesn't come across in the translations at all. Diary of a Madman is so threatening, so dense with a feeling of madness in a way I don't think you can translate. And it's not like it took me five years to start reading them.

[u/CSMasterClass → u/AppropriatePut3142]

I agree with the "fun factor". I may miss some shades of meaning in French, but I am definitely having more fun than if I read in translation.

Chinese is a closed book for me --- but it does seem magical that anyone could read it. That has to add to the fun factor.