Other editions of book Notes From The Underground: Letters from the Underworld

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Dostoevsky’s most revolutionary novel is an 1864 novella. Notes from the Underground also translated as Letters from the Underworldmarks, the dividing line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, and between the visions of self each century embodied. Notes is considered by many to be one of the first existentialist novels. One of the most remarkable characters in literature, the unnamed narrator is a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. In full retreat from society, he scrawls a passionate, obsessive, self-contradictory narrative that serves as a devastating attack on social utopianism and an assertion of man’s essentially irrational nature.The author of the diary and the diary itself are, of course, imaginary. Nevertheless it is clear that such persons as the writer of these notes not only may, but positively must, exist in our society, when we consider the circumstances in the midst of which our society is formed. I have tried to expose to the view of the public more distinctly than is commonly done, one of the characters of the recent past. He is one of the representatives of a generation still living. In this fragment, entitled “Underground,” this person introduces himself and his views, and, as it were, tries to explain the causes owing to which he has made his appearance and was bound to make his appearance in our midst. In the second fragment there are added the actual notes of this person concerning certain events in his life.--"Author's Note

Notes from Underground, also translated as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld, is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Notes is considered by many to be one of the first existentialist novels. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man), who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told in monologue form, or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? The second part of the book is called "Apropos of the Wet Snow" and describes certain events that appear to be destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man, who acts as a first person, unreliable narrator and anti-hero.

The passionate confessions of a suffering soul; the brutal self-loathing of a tormented man; the scathing scorn of an alienated antihero who has become one of the greatest figures in all literature. Notes from Underground, published in 1864, introduces the moral, political, and social ideas Dostoevsky later explores in such masterpieces as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and The Brothers Karamazov

The anonymous narrator of Notes from Underground is a bitter, misanthropic man living alone in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the 1860s. He is a veteran of the Russian civil service who has recently been able to retire because he has inherited some money. The novel consists of the “notes” that the man writes, a confused and often contradictory set of memoirs or confessions describing and explaining his alienation from modern society.The first words we hear from the Underground Man tell us that he is “a sick man . . . a wicked man . . . an unattractive man” whose self-loathing and spite has crippled and corrupted him. He is a well-read and highly intelligent man, and he believes that this fact accounts for his misery. The Underground Man explains that, in modern society, all conscious and educated men should be as miserable as he is. He has become disillusioned with all philosophy. He has appreciation for the sublime, Romantic idea of “the beautiful and lofty,” but he is aware of its absurdity in the context of his narrow, mundane existence.The Underground Man complains that man’s primary desire is to exercise his free will, whether or not it is in his best interests. In the face of utilitarianism, man will do nasty and unproductive things simply to prove that his free will is unpredictable and therefore completely free. This assertion partially explains the Underground Man’s insistence that he takes pleasure in his own toothaches or liver pains: such pleasure in pain is a way of spiting the comfortable predictability of life in modern society, which accepts without question the value of going to the doctor. The Underground Man is not proud of all this useless behavior, however. He has enormous contempt for himself as a human being. He is aware that he is so overcome by inertia that he cannot even become wicked enough to be a scoundrel, or insignificant enough to be an insect, or lazy enough to be a true lazybones.The second fragment of Notes from Underground, entitled “Apropos of the Wet Snow,” describes specific events in the Underground Man’s life in the 1840s, when he was twenty-four years old, describes interactions between the Underground Man and various people who inhabit his world: soldiers, former schoolmates, and prostitutes. The Underground Man is so alienated from these people that he is completely incapable of normal interaction with them. He treats them with a mixture of disgust and fear that results in his own effacement or humiliation—which in turn result in remorse and self-loathing.The Underground Man’s alienation manifests itself in all kinds of relationships. When walking in the park, he obsesses about whether to yield the right of way to a soldier whom he does not even know. Then, in a confused attempt at social interaction, the Underground Man deliberately follows some school acquaintances to a dinner where he is not wanted, alternately insulting them openly and craving their attention and friendship. Later that same evening, the Underground Man attempts to rescue an attractive young prostitute named Liza by delivering impassioned, sentimental speeches about the terrible fate that awaits her if she continues to sell her body.When Liza comes to visit the Underground Man in his shoddy apartment several days later, he reacts with shame and anger when he realizes she has reason to pity or look down upon him. The Underground Man continues to insult Liza throughout the visit. Hurt and confused, she leaves him alone in his apartment.Here the Underground Man decides to end his notes. In a footnote at the end of the novel, Dostoevsky reveals that the Underground Man fails to make even this simple decision to stop writing, as Dostoevsky says that the manuscript of the notes goes on for many pages beyond the point at which he has chosen to cut it off.

Dostoevsky’s Underground Man is a composite of the tormented clerk and the frustrated dreamer of his earlier stories, but his Notes from the Underground is a precursor of his great later novels and their central concern with the nature of free will. Initially musing on his “sickness” and the detested notion of self-interest, the maladjusted and willful Underground Man turns to a series of incidents from years earlier. Scornful of others and of himself, he recounts a party he attended at which, unwelcome, he got drunk and acted scandalously, the visit to a brothel that ensued, and the chance arrival there of love—love which, of course, by his very nature he cannot accept, and so debases. Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of the greatest, most influential prose writers of all time.

Notes from Underground is an 1864 novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told in monologue form, or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?

Dostoevsky's most revolutionary novel following life of a former official who has defiantly withdrawn into an underground existence. The unnamed narrator turns to a series of incidents from his earlier life and examines them obsessively through a lens of self-contradictory beliefs. A vivid example of essentially irrational nature of human kind presented here with realism and conviction of Dostoyevsky's prose.