Notes from Underground
1864 novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Notes from Underground (pre-reform Russian: Записки изъ подполья; post-reform Russian: Записки из подполья, Zapíski iz podpólʹya; also translated as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld)[lower-alpha 1] is a novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky first published in the journal Epoch in 1864. It is a first-person narrative in the form of a "confession". The work was originally announced by Dostoevsky in Epoch under the title "A Confession".[3]
Author | Fyodor Dostoevsky |
---|---|
Original title | Записки изъ подполья |
Country | Russian Empire |
Language | Russian |
Genre | Philosophical fiction |
Set in | St. Petersburg, c. 1862–64[1] |
Publisher | Epoch |
Publication date | January–April 1864 |
OCLC | 31124008 |
891.73/3 20 | |
LC Class | PG3326 .Z4 1993 |
Original text | Записки изъ подполья at Russian Wikisource |
Translation | Notes from Underground at Wikisource |
The novella presents itself as an excerpt from the 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. Although the first part of the novella has the form of a monologue, the narrator's form of address to his reader is acutely dialogized. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, in the Underground Man's confession "there is literally not a single monologically firm, undissociated word". The Underground Man's every word anticipates the words of an other, with whom he enters into an obsessive internal polemic.[4]
The Underground Man attacks contemporary Russian philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?[5] More generally, the work can be viewed as an attack on and rebellion against determinism: the idea that everything, including the human personality and will, can be reduced to the laws of nature, science and mathematics.[6]