Notes from Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mint Editions (Contribution by)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A darkly compelling classic that tackles major themes of alienation and the cruelty of society, Notes From The Underground is essential Dostoevsky. It’s one of those books that stays relevant no matter how many decades pass us by.

"It may seem paradoxical to speak of such insights as liberating, or to find in the Underground Man's impassioned rejection of rational humanitarianism a call to arms. Yet each age we live through as individuals demands a certain kind of book- just as each era thieves the last with a magpie's lust for the gewgaws of thought. Oddly enough, now I come to look at Notes again- and examine it in the round- I discover that my revised impression of it as a text at once jejune and cynical, callow as well as wise, is not, perhaps, too far from reality." -Will Self

""(Dostoevsky)... is the man more than any other who has created modern prose, and intensified it to its present-day pitch." -James Joyce Notes from the Underground is Fyodor Dostoevsky's ninth novel, and considered to be one of the first examples of the existential novel. In this radically inventive work, an alienated former minor administrator in nineteenth-century Russia has broken away from society and withdrawn into an underground identity. With its piercing insight into political, social, and moral issues, this classic is one of the most provocative work of literature ever written.

In the first half of the novel, the unnamed narrator, a cynical recluse in 1860's St. Petersburg, attacks the ideologies of inherent laws of self-interest; he is crippled with self-loathing, and bound by his contempt of certain political attitudes of his day. He welcomes any psychic or physical pain in his life as he believe it rails against the complacency of modern society. The second half, entitled "Apropos of the Wet Snow", the narrator relates his alienated relationships he experiences with others, including old school chums and a prostitute named Liza, who is only demeaned in his misanthropic mind. A singular document of the depravity of human consciousness, this is one of the most powerful pieces of literature ever written.

With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Notes from the Underground is both modern and readable.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781513266190
Publisher:	Mint Editions
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Series:	Mint Editions (Philosophical and Theological Work)
Pages:	114
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist, short-story writer, and essayist. His work probed profound depths of human nature, with an indomitable insight into man's relationship with society, religion, and philosophical inquiry. Dostoevsky's first novel, Poor Folks (1846) immediately established his literary reputation. In 1849 he was arrested for his subversive political activities and spent eight months in imprisonment and four years in a labor camp. These experiences were the foundation for many of his works, including his masterpiece, Crime and Punishment(1866) His work and ideas had an enormous influence on 20th Century literature, psychological theory, and literary criticism.

Read an Excerpt

Notes From Underground

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By Fyodor Dostoevsky

Random House

Fyodor Dostoevsky
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0553211447

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Chapter One

PART ONE

UNDERGROUND*

I

I AM a sick man. . . . I am a spiteful man. An unattractive man. I
think that my liver hurts. But actually, I don't know a damn thing
about my illness. I am not even sure what it is that hurts. I am not
in treatment and never have been, although I respect both medicine
and doctors. Besides, I am superstitious in the extreme; well, at
least to the extent of respecting medicine. (I am sufficiently
educated not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, sir, I refuse to see
a doctor simply out of spite. Now, that is something that you
probably will fail to understand. Well, I understand it. Naturally, I
will not be able to explain to you precisely whom I will injure in
this instance by my spite. I know perfectly well that I am certainly
not giving the doctors a "dirty deal" by not seeking treatment. I
know better than anyone that I will only harm myself by this, and no
one else. And yet, if I don't seek a cure, it is out of spite. My
liver hurts? Good, let it hurt still more!

I have been living like this for a long time-about twenty years. Now
I am forty. I used to be in the civil service; today I am not. I was
a mean official. I was rude, and found pleasure in it. After all, I
took no bribes, and so I had to recompensemyself at least by this.
(A poor joke, but I will not cross it out. I wrote it, thinking it
would be extremely witty; but now I see that it was only a vile
little attempt at showing off, and just for that I'll let it stand!)

When petitioners came to my desk seeking information, I gnashed my
teeth at them, and gloated insatiably whenever I succeeded in
distressing them. I almost always succeeded. Most of them were timid
folk: naturally-petitioners. But there were also some fops, and among
these I particularly detested a certain officer. He absolutely
refused to submit and clattered revoltingly with his sword. I battled
him over that sword for a year and a half. And finally I got the best
of him. He stopped clattering. This, however, happened long ago, when
I was still a young man. But do you know, gentlemen, what was the
main thing about my spite? Why, the whole point, the vilest part of
it, was that I was constantly and shamefully aware, even at moments
of the most violent spleen, that I was not at all a spiteful, no, not
even an embittered, man. That I was merely frightening sparrows to no
purpose, diverting myself. I might be foaming at the mouth, but bring
me a doll, give me some tea, with a bit of sugar, and I'd most likely
calm down. Indeed, I would be deeply touched, my very heart would
melt, though later I'd surely gnash my teeth at myself and suffer
from insomnia for months. That's how it is with me.

I lied just now when I said that I had been a mean official. I lied
out of sheer spite. I was merely fooling around, both with the
petitioners and with the officer, but in reality I could never have
become malicious. I was aware at every moment of many, many
altogether contrary elements. I felt them swarming inside me, those
contrary elements. I knew that they had swarmed inside me all my
life, begging to be let out, but I never, never allowed them to come
out, just for spite. They tormented me to the point of shame, they
drove me to convulsions-I was so sick and tired of them in the end.
Sick and tired! But perhaps you think, dear sirs, that I am now
repenting of something before you, asking your forgiveness for
something? . . . Indeed, I am quite certain that you think so. But
then, I assure you it doesn't make the slightest difference to me if
you do. . . .

I could not become malicious. In fact, I could not become anything:
neither bad nor good, neither a scoundrel nor an honest man, neither
a hero nor an insect. And now I am eking out my days in my corner,
taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolation that
an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything; that only a fool
can become something. Yes, sir, an intelligent nineteenth-century man
must be, is morally bound to be, an essentially characterless
creature; and a man of character, a man of action-an essentially
limited creature. This is my conviction at the age of forty. I am
forty now, and forty years-why, it is all of a lifetime, it is the
deepest old age. Living past forty is indecent, vulgar, immoral! Now
answer me, sincerely, honestly, who lives past forty? I'll tell you
who does: fools and scoundrels. I will say this right to the face of
all those venerable old men, all those silver-haired, sweet-smelling
old men! I have a right to say it, because I will live to sixty
myself. To seventy! To eighty! . . . Wait, let me catch my breath. .
. .

You might be imagining, gentlemen, that I am trying to amuse you, to
make you laugh? Wrong again. I am not at all the jolly character you
think I am, or may perhaps think I am. But then, if, irritated by all
this prattle (and I feel it already, I feel you are irritated),
you'll take it into your heads to ask me what I am, I'll answer you:
I am a certain collegiate assessor. I worked in order to eat (but
solely for that reason), and when a distant relation left me six
thousand rubles in his will last year, I immediately retired and
settled down in my corner. I had lived here previously as well, but
now I've settled down in this corner. My room is dismal, squalid, at
the very edge of town. My servant is a peasant woman, old, stupid,
vicious out of stupidity, and she always has a foul smell about her
besides.

I am told that the Petersburg climate is becoming bad for me, that
with my niggling means it's too expensive to live in Petersburg. I
know all that, I know it better than all those wise, experienced
counselors and head-shakers. But I stay on in Petersburg; I shall not
leave Petersburg! I shall not leave because. . . . Ah, but what
difference does it make whether I leave or don't leave.

To go on, however-what can a decent man talk about with the greatest pleasure?

Answer: about himself.

Well, then, I too shall talk about myself.

-

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Excerpted from Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface
The Text of Notes From Underground
Backgrounds and Sources
Selected Letters from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Mikhail Dostoevsky (1859-64)
Fyodor Dostoevsky · [Socialism and Christianity]
Fyodor Dostoevsky · From Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
N.G. Chernyshevsky · From What Is To Be Done?

Responses
PARODY
M.E. Salykov-Shchedrin · From "The Swallows"
Woody Allen · Notes from the Overfed
IMITATION/INSPIRATION
Robert Walser · The Child
Ralph Ellison · From The Invisible Man
John Lennon and Paul McCartney · "Nowhere Man"

Criticism
Nicolai Mikhailovsky · [Dostoevsky's Cruel Intent]
Vasily Rozanov · [Thought and Art in Notes From Underground]
Lev Shestov · [Dostoevsky and Nietzsche]
M.M. Bakhtin [Discourse in Dostoevsky]
Ralph E. Matlaw · Structure and Integration in Notes From Underground
Victor Erlich · Notes on the Uses of Monologue in Artistic Prose
Robert Louis Jackson · [Freedom in Notes From Underground]
Gary Saul Morson · [Anti-Utopianism in Notes From Undergound]
Richard H. Weisberg · The Formalistic Model: Notes From Underground
Joseph Frank · Notes From Underground

A Chronology of Dostoevsky's Life and Work
Selected Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

This revised Norton Critical Edition is based on Michael Katz's translation of the 1863 novel, which is introduced and annotated specifically for English-speaking readers. After the complete text of the novel, a section on background and sources offers selections from Dostoevsky's letters to his brother, some of his writings on socialism and Christianity and on his trip to the West, and excerpts from writings by Dostoevsky's contemporaries. A section on responses offers parodies and works of imitation by writers including Woody Allen, Ralph Ellison, and Jean-Paul Sartre. There are also critical interpretations by both Russian and Western critics from the 19th and 20th centuries. Includes a chronology. Katz teaches Russian at Middlebury College. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Narrator Stefan Rudnicki brings his pleasingly gravelly voice and considerable skill to Dostoevsky’s antiheroic short novel…He demonstrates intelligence and professional ability throughout…He brings enough but not too much emotion to a book that is mostly a highly charged tirade interspersed with bitter and painful dealings with others. An adept, understated performance of a troubling but important book.”

AudioFile

Rowan Williams
"Archbishop of Canterbury
"Notes from Underground has increasingly been recognized in recent years as a crucially significant work for understanding the whole of Dostoevsky's mature fiction. Boris Jakim's translation — the work of a seasoned translator with a keen scholarly appreciation of the Russian spiritual and theological world — is excellent: bold, fresh and clear, contemporary without sacrificing the distinctiveness of the setting. It will be a perfect introduction to this brief but profoundly charged work."

Paul Valliere
Butler University
"The indefatigable Boris Jakim, who has put thousands of pages of Russian theology into English, now gives us a hundred pages of Russia's most theological novelist in a bold new translation. Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground is a chilling parable for modern times — the story of a man who talks himself out of his own salvation. The tale has lost none of its relevance since it appeared a century and a half ago. As Robert Bird observes in his fine introduction, Notes challenges us to consider something our materialistic civilization discourages at every turn — the possibility of spiritual causation. As Dostoevsky knew, the real world includes a mystical element. That spark can be denied, derided, even blasphemed, but it cannot be eradicated. With some help from Jakim, Dostoevsky gives us a vigorous contemporary language for talking about such a thing."

From the Publisher

Dostoevsky chips away at complex human motivation with persuasive stylistic tools, succeeding in being hilarious and heart-rending in a single sentence…It’s through elegantly excavating the particularities of his era that Dostoevsky strikes upon timeless truths, and with perspicacious analysis of behavior, tunnels through to hidden depths.”

The Guardian (London)

Notes From Underground , with its mood of intellectual irony and alienation, can be seen as the first modern novel . . . That sense of the meaninglessness of existence that runs through much of twentieth-century writing - from Conrad and Kafka to Beckett and beyond - starts in Dostoyevsky's work

Malcolm Bradbury

Dostoyevsky is one of the few psychologists from whom I have learned something

Nietzsche

Notes From Underground transcends art and literature, and its place is among the great mystical revelations of mankind . . . It cannot be recommended to those who are not either sufficiently strong to overcome it or sufficiently innocent to remain unpoisoned. It is a strong poison, which is most safely left untouched

D.S. Mirsky in HISTORY OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE

One of the most revolutionary and original works of world literature

Walter Kaufman

An author whose Christian sympathy is ordinarily devoted to human misery, sin, vice, the depths of lust and crime, rather than to nobility of body and soul . . . [ Notes From Underground is] an awe- and terror-inspiring example of this sympathy

Thomas Mann

Notes From Underground established Dostoevsky's reputation as the most innovative and challenging writer of fiction in his generation in Russia

Guardian - Rowan Williams

Narrator Stefan Rudnicki brings his pleasingly gravelly voice and considerable skill to Dostoevsky’s antiheroic short novel, a book as studiedly discomforting as it is important to the dysphoria of twentieth-century literature. He demonstrates intelligence and professional ability throughout; his natural-sounding pacing and matching of tone and turn of phrase to sense are rooted in an understanding of the text. He's perhaps at his best in the first part, a monologue he turns into a one-man drama, effective not least because he avoids the temptation to overdo the narrator’s wandering rant. He brings enough but not too much emotion to a book that is mostly a highly charged tirade interspersed with bitter and painful dealings with others. An adept, understated performance of a troubling but important book. W.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile