For some time I’ve heard about the significance of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s work. Last year I tried to delve into Crime and Punishment but stopped around the halfway point. Now I wish I would have began with Notes from Underground. Notes is a first-person (but not autobiographical) account of a Russian man in mid-19th Century St. Petersburg who claims to have been living “underground” practically his whole life. The 130-page book is truly a rarity in how much thought-provoking material it contains. It leaves the reader wanting much more information, which might have been partly responsible for C&P‘s 600-page length and complicated (but arguably boring) nature.
The two-part Notes (first published in 1864) is a literary genius’ attempt at Show & Tell — or, more accurately, tell and then show. Part 1 is written from the point of view of an unnamed 40-year-old, a broken man ranting about his non-progressive situation and generally bleak outlook on life. It has no plot nor any dialogue. Part 2, on the other hand, is a remembrance of a particularly traumatizing event that happened to the narrator at age 24. This section reads more like a story.
Colin Wilson expounded the greatness of Notes in his 1956 book The Outsider (discussed here previously), calling it “the first major treatment of the Outsider theme in modern literature. [...] It stands as a uniquely great monument of Existentialist thought.” However, he focuses on aspects of the book that (to me, at least) don’t seem vital to gain a deep understanding. (Mostly he just wasn’t very skilled at choosing the right quotes.)
Still, Wilson isn’t alone in crediting Notes as the first true Existentialist work. And I think that it’s still so valid today because of that, given that Existentialist themes have remained popular among those who can’t seem to rise up from the philosophical underground. Donald Fanger writes in the introduction that “the underground man…is to be seen as representative, his ‘underground’ itself a state shared by others and not simply the product of individual pathology or biographical accident” (p. xix).
To quote the underground man directly is probably the best method of description, but I’ll try to explain anyways. He’s a lonely, unsuccessful creature who hides in his small apartment and curses the outside world. Despite his strong views and reported intelligence, he’s extremely neurotic, often accidentally contradicting himself or blatantly reversing his claims in an attempt at being honest with himself and his imaginary audience.
“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” (p. 3).
Faced with constant hardship, the narrator claims that he has learned to enjoy psychological distress and emotional pain.
“It’s in despair that you find the sharpest pleasures, particularly when you are most acutely aware of the hopelessness of your situation” (p. 7).
“But how preferable it is to…be aware of everything, of all the impossibilities and stone walls, and yet refuse to reconcile yourself to a single one [...] It is entirely obvious that you are not to blame at all; and, in consequence of all that, to sink into voluptuous inertia” (p. 12).
“For the direct, inevitable, and logical product of consciousness is inertia—a conscious sitting down with folded arms” (p. 16).
I’ve gotten the impression from other literary figures that inertia is a thing to be avoided at all costs, which makes one think that the underground man might be trying to justify his own terrible situation. The unsatisfying nature of his own life also seems to afford him the right to criticize all of mankind.
“…All these theories about teaching mankind to understand its true, normal interests…are for the time being—in my view—nothing but idle exercises in logic! [...] But man is so addicted to systems and to abstract conclusions that he is prepared deliberately to distort the truth, to close his eyes and ears, but justify his logic at all costs” (p. 22).
“…Man, whoever he might be, has always and everywhere preferred to act according to his own wishes rather than according to the dictates of reason and advantage. And his wishes may well be contrary to his advantage; indeed, sometimes they positively should be…
“One’s own free, untrammeled desires, one’s own whim, no matter how extravagant, one’s own fancy, be it wrought up at times to the point of madness—all of this is…constantly knocking all systems and theories to hell. [...]
“What man needs is only his own independent wishing, whatever independence may cost and wherever it may lead” (p. 25)
The underground man makes it clear that independence is important in theory, but isn’t so fond of what independence breeds. Or at least he’s not convinced that independence solves more problems than it creates.
“…All of man’s purpose, it seems to me, really consists of nothing but proving to himself every moment that he is a man and not an organ stop! Proving it even at the cost of his own skin; even at the cost of turning back into a troglodyte” (p. 31).
“Man is primarily a creative animal, condemned to strive consciously toward a goal…in other words, to be eternally and continually building roads for himself, leading somewhere, no matter where. But he may sometimes be tempted to slip off to the side precisely because he is condemned to build these roads…
“Man loves to create…But why, then, does he also passionately love destruction and chaos? [...] Because he is himself instinctively afraid of achieving his goal and completing the edifice he is constructing?” (p. 32).
“He sacrifices his life in this quest, but, I swear, he’s somehow afraid of really finding, discovering it. For he feels that, as soon as he finds it, there will be nothing to search for” (p. 33).
“I am convinced that man will never give up true suffering—that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole root of consciousness” (p. 34).
Sure that he has ruled out man’s claim to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the narrator again exclaims that he’s better off staying underground. But only for a moment…
“The best thing is conscious inertia! An so, hurrah for the underground! [...] Ah, but I am lying again! Lying, because I know…that it’s not at all the underground which is best, but something different…something I long for and can never find!” (p. 37).
This is what I meant by wanting more information, because, while Part 2 thoroughly explains how the narrator ended up in this situation, there are hardly any suggestions offered for what he (or mankind) might do to progress. In The Outsider, Wilson kept returning to the idea of a religious solution (even if it’s unrelated to God or traditional, organized religion). And Fanger states in the introduction that Dostoevsky included Christian elements in the original manuscript’s ending, which were supposedly removed by the censors.
I’m inclined to think that Notes is better off the way it is — at least regarding religion — for reasons that are too complicated to fit into this already-too-long article. Maybe step one is admitting that we’re really nothing more than bugs stuck under the floorboards. Then step two can be some kind of progression from there.
In fact, Fanger’s introduction contains a few brilliant statements and suggestions:
“…The underground man here is touching on a quest in which pleasure is of no use — the quest for self-definition and self-affirmation. [...] It reopens the question of what it means to be human…” (p. xx).
“But he has concluded that reason accounts for only one-twentieth of a human being. If we are to understand the text before us, we must accordingly attend to the other nineteen-twentieths of this character…” (p. xxi).
And that, in my mind, leads us to a psychological study of the human unconscious using the knowledge left to us by Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. But that topic will have to wait until later.
(After seeking out these quotes, I realized that Notes deserves a two-part analysis to match its two-part structure. After all, this post was derived from the first 40 pages of the book! So perhaps I’ll return to Part 2 sometime soon.)
