Notes From the Underground: By Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Illustrated by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Epub)

Description

Notes from Underground, also translated as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld, 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?. The second part of the book is called “Àpropos of the Wet Snow”, and describes certain events that, it seems, are destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man, who acts as a first person, unreliable narrator.

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Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ THE EBOOK IS NOT THE PEVEAR TRANSLATION! This is flagrant product misrepresentation by Amazon. They listed an e-book version of the PEVEAR translation and when I downloaded it and opened it on my device it is NOT the same translation as you can see in the peak inside of the printed version. You can find free online versions of this translation that Amazon is falsely selling as the PEVEAR translation in lots of places online. Amazon cheated!

⭐ As usual with Dostoevsky, the read is complex, even in this instance with the simplest of storylines – an old man ranting. The complexity comes from Dostoevsky’s amazing ability to articulate the waves of thought behind human emotion – the flood and ebb of reasoning, the articulation of the irrational. But complexity extends well beyond style. Dostoevsky counters and buttresses contemporaneous philosophical thought using the rantings of his protagonist, “the underground man”, the narrator. For those not familiar with Søren Kierkegaard and Nikolay Chernyshevsky (and here I admit my own ignorance) even a quick read of the short, but well done Wikipedia article on this title will be a very useful primer. Interestingly, the reviewer mentions that ‘underground’ is a flawed translation of the Russian and that ‘crawl space’ (my alternative) or something like it, might be more apt, implying; underneath the structure and within the loathsomeness of darkness, rats, snakes, spiders, and evil spirits.Part I “underground” overwhelms, tediously with rant, still, the reader comes away with a sense of the underground man’s misery, frustration, and disgust at life. It is a pure rant with minimal structure. In part II “Apropos the wet snow” we are taken on a – years earlier – ‘social encounter’ of the underground man. It does not go well – in fact, the reader will now feel, compellingly, albeit without sympathy, the narrator’s hatefulness.Dostoevsky’s novels so overwhelm with depth and seriousness that other authors on the list of ‘100 greatest books’ (which I am reading through) can seem well behind. In order NOT to be that reviewer who ‘gushes’ 5-stars at everything picked-up – and because this isn’t my favorite Dostoyevski novel I’ll give it 4-stars (but if my arm were twisted – even a little – 5! ;-).(translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, Publisher: Aegitas April 20, 2017)

⭐ The first part of the book is phenomenal and timeless. It speaks about how resentment is a part of human nature or maybe how humans will never be satisfied, that it is perhaps ontologically necessary that we cannot experience satiety or fulfillment. I’m not quite sure how to word it, but if you read it for yourself that would be cool, and then you could tell me what it is that I read. I thought the first part was an absolutely brilliant nsight into human natureThe second part is about an angry Russian guy being an angry (and especially miserable) Russian guy. It feels uniquely Russian. I found the second part hard to relate to—probably because I’m not a Russian from the 19th century. But the texture was vivid: I could feel like the spite and the cold wind. Dostoevsky does an amazing job of carefully invoking a vivid image (of something Russian.)

⭐ What a crock of crap. Holy moly. And I mean… I love classic literature, okay. I can get down on some Thomas Wolfe, Kerouac, Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy any day of the week. I read the classic literature to relax and cure insomnia – I’ve found treasures in history. But THIS book is some serious BS. If I want to stoke my inner misanthrope, baby, I’ll stick with my Hunter S. Thompson. At least I can understand WTF Hunter is talking about. First couple chapters…. just on and on and on about how he couldn’t even be an insect or whatever and you’re just like, “wtf? shut up and get to the point, dead author”

⭐ I really want to read this book. I made it through two chapters but the print on demand version has type so small I cannot comfortably read it. This is the second time I’ve been stuck like this. This time Amazon is getting it back. This rating is in no way a refection of the book which from the two chapters I managed to read seemed quite good. It is a reflection on the printing entirely. I can’t believe the printers would make a copy so hard to read just to save a nickels worth of paper. Quit it!!!!!!!!!!! Give the reader a little comfort. If you’re sitting in a chair and you hold it really close, you can kind of read it but trying to read it in bed is problematic. I like reading in bed. I’ve included pictures of the print and the printing date which is the same as the date I bought the book. I don’t have a problem with print on demand, it’s a good idea. In this case it is poorly executed. The third picture posted contrasts the type of a book the same size that is readable with the type from this book. It’s hard to read not just because I am an older fellow with older fellow eyesight.

⭐ Fyodor Dostoyevsky is an incredible author. He seems incredibly complex and, to me, far ahead of this time. As a retired police detective, I feel “Crime And Punishment” is one of the most sophisticated crime novels that I have ever read from any era.This book is another incredible work. The narrator is an unnamed “unreliable” male. He seems to be a demented misanthrope. The novel essentially consists of his semi cogent rantings.I have read this work twice. The second time I read this unique work, I read and listened to the work simultaneously on Audiobook. This definitely added to my enjoyment. There were times I actually burst out laughing.To say that I actually comprehend this work would be an exaggeration. However I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially with Audiobook and I will probably read it a third time, although it will be in the distant future. In the event one wishes to read a modern novel with an unreliable narrator, one might consider “The Dinner” by Herman Koch. One might find these two works Interesting for the purposes of comparing and contrasting. Thank You…

⭐ _Notes_ is long on thought and character, and short on incident.In the first (and shorter) part, there are literally _no_ incidents; it consists of a great deal of existential-ish philosophizing and critiquing of society (and of the personality of the narrator, who is never named). Even more, the narrator critiques contemporary scientific utopianism, insisting that, even if human nature were reduced to mathematics, it would still be human nature and perversely inconsiderate of its own best interests; that Man is not a rational animal at all but an emotional animal who demands, above all else, freedom (or its illusion). Man, he says, feels oppressed even by simple mathematics; he wants to be free to declare, when he chooses, that twice two is five.Determinism, he observes, relieves Man of the burden of guilt; Man, he implies, cannot live without it. Implied but never stated (though apparently it was stated in the original text and removed by Russian censors) is that only through faith in Christ can this paradox be overcome.The second part consists, basically, of two sequences of events.In the first, the narrator decides to insult an officer by bumping into him on the street, and eventually does, to no effect.In the second, he invites himself to a party of farewell for a man he doesn’t like, gets drunk and behaves badly, berates a prostitute, and makes an ass of himself in front of his servant.Really, at the level of plot, that’s about it. It doesn’t so much end as is cut off, first by the narrator’s claim that he will write no more, then by a fictitious editor’s claim that he did, indeed, write more, but that there’s no point in continuing.Fortunately, there’s a great deal that _isn’t_ at the level of plot: deep and detailed analysis of Russian society of the nineteenth century … which turns out, really, to be analysis not of society, but of the narrator himself, whom we quickly realize is not a reliable or objective speaker. In fact, _Notes_ is a portrait, a portrait of a thoroughly unpleasant and despicable human being; who is, nonetheless, a human being and not some kind of metaphorical cockroach. Even as the narrator demands our despite, Dostoevsky invites us to love him as a perversely damaged image of Christ.

⭐ This is a good introduction to Dostoyevsky because it’s probably the best known of his shorter works. The first partdoesn’t read much like a novel at all. It’s more like an existential philosophical monologue of an older man, as otherreviewers have pointed out. In that it follows a tradition that goes back to Ecclesiastes or Qoheleth among others,but also has some modern aspects to its pessimistic approach to the paradoxes of life. In any event, this book hasbeen linked to a number of works by Nietzsche, so you can plan on doing a lot of thinking. Then the narratorencounters an old “friend” and some others from school in France after being “underground” for 40 years. He findsthat he is much better educated but they are snobby and superficial in their understanding of success which furtheradds to his resentment. I can relate. The last part of the book is his encounter with the “wench” that he finds appealingand finally is a person he’s concerned about and expresses where her life is leading. But the attraction of love leads toa sort of love/hate attraction and repulsion dynamic that represents the difficulty of all human attempts to go out from theunderground of self and love the other.

⭐ Perfect.This man could be any man, in any place, today. And this qualities are the ones that define universal literature. Being my first book of Dostoyevsky I can declare unabashedly this book the work of a genius. This is the testimony of a man that cheats himself into thinking his self-exile and poverty is the product of a despised society that doesn’t recognize his genius (and this made me recall Oscar Wilde’s short tale “The Remarkable Rocket”). His life is so minuscule, so devoid of true life, that the petty and forgettable events that occur to him are in his mind are epic battles. He is afraid to live and his mind is rot in bookish fantasies; but he doesn’t cross the threshold of his home and work, rendering himself a prisoner. This is a quite spectacular portrait, nobody, not even the lower beings in the social scale, can feel offense from him due to his miserable life; and the end, without spoiling it, is a so complete insult against the anonymous man, that I couldn’t avoid to think in the end of (again) Oscar Wilde’s (again) short story “The Devoted Friend.” I enjoyed it from beginning to end without knowing what to expect.This book applies to our times too. Social networks, especially Twitter, have armies of persons that spend the time there, making tragedies of forgettable trivialities, commenting them as if each word uttered by them were the most important declaration ever, for a public that barely can register (if they do at all) a fraction of a second before passing to the next post. As in “Notes from the Underground” the modern life is harming the humanity of so many. Is the paradox to have potential of more real and diverse human connections but being shy and get stuck only in the written word of books or internet, and unrealistic dreams for the mere fact that they will not move physically to the door to make them real, and they will blame others, victimizing themselves, because in their mind they are geniuses. The irony of writing here, in the loneliness of a borrowed laptop, as if I were writing to an eager audience certainly doesn’t escape me x^PThis is another beautiful edition of AmazonClassics. Clean from errors, nice typography, X-Ray, in excellent formatting. The translation is a public domain one, around the end of 19th century I think, but it doesn’t feel antiquated, it is a good translation. Amazing book to get.

⭐ Notes from the Underground resonates more with social media denizens than any of his larger masterpieces. The diarist conceives of one grand gesture after another, after ranting and embarrassing himself in words that seem almost like a rage tweet.He is, at different times, hysterical, full of bravado, then full of shame. He fulminates against bourgeoisie society after his pathetic attempts to join it. Rejected he alternates between thinking himself well above and well below his peers. Remind you of some behavior on the internet?An indelible character, particularly worth reading in our era. Highly recommended.

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