Book Review: Notes from Underground was the first step in Dostoevsky's most productive and successful period, followed by Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). As such, the life of the underground man may hold keys to understanding the later books (for thesis writers, there are plenty of reflections of Raskolnikov in the underground man). Notes from Underground can be read on several levels. For those familiar with Russian history and literature, Dostoevsky includes a study of those intellectuals influenced by Western values and as such alienated from the land, religion, and their Russian heritage. These intellectuals are people of "heightened consciousness," as opposed to "normal" men, "direct" or ingenuous men, men of action; the two extremes are also identified as the man and the mouse, with the Westernized intellectual being the "mouse." This discussion includes many references to What is to be Done? (1863) by Dostoevsky's ideological opposite, N.G. Chernyshevsky. This reading of the book is of a contemporary Russian writing for contemporary Russians. This level of interpretation, however, isn't too profitable or entertaining for non-scholars and simple readers like me.
The book can also be read as a study of existentialism: the underground man is an existentialist. He is solely an individual, he has no meaning in his life, although he is searching but failing to find some meaning. The underground man is constantly upset, disturbed, impassioned, filled with anxiety. He lives in a permanent existential crisis, always vacillating, weak, miserable. He may not know who he is, but paradoxically (Dostoevsky calls him a "paradoxalist") he is himself. Discontented and resentful but unbound. He makes his own choices, always bad choices, but his own. He's lost his Russianness, but nothing has filled the void: "it is not at all the underground that is better, but something different, completely different, which I thirst for but cannot ever find!" My guess is that the underground man's world is what Dostoevsky saw in his dark nights of the soul. Although religious (if he is an existentialist, he made his meaning from traditional Russia and the Church), as an intelligent man Dostoevsky also had doubts, and he wrote what he saw in those moments of doubt. What was his gambling addiction except a manifestation of doubt, and in the throes of his addiction he had visions from the underground man's world.
Finally, if Notes from Underground can be read apart from historical and existential interpretations, it can be read as a story. The book (novella?) is divided into two parts. In the first, we are virtually only exposed to his inner life, his mind's constant rant, and we have barely any description of the real world around him. This can seem to go on too long, which was Dostoevsky's point, but still wears on the reader: we get it already! In the second part, we have more interaction with other people, "friends" and a lover, Liza, but he's still always wretched and miserable. The underground man is someone you may have seen, that person in class or in the office, the loner down the block who just seems pathetic, never happy, never fitting in, a "loser." He feels superior because of his intellectual capacity, but also knows that he's less than other people. He's read too many books. But he still needs human contact. He wants to join, to connect, but he can't make contact, adapt, conform, get along. He can only live his own way, which is always self-defeating relative to the real world. He cannot even be honest with himself, telling Liza "I look upon my poverty with pride. I'm poor but noble." But in the same discussion he says, "I'm ashamed of it most of all." The "underground" is his own diseased mind, that he can't let others see. The underground man cannot connect with other people, and would rather stay in his fantasies than suffer the humiliations of the real world. He'd rather "be left alone in the underground." Living life has "crushed" him, that it is "even difficult ... to breathe." He would like to conform, gain the admiration of acquaintances, but he is unable, his nerves, his narcissism, prevent him from interacting in any kind of normal manner. We don't know how he came to be this way.
This is not a light and easy read; few people will be able to read this purely for enjoyment. Notes from Underground is a book for those who want a challenging read, want to expand their vision, to grow a little. A work of the mind as much as the heart. [4★]
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