However, as the Underground Man points out in his rant, such dreams are based on a utopian trust of not only the societal systems in place, but also humanity’s ability to avoid corruption and irrationality in general. The points made in Part 1 about the Underground Man’s pleasure in being rude and refusing to seek medical help are his examples of how idealised rationality is inherently flawed for not accounting for the darker and more irrational side of humanity.
The Stone Wall is one of the symbols in the novella and represents all the barriers of the laws of nature that stand against man and his freedom. Put simply, the rule that two plus two equals four angers the Underground Man because he wants the freedom to say two plus two equals five, but that the Stone Wall of nature’s laws stands in front of him and his free will.
Political climate
In the 1860s, Russia was beginning to absorb the ideas and culture of Western Europe at an accelerated pace, nurturing an unstable local climate. There was especially a growth in revolutionary activity accompanying a general restructuring of tsardom where liberal reforms, enacted by an unwieldy autocracy, only induced a greater sense of tension in both politics and civil society.
Many of Russia’s intellectuals were engaged in a debate with the Westernizers on one hand, and the Slavophiles on the other, concerned with favoring importation of Western reforms or promoting pan-Slavic traditions to address Russia’s particular social reality. Although Tsar Alexander emancipated the serfs in 1861, Russia was still very much a post-medieval, traditional peasant society.
When Notes from Underground was written, there was an intellectual ferment on discussions regarding religious philosophy and various ‘enlightened’ utopian ideas. The work is a challenge to, and a method of understanding, the larger implications of the ideological drive toward a utopian society.
Utopianism largely pertains to a society’s collective dream, but what troubles the Underground Man is this very idea of collectivism. The point the Underground Man makes is that individuals will ultimately always rebel against a collectively imposed idea of paradise; a utopian image such as The Crystal Palace will always fail because of the underlying irrationality of humanity.
Writing style
Although the novella is written in first-person narrative, the “I” is never really discovered. The syntax can at times seem “multi-layered”; the subject and the verb are often at the very beginning of the sentence before the object goes into the depths of the narrator’s thoughts. The narrator repeats many of his concepts.
In chapter 11, the narrator refers to his inferiority to everyone around him and describes listening to people as like “listening through a crack under the floor.” The word “underground” actually comes from a bad translation into English. A better translation would be a crawl space: a space under the floor that is not big enough for a human, but where rodents and bugs live. According to Russian folklore, it is also a place where evil spirits live.
Legacy
The challenge posed by the Underground Man towards the idea of an “enlightened” society laid the groundwork for later writing. The work has been described as “probably the most important single source of the modern dystopia.”
Notes from Underground has had an impact on various authors and works in the fields of philosophy, literature, and film, including:
the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche
The Metamorphosis (1915), a novella by Franz Kafka
Invisible Man (1952), by Ralph Ellison
Taxi Driver (1976), directed by Martin Scorsese
Notes from Underground (1995), a film adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novella, directed by Gary Walkow, with Henry Czerny and Sheryl Lee in the leading roles.
Yeraltı (2012), directed by Zeki Demirkubuz
Notes from Underground (2014), by Roger Scruton
English translations
Since Notes from Underground was first published in Russian, there have been a number
of translations into English over the years, including:
1913. C. J. Hogarth. Letters from the Underworld.
1918. Constance Garnett. Revised by Ralph E. Matlaw, 1960.
1955. David Magarshack. Notes from the Underground.
1961. Andrew R. MacAndrew.
1969. Serge Shishkoff.
1972. Jessie Coulson.
1974. Mirra Ginsburg.
1989. Michael R. Katz.
1991. Jane Kentish. Notes from the Underground.
1994. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
2009. Ronald Wilks.
2009. Boris Jakim.
2010. Kyril Zinovieff and Jenny Hughes.
2014. Kirsten Lodge. Notes from the Underground.
