Notes from Underground

1
Notes from Underground

• by
• Fyodor Dostoevsky

2
Existentialism

• Notes from Underground is considered by many to
  be the world's first existentialist novel.
• Existentialism is a philosophical movement that
  posits that individuals create the meaning and
  essence of their lives, as opposed to deities or
  authorities creating it for them.
• Existentialism emerged as a movement in
  twentieth-century literature and philosophy,
  though it had forerunners in earlier centuries.
• Walter Kaufmann described existentialism as "The
  refusal to belong to any school of thought, the
  repudiation of the adequacy of any body of
  beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and
  a marked dissatisfaction with traditional
  philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote
  from life".

3
The philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich
Nietzsche are considered fundamental to the
existentialist movement, though neither used the
term "existentialism".

• Existentialism generally postulates that the
  absence of a transcendent force (such as God)
  means that the individual is entirely free, and,
  therefore, ultimately responsible.
• It is up to humans to create an ethos of personal
  responsibility outside any branded belief system.
  
• In existentialist views, personal articulation of
  being is the only way to rise above humanity's
  absurd condition of much suffering and inevitable
  death.

4
Underground and What is to Be Done?

• What is to be Done? (alternatively translated as
  What Shall we Do?) is a novel written by Nikolai
  Chernyshevsky when he was in Peter and Paul
  Fortress. It was written in response to Fathers
  and Sons by Ivan Turgenev.
• The novel's hero, named Rakhemtov, became an
  emblem of the philosophical materialism and
  nobility of Russian radicalism. The novel also
  expresses, in one character's dream, a society
  gaining "eternal joy" of an earthly kind. The
  novel has been called "a handbook of radicalism"
  and led to the founding of a Land and Liberty
  society.

5

• The book is perhaps best known for the responses
  it created than as a novel in its own right. Leo
  Tolstoy wrote a different What is to be Done?
  based on moral responsibility. Fyodor Dostoevsky
  mocked the utilitarianism and utopianism of the
  novel in his Notes from Underground.
• Vladimir Lenin, however, found it inspiring and
  named a pamphlet for it.
• Remember that Lenin had also been deeply moved by
  Chekhov's short story Ward No. 6

6
Notes from Underground
Image taken from the poster for the film released
on March 6, 1998

• The role of man in a world in which the belief of
  God does not exist.
• In Notes, Dostoevsky shows us the Underground
  Man, (a new type)
• A despicable and pitiable creature who betrays
  himself and is not even aware of it.
• The Underground Man becomes a common character
  type in many of the works that followed Notes. He
  is present in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in the
  milder form of the character Nikolai Levin, in
  Anton Chekhov's Ward No. 6, Ralph Ellison's
  Invisible Man, and in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 as
  Yossarian the 28-year-old Army Air Corps Captain.

7
Written at a time of Great Difficulty for
Dostoevsky

• His wife was dying
• His business ventures as an editor of journals
  were failing
• His own health was in difficulty with more and
  more epileptic fits becoming a major hindrance.
• In The Underground Man is Dostoevsky attempt as a
  thoroughly anti-modern author to implore his
  fellow Russians to resign from the West and its
  atheistic liberalism

8
What was going on around him?

• To some extent, the bitterness of the novel is
  traceable to the many personal misfortunes
  Dostoevsky suffered while the novel was being
  written.
• Much more important was the influence of his
  maturing world-view with its ever colder and more
  distant attitude toward the European liberalism,
  materialism and utopianism of his younger years.
• Dostoevsky had begun his writing career in the
  1840's as a romantic idealist, even as a dreamer.

9

• At that time he had devoted a great deal of
  attention to utopian socialism and its vision of
  a perfectly satisfying, perfectly regulated life
  for humankind.
• This perfection of life was thought to be
  achievable solely through the application of the
  principles of reason and enlightened
  self-interest. In fact, it was maintained that
  given the dominance of the rational and the
  spread of enlightenment, perfection of life must
  necessarily follow.
• Dostoyevsky is noted for his skill in
  interweaving deep philosophical, psychological
  and theological threads into his brilliant
  fiction.
• As a result, Notes for Underground is much more
  than stimulating, entertaining stories but is an
  actual representation of 19th century
  intellectual history.

10

• Notes from Underground wrestles with modern
  existential questions which deal with Man's role
  in a world where the idea of God was being
  rejected more and more.
• The Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries
  espoused the value of reason, proclaimed the
  potential improvement of Man and Society, and
  freed humanity from superstition.
• By the 19th century, with the belief in God
  declining, Dostoevsky saw mankind having lost its
  moral bearing, wafting directionless in the
  tempest that is life. Instead of liberating Man
  for the better, the Enlightenment had renounced
  his spiritual connection.
• Where Dostoevsky saw a creature of God, his
  contemporary philosophers were seeking a new
  definition of modern man, out from under the
  definition of God.
• The Underground Man is what he sees as their
  final product.

11
Works and Sites Cited

• Lawall, Sarah. Ed. Fyodor Dostoevsky. The
  Norton Anthology of world Literature Vol. E. New
  York Norton 1301-1306.
• Marder, Jen, Mike Meyer, and Fred Wyshak
  Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground.
  http//community.middlebury.edu/beyer/courses/pre
  vious/ru351/novels/UGMan/ugman.html 3 April 2008
• Notes from Underground. Wikipedia the Free
  Encyclopedia. http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_f
  rom_Underground 3 April 2008.