Reading Notes from Underground: Part One

The opening of the translation by Constance Garnett from my kindle edition.

One thing leads to another.  Last October I changed my morning routine.  Instead of perusing dozens of news sources on topics of interest about the world I decided to start my day by reading books, either on my kindle or in print.  I finished a neuroscience book that I had previously started, which I hope to include in some future post.  But I really had nothing to read after that.  I had many unread kindle books at my disposal but I wasn't interested in any of them at that moment.

So, I randomly decided to read Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground for the first time.  After all, it is considered the “first existential novel” and I greatly admire the author (see here, here, here and here) so why not?  It is a short volume, a scant 130 pages or so.  I should breeze through it and I was needing some Dostoevsky too, I guess, as I discovered after I started reading it.

I read the first three chapters and realized I wanted to know more about the novella before I continued.  I pulled off the shelf an unread massive but abridged 900+ page biography of Dostoevsky and turned to the section pertaining to the novel.  It is, rightly, almost half way through the bio.  I read what Joseph Frank had to say about the work and suddenly saw the chapters I had just read in a richer light.  

According to Frank, Notes from Underground is “paradistic” and it is “misunderstood and taken straight,” its aim is “satire.”  This completely escaped me upon my initial charge into the chapters, as it did most readers in Dostoevsky's time and as it apparently does even today.  My desire for context is one reason I wanted to pause before getting too far along, which Frank provided.  He was so effective that, in fact, I halted Notes from Underground to back up 400+ pages and read Frank's biography from the beginning.  Dostoevsky's life fascinates me as much as his novels and Frank (along with a classic bio from 1947 I had previously read by Konstantin Mochulsky) tells the story of his life splendidly.

Frank inspired me to read one of Dostoevsky's earliest short stories. “White Nights” was recommended a couple of times in my past perusing of content on the writer.  It is an easy read and anyone having difficultly engaging with Dostoevsky should give it a try before giving up.  While the highly accessible story is quaint and clever, it is written in the rather common tone for literature of the 1840's; kind of stiff but pleasant enough.  No depth at all.  Cliché in a Romantic way.  The kiddy pool of Dostoevsky, you might say.  “White Nights” tamely reveals the extent of his talent early in his life before he was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia.

I continued on with Frank as my primary morning reading.  It was nice to have an actual book in my hands with my green tea first thing in the morning.  Eventually, I completed Notes from Underground (on my kindle) while forging ahead with Frank. It is a marvelous biography and I hope to perhaps review it one day.   I did not, however, think much of Notes from Underground on that initial reading, even with Frank's excellent perspective to orient me.  

The short novel is really more of a thought experiment than anything.  Nevertheless, it haunted me for strangely elusive reasons.  I ended up reading it again immediately, its brevity allowed that.  It was a troublesome read, however, even the second time through.  This is not Dostoevsky at his best.  But I can certainly see the hint of brilliance here.  Besides, the work continued to demand my attention, as I attempted to ask questions I could not adequately formulate, at first.

Notes from Underground is told in two parts.  The first is strictly the narrator issuing a statement of his philosophy of life, revealing himself to be lonely and frustrated, condescending and repulsive.  He is 40 years old and gives us plenty of reasons to question the world of “books” and “logic” in favor of the fundamentally irrational and emotionally self-conflicted nature of humanity.  The second part contains the rudiments of a story, told in a handful of episodes that are more impressive when considered in isolation.

That doesn't sound like much of a parody, but it is.  The Underground Man is a ridiculously disturbed person who has withdrawn deep within his anger and fear and emotions.  He has successfully built what Pink Floyd would call “The Wall” around his psyche.  He speaks crudely and roughly and yet he constantly warns the reader to not take him seriously.  He is a parody of the intellectual critic.  Even more twisted, he is the parody of himself.

Dostoevsky uses this self-created isolation and disaffection with society as a metaphor for the overapplication of reason (“excessive consciousness” or Frank uses the term “hyperconscious”) in a supposedly fundamentally irrational world.  My original kindle translation is by Constance Garnett from 1918, obviously an old translation but it remains highly respected in literature.  Many scholars still use this translation.  Garnett's massive life work of translating Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and other Russian authors, making many of them available in the English for the first time, is a forgotten achievement that merits our praise and holds up well, as my quotations below will reveal.  I want to learn more about her life some day.

Later, as I felt like the text needed a slight tweak to bring into sharper focus, I decided to augment Garnett with the 2009 translation by Ronald Wilks.  I will quote extensively from both translations throughout these essays (favoring Garnett).  Kindle makes that easy but my examples also give you a real feel for Dostoevsky's prose.  Warning:  19th century literature is infamous for notoriously long paragraphs.  It was the style at the time.  Apparently, ADHD was not much of a problem among readers of world literature back then.

The novel begins with: “I am a sick man....I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite.” (Garnett, Part 1, Chapter 1, my kindle edition is an anthology, which is why I offer chapters instead of page numbers)

That the work is a parody is rather obvious in the fact that the narrator quickly establishes, almost pridefully, his conflicted self and his lack of reliability.  He lies and jokes throughout Part One – and he does not hide it.  “I was lying when I said just now that I was a spiteful official. I was lying from spite. I was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and with the officer, and in reality I never could become spiteful. I was conscious every moment in myself of many, very many elements absolutely opposite to that. I felt them positively swarming in me, these opposite elements. I knew that they had been swarming in me all my life and craving some outlet from me, but I would not let them, would not let them, purposely would not let them come out.” (1,1)

In Part One, Chapter Two, the Underground Man states: “...now I’m living out my life in my corner, teasing myself with the spiteful and utterly worthless consolation that an intelligent man cannot make himself anything and that it’s only fools who manage to do that. Oh yes, your intelligent, nineteenth-century man ought to be and is in fact morally obliged to be essentially without character; a man of character, a man of action, is primarily a very limited creature.” (Wilks, page 5)

“I assure you, gentlemen, that to be excessively conscious is a disease, a real, full-blown disease. For the needs of everyday life ordinary human consciousness should be more than sufficient – that is, half or even a quarter less than the portion which falls to the lot of an educated man in our unhappy nineteenth century […] All the same, I’m firmly convinced that not only a great deal of consciousness but even any amount of consciousness is a disease. I firmly maintain that.”  (pp. 6 - 7)

This passage is remarkable for how it anticipates modern psychological concepts about rumination and overthinking, but more importantly, it perfectly encapsulates the Underground Man's central conflict. He's diagnosing his own condition while simultaneously taking perverse pride in it - a perfect example of the paralysis of consciousness he's describing.  As I mentioned, Frank uses the word “hyperconscious” for “excessively conscious” in his biography which I think captures Dostoevsky's intent here better than either the Garnett or Wilks translations.

What's particularly interesting is his quantification of consciousness - suggesting that modern educated people have too much of it, while earlier or simpler people had just "enough" consciousness for daily life. He sees consciousness itself as pathological when present in excess, yet he can't stop exercising that very consciousness to analyze his own condition. Throughout Part One, the Underground Man is yearning for a pre-rational state of being, the way the world used to be before all this infernal “progress” came along.  In fact, his entire philosophy strikes me as an aesthetic revolt against the force of the contemporary world, which was only crudely emerging during his time.

This is a parody of a self-conscious performance.  After all, how can one say how much rational thought is "enough."  We are running into Dostoevsky's anti-rational, anti-science, anti-Western crusade for an idealized past that he seems to believe is endangered by rational, scientific, mathematical, Western thought.  He prefers a rising, influential Christian Russia, but that is only background and is beyond the periphery of this novel.  The very attempt to quantify consciousness in fractions ("half or even a quarter") is absurdly rational for someone supposedly arguing against rationality! The passage drips with irony and parody. It's performing the very kind of systematic, analytical thinking it claims to reject.

There's something almost dishonest about using such elaborate rational argumentation to attack rationality itself. It's like Dostoevsky is trying to beat Western philosophical discourse at its own game while simultaneously condemning it. The Underground Man's tortured logic and self-conscious performance becomes a kind of intellectual sleight-of-hand meant to discredit reason through somewhat reasonable (actually quite shallow) argument.

Dostoevsky sets up this artificial conflict between reason and authentic human experience, when in fact they're not mutually exclusive at all. One thing the reader must understand about Notes from Underground is that Dostoevsky is only interested in presenting a false choice.  His nostalgia for some imagined pre-rational past (to be theoretically reborn by Russian Christianity) blinds him to the possibility that human consciousness can encompass both rational and irrational elements without destroying either.  After all, is life worse now than it was in 1864?  In terms of civil rights, medical and health knowledge, and the generation of wealth with the largest middle class in human history?  Sure there are challenges to be met but it is nothing like 1864.  The rational, abstract world today is far better than Dostoevsky could imagine or accept.

No, instead we are told that abstract thought and planning ("consciousness") is an illness and a disease for human emotional irrationality and free will.  Yet, Dostoevsky attempts to lead us away from the fact that a person can be abstract and emotional simultaneously.  The Underground Man is, at bottom, a failure not as Dostoevsky intended but, rather, as someone who cannot come to terms with the contemporary world and to adapt as necessary.  The disease is actually the inability to integrate.  

This is part of what haunted me about the work.  It completely reframes the Underground Man's failure. Rather than being a tragic hero standing against the tide of soulless rationalism (as Dostoevsky would have us see him), he's actually a case study in the pathology of failing to integrate and adapt to change.

Importantly, rational thought is only a "disease" if viewed as a threat. The Underground Man's inability to see reason and emotion as potentially complementary rather than antagonistic is his real illness (again, Dostoevsky did not compose the piece with this in mind). His rejection of integration - his insistence on seeing rationality and human nature as irreconcilable enemies - becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to his isolation and dysfunction.

This interpretation turns Dostoevsky's intended message on its head. Instead of the Underground Man demonstrating the soul-destroying effects of modern rationality, he actually demonstrates the destructive consequences of refusing to evolve and incorporate new modes of thinking. His "disease" isn't “excess consciousness” at all - it's his rigid, binary thinking that refuses to acknowledge human capacity for both rational and emotional experience.

The irony is that while Dostoevsky was trying to defend human complexity against what he saw as the reductive nature of rational systems, he ended up creating a character whose own reductive view of human nature (as necessarily opposed to reason) traps him in a kind of spiritual and emotional poverty. For me, the Underground Man's failure to integrate isn't a noble stand for human freedom as Dostoevsky intends – it raises the alarm to the dangers of refusing to grow and adapt.

“Gentlemen, I am joking, and I know myself that my jokes are not brilliant, but you know one can take everything as a joke. I am, perhaps, jesting against the grain. Gentlemen, I am tormented by questions; answer them for me. You, for instance, want to cure men of their old habits and reform their will in accordance with science and good sense. But how do you know, not only that it is possible, but also that it is DESIRABLE to reform man in that way?” (Garnett, 1, 9)

The Underground Man questions everything and believes in nothing except that books and reason causes at least as many problems as they solve.  He is quick to, jokingly, justify his preference for an irrational existence.  Rationalized society is the cause of so much human misery because it does not adequately reflect who we are as irrational persons.

“...have man’s advantages been reckoned up with perfect certainty? Are there not some which not only have not been included but cannot possibly be included under any classification? You see, you gentlemen have, to the best of my knowledge, taken your whole register of human advantages from the averages of statistical figures and politico-economical formulas. Your advantages are prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace — and so on, and so on. So that the man who should, for instance, go openly and knowingly in opposition to all that list would to your thinking, and indeed mine, too, of course, be an obscurantist or an absolute madman: would not he? But, you know, this is what is surprising: why does it so happen that all these statisticians, sages and lovers of humanity, when they reckon up human advantages invariably leave out one? They don’t even take it into their reckoning in the form in which it should be taken, and the whole reckoning depends upon that. It would be no greater matter, they would simply have to take it, this advantage, and add it to the list.”

“But man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic. I take this example because it is the most glaring instance of it. Only look about you: blood is being spilt in streams, and in the merriest way, as though it were champagne. [...] In any case civilization has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse?”

“...science itself will teach man (though to my mind it’s a superfluous luxury) that he never has really had any caprice or will of his own, and that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ, and that there are, besides, things called the laws of nature; so that everything he does is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of nature. Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will become exceedingly easy for him. All human actions will then, of course, be tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still, there would be published certain edifying works of the nature of encyclopaedic lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or adventures in the world. Then — this is all what you say — new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the “Palace of Crystal” will be built. Then ... In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then (for what will one have to do when everything will be calculated and tabulated), but on the other hand everything will be extraordinarily rational.”  (I will explain the “Palace of Crystal” reference in due course.)

“...man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests, and sometimes one POSITIVELY OUGHT (that is my idea). One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice, however wild it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy — is that very “most advantageous advantage” which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms.” (I, 7)

Throughout the novel, especially in Part One, the narrator is speaking to “gentlemen” as if addressing a small gathering in a speech.  He speaks to an audience of men, not women.  Does Dostoevsky's obvious sexism from the 1860's lessen the magnitude of his achievement in Notes from Underground?  That is the absurd crap we find ourselves asking these days.  Of course not!  It has nothing to do with it!  Dostoevsky is addressing men because, in his time, the statement “ladies and gentlemen” would be appalling.  Ladies should not be exposed to such thoughts as he is espousing.  They are for men only – of that day.  Thinking otherwise is to apply something about today that in no way existed in 1864.

If the march of science and invention and the resulting mechanization of society continues, we may well reduce our humanity into simple objects.  The objectification of humanity is a chief concern with the Underground Man and a major reason he distrusts the obvious forces of his world in the 1860's.  Instead of being or becoming music (the reason for the piano-key), for example, humanity becomes the mechanism for music (the piano-key as an object), a tool for other things, not the same humanity at all.

“I was just going to say that the devil only knows what choice depends on, and that perhaps that was a very good thing, but I remembered the teaching of science ... and pulled myself up. And here you have begun upon it. Indeed, if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices — that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is a real mathematical formula — then, most likely, man will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who would want to choose by rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ-stop or something of the sort; for what is a man without desires, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ?”

“You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots.”

“...that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object — that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key!” (1, 8)

Quite to the contrary to what everyone claims, human beings actually would not know how to Be without their inevitable suffering, the very suffering “rational progress” is supposedly addressing.  “And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive — in other words, only what is conducive to welfare — is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.”

“Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.” (1, 9)  This last sentence encapsulates the Underground Man's anti-reason call to acknowledge and allow our more instinctual and brutal nature.  The Underground Man is clearly a provocative narrator, challenging readers to confront uncomfortable truths about human nature. His contradictions and self-destructive behaviors illustrate Dostoevsky's belief in the complexity of the human psyche, which cannot be reduced to simple formulae or rational self-interest.

As an side, this last short sentence is worth comparing Garnett with Wilks.  Wilks renders it as: “Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, smashing something is occasionally very pleasant too.” (page 31)  Clearly, Garnett's is a superior rendering in terms of effect, even though her version is about 80 years older than the Wilks translation.

There's a significant irony in the Underground Man's frequent attacks on rationality and books, given that he himself is deeply intellectual and clearly well-read. This paradox reveals the Underground Man's self-awareness and self-loathing. He seems to believe his own intellectualism is the source of his alienation and unhappiness. Through this paradox, Dostoevsky critiques the prevailing rationalist philosophies of his time. The Underground Man's arguments against rationality gain credibility precisely because they come from someone so steeped in rational thought. This rather brilliantly embodies the existential struggle between the desire for rational understanding and the yearning for authentic, unrestrained existence.

For example, when the Underground Man says, "This cruelty was so affected, so purposely made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books," he's criticizing his own intellectual background and nature. We find out in Part Two, he used to be an avid reader, for example.  Yet, this very criticism is expressed through a sophisticated literary narrative.  Similarly, his attacks on scientific determinism ("science itself will teach man... that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key") come from a place of extensive knowledge about these scientific theories.  This paradox is central to the novel's exploration of free will, determinism, and the limitations of pure reason in understanding human nature. It challenges readers to consider the complex, often contradictory nature of human consciousness and the potential pitfalls of excessive intellectualism.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the novella from a literary perspective is Part One, Chapter 10, which was heavily edited by Russia's literary censors of the day.  We don't know what Dostoevsky originally wrote because he never tried to revive his original prose (a strange fact when you consider he completely revised his novella The Double which is a lesser effort compared with Notes from Underground).  According to Frank, who pieced together items from his letters, the author strongly advocated the need for “faith and Christ” in some way.  Given the rest of Part One, this seems strangely out of character for the Underground Man, who does not strike me as particularly religious at all.  Christ is not mentioned anywhere else in the text.  Obviously, had that been included it could have completely changed how the reader relates to the perplexing narrator.

Frank says that the censors were apparently “confused and frightened” by whatever Dostoevsky wrote.  “...they would have excised the sentences in which Dostoevsky tried to give his own Christian significance...perhaps considering them both subversive and blasphemous.”  (page 427)  Perhaps Dostoevsky did not bother to salvage his original intent because Notes from Underground was completely misunderstood and taken far too seriously by his readers, not what he intended.

Dostoevsky considered the work a failure and did not bother with it again.  I must admit, Part One speaks to me but seems a bit overwrought and rambling.  However, if you can sit that aside, it is a remarkable achievement.  No one had ever presented the human psyche previously quite the way Dostoevsky does in Part One.  You become intimately acquainted with this unnamed man's psychological state.  Beyond his reasoning and emotions there is much that is missing.  We are only given vague glimpses of his background.  He is a retired civil servant. We look in vain for any trace of a redeemable character trait.  The Underground Man is an anti-hero, a protagonist who we find more reason to despise than in which to invest ourselves.

Notes from Underground is an experimental work, and it doesn't necessarily follow the traditional narrative structure of having a clear, overarching "point" or moral (perhaps because Chapter 10 was so heavily censored). Its fragmented “paradistic” style, the unreliable and contradictory nature of the Underground Man, and the work's abrupt, unresolved ending all contribute to this sense of experimentation.  In fairness, Dostoevsky intended to write more but apparently he grew weary of the work after the censors trampled upon it and moved on to other projects.

It feels like Dostoevsky wanted to explore a new kind of narrative—one that accentuates the chaos and contradictions of the human mind, especially in the context of modern alienation. The novel's structure itself is disorienting: Part One feels like a philosophical treatise, while, as we will see, Part Two consists of a few messy, painful episodes of lived experience, full of absurdity, self-sabotage and incoherence. This tension between intellectual ideas and lived reality reflects the Underground Man’s own disjointed life and mind.

Rather than having a singular "point," the work seems to probe the limitations of rationalism, the complexity of human consciousness, and the absurdity of life even in the 1860's. This ambiguity and elusive messaging give the novella its enduring appeal, as readers are invited to wrestle with its ideas without being told what to think (as I have been doing for many weeks now). It’s open-ended in a way that encourages interpretation and re-interpretation—fitting for a text that is so self-consciously "underground" in its rejection of clear, rational order.  This is part of the reason why the novella fundamentally haunts me so.  And yet lures me back for more.

(to be continued)