In this blog post, we’ll explore Dostoevsky’s complex and multifaceted literary world and the significance of ‘Notes from the Underground’.
Although a century has already passed since the death of Dostoevsky (1821–1881), the world-renowned literary giant born in Russia, his literature continues to raise new questions every day and remains the subject of lively debate. While there are hundreds of books on Dostoevsky published by prominent literary figures from around the world, no one has been able to adequately define him in a single phrase. People have bestowed upon him various titles: the writer of existence and self-flagellation, the writer of fragmentation and absurdity, the evangelical writer who pierces the human soul, the writer who applied detective novel techniques to psychological realism, and the poet of the modern city.
In short, Dostoevsky’s literary world is like a mysterious realm where dense primeval forests, deep caves, abysses, and countless towering mountains converge. For this reason, it is extremely difficult to fully understand his works. His pathological personality, elusive existentialist ideas, intense and original thoughts, and the complex psychological state of 19th-century Russian society present multiple layers of obstacles to those seeking to understand his literature.
Through the epilepsy that plagued him throughout his life, his experience standing on the scaffold (his life was spared by a royal pardon just before execution), his hellish life in Siberian exile, and the unending torment of debt, he endured the greatest physical and mental suffering a human being could experience. Through these experiences, he discovered the coexistence of two contradictory elements within the human psyche—good and cruelty, the divine and the demonic, submission and rebellion, superiority and inferiority—that is, the problem of the dual personality, and he devoted himself to an unyielding effort to explore this from every angle.
Dostoevsky took the conflict and struggle between these mutually contradictory elements within the human psyche as his central theme and expanded it into social, ethical, and philosophical issues. The reflections thus formed became the foundation for pioneering a new genre of philosophical novels, including ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘The Idiot’, ‘The Possessed’, and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’.
The 1864 publication of ‘Notes from the Underground’ in the journal ‘Vremya’ was significant because this work contains nearly all the artistic motifs that would later be developed in his major works. André Gide described this work as “the key to understanding Dostoevsky’s entire oeuvre,” but readers must discover that key for themselves amid the author’s distinctive style—a contradictory mix of nervous cynicism, sarcasm, irony, and paradox.
Part 1 of this work is largely filled with raw reflections and discussions, largely devoid of artistic embellishment, and freely expresses the thoughts and emotions that shaped the author’s inner world. This section appears to have been written as a rebuttal to Chernyshevsky’s novel ‘What Is to Be Done?’, which represented the revolutionary ideas of Russia at the time. At that time, Dostoevsky harbored an extreme aversion to socialist doctrine as a whole, viewing rational social control based on socialist theory as the enslavement of the individual and the trampling of individuality.
He identified an idealization of a Fourierist communist society in ‘What Is to Be Done?’ and, calling it the “Crystal Palace” ironically, he poured scorn upon it. The logic goes that if such a “Crystal Palace” were built, reason would completely dominate the will, all human actions would be classified like items on a ledger, and people would precisely understand their own interests and logically determine their actions according to those classifications. However, Dostoevsky does not fully trust such utilitarian theories.
His reasoning is as follows: even if such a “Crystal Palace” were to be realized, the human instinct for freedom would not tolerate that state of affairs. Humans trapped in a “rational life” would be unable to overcome boredom; even knowing the consequences would be unfavorable to them, they would rebel against the laws of reason and reject all regulations solely out of free will.
The important point here is not merely a critique of socialist doctrine. What is more important is that it poses a scathing challenge to the tendency, prevalent in modern society, to disregard individuality from a utilitarian perspective.
The protagonist’s actions in Part 2 of the work—attending a farewell banquet that causes nothing but discomfort and pain to himself and others, and committing senseless and cruel acts against an unfortunate prostitute—are illustrative scenes meant to demonstrate that reason cannot dominate the will. In other words, the author aims to show that human desires—no matter how irrationally they manifest—cannot be restrained by the power of consciousness alone, and that consciousness cannot consistently guide human behavior.
However, the protagonist’s state of mental fragmentation must also be taken into account; the issue of human complexity arising as a result of civilization is raised; and the philosophy of the worship of suffering also plays an important role. Because these various elements are intertwined, it is difficult to neatly organize and explain all the ideas contained in this work into a single coherent system. Within the work, ideas clash with one another, and ideas and psychology intersect and sometimes contradict each other, revealing the endless abyss of Dostoevsky’s complex inner world.
In any case, ‘The Diary of a Underground Man’ marks a clear turning point in Dostoevsky’s oeuvre. Prior to the publication of this work, he had been nothing more than a first-rate writer in the Russian literary world; however, beginning in 1864, he established himself as a world-class genius who opened up new horizons for humanity.
