BOOK REVIEW

Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Worth the dense opening section for its mind-twisting climax

Russian literature has claimed a blossoming interest from me lately, in tandem with my recent exploration of classical fiction in general. Names such as Chekhov and Tolstoy radiate with an esteemed bibliography whose works often grapple with the darkest tenets of human psychology and emotion. For my initial foray into this wide genre though, I chose a Dostoevsky novel as I imagined his difficult life would befit the inevitable themes of internal struggle and existential anguish. I passed over Crime and Punishment, widely considered his magnum opus, solely because its length at 500-plus pages was a lengthier overture to the genre than that to which I was prepared to commit.

                The narrator splits Notes from Underground into two sections. The first outlines his views on why man, from a desire to exercise his free will, often acts against what logic would suggest are his own interests. I found this section’s prose tremendously challenging to follow, fuelled by the numerous revisions to his opinion as he interpolates objections from an imaginary audience. The book’s second part relates anecdotes that he deems illustrative of his proposition, from his obsessed vengeance on an officer who once displaced him in the street to the open mockery of his former schoolmates.               

          It is the book’s closing scenes, however, that most reward the patient reader who toiled the opening section: the narrator relates how, abandoned by his friends, he spends a night with a young prostitute in a drunken desire for mastery. In the morning he delivers an impassioned moralistic lecture to her, leading her to be deeply touched by his ostensible concern for her prospects. In doing so, he reignites in her a belief that she is still capable of accepting and exhibiting love. After a few days she seeks him out, but stumbles upon him in an undignified moment in the backdrop of his modest home. Alarmed and furious at her offer of affection, he exclaims that his earlier words were meant solely to humiliate her as his friends had humiliated him, before breaking down in a confession of self-shame. Though shocked, she embraces him in pity but then in a renewed rage he forces himself upon her. He then tries to pay her when she finally makes to leave.

                Reliving this account prompts me to consider that it may be one of the most twisted pieces of writing I’ve come across. As far as psychological trauma goes, I now realize why Dostoevsky’s manipulation of his readers’ minds cannot be understated. It will be with weighty apprehension and trepidation that I next read him. 

     -NP, September 2016