"I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man," the irascible voice of a nameless narrator cries out. And so, from underground, emerge the passionate confessions of a suffering man; the brutal self-examination of a tormented soul; the bristling scorn and iconoclasm of alienated individual who has become one of the greatest antiheroes in all literature. Notes From Underground , published in 1864, marks a tuming point in Dostoevsky's writing: it announces the moral political, and social ideas he will treat on a monumental scale in Crime And Punishment , The Idiot , and The Brothers Karamazov . And it remains to this day one of the most searingly honest and universal testaments to human despair ever penned. “The political cataclysms and cultural revolutions of our century…confirm the status of Notes from Underground as one of the most sheerly astonishing and subversive creations of European fiction.” –from the Introduction by Donald Fanger
Part I Underground
The author of the diary and the diary itself are, of course, imaginary. Nevertheless it is clear that such persons as the writer of these notes not only may, but positively must, exist in our society, when we consider the circumstances in the midst of which our society is formed. I have tried to expose to the view of the public more distinctly than is commonly done, one of the characters of the recent past. He is one of the representatives of a generation still living.
In this fragment, entitled “Underground,” this person introduces himself and his views, and, as it were, tries to explain the causes owing to which he has made his appearance and was bound to make his appearance in our midst. In the second fragment there are added the actual notes of this person concerning certain events in his life. — AUTHOR’S NOTE.
Part I Underground
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Chapter I
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Chapter II
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Chapter III
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Chapter IV
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Chapter V
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Chapter VI
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Chapter VII
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Chapter VIII
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Chapter IX
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Chapter X
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Chapter XI
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Part II A Propos of the Wet Snow
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Chapter I
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Chapter II
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Chapter III
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Chapter IV
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Chapter V
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Chapter VI
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Chapter VII
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