Notes from Underground book summary and Review

 Check out my Notes from Underground book summary and Review that I created to help you understand the basics of this great book. Notes from the Underground (pre-reform Russian: Записки изъ подполья; post-reform Russian: из из подполья, Zapíski iz podpólʹya; also translated as notes from the underworld or letters from the underworld) is a novel and written by Discordian 64.

 Many consider it to be the first existentialist novel. The novel presents itself as a quote from the bitter memories of a bitter, isolated, nameless narrator (commonly referred to by critics as the Underground Man), a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg.

The first part of the story is told in the form of a monologue through Underground Man's Diary and attacks contemporary Russian philosophy, especially Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What is to be done ?.

 The second part of the book, "Approaches of the Wet Snow", describes some of the events that are destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man, who acts as the first person, the unfaithful narrator and the opposition hero.

Notes from Underground book summary :

The novel is stylistically divided into two parts: the first is essay, the second is descriptive, and is sometimes considered a novel. The protagonist and first-person narrator is a 40-year-old former civil servant whose name is not mentioned.

 All that is known about his living conditions is that he quit his job, living alone in a basement apartment on the outskirts of St. Petersburg and earning his living from a decent inheritance. The first part of Notes from the Seller Hole represents his thoughts on society as well as himself.

He describes himself as wicked, lowly, and ugly, but highly educated; The main target of his controversial and sharp analysis is the "modern man" and the society he created, which he comments bitterly and harshly against and against which he builds aggression and revenge.

He sees his own fall as normal and necessary. Although he insisted that he was only writing recordings for himself, the narrator repeatedly addressed an indefinite audience, whose questions he tried to anticipate.

In the second part he talks about different periods of his life, each from much earlier, which exemplifies his failures in the professional level as well as in the interpersonal field and in his love life. One episode, for example, describes a meeting with old school friends who, in contrast, are all in a high and secure position and are polite to him.

His aggression is then directed against himself and he tries to humiliate himself further. At the same time, he distinguishes himself from the following: He presents himself as a potential savior to the poor prostitute Lisa, rejecting her with much self-condemnation only when he begins to hope for her.

Dostoevsky himself included a brief commentary with the note, noting that although the characters and plots were fictional, they were not only possible, but even inevitable, given the conditions of contemporary society.

Dostoevsky wrote this article in Moscow in the winter of 1863/64. During this time he suffered from many epilepsy and other chronic illnesses; His financial situation was depleted due to gambling debts which he did a few days ago in Homburg before the heights. The Ipocha Journal, where the notes were finally published, was published by his brother Mikhail from March 1864.

Since it was less liberal than its predecessor, Vremzar, it suffered a decline in readership. The publication of a text that contains such unpopular ideas and publicly Chernyshevsky's novel What is to be done? However, Dostoevsky was convinced of the quality of the notes and spoke to his brother at the stage of planning a "strong and clear [n] work," the analysis of which would be "true." ]

Recordings from the basement were initially perceived as a psychological study. One of his first admirers was Friedrich Nietzsche, who described the work as a "true stroke of fate for psychology" and thus launched a massive reception in the German-speaking world.

For Nietzsche, the notes (which he read in French translation) were his first encounter with Dostoevsky. The notes were also used as an attack on Chernyshevsky's novel What to Do. (Published 1863), who worked in an optimistic way about the potential of an idealistic, progressive human society and was extremely popular with socialists and revolutionaries throughout Europe at the time.

Its historical background was the belief in progress, which was based on influential contemporary successes in technology and natural sciences (such as the theory of evolution) and shifted to social processes. Such thinking is a central goal of the anxious analysis of the anonymous narrator of the note, which at least disqualified them at the time.

Notes from Underground book Review :

From the moment we left, we were introduced to the abnormal minds of the underground people. He is the greatest anti-hero. He feels intensely jealous of the "man of action", who possesses little intellectual power and is free from doubts, questions and annoyances which are part of his underground consciousness.

But on the other hand, he finds solace in his sense of intellectual superiority, even though it prevents him from participating in "life" like other people, he is constantly over-analyzing everything and therefore unable to make decisions. He goes through a life full of self-hatred.

As an orphan, she never had a normal, loving relationship with other people. He usually spends time reading literature, but reflecting the reality, he is aware of its irrationality and this contradiction pushes him further away from society.

The tension between his intellectual superiority and his deep self-loathing is a recurring psychological theme throughout the novel. The Underground Man has a limited repertoire of emotions, including anger, bitterness, revenge, and humiliation. He described listening to people as "listening through the cracks in the floor."

 The word "underground" actually comes from a bad translation in English. A good translation would be a crawl space: a space under the floor that is not large enough for humans, but where rats and bugs live.

Dostoevsky noted at the outset that people like Underground Man "cannot just exist in our society, can exist, when we consider the circumstances in which our society is formed."

The Underground Man observes the rise of a utopian society that seeks to alleviate sorrow and pain. He argues that people want both and need them to be happy.

We want happiness but we have a special talent for making ourselves miserable. "People sometimes fall in love with extraordinary, passionate suffering: it's a fact."

Underground Man criticizes utilitarianism of the 19th century, a thought that sought to use mathematical formulas to align human aspirations with its best interests. Because of the inherent irrationality of humanity, the individual will always rebel against the collectively imposed notion of heaven.

As individuals, we sometimes do not act in our own interests, only to legitimize our existence as individuals, to exercise our free will. Underground Man attacks this kind of enlightened selfishness. He hates the notion of a cultural and legal system based on this logical ego.

A useful and predictable life will limit human freedom, life will be so rational that everything will become dull. This claim explains the underground man's stubbornness that he may suffer from toothache or liver pain,

It’s a way to go against the comfortable predictions of life. Although he is not proud of this useless behavior. In other words, two plus two equals four makes him angry, he wants the freedom to say two plus two equal five.

He blames himself that he is not insignificant enough to be a scoundrel or an insect. Man does not want what is harmful to him, but man wants freedom more than happiness, the ability to do what one wants, even when it does one harm.

But there is no guarantee that people will use that freedom constructively. Evidence from history indicates that people try to destroy others and themselves. One can say something about the history of the world, not just one thing that makes sense.

"Bring all worldly blessings upon man, drown him in the sea of ​​happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of joy can be seen on the surface, give him such economic prosperity that he has nothing to do but sleep, eat cake and be busy."

In the continuity of his species, and even out of sheer ingratitude, out of sheer reproach, people will play some bad tricks on you. "Man is not rational;