Notes from Underground E-Book

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

• Herausgeber: Enhanced Media Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Often called the first existentialist work, Dostoyevsky’s 1864 Notes from Underground touches on many of the philosophical problems dealt with in the Russian master’s novels. The story is written in the form of a journal belonging to an unnamed man who withdrawn himself from society into an underground existence. The first part is a monologue in which the narrator philosophizes and then laughs at his ideas; the second part is a recounting of adventures from the narrator’s life, which exemplify some of the ideas propounded in the first part of the story.

Notes from Underground is considered one of Dostoyevsky’s most powerful and original stories and marks the starting point of his literary maturity.

Includes image gallery.

Leseprobe

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND

A Novel

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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Translated by Constance Garnett

Table of Contents

Title Page

Notes from Underground

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND[1] | PART I - Underground

PART II

IMAGE GALLERY

Further Reading: On The Shortness of Life: De Brevitate Vitae

Notes from Underground By Fyodor Dostoyevsky. First published in 1864.  Translation by Constance Garnett first published in White Nights and Other Stories - The Novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Volume X in 1918. 

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND[1]

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PART I - Underground

I

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. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than any one that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well—let it get worse!

[1] 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.