The ellipsis after the opening sentence of Notes from Underground is likea window affording us a first glimpse of one of the most remarkable charactersin literature, one who has been placed among the bearers of modernconsciousness alongside Don Quixote, Hamlet, and Faust. What we see is a manglancing at us out of the corner of his eye, very much aware of us as he speaks,very much concerned with the impression his words are making. In fact, we donot really see him, we only hear him, and not through anything so respectable asa window, but through a crack in the floorboards. He addresses the world fromthat crack; he has also spent a lifetime listening at it. Everything that can be saidabout him, and more particularly against him, he already knows; he has, as hesays in a typical paradox, overheard it all, anticipated it all, invented it all.”I ama sick man . . . I am a wicked man.” In the space of that pause Dostoevskyintroduces the unifying idea of his tale: the instability, the perpetual “dialectic”of isolated consciousness. The nameless hero – nameless “because T is all ofus,” the critic Viktor Shklovsky suggested — is, like so many of Dostoevsky'sheroes, a writer. Not a professional man of letters (none of Dostoevsky's“writers” is that), but one whom circumstances have led or forced to take up thepen, to try to fix something in words, for his own sake first of all, but also withan eye for some indeterminate others — readers, critics, judges, fellow creatures.He is a passionate amateur, a condition that marks the style and structure as wellas the content of the book. Where the master practitioner would present us with aseamless and harmonious verbal construction, the man from underground, wholiterally cannot contain himself, breaks decorum all the time, interrupts himself,comments on his own intentions, defies his readers, polemicizes with otherwriters. The literariness of his “notes” and the unliterariness of his style are bothresults of his “heightened consciousness,” his hostility to and dependence uponthe words of others. Thus the unifying idea of Notes from Underground,embodied in the person of its narrator, is dramatized in the process of its writing.The controlling art of Dostoevsky remains at a second remove
I am not bound in any way. Ill send Simonov a note by tomorrows post .... But what made me furious was that I knew for certain that I should go, that I should make a point of going; and the more tactless, the more unseemly my going would be, the more certainly I would go. And there was a positive obstacle to my going: I had no money. All I had was nine roubles, I had to give seven of Notes from the Underground 103 of 203 that to my servant, Apollon, for his monthly wages. That was all I paid himhe had to keep himself. Not to pay him was impossible, considering his character. But I will talk about that fellow, about that plague of mine, another time. However, I knew I should go and should not pay him his wages. That night I had the most hideous dreams. No wonder; all the evening I had been oppressed by memories of my miserable days at school, and I could not shake them off. I was sent to the school by distant relations, upon whom I was dependent and of whom I have heard nothing
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My schoolfellows met me with spiteful and merciless jibes because I was not like any of them. But I could not endure their taunts; I could not give in to them with the ignoble readiness with which they gave in to one another. I hated them from the first, and shut myself away from everyone in timid, wounded and disproportionate pride. Their coarseness revolted me. They laughed cynically at my face, at my clumsy figure; and yet what stupid faces they had themselves. In our school the boys faces seemed in a special way to Notes from the Underground 104 of 203 degenerate and grow
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How many fine-looking boys came to us! In a few years they became repulsive. Even at sixteen I wondered at them morosely; even then I was struck by the pettiness of their thoughts, the stupidity of their pursuits, their games, their conversations. They had no understanding of such essential things, they took no interest in such striking, impressive subjects, that I could not help considering them inferior to myself. It was not wounded vanity that drove me to it, and for Gods sake do not thrust upon me your hackneyed remarks, repeated to nausea, that I was only a dreamer, while they even then had an understanding of life. They understood nothing, they had no idea of real life, and I swear that that was what made me most indignant with them. On the contrary, the most obvious, striking reality they accepted with fantastic stupidity and even at that time were accustomed to respect success. Everything that was just, but oppressed and looked down upon, they laughed at heartlessly a
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They took rank for intelligence; even at sixteen they were already talking about a snug berth. Of course, a great deal of it was due to their stupidity, to the bad examples with which they had always been surrounded in their childhood and boyhood. They were monstrously depraved. Of course a great deal Notes from the Underground 105 of 203 of that, too, was superficial and an assumption of cynicism; of course there were glimpses of youth and freshness even in their depravity; but even that freshness was not attractive, and showed itself in a certain rakishness. I hated them horribly, though perhaps I was worse than any of them. They repaid me in the same way, and did not conceal their aversion for me. But by then I did not desire their affection: on the contrary, I continually longed for their humiliation. To escape from their derision I purposely began to make all the progress I could with my studies and forced my way to the very top. This impressed them. Moreover, they
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