From the undergraduate archives –

Notes from Underground is striking for a number of reasons, primarily for being a real, living, breathing account of a paradox that lives within all of us. Musings would be too gentle a word for this two part novel.

It contains the not-so-condensed anguish of the bitter narrator, enlightening us to his contrasting worldviews. Dostoevsky’s words flow relentlessly, so we assume there was a lot that was written, but the ideas are all interconnected, one beginning where the other ends, much like an ouroboros. Rather than pinpricks that can be individually, the novella appears to result in a diffused impression, that is surprisingly strong.

Certain themes in the novel are universal and eternal. It is because of this that Notes, although increasingly frustrating to get through, has stood the test of time. Having been the first to trace the real man of the Russian majority, the novella talks about a great many things. What stands out, much like in Sophocles’s Antigone, is man’s innate desire to be good and the consequences of such a desire.

We see the underground man at his worst and at his best, which arguably his worst as well. We see him angry, spiteful, cruel and sadistic. We see him as a defeatist and an “honest scoundrel” who is out of control when it comes to opinions, but most of all, we see him suffer. Whether it is from the fear of remaining unnoticed or from battles waged against the inner self, his endless suffering is felt by the reader.

To borrow from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, we are all generals in labyrinths of our own making, deriving pleasure from pain.

If one were to place the ‘beautiful and the lofty’ and the underground at the opposite ends of the spectrum, then man is reduced to a being governed by laws – embraced by the talons of the underground, seeking the beauty of the lofty.

Indeed, a romantic idea, to be grasping at something that you could never have, much like Orion and the Pleiades. Although to each, his own, the immutable yearning could be for freedom. Freedom to speak our minds, to go against oneself, to make one’s choices and most importantly, the freedom to contest the idea that two plus two might not always be equal to four. It is this individualistic, existentialist aspect that shines through every page.

Much like the narrator, we are a mess of contradictions – craving attention, but finding comfort in solitude, intending to do one thing, but completely bypassing it, wanting to hide, but needing to stand out, cynical romantics and above all, skeptical of society but forever searching for a place to belong. Perhaps the underground is such a retreat – where we can reveal our true, ghastly selves, or it could be a circumstance that hampers actualization.

In a roundabout manner, we get the sense that it is perfectly alright to succumb to this darkness, to accept the beasts we see in the mirror. In this acceptance lies our freedom.
In putting down the pen, just like Dostoevsky did, we bring down the proverbial wall, built strong by the laws of nature.

A strange, alchemical mixture of the desire to be good and the fear of accepting one’s inner evil situates us in the beautiful chaos that is “living life”.

We are sick, we are wicked, we are unattractive, rude madmen running in the wet snow. We are the underground and the underground is us.