Many critics have observed that Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, looking at 19th Century limitations, have seen the same decadence, but few have observed that these two geniuses attribute the problem to precisely opposite causes. To Nietzsche, it is Christianity which has created the 19th Century wimpy man; to Dostoevsky, it is the rejection of a profound Christianity which has produced the same result. Many postmodern readers see the "Notes" merely as a psychological text, valuable because anticipatory of Freud. What should be recognized as even more important is the allusive significance of the principal event in this text, the conversion of a prostitute. The Underground Man, a skilled rhetorician, talks a first-day prostitute out of pursuing her career. The next day she comes to his house, apparently having met her "savior." Brutally, he rejects her, as a trespasser on his freedom. He is Nietzsche's new man, though hardly a Superman, and certainly not superior to his Western Culture predecessor, the Christ who not only converts Mary Magdalene, but takes her into his new family.

As he does in his other novels, here Dostoevsky, uses alienation, inner struggle, humiliation and suffering to underscore the ambiguities of the meaning of life and as a way of questioning the basic rules of humanity as well as the traditional rules and values of society.

The first half of book demonstrates how boredom, meaninglessness, self-doubt, and an overly active intellect conspire to mask man's fear and lack of courage to act in defense of his own right to be. This lack of courage, and the intellectual devices used to cover it up (rationalization, social excuses, etc.), ultimately immobilizes man, and estranges him from his inner self, thus, preventing him from being able to measure his true worth and calibrate his true degree of aliveness. In this sense, the psychological analysis of the Underground Man is a classic Freudian-Existential analysis, performed a half century before Freud was born.

The second half of the book carries a companion theme about how pain and suffering brought on by isolation and self-doubt can lay bare the true underlying meaning of the human condition. It reveals how, in an effort to muster the courage to act in the moment, that the essence of being alive is about the will to move beyond intellectualizations and rationalizations. Or said another way: only when he is broken down to the level of the most extreme degradation and embarrassment can man begin to accept himself and then be able to rebuild and prepare himself for a life of redemption, true love and understanding.

What Dostoevsky does so well in both The Underground Man and in Crime and Punishment is carry to the limit what man is unable to do - how we are utterly immobilized by our inner fears and incapacity to act. He shows what the consequences are (for our being and our humanity) when we mistake our cowardice for reasonableness, and use it as a substitute for acting.

A failure to live is precisely to be faced with the consequences of being alive, but instead of acting, we "sleep-walk through life," using psychological ruses to make ourselves feel better about dodging the consequences of "having a real life."

Left alone with our cowardice, Dostoevsky says, we become entangled and lost--we don't know what to join, what to keep up with; what to love, what to hate; what to respect, or what to despise. We become so out of touch with our "real being" that we long to turn ourselves into the hypothetical "average man." (p 203).

In the catatonia of this self-made mental prison, often crime or other modalities of rebelling and acting out against society are the only viable ways out. That is to say, rebelling against the rules of society is the only way to feel truly alive and in control of one's being.

In Crime and Punishment, for instance, it is Raskolnikov's murders that does this; in Notes From the Underground, it is the Underground Man's sexual seduction of a prostitute at a party that does so. In each novel, the criminal act serves as the cathartic way of restoring meaning and balance to lives immobilized by the fear of being unable to act.

Dostoevsky's most powerful and recurring theme ultimately is almost religious in its content and its subtext: that self-redemption and salvation are the ultimate liberator of the soul and can come only through humiliation and suffering. However, while Rakolnikov in Crime and Punishment surrenders to God and Christianity through the love of a prostitute. The underground man rejects love and overtures to turn his freedom over to those who consider themselves morally superior to him.

The Underground Man is the clearest, most succinct and most powerful statement of Dostoevsky's existentialist philosophy. It is a beautiful read. Ten stars.

Notes From Underground is a highly unusual story and therefore difficult to summarize. Part I is a dense, rambling, but incredibly insightful exploration of human freedom in the face of modern concepts that question the possibility of meaningful choice. Dostoevsky argues that, more than anything else, it is our ability to make choices (even irrational and destructive choices) that defines us as human beings and allows us to express our freedom from rational egoism and scientific determinism. People don't always choose what is rational; in fact, sometimes we choose pain and suffering simply to show that we are free to do as we please. As the underground man says, what fun is it to want something if what you want is already predetermined by either reason or science? However, while human freedom makes choice meaningful, it is also disconcerting. The realization that we are completely free to make choices opens up such a wide range of possibilities that action becomes difficult and even terrifying at times, and the underground man suffers a sort of paralysis as a result.

Although Dostoevsky certainly does not view the underground man's response to freedom as the right one, he does seem to think that such a person is a possible and perhaps even necessary product of the alienating, bureaucratic, unnaturally "rational" society in which he finds himself. Under such conditions, making destructive choices is perhaps the only means left for a person on the fringes of society to express her freedom and humanity. Thus, while The Brothers Karamazov could perhaps be read as Dostoevsky's solution to the problems presented in Notes From Underground, the underground man himself serves an example of someone who fails to carry the burden of human freedom in a way that makes happiness possible. Part I, then, is a difficult but powerful exploration of possible responses to the problem of human freedom, and for this reason it is widely regarded as an important precursor to the existential philosophy of later thinkers like Sartre and Camus.

Part II takes a more traditional "story" format, and shows how the Underground Man interacts with the world around him. An important aspect of Part II is its emphasis on the contradictory and paradoxical makeup of human nature. According to Dostoevsky, human beings are not at all rational; instead, we are capable of feeling the pull of highly contradictory motivations and desires. For instance, the underground man desperately wants love and acceptance, but whenever he seeks out human contact he is suddenly seized by an equally strong desire to sabotage his relationships with others and destroy any possibility of meaningful connection. He is filled with noble desires and appreciates the beautiful and lofty, but at the same time delights in humiliating himself and engaging in debaucheries for the pure enjoyment of it. In other words, the underground man feels the pull of contradiction and is aware of his freedom to express divergent aspects of his personality, but he is unable to do so in the right sort of way. (Again, read The Brothers Karamazov for Dostoevsky's solution to the problem.)

Basically, I felt that Notes From Underground was incredibly worthwhile: read it for its influence on the development of existentialism, or for its exploration of human nature, or for the insight it offers into Dostoevsky's later works, or as an amazing character sketch, or just because (after Part I, at least) it's an enthralling story that builds up speed like a locomotive. In the end I enjoyed Notes From Underground for each of the above reasons. Good book.

Dostoyevsky's pessimistic, deeply disturbing novella, Notes from the Underground (1864), presents a rather atypical protagonist - one that describes himself as a sick man, a spiteful man, an unattractive man. In an introductory footnote Dostoyevsky argues that the fictional writer of these notes not only may, but positively must exist, when one considers the circumstances of current society (i.e., Dostoyevsky's mid-nineteenth century Russia).

Notes from the Underground consists of two fragments from a diary. In the first the writer rather incoherently defends his motivation for his self-destructive behavior and defiant suffering. In the second he relates actual events from his life that clearly illustrate his irrational, capricious, self-degrading actions. This man of intellect is completely aware of his destructive behavior, and yet he deliberately and calculatingly makes no effort to change.

The first fragment has overtones of a Socratic discussion. The protagonist argues incessantly that his apparent irrational behavior is actually quite rational and that it is popular rationalism that is misguided. Dostoyevsky's character enjoys challenging conventional wisdom, making outrageous statements, strongly arguing his viewpoint, only quite abruptly to deny his own argument. I found myself sometimes shocked, sometimes amused, and other times simply confused by this verbose, academic manifesto.

Contrastingly, the impact of the second fragment was disturbingly emotional. At points I felt sympathy and pity and even embarrassment with Dostoyevsky's protagonist's inability to avoid angering others. At other times I was frustrated and angry as he recounted in detail his carefully orchestrated efforts to diminish and demean others.

It is difficult not to agree with this character's earlier self-assessment; he is, indeed, a sick man, a spiteful man, an unattractive man. What I found most surprising is that this emotionally disturbed protagonist is immensely compelling and darkly fascinating. Perhaps, we unconsciously recognize elements of Dostoyevsky's rebellious creation in ourselves.

My copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground (1864) is an inexpensive Dover reprint of Constance Garnett's translation (originally published in 1918).