Notes from Underground
Dostoevsky wrote the most influential novella in modern literature: a bitter, hyper-aware narrator who tears apart every rational scheme for improving humanity.
Read this if you…
- want the shortest and earliest Dostoevsky classic
- love an unhinged insane rant, that amongst its ramblings hits on some very serious psychospiritual truths
- like dark stories
Skip this if you…
- don't want to agree with everyone that Dostoevsky is great
- like warm uplifting stories
Why It Matters
Dostoevsky wrote the most influential novella in modern literature: a bitter, hyper-aware narrator who tears apart every rational scheme for improving humanity. The Underground Man is the prototype for every unreliable narrator and alienated antihero, every voice that refuses to be optimistic. Existentialism, absurdism, and the modern novel all start in this basement.
The 
Take
Awesome philosophical concepts. You get in the head of an absolute insane person that has some shred of a point. I was entranced. Very very dark though
Where to go next
- Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Notes from Underground built on it. - *Notes from Underground* is an anti-*Confessions* — Dostoevsky's first title for it was literally "A Confession," and the whole monologue is Rousseau's self-revelation soured into spite - The Underground Man warps Rousseau's "man of nature and truth" into a hyper-conscious liar, and accuses Rousseau himself of confessing out of vanity - Read Rousseau first and the parody lands: you'll hear the earnest voice the Underground Man is corroding from within
Depicted in Art
Dostoevsky sits hunched in a dark coat, hands clasped, gaze turned inward — a closed, brooding figure isolated against a featureless background.
Vasily Perov, 1872
Drawing made the day Dostoevsky died — the writer in profile, eyes closed, face still composed against the pillow.
Ivan Kramskoi, 1881
Stark black-and-white woodcut bust of Dostoevsky — heavy beard, deep-set eyes, all reduced to severe blocks of light and shadow.
Félix Vallotton, 1895
Piper Verlag book cover — a brooding stylized portrait of Dostoevsky wraps a 1916 German critical study of the writer's personality.
René Beeh, 1916
Pencil drawing of the 26-year-old Dostoevsky — slender, intent, drawn by a classmate from the Military Engineering Academy a few years before his arrest.
Konstantin Trutovsky, 1847
Recommended Editions
Constance Garnett
Dover Publications · 1918
Garnett's 1918 version is the one Conrad, Lawrence, and Hemingway read. She smooths some of the underground man's bile, but the English momentum is hers and nobody since has matched it.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.”
“I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.”
More by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Crime and Punishment
1866 · Novel
- The Idiot
1869 · Novel
- Devils
1872 · Novel
- The Brothers Karamazov
1880 · Novel