Notes from Underground, Part One: The Self-Imposed Sufferer
"With consciousness we have nothing much to do either, but we can at least lacerate ourselves from time to time, which does liven things up a bit." It sounds like somebody needs a garden to cultivate.
I've got to hand it to Dostoyevsky; if his aim was to write something that sounds like the absolutely pointless ramblings of a depressed recluse who has nothing better to do than rant about how miserable it is being a recluse, he succeeded. He succeeded so well that I suspect I have a grasp of his mental state at the time he wrote this.
I have a hard time detecting any sort of thesis or concluding moral in Part One. To me this simply seems to be two things: a mess of pessimistic philosophical theories about how man is driven to harm himself by his desire, and the results of bad atheistic science saying man has no free will and therefore cannot desire. Thesis and antithesis aren't exactly creating synthesis here. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the great confusion of the matter; if a man spent forty years living in a mouse hole under the floor, how can we expect him to know jack-diddly about human nature, anyway? When a man spends his life mired in the muck of his secluded misery, why should he be hailed as an intellectual who can be trusted to give a fair and unbiased outlook on life? This is where I feel Voltaire succeeded in a place where Dostoyevsky leaves me wanting more; Candide was a dynamic character who saw both sides of life, and Martin could at least be trusted to have obtained a full life experience before developing his outlook. Dostoyevsky's snarky old curmudgeon had a couple bad experiences, so he just secluded himself away and never even tried to find brighter horizons. Pessimism is the brick wall he set between himself and any hope for a better future; it's hard for me to take him seriously knowing this.
P.S. I commented on Zelda and Noah's posts.
I've got to hand it to Dostoyevsky; if his aim was to write something that sounds like the absolutely pointless ramblings of a depressed recluse who has nothing better to do than rant about how miserable it is being a recluse, he succeeded. He succeeded so well that I suspect I have a grasp of his mental state at the time he wrote this.
I have a hard time detecting any sort of thesis or concluding moral in Part One. To me this simply seems to be two things: a mess of pessimistic philosophical theories about how man is driven to harm himself by his desire, and the results of bad atheistic science saying man has no free will and therefore cannot desire. Thesis and antithesis aren't exactly creating synthesis here. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the great confusion of the matter; if a man spent forty years living in a mouse hole under the floor, how can we expect him to know jack-diddly about human nature, anyway? When a man spends his life mired in the muck of his secluded misery, why should he be hailed as an intellectual who can be trusted to give a fair and unbiased outlook on life? This is where I feel Voltaire succeeded in a place where Dostoyevsky leaves me wanting more; Candide was a dynamic character who saw both sides of life, and Martin could at least be trusted to have obtained a full life experience before developing his outlook. Dostoyevsky's snarky old curmudgeon had a couple bad experiences, so he just secluded himself away and never even tried to find brighter horizons. Pessimism is the brick wall he set between himself and any hope for a better future; it's hard for me to take him seriously knowing this.
P.S. I commented on Zelda and Noah's posts.
I agree that this first part just reads sloppily. However, I think that's the point, don't you? I'm not sure where D is going with this, but we definitely have a clear view of the type of narrator we're dealing with: he's unorganized, highly opinionated, and prone to back-tracking and side-tracking himself!
ReplyDeleteYour inquiry is right on, Will. I think, for myself at least, it was hard to get past his ramblings and dry humor to see a possible point he is trying to make. But like Faith, maybe this is just the point. His discourse is so depressive in showing meaninglessness. After looking a little at outside sources that biographize his life, I have hope that part 2 brings a little bit of structure to his thus far chaotic musings.
ReplyDeleteThe sloppiness is kind of the point, I think. The Underground Man is an enigmatic character, and therefore he wants all of us wanting more (in spite of his constant rambling). It's hard to see Dostoyevsky's point in this at the moment, but perhaps it'll be revealed in Part 2.
ReplyDelete"It seems like someone needs a garden to cultivate" exactly what I thought! When he kept repeating that he did things out of "sheer boredom", all I could think was "well, you could learn a few things from Candide."
ReplyDeleteMaybe the point of his suffering in meaninglessness is to point meaninglessness out to us. Maybe he is doubting completely the way of the world, whether it be good or evil, and is struggling to figure out his purpose and if there is anything meaningful in the world besides pain and suffering.
ReplyDelete