Approaching Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground

The critic David Denby, in his essay “Can Dostoevsky Still Kick You in the Gut?” (New Yorker, June 11, 2012), captures something of the enduring power of this short, difficult book. He notes that the works of Nietzsche, Freud’s theorisation of neurosis, Kafka’s stories, Saul Bellow’s novel Herzog, Philip Roth’s novel Portnoy’s Complaint, Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver, and many of Woody Allen’s films would not have been the same without the existence of this “ornery, unstable, unmanageable text.”

At its core, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (1864) presents itself as a confused set of memoirs and confessions “from under the floorboards.” The Underground Man dramatizes alienation, disillusionment, contempt for utilitarian rationalism, and a profound skepticism about the value of the sublime. He sabotages his own best interests, wallows in remorse, and collapses into inertia. Dostoevsky eventually cuts the narrative short, leaving it fragmented and unresolved.

It is precisely this lack of closure that continues to make the text so powerful. In refusing to offer neat conclusions, Dostoevsky forces us to confront the contradictions of human existence. As Bakhtin observed, Dostoevsky’s world is a polyphonic one, where voices clash, overlap, and resist finalization.

To read Notes from Underground today is to enter that carnival of voices and to recognize, however uncomfortably, that the Underground Man is not merely a creation of nineteenth-century Russia. He is also a symptom of our modern condition — a figure of alienation and contradiction that continues to speak to us, unsettlingly and insistently, across the centuries.

How to Approach Notes from Underground

When beginning a discussion of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, a few fundamental questions immediately arise. Which translation should one use? What are the essential readings? What perspectives are most useful for approaching the text?

Four Pathways into the Text

For the purposes of study, the Notes can be approached along three major pathways, though a fourth inevitably intersects them.

The first pathway is narratological. Notes from Underground is striking for its unreliable narrator, for the metaphorical resonance of the very idea of the “underground,” and for its dystopian sense of alienation. Dostoevsky refuses to provide neat conclusions. He does not impose a totalizing worldview, and he deliberately leaves the narrative open-ended and unsettled.

The second pathway is philosophical. The novel wrestles with questions of authenticity, death, faith, bureaucratization, and scientific determinism. Dostoevsky satirizes the hyper-rationalism and utopian socialism of his day, particularly the “beautiful world” envisioned in Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What is to be Done?. The text is also deeply rooted in the debates between the Slavophiles and the Westernizers. Figures like Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky can be read together on pro-existentialist themes, for both critique the Enlightenment rationality that gripped nineteenth-century intellectuals. Even as Dostoevsky provides one of the most compelling articulations of existentialist angst, as a member of the Russian Orthodox Church he would ultimately have rejected existentialism in favour of faith. His greatness as a writer lies in the fact that he could nevertheless render the existentialist vision of the world with remarkable clarity and force.

The third pathway is psychological. Dostoevsky’s life was marked by epilepsy, the murder of his father, his imprisonment and brush with execution, his gambling addiction, and the years of poverty and exile that followed. These personal traumas surface repeatedly in his fiction. The Underground Man himself can be read as a pathological case, defined by inertia, masochism, perversion, remorse, and alienation. The Notes can be approached almost as a kind of self-analysis, or as a proto-psychoanalytic text written in the form of free association. Louis Breger’s reading of Dostoevsky as “the author as psychoanalyst” is particularly relevant here.

The fourth pathway is political. This cuts across all the others. The text stages a critique of modernity and a return to Russian values, insisting on individuality over universality and undermining utopian or totalitarian visions of the collective.

The Critical Landscape

Any serious engagement with Dostoevsky inevitably passes through three monumental interlocutors: Bakhtin, Sartre, and Freud. Their readings of Dostoevsky have shaped the critical vocabulary with which we approach him today. To claim a wholly unique reading that bypasses these thinkers is nearly impossible.

Bakhtin introduced the concepts of polyphony, carnival, and the “unfinalizable self” to describe Dostoevsky’s novels. Sartre found in Dostoevsky an anticipation of existentialist freedom and bad faith. Freud, meanwhile, explored Dostoevsky as a writer of unconscious formations and symptoms. Together, they laid out the frameworks that still define Dostoevsky studies.

Choosing a Translation

For English readers, there is the further question of which translation to use. Almost every major publisher has issued a version of Notes from Underground. Here is a list of important translators of the text.

• Constance Garnett – early 20th century; long read for fluency and readability. Best for those who want an old, classic rendering in plain style.

  
  

• Ralph Matlaw (1960) – revision of Garnett’s, improving accuracy. Good middle ground between Garnett’s fluency and more modern fidelity.

  
  

• Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky (1993; Everyman’s Library 2004) – highly influential for linguistic fidelity. Best for readers who want Dostoevsky’s rhythms and quirks preserved.

  
  

• Andrew R. McAndrew (Signet Classics, 2004) – widely available classroom favourite. Best for students, since it is affordable and often assigned.

  
  

• Ronald Wilks (Penguin Classics, 1961) – accessible and annotated. Good for readers who like helpful notes and context.

  
  

• Kirsten Lodge (2014) – one of the most recent. Useful for those seeking a fresh and updated translation.

Each has its strengths, and students often find themselves moving between more than one.

Essential Readings

Beyond the text itself, a few critical works are indispensable:

• Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time (2010) – monumental, foundational biography. The single most important secondary work — essential for serious study.

  
  

• Louis Breger, Dostoevsky: The Author as Psychoanalyst – psychological perspective. Best for readers interested in Freud and psychoanalysis.

  
  

• Harold Bloom, Biocritiques: Dostoevsky – situates Dostoevsky in the Western canon. Helpful for understanding Dostoevsky’s place in Western literary tradition.

  
  

• Robert Bird, Dostoevsky (Critical Lives) – compact introduction. Best as a starting point for newcomers.

  
  

• E.H. Carr, Dostoevsky 1821–1881 (1931) – early biography. Worth consulting as a period piece, showing how Dostoevsky was read in his own century.