Notes from Underground • Fjodor M. Dostoevsky

I came to this book in a roundabout way, and it shows once again how skeptical one must be of artificial intelligence and how useful it is at the same time. Dostoevsky is an author I am certainly not done with yet and from whom I will read more books. Even if his view of the world does not completely correspond to mine, the questions he raises, his deep insight into human thought, and his linguistic skill are simply incredibly inspiring. I want to describe in more detail here why this book caused me quite a bit of confusion.

I use artificial intelligence very intensively, and it has become an integral part of my daily tools and is used by me in a wide variety of ways. I discussed philosophy with Gemini, and that is quite interesting. Of course, one has to be aware that an AI is not a real conversational partner and can be completely controlled. However, this also makes very fascinating and exciting content very easily accessible. After an exchange about a very rational and materialistic worldview, I asked the AI for suitable literature. And not books that support these theses, but rather challenge them, question them. One suggestion was Notes from Underground.

However, I was not aware that there is another book by Dostoevsky that has a very similar title: The House of the Dead. I had simply thought this difference between “Underground” and “dead house” was a different translation, as is very often the case. I even gave the link to the “wrong” book, The House of the Dead, to Gemini and asked if this edition was good. And Gemini confirmed that it was exactly the book. So I got The House of the Dead and wondered why it had absolutely no connection to the topics I had discussed with the AI. It is about Dostoevsky’s time in the prison camp and was altogether very well worth reading. An error that was therefore no harm, but still made me laugh because it shows that AI can always lead you astray. Directly afterwards, I then read the correct book.

Notes from Underground is about a very sinister fellow. The protagonist is a very cynical, dark, and disgusting guy, a complete antihero who stands outside society, who is avoided by everyone, and who is genuinely an unpleasant person himself. In the first part, he sets out his insights, his philosophy of life. In the second part, he then recounts scenes from his life that illustrate how he arrived at this philosophy. While the first part does not tell an actual story, the second part immerses you in his life and his encounters.

Notes from Underground is basically a literary attack on the most heated intellectual debates in Russia in the 1860s. The book is a direct, polemical response to very specific currents that strongly occupied Russian youth and the intellectual world at the time. Dostoevsky particularly criticizes Chernyshevsky and the dominance of reason and science, showing the cynicism and heartlessness inherent in them by taking it to the extreme with his “underground man.” And I think this is even more the case these days, because the findings of physics, the mechanization of our society, and not least a strong secularization mean that humanity, active unconditional love, and compassion are, despite everything, vital for a healthy society to survive.

Linguistically, the book is at the level of the 19th century. So it is very pleasant to read, but not exceptionally poetic. In certain scenes, you almost feel secondhand embarrassment, because the protagonist really is an unpleasant person and gets himself into situations where you would feel extremely uncomfortable yourself. It is also a rather dark book, so not necessarily suitable for dark winter evenings. All in all, however, it reads well and quickly.

I chose the edition from Manesse Verlag, translated by Ursula Keller in 2021, and there is nothing to complain about; it is of high quality. You can tell that the translator wanted to stay close to the original again, which is clear from the title alone. She deliberately chose the word “Untergrund” [underground] over “Kellerloch” [cellar hole], as it becomes clear while reading that the protagonist does not live in a cellar, and that the Russian word also has a slightly disreputable connotation. That is something I really appreciate about current translations: the closeness to the original.

The book has colorful thread stitching and very nice typography, but unfortunately only a cardboard cover and a really ugly cover design. I really wonder what these shrill colors are supposed to mean. They might represent how crazy the main character is, but it simply doesn’t look good. But the book comes with a ribbon marker and also with an informative epilogue, which I found very successful. The annotations also help very well to contextualize individual terms in the text. All in all, a thoroughly recommendable edition.

Conclusion: Dostoevsky’s examination of a very rational and scientifically influenced worldview and his call for humanity, compassion, and love are timeless and certainly appropriate these days. Deliberately exaggerated, Dostoevsky shows how heartless, contradictory, and unpleasant a person becomes who is trapped in his own cynical intellect and only overthinks the world instead of feeling it. The structure of the book, in which he presents his philosophy in the first part and leads up to it using scenes from the main character’s life in the second part, is very successful. The Manesse edition is of high quality, with thread stitching and a ribbon marker, but the color and cover design are too shrill for me. A good book whose reading will certainly broaden one’s horizons.

Book Information: Notes from Underground • Fyodor M. Dostoevsky • Manesse Verlag • 320 pages • ISBN 9783717525363