Notes From Underground | Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Notes From Underground | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | Move over Freud

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Notes From Undergr...

	Notes From Underground Fyodor Dostoyevsky Signet Classics, 2004 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 136 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Note on Translations...

I will not delve into the brilliant work of nascent existentialism that Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" represents as there are plenty of reviews who have already done that for me. I do want to help customers in choosing a translation out of the many that are available, as there doesn't seem to be much to guide one through them here.

Perhaps the best translation I've found to date is that by Andrew MacAndrew, available in a Signet Classics edition. MacAndrew's prose has a masculine vigor and modern clarity that truly make this work speak to the reader - the Underground Man truly comes to life as a living, breathing character with a relevance and immediacy.

For all the praise the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations have gotten, I do not think they necessarily surpass the efforts of those who came before them in this particular instance. Although a big fan of their Tolstoy, the Dostoevsky comes off somewhat comparatively muted.

Compare MacAndrew's rendering of the opening words in which the Underground Man introduces himself:

" I'm a sick man... a mean man. There's nothing attractive about me. I think there's something wrong with my liver. But, actually, I don't know a damn thing about my sickness; I'm not even too sure what it is that's ailing me."

To Pevear/Volokhonsky's:
"I am a sick man... I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, I don't know a fig about my sickness and am not sure what it is that hurts me."

Of the two, MacAndrew's Underground Man obviously speaks a more contemporary English. I am aware that this has actually been a criticism of his. In fact, many readers might actually be put off by the brusque and terse take or find it even slightly disturbing. Purists will also doubtless find much to annoy them about MAcAndrew's more interprretive (as opposed to literal) approafch to translation. The Pevear/Volokhonsky actually appeared in 1993, about 30 years after MacAndrew's. There's nothing particularly wrong with their version. It has a stately, nuanced charm and is apparently much truer to Dostoevsky's original in the literal sense (to the point of translating his flaws and idiosyncracies). But personally, as a reader, I just got much more out of reading the MacAndrew translation. You immediately get a taste of the angst of this character from MacAndrew's terse, flippant diction.

Two others to take note of: The classic Constance Garrett translation can still be found in a cheap Barnes and Noble Classics edition, along with a good selection of Dostoevsky's shorter works. Garnett's haphazard, hasty, and somewhat reckless method of translation has been much criticised, as has her quaintly Victorian diction. Mirra Ginsberg's translation in the Bantam Classics series matches the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation almost word-for-word, although I find the wording where she deviates to actually be better overall.

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Move over Freud

As I was reading Part I, I thought I ought to burn the book to save myself, or possibly end up throwing myself out the window as the underground man longed to be trashed. For 34 pages he went on and on and on about the hideousness of human nature and existence. No relief. In Part II, things picked up and I even found myself laughing. But once Liza entered the picture, I sensed it was all downhill. The book ends as it starts: grim and grimmer.

Dostoevsky is the psychologist of psychologists before the big names came along to try and educate us. He can still teach them (and us) a thing or two. My only complaint is that Dostoevsky gives the clue to the man's despair in one short sentence in Part II where he tries to tell Liza "about myself." For me this is a pivotal paragraph ending with, "I grew up without a home; and perhaps that's why I've turned so.......unfeeling."

In my book club we've been reading classics for a few years. Each time we approach one of the great writers we become delirious with admiration. Whoever it is, he (or she) is the best until the next one rolls along. As to Russians, Tolstoy was tops. But now, there is tough competition for top spot from Dostoevsky. 5 Stars (or 6, or 7, etc) for him and thankfully more books to go.

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Dostoyevsky a social prophet?

I found Dostoyevsky through reading (about) Charles Bukowski, and I gotta say I'm very impressed. For a writer back in 1800's Russia, I found his writing VERY contemporary, especially in the fatalist/nihilist tone... Like Orwell's 1984 (and Animal Farm), Dostoyevsky looked into the future and saw a miserable anti-human society built on fear, paranoia, self-hatred, and a misanthropic/selfish state of mind that our world has de-evolved into. Read this and see into the mind of the majority of the 21st Century human race. (but, that's my opinion...)
Still, it's a timeless book, doesn't read like a stuffy, old-worldly literary snooze-fest like most old-time "Classics".
Read it and weep for the decline of humanity...

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Absolutely though provoking

This story can stimulate your thoughts in many directions: history, philosophy, psychology, your own existence. At least, it did so for Sigmund Freud, Nietzshe and other great thinkers.

But if you read it and CHOOSE not to be influenced, or even if you read this review but choose not to read the book, you then also understand this underground man's message:)

Not for the faint of heart

First, I thought that the translation was very readable and strongly commend it.

Notes from Underground was not a particularly fun or entertaining book, but Dostoevsky is at his best as he takes us inside the mind of his unnamed narrator. The plot is essentially non-existent, or at least non-essential, but the book is not about plot; it is about the narrator. He is loathsome, detestable. However, too often the his harried and contradicting thoughts are alarmingly familiar. Unlike the modern fashion of reveling in the weaknesses or the humanity of our heroes, Notes from Underground will not allow us romanticize the frailty of human beings. His goal is to shock the reader by self-observation. As the narrator reminds us, "...a novel needs a hero, and here there are purposely collected all the features for an anti-hero, and, in the first place, all this will produce a most unpleasant impression, because we've all grown unaccustomed to life, we're all lame, each of us more or less." I recommend reading it with a healthy dose of introspection.

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