Notes from Underground: 19th Blogiversary Post

Today is the 19th anniversary of the start of this blog. It was named for Dostoyevsky's novel of the same name, and since this morning I read an interesting critique and description of the novel on Facebook, what better way of celebrating the anniversary of this blog is there than sharing it here: 

Classic Literature 

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a groundbreaking work that delves into the darkest and most conflicted aspects of human consciousness. Widely considered one of the first existential novels, this novella, published in 1864, explores themes of isolation, free will, and the human tendency toward self-destruction.

Plot and Structure 

The novella is divided into two parts. The first, “Underground,” is a philosophical monologue in which the narrator, known as the “Underground Man,” grapples with his disdain for society, his sense of superiority, and his scorn for the rationalism and optimism of his time. Here, Dostoevsky presents a scathing critique of the emerging social ideals of the 19th century, questioning the notion of human perfectibility and the idea that rationality alone can guide human behavior. In the second part, “Apropos of the Wet Snow,” the Underground Man recounts a series of personal encounters that showcase his intense insecurity, emotional turbulence, and spite. His interactions, particularly with a young woman named Liza, reveal his inability to form meaningful relationships, his desire for control, and his overwhelming self-hatred. His actions oscillate between cruelty and vulnerability, illuminating the tension between his need for connection and his self-imposed alienation.

Themes and Analysis

At its core, Notes from Underground is an exploration of human freedom, especially the paradoxical desire to act irrationally, even to one’s detriment. The Underground Man embodies the tension between intellect and emotion, revealing how individuals can choose to suffer and reject societal norms simply to assert their independence. Dostoevsky’s probing into this psyche reveals the complex motives driving human behavior, from pride to self-loathing, and forces the reader to confront uncomfortable questions about autonomy, morality, and the need for meaning.

Dostoevsky’s critique of utilitarianism and “enlightened self-interest” — the popular belief that people act in ways that maximize their own good — challenges the reader to considenr the limits of rationalism. The Underground Man rebels against the idea that humanity can be entirely understood, or improved, through logic alone. His desire to make choices purely for the sake of rebellion suggests a deep-seated need for freedom that defies logical categorization, prefiguring existentialist thought.

Writing Style and Tone;

Dostoevsky's writing in Notes from Underground is intense, introspective, and laden with irony. The Underground Man’s narrative voice is sharp and caustic, giving readers an unfiltered look at his bitterness ahttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17881.Notes_from_Underground_The_Doublend cynicism. The novella’s fragmented and sometimes contradictory prose reflects the narrator’s chaotic inner world, creating a feeling of immediacy and intimacy. Dostoevsky’s use of direct address, as the Underground Man often speaks to an imagined audience, implicates the reader in his tirades and heightens the story’s impact.

Reception and Legacy

Upon publication, Notes from Underground was seen as a bold and unsettling work. Its exploration of moral ambiguity, psychological complexity, and existential themes has made it one of Dostoevsky’s most studied works. Often cited as a precursor to existentialism, it has influenced countless writers and thinkers, from Jean-Paul Sartre to Albert Camus, who admired Dostoevsky’s ability to probe the darker facets of human freedom and responsibility.

Final Thoughts

Notes from Underground is a challenging yet rewarding read that delves into the paradoxes of human nature and the conflicts inherent in modern consciousness. Its themes resonate just as powerfully today as they did in Dostoevsky’s time, as it forces readers to confront questions about individuality, freedom, and the inherent irrationality of human behavior. With its psychological depth, raw emotion, and philosophical insights, Notes from Underground remains a seminal work, essential for anyone interested in the darker corridors of the human psyche.

The book: Notes from Underground.

Why the blog?

I called the blog "Notes from Underground" because it was intended first of all to be a rather cynical and detached view of the world around us, but secondly, and finally, all human observers of human frailty are themselves subject to frailty and so their observations need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The blog started here on Blogger, and you can go and look at the first post if you like. But the people at Blogger kept thinking of ways of making the editor more clunky and difficult to use, and at one stage it became so difficult that I moved it to a different blogging platform on Wordpress, which you can see here, and so most posts between 2012 and 2020 can be found at Notes from Underground on Wordpress.

For several years Blogger and Wordpress were in competition to see whose blog editor would be the clunkiest and most difficult to use, but in February 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic, Wordpress won by making theirs impossible to use, and since then I've done most of my blogging here, clunky editor and all. 

Lockdown reading: The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Having just finished reading it for the third time, I up my rating from four to five stars. It took me three readings to really appreciate this book. Perhaps in part that is because it is a long and complex book with many characters and incidents, and it took me three readings before I could hold them together enough to follow the thread of the story properly.

I began re-reading The Brothers Karamazov this time partly because I had recently finished Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, and wanted to compare them, and partly because I wanted to check on Dostoevsky's alleged views on Christian socialists (which turned out to be very different from what was alleged). I have dealt with those points in a blog post here Notes from underground: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy on Orthodox Christian worship.

And now, having reached the end of The Brothers Karamazov. I can perhaps take the comparison further, because it now seems clear to me that Tolstoy probably wrote User:Denghu, CC BY 3.0, Link title="Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy">Resurrection as a reply to, and perhaps as an intended refutation of The Brothers Karamazov.

Tolstoy was clearly the "woke" Russian author of his time, with a passion for justice. So he embarks on a crusade against against the injustice of the Russian criminal justice system, probing its weaknesses -- the fallibili8ty of its judges and judgements, the cruelty of its prisons, and so on.

Dostoevsky does not do this. He just describes, and lets the reader decide.

Tolstoy writes about injustice, with a passion for justice. But Dostoevsky writes about love, and justice is congealed love.

The Brothers Karamazov is, on one level, a crime novel, a whodunit. It is also a courtroom drama. It is also a love story, where the eternal triangle becomes the infernal pentagon. But it is also a story of resurrection and love and and reconciliation. And this is what shines through the character of the youngest Karamazov brother, Alyosha, whose love and goodness leads others to love, who leads schoolchildren and members of his own family to the beginnings of forgiveness and reconciliation where there had previously been hatred and enmity.

Tolstoy gave his book the title Resurrection, but the story of the resurrection of a dog in Dostoevsky is far more impressive that the story of the "resurrection" of the protagonist in Tolstoy's story.I get the impression that Tolstoy would give his body to be burned, but had not love (I Cor 13:3)

I am grateful to all the Orthodox priests of my acquaintance who, ignoring the rubric that says some prayers should be said by the priest sotto voce, have said aloud the prayer from the Liturgy of St Basil that contains the phrase "Preserve the good in goodness and make the evil be good by Thy goodness", for that is the main message of The Brothers Karamazov.



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Dostoevsky and Tolstoy on Orthodox Christian worship

A few weeks ago I read Leo Tolstoy's novel Resurrection and in my review of it (see here: Notes from underground: Resurrection: prison and land reform) I mentioned that shortly after the book was published Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church. I remarked that after reading the book I was not surprised by this, since it was clear from the book that he rejected and despised Orthodox Christianity and Orthodox worship.

Some people who read it asked me to say what Tolstoy had to say about Orthodoxy, and this post is a response to that request.

After I finished reading Tolstoy's novel I began re-reading Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, which has more sympathetic descriptions of Orthodoxy and Orthodox worship. In this post I shall quote excerpts from both, and make comments on both.

In the first passage, from Dostoevsky, the monk Zossima, who is ill and near death, tells his fellow monks some of his recollections of his childhood.

But even before I learned to read, I remember first being moved to devotional feeling at eight years old. My mother took me alone to mass (I don't remember where my brother was at the time) on the Monday before Easter. It was a fine day, and I remember today, as though I saw it now, how the incense rose from the censer and softly floated upwards and, overhead in the cupola, mingled in rising waves with the sunlight that streamed in at the little window. I was stirred by the sight, and for the first time in my life I consciously received the seed of God's word in my heart. A youth came out into the middle of the church carrying a big book, so large that at the time I fancied he could scarcely carry it. He laid it in the reading desk, opened it, and began reading, and suddenly for the first time I understood something read in the church of God. In the land of Uz there lived a man, righteous and God-fearing...

And here is Tolstoy's description, from Resurrection:

The service began.

It consisted of the following. The priest, having dressed himself up in a strange and very inconvenient garb of gold cloth, cut and arranged little pieces of bread on a saucer and then put most of them into a cup with wine, repeating at the same time different names and prayers.

Meanwhile the deacon first read Slavonic prayers, difficult to understand in themselves and rendered still more incomprehensible by being read very fast, and then sang them in turn with the convicts. The prayers chiefly expressed desire for the welfare of the Emperor and his family. These petitions were repeated many times, separately and together with other prayers, the people kneeling. Besides this several verses from the Acts of the Apostles were read by the deacon in a peculiarly strained voice, which made it impossible to understand what he read, and then the priest himself read very distinctly a part of St. Marks Gospel, in which it is told how Christ, having risen from the dead, before flying up to heaven to sit down at His Father's right hand, first showed himself to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven devils...

The essence of the service consisted in the supposition that the bits of bread cut up by the priest and put into the wine, when manipulated and prayed over in a certain way, turned into the flesh and blood of God.

These manipulations consisted in the priest, hampered by the gold cloth sack he had on, regularly lifting and holding up his arms, and then sinking to his knees and kissing the table and all that was on it; but chiefly in his taking a cloth by two of its corners and waving it rhythmically and softly over the silver saucer and the golden cup. It was supposed at this point that the bread and the wine turned into the flesh and blood: therefore this part of the service was performed with the utmost solemnity.

There are several notable differences between these descriptions.

The service Dostoevsky describes, though the English translator has called it "mass", is actually Vespers, which on the Monday of Holy Week is followed by the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. In the Orthodox Church, though Vespers is normally an evening service, in Holy Week it is usually celebrated in the morning, by anticipation, hence the sunlight in the cupola.

St Mitrofan Church in Moscow

Doestoevsky describes the service through the eyes of one of his characters. Tolstoy describes it as the author, rather in the manner of a lecturer from the League of Militant Atheists instructing novices in militant atheism on the correct understanding of Christian worship.

Nowadays, in writing courses, novice writers are urged "show, don't tell". This is what Dostoevsky does -- he shows the reader through the eyes of one of his characters. Tolstoy is determined to tell the reader, and does this throughout his book. Tolstoy rarely lets his characters speak for themselves or think for themselves. He himself tells the readers what they think and what they are like. While "show, don't tell" may have become a bit of a literary cliché, or even a literary fetish, comparing Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy has shown me some of the wisdom in it.

The reason I started to re-read The Brothers Karamazov, however, is related to this point. Someone posted a link to an article about the dangers of Christian socialism, and quoted Dostoevsky as having pointed out the dangers:
Dostoevsky: Fear the Christian Socialist | The Voice Blog: by Chris Banescu –
“The socialist who is a Christian is more to be feared than the socialist who is an atheist.” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Now Tolstoy might have said such a thing, but in Dostoevsky, that is not what Dostoevsky himself said -- it was something he put into the mouth of one of his characters (one who is not at all sympathetic to Christianity -- he started a lawsuit against a monastery to show how anticlerical he was). And this character, Peter Miusev, was quoting a head of the political  police in France. It's a bit like a Jewish author putting similar words into the mouth of an anti-Semitic character quoting a Gestapo chief as saying that Jewish socialists were more to be feared than atheist ones. Well he would, wouldn't he.

And so I started re-reading The Brothers Karamazov to remind myself what Dostoevsky's character Peter Miusev was like, because it is clear that in that linked article he is being quoted wildly out of context.

But I'll review that book in due course. For now the point is that Tolstoy shows himself as hostile to Orthodox worship, so he would really have no reason to worry about being excommunicated, since he made it very obvious that he did not value communion at all.