NotesfromUnderground

Notes from Underground FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky with an Introduction by Richard Pevear Copyright © 1993 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky ISBN: 1400041910 at least “terribly sad”) essence of its vision. Both notions seem to overlook the humor – stylistic, situational, polemical, parodic – that pervades Notes from Underground. Dostoevsky certainly put a lot of himself into the situations and emotions of his narrator; what distinguishes his book from the narrator's is an extra dimension of laughter. Laughter creates the distance that allows for recognition, without which the book might be a tract, a case history, a cry of despair, anything you like, but not a work of art. Notes from Underground has been called the prelude to the great novels of Dostoevsky's last period, and it is so partly because here Dostoevsky first perfected the method of tonal distancing that enabled him to present characters and events simultaneously from different points of view, to counter empathy with intellection. The underground man's book is a personal outpouring – harsh, self- accusatory, de......