Notes from the Underground cover

Notes from the Underground

Original title: Записки из подполья

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), trans. Constance Garnett

Translation en 44088 words First published 1864 Russia

Dostoevsky's 1864 novella, the first great anti-hero of modern literature. An unnamed retired civil servant in St Petersburg delivers a two-part monologue: first a bitter assault on rationalism and utopianism — man, he insists, will choose suffering just to prove he is not a piano key — then the humiliating 'Apropos of the Wet Snow', the memory that shows his theory of himself is a lie. Feverish, self-lacerating and darkly funny, it is the seed from which all his great novels grew, and the wellspring of existentialist literature. This edition uses Constance Garnett's translation.

Text sourced from Project Gutenberg (public domain in the United States); the Project Gutenberg trademark and license text have been removed on import. Public-domain status determined by the author's death year + 50 years rule.

Table of Contents

  1. 001 NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND[*] A NOVEL * The author of the diary and… 2553 words
  2. 002 III With people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up… 3256 words
  3. 003 VI Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! 2570 words
  4. 004 VIII “Ha! ha! ha! But you know there is no such thing as choice in… 2793 words
  5. 005 And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the… 2819 words
  6. 006 Of course, I hated my fellow clerks one and all, and I despised them… 2643 words
  7. 007 Sometimes I was positively choked with resentment. 2749 words
  8. 008 I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time… 2518 words
  9. 009 But what made me furious was that I knew for certain that I should… 2526 words
  10. 010 All sat down; I did the same. 2506 words
  11. 011 “Take it, if you have no sense of shame!” he pronounced pitilessly… 2539 words
  12. 012 “I saw them carrying a coffin out yesterday and they nearly dropped… 2797 words
  13. 013 “It’s by pictures, pictures like that one must get at you,” I thought… 2527 words
  14. 014 “This is my address, Liza, come to me.” “I will come,” she answered… 2606 words
  15. 015 ‘Into my house come bold and free, Its rightful mistress there to… 2562 words
  16. 016 I sat down again. She looked at me uneasily. For some minutes we were… 2545 words
  17. 017 I did not hate her so much, however, when I was running about the… 1579 words