![]() ![]() In his attempts at social – and moral – climbing, he digs himself into an ever deeper hole.ĭostoevsky chips away at complex human motivation with persuasive stylistic tools, succeeding in being hilarious and heart-rending in a single sentence (after all, "mankind is a comical construction"), captured in this beautiful translation by Natasha Randall. After a humiliating social occasion with old schoolfriends, he pursues them seeking revenge, meeting instead the 20-year-old prostitute Liza by whom he is both attracted and repelled. As a 24-year-old, his life is "gloomy, untidy and solitary to a savage extent" and he yearns to be on an "equal social footing". He is "burdened with one ancient memory" and hopes that in writing it down it will "let go" of him. ![]() ![]() The second part of the book tells the engrossing story leading to his seclusion. ![]() But why does he also love destruction and chaos so passionately?" he wonders. "Man likes to create and lay down paths, that is indisputable. The lower this alienated antihero sinks, the loftier his intellectual pontifications, critiquing contemporary philosophies on rationalism and free will. The novel's first section is an embittered monologue narrated from his St Petersburg basement. The "Underground Man" is a 40-year-old former civil servant, an unreliable narrator who – in spite of himself – is "intoxicated with spite". ![]()
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