Notes From Underground, White Nights, The Dream Of A Ridiculous Man And House Of The Dead

Very discombobulating read

Excellent idea to put together in one book a selection of Dostoyevsky’s short stories. Love the pocket size, is perfect for traveling.

Dostoyevsky is Dostoyevsky, and if you care about literature you will read his great works if you haven't already. But what makes this edition of one of those great works, Notes from Underground, great is that it is combined with other shorter works from different periods in his life. Dostoyevsky is serious stuff. Living in a time and a place of brutal oppression, he could do nothing else but write about the serious questions of life. And through the writings chosen for this collection, we can see the progression of his thoughts and beliefs as he aged. We start with `White Nights', a story of selflessness in which a young man helps a girl connect with her love even though he loves her too. Though this story has the grave tone common of 19th century Russian literature, it has a tinge of hopefulness in the man's sacrifice. This is the young and idealistic Dostoyevsky, before he was jailed for having `revolutionary ideas' and sentenced to death only to be pardoned moments from being shot. Obviously this had a great impact on his mind and went a long way towards destroying any hopefulness he had. The transition is seen in the three stories selected from The House of the Dead, his first successful work. Written in 1862, or about a decade after his imprisonment, these stories tell of senseless murderers and corporal punishers. Almost entirely devoid of emotion, we can see a Dostoyevsky who has gone inward and narrates simply and pragmatically. Life has become a matter of survival, with no room for the sentimentality of the protagonist in `White Nights'. Then in the main event, Notes from Underground, the emotion is back, but it has been transformed into anger and hatred in the form of the bitter and isolated narrator. There is much existentialist (this work is considered the founding work of existentialism) rambling in the first part, as he debates with us, the reader (even though these are his memoirs, not a two way discussion) about logic and determinism, arguing that man will not always do what's best for himself, as propounded by the utopians of the time, but will often act in direct antagonism towards themselves to display `individualism'. And, as he is an `individual', he cannot act properly in society, which is why he is now isolated and bitter. Then he gets into a proper narrative in Part II, as he demonstrates his ideas to us with stories from his earlier life. There are three parts to this, but the most interesting is the last: his brief encounter with a prostitute, where he shows the inkling of decency and love towards her, but rejects her when she returns it. Despite feeling much revulsion for the narrator to this point, there is a sense of poignancy at this end for him, and perhaps reflects both Dostoyevsky's struggle with society after his imprisonment, and our admiration for him despite his nihilistic views. The collection closes with Dream of a Ridiculous Man, a story written just a few years before his death. In it, a man decides life is meaningless and wants to commit suicide. He chances upon a little girl whose mother needs help, but he brushes the girl away. He then goes home, feels guilty, falls asleep, and has a dream. In the dream he goes to a utopia where everyone is happy until heteaches them to lie and ruins the society. He awakens a changed man who only wants to love others as himself. Near the end of his life, Dostoyevsky had found God.

Danke

Good page quality and text readability. The content is great ofcourse

The book is an odd size flimsy anf the font/spacing is really bizarre. It looks like a cheap reproduction and arrived with a scratch marks on the cover and it was folded to fit in my post box instead of ringing my door.

Un libro trasformativo