Notes from Underground

Name: Notes from Underground
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky · Translated by Constance Garnett

English · 1864 · Fiction · Philosophy

Dostoevsky's short novel presents the bitter monologue of a reclusive former official, read as a key precursor of existentialist thought.

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Part I: Underground
Chapter II am a sick man. … I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I…
Chapter III want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or…
Chapter IIIWith people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up for…
Chapter IV“Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding enjoyment in toothache next,” you…
Chapter VCome, can a man who attempts to find enjoyment in the very feeling of…
Chapter VIOh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should…
Chapter VIIBut these are all golden dreams. Oh, tell me, who was it first…
Chapter VIII“Ha! ha! ha! But you know there is no such thing as choice in…
Chapter IXGentlemen, I am joking, and I know myself that my jokes are not…
Chapter XYou believe in a palace of crystal that can never be destroyed—a…
Chapter XIThe long and the short of it is, gentlemen, that it is better to do…
Part II: À Propos of the Wet Snow
Epigraph
Chapter IAt that time I was only twenty-four. My life was even then gloomy…
Chapter IIBut the period of my dissipation would end and I always felt very…
Chapter IIII found two of my old schoolfellows with him. They seemed to be…
Chapter IVI had been certain the day before that I should be the first to…
Chapter V“So this is it, this is it at last—contact with real life,” I…
Chapter VI… Somewhere behind a screen a clock began wheezing, as though…
Chapter VII“Oh, hush, Liza! How can you talk about being like a book, when it…
Chapter VIIIIt was some time, however, before I consented to recognise that…
Chapter IXI stood before her crushed, crestfallen, revoltingly confused, and I…
Chapter XA quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room in…

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Source text: Standard Ebooks (original); CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication). Translation by Constance Garnett. Re-typeset by ClassicBooksPress.com.

Notes from Underground

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