Notes from the Underground (1st World Library Literary Society Classics) - Softcover

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

 
9781595400239: Notes from the Underground (1st World Library Literary Society Classics)

Synopsis

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well - let it get worse! I have been going on like that for a long time - twenty years. Now I am forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!)

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review

'...a rant against natural laws and a scream of defiance form the man who lives underground. This book, superbly presented as always by Hesperus, is essential reading for the twenty-first century. Warning: not for the faint-hearted!' --The Use of English

'a canny work of literature... "Notes" is still a work of modern literature; it still can kick' --The New Yorker

From the Publisher

A new translation of the most important of Dostoevsky’s shorter works.

Dostoevsky's Underground Man is a combination of the psychologically tortured poor clerk and the frustrated dreamer of his early stories, but his Notes from the Underground is a precursor of the great novels of ideas of his later career, with their ongoing central concern of the nature of free will.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title