Copyright Date:
1992
Edition Date:
1992
Release Date:
02/21/92
Pages:
iii, 91 pages
ISBN:
0-486-27053-X
ISBN 13:
978-0-486-27053-1
Dewey:
Fic
LCCN:
91038930
Dimensions:
21 cm.
Language:
English
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!)
Excerpted from Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
In 1864, just prior to the years in which he wrote his greatest novels -- Crime and Punishment , The Idiot , The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) penned the darkly fascinating Notes from the Underground . Its nameless hero is a profoundly alienated individual in whose brooding self-analysis there is a search for the true and the good in a world of relative values and few absolutes. Moreover, the novel introduces themes -- moral, religious, political and social -- that dominated Dostoyevsky's later works. Notes from the Underground , then, aside from its own compelling qualities, offers readers an ideal introduction to the creative imagination, profundity and uncanny psychological penetration of one of the most influential novelists of the nineteenth century. Constance Garnett's authoritative translation is reprinted here, with a new introduction.