Notes from Underground Introduction by Richard Pevear

by Dostoevsky, Fyodor; Pevear, Richard; Volokhonsky, Larissa; Pevear, Richard

• ISBN13: 9781400041916
• ISBN10: 1400041910
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-03-23
• Publisher: Everyman's Library

Summary

The text for this edition of Notes from Underground is Michael Katz's acclaimed translation of the 1863 novel, which is introduced and annotated specifically for English-speaking readers.

Author Biography

Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoevsky’s life was as dark and dramatic as the great novels he wrote. He was born in Moscow in 1821. A short first novel, Poor Folk (1846) brought him instant success, but his writing career was cut short by his arrest for alleged subversion against Tsar Nicholas I in 1849. In prison he was given the “silent treatment” for eight months (guards even wore velvet soled boots) before he was led in front a firing squad. Dressed in a death shroud, he faced an open grave and awaited execution, when suddenly, an order arrived commuting his sentence. He then spent four years at hard labor in a Siberian prison, where he began to suffer from epilepsy, and he returned to St. Petersburg only a full ten years after he had left in chains.

His prison experiences coupled with his conversion to a profoundly religious philosophy formed the basis for his great novels. But it was his fortuitous marriage to Anna Snitkina, following a period of utter destitution brought about by his compulsive gambling, that gave Dostoevsky the emotional stability to complete Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868-69), The Possessed (1871-72), and The Brothers Karamazov (1879-80). When Dostoevsky died in 1881, he left a legacy of masterworks that influenced the great thinkers and writers of the Western world and immortalized him as a giant among writers of world literature.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition	p. vii
Preface to the First Edition	p. ix
A Brief Note on the Translation	p. xi
The Text of Notes from Underground	p. 1
Backgrounds and Sources	p. 93
Selected Letters from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Mikhail Dostoevsky (1859-64)	p. 95
[Socialism and Christianity]	p. 98
from Winter Notes on Summer Impressions	p. 99
from Russian Nights	p. 101
from "Hamlet of Shchigrovsk District"	p. 102
from What Is to Be Done?	p. 104
Responses	p. 123
Parody	p. 125
from "The Swallows"	p. 125
Notes from the Overfed	p. 126
Imitation/Inspiration	p. 130
The Child	p. 130
from The Invisible Man	p. 133
from We	p. 136
from "Erostratus"	p. 137
Criticism	p. 139
[Dostoevsky's Cruel Talent]	p. 141
[Thought and Art in Notes from Underground]	p. 145
[Dostoevsky and Nietzsche]	p. 148
[Discourse in Dostoevsky]	p. 152
Structure and Integration in Notes from the Underground	p. 162
Notes on the Uses of Monologue in Artistic Prose	p. 178
[Freedom in Notes from Underground]	p. 186
[The Pun of Creativity; Double Determination]	p. 195
The Formalistic Model: Notes from Underground	p. 201
Notes from Underground	p. 213
[The Symbolic Game]	p. 250
Fyodor Dostoevsky: A Chronology	p. 255
Selected Bibliography	p. 257
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.