M.A. (ENGLISH) PART-I COURSE-VII SEMESTER-II NINETEENTH CENTURY FICTION Lesson No: 18 Author : Dr. Sushil Kumar

Fyodor Dostoevsky : Notes From Underground Major Critical Aspects Notes From Underground is more relevant in 21th century when human beings are dangerously and completely trapped by market and media. On the other side, the problems of unemployment, sharp economic inequalities, intolerance and fundamentalism are rising day by day. Life today has become alarmingly insecure. Large scale manufacturing of nuclear weapons and greed of power hungry politician have touched new heights in the present scenario. The world has broken up in fragments and a common person has become rootless, lonely and alien to society. The common people do not find any alternative solutions or way out to come out of this vortex. The situation has become more complex and intricate in the present scenario. Notes From Underground inspires us to understand the current discourse and find out solution. Existentialism is a vague and scholastic philosophy that represents mumbo Jumbo, Insecurity, culture decline, alienation, industrial revolution and race for armament. Existentialists strongly emphasize on the philosophy of hope amidst the encircling gloom. It is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is a fact that human life is in no way complete and fully satisfying but it has meaning. Existentialism is the search and journey for true self and true personal meaning in life. Existentialism Existentialism lays emphasis on human existence. It was originated by Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) in the nineteenth-century. His books Fear and Trembling (1843), The Concept of Dread (1844) and Sickness Unto Death (1848) represent existential philosophy. In the beginning of the 20th century, it was propagated by Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and Kafka from the atheistic point of view. Existential scholars argue that existence precedes essence. They challenge and negate preconceived beliefs and life is incapable of being described in its essential nature. The previous philosophers used to explain life in this manner. Jean-Paul Sartre provides new vistas to existentialism through his novels, plays and philosophical writings. Most of the existentialists surrender in despair but some writers like Dostoevsky have courage to resist. Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground is considered as first existential text. It portrays an underground man who is unable to fit into society. His free will is supreme for him. M.A. (English) Part-I (Semester-II) 78 Course-VII

Existentialism is the philosophy of understanding the condition and existence of human beings, their place and function in the world. Dostoevsky represents pain as a product of society and does not write directly about the necessity of change in political and economic structures. He does not polemically state why the society is bad in Notes From Underground. He attempts to find psychological solutions of deep rooted crisis. The novel indicates that individual is above the society. He does not depict that economics is the root cause of the evils prevalent in society. The underground man is so much engrossed in pain that he does not see the dream of better healthy society. He believes in the completeness of society in its own way. According to him life is more than logical reasoning. Reason can be a small part of human personality. By writing this novel Dostoevsky was responding to Chernyshevsky’s novel What is to be Done? Chernyshevsky’s novel What is to be Done? What is to be Done? is one of the representative texts of the 19th century, Russia written in 1863. It is written by Nikolai Chernyshevsky who is a literary writer, philosopher, polemicist, radical revolutionary, political critic and prisoner. He wrote this novel in response to Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862). Czar Nicholas was disliked by the majority of the population of Russia. His death in 1855 was considered as a matter of relief and his successor the new Tsar, Alexander II brought some relief reforms, culminating in the emancipation of the peasants in 1861. But these reforms were not enough for the betterment of the peasants, that is why, majority of the people were not fully satisfied. The corruption prevalent in the regime of Tsar made the intelligentsia and middle class people restless. These feelings paved the way to revolution in Russian society. The establishment of railways, media and education played a significant role in uniting the Russian society. Many contemporary writers represented the inequality, injustice and exploitation in the regime of Tsar. The protagonist in What Is To Be Done is Vera Pavlovna. She is living with her self-righteous mother, who wants to marry her as soon as possible. Vera is an ambitious girl who wants to live her life on her own terms. She was strongly inclined to be an economically independent woman and she dared to challenge the institution of marriage and family. She comes into the contact with Lopukhov who is a medical student. In order to save herself, she marries him. She enjoys the freedom in the house which is built by both of them. Meanwhile, she starts a sewing union with the help of other ladies. She collects some girls and educates them. After some time, she comes into contact with a friend and classmate of Lopukhov, Kirsanov and falls in love with him. Lopukhov does not object to her relationship and Rakhmetov guides him in this regard. Rakhmetov is portrayed as an ideal revolutionary who is strictly committed to the M.A. (English) Part-I (Semester-II) 79 Course-VII process of revolution. Vera and Kirsanov marry and live happily after that. This novel is well received and appreciated by Plekhanov and Lenin. The historical context of growing radicalism in 1860s is reflected in this novel. Jane Barstow observes in his article “Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground Verses Cherryshevsky’s What is to be Done ?” that Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, “is one of those important short novels that college professors delight in placing on syllabi but abhor teaching. It's so easy to note the polemic tone but so hard to answer those inevitable questions asking who or what the narrator is screaming at…. Dostoevsky was so enraged by the simplistic solutions to complex social and human problems this work preached, that instead of writing a literary review, he wrote a bitter artistic answer (24)”. One can get leads for the answers from Chernyshevsky’s What is to be Done? It is a highly didactic and naively optimistic and offers simplistic solutions to complex social and human problems. Cherneshevsky’s What is to be Done? is deeply socialist, feminist, and atheistic. The protagonist of his novel, Vera Pavlona, is a liberated, modern and independent superwoman. She works for the betterment of other women in the society by educating them and making them aware about the subjugation and exploitation. Dostoevsky strongly reacted on such simplistic responses towards the problematic of life. He gave proper artistic answer to Chernyshevsky by writing this text. Dostoevsky was writing the text in the second half of nineteenth century. It was a time when a rapid transformation was occurring in social, economical and cultural life of Russia. The writers and intellectuals of that time were looking for the solutions seriously. Chernyshevsky in his novel What is to be Done? attempts to provide direct surface level solution to the evils of society. Dostoevsky strongly disagreed with this highly logical positive approach. The underground man in his novel does not accept the goodness or creativity of human being. Although, he is self centered but he is honest and does not accept bribes at any cost. By self destruction, he proves the irrationality of human beings. The society governed by reason creates separation between individuality and surrounding. Reason takes one away from individuality. " But once all this has been explained to us and worked out on a sheet of paper (which is very possible, because it is contemptible and meaningless to maintain that there may be laws of nature which man will never penetrate ), such desires will simply cease to exist. For when desire merges with reason, then we reason instead of desiring" (111). The underground man is not ready to reduce human individuality to the logic of, “Two times two will be four even without my will. As if that were any will of one’s own!” M.A. (English) Part-I (Semester-II) 80 Course-VII

(31). Dostoevsky’s art of the autobiographical novel is a kind of contrast to the autobiography, The Confessions, by Rousseau. Similarly, Chernyshevsky defines life idealistically, ““How splendid the brightness/Of nature around me!/How the sun shines!/How the fields la ugh!...Oh earth! Oh sun!/Oh happiness! Oh delight!,” (Chernyshevsky 105). He further points out that life can be lived rationally and the person should have knowledge of using the observes, “One has only to be rational, to know how to organize, and to learn how to use resources most advantageously,” (Chernyshevsky 120). Dostoevsky considers them romantic views about human beings. He points out that life is meaningless but human beings try to find meaning in it. He rejects Chernyshevsky’s model, “I agree: man is predominantly creative animal, doomed to strive consciously toward a goal, and to occupy himself with the art of engineering-that is, to eternally and ceaselessly make a road for himself that at least goes somewhere or other….Man loves creating and the making of roads, that is indisputable. But why does he so passionately love destruction and chaos as well” (32-33). According to Chernyshevsky’s utilitarian philosophy, human beings can be happy when their desires are fulfilled. To Dostoevsky, the happiness is a matter of conviction. A self conscious human being can be happy when he rejects the happiness. A human being is highly individual, he can be happy when he works individually. On the contrary, Dostoevsky ridicules Cherneshevsky’s philosophy of socialist rationalism in his Notes from Underground. But he was not anti women. He wrote to V.P. Merchevsky. “A woman has only one main purpose in life: to be a wife and a mother. There is no, there was no, and there will not be, any ‘social purpose’ for a woman. This is all stupidity, senseless talk, and gibberish” (Merchevsky 205). But at the same time many critics like Nina Pelikan Straus polemically criticize Dostoevsky, “Dostoevsky’s negative responses to Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s socialist heroinism in What is to be Done? and his specific support of Slavophiles, Russian Imperialism, and Czars indicate an anti- feminist stance” (Straus, 2). In comparison to Chernyshevsky, Albert Guerard points out in his book The Triumph of the Novel: Dickens, Dostoevsky,Faulkner that Dostoevsky is far more psychologically complex, in this regard Chernyshevsky, “is left very far behind in this great masterpiece of psychological literature” (171). According to Chernyshevsky, the society will change when the social and economic conditions will get better but Dostoevsky strictly opposes this model of social engineering and names it as a vulgar scientism and determinism. He notes in A Writer’s Diary, “evil lies deeper in human beings than socialist-physicians suppose” (38).

M.A. (English) Part-I (Semester-II) 81 Course-VII

Works Cited : Barstow, Jane. “Dostoevsky's “Notes from Underground” Versus Chernyshevsky’s “What Is to Be Done?”. College Literature 5.1 (1978): 24–33.Print. Meshchervsky, V.P. “Memoirs.” The Dostoevsky Archive: Firsthand Accounts of the Novelist from Contemporaries' Memoirs and Rare Periodicals. Ed. Peter Sekirin. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co, 1997. Print Straus, Nina Pelikan. Dostoevsky and the Woman Question: Rereadings at the End of a Century. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. 2-32. Print. Chernyshevsky, Nikolay Gavrilovich. What Is to Be Done? Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1986. Print. Guerard, Albert J. The Triumph of the Novel: Dickens, Dostoevsky, Faulkner. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Print. Dostoevsky, Fyodor. A Writer’s Diary, vol. 2, 1877–1881. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1994. Print.