Freedom against the Crystal Palace
Follow the underground man’s case against rational egoism and ask whether the freedom he defends amounts to more than spite.
An original introduction. This guide accompanies the work; it is neither the complete text nor a translation.
Situating the text
Published in 1864 in Epoch, the journal Dostoevsky ran with his brother, the work answers Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? and its image of a Crystal Palace. Dostoevsky complained that the censors had cut a passage that drew from all this the need for faith and Christ, so the printed text is partly truncated. A nameless retired official of forty addresses imaginary readers from his “underground” in Saint Petersburg. The first part is a monologue against rational egoism, utopian planning and the idea that people always pursue their own advantage; the second recalls humiliating episodes from his youth, ending with his cruelty toward Liza.
Following the arguments
Spite : The narrator’s self-lacerating lucidity shows how reflection can turn into paralysis, resentment and a strange pleasure in humiliation. Caprice : Against reasoned self-interest he defends free, even irrational wanting as the one advantage that no system can include. Liza : The second part tests the monologue against an encounter in which the narrator wounds the person who offers him real compassion.
Continuing the reading
Read the first part slowly, noting where the narrator contradicts himself, then ask whether the second part confirms or undermines his arguments. Published in 1864 in Epoch, the journal Dostoevsky ran with his brother, the work answers Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? and its image of a Crystal Palace. Dostoevsky complained that the censors had cut a passage that drew from all this the need for faith and Christ, so the printed text is partly truncated.
Underground freedom resists every calculation, but cut off from other people it collapses into spite and self-torment.
Your turn to think.
- Why does the narrator call heightened consciousness a disease, and does his own monologue bear that out?
- What does the episode with Liza reveal about the freedom defended in the first part?
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