Take me back to that quiet, fateful evening in 2015, lost in the pages of Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground. Nothing quite compares. Reading this book can be one of the most painfully self-conscious experiences you can have while sitting alone.
First published in 1864, it’s a fictional memoir written by an unnamed narrator who lives as a recluse under the streets of St. Petersburg and describes his life and thoughts in a series of disjointed fragments. It's an exhaustive experience, like hearing the scream of a man trapped in a labyrinth of his own mind, clawing at the walls of reason.
The Underground Man dissects every emotion, every interaction, until nothing remains but a pile of lifeless fragments. He chooses spite over connection, intellectual games over vulnerability, because to feel, to truly feel, would shatter the armor of his self-importance. His tragedy isn’t his suffering, but his conviction that suffering makes him superior. Here lies Dostoyevsky’s warning: the mind, untethered from the heart, becomes a prison.
After reading the book, I recognized my own follies. How often have I intellectualized pain to avoid admitting it? How many times have I rehearsed conversations instead of living them? Dostoyevsky forces us to ask: What good is free will if we use it only to dig deeper into our own isolation?
Notes from Underground is often considered an early precursor to the philosophy of existentialism, particularly the works of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and later, Sartre. The Underground Man embodies many of the central concerns of existentialism: the struggle for individual freedom, the rejection of societal norms, the absurdity of life, and the search for authentic existence in a world devoid of inherent purpose or meaning.