ABSTRACT
Notes from the Underground inaugurates Fyodor Dostoevsky's great creative period. There are anticipations of the underground man in earlier work, but he emerges full blown as a type for the first time in Notes. Apart from the abrupt interruption at the end of the tale and a "footnote" at the beginning, Dostoevsky never appears in the traditional novelist's role of narrator and commentator. The story is completely occupied by the confessions of the underground man. Some of Dostoevsky's best critics have precipitously translated the underground man's powerful presence and intelligence into evidence of Dostoevsky's approval of him. The paradoxical character of such a statement inhibits any impulse to reject the statement peremptorily. We hesitate if only to understand, and the hesitation is fatal, for we find ourselves drawn into the logic and feeling of the underground man. The condition from which the underground man suffers has been analyzed by Nietzsche in masterly fashion.
