notes on underground
The first time I read Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, I was a senior in college. It was such a strange experience poring over Part One, and seeing myself so intimately, so acutely paralleled in those pages. At certain points, the narrator appalled and shocked me by speaking to the places I still feel uncomfortable expressing to the outside world. But mostly reading it made my brain whirl. It was the spring of 2021, and I was feeling freakishly alone, so having something, someone, even such an odd construction of a character, that felt enough like me stuck me with awe. Part One still perturbs me a little; I’m still in awe, but the experience is tinged by the context of my first encounter with it.
Notes from Underground was required reading for one of my literature courses, and as expected there was time during class to discuss the content that we were reading. I don’t remember now exactly what was said or even if I’m remembering it correctly, but it was during one of those discussions that I felt deeply and thoroughly different from everyone else in that space. It was because the narrator, who had been so odd, but so welcome in his strange relatability had inspired a level of derision and disgust within my classmates. Again, I don’t remember well what was said; there might have been something about the stream of consciousness style being unrealistic as ‘no one actually thinks or talks like that.’ But what I felt during that discussion was a sensation of just utter alienation and difference that I have never forgotten. It was raw and confusing. I felt a little like laughing, but also crying. It was utterly baffling.
I think now I was simply unlucky. Their judgments, or what I perceived as judgements, were impulsive, premature. I was then overly sensitive to who I was and how I was different. It was unlucky, but of course it stuck. I shouldn’t have expected anything else.
~nan