# Notes from Underground (Записки из подполья)
**Notes from Underground** (Записки из подполья) is a two-part novella by [Fyodor Dostoevsky](https://www.edgepedia.org/fyodor-dostoevsky), first published in 1864 in the journal *[Epokha](https://www.edgepedia.org/epokha)*, in which an unnamed retired civil servant in St. Petersburg delivers a bitter philosophical monologue and then recounts the episodes that drove him into his self-imposed "underground"[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/notes-underground). It is often regarded as a precursor to the existentialist novel[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/notes-underground), and it is commonly described as the first existentialist novel[2](https://www.booksinrussian.com/ru/zapiski-iz-podpolya).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Publication | Serialized in 1864 in the journal *Epokha*, edited by Dostoevsky's brother Mikhail[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/notes-underground) |
| Composition | Written January–May 1864, months that also saw the death of Dostoevsky's first wife Maria Dmitrievna on 15 April 1864[3](https://polka.academy/articles/535?block=2023) |
| Structure | Part one, "Underground", is the narrator's ideological monologue; part two, "Apropos of the Wet Snow", is a narrative of earlier events[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/notes-underground) |
| Narrator | An unnamed forty-year-old former civil servant who has lived "underground" for nearly twenty years[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/notes-underground) |
| Target | A polemic against rational egoism and utilitarianism, directly engaging Nikolai Chernyshevsky's novel *What Is to Be Done?*[2](https://www.booksinrussian.com/ru/zapiski-iz-podpolya) • [4](https://litrekon.ru/analiz-proizvedenij/zapiski-iz-podpolya-f-m-dostoevskij/) |
| Standing | Widely read as a source of existentialism; Walter Kaufmann called part one "the best introduction to existentialism that has ever been written"[5](https://biblio.imli.ru/images/abook/russliteratura/kasatkina_dostoevskiy_kak_filosof_i_bogoslov_hudozhestvennyi_sposob_vyskasyvaniya-2019.pdf) |
## Origin and composition
The idea took shape around late 1862, while Dostoevsky was planning and writing *Winter Notes on Summer Impressions*; those travel sketches already contain, in compressed form, one of the hero's central claims, that human life cannot be built "on rational foundations"[6](https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%B8_%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8B_%281864-1866%29_%28%D0%94%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9%29/%D0%94%D0%9E). As early as 1862 Dostoevsky conceived a work called *Исповедь* ("Confession"), which was even announced in the journal *Vremya*[3](https://polka.academy/articles/535?block=2023). He replaced that title with *Записки из подполья* and printed the first part in issues 1–2 of *Epokha* for 1864, still intending at that point to create a much larger work[6](https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%B8_%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8B_%281864-1866%29_%28%D0%94%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9%29/%D0%94%D0%9E).
The writing fell in January–May 1864, a period both happy and dramatic for the author: after returning from hard labor and exile he had regained literary recognition and was publishing *Vremya*, but the same months brought the illness and death of his wife[3](https://polka.academy/articles/535?block=2023). One English edition, the Norton Critical Edition with Michael Katz's translation, dates the novel to 1863[7](https://wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393976120-notes-from-underground), while most sources, including the Encyclopedia.com entry and the Polka commentary, give 1864[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/notes-underground) • [3](https://polka.academy/articles/535?block=2023).
## Structure and content
The work falls into two parts that differ in character. In the first, the hero speaks directly: an ideological address in which he attacks utilitarianism, rational egoism, and the idea that human behavior is predictable[2](https://www.booksinrussian.com/ru/zapiski-iz-podpolya). He argues that a person can act "as he wants, and not at all as reason and profit dictate; and one can want even against one's own profit", and he derides the "crystal edifice", a metaphor for rational ideals that also alludes to the Crystal Palace built in London in 1851[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/notes-underground). His famous question, whether the world should perish or he go without his tea, which he answers in favor of the tea, generated what one commentary calls a global philosophical discussion of the limits of nihilistic individualism[8](https://libfl.ru/ru/news/zapiski-iz-podpolya-k-200-letiyu-fedora-dostoevskogo).
The second part, "Apropos of the Wet Snow", supplies dramatic evidence for the first part's theories: a humiliating encounter with an officer on Nevsky Prospect, a disastrous farewell dinner with former schoolmates, and the narrator's cruel treatment of Liza, a young prostitute who offers him genuine affection[2](https://www.booksinrussian.com/ru/zapiski-iz-podpolya). The events of this section precede those of the first and explain the narrator's literal and metaphorical retreat underground[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/notes-underground).
**The polemical target.** The ideological core is the hero's dispute with the best-known scientific theories of the mid-nineteenth century, from Malthus to Darwin and Sechenov, and behind it Dostoevsky's own conviction of the need for Christian faith and self-renunciation[3](https://polka.academy/articles/535?block=2023). The immediate literary opponent was Chernyshevsky's utopian novel *[What Is to Be Done?](https://www.edgepedia.org/what-is-to-be-done-novel)*, in which people act purely from enlightened self-interest and thereby build an earthly paradise; Dostoevsky, recently out of prison labor, regarded these promises with suspicion[4](https://litrekon.ru/analiz-proizvedenij/zapiski-iz-podpolya-f-m-dostoevskij/). The hero is presented by a conditional "editor" as a "paradoxalist", and his speech is an anti-confession, a self-disclosure made provocatively, in struggle with a possible listener[9](https://geum.ru/next/art-108.leaf-4.php).
## Style and narrative form
Contemporaries were struck by the narrator's sick, nervous intonation, on the edge of pathology, rambling and verbose. The philologist [Mikhail Bakhtin](https://www.edgepedia.org/mikhail-bakhtin) named this manner "a word with a loophole" (слово с лазейкой), speech that keeps open the possibility of retreat and renunciation of one's own word; the opening lines show it at once: "I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man"[3](https://polka.academy/articles/535?block=2023). Bakhtin's analysis treats the hero as a self-conscious, dialogic consciousness whose word endlessly repeats and refutes itself[9](https://geum.ru/next/art-108.leaf-4.php).
## Reception and influence
The povest (Russian prose tale, longer than a short story) did not meet an enthusiastic reception when it appeared in *Epokha* in 1864. The left took it extremely hostilely, and Saltykov-Shchedrin published a pamphlet in *Sovremennik* parodying the sickly appearance and tone of the underground man[10](https://dostoevsky-studies.dlls.univr.it/issue/download/54/37). [Nikolai Mikhailovsky](https://www.edgepedia.org/nikolai-mikhailovsky) was the first critic to point out that the work contains many themes, images, and problems that received further development in Dostoevsky's later writing[11](https://articles.moluch.ru/archive/88/17092/). Russian scholarship now commonly treats the work as the overture to the writer's five great novels and as the place where the foundations of existentialist philosophy were first formulated in [Russian literature](https://www.edgepedia.org/russian-literature)[12](https://azbooka.ru/books/zapiski-iz-podpolya-43c4).
**Philosophical afterlife.** In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries philosophers read the work anew: [Maxim Gorky](https://www.edgepedia.org/maxim-gorky) said that all of Nietzsche was contained in this povest, and European thinkers called it a prologue to the new philosophy of existentialism[13](https://magisteria.ru/dostoevsky/notes-from-underground). The philosopher Lev Shestov saw in the "Underground" a manifesto of existential revolt[4](https://litrekon.ru/analiz-proizvedenij/zapiski-iz-podpolya-f-m-dostoevskij/), though idealist philosophers such as Rozanov and Shestov repeated, in effect, the same error of identifying Dostoevsky with his character[14](https://nevmenandr.net/scientia/nazirov-ch5.php). Walter Kaufmann, editor of the classic anthology *Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre*, wrote that he saw no reason to call Dostoevsky an existentialist but considered part one of the *Notes* the best introduction to existentialism ever written[5](https://biblio.imli.ru/images/abook/russliteratura/kasatkina_dostoevskiy_kak_filosof_i_bogoslov_hudozhestvennyi_sposob_vyskasyvaniya-2019.pdf).
European philosophers and writers from Nietzsche and Kafka to Camus and Sartre drew on the work[3](https://polka.academy/articles/535?block=2023). Camus valued Dostoevsky highly, writing that "without Dostoevsky, twentieth-century French literature would not be what it is", and noted that the Russian writer's reflections anticipate not only the existentialists but [Friedrich Nietzsche](https://www.edgepedia.org/friedrich-nietzsche)[8](https://libfl.ru/ru/news/zapiski-iz-podpolya-k-200-letiyu-fedora-dostoevskogo). *The New Yorker* put the cultural reach broadly: Nietzsche's works, Freudian theory of neurosis, Kafka's *Metamorphosis*, Bellow's *Henderson*, Roth's *Portnoy's Complaint*, Scorsese's *Taxi Driver*, and half of [Woody Allen](https://www.edgepedia.org/woody-allen)'s filmography "would not be what they are without this vicious, unstable, ungovernable text"[8](https://libfl.ru/ru/news/zapiski-iz-podpolya-k-200-letiyu-fedora-dostoevskogo).
## Themes
The work anticipates the themes of Dostoevsky's later novels, including alienation, despair, and the questioning of the limits of rationality, themes carried forward in *Crime and Punishment* (1866) and *[The Brothers Karamazov](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-brothers-karamazov)* (1879–1880)[1](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/notes-underground). The underground man himself became a literary archetype: the anti-hero who cuts himself off from society and is torn by doubt, a figure continued in Camus's *The Stranger* and included in the row of archetypal images of twentieth-century [Western culture](https://www.edgepedia.org/western-culture)[8](https://libfl.ru/ru/news/zapiski-iz-podpolya-k-200-letiyu-fedora-dostoevskogo) • [15](https://eisn.cfuv.ru/images/07.2018/sbornik_materialov_konferenzii_-ISBN.pdf). Later scholarship has cautioned against flattening the text: some modern readings reduce it to a critique of the "dark" side of man, of destruction and boundless godless egoism, a simplification noted in the academic literature[16](https://polylogue.jourssa.ru/index.php/polylogue/article/view/132).
## References
1. [Notes from Underground, Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/notes-underground)
2. [Записки из подполья — Достоевский: краткое содержание и анализ, Books in Russian](https://www.booksinrussian.com/ru/zapiski-iz-podpolya)
3. [Записки из подполья, Polka Academy](https://polka.academy/articles/535?block=2023)
4. [Анализ романа «Записки из подполья», Литрекон](https://litrekon.ru/analiz-proizvedenij/zapiski-iz-podpolya-f-m-dostoevskij/)
5. [«Записки из подполья»: проблемы восприятия, ИМЛИ РАН (Касаткина, ред.)](https://biblio.imli.ru/images/abook/russliteratura/kasatkina_dostoevskiy_kak_filosof_i_bogoslov_hudozhestvennyi_sposob_vyskasyvaniya-2019.pdf)
6. [Наброски и планы (1864–1866) (Достоевский), Викитека](https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%B8_%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8B_%281864-1866%29_%28%D0%94%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9%29/%D0%94%D0%9E)
7. [Notes from Underground, Norton Critical Edition, W. W. Norton](https://wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393976120-notes-from-underground)
8. [«Записки из подполья»: к 200-летию Федора Достоевского, Библиотека иностранной литературы](https://libfl.ru/ru/news/zapiski-iz-podpolya-k-200-letiyu-fedora-dostoevskogo)
9. [Лекция 4: «Записки из подполья» (1864), курс А. А. Казакова](https://geum.ru/next/art-108.leaf-4.php)
10. [Елена Д. Гальцова (отв. ред.), Dostoevsky Studies](https://dostoevsky-studies.dlls.univr.it/issue/download/54/37)
11. [Роман Ф.М. Достоевского «Записки из подполья» в оценке русской критики, Молодой ученый](https://articles.moluch.ru/archive/88/17092/)
12. [«Записки из подполья», издательство «Азбука»](https://azbooka.ru/books/zapiski-iz-podpolya-43c4)
13. [«Записки из подполья». О природе зла, курс лекций, Магистерия](https://magisteria.ru/dostoevsky/notes-from-underground)
14. [Назиров Р. Г. Творческие принципы Достоевского, глава V](https://nevmenandr.net/scientia/nazirov-ch5.php)
15. [Сборник материалов конференции, КФУ (2018)](https://eisn.cfuv.ru/images/07.2018/sbornik_materialov_konferenzii_-ISBN.pdf)
16. [«Записки из подполья» как индикатор современной антропологической ситуации, Философский полилог](https://polylogue.jourssa.ru/index.php/polylogue/article/view/132)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Creative written works and worlds › Prose fiction › Novellas, novelettes, and short stories › Novellas and novelettes › Russian and Slavic novellas*
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