Theories of existence - Preamble

 

Preamble

 

“I am a sick man… I am a wicked man.” [1] With this famous line opens one of the nineteenth-century’s most prolific works, considered the first truly existentialist masterpiece of our time. The unnamed narrator, bitter, isolated, and utterly miserable with his own existence, leads us through the forlorn tunnels of his mysterious ‘underground’: first by his beliefs on life and the human condition and followed by the very example of a reality plagued by derision and acrimony. Since it is in this second section, poetically entitled “Apropos of a wet snow”, that the true meaning of the underground man’s paradoxalist tale is revealed, only this segment will receive the benefit of a summary; the rest is discussed later in the chapter.

His narrative begins in the dreary, snow-engulfed city of Petersburg, ripe in the grips of an urban population boom. The narrator lets us view his life, from his perspective, almost as if we are peering from some crack in the wall: his sanity is put into question enough times in the novel for us to know that we cannot take everything he describes at face value. Nonetheless, we are intrigued and fascinated by his view of the world, his incessant ramblings, and his seemingly disproportionate anxiety towards relatively negligible events. He delivers to us three tales, roughly divided into several chapters each—important to note is a common motif throughout the segment: that of falling wet snow, seeming to symbolize the constant bleakness of the underground man’s situation.

The first tale begins when the narrator decides he is tired of his monotonous, prearranged lifestyle in what he calls his ‘corner’, or where he observes life passing him by; he begins to walk the snowy streets of Petersburg, searching for his escape into the hurdles of a ‘common existence’. He views a brawl in a tavern, and several drunks throw a man out a window—deciding that this is the route he too wishes to take so that he may feel ‘alive’, he stands in the entranceway of the tavern, only to be met by a self-important police guard. Feeling a sudden sense of apprehension, he pauses at the doorway, whence the officer removes our narrator like a piece of furniture out of the path so the former may enter. The underground man is outraged that he could be “treated like a fly”, as it were, and agonizes over the concept for years, suffering delusions and ravenous aversion; he fantasises that the officer, after the narrator deals with him, will wrap his hands about the underground man’s feet and beg for friendship.[2] However, he eventually pads himself so full of decisions, enigmas, and nausea over the situation that he loses any chance of revenge and the officer moves to another district.

This situation gives us a grasp on the type of person the underground man is: slight, shrewd, and generally over-conscious of his predicaments. He is miserable, and mentally unstable, as seen by his rapid mood swings and changes of perspective on the same idea. The second episode only appeals more to this unhappy and premeditated character: out of loneliness and want of a human companion—which he notes with pompousness, are feelings that do not come often, as they are often superfluous—he visits his friend Simonov, who happens to be planning a farewell dinner for his childhood friend Zverkov. The underground man is incredibly antisocial and withdrawn—with a strong superiority complex to match—yet he wishes to join his ‘friends’ at their valediction dinner. The three acquaintances undesirably agree to his attending, although they remain on guard for the narrator’s arrogance. At dinner, the underground man becomes irritated and haughty towards the three friends, for the sole reason that he ‘loathes’ them to the point of bile. In a drunken stupor, the narrator insults Zverkov, whence the three friends leave the restaurant and head to a brothel, leaving the seething narrator behind in sudden desperation at his solitude. The underground man, incredibly insulted by Zverkov’s nonchalance towards the former’s apparent superiority, decides to slap him as vengeance. The narrator rushes like mad to the brothel, knowing fully well that his overly conscious mind will soon take over and force him to change his mind, and crawl back into a cowardliness that derives not from cowardice but from vanity.

The underground man’s revenge, however, goes unrequited, as the three friends had departed the brothel before our ill at ease and spiteful friend had a chance to deliver that fateful slap. It their wake, however, is the shy and enigmatic Liza, the main importance of the final tale.

The underground man’s thirst for vengeance evaporates at the meeting of Liza, the young prostitute with eyes of steel and a heart so tender the lowliest destitute could not go beyond her love. It is unfortunate, in this case, that this young woman has become a prostitute, for out of desperation this occupation will bring no love, as the narrator asserts. He implores to her his ideas on how love will save your soul, albeit a lack thereof may kill it; he tells the tale of a poor wretch who, at the nethermost brothel in all of Petersburg, was carried away in a box coffin, dead from consumption (tuberculosis) and thrown into a watery grave without care; he relates this poor girl’s fate to Liza’s future, and continues to explain the wonders of love as a cradle of life. Liza becomes incredibly upset at her future, and the narrator—for an unknown reason, although perhaps alcohol may be to blame—offers the young woman his address. The underground man suffers three days of nausea and heartbreak, noticing with vile self-loathing that he has fallen in love himself, before the woman unexpectedly arrives. There, he breaks down, exclaiming to her through a veil of tears how he himself is miserable, and his future is no doubt more forlorn than hers; she, too, must hate him for everything that he is because, through some sort of revelation through love, he understands that he too is unhappy. Liza, in an unexpected reaction, instead embraces the narrator in a loving clasp, and they make love.

The underground man, alas, knew from the start that his consciousness was not to change. Perhaps he may have acknowledged his unhappiness, but he is in no way a vile coward for doing so; he is simply a victim of his consciousness. He realizes how stupidly emotional he had been, and treats Liza as such. The young woman, most certainly hardened for the rest of her life by this callous and cruel man, is about to leave when the narrator shoves a five-rouble note into her hands—a final act of nastiness that forces even the most sympathetic reader to cringe in disgust. The redeemed prostitute, however, tosses the money back to him and leaves; when the underground man realizes what he has done, his immediate reaction is to run after her and apologize, begging at her feet. Several yards into the wet snow, however, he realizes that it would be better, in his painful fantasies, that she “[carry] an insult away with her forever… [as] it’s the most stinging and painful consciousness.” [3] He concludes, in his abhorrent misery, that although he is indeed unhappy, he is better of knowing he is morally and perceptively superior, and that his ‘conscious inertia’ (to be discussed in detail later) is what keeps him above the rest of the lower people—he will forever take pleasure in his suffering.

 

In abject sorrow, the underground man leaves us—but not without much to ponder. His series of tales is the exemplified realisation of his credence, and although he is an unreliable narrator we certainly well-receive his ideas, illustrated with the prefect tone of melancholy. One of the first important concepts he throws out to us—the one most visualized and least abstract—is the problem of fantasies, or better, delusions, versus reality: he seems to live almost in a world to his own, like his corner is the only corner, and his underground is absolute. His delusions are fantastical and pointless, his actions contradictory. The further problem realized through this dialectic is what he calls ‘human inertia’, or consciousness to the point of inaction—this leads to suffering, which he claims is the universal feature of life. Like a path in a haunted forest, the underground man leads us further into the metaphysical depths of understanding, taking us to the problem of rationalism—mainly Hegelian, but reminiscent of ancient times as well.  

This theoretical conception of reality is finally concluded through an almost parodied look at communism, and the ultimate goal of mankind—in the end, he leaves us to wonder, if there is anything more but suffering and the pathetic attempts to hide from it under a ‘crystal palace’, or the Cherneshevskian version of Russia under socialism.

As a work highly regarded as the first in the realm of existentialism, an introduction to the complex philosophy is required — the underground man is alone, and through existentialism, as it exists today, we may also see the ramifications of his ramblings in today’s despondent world. 

---

[1] Dostoevsky, F. (1864), p. 1

[2] p. 49

[3] p. 128