White Nights ended up leaving me feeling a little, I dunno, empty? I understood the intention behind the story and the character, but I think I was admittedly lost in the decadent (though impressive) prose. Not because I failed to comprehend what was being said, but because I simply had a difficult time caring about the words as they dragged on. It was beautifully poetic, but so long and dragging, and it left me feeling more tired than inspired.
I took a break from Dostoevsky because that's how I tend to enjoy various authors the most, by separating their works by a read (or a few) of other authors. So over the weekend I decided that it was time to pick him back up and see what Notes from Underground had to offer.
If I could sum up my feelings in a single word, it would be "sheesh". The main character from Notes left me feeling viscerally uncomfortable, and I mean that as the most sincere of compliments. The depths of human despair and self-hatred that Dostoevsky was able to channel was genuinely astounding, and I was left feeling the need to pause and collect myself several times along the way.
It was such a wild contrast to his dreamer character in White Nights, and it made me far more appreciative of that which I sort of took for granted when I read it a couple months ago. Where the main character's rather absurd positivity initially struck me as naïve or perhaps even as a coping mechanism, I now recognize as the positive relative to the trenches he dug into with Notes from Underground.
I don't know that I have the energy to pursue more Dostoevsky in the near future, but after this experience with Notes, I'm far more motivated to read his longer works like Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov than I expected to be upon first finishing White Nights.
I wrote down a passage that struck me at the time of reading it, and I think this was really my turning point with Notes from Underground that started shifting my perspective and appreciation of the author.
Now, you may say that this too can be calculated in advance and entered on the timetable – chaos, swearing, and all – and that the very possibility of such a calculation would prevent it, so that sanity would prevail. Oh no! In that case man would go insane on purpose, just to be immune from reason.
I believe this is so and I'm prepared to vouch for it, because it seems to me that the meaning of man's life consists in proving to himself every minute that he's a man and not a piano key.
by PsyferRL