Classics and the Western Canon discussion

At the end of the first part, our narrator tells us that he has decided to write some things down because "they say work makes a man good and honest." He offers the second half of his account "apropos of the wet snow." What does wet snow have to do with his story?

His story goes back to when he was twenty four and working in the office. He despises and fears those around him, but he is self-aware enough to recognize that he is projecting his feelings about himself onto his coworkers.

After a brief discussion of romantics, something like a story starts to form. He describes an occasion when he is passing a tavern and sees a fight. One man is "chucked out the window" and he imagines with envy, "Perhaps I, too, will have a fight and get chucked out the window myself." He makes a feeble attempt to create a confrontation in the tavern with a 6 foot tall officer by standing in his way, but the officer just moves him aside. Our narrator describes his fantasies about challenging the officer in the street and eventually, after elaborate preparations, has his greatest triumph when he manages to bump shoulders with him. (I do hope some of this is supposed to be comical.)

The next few chapters describe a similar situation where the narrator creates an unecessary and awkward conflict with some old schoolmates at a going away dinner. At one point he challenges one of them to a duel and they fall over laughing.

What is our narrator trying to prove with these provocations?

Thomas wrote: "What does wet snow have to do with his story?"

The stories in Part II seem to serve as demonstrations of the Underground Man’s worldview from Part I and how his overthinking muddies everything. The phrase “apropos of the wet snow” becomes symbolic of the contradictions he embodies and the unpleasant conditions of wet snow, and the middle ground he seems to occupy by being caught between states of inaction and action that make either path ineffective and awkward.

If Dostoevsky had placed him in a warmer climate, perhaps “apropos of the mud” would have been even more clear to us because everything the Underground Man touches becomes muddied by his own conflicting impulses. The “wet snow” captures that moral and emotional slush he lives in: the snow-like purity of the rational ideals he reads about in books that makes him feel superior to others inevitably is to be watered down and turned to slush, and humiliation by reality and the irrational behavior that follows that he sees as his only choice validation and respect. Of course this only alienates him more.

I'm waiting to learn why I should care about this guy and his shaky sanity.

Thomas wrote: "What does wet snow have to do with his story?"

In Pevear's translation of the book, in the back notes, it says: "In his 'Dostoyevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865', Joseph Frank, drawing attention to an 1849 article in which the Russian critic P. V. Annenkov points to "wet snow" as a common meteorological condition in descriptions of Petersburg by writers of the natural school, suggests that Dostoyevsky uses the same "wet snow" here to evoke both the atmosphere of the period he is going to write about (the late 1840s) and the naive assumptions of its literature, which he himself, had shared."

But I like David's interpretation.

My first thought was that the MC is like wet snow, to everyone around him. They all want to get rid of him and find him unpleasant, almost unbearable. Like wet snow caught on boots, behind the neck, on the coat. They want to shake it/him off.

The episode with shoulders bumping and his elation after it was to me humorous, though I'm aware there's more to it than humor.

The discussion about romantics went over my head. Maybe this is the part that is meant to be a direct answer to the other book, written before by another author, that someone else mentioned in another thread?

"I knew yesterday that I would get there first" - genius line in the beginning of chapter IV, completely unexpected, even though it should be expected. I read it and think "of course", it couldn't have been any other way.

I don't know why he's doing what he's doing, but it seems obvious he can't help himself. To me it looks like it has to do a bit with a resolution to avoid shortcuts. And with pride.

I liked how Simonov was described at first, while they were still in school: he had "a certain independence of character". This is important to him. I also think it is.

Roger wrote: "I'm waiting to learn why I should care about this guy and his shaky sanity."

I would agree our caring need not extend to liking him but it should extend to understanding him and people like him. Maybe shifting the question from, "why should we care about this guy", to, "why does Dostoevsky think we should?" would lessen our burden.

To aid in this change of inquiry we should recall the opening note:

Both the author of these notes and the Notes themselves are fictitious, of course. Nevertheless, people like the author of these notes not only may, but actually must exist in our society, considering the general circumstances under which our society was formed. I wanted to bring before the public with more prominence than usual one of the characters of the recent past. He’s a representative of the current generation. In the excerpt entitled “Underground” this person introduces himself and his views, and, as it were, wants to explain the reasons why he appeared and why he had to appear in our midst. The following excerpt [“Apropos of Wet Snow”] contains the actual “notes” of this person about several events in his life [Dostoevsky’s note].
~Katz Translation

Why would Dostoevsky assert people like Underground Man must exist? Is our acknowledgment that they do a simple point of compassion, understanding and inclusive accommodation in society, or is it for our own more accurate picture of reality? Or are there some other reasons?

Xaph wrote: "I don't know why he's doing what he's doing, but it seems obvious he can't help himself. To me it looks like it has to do a bit with a resolution to avoid shortcuts. And with pride.."

Pride and vanity have a lot to do with it. He also has a rich fantasy life, and I think this might be the root of his illness. He likes to imagine how he would be in a certain situation, more courageous, more dignified, more likeable, but when his imagination runs up against reality in the tavern or at the dinner, he inevitably fails. That fuels his spitefulness and self-loathing.

But then he turns around and says he likes his spitefulness and self-loathing, which is a justification for his continuing on like that. It gives him license to dream an impossible dream, like a dingy Don Quixote. The difference is that DQ doesn't know that he's crazy. Underground man recognizes his illness from the first line, but he doesn't want to get well.

David wrote: "Why would Dostoevsky assert people like Underground Man must exist? "

A great question. I also wonder about the "general circumstances" of society he is referencing here:

Nevertheless, people like the author of these notes not only may, but actually must exist in our society, considering the general circumstances under which our society was formed.

Was there something special about Russian society at that time that created people like Underground Man? Or is there something more general in human nature?

To get a better handle on the Underground Man (UM), I’ve been wondering what distinguishes him from the typical social misfit. Ordinary misfits simply fail to adapt; they’re awkward, isolated, or rejected by temperament or circumstance. UM, though, chooses his alienation. His philosophical outlook leads him to feel an intellectual superiority to others that both distances him from, and justifies his spite toward them.

Is UM an inevitable result of modernity when self-consciousness and abstract reason take the place of genuine moral or communal life, or is he just an extreme outlier of any age?

David wrote: "Is UM an inevitable result of modernity when self-consciousness and abstract reason take the place of genuine moral or communal life, or is he just an extreme outlier of any age?"

UM is such a bundle of conflicting emotions and ideas that it's hard to nail him down as anything at all. The one thread that seems to run through his narrrative is that he dislikes limitation of any kind. Even the limitations of natural law and reason irritate him. He wants to live in a fantasy world of possibility where nothing exists in an actual real form, like the stone wall, because as soon as the stone wall exists it blocks his path. It limits him and impinges on his fantasies of unlimited freedom, which for him is a "refined pleasure."

I calmly continue about people with strong nerves, who do not understand a certain refinement of pleasure. In the face of some mishaps, for example, these gentlemen may bellow at the top of their lungs like bulls, and let's suppose this does them honor, but still, as I've already said, they instantly resign themselves before impossibility. Impossibility -- meaning a stone wall? What stone wall? Well, of coure, the laws of nature, the conclusions of natural science, mathematics...

My God, but what do I care about the laws of nature and mathematics if for some reasons these laws and two times two is four are not to my liking? To be sure, I won't break through such a wall with my forehead if I really have not got enough strength to do it, but neither will I be reconciled with it simply because I have a stone wall here and have not got strength enough. (Part I section 3)

His refusal to be reconciled to laws and social norms means that he can't really be at home anywhere, so he's a perfect kind of misfit. He can't even be at home with himself because he has no identity as a person. To have an identity requires some kind of boundary setting and self-discipline, and that would take all the fun out of it for him. He wants the freedom to NOT be anything in particular, and he seems to find that pleasurable, even when it's harmful to himself.

I don't know if a person like that is an inevitable result of modernity, but maybe Dostoyevsky was concerned that young rebels were running around declaring themselves free when in fact they were just unprincipled libertines?

David wrote: "the snow-like purity of the rational ideals he reads about in books that makes him feel superior to others inevitably is to be watered down and turned to slush, and humiliation by reality and the irrational behavior that follows that he sees as his only choice validation and respect."

Wet snow is also very heavy. Here in Utah, our license plates proudly proclaim "The greatest snow on Earth" because we get a lot of light, fluffy snow that skiers love. But last winter, there were a handful of very heavy and wet snowstorms. Clearing my walks was backbreaking. UM, while easily brushed aside and ignored in the first episode, becomes quite onerous in the second.

Roger wrote: "I'm waiting to learn why I should care about this guy and his shaky sanity."

The forward to my edition, written by Pevear, promises us "one of the most remarkable characters in literature, one who has been placed among the bearers of modern consciousness alongside Don Quixote, Hamlet, and Faust."

That's likely an overstatement. I'm reserving judgment until after I've read from VI to the end and had time to reflect.