Notes from Underground

The poem in this section is the first stanza of Nikolai Nekrasov’s poem “When from the darkness of delusion...” (1845). Nekrasov was a popular poet of Dostoevsky’s day who was known for his progressive views, and the poem’s subject is the plight of sex workers in 19th-century Russia. 

The Underground Man is 24 and works in a government office. He is painfully antisocial and is convinced that everyone looks down on him; he believes this because he resents himself and feels that everyone else must, too. He dislikes his appearance and is afraid that he looks “stupid,” despite his intelligence. He tries to affect an intellectual look but ends up feeling humiliated. On several occasions, he befriends his coworkers, but these associations do not last long, as he inevitably returns to his antisocial ways. He spends most of his time reading. Due to depression and loneliness, he begins to frequent “brothels.”

The Underground Man digresses about Russia’s romantic writers and poets, claiming that they are “absolutely and directly opposed to the transcendental European type” (40), whom he sees as foolish and sentimental. He blames Russia’s literary critics and journalists for falsely equating Russian and European

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