Russian Novels
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1. The philosophical orientation of Dostoevsky in Notes from Underground is principally nihilism. The tone of the story from the outset indicates the narrator's alienation from society. He describes himself as sick, spiteful, unpleasant, as well as physically frail (Dostoevsky 3), and he can't seem to do enough to prove it. Dostoevsky's annotation of the content with footnotes creates a fictional confessional of Romanticist nihilis and determination to prove the futility of sentiment and comity. The narrator refers to his hopeless predicament and to having no regard or respect for himself, declaring as well that everyone is in the same predicament. That being so, he sees no reason to make a pretense of having anything like a positive regard for his fellow men: "Can a man possessing consciousness ever really respect himself" (Dostoevsky 11). Yet the story shows that the narrator is desperate to be held in high regard and hopeless of being so. He attempts to reach out for friendship--despite insulting the very friends he craves:"These numbskulls think they're doing me an honor by allowing me to sit with them at their table, when they don't understand that it's I who's done them the honor, and not the reverse. . . . Right now, this very moment, I should stand up, take my hat, and simply leave without saying a single word. . . ." Of course, I stayed (Dostoevsky 51). Further, he borrows money, at once bullying and imploring his friend Zverkov for a visit to a house
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general, both aspects of unhappiness directly traced to the position that women enjoy in marriage and society. People, he says, "will wonder how a society could exist in which actions were permitted which so disturb social tranquillity as those adornments of the body directly evoking sensuality, which we tolerate for women in our society" (Tolstoy 175).
One reading of The Kreutzer Sonata is that, through Pozdnyshev, Tolstoy advocates the idea that the overweening focus on sex as the primary determinant of married love and the marriage relationship is highly destructive to both marriage as an institution and the partners of marriage. On this view, Pozdnyshev's elaboration of sexual relations as poisonous to a successful marriage can be seen as Tolstoy's own. However, an alternative reading of the narrative is that Pozdnyshev is mentally unbalanced and that the skewed point of view he presents is really Tolstoy's subject. For indeed, from a modern perspective, Pozdnyshev's is a skewed social logic that either informs or is informed by a skewed sexual logic. To the degree one skewed realm of reason feeds and is fed by the other, The Kreutzer Sonata can be read as sharp social criticism, with Tolstoy lending urgency and emotional wei
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Approximate Word count = 2371
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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