Audiobook · read by volunteers
Notes from the Underground
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)
Read by Greg, Randy Phillips, Aaron Andrade, Hugh McGuire, Neal Foley, Gord Mackenzie · 20 chapters · 5 h 06
About the book
Who is the man who speaks to us from his cellar, bitter, brilliant, contradictory and impossible to ignore? The narrator of Notes from the Underground is a retired civil servant in St Petersburg, ill-tempered, defiantly unhappy and determined to explain exactly why. In the first part he argues with the reader and with the whole idea of rational self-interest. In the second he tells the story of an episode from his younger days, when his pride, his envy and his longing for contact led him into humiliation. Dostoyevsky packs a startling amount of psychology and philosophy into a short book, and he does it with dark humour. Twenty chapters, in Constance Garnett's classic translation, about five hours, six voices. An unsettling, unforgettable listen. Dostoyevsky's narrator is the sort of character you may recognise in yourself on your worst days.
Introduction
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) is one of the giants of Russian literature, the author of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Notes from the Underground, which dates from 1864, is a much shorter work, and it is often seen as the key to the novels that followed. Dostoyevsky wrote it in his early forties, a few years after his imprisonment and exile in Siberia, and it marks a turning point towards his great novels. The narrator is among the most distinctive voices in literature, and the combination of confession, argument and spite is easier to follow when it is heard than when it is read in a hurry.
It is a book about a ranting, slightly mad civil servant. Its stylistic inventiveness and its insights into the absurdities and weaknesses of human beings still seem so fresh and incisive that the text could pass for a daring modern work. It is in two parts. The first is a monologue, an argument in which the narrator confronts ideas about progress and reason. The second is a narrative of events in his youth that illustrate his character. In some ways the text is heavy, laden with conversational philosophizing, but the vividness of the narrator makes it a wonderful read, and funny.
This recording uses the English translation by Constance Garnett (1861-1946), who introduced many Russian novels to English readers. It has 20 sections, ten in each part, and lasts about five hours. Six LibriVox volunteers share the reading.
Why listen now? Because the underground man's voice is unforgettable, and because the questions he raises about freedom, spite and self-deception have lost none of their force. It is challenging, but rewarding.
Public domain
Fyodor Dostoyevsky died in 1881: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text