dosteovsky "notes from underground"

[bulenlen]

 hi! i don't understand, please help me. i need some notion about desteovsky novel that he declares himself as overly conscious. can you tell me some instances and behavior why he is overly conscious. thank you very much.

[Sklyansky]

 I'm somewhat new to the World of Dostoevsky (I'm a comparative literature major, who's now immersing himself in Russian literature), but there are aspects of "Notes From The Underground" that would easily lend themself to the idea of being overly conscious.  

For instance, during part 1, the narrator obsesses over the fact that when he and another individual are walking down a sidewalk, and they approach one another, invariably, it is the narrator who must cede his position on the sidewalk.  Now such instances happen in everyday life, however the narrator dwelled on the incident, and even speculated as to the reason why he always had to cede his position on the sidewalk.  He deduced it may have to do with social class, so he acquires nice clothing, to appear as though he is a nobleman, and attempts to reproduce an instance where he and another person approach one another on a sidewalk.  When said incident occurs, the narrator pushes the oncoming pedestrian aside, and the pedestrian thinks nothing of the incident, and gets on with his day.  So basically, while the narrator concerned himself with trivial matters such as these, other people are occupying their minds with stuff their social lives, or other such nonsense.  

What the idea of being overly conscious comes down to is the internal thoughts of the narrator.  The entirety of "Notes From Underground" is the thoughts of the narrator in print, however the instance I described is a very specific instance of this concept of being overly conscious.  I hope I articulated the idea well enough, as of course I'm quite new to these forums.  

[Worm]

Hi Slylansky,
you gave a nice well-worded reply there.


Which literature do you compare in your classes?  I assume you're from England?

[Sklyansky]

Hi.  Actually, I'm from Olympia, WA.  Up to this point, my readings have been about literature and folklore from the African diaspora.  So stuff like Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston, and various west African and Caribbean authors.  I've done that for two years and am rather tired of it.

I also studied a little bit of Soviet literature like Bulkgakov, Blok, and Zoshchenko (I actually wrote an atrocious research paper about Zoshchenko).  

[Dillon]

What the idea of being overly conscious comes down to is the internal thoughts of the narrator.  The entirety of "Notes From Underground" is the thoughts of the narrator in print, however the instance I described is a very specific instance of this concept of being overly conscious.

I would have to ultimately agree, but I have a somewhat different approach.

The narrator asks in Notes: "Is man not perhaps so fond of chaos and destruction...because he is instinctively afraid of reaching the goal and completing the building he is erecting?" Perhaps when one realizes his objective, furthermore the triviality of what is most commonly considered a goal or objective, and becomes truly lucid in his journey to attain it, he regresses back to a state of inherent anarchy and self-conflict, the shattered, ungrateful state of human mind that goes so deep as to reject the notion of civilization, a mentality of brooding and recession from society, as the narrator is. Perhaps, in the narrator's mind, when one becomes aware of the mental, imaginative, or logical will which allows to germinate such concepts of accomplishment, which gives us the idea that we may be able to bestow something upon the earth that could possibly lead to something true, we have reached his ideal of being overly conscious, that is continually played out by his musings.

This is what I see the narrator's notion of being overly-conscious is. I am always open to developmental criticism.