I've read this one lots of times. At least a dozen. It was a favorite of the Great Books classes. So I thought I'd try one not translated by Constance...since hers was the version I've previously read. And yes indeed, there was a P&V translation available...but despite the fact that they did a good job with Notes From a Dead House, I wanted something else. So this, which is the work of one Michael R. Katz. He's A professor at Middlebury College, has published translations of more than fifteen Russian novels, and lives in Cornwall, Vermont. So that's cool.
Anyway...Notes From Underground is xxiii+ 148 = 171 pages. I'm thinking 5 days. Maybe less.
Day 1 (DDRD 2,278) January 26, 2024
Read to page 20...which leaves 120 text pages. Four days.
In "A Note on the Translation," Katz makes reference to F. M. Dostoevskii: Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii v 30...aka Collected Works of Dostoevsky in 30 Volumes. So of course I had to have a look for that. Found it on Amazon (of course) for a mere $2,495. Unfortunately, it's in Russian, otherwise....
Well. You know what kind of eyes she got.
And I do love this bit:
"You see, the direct, legitimate, immediate result of consciousness is inertia, that is, the conscious sitting idly by with one's arms folded. I've referred to this before. I repeat, I repeat emphatically: all spontaneous men and men of action are so active precisely because they're stupid and limited." (19)
Day 2 (DDRD 2,279) January 27, 2024
Read to page 51.
The narrator makes reference to The Last Supper by Nikolai Ge, of which I'd never heard, so...Wikipedia leviosa:
Innocuous as that is, it caused me to find out who that Buckle fellow was, and that ended with me reading all of his published works, and I'd still say that his History of Civilization in England is one of my favorite books. And I've read a lot of books.
Day 3 (DDRD 2,280) January 28, 2024
Read to page 110. Easy, engaging read...+ an hour and a half early to church. So I guess it's just one more day with this, then.
Day 4 (DDRD 2,281) January 29, 2024
Read to page 148 = The End. A good read, for sure, and, for me, the first truly great work Dostoyevsky produced.
"...it's as if the skin's been stripped away from my body so that even wafts of sir cause pain." (131)
There's a line in John Hersey's Hiroshima that is very much like this. It describes a horse whose outer skin has been blown off by the atomic bomb explosion, and as the wind touches the horse, it shivers with pain. I've always felt a kinship for that horse.
"... love consists precisely in a voluntary gift by the beloved person of the right to tyrannize over him." (134)
Yep. I see it when couples gouge each other in stores. And I see it in my own relationships. When it be and obvious that I would neither tyrannize nor be tyrannized, those bitches too off.
Ah...glad I re-read this. Onward.
(1) Leviathan 63 days, 729 pages
(2) Stalingrad 27 days, 982 pages
(3) Life and Fate 26 days, 880 pages
(4) The Second World War 34 + 32 + 40 + 43 + 31 + 32 days = 212 days, 4,379 pages
(5) Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming 10 days, 572 pages
(6) The Great Bridge 25 days, 636 pages
(7) The Path Between the Seas 29 days, 698 pages
(8) Blake: Prophet Against Empire, 23 days, 523 pages
(9) Jerusalem 61 days, 1,266 pages
(10) Voice of the Fire 9 days, 320 pages
(11) The Fountainhead 15 days, 720 pages
(13) The Pacific Trilogy: The Conquering Tide 28 days, 656 pages
(14) The Pacific Trilogy: Twilight of the Gods 31 days, 944 pages
(16) Toward Jazz 18 days, 224 pages
(17) The Worlds of Jazz 13 days, 279 pages
(18) To Be or Not...to Bop 14 days, 571 pages
(19) Kind of Blue 4 days, 224 pages
(20) Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and his Masterpiece: 5 days, 256 pages
(21) Miles: The Autobiography 16 days, 445 pages
(21) A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album: 8 days, 287 pages
(22) Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest 8 days, 304 pages
(23) Living With Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings 11 days 325 pages
(25) Oliver Twist 16 days, 542 pages
(26) Nicholas Nickleby 27 days, 1,045 pages
(27) The Old Curiosity Shop 22 days, 753 pages
(28) Barnaby Rudge 24 days, 866 pages
(30) Martin Chuzzlewit 32 days, 1,045 pages
(31) American Notes 10 days, 324 pages
(32) Pictures From Italy 7 days, 211 pages
(33) Christmas Stories Volume I 10 days, 456 pages
(34) Christmas Stories Volume II 15 days, 472 pages
(1) Miscellaneous Papers Volume II 28 days (don't count, while reading BH), 494 pages
(2) Bleak House 37 days, 1,098 pages
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