Notes from Underground by F.M. Dostoevsky in XXth Century English Criticism

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issue of the critical reception of F.M. Dostoevskys Notes from Underground in the XXth century. Some letters, as well as books on philosophy and literary criticism by such writers as D.H. Lawrence, J.M. Murry, C. Wilson and I. Murdoch are analysed. The reviews by the given authors correspond to two waves of interest in Dostoevsky - the first one took place at the turn of the XXth century followed by the second one in the middle of the century. The writers name the key characteristics of the Underground Man: vanity, egoism, self-division, desire for suffering and inability to act. Some critics of Dostoevskys Notes see the Underground Man as recurrent image and note his relevance to the ideas of existentialism, especially the one about inability to apprehend truth in a rational way.

Keywords

• dostoevsky and english literature
• underground
• underground man
• reception
• criticism