Records from the basement hole

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Notes from the basement hole ( Russian Записки из подполья , scientific transliteration : Zapiski iz podpolʹja , German also records from the underground ) is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky , which was first published in 1864 in the journal Epocha . It is one of Dostoevsky's most famous works.

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The novel is divided into two stylistically very different parts: the first is essayistic , the second narrative and was sometimes viewed as a novella . The main character and first-person narrator is a 40-year-old former civil servant, whose name is not mentioned. All that is known about his living situation is that he quit his job, lives alone in a basement apartment on the outskirts of St. Petersburg and earns his living from a modest inheritance. The first part of records from the basement holeis a record of his thoughts on society as well as on himself. He describes himself as vicious, depraved, and ugly, but highly educated; The main goal of his polemical and sharp analyzes is “modern man” and the society he has created, which he comments bitterly and cynically and against which he builds up aggressions and vindictiveness. He sees his own decline as natural and necessary. Although he emphasizes that he should write the recording only for himself, the narrator repeatedly addresses an unspecified audience whose questions he tries to anticipate.

In the second part he tells different, each long past episodes of his life, his failure on a professional level as well as in human relationships and in his love life exemplify . One episode describes a meeting with old school friends who, unlike him, are all in high and secure positions and treat him with condescension. His aggressions are then directed against himself and he tries to humiliate himself even further. At the same time, he lets himself out on people who are even deeper than that: with the penniless prostitute Lisa, he stages himself as a possible savior, only to reject her with many self-reproaches at the very moment when she begins to draw hope through him. Dostoevsky himself added the records in a brief comment that indicates that characters and plot were indeed invented, but in the conditions of contemporary society are not only possible but inevitable.

Origin and reception

In the notes from the basement hole , Dostoevsky depicted the Crystal Palace as a symbol of materialism and industrialization.

Dostoyevsky wrote this text in Moscow in the winter of 1863/64 . During this time he suffered from many epileptic fits and other protracted illnesses; his financial situation was desolate due to gambling debts that he had made shortly before in Homburg vor der Höhe . The journal Epocha , in which the records finally appeared, was published by his brother Michail from March 1864 . Since it was less liberal than its predecessor Vremja , it suffered from declining readership. The publication of a text that contained such unpopular ideas and openly opposed fads like Chernyshevsky's novel What to do? posed, became a risk for the magazine itself. Dostoyevsky, however, was convinced of the quality of the records and spoke to his brother during the planning phase of a “strong and frank work”, the analysis of which was “the truth”. be.

The records from the basement hole were initially perceived primarily as a psychological study. One of her first admirers was Friedrich Nietzsche , who described the work as a "real stroke of luck for psychology" and thus triggered extensive reception in German-speaking countries. For Nietzsche, the notes (which he read in French translation) were the first encounter with Dostoevsky. In addition, the records were recorded as an attack on Chernyshevsky's novel What to do? (published 1863), who deals optimistically with the possibilities of a society of idealistic, progressive people and was extremely popular with socialists and revolutionaries all over Europe at this time. The historical background for this was a belief in progress that was based on influential contemporary achievements in the field of technology and natural sciences (such as the theory of evolution ) and was transferred to social processes. This way of thinking is a central point of attack of the cynical analyzes of the nameless narrator of the recordings , which made them at least inopportune at the time.

Various later recipients tried to read the text at least partially autobiographically , which was supported by the argument that Dostoevsky himself had expressed very similar views as the narrator and even formulated them in his letters very similarly. However, this approach is controversial as there are many views in the novel that are clearly tailored precisely to the fictional main character. In the literature there have been repeated attempts parallels between the figures of the records to draw and different characters of Dostoevsky's later novels published. The prostitute Lisa was read as a prototype for the figure of Sonja in debt and atonement . The narrator himself shows parallels to Raskolnikov or Nikolai Stavrogin from the demons in his way of placing thought experiments and reason above morality and thus ultimately triggering an insoluble conflict of conscience in himself .

filming

In 1995 the novel was made into a film under the direction of Gary Walkow under the title Notes from Underground . Henry Czerny and Sheryl Lee can be seen in the leading roles .

literature

  • Barbara Lambeck: Dostoevskij's examination of Chernyshevsky's ideas in "Notes from the Underground" . 1980.
  • Klaus Schwarzwäller: The lonely man in the underground. FM Dostoyevsky, "Notes from the Underground" . In: DDG Yearbook , pp. 31–48
  • Horst-Jürgen Gerigk : Dostoyevsky's "Paradoxalist". Notes on the records from a basement hole. In: The Paradox. A challenge to western thought . ISBN 3-8260-2345-5 , pp. 481-497.
  • Verena Flick: The Psychology of Humiliation. Thoughts on Dostoyevsky's "Notes from a Hole in the Cellar". In: DDG Yearbook , 11, pp. 67–87
  • Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Notes from the basement hole. German by Swetlana Geier. Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-008021-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Maximillian Braun: Dostojewskij - The complete work as diversity and unity. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1976, p. 96 ff.
  2. ^ Pattison, Thompson: Dostoevsky and the Christian Tradition . 2001, p. 181.
  3. ^ William J Leatherbarrow: A Devil's Vaudeville: The Demonic in Dostoevsky's Major Fiction . Northwestern University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8101-2049-6 , p. 41.
  4. ↑ Janko Lavrin: Dostojevskij. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1963, p. 56ff.
  5. ↑ quoted from: Walter Jens (Hrsg.): Kindlers new literature dictionary . Kindler, Munich 1989, Volume 4, p. 825.
  6. ^ A b Hans Walter Poll: Afterword. in Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Notes from the cellar hole. German by Swetlana Geier. Reclam, Stuttgart 1984, pp. 149ff.
  7. ↑ Orhan Pamuk : First Dostoevsky teaches how to enjoy humiliation . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . January 6, 2001, p. 44 . says: "In this little episode I see all the determining elements of the later novels."