Notes from Underground

[Anonymous No.13011721]

How come Underground man is still alive in his 40s? You'd think he'd topped himself by then.
Can bitterness and resentment keep you alive for that long?

[Anonymous No.13011726]

things don't spoil as quickly underground

[Anonymous No.13011765]

>>13011726
You think he lives to old age?

[Anonymous No.13011775]

Based thread. DESU. I'm a friendless loser, but I still love life. I have no idea how to interact with people though. Notes from Underground was bleh compare to the big 4. Dostoevsky was a weirdo in real life though

[Anonymous No.13011783]

>>13011775
>Dostoevsky was a weirdo in real life though
It was kind of bummer when I found that out. I thought he just knew how a sadbrains worked. Instead it turned out he was a sadbrains.

[Anonymous No.13011792]

>>13011783
IDT there's a great writer that wasn't like that though. Maybe Hemingway, but the war fucked him. Most great writers didn't even graduate college nor had normal viewpoints. The Tom Buchanan comment about race was almost akin to a letter that F. Scott wrote to a friend.

[Anonymous No.13011826]

>>13011721
cowardness from killing yourself

[Anonymous No.13011874]

>>13011721
he perversely enjoys his condition

i know this because like dostoevsky i am a genuis who can get into the heads of other people and not because i am one

[Anonymous No.13011881]

>>13011874
Other people don't think about anything. It's just sybaritic insouciance

[Anonymous No.13011921]

Instead of making my own Dost. thread can someone quickly reccommend me the order in which he's to be read?

[Anonymous No.13011925]

>>13011921
Crime and Punishment, Notes, Idiot, Demons, Brothers K

[Anonymous No.13011926]

>>13011921
just read TBK the other ones are gay(homosexual)

[Anonymous No.13012067]

>>13011874
I don't know if I could reach my 40s like that. Misery doesn't seem as enjoyable as it used to be in my 20s.

[Anonymous No.13012095]

>>13011775
tell me more about this big 4 book that trumps notes. I'm reading notes from underground and i've found it to be the most relatable thing i've ever read. tell me more about big 4

[Anonymous No.13012112]

>>13012067
>I don't know if I could reach my 40s
well dostoyevsky's underground man (him basically) is an absolute madlad. Being in such a pathetic state into your 40s is daredevil tier shit that only an edgy philosopher gamer like me can enjoy.

fuck sticking your head in an alligators mouth or type rope walking try being the thing absolutely no one wants to be.

[Anonymous No.13012143]

The build up and result of the dinner with Simonov and Zverkov almost made me throw up.

[Anonymous No.13012243]

>>13012143
Yeah, I find it difficult to read the second part too. I usually stop just before he goes and sees him. The second-hand embarrassment and shame is just too much for me.

[Anonymous No.13012255]

>>13012112
>try being the thing absolutely no one wants to be.
In this day and age, that's being without identity.

[Anonymous No.13012268]

Always an interesting read when Notes from the Underground comes up:

https://old.reddit.com/r/thelastpsychiatrist/comments/5wq4u3/missing_post/dec58lc

>>13012067
Well he does go to brothels and stuff to help him cope. I guess working on the novel probably helps too

[Anonymous No.13012429]

>>13012268
>hoping at some point the reader-- almost certainly in the form of a beautiful and selfless woman who detects the real good inside him-- will come forward and tell him exactly what's going on, and help him, and then love him.

You know what annoys me about most analysis about the underground man? They all seem to blame him for not knowing how the world works. I mean, if for most of your early life you were shunned from most social things, and you end up a social retard, isn't that society's fault?

[Anonymous No.13012446]

>>13012429
yes and they hate you for it because you remind them on some level that none of this is real, they haven't earned anything, they just got lucky

obviously to some extent the underground man's condition is due to his inherent disposition but modern liberal enlightened society accelerates the extent to which these inherent dispositions govern our lives. we were born at a point where these values are being compounded with technology to make the phenomenon even worse, hence why we're even capable of having this discussion

[Anonymous No.13012637]

>>13012243
>tfw your life is literally someones worst nightmare but your used to it.

[Anonymous No.13012822]

Sometimes I wonder if you faggots are even autists like me. The level of normie has become too much to handle.

[Anonymous No.13013321]

>>13012637
It's like reliving the past for me.

[Anonymous No.13013323]

Isn't notes from the underground a retarded title and it actually translates more closely to "memoirs from a mousehole?"

[Anonymous No.13013360]

>>13012095
I'm guessing he's referring to The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and I'm not sure about the last one.

[Anonymous No.13013526]

>>13013360
Demons?

[Anonymous No.13013632]

>>13013526
and it's the second best of all

[Anonymous No.13013637]

Just read Garnett translation of Notes and enjoyed it a lot. Do I continue with her translation of Crime and Punishment or is there someone else that is generally considered superior?

[Anonymous No.13013648]

>>13011921
notes, crime and punishment, idiot, humiliated and insulted, demons, karamazov

[Anonymous No.13013706]

>>13013323
I think it was closer to "underneath the floorboards".

[Anonymous No.13013720]

>>13012429
Or perhaps the Underground man wants to be told or led to believe that his worldview is indeed wrong and warped, and things really aren't as bad as they seem.

[Anonymous No.13013723]

>>13013637
Read P&V instead.

[Anonymous No.13013745]

>>13011721

>blaming every single thing in the entire world except your own actions and refusing to take responsibility for your decisions because meaningless platitudes are, in fact, meaningless platitudes

Shocking.

[Anonymous No.13013747]

>>13011721
>I was like this
>it cliqued one day
>no longer like tgis
You need to protest against the condition of your existence. You need to protest against who you have become and who you are being. You need to protest against the unfairness that has fallen upon you, be it by your own virtue or otherwise. You need to protest for that higher ideal, an ideal of what you think your life should be. Through your protest you must outrightly reject your shortcomings, whether or not you can overcome them is secondary. You must protest to uphold your morality which promises you what's yours, be it happiness, friends, family, sex or whatever. You must protest against yourself. You MUST protest.
>Frida Khalo
Her work was a protest against her life long suffering. Surely you're better than a woman. R-right anon?
>btw she fucked Leon Trotsky which ultimately led to his cover being blown and his assassination. Lel womyn huh

[Anonymous No.13014036]

>>13013747
Thx brother

[Anonymous No.13014057]

>>13013723
Only translation I would definitely not read, at least not the first time around. I went and bought a nice old leather copy of garnett.
Does anyone know if there are differences between various editions of the garnett translation? There is a recent printing from 2017, but the design on the dust-jacket is nauseating, so I bought a pretty one from 1960 on the assumption that the contents would be identical.

[Anonymous No.13014143]

>>13011721
Bitterness and resentment will keep you alive in your 100s

[Anonymous No.13014327]

>>13012429
just stop whining and socially pull yourself up by your bootstraps bucko

[Anonymous No.13014546]

So, are you people spiteful, or wicked, or something else?
https://periodicals.narr.de/index.php/dostoevsky_studies/article/download/721/699

[Anonymous No.13014759]

>>13013747
Based beaut and bumped

[Anonymous No.13014763]

>tfw I completely understand and relate to the underground man

Am I fucked anons? Am I mentally ill?

[Anonymous No.13014773]

>>13011921
All of them at the same time. Under a rock in Siberia of course

[Anonymous No.13014781]

>>13014763

Yeah you're fucked man. May as well lock the door to your basement and start questioning every decision you make to breathe.

[Anonymous No.13014911]

>>13014763
As long as you haven't reached 30.

[Anonymous No.13014922]

>>13011721
I don't know yet. Only thing keeping me alive is my love for a girl who probably doesn't love me back.

[Anonymous No.13014938]

>>13012243
Yea a lot of people find it funny but to me it's just painful, like looking straight into a mirror, a bit exaggerated but still a mirror.

[Anonymous No.13014955]

No character has ever felt more real to me than him, it's almost surreal.

[Anonymous No.13015505]

>There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years together it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most ignominious details, and every time will add, of itself, details still more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own imagination. It will itself be ashamed of its imaginings, but yet it will recall it all, it will go over and over every detail, it will invent unheard of things against itself, pretending that those things might happen, and will forgive nothing. Maybe it will begin to revenge itself, too, but, as it were, piecemeal, in trivial ways, from behind the stove, incognito, without believing either in its own right to vengeance, or in the success of its revenge, knowing that from all its efforts at revenge it will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom it revenges itself, while he, I daresay, will not even scratch himself. On its deathbed it will recall it all over again, with interest accumulated over all the years and...

[Anonymous No.13015562]

>>13015505
Fuck anons, why are we like this? Why does this passage resonant with me so much?

Are all genius writers insane?

[Anonymous No.13015633]

>>13015562
Because you didn't protest against your condition like >>13013747 said.

[Anonymous No.13015656]

>>13013747
>>13015633
Can you elaborate further anon? I have some idea, but how does one protest?

[Anonymous No.13015660]

>>13013637
Garnett was a top-notch Victorian style writer, but she didn't give a shit about accuracy. Her prim and proper style is the opposite of Dostoevsky's style. Also, she cut out any sentences that would've been difficult to translate. Dostoevsky purists despise her. If you really like her style then keeping reading her Dostoevsky translations. However, if you want a translator that attempts to retain Dostoevsky's style then go for either P&V or McDuff. Some people accuse P&V of being overly literal, but I read their translations of Notes and The Idiot and both were enjoyable and easy to understand. I can't comment on McDuff, but I've heard his Dostoevsky translations are good.

[Anonymous No.13015976]

>>13015656
By hating yourself to the point where you want to take revenge on your very existence. By loving someone who's ideal is greater than your own. By working on something purely for the same of enjoying the process, all while your shithole of a body keeps trying to drag you back into indulging in pety hedonistic activities like binging on McDongles. You either love yourself, hate yourself or have no opinion about yourself. Having no opinion is the worst of all. But good news is that you'll definitely have something to say about yourself by the very virtue of being alive. There are parts about you you like and parts about you you hate. Gather what you like and go to war against what you hate. If that dark and desolate but nevertheless comfortable part of your shitty self beckons you every now and then, resist it. It is not the part of you that cares about 'you' so why care about it? Sure visiting the wretched prostitute for a quick jiggle and pop has it's upside but you know she's slowly killing your vitality. So why not protest.
The downside to all this is an acute loss of comfort. But it isn't too great a price. Your life already is shit enough for you to not know what true comfort is. Why be bothered by a greater discomfort? Why not grow to pike this new found discomfort of doing things that make up your ideal life? Slowly you'll find yourself delving deeper into this masochist pit of sludge and filth. Just like the time you were sinking more and more into degeneracy, remember? Those bygone days of the underground man?
Really nothing much has changed though. You still are a hopelessly masochistic man who seeks out harm. Except this time the direction is reversed and this time 'harm' actually helps. Of course the dark part of your shitty existence won't know it. But what do you care? The voice of that filthy part of you has grown weaker, it's seduction has lost it's charm and one day..
>you wake up next to a beautiful lady
>whom you have wholely fallen in love with and who, reciprocating to your retarded pursuits, has started to love you back
>it'll be a glorious sunday morning with the sun shining so bright that the rays chase your sleep away.
>you get up and notice that the sun is no match for the light coming of her glowing face
>a face still in slumber, unaware of its own beauty at that moment
>you gently peck her cheek beside her ear
>and at that moment you wouldn't have noticed that you no longer care or remember what a vermin you once were
Rise above and protest my lad. I may be betting a rigged game but I'll be damned if I don't protest and bet against myself.

[Anonymous No.13016038]

>>13015976

[Anonymous No.13016076]

>>13015976
how are some of us this based?

[Anonymous No.13016091]

>>13015976
Enjoyed this post quite a bit until I reached the greentext

[Anonymous No.13016250]

>>13015976
I will try to protest anon. I will protest. Thank you

[Anonymous No.13016258]

Imagine spending a lifetime chasing normality

[Anonymous No.13016285]

some people get off wallowing in their own misery, bitterness and misanthropy.

[Anonymous No.13016317]

That book was really painful to read. If you can relate with the underground man ( as I and I suppose almost everybody here can) you are royally fucked up. And I'm not talking from normie standards of sucess, the underground man was a failure not for not being a sucessful worker with a wife and kids, but for his lack of reasons to live, his lack of desires, he is the epitome of bugmen, he is nothing and if you are absolutely nothing everything seems immense in comparison. This impotence rapidly converts into a pathetic resentment. This man was planning literally for years petty revenges against some dude whom he barely ran into as if it were a matter of honour. He sperged out in front of his former peers. He hired a prostitute just to humiliate her, discharging his whole resentment in her, which ultimately just confirms what utter miserable he is. I won't give the classical normie advices of improve yourself, just stop comparing youself to others, leave from that hole and at least enjoy the sunset and the company of your loved ones.

[Anonymous No.13016319]

>>13015976
Very based, very redpilled, etc., et al.
Incredible post, anon

[Anonymous No.13016425]

>>13011792
This is true. You can't produce unique work by living exactly like the rest and thinking exactly like them.
The only way you can produce unique work is by either having unique experiences or by having unique thought. Sometimes though an unholy combination of both of this produces a concoction so good that for years to come people will still find themselves addicted to sipping it.
Dosto was the Cosmopolitan of such cocktails.

[Anonymous No.13016468]

Who else here is sporting a magnificent patchy dosto neckbeard?

[Anonymous No.13016499]

>>13015976
hatepilled and lovepilled at the same time.
truly based

[Anonymous No.13016971]

>>13016317
>bugmen
I've never known what this term meant.

[Anonymous No.13016986]

>>13016971
it was originally a meme from MPC, a sort of racist, sexist, right wing(but not like NRx) forum. It referred to people who defined themselves by consumption of products, lived a sterile, atomized existence cut off from any tradition. It often referred to people who literally looked like bugs and fit the above qualifiers because MPC are big on physiognomy.

The whole term was 'small souled bugman'.

[Anonymous No.13017340]

>>13011721
Suicide is a huge step. Think about the sheer displeasure you must get out of consciousness to plan out the ending of your own life.

[Anonymous No.13017358]

>>13011721
The lack of self-awareness in this pic is agonizing

Narrarive fallacy, confirmation bias, mental gymnastics all over the place

[Anonymous No.13017486]

>>13015976
Honestly, I've got a better greentext for your post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA7ZGV5z3i4
> The river flows into the sea, people flow towards death
> The setting sun will judge if you have done all that you can
> Turn sorrow into money, make flowers bloom with your rage
> All originates from and squirms under love

[Anonymous No.13017523]

>>13017486
I really like this anon. Did you write it? What's it called?

[Anonymous No.13017551]

>>13017523
As you can deduce from that link, it is called 死神, and is written by a renown Japanese stand-up comedian 大森靖子
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2CTND-G1Xk

[Anonymous No.13017562]

>>13017551
Oh thanks anon, I'll take a look at the videos

[Anonymous No.13017603]

>>13015976
Written in kind of a memey way but this is actually 100% accurate and true. It can be reduced to more biological terms of the prefrontal cortex aka logical/moral part of your brain vs the mammalian brain seeking out base comforts and feeding the ego incessantly and thoughtlessly. Ultimately what matters is not any result you achieve in the external world, but the victory of willpower over your own innate weakness.

[Anonymous No.13017605]

Uneventful days and sedentary monotone habits were a mistake. The Agricultural Revolution.
People who are struggling (including myself) need to be in a different environment with moving people and things. Whether the stimuli is really good or bad, it will at least provide you with something significant to address.
I'm somewhere between normie and edgy depresso fuck, I've watched my life go from bright to dark. Years of self examination and experimentation has helped and I do see the light. However there is one thing, that I know, that would shoot me out into greatness. That thing is to change my environment. It's the only thing that I believe someone can blame instead of themselves (but they also must blame themselves for not exiting the environment).
What little dysfunctional family I have supports me and its all I have left, but they too bring me down.

We're all gonna make it though. The writer in the OP pic is a bit of a fag, but does express feels.

>>13015976
The masochism element is really key. I know (knew) the feeling of hurting yourself for something great. Hopefully I can attain it in the future. Right now I'm working on doing it with technology and my addiction.

[Anonymous No.13017640]

>>13017562
It's a long road, buddy, but at least there are translations for essential songs.

Don't forget to notice users who post comfy live concerts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bPt_yuZMWQ

[Anonymous No.13017669]

>>13011721
Because despite how profoundly bitter and disgusted he is with every aspect of his existence he is far too much of a coward to actually go through with it and is painfully aware of that as well, keeping him in a negative feedback loop that forever wounds but never kills. Rodya was closer to killing himself than underground man was because his suffering was even greater but much shorter. He at least was compensated with a cute Russian waifu for his troubles after he got out of Siberia.

[Anonymous No.13017686]

>>13017358
Do you care to expand? I can't find flaws in the logic of that pic. I'm sincerely asking because being at this hole isn't funny.

[Anonymous No.13017689]

>>13017358
Some people really are just fucked and it annoys me when people won't accept that.

[Anonymous No.13017705]

>>13012143
>>13012243
Glad I wasn't the only one. That was one of the hardest things to read and all he did was make an asshole out of himself at a little get together. Yet I felt physical pain when he begged for money afterwards.

[Anonymous No.13017739]

>>13017358
What he gets right is that social connections work in a way analogous to money, i.e. the richer you are, the easier it is to make more money. The point that he misses, though, is that while he couldn't become as popular and well-adjusted as someone who was normal from the start, he could still make himself much happier.

>>13017689
Possibly also true but I think there are certain fundamental ideas and practices that could /theoretically/ help anyone. Whether people are capable of actually following up on those ideas is a different matter altogether, and obviously this doesn't apply to cases where the problem is more so on a biological level.

[Anonymous No.13018238]

>>13017358
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX2wj5lh-KQ

[Anonymous No.13019264]

ITT: Post about how you found Notes.

>bored
>just start posting my thoughts and feelings, rambling on about being me
>get first reply
>"What is this? notes from underground? Fuck off"
and thats how i found it. I am the modern underground man.

[Anonymous No.13019278]

>>13011925
So at what point do you read Poor Folk and House of the Dead?

[Anonymous No.13019476]

>>13011721

Sure it can.

The only ingredient missing from the OP image rant is the "way out".

Another gentleman upthread mentioned productive masochism already, but having been destroyed multiple times by life - having grasped that peak, the height, like waking up next to someone beautiful and kind who loves you, and having watched it burn to ash in front of me, seven or eight times, each time increasingly cruel, each time like watching the world end - you have to learn to relish solitude.

Normals will tell you you have to "love yourself" because they're midwits who think love is a universal, something everyone understands. It's a flaccid milquetoast catchphrase - an advertising tagline.

You need to develop to the point that you can not only tolerate, but enjoy, your own company as much as you would enjoy the company of Seneca, or Cicero, or Epictetus, or Schopenhauer, or Homer - whatever giant upon whose shoulders your image of greatness rests. This is /lit/, not /r9k/. You've all encountered great minds - you all have an author, buried somewhere in that rotting heart, who formed the germ of your ideas of greatness, of what it means to be a man, what it means to be fucking human. Even if you're the last of your lineage and have nothing in the world, you have access to the minds of a vast multitude, some deformed, some brilliant. You are not alone in your suffering. Titans among men have felt your pain. The world changes, unrecognizably, but human suffering is a constant.

The dead are the only companions you can 100% rely upon until the day you join them. The living are fickle, happiness is fleeting, and your body will grow weak, ugly, and frail with age, if you manage to make it that long. You, underground man, and those six feet underground, are all you have.

[Anonymous No.13020135]

>>13019476
But don't you think every time you make an effort to be happy, you're 'protesting' against this cruel world? Like that dude above said?

[Anonymous No.13020149]

>>13020135
What world?

[Anonymous No.13020265]

>>13019264
I literally spotted a russian one published in, iirc 1890, on top of my grandfather's bookshelf and asked him about the book. Grandpa told me it was a profound study, written by an highly intelligent man, of a profound human being who knew who he was but because of social constraints, was unable to publicize the truth without multilayered self-irony. My god how I fell in love with Dostoyevsky that day.

[Anonymous No.13020319]

>>13017739
>The point that he misses, though, is that while he couldn't become as popular and well-adjusted as someone who was normal from the start, he could still make himself much happier.

I guess, like some of us, he wants some acknowledgement that he got dealt a bad hand in the early part of his life. I mean, yeah he can start working towards happiness now but it's really grating to be told you could have changed things from the very beginning when you didn't know how things worked because you were shunned early on.

[Anonymous No.13020905]

>>13013747
Thanks anon, I needed to hear this.

[Anonymous No.13021169]

>>13020265
What a based gramps
Peace upon him, anon

[Anonymous No.13021194]

>>13012446
>but modern liberal enlightened society accelerates the extent to which these inherent dispositions govern our lives.

yeah, ive noticed what it does isn't so much obliterate differences between people, but exaggerate them

[Anonymous No.13021286]

>>13017603
>Ultimately what matters is not any result you achieve in the external world, but the victory of willpower over your own innate weakness.

profoundly, profoundly true

[Anonymous No.13021337]

>>13021194
In the olden days differences among humans were superficially and externally forced. You had to consciously behave a certain way with people of other classes and force the differences. All the while having in your heart an implicit idea inherent equality among humans.
Today you have to force your behavior to express equality in a very purposeful manner. All the while knowing in your heart you are somehow better than the other person or people.
Contempt among classes of men today is heartfelt and genuine no matter how much we suppress it superficially. Sure we don't burn each other in the millions anymore but we certainly make sure the dynamics of power remain unchanged and that the status quo still continues to be in a way so as to favor the few elites. The best trick the ones on top pulled was to convince every man that it was the ones who are under him that are the ones he has to be vigilant about. For surely it is the poor who will mug you isn't it? And not the rich who drain you of your value slowly but surely, in a way that is so ingrained in our culture and society that you will not notice the melting away of the 'youness' of you.
At last when there is nothing more for you to give, at an age--when you are frail from not only having lost all physical vitality but also from the mental handicap that has been caused by reinforcing your prejudices--you won't even notice just how bitter and resentful you have grown. You will only notice the spick who steals your hubcaps, the negro who rams your daughter, the chink who takes your son's job, but not the elite who continues to subject your children to the same life as yours.
Your freedom controlled by your financial indebtedness, you thoughts controlled by the media, your psyche controlled by an incessant barrage of advertisements and worst of all you freewill controlled by making sure you never actually come out of systemic depression.
And now theirs..
>>13013747
>>13015976
So when you protest against yourself and your condition remember that you are essentially protesting against the status quo. And there will be those who won't like you doing so.

[Anonymous No.13021425]

>>13015976
Damn.

[Anonymous No.13021952]

As this thread comes to it's end I feel sad. There is a certain permanence that the written word assumes which is not true with 4chan threads. These are ephemeral. And all beautiful things die. Godspeed anons

[Anonymous No.13022306]

>>13021952
We're still 200 posts from the end and there's still things to be said.

[Anonymous No.13022356]

I am only in my early twenties. I relate very deeply with the underground man and understand the picture OP posted. Some of us are wounded by fate. Our own weaknesses play a role too of course. For me I had empathy with out boundaries. I burnt myself out for my family and loved ones and it destroyed me. Now I am alone. And it is good. Living like this has at least made me prideful and unforgiving. I used to be so much weaker. I have cut out those who treated me with disrespect. I have seen the great things I am capable of when I set myself to it. I know I can change. I know we can all climb out of this pit anons. Perhaps it is a blessing to be in the pit. If you're in the pit you have an incentive to climb and to grow stronger and to master your soul. I don't know anything very well, but I really believe this. Best of luck anons, we have to keep climbing until we touch the sky

[Anonymous No.13022378]

Watch the documentary Free Solo.

[Anonymous No.13022416]

>>13022356
>I am only in my early twenties
I'm not even gonna read the rest.

[Anonymous No.13022423]

>>13022416
Why not anon?

[Anonymous No.13022472]

>>13022423
Cos it's usually followed by
>my life is over
when it's just barely begun.

[Anonymous No.13022501]

>>13022472
I'm not that pessimistic. Still, it's nice to be told that everything is just beginning. Were you like me when you were in your early twenties anon? Alienated but still hopeful?

[Anonymous No.13022533]

>>13022501
>Alienated but still hopeful?
Lol no, I was a pessimistic and isolated person that worked in a dead-end jobs wasting my years and opportunities. It's only now I realize I could have taken other routes back then.

[Anonymous No.13022546]

>>13022356
Bergman should have cast Andresen in one of his films. When I first saw a picture of him in a striped sweater I thought he was some dyke with a soccer-mom haircut, but warmed up immediately when I realized he was just a teenage male. Britten's opera/ballet of Death in Venice is rendered unwatchable because everyone cast to play Tadzio looks hideous in comparison

[Anonymous No.13022564]

>>13022546
I agree, Andresen is truly one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen. I'll have to get around to reading the novel one day. I find it really interesting that Hindu and some Greek gods are portrayed as being more "beautiful" than handsome. I wonder why that is?

[Anonymous No.13022595]

>>13022564
You gigantic homosexual.

[Anonymous No.13022660]

>>13022546
>When I first saw a picture of him in a striped sweater I thought he was some dyke with a soccer-mom haircut, but warmed up immediately when I realized he was just a teenage male.
That's a really gay thought process.

[Anonymous No.13022949]

>>13013745
>blaming every single thing in the entire world except your own actions and refusing to take responsibility for your decisions because meaningless platitudes are, in fact, meaningless platitudes
>refusing to take responsibility for your decisions

Up to a certain point certain decisions have already been made for you.

[Anonymous No.13023121]

>>13015976
damn anon, pic related

[Anonymous No.13023181]

>>13019476
>think love is a universal, something everyone understands
But everyone does understand love, or at least have at some point in their life. Just because some people forget doesn't make it any less of a universal.

[Anonymous No.13023287]

Damn so nobody here understood notes? The absolute state...

[Anonymous No.13023363]

>>13023287
enlighten me please

[Anonymous No.13023367]

>>13023287
>Damn so nobody here understood notes?
Do tell.

[Anonymous No.13023430]

>>13023363
>>13023367
It’s not some /r9k/ tfwnogf sadboy story and it’s not supposed to make you wanna pull yourself up by the bootstraps and be a normalfag. The underground man doesn’t want to be happy and perversely enjoys being under the floorboards. It’s a rejection of consequentialism and utilitarianism, the latter of which everyone here seems to think in terms of.

[Anonymous No.13023452]

>>13023430
>The underground man doesn’t want to be happy and perversely enjoys being under the floorboards.

I've brought a similar point up >>13011874

[Anonymous No.13023462]

>>13023452
Oh yeah I saw your post you got it my dude. I might’ve exaggerated a bit but it be like that sometimes ya feel

[Anonymous No.13023465]

>>13023430
>It’s a rejection of consequentialism and utilitarianism

I agree but these are precisely the elements that lead the protagonist to his pathetic state. That's the same alienation that /r9k/ tfwnogf sadboy experiences.

>The underground man doesn’t want to be happy and perversely enjoys being under the floorboards

This is the thing we've been discussed so far.

[Anonymous No.13023470]

>>13023465
Nah /r9k/ is a bunch of incels, the underground is an incel because he wants to be

[Anonymous No.13023479]

>>13023465
>we've been discussed

*we've been discussing

[Anonymous No.13023548]

>>13023470
I agree that the Underground Man enjoys his state but he mentions in Part I that he can't change because "there is nothing to change into" (I think). This makes me think he has attempted to change himself in his youth but failed

[Anonymous No.13023582]

>>13020319
Yes, I agree that people who are unwilling to acknowledge that, who buy into the just-world fallacy, are infuriating to deal with. But trying to convince them of things they can't conceive of or understand because they've never experienced anything like it is a pointless endeavor. Most people's morality is so malformed and directed by groupthink that you'll never be able to break through their cognitive dissonance. People say things like what you're describing because they lack anything approaching actual empathy.

Lots of things in life are unfair but resentment is a colossal waste of time and energy that could be spent upon improving the situation for yourself and other people who need help.

p.s.: literature for this feel would be Nietzsche I guess? Fuck you janny, half the shit on this board is "not literature related".

[Anonymous No.13024461]

>>13023470
Isn't it self-pity and they like it. Because it's comfortable, you can blame the whole world and don't have to push yourself. Underground man's only difference is that he is not delusion himself.

[Anonymous No.13025157]

>>13019264
Found it after reading The Double.

[Anonymous No.13025378]

>>13023548
>This makes me think he has attempted to change himself in his youth but failed
Kinda fucked himself there didn't he? Someone was willing to take a chance on him and he threw it back in their face.

[Anonymous No.13025451]

>>13025378
Haven't we all thrown away all the opportunist life gave us?

[Anonymous No.13025543]

>>13025451
No, but I don't know if I would've recognised it back then.

[Anonymous No.13025559]

>>13025451
I meant opportunities
>mobile posting

[Anonymous No.13025765]

>>13012143
That part was tough to read but what did it for me was him treating the prostitute like garbage after she pretty much gives up on her prostitution just to be part of his life. It hit way too close to home.
Notes is genuinely one of the hardest-hitting books I've ever read.

[Anonymous No.13025773]

>>13013745
Underground man is aware that part of his condition in life is result of his own actions, though.

[Anonymous No.13025798]

>>13019264
Jordan Peterson.

[Anonymous No.13025982]

>>13025798
Yeah me too desu

[Anonymous No.13026067]

>>13025798
>>13025982
The fuck did Peterson say about Notes From Underground?

[Anonymous No.13026137]

>>13025765
>It hit way too close to home.
Storytime?

[Anonymous No.13026850]

I think another anon talked about this earlier, but the Underground Man was a consequence of modernity/hyperliberalism.
At the time Dostoevsky wrote the book, this was a barely emerging phenomenon. Robots didn't exist before the current rationalist-individualist-nihilist-globalist-humanist cultural cocktail splashed across the world. He basically predicted the destructive nature of modern society as it was being formed, and showed what it would do to a person who fell in between the floorboards in this new world. Maybe the Underground Man could have saved himself from spite and laceration if he keenly understood society from an early age, but every deck was stacked against him thanks to well-meaning normalfags who unthinkingly built a world hostile to people not like themselves.

[Anonymous No.13027401]

>>13026850
Dostoevsky is an autist. The whole story is a projection of himself

[Anonymous No.13027673]

>>13019264
Read crime and punishment which I found through 4chan, and afterwards I wanted to read more dosto

[Anonymous No.13027846]

>>13013747
I will write this down (and maybe your second post too) and look at it often so I don't forget it. Blessed you are, fren. I hope you will have what you seek (or won't, in spirit of this post).

[Anonymous No.13027939]

>>13026067
It's a great analysis about how bitterness and resentment can mess you up even if you're aware of your condition and that the only way to deal with it is actively fighting against it.

[Anonymous No.13028118]

>>13027846
Ayy cheers bud. Wish you well too

[Anonymous No.13028607]

what do i do if im like the underground man and don't want to get better? just kill myself?

[Anonymous No.13028739]

>>13023548
>but he mentions in Part I that he can't change because "there is nothing to change into" (I think).
What change COULD he make in his 40s? Dude's probably near the life expectancy age in 1800s Russia.

[Anonymous No.13029313]

>>13028739
You have some strange ideas about historical periods of humanity, young man.

[Anonymous No.13029521]

>>13023121
That last chapter... Kurosawa 2 shouldn't be canon.

[Anonymous No.13029685]

>>13029521
>Kurosawa 2

Is there more? I just finished the manga and casually found this thread so I felt compelled to post that picture.

[Anonymous No.13029988]

>>13015505

[Anonymous No.13030048]

>>13011721
This thread proves once again that /lit/ is one of the best and most sincere boards when it tries.

Genuinely proud of anon itt.

[Anonymous No.13030769]

>>13028607
>Probably not even in his 20s

[Anonymous No.13031130]

>>13030769
I'm 25

[Anonymous No.13032210]

>>13031130
Then it might be too late.

[Anonymous No.13033233]

>>13019264
was in a best books list and sounded edgy...

[Anonymous No.13033277]

>>13015505

This is the state of every non Chad male in western society

[Anonymous No.13033521]

>>13033277
>This is the state of every non Chad male in western society
Don't ruin the fucking thread you piece of shit.

[Anonymous No.13034437]

>>13011721
kys incel

[Anonymous No.13034478]

>>13015976
I hate that in all of these self improvement posts "making it" is either implicitly or explicitly codified as the obtaining of a beautiful woman; presumably by being physically fit and with all the trappings of financial success: a good job, a nice house, a fast car, etc. In these posts, the goal to aspire to is always the middle class ideal; without meaning to, and with genuine sincerity, these motivational posts repeat (sometimes subtly but with disturbing regularity) the same materialist drivel Hollywood and advertisements constantly bombard you with at every conceivable opportunity. There really is no escaping the propaganda.

[Sage No.13034864]

>>13025451
No. Everyone throws out opportunities at some points in their lives. This is the basis of regret, an emotion I’m sure 100% of people are familiar with. The key is to systematically take more and more opportunities as they come, learning from the past through regret. Regret is a positive thing if twisted correctly.

[Anonymous No.13034961]

>>13015976
Based and redpilled

[Anonymous No.13035411]

>>13028607
Why don’t you want to get better? Because you think it’s not worth it or that you can’t do it? Or both? How is a more pleasant life not “worth” it? And if it isn’t, what is worth it? Is life worth living? It’s difficult for me to not always come to one conclusion: yes. For even if your life is one of perpetual suffering, it still does no good to cut it short. And don’t pretend like committing suicide is somehow for the greater good, or that people will appreciate you being gone, or if there are no people that it doesn’t matter, or you ran out of hope or have some handicap or you can’t get laid. So what? Deal with it pussy. Spend it miserable, spend it happily, spend it with a heavy dose of both, but fucking spend it dude. You’ve been given the ultimate gift. And not in some religious bullshitty way. Death is the ultimate authority. It is the arbiter of existence. All things ripped from death’s grips return unto it. Your existence happens, as far as we can tell, only once in the universe. To throw that away on purpose would be a tragedy with no parallel. To squash such a rare thing is savagely unreasonable.

[Anonymous No.13035416]

>>13034478
This

[Anonymous No.13035583]

>>13026850
The think the Underground Man works so well as a critique since he at once reacts against the social context he exists in but nevertheless is ironically such a strong product of it, and this leads to his sad state. Remember that he remarks about how he was once so strongly influenced by romanticism and books, and like the rising individualism of the time he has such a strong desire for recognition as a subject for those around him is which is always denied. You can see many times he imagines things as they would occur in a romantic novel like in Schiller, only for real events to take the opposite course.

[Anonymous No.13036333]

>>13034478
Do you have a better self-improvement plan?

[Anonymous No.13036417]

>>13033277
Dude, trust me, I'm the closest thing to a Chad you'll see and I feel the same, I just don't dwell on it constantly.

[Anonymous No.13036431]

Because like most suicidal wrecks, he was a huge pussy who actually enjoyed wallowing in self-pity.

[Anonymous No.13036884]

He's living out of spite, clearly.

[Anonymous No.13037250]

>>13036417
Wonder if the "normies" in the second part of the book are affected by the same thing but we're just better at putting on a performance/acting normal

the book is about the encroachment of modernity on the human mind and normies (it pains me to say) are human too

[Anonymous No.13037313]

>>13035411
>Why don’t you want to get better?

spite lol

[Anonymous No.13037859]

>>13036333
The concept of self improvement, as interpreted by most self help books, is often synonymous with improving skills to increase one's ability to participate within society in a way that maximizes social status and financial success. To do the opposite - to reject integration within society - one would likely also reject any and all of the common socially imposed methods for, and metrics of, success. So no, I cannot offer a better self improvement plan, because personal achievement is socially constructed by the society in which we live; you either conform to it, reject the concept entirely, or compromise by defining your own standards for success, with the knowledge that your worldview has been strongly influenced by the culture that surrounds you.

[Anonymous No.13038526]

Do you guys really think "self-pity" was one of the underground lads traits? I always felt like he was pitying the society for not understand him and his "higher morals".

[Anonymous No.13038582]

>>13038526
It's both.

[Anonymous No.13039762]

why does underground man takes his revenge on an innocent girl and not the bullies he was hanging out with?

[Anonymous No.13039834]

>>13039762
He wanted easy prey, and there'snt an easier prey than a teenage prostitue

[Anonymous No.13040223]

>>13015976
You can't do it by your own. You need to be poor in spirit.

[Anonymous No.13040481]

>>13016986
That’s such a good... adjective.
Tell me more about this MPC forum.

[Anonymous No.13040525]

>>13021286
Not at all, that’s just some tumblr level BS. no one looks at the bum who lives in a trailer and has more respect for him because he overcame more mentally then the guy who is well groomed, has 6 kids, a business, and attends church weekly.

[Anonymous No.13040534]

>>13022533
What would you do differently? I’m in my early 20’s and want to be motivated and inspired.

[Anonymous No.13041084]

You know in my early 20's I used to think the idea of a point of no return was nonsense
just a few years later at 26 people straight up started treating me differently, looking at me like I was the unabomber
it's really upsetting

[Anonymous No.13041290]

>>13040525
Right. But what matters isn't how anyone looks at the bum. It's the interior fuckinnn thing

[Anonymous No.13041933]

>>13037250
>I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.

I don't know man, kinda hard to tell when you're isolated and it appears everyone is part of something you're not. Or if everyone is just so much better at faking it.

[Anonymous No.13042016]

>>13037250
I'm the guy you replied to and my isolation is in a sense self made, I'm far removed from society, the only real good thing about it all is that I am good looking, can be charming if I try and people (mostly women) like me generally speaking.

[Anonymous No.13042038]

>>13039762
The girl was far younger than him, was also foreign, didn't know much about life generally speaking and she was naive.
He exploited that for his own purposes, not necessarily out of spite but simply because he wanted to feel like a man, a leader, a charmer, he knew he had a way with words and he found joy in slicing into all of her lies that she so carefully but childishly surrounded herself with to forget about her own reality. In essence she didn't have a chance and was part of the lowest class in society, standing even below him, which was rare. As the other anon said "easy prey" for his desires to dominate and then forget about someone.
He wanted to be wanted and desired and when he insulted her with the 5 Rubel note, the finality of his insult and her anger and pain were something he could relate to, he betrayed her and now he did not want to live with the betrayal but it was too late in the end. He had also felt betrayed so often and he could never fix his own hurt ego, nobody ever came after him when he was crying inwardly and so he wanted to see if he could make others feel the same, but at the same time he was conflicted and wanted to offer kindness after he had suceeded.

[Anonymous No.13042350]

>>13027401
And?

[Anonymous No.13043222]

>>13011881
Stop typing like that, it makes me want to fuck you

[Anonymous No.13043229]

>>13011926
This TBK encapsulates all of Dostoevskys themes. You'll probably be bored by it, it's not actually that good but it has a lot of moments

[Anonymous No.13043489]

>>13043222
based. nice trips, based man