Letters from the Underworld (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
- First Published: 1864
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Impressionistic realism
- Time of Work: Mid-nineteenth century
- Setting: St. Petersburg, Russia
- Principal Characters: The Narrator, Simonov, Zverkov, Liza
- Genres: Long fiction, Impressionistic literature
- Subjects: Philosophy or philosophers, Nineteenth century, Prostitution or prostitutes, Antiheroes, Letter writing, Life, philosophy of, Students or student life, Russia or Russian people, Parties
- Locales: St. Petersburg, Russia
The Story:
The narrator, addressing an imaginary group of acquaintances, declared that after many years of life as a rude and spiteful government official, and after many years as a recluse, he was not really bitter in his heart. Something perverse in him, his acute consciousness, had led him to find pleasure in the pain of humiliating experiences. From experience, he advised against intellectual acuteness. The intellectual, when faced with revenge, surrounds himself with a legion of doubts; then he would crawl into his self-imposed rat’s nest and torture himself with petty...
[The entire page is 2758 words long]
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