Customer Reviews

The Best Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Including "Notes from the Underground" (Modern Library Classics)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dostoevsky is without question one of the great geniuses of world-literature. This is apparent both in his great 'novels' and also in his shorter - works. Here we have a number of these works including what is perhaps a signature- work for him 'The Underground Man'. For in the anger, spite, contradictory and paradoxical relation to himself and the world, the principal character of this work reflects some of the deepest elements in Dostoevsky's soul and character. It might even be said that modern Existensial philosophy has one of its truest beginnings in this work. For in this reflection upon self and world, the anti- hero hero teaches us how contempt and pride, love and hate , freedom and imprisonment are mingled and conflict in one troubled soul, and life.
In all Dostoevsky's the spirit of dialogue reigns. Even when there is monologue there is some kind of internal conversation going on within the self. And with Dostoevsky this conversation is deep and probing, ironic and humorous. This is especially with those characters who seem to present some kind of revelation of human extremity at its worst. The great story 'The Gambler' is another such Dostoevsky work where salvation and contempt, seem to go inevitably with each other.
As with the greatest of writers Dostoevsky seems to reveal to us something new about human nature, something no one ever knew before until this writer brought it into existence. These stories are works of a genius, however monstrous at times this genius seems to be.