In the last analysis, Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is an exercise in paradoxalizing.[1] Here is the first sentence of a prefatory note signed by himself as the book’s real author: “The author of the diary and the diary itself are, of course, imaginary.”[2] He proceeds by assuring the reader that “such persons” must perforce exist in Russia of the day. And here is the last, as well as matching, paragraph of the “diary” in question:

The “notes” of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop here.[3]

Although Dostoevsky is the indubitable author of the “notes” that form the “diary” in question, he unexpectedly adopts the lordly “we” in the last paragraph. Thus he is imaginary as the author of the “diary,” but very real as the editor of his own book. Which is why he calls the imaginary author of the “diary” a paradoxalist even though there is nothing paradoxical in his conduct. If anything, he is only peculiar, if not outright weird. The only paradox lies in Dostoevsky’s refusal to identify himself with the hero of his book. Or is it only reluctance?

Footnotes

1. Translated by Constance Garnett, Dublin: Roads, 2013 (first published in 1864).

2. Op. cit., p. 9.

3. Op. cit., p. 141.