Episode 89, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (Part IV - Body and Blood)

The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast

Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Courses

4.8 • 612 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2020

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Introduction

I write this in secret, hoping that these notes be passed on outside Russia. The author of the diary and the diary itself may, of course, be imaginary. Nevertheless, it is clear that such persons as the Underground Man do exist in our society.

We have tried to expose him to the public but so far there has been no luck. If only people knew of the power of the Underground. He is one of the representatives of a generation still living, a generation waiting patiently for the right moment. His notes were discovered long after his passing, written on tatty paper in cheap ink, covered in cigarette burns and dust….

Don't listen to the ants who would rather slave over the anthill than accept the truth. These notes are yours now, spread them to every corner of the globe. Long live the Underground!

Contents

Part I. The Life of Fyodor Dostoevsky

Part II. Underground

Part III. Apropos of the Wet Snow

Part IV. Body and Blood

Part V. Further Analysis and Discussion

Links

Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky (pdf).

Teaching Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature (book).

Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time (Joseph Frank).

The Case against Rational Egoism in Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, James P. Scanlan (paper).

Symbolism of Rats and Mice in Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Michael Haltresht (paper).

Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky - Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (book).

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Pan Pan
0:02.0	Psychist
0:04.0	Hello and welcome to part 4 where we're going to end notes from underground.
0:23.8	I've just sprung that upon you both.
0:26.0	I was definitely ready.
0:28.6	Ollie, do you want to give us a quick summary?
0:30.7	Put me down, Andy.
0:33.3	What's everything that's happened so far in a few words, Ollie?
0:36.3	Okay, so the story of Notes from Underground, part D.
0:40.4	So far, we have the underground man, or affectionately referred to as Mr. Man, who has been
0:46.4	humiliated by a six-foot officer who he didn't start a fight with.
0:50.7	He then didn't have a duel with his friend for Fitchkin and didn't slap his kind of
0:55.1	friend Zerkov in a party. He has then gone to a brothel and met Liza, who he has completely
1:00.1	humiliated and belittled in a horrific manner. He gave her his address in a moment of kindness or
1:06.6	vulnerability. Air quotes from all of those. Yeah, there, sorry. And now he has gone home.
1:11.2	Yeah.
1:11.5	So we're going to find out what his home life is like.
1:13.9	I'm sure it will be domestic bliss and see what happens to the final kind of few chapters of this story in which we will see if our underground man is just going to go full goth and be miserable for the whole story or if something else may happen.
1:29.3	I think I know who the underground man is. I think all along there's a little bit of the underground man in all of us.
1:34.3	That would be a really inspirational thing say if he wasn't a horrible person.
1:39.3	There is a little bit of the underground man in the...
1:42.3	That's the end of the story. So that's it.
	...

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