RUSS 402(S) Senior Seminar: Dostoevsky's Underground Man in Russian Culture
What does it mean to be a disaffected outsider, one who questions everything about the status quo? Why do we sometimes go out of our way to reject reason and progress in our lives? To the irascible and nay-saying narrator of Dostoevsky's novella Notes from the Underground, the mere fact that we somehow feel compelled to ask these question at all testifies to our deeply-seated unease with idealistic visions. Few works in Russian literature have provoked such completely opposing interpretations. On the one hand, many writers have regarded the Underground man as Dostoevsky's mouthpiece for a Russian nationalist attack on both the rationalism prized in the Western philosophical tradition and socialism itself; on the other, some critics have argued that the Underground man's diatribes against economic materialism are a blistering critique of capitalism, and have asserted that the novella is wholly consistent with a Marxist point of view. We will examine both perspectives on Dostoevsky's work beginning with its publication in 1864 to the present day, focusing on subsequent manifestations of Dostoevsky's rebellious anti-hero in the literary works of Tolstoy, Mayakovsky, Solzhenitsyn, and Venedikt Erofeev and the political essays of Berdiaev, Soloviev, and Tatiana Tolstaya, among others. The course will be conducted entirely in Russian. Evaluation will be based on class participation, graded essays, a final paper and exam. Prerequisite: Russian 202 or permission of the instructor.