W: LP: LG: FD: NFU

At our first meeting, the moderator of our literary group (currently studying Dostoevsky's Notes From The Underground) summarized our first meeting with these words:

"If you missed the discussion you may want to pay attention to some of the
terms that came up tonight: the repeated metaphors of the wall linked to
the mathematical equation 2 X 2=4, the discussion of the satirical and
humorous tone on the part of Dostoevsky that contrasts with the dark
loneliness in the story of the narrator (the underground man) and how the
novel unfolds on these two separate levels: how the novel is at once a
sophisticated humorous attack on the thinking of the liberals in Russia at
the time (who were the precursors of what came to be known as the
Bolsheviks), and how it portrays man in his fallenness on another level. A
description of this technique has been borrowed from music, "polyphonic,"
meaning music in which two or more different voices or melodies are occuring
simultaneously. A feature of Dostoevsky's genius is that he writes
"polyphonically." We discovered how the humor comes out as the passages are
read aloud. We noticed his repeated use of the terms "action figures" and
"ingenuous persons" and speculated as to what could be meant by these groups
and how Dostoevsky has them relating to the "wall" and "2 X 2 = 4". We
discussed what the phrase in the foreward, on the first page, might mean:
how the underground man shows "the dialectic of the isolated consciousness"
and how it might refer to the narrator's bragging about lying and then
denying he ever lied in the next paragraph (as one example). We looked at
the metaphor of the mouse seeking revenge in the reading, how it stands for
the narrator, and we discussed the narrator's assertions that his guilty
awareness of his sins, his "nastinesses" as he calls them, and then uses
them to gnaw and eat at himself inwardly until the pain becomes a "decided
pleasure" and how this differs from the idea of the pleasure in the sin
itself, because it is a sort of pleasure in the misery and guilt of the sin.
Thus, the underground man is not repudiating morals, he accepts the
morals, but rejoices, indeed eventually comes to take pleasure in the
degradation and shame that result from breaking them. This seems to be an
aspect of Dostoevsky's depiction of our fallenness."

There were other points discussed and much interesting conversation beyond the above summary, but the summary is fair.

I am still thinking and working out how I am going to express all the ideas and fancies in my mind that are needing expression. Here are the bare beginnings of my comments on the piece of literature that we are studying:

Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The writer laughingly begins a caricature of himself and humanity in general. By contrasting humans as they really are with how the Romantics, Liberals, and various related philosophers would want humanity to be, I have discovered a few of my own presuppositions that I had not before questioned. Perhaps at a later time I will explore some of the ideas and philosophies that have, until now, been the basis of some of my world-view assumptions. But besides all this philosophical wrangling and sardonic criticism made by the writer in the voice of the narrator, the narrator reminds me of some my own mental entanglements in my earlier years. I would say that the narrator is possibly a bit more neurotic than I was. Or maybe I was that neurotic?!:) Anyway, and to use colloquialisms, I can relate; more on this later as well.