Turgenev: On the Eve, First Love. George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss. Birth of Chekhov. Dickens: Great Expectations (to 1861).
1861
Time commences publication. The Insulted and Injured.
Herzen: My Past and Thoughts (to 1867).
1862.
Travels in Europe. Affair with Polina Suslova.
Turgenev: Fathers and Children. Hugo: Les Miserables. Chernyshevsky arrested.
1863
Further travel abroad. Time closed. Winter Notes on Summer Impressions.
Tolstoy: The Cossacks. Chernyshevsky: What Is to Be Done?
1864
Launch of Epoch. Death of wife and brother. Notes from Underground.
Nekrasov: Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia? (to 1876). Dickens: Our Mutual Friend (to 1865).
1865
Epoch closes. Severe financial difficulties.
Leskov: Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.
1865-9
Tolstoy: War and Peace.
NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND
DATE
AUTHOR'S LIFE
LITERARY CONTEXT
1866
Crime and Punishment. The Gambler.
The Contemporary and The Russian Word suppressed.
1867
Marries Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina. Flees abroad to escape creditors.
Turgenev: Smoke.
1868
The Idiot. Birth and death of daughter, Sonya. Visits Switzerland and Italy.
Gorky born.
1869
Birth of daughter Liubov.
Goncharov: The Precipice. Flaubert: L'Education sentimentale.
1870
The Eternal Husband.
Death of Dickens and Herzen.
1871
Returns to St. Petersburg. Birth of son, Fyodor.
Ostrovsky: The Forest.
1871-2
Demons (The Devils/ The Possessed),
1872
Summer in Staraia Russa -becomes normal summer residence. Becomes editor of The Citizen.
Leskov: Cathedral Folk. Marx's Das Kapital published in Russia. George Eliot: Middlemarch.
i873
Starts Diary of a Writer.
.874
Resigns from The Citizen. Seeks treatment for emphysema in Bad Ems.
1875
The Adolescent (A Raw Youth). Birth of son, Alexey.
Saltykov-Shchedrin: The
Golovlyovs (to 1880).
1875-8
Tolstoy: Anna Karenina.
1876
1877
Turgenev: Virgin Soil.
1878
Death of Alexey. Visits Optina monastery with Vladimir Solovyov.
1879
1879-80
The Brothers Karamazov.
Tolstoy's religious crisis, during which he writes A Confession.
1880
Speech at Pushkin celebrations in Moscow.
Death of Flaubert and George Eliot.
1881
Dies of lung hemorrhage. Buried at Alexander Nevsky Monastery, St. Petersburg.
James: The Portrait of a Lady.
NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND
PART ONE
UNDERGROUND
I*
I am a sick man…I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, I don't know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not being treated and never have been, though I respect medicine and doctors. What's more, I am also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicine. (I'm sufficiently educated not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, sir, I refuse to be treated out of wickedness. Now, you will certainly not be so good as to understand this. Well, sir, but I understand it. I will not, of course, be able to explain to you precisely who is going to suffer in this case from my wickedness; I know perfectly well that I will in no way "muck things up" for the doctors by not taking their treatment; I know better than anyone that by all this I am harming only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't get treated, it is out of wickedness. My liver hurts; well, then let it hurt even worse!
I've been living like this for a long time - about twenty years. I'm forty now. I used to be in the civil service; I no longer am. I was a wicked official. I was rude, and took pleasure in it. After all, I didn't accept bribes, so I had to reward myself *Both the author of the notes and the Notes themselves are, of course, fictional. Nevertheless, such persons as the writer of such notes not only may but even must exist in our society, taking into consideration the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed. I wished to bring before the face of the public, a bit more conspicuously than usual, one of the characters of a time recently passed. He is one representative of a generation that is still living out its life. In this fragment, entitled "Underground," this person introduces himself, his outlook, and seeks, as it were, to elucidate the reasons why he appeared and had to appear among us. In the subsequent fragment will come this person's actual "notes" about certain events in his life.