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Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately in love with suffering.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

Literature

The story behind the card

In Notes from Underground (1864), the unnamed narrator, usually called the Underground Man, is a bitter retired civil servant in St Petersburg. He is arguing against an idea popular among Russian radicals, set out in Nikolay Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done? (1863): people always act in their own rational interest, so a society built on reason would make everyone happy. People want freedom more than comfort, he replies, and some will even choose suffering to prove it: “twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.”

Türkçe oku
İnsan bazen acıya olağanüstü bir tutkuyla âşıktır.
Fyodor Dostoyevski, Yeraltından Notlar

Yeraltından Notlar'ın (1864) adı hiç geçmeyen anlatıcısı, genellikle “Yeraltı Adamı” diye anılır: St. Petersburg'da yaşayan, hayata küsmüş, emekli bir memur. Karşı çıktığı düşünce, dönemin Rus radikalleri arasında yaygındı ve Nikolay Çernişevski'nin Ne Yapmalı? (1863) romanında dile getirilmişti: İnsan her zaman aklının gösterdiği çıkara göre davranır, bu yüzden akla dayanan bir toplum herkesi mutlu eder. Yeraltı Adamı'nın cevabı şudur: İnsan rahattan çok özgürlük ister, bunu kanıtlamak için acıyı bile seçebilir. Ona göre “iki kere ikinin beş etmesi de bazen pek hoş bir şeydir”.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Fyodor Dostoevsky
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