![]() There is also talk of the foul smell that a few of the dead people complain about is a moral stench, and not a literal one. In old days, once a year at any rate a fool would recognize that he was a fool, but nowadays not a bit of it.” ![]() ”The wisest of all, in my opinion, is he who can, if only once a month, call himself a fool - a faculty unheard of nowadays. Of people taking themselves too seriously. There’s a constant theme of the changing times, of a cruder and crueller society emerging. The last memory of the young man that was buried was a German (Schultz) doctor telling him that there was a complication. He sees different from your average Dostoevsky character. Spend some time over at r/PoliticalHumor for endless examples. This seems especially true today, especially in ideological spheres. “ Nowadays humor and fine style have disappeared, and abuse is accepted as wit.” Ok, I'm only a few pages in but I really like the story so far.Īlready on the first page there is a line that stood out to me His two warts on the forehead looking almost like horns sets him apart, it's a metaphor too on the nose perhaps but effective. I think the protagonist is haunted by the fact that we can explain things, but do we really understand them? He says "we can't separate the fools from the wise". We've seen a resurgence of that ourselves in our time. He also speaks to the tearing down of values with the line "abuse accepted as wit". When areas of study become politicized we really are in serious trouble. It reads almost like a critique of scientism that are now plaguing the social sciences and humanities in general. This man is concerned, and rightfully so, that bureaucrats are more interested in military matters and engineers that are more interested in political science and philosophy. It takes the guise of the opposite of what the man in notes from the underground is saying. What does matter, at least to me, is that we have a sort of downtrodden soldier figure here that is having a spout of misanthropy. Is he really an alcoholic? Does it matter? This is often the case with philosophy where we remember and celebrate the question but very rarely the answer. He starts off with a version of 'when did you stop beating your wife?' Sometimes the question is more important than the answer. What is this secret?Īnyway, as always this story was better now when I read it a second time. The narrator sarcastically notes that they were not ashamed. But when they realised a man was there they were suddenly silent. They resolved to be unashamed and said even more vile stuff. Similarly these people will never understand. It reminds me of Jesus saying "Even if someone rises from the grave they will not believe". And yet they consider his advice "mystical". They had a chance, as the Philosopher noted, to look back and consider their lives. Lewis's book, The Great Divorce, where the dead similarly don't realise they are in Purgatory and continue living their spiteful lives. What kind of bored man goes to a funeral? What does that say about what he considers other events are like? "I went in search of diversion and ended up at a funeral". It took my years for this type of Russian humour to grow on me. The first thing I notice is that it is actually funny. Then I read something like Bobok and I'm reassured. Sometimes when I've not read Dostoevsky in a while I begin to wonder why I like him.
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