How Notes from Underground drew on Confessions
A documented line of influence: Fyodor Dostoevsky demonstrably engaged Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Confessions
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1782
EnlightenmentThe influenced
Notes from Underground
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1864
The Age of the NovelRelevance
9/10
On Notes from Underground’s page
- Notes from Underground is an anti-Confessions — Dostoevsky's first title for it was literally "A Confession," and the whole monologue is Rousseau's self-revelation soured into spite
- The Underground Man warps Rousseau's "man of nature and truth" into a hyper-conscious liar, and accuses Rousseau himself of confessing out of vanity
- Read Rousseau first and the parody lands: you'll hear the earnest voice the Underground Man is corroding from within
On Confessions’s page
- Dostoevsky first announced Notes from Underground under the title "A Confession" — it is Rousseau's project turned inside out
- Where Rousseau offers earnest self-revelation, the Underground Man parodies it, charging that Rousseau lied about himself out of vanity
- Even Rousseau's "l'homme de la nature et de la vérité" survives — distorted into a sneer in the spiteful mouth of a man who knows he is anything but natural or true