NOTES FROM 

UNDERGROUND 
 
 
 
 
PREFATORY FOOTNOTE: 
 
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. -​ Fyodor Dostoevsky