Analysis
The first chapter of “Apropos of the Wet Snow” reveals
a good deal about the Underground Man’s experience with and attitude
toward literature, particularly the Romantic literature written
in and before the 1840s. We learn that the
Underground Man has been an avid reader all his life, and that reading
is one of the few pursuits and situations with which he feels comfortable.
The Underground Man admires “literary language” and wishes that
he inhabited a society where that kind of language was part of daily
interactions.
The Underground Man’s relationship with literature, however,
is highly ambiguous. He is ashamed of the “romanticism” that leads him
to want to befriend his coworkers. Though he seems to admire the
Russian brand of Romanticism, he also describes it as somewhat hypocritical
and absurd. Dostoevsky himself disapproved of the degree to which
Russian intellectuals of his time adopted western European culture
and ideals. As the Underground Man explains in his description of
Russian Romantics, the “translunary” qualities of French and German
Romanticism do not translate to the Russian version of Romanticism,
which is too practical and honest. Though the Underground Man is
conscious enough to understand this difference, he does not necessarily
understand that many of the qualities that he admires in literature—and
that he subsequently attempts to transfer to his own life—are European
and untranslatable. He knows that the soldiers from the tavern will
not accept a duel and will laugh at his use of “literary language,”
but he attributes this to their lack of intelligence and sensitivity.
Dostoevsky believed that European culture had been artificially imposed
upon Russian culture. The Underground Man believes that he should
live by European cultural rules, so he attempts to apply them to
life in Russia—a project that Dostoevsky believes can only lead
to frustration and failure. Though European culture is alien to Russia,
it has replaced Russian culture in places like St. Petersburg. The
city is an artificial place—the Underground Man calls it “intentional
and abstract” —with no natural culture of its own, supporting an
artificial, untranslatable culture that can only alienate its inhabitants.
The Underground Man’s interaction with the soldier, however pathetic
it may appear, has its roots in Romantic European ideas of justice
and revenge. The Underground Man wants to walk with the officer
as an equal, but when he tries to put this progressive idea into practice,
he fails. The confrontation with the officer is a parody of a similar
passage in Chernyshevsky’s novel What Is to Be Done? Dostoevsky
implies that literature, however rational, cannot supply its readers
with a model for living. The Underground Man’s desire for the officer
to throw him out of the window indicates the degree to which the
Underground Man is starved for any social interaction. He is so
alienated that he craves any interaction, regardless
of whether that interaction is positive or negative. The Underground Man’s
failure to achieve a satisfying interaction with the officer is typical
of his inability to ever achieve human contact on conventional terms.
His behavior with the officer is just as he describes it in “Underground”:
he wants to act, but resists the urge and spends months obsessing
over the offense before finally exacting a limited, anticlimactic,
and pathetic revenge.
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