The Adolescent

The distinctive tone of the novel is set by the adolescent narrator himself, that is, by the fact of his being an adolescent, speaking in the first person and writing as an amateur. Dostoevsky’s notebooks show how carefully he weighed the question of point of view, and with what effect in mind. In September 1874, during the early stages of planning the novel, he notes: “In the first person it would be much more original, and show more love; also, it would require more artistic skill, and would be terribly bold, and shorter, easier to arrange; moreover, it would make the character of [the adolescent] as the main figure of the novel much clearer . . .” And a little further on: “A narrative in the first person is more original by virtue of the fact that the [adolescent] may very well keep skipping, in ultra-naïve fashion . . . to all kinds of anecdotes and details, proper to his development and immaturity, but quite impossible for an author conducting his narrative in regular fashion.” A few days later, he repeats: “In the first person it would be more naïve, incomparably more original, and, in its deviations from a smooth and systematic narrative, even more delightful.”

Dostoevsky had considered writing both Crime and Punishment and The Idiot in the first person, but had abandoned the idea. He came back to it in The Adolescent, which is his only novel with a first-person protagonist after Notes from Underground. The two have more than a little in common. For instance, both narrators, though they are constantly aware of the reader, deny any literary or artistic purpose and claim to be writing only for themselves. “I, however, am writing only for myself,” asserts the man from underground, “and I declare once and for all that even if I write as if I were addressing readers, that is merely a form, because it’s easier for me to write that way. It’s a form, just an empty form, and I shall never have any readers. I have already declared as much . . .” The adolescent, Arkady Dolgoruky, begins his “notes” with the declaration that he is “not writing for the same reason everyone else writes, that is, for the sake of the reader’s praises.” Later he says:

. . . The reader will perhaps be horrified at the frankness of my confession and will ask himself simple-heartedly: how is it that the author doesn’t blush? I reply that I’m not writing for publication; I’ll probably have a reader only in some ten years, when everything is already so apparent, past and proven that there will no longer be any point in blushing. And therefore, if I sometimes address the reader in my notes, it’s merely a device. My reader is a fantastic character.

Arkady also turns out to share some of the underground man’s opinions, for instance about rational egoism and social progress. At a meeting of young radicals, he delivers a perfect “underground” tirade:

Things are not at all clear in our society, gentlemen. I mean, you deny God, you deny great deeds, what sort of deaf, blind, dull torpor can make me act this way [i.e. nobly], if it’s more profitable for me otherwise? You say, “A reasonable attitude towards mankind is also to my profit”; but what if I find all these reasonablenesses unreasonable, all these barracks and phalansteries? What the devil do I care about them, or about the future, when I live only once in this world? Allow me to know my own profit myself: it’s more amusing. What do I care what happens to this mankind of yours in a thousand years, if, by your code, I get no love for it, no future life, no recognition of my great deed? No, sir, in that case I shall live for myself in the most impolite fashion, and they can all go to blazes!

The unaware reader would find it hard to tell which of the two is speaking.

But the differences between them are far more important. And the main difference is precisely Arkady’s adolescence. The underground man is trapped in the endless alternation of “Long live the underground!” and “Devil take the underground!” and has sat in his corner like that for forty years. Arkady Dolgoruky is young, fresh, resilient. Time and again he falls asleep after some disastrous blunder or crushing humiliation, sleeps soundly and dreamlessly, and wakes up feeling heartier than ever. The underground man is inwardly fixed; Arkady is all inner movement, constantly going beyond himself. His experiences do not bind him as the underground man’s do; they liberate him.