Dostoyevsky

The meaning of “Notes from Underground” to the artistic world is difficult to overestimate. As mentioned by L.P. Grosman: “’Notes from Underground’ – is one of the most exposing compositions of Dostoyevsky. Never has it happened again that he opens up in such fullness all of his most intimate thoughts, not meant for show secrets of his heart” (Grosman, 299). Becoming the prelude to other great works of Dostoyevsky, “Notes from Underground” influenced world literature, not only Russian literary growth. Merezhkovskii thought that the main difference between Dostoyevsky’s and Nietzsche’s “last freedoms” is that Dostoyevsky, growing “underground” ideas in his characters, but not completing them still tried to “grasp” onto Russian orthodoxy, while the other – praised the man: “Just as Nietzsche […] Dostoyevsky considers the last gift of freedom to be the man-god, the antichrist, with the difference in the two being that Nietzsche blesses this gift, and Dostoyevsky curses it” (Merezhkovskii, 217 – 218).
By the thoughts of Berdyaev, if before “Notes from Underground” Dostoyevsky was no more than a:

humanist, full of compassion for the ‘poor people’, the ‘humiliated and insulted’, the characters of the ‘House of the Dead’, then from ‘Notes from Underground’ begins the brilliant ideological dialectic of Dostoyevsky. He is no longer simply a psychologist, he is a metaphysician; he explores, to the depths, the tragedies of human spirit. He is no longer a humanist by the old meaning of the word; He has completely torn away from Belinsky’s humanism. (Berdyaev, 36)

At the same time Berdyaev did not share this opinion with Shestov about Dostoyevsky being an exclusive underground psychologist: “Dostoyevsky possesses underground psychology only in the moment of the spiritual journey of man. He does not leave us in the hopeless circle of underground psychology, he removes us from it” (Berdyaev, 141). Losing humanistic faith in man, Dostoyevsky has no choice but to be loyal