A translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground” that does two things in particular: aims to recreate the energy of the original and happens in the 21st century.
The catalyst for its creation was simple: seeing countless out-of-context badly translated quotes from the novella, as well as the generally solemn “philosophical” aura around it. The book is, on the contrary, a comedy, but archaic translations completely bury its manic, self-contradictory energy, so it becomes hard, almost impossible to see that behind “the wise voice from the 19th century.”
So, the idea is to rip it off from that aspect completely and hopefully look at it from a new angle. It still follows the original text faithfully when it comes to wording, syntax, speech cadence, etc. It is a translation, only with modernised setting and historical detail, so we could also see how the same psychology manifests now.
In a letter to his brother Mikhail, Dostoevsky himself described the tone as “strange, harsh and wild.” It’s easy to be enamoured by the poetry and confuse the satire on an incoherent and contradictory worldview with a philosophical treatise. “Notes from Underground” is a deadpan cringe comedy about an exhausting and ridiculous armchair philosopher who mistakes neurotic paralysis for sophisticated intelligence, who would absolutely post unhinged screeds on Substack at 3am.
Thus we have what we call “Posts from Underground.”