Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground in the light of literary tradition: A semiotic approach

In the paper, Dostoevsky's novella Notes from the Underground is interpreted through the conceptualization of literary tradition within a semiotic framework, from three interconnected angles: the interpretation of (1) the discursive forms of negation (apophatism); (2) the semantization of the idea of 'plenitude' (fullness, totality, completeness); (3) the text's concentrated reflection on the semiotic nature of the modelled world and its (meta) poetic language. Apophatic poetics calls attention to the conflictual relationship between the signifier and the signified, including the paradoxical situation in which intensive sign articulation/expression is given to some substance considered to be unexpressable. Signification here strives to gain epistemological knowledge about the potentials of the existence of personality through its definition in terms of non-existence or ambivalent, unproductive existence. The character definition, putting in centre stage within the problematics of personhood and personality the protagonist's desire to achieve the state of plenitude, also gains a semiotic orientation through the conflict between being endowed with vs. being deprived of individual semantic attributes accorded to the object of cognition (individualization vs. generalization). The paper examines the semantic modelling of 'plenitude' and explains the various means that this model is discredited by the object's lack of individual semantic attributes in (a) causality; (b) temporal segmentation; (c) the forms of exhaustive detailing. Individual object identification is also interpreted as preserving oppositions at the levels of literary character (his contradictions) and abstract notions (theses and antitheses) in which conflicting elements constitute an organic whole. This can be traced back to monodualistic antinomies deeply rooted in the Russian philosophy of religion.