Notes From Underground Read online

smell about her. I am told that the Petersburg climate is bad for me, and

  that with my small means it is very expensive to live in Petersburg. I

  know all that better than all these sage and experienced counsellors and

  monitors. ... But I am remaining in Petersburg; I am not going away

  from Petersburg! I am not going away because ... ech! Why, it is

  absolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away.

  But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?

  Answer: Of himself.

  Well, so I will talk about myself.

  II

  I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why

  I could not even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many

  times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear,

  gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness--a real thorough-going

  illness. For man's everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to

  have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the

  amount which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy

  nineteenth century, especially one who has the fatal ill-luck to inhabit

  Petersburg, the most theoretical and intentional town on the whole

  terrestrial globe. (There are intentional and unintentional towns.) It

  would have been quite enough, for instance, to have the consciousness

  by which all so-called direct persons and men of action live. I bet you

  think I am writing all this from affectation, to be witty at the expense of

  men of action; and what is more, that from ill-bred affectation, I am

  clanking a sword like my officer. But, gentlemen, whoever can pride

  himself on his diseases and even swagger over them?

  Though, after all, everyone does do that; people do pride themselves

  on their diseases, and I do, may be, more than anyone. We will not

  dispute it; my contention was absurd. But yet I am firmly persuaded that

  a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a

  disease. I stick to that. Let us leave that, too, for a minute. Tell me this:

  why does it happen that at the very, yes, at the very moments when I am

  most capable of feeling every refinement of all that is "sublime and

  beautiful," as they used to say at one time, it would, as though of design,

  happen to me not only to feel but to do such ugly things, such that ...

  Well, in short, actions that all, perhaps, commit; but which, as though

  purposely, occurred to me at the very time when I was most conscious

  that they ought not to be committed. The more conscious I was of goodness

  and of all that was "sublime and beautiful," the more deeply I sank

  into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether. But the

  chief point was that all this was, as it were, not accidental in me, but as

  though it were bound to be so. It was as though it were my most normal

  condition, and not in the least disease or depravity, so that at last all desire

  in me to struggle against this depravity passed. It ended by my almost

  believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal

  condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that

  struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my

  life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now,

  perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret

  abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on

  some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had

  committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be

  undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing

  and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of

  shameful accursed sweetness, and at last--into positive real enjoyment!

  Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of

  this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel

  such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too

  intense consciousness of one's own degradation; it was from feeling

  oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that

  it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never

  could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left

  you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to

  change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because

  perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.

  And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord

  with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and

  with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that

  consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely

  nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness,

  that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were

  any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he

  actually is a scoundrel. But enough. ... Ech, I have talked a lot of

  nonsense, but what have I explained? How is enjoyment in this to be

  explained? But I will explain it. I will get to the bottom of it! That is why

  I have taken up my pen. ...

  I, for instance, have a great deal of AMOUR PROPRE. I am as suspicious

  and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf. But upon my word I

  sometimes have had moments when if I had happened to be slapped in

  the face I should, perhaps, have been positively glad of it. I say, in

  earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover even in that a

  peculiar sort of enjoyment--the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but in

  despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is

  very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position. And when

  one is slapped in the face--why then the consciousness of being rubbed

  into a pulp would positively overwhelm one. The worst of it is, look at it

  which way one will, it still turns out that I was always the most to blame

  in everything. And what is most humiliating of all, to blame for no fault

  of my own but, so to say, through the laws of nature. In the first place, to

  blame because I am cleverer than any of the people surrounding me. (I

  have always considered myself cleverer than any of the people surrounding

  me, and sometimes, would you believe it, have been positively

  ashamed of it. At any rate, I have all my life, as it were, turned my eyes

  away and never could look people straight in the face.) To blame, finally,

  because even if I had had magnanimity, I should only have had more

  suffering from the sense of its uselessness. I should certainly have never

  been able to do anything from being magnanimous--neither to forgive,

  for my assailant would perhaps have slapped me from the laws of nature,

  and one cannot forgive the laws of nature; nor to forget, for even if it were

  owing to the laws of nature, it is insulting all the same. Finally, even if I

  had wanted to be anything but magnanimous, had desired on the

  contrary to revenge myself on my assailant, I could
not have revenged

  myself on any one for anything because I should certainly never have

  made up my mind to do anything, even if I had been able to. Why

  should I not have made up my mind? About that in particular I want to

  say a few words.

  III

  With people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up for

  themselves in general, how is it done? Why, when they are possessed, let

  us suppose, by the feeling of revenge, then for the time there is nothing

  else but that feeling left in their whole being. Such a gentleman simply

  dashes straight for his object like an infuriated bull with its horns down,

  and nothing but a wall will stop him. (By the way: facing the wall, such

  gentlemen--that is, the "direct" persons and men of action--are genuinely

  nonplussed. For them a wall is not an evasion, as for us people who

  think and consequently do nothing; it is not an excuse for turning aside,

  an excuse for which we are always very glad, though we scarcely believe

  in it ourselves, as a rule. No, they are nonplussed in all sincerity. The

  wall has for them something tranquillising, morally soothing, final--

  maybe even something mysterious ... but of the wall later.)

  Well, such a direct person I regard as the real normal man, as his

  tender mother nature wished to see him when she graciously brought him

  into being on the earth. I envy such a man till I am green in the face. He

  is stupid. I am not disputing that, but perhaps the normal man should be

  stupid, how do you know? Perhaps it is very beautiful, in fact. And I am

  the more persuaded of that suspicion, if one can call it so, by the fact that

  if you take, for instance, the antithesis of the normal man, that is, the

  man of acute consciousness, who has come, of course, not out of the lap

  of nature but out of a retort (this is almost mysticism, gentlemen, but I

  suspect this, too), this retort-made man is sometimes so nonplussed in

  the presence of his antithesis that with all his exaggerated consciousness

  he genuinely thinks of himself as a mouse and not a man. It may be an

  acutely conscious mouse, yet it is a mouse, while the other is a man, and

  therefore, et caetera, et caetera. And the worst of it is, he himself, his very

  own self, looks on himself as a mouse; no one asks him to do so; and that

  is an important point. Now let us look at this mouse in action. Let us

  suppose, for instance, that it feels insulted, too (and it almost always does

  feel insulted), and wants to revenge itself, too. There may even be a

  greater accumulation of spite in it than in L'HOMME DE LA NATURE ET DE LA

  VERITE. The base and nasty desire to vent that spite on its assailant rankles

  perhaps even more nastily in it than in L'HOMME DE LA NATURE ET DE LA

  VERITE. For through his innate stupidity the latter looks upon his revenge

  as justice pure and simple; while in consequence of his acute consciousness

  the mouse does not believe in the justice of it. To come at last to the

  deed itself, to the very act of revenge. Apart from the one fundamental

  nastiness the luckless mouse succeeds in creating around it so many other

  nastinesses in the form of doubts and questions, adds to the one question

  so many unsettled questions that there inevitably works up around it a sort

  of fatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of the

  contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action who stand solemnly

  about it as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it till their healthy sides

  ache. Of course the only thing left for it is to dismiss all that with a wave

  of its paw, and, with a smile of assumed contempt in which it does not

  even itself believe, creep ignominiously into its mouse-hole. There in its

  nasty, stinking, underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed

  mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all,

  everlasting spite. For forty years together it will remember its injury down

  to the smallest, most ignominious details, and every time will add, of

  itself, details still more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting

  itself with its own imagination. It will itself be ashamed of its imaginings,

  but yet it will recall it all, it will go over and over every detail, it will

  invent unheard of things against itself, pretending that those things

  might happen, and will forgive nothing. Maybe it will begin to revenge

  itself, too, but, as it were, piecemeal, in trivial ways, from behind the

  stove, incognito, without believing either in its own right to vengeance,

  or in the success of its revenge, knowing that from all its efforts at revenge

  it will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom it revenges itself,

  while he, I daresay, will not even scratch himself. On its deathbed it will

  recall it all over again, with interest accumulated over all the years

  and ...

  But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in that

  conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years,

  in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one's

  position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of

  oscillations, of resolutions determined for ever and repented of again a

  minute later--that the savour of that strange enjoyment of which I have

  spoken lies. It is so subtle, so difficult of analysis, that persons who are a

  little limited, or even simply persons of strong nerves, will not understand

  a single atom of it. "Possibly," you will add on your own account

  with a grin, "people will not understand it either who have never received

  a slap in the face," and in that way you will politely hint to me that I, too,

  perhaps, have had the experience of a slap in the face in my life, and so I

  speak as one who knows. I bet that you are thinking that. But set your

  minds at rest, gentlemen, I have not received a slap in the face, though it

  is absolutely a matter of indifference to me what you may think about it.

  Possibly, I even regret, myself, that I have given so few slaps in the face

  during my life. But enough ... not another word on that subject of such

  extreme interest to you.

  I will continue calmly concerning persons with strong nerves who do

  not understand a certain refinement of enjoyment. Though in certain

  circumstances these gentlemen bellow their loudest like bulls, though

  this, let us suppose, does them the greatest credit, yet, as I have said

  already, confronted with the impossible they subside at once. The impossible

  means the stone wall! What stone wall? Why, of course, the laws of

  nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics. As soon as they

  prove to you, for instance, that you are descended from a monkey, then it

  is no use scowling, accept it for a fact. When they prove to you that in

  reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred

  thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this conclusion is the final

  solution of all so-called virtues and duties and all such prejudices and

  fancies, then you have just to accept it, there is no help for it, for twice

  two is a law of mathematics. Just try refut
ing it.

  "Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a

  case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your permission, she

  has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or

  dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all

  her conclusions. A wall, you see, is a wall ... and so on, and so on."

  Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and

  arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that

  twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by

  battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it

  down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone

  wall and I have not the strength.

  As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did

  contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as twice

  two makes four. Oh, absurdity of absurdities! How much better it is to

  understand it all, to recognise it all, all the impossibilities and the stone

  wall; not to be reconciled to one of those impossibilities and stone walls if

  it disgusts you to be reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable,

  logical combinations to reach the most revolting conclusions on the

  everlasting theme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself somehow

  to blame, though again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the

  least, and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into

  luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for you to

  feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never will have, an

  object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-

  sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing

  who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an

  ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.

  IV

  "Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding enjoyment in toothache next," you cry,

  with a laugh.

  "Well, even in toothache there is enjoyment," I answer. I had toothache

  for a whole month and I know there is. In that case, of course,

  people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not candid

  moans, they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole

  point. The enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans; if

  he did not feel enjoyment in them he would not moan. It is a good

  example, gentlemen, and I will develop it. Those moans express in the

  first place all the aimlessness of your pain, which is so humiliating to

  your consciousness; the whole legal system of nature on which you spit

  disdainfully, of course, but from which you suffer all the same while she

  does not. They express the consciousness that you have no enemy to

  punish, but that you have pain; the consciousness that in spite of all

  possible Wagenheims you are in complete slavery to your teeth; that if

  someone wishes it, your teeth will leave off aching, and if he does not,

  they will go on aching another three months; and that finally if you are

  still contumacious and still protest, all that is left you for your own

  gratification is to thrash yourself or beat your wall with your fist as hard as

  you can, and absolutely nothing more. Well, these mortal insults, these

  jeers on the part of someone unknown, end at last in an enjoyment which

  sometimes reaches the highest degree of voluptuousness. I ask you,

  gentlemen, listen sometimes to the moans of an educated man of the

  nineteenth century suffering from toothache, on the second or third day

  of the attack, when he is beginning to moan, not as he moaned on the

  first day, that is, not simply because he has toothache, not just as any

  coarse peasant, but as a man affected by progress and European civilisation,