Notes from the Underground
by
Dostoyevsky
PART I
PART IPART II
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[2] PART I
[3]
[4] Underground*
[5] *The author of the diary and the diary itself
[6] are, of course, imaginary. Nevertheless it is clear
[7] that such persons as the writer of these notes
[8] not only may, but positively must, exist in our
[9] society, when we consider the circumstances in
[10] the midst of which our society is formed. I have
[11] tried to expose to the view of the public more
[12] distinctly than is commonly done, one of the
[13] characters of the recent past. He is one of the
[14] representatives of a generation still living. In this
[15] fragment, entitled "Underground," this person
[16] introduces himself and his views, and, as it were,
[17] tries to explain the causes owing to which he has
[18] made his appearance and was bound to make his
[19] appearance in our midst. In the second fragment
[20] there are added the actual notes of this person
[21] concerning certain events in his life. --AUTHOR'S NOTE.
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25] I
[26]
[27]
[28] I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I
[29] believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my
[30] disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor
[31] for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors.
[32] Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine,
[33] anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am
[34] superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you
[35] probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I
[36] can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my
[37] spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not
[38] consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only
[39] injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is
[40] from spite. My liver is bad, well--let it get worse!
[41]
[42] I have been going on like that for a long time--twenty years. Now I am
[43] forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a
[44] spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take
[45] bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A
[46] poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound
[47] very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off
[48] in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!)
[49]
[50] When petitioners used to come for information to the table at which I
[51] sat, I used to grind my teeth at them, and felt intense enjoyment when I
[52] succeeded in making anybody unhappy. I almost did succeed. For the
[53] most part they were all timid people--of course, they were petitioners.
[54] But of the uppish ones there was one officer in particular I could not
[55] endure. He simply would not be humble, and clanked his sword in a
[56] disgusting way. I carried on a feud with him for eighteen months over
[57] that sword. At last I got the better of him. He left off clanking it. That
[58] happened in my youth, though.
[59] But do you know, gentlemen, what was the chief point about my spite?
[60] Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually,
[61] even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with
[62] shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man,
[63] that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I
[64] might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of
[65] tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should be appeased. I might even be
[66] genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards
[67] and lie awake at night with shame for months after. That was my way.
[68]
[69] I was lying when I said just now that I was a spiteful official. I was
[70] lying from spite. I was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and with
[71] the officer, and in reality I never could become spiteful. I was conscious
[72] every moment in myself of many, very many elements absolutely opposite to
[73] that. I felt them positively swarming in me, these opposite elements.
[74] I knew that they had been swarming in me all my life and craving
[75] some outlet from me, but I would not let them, would not let them,
[76] purposely would not let them come out. They tormented me till I was
[77] ashamed: they drove me to convulsions and--sickened me, at last, how
[78] they sickened me! Now, are not you fancying, gentlemen, that I am
[79] expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking your forgiveness
[80] for something? I am sure you are fancying that ... However, I assure you
[81] I do not care if you are. ...
[82]
[83] It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to
[84] become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest
[85] man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my
[86] corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an
[87] intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool
[88] who becomes anything. Yes, a man in the nineteenth century must and
[89] morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless creature; a man of
[90] character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited creature. That is my
[91] conviction of forty years. I am forty years old now, and you know forty
[92] years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer
[93] than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live
[94] beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do:
[95] fools and worthless fellows. I tell all old men that to their face, all these
[96] venerable old men, all these silver-haired and reverend seniors! I tell the
[97] whole world that to its face! I have a right to say so, for I shall go on
[98] living to sixty myself. To seventy! To eighty! ... Stay, let me
[99] take breath ...
[100]
[101] You imagine no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you. You are
[102] mistaken in that, too. I am by no means such a mirthful person as you
[103] imagine, or as you may imagine; however, irritated by all this babble (and
[104] I feel that you are irritated) you think fit to ask me who I am--then my
[105] answer is, I am a collegiate assessor. I was in the service that I might have
[106] something to eat (and solely for that reason), and when last year a distant
[107] relation left me six thousand roubles in his will I immediately retired
[108] from the service and settled down in my corner. I used to live in this
[109] corner before, but now I have settled down in it. My room is a wretched,
[110] horrid one in the outskirts of the town. My servant is an old country-
[111] woman, ill-natured from stupidity, and, moreover, there is always a nasty
[112] smell about her. I am told that the Petersburg climate is bad for me, and
[113] that with my small means it is very expensive to live in Petersburg. I
[114] know all that better than all these sage and experienced counsellors and
[115] monitors. ... But I am remaining in Petersburg; I am not going away
[116] from Petersburg! I am not going away because ... ech! Why, it is
[117] absolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away.
[118]
[119] But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?
[120]
[121] Answer: Of himself.
[122]
[123] Well, so I will talk about myself.
[124]
[125]
[126]
[127] II
[128]
[129]
[130] I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why
[131] I could not even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many
[132] times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear,
[133] gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness--a real thorough-going
[134] illness. For man's everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to
[135] have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the
[136] amount which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy
[137] nineteenth century, especially one who has the fatal ill-luck to inhabit
[138] Petersburg, the most theoretical and intentional town on the whole
[139] terrestrial globe. (There are intentional and unintentional towns.) It
[140] would have been quite enough, for instance, to have the consciousness
[141] by which all so-called direct persons and men of action live. I bet you
[142] think I am writing all this from affectation, to be witty at the expense of
[143] men of action; and what is more, that from ill-bred affectation, I am
[144] clanking a sword like my officer. But, gentlemen, whoever can pride
[145] himself on his diseases and even swagger over them?
[146]
[147] Though, after all, everyone does do that; people do pride themselves
[148] on their diseases, and I do, may be, more than anyone. We will not
[149] dispute it; my contention was absurd. But yet I am firmly persuaded that
[150] a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a
[151] disease. I stick to that. Let us leave that, too, for a minute. Tell me this:
[152] why does it happen that at the very, yes, at the very moments when I am
[153] most capable of feeling every refinement of all that is "sublime and
[154] beautiful," as they used to say at one time, it would, as though of design,
[155] happen to me not only to feel but to do such ugly things, such that ...
[156] Well, in short, actions that all, perhaps, commit; but which, as though
[157] purposely, occurred to me at the very time when I was most conscious
[158] that they ought not to be committed. The more conscious I was of goodness
[159] and of all that was "sublime and beautiful," the more deeply I sank
[160] into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether. But the
[161] chief point was that all this was, as it were, not accidental in me, but as
[162] though it were bound to be so. It was as though it were my most normal
[163] condition, and not in the least disease or depravity, so that at last all desire
[164] in me to struggle against this depravity passed. It ended by my almost
[165] believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal
[166] condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that
[167] struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my
[168] life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now,
[169] perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret
[170] abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on
[171] some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had
[172] committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be
[173] undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing
[174] and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of
[175] shameful accursed sweetness, and at last--into positive real enjoyment!
[176] Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of
[177] this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel
[178] such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too
[179] intense consciousness of one's own degradation; it was from feeling
[180] oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that
[181] it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never
[182] could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left
[183] you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to
[184] change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because
[185] perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.
[186]
[187] And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord
[188] with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and
[189] with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that
[190] consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely
[191] nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness,
[192] that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were
[193] any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he
[194] actually is a scoundrel. But enough. ... Ech, I have talked a lot of
[195] nonsense, but what have I explained? How is enjoyment in this to be
[196] explained? But I will explain it. I will get to the bottom of it! That is why
[197] I have taken up my pen. ...
[198]
[199] I, for instance, have a great deal of AMOUR PROPRE. I am as suspicious
[200] and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf. But upon my word I
[201] sometimes have had moments when if I had happened to be slapped in
[202] the face I should, perhaps, have been positively glad of it. I say, in
[203] earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover even in that a
[204] peculiar sort of enjoyment--the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but in
[205] despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is
[206] very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position. And when
[207] one is slapped in the face--why then the consciousness of being rubbed
[208] into a pulp would positively overwhelm one. The worst of it is, look at it
[209] which way one will, it still turns out that I was always the most to blame
[210] in everything. And what is most humiliating of all, to blame for no fault
[211] of my own but, so to say, through the laws of nature. In the first place, to
[212] blame because I am cleverer than any of the people surrounding me. (I
[213] have always considered myself cleverer than any of the people surrounding
[214] me, and sometimes, would you believe it, have been positively
[215] ashamed of it. At any rate, I have all my life, as it were, turned my eyes
[216] away and never could look people straight in the face.) To blame, finally,
[217] because even if I had had magnanimity, I should only have had more
[218] suffering from the sense of its uselessness. I should certainly have never
[219] been able to do anything from being magnanimous--neither to forgive,
[220] for my assailant would perhaps have slapped me from the laws of nature,
[221] and one cannot forgive the laws of nature; nor to forget, for even if it were
[222] owing to the laws of nature, it is insulting all the same. Finally, even if I
[223] had wanted to be anything but magnanimous, had desired on the
[224] contrary to revenge myself on my assailant, I could not have revenged
[225] myself on any one for anything because I should certainly never have
[226] made up my mind to do anything, even if I had been able to. Why
[227] should I not have made up my mind? About that in particular I want to
[228] say a few words.
[229]
[230]
[231]
[232] III
[233]
[234]
[235] With people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up for
[236] themselves in general, how is it done? Why, when they are possessed, let
[237] us suppose, by the feeling of revenge, then for the time there is nothing
[238] else but that feeling left in their whole being. Such a gentleman simply
[239] dashes straight for his object like an infuriated bull with its horns down,
[240] and nothing but a wall will stop him. (By the way: facing the wall, such
[241] gentlemen--that is, the "direct" persons and men of action--are genuinely
[242] nonplussed. For them a wall is not an evasion, as for us people who
[243] think and consequently do nothing; it is not an excuse for turning aside,
[244] an excuse for which we are always very glad, though we scarcely believe
[245] in it ourselves, as a rule. No, they are nonplussed in all sincerity. The
[246] wall has for them something tranquillising, morally soothing, final--
[247] maybe even something mysterious ... but of the wall later.)
[248]
[249] Well, such a direct person I regard as the real normal man, as his
[250] tender mother nature wished to see him when she graciously brought him
[251] into being on the earth. I envy such a man till I am green in the face. He
[252] is stupid. I am not disputing that, but perhaps the normal man should be
[253] stupid, how do you know? Perhaps it is very beautiful, in fact. And I am
[254] the more persuaded of that suspicion, if one can call it so, by the fact that
[255] if you take, for instance, the antithesis of the normal man, that is, the
[256] man of acute consciousness, who has come, of course, not out of the lap
[257] of nature but out of a retort (this is almost mysticism, gentlemen, but I
[258] suspect this, too), this retort-made man is sometimes so nonplussed in
[259] the presence of his antithesis that with all his exaggerated consciousness
[260] he genuinely thinks of himself as a mouse and not a man. It may be an
[261] acutely conscious mouse, yet it is a mouse, while the other is a man, and
[262] therefore, et caetera, et caetera. And the worst of it is, he himself, his very
[263] own self, looks on himself as a mouse; no one asks him to do so; and that
[264] is an important point. Now let us look at this mouse in action. Let us
[265] suppose, for instance, that it feels insulted, too (and it almost always does
[266] feel insulted), and wants to revenge itself, too. There may even be a
[267] greater accumulation of spite in it than in L'HOMME DE LA NATURE ET DE LA
[268] VERITE. The base and nasty desire to vent that spite on its assailant rankles
[269] perhaps even more nastily in it than in L'HOMME DE LA NATURE ET DE LA
[270] VERITE. For through his innate stupidity the latter looks upon his revenge
[271] as justice pure and simple; while in consequence of his acute consciousness
[272] the mouse does not believe in the justice of it. To come at last to the
[273] deed itself, to the very act of revenge. Apart from the one fundamental
[274] nastiness the luckless mouse succeeds in creating around it so many other
[275] nastinesses in the form of doubts and questions, adds to the one question
[276] so many unsettled questions that there inevitably works up around it a sort
[277] of fatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of the
[278] contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action who stand solemnly
[279] about it as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it till their healthy sides
[280] ache. Of course the only thing left for it is to dismiss all that with a wave
[281] of its paw, and, with a smile of assumed contempt in which it does not
[282] even itself believe, creep ignominiously into its mouse-hole. There in its
[283] nasty, stinking, underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed
[284] mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all,
[285] everlasting spite. For forty years together it will remember its injury down
[286] to the smallest, most ignominious details, and every time will add, of
[287] itself, details still more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting
[288] itself with its own imagination. It will itself be ashamed of its imaginings,
[289] but yet it will recall it all, it will go over and over every detail, it will
[290] invent unheard of things against itself, pretending that those things
[291] might happen, and will forgive nothing. Maybe it will begin to revenge
[292] itself, too, but, as it were, piecemeal, in trivial ways, from behind the
[293] stove, incognito, without believing either in its own right to vengeance,
[294] or in the success of its revenge, knowing that from all its efforts at revenge
[295] it will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom it revenges itself,
[296] while he, I daresay, will not even scratch himself. On its deathbed it will
[297] recall it all over again, with interest accumulated over all the years
[298] and ...
[299]
[300] But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in that
[301] conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years,
[302] in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one's
[303] position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of
[304] oscillations, of resolutions determined for ever and repented of again a
[305] minute later--that the savour of that strange enjoyment of which I have
[306] spoken lies. It is so subtle, so difficult of analysis, that persons who are a
[307] little limited, or even simply persons of strong nerves, will not understand
[308] a single atom of it. "Possibly," you will add on your own account
[309] with a grin, "people will not understand it either who have never received
[310] a slap in the face," and in that way you will politely hint to me that I, too,
[311] perhaps, have had the experience of a slap in the face in my life, and so I
[312] speak as one who knows. I bet that you are thinking that. But set your
[313] minds at rest, gentlemen, I have not received a slap in the face, though it
[314] is absolutely a matter of indifference to me what you may think about it.
[315] Possibly, I even regret, myself, that I have given so few slaps in the face
[316] during my life. But enough ... not another word on that subject of such
[317] extreme interest to you.
[318]
[319] I will continue calmly concerning persons with strong nerves who do
[320] not understand a certain refinement of enjoyment. Though in certain
[321] circumstances these gentlemen bellow their loudest like bulls, though
[322] this, let us suppose, does them the greatest credit, yet, as I have said
[323] already, confronted with the impossible they subside at once. The impossible
[324] means the stone wall! What stone wall? Why, of course, the laws of
[325] nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics. As soon as they
[326] prove to you, for instance, that you are descended from a monkey, then it
[327] is no use scowling, accept it for a fact. When they prove to you that in
[328] reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred
[329] thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this conclusion is the final
[330] solution of all so-called virtues and duties and all such prejudices and
[331] fancies, then you have just to accept it, there is no help for it, for twice
[332] two is a law of mathematics. Just try refuting it.
[333]
[334] "Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a
[335] case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your permission, she
[336] has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or
[337] dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all
[338] her conclusions. A wall, you see, is a wall ... and so on, and so on."
[339]
[340] Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and
[341] arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that
[342] twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by
[343] battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it
[344] down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone
[345] wall and I have not the strength.
[346]
[347] As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did
[348] contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as twice
[349] two makes four. Oh, absurdity of absurdities! How much better it is to
[350] understand it all, to recognise it all, all the impossibilities and the stone
[351] wall; not to be reconciled to one of those impossibilities and stone walls if
[352] it disgusts you to be reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable,
[353] logical combinations to reach the most revolting conclusions on the
[354] everlasting theme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself somehow
[355] to blame, though again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the
[356] least, and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into
[357] luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for you to
[358] feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never will have, an
[359] object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-
[360] sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing
[361] who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an
[362] ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.
[363]
[364]
[365]
[366] IV
[367]
[368]
[369] "Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding enjoyment in toothache next," you cry,
[370] with a laugh.
[371]
[372] "Well, even in toothache there is enjoyment," I answer. I had toothache
[373] for a whole month and I know there is. In that case, of course,
[374] people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not candid
[375] moans, they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole
[376] point. The enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans; if
[377] he did not feel enjoyment in them he would not moan. It is a good
[378] example, gentlemen, and I will develop it. Those moans express in the
[379] first place all the aimlessness of your pain, which is so humiliating to
[380] your consciousness; the whole legal system of nature on which you spit
[381] disdainfully, of course, but from which you suffer all the same while she
[382] does not. They express the consciousness that you have no enemy to
[383] punish, but that you have pain; the consciousness that in spite of all
[384] possible Wagenheims you are in complete slavery to your teeth; that if
[385] someone wishes it, your teeth will leave off aching, and if he does not,
[386] they will go on aching another three months; and that finally if you are
[387] still contumacious and still protest, all that is left you for your own
[388] gratification is to thrash yourself or beat your wall with your fist as hard as
[389] you can, and absolutely nothing more. Well, these mortal insults, these
[390] jeers on the part of someone unknown, end at last in an enjoyment which
[391] sometimes reaches the highest degree of voluptuousness. I ask you,
[392] gentlemen, listen sometimes to the moans of an educated man of the
[393] nineteenth century suffering from toothache, on the second or third day
[394] of the attack, when he is beginning to moan, not as he moaned on the
[395] first day, that is, not simply because he has toothache, not just as any
[396] coarse peasant, but as a man affected by progress and European civilisation,
[397] a man who is "divorced from the soil and the national elements," as
[398] they express it now-a-days. His moans become nasty, disgustingly malignant,
[399] and go on for whole days and nights. And of course he knows
[400] himself that he is doing himself no sort of good with his moans; he knows
[401] better than anyone that he is only lacerating and harassing himself and
[402] others