



Produced by Judith Boss.  HTML version by Al Haines.








Notes from the Underground

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY





PART I

Underground*

     *The author of the diary and the diary itself
     are, of course, imaginary.  Nevertheless it is clear
     that such persons as the writer of these notes
     not only may, but positively must, exist in our
     society, when we consider the circumstances in
     the midst of which our society is formed.  I have
     tried to expose to the view of the public more
     distinctly than is commonly done, one of the
     characters of the recent past.  He is one of the
     representatives of a generation still living.  In this
     fragment, entitled "Underground," this person
     introduces himself and his views, and, as it were,
     tries to explain the causes owing to which he has
     made his appearance and was bound to make his
     appearance in our midst.  In the second fragment
     there are added the actual notes of this person
     concerning certain events in his life.--AUTHOR'S NOTE.



I

I am a sick man....  I am a spiteful man.  I am an unattractive man.  I
believe my liver is diseased.  However, I know nothing at all about my
disease, and do not know for certain what ails me.  I don't consult a
doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and
doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to
respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be
superstitious, but I am superstitious).  No, I refuse to consult a
doctor from spite.  That you probably will not understand.  Well, I
understand it, though.  Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely
that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well
aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I
know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and
no one else.  But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite.
My liver is bad, well--let it get worse!

I have been going on like that for a long time--twenty years.  Now I am
forty.  I used to be in the government service, but am no longer.  I
was a spiteful official.  I was rude and took pleasure in being so.  I
did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in
that, at least.  (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out.  I wrote
it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself
that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch
it out on purpose!)

When petitioners used to come for information to the table at which I
sat, I used to grind my teeth at them, and felt intense enjoyment when
I succeeded in making anybody unhappy.  I almost did succeed.  For the
most part they were all timid people--of course, they were petitioners.
But of the uppish ones there was one officer in particular I could not
endure.  He simply would not be humble, and clanked his sword in a
disgusting way.  I carried on a feud with him for eighteen months over
that sword.  At last I got the better of him.  He left off clanking it.
That happened in my youth, though.

But do you know, gentlemen, what was the chief point about my spite?
Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that
continually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly
conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an
embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and
amusing myself by it.  I might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll
to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should
be appeased.  I might even be genuinely touched, though probably I
should grind my teeth at myself afterwards and lie awake at night with
shame for months after.  That was my way.

I was lying when I said just now that I was a spiteful official.  I was
lying from spite.  I was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and
with the officer, and in reality I never could become spiteful.  I was
conscious every moment in myself of many, very many elements absolutely
opposite to that.  I felt them positively swarming in me, these
opposite elements. I knew that they had been swarming in me all my life
and craving some outlet from me, but I would not let them, would not
let them, purposely would not let them come out.  They tormented me
till I was ashamed: they drove me to convulsions and--sickened me, at
last, how they sickened me!  Now, are not you fancying, gentlemen, that
I am expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking your
forgiveness for something?  I am sure you are fancying that...
However, I assure you I do not care if you are....

It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to
become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an
honest man, neither a hero nor an insect.  Now, I am living out my life
in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation
that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is
only the fool who becomes anything.  Yes, a man in the nineteenth
century must and morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless
creature; a man of character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited
creature.  That is my conviction of forty years.  I am forty years old
now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is
extreme old age.  To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is
vulgar, immoral.  Who does live beyond forty?  Answer that, sincerely
and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows.  I
tell all old men that to their face, all these venerable old men, all
these silver-haired and reverend seniors!  I tell the whole world that
to its face!  I have a right to say so, for I shall go on living to
sixty myself.  To seventy!  To eighty!...  Stay, let me take breath
...

You imagine no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you.  You are
mistaken in that, too.  I am by no means such a mirthful person as you
imagine, or as you may imagine; however, irritated by all this babble
(and I feel that you are irritated) you think fit to ask me who I
am--then my answer is, I am a collegiate assessor.  I was in the
service that I might have something to eat (and solely for that
reason), and when last year a distant relation left me six thousand
roubles in his will I immediately retired from the service and settled
down in my corner.  I used to live in this corner before, but now I
have settled down in it.  My room is a wretched, horrid one in the
outskirts of the town.  My servant is an old country-woman, ill-natured
from stupidity, and, moreover, there is always a nasty 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