Chapter: But the period of my dissipation would end and I always felt very sick
afterwards.  It was followed by remorse--I tried to drive it away; I
felt too sick.  By degrees, however, I grew used to that too.  I grew
used to everything, or rather I voluntarily resigned myself to enduring
it.  But I had a means of escape that reconciled everything--that was
to find refuge in "the sublime and the beautiful," in dreams, of
course.  I was a terrible dreamer, I would dream for three months on
end, tucked away in my corner, and you may believe me that at those
moments I had no resemblance to the gentleman who, in the perturbation
of his chicken heart, put a collar of German beaver on his great-coat.
I suddenly became a hero.  I would not have admitted my six-foot
lieutenant even if he had called on me.  I could not even picture him
before me then.  What were my dreams and how I could satisfy myself
with them--it is hard to say now, but at the time I was satisfied with
them.  Though, indeed, even now, I am to some extent satisfied with
them.  Dreams were particularly sweet and vivid after a spell of
dissipation; they came with remorse and with tears, with curses and
transports.  There were moments of such positive intoxication, of such
happiness, that there was not the faintest trace of irony within me, on
my honour.  I had faith, hope, love.  I believed blindly at such times
that by some miracle, by some external circumstance, all this would
suddenly open out, expand; that suddenly a vista of suitable
activity--beneficent, good, and, above all, READY MADE (what sort of
activity I had no idea, but the great thing was that it should be all
ready for me)--would rise up before me--and I should come out into the
light of day, almost riding a white horse and crowned with laurel.
Anything but the foremost place I could not conceive for myself, and
for that very reason I quite contentedly occupied the lowest in
reality.  Either to be a hero or to grovel in the mud--there was
nothing between.  That was my ruin, for when I was in the mud I
comforted myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and
the hero was a cloak for the mud: for an ordinary man it was shameful
to defile himself, but a hero was too lofty to be utterly defiled, and
so he might defile himself.  It is worth noting that these attacks of
the "sublime and the beautiful" visited me even during the period of
dissipation and just at the times when I was touching the bottom.  They
came in separate spurts, as though reminding me of themselves, but did
not banish the dissipation by their appearance. On the contrary, they
seemed to add a zest to it by contrast, and were only sufficiently
present to serve as an appetising sauce.  That sauce was made up of
contradictions and sufferings, of agonising inward analysis, and all
these pangs and pin-pricks gave a certain piquancy, even a significance
to my dissipation--in fact, completely answered the purpose of an
appetising sauce.  There was a certain depth of meaning in it.  And I
could hardly have resigned myself to the simple, vulgar, direct
debauchery of a clerk and have endured all the filthiness of it.  What
could have allured me about it then and have drawn me at night into the
street?  No, I had a lofty way of getting out of it all.

And what loving-kindness, oh Lord, what loving-kindness I felt at times
in those dreams of mine!  in those "flights into the sublime and the
beautiful"; though it was fantastic love, though it was never applied
to anything human in reality, yet there was so much of this love that
one did not feel afterwards even the impulse to apply it in reality;
that would have been superfluous.  Everything, however, passed
satisfactorily by a lazy and fascinating transition into the sphere of
art, that is, into the beautiful forms of life, lying ready, largely
stolen from the poets and novelists and adapted to all sorts of needs
and uses.  I, for instance, was triumphant over everyone; everyone, of
course, was in dust and ashes, and was forced spontaneously to
recognise my superiority, and I forgave them all.  I was a poet and a
grand gentleman, I fell in love; I came in for countless millions and
immediately devoted them to humanity, and at the same time I confessed
before all the people my shameful deeds, which, of course, were not
merely shameful, but had in them much that was "sublime and beautiful"
something in the Manfred style.  Everyone would kiss me and weep (what
idiots they would be if they did not), while I should go barefoot and
hungry preaching new ideas and fighting a victorious Austerlitz against
the obscurantists.  Then the band would play a march, an amnesty would
be declared, the Pope would agree to retire from Rome to Brazil; then
there would be a ball for the whole of Italy at the Villa Borghese on
the shores of Lake Como, Lake Como being for that purpose transferred
to the neighbourhood of Rome; then would come a scene in the bushes,
and so on, and so on--as though you did not know all about it?  You
will say that it is vulgar and contemptible to drag all this into
public after all the tears and transports which I have myself
confessed.  But why is it contemptible?  Can you imagine that I am
ashamed of it all, and that it was stupider than anything in your life,
gentlemen?  And I can assure you that some of these fancies were by no
means badly composed....  It did not all happen on the shores of Lake
Como.  And yet you are right--it really is vulgar and contemptible.
And most contemptible of all it is that now I am attempting to justify
myself to you.  And even more contemptible than that is my making this
remark now.  But that's enough, or there will be no end to it; each
step will be more contemptible than the last....

I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time
without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society.  To
plunge into society meant to visit my superior at the office, Anton
Antonitch Syetotchkin.  He was the only permanent acquaintance I have
had in my life, and I wonder at the fact myself now.  But I only went
to see him when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached
such a point of bliss that it became essential at once to embrace my
fellows and all mankind; and for that purpose I needed, at least, one
human being, actually existing.  I had to call on Anton Antonitch,
however, on Tuesday--his at-home day; so I had always to time my
passionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a
Tuesday.

This Anton Antonitch lived on the fourth storey in a house in Five
Corners, in four low-pitched rooms, one smaller than the other, of a
particularly frugal and sallow appearance.  He had two daughters and
their aunt, who used to pour out the tea.  Of the daughters one was
thirteen and another fourteen, they both had snub noses, and I was
awfully shy of them because they were always whispering and giggling
together.  The master of the house usually sat in his study on a
leather couch in front of the table with some grey-headed gentleman,
usually a colleague from our office or some other department.  I never
saw more than two or three visitors there, always the same.  They
talked about the excise duty; about business in the senate, about
salaries, about promotions, about His Excellency, and the best means of
pleasing him, and so on. I had the patience to sit like a fool beside
these people for four hours at a stretch, listening to them without
knowing what to say to them or venturing to say a word.  I became
stupefied, several times I felt myself perspiring, I was overcome by a
sort of paralysis; but this was pleasant and good for me.  On returning
home I deferred for a time my desire to embrace all mankind.

I had however one other acquaintance of a sort, Simonov, who was an old
schoolfellow.  I had a number of schoolfellows, indeed, in Petersburg,
but I did not associate with them and had even given up nodding to them
in the street.  I believe I had transferred into the department I was
in simply to avoid their company and to cut off all connection with my
hateful childhood.  Curses on that school and all those terrible years
of penal servitude!  In short, I parted from my schoolfellows as soon
as I got out into the world.  There were two or three left to whom I
nodded in the street.  One of them was Simonov, who had in no way been
distinguished at school, was of a quiet and equable disposition; but I
discovered in him a certain independence of character and even honesty
I don't even suppose that he was particularly stupid.  I had at one
time spent some rather soulful moments with him, but these had not
lasted long and had somehow been suddenly clouded over.  He was
evidently uncomfortable at these reminiscences, and was, I fancy,
always afraid that I might take up the same tone again.  I suspected
that he had an aversion for me, but still I went on going to see him,
not being quite certain of it.

And so on one occasion, unable to endure my solitude and knowing that
as it was Thursday Anton Antonitch's door would be closed, I thought of
Simonov.  Climbing up to his fourth storey I was thinking that the man
disliked me and that it was a mistake to go and see him.  But as it
always happened that such reflections impelled me, as though purposely,
to put myself into a false position, I went in.  It was almost a year
since I had last seen Simonov.

 So, basically, the Underground Man's life was not fun. Ever. Because interacting with another human was clearly not an option, he took refuge in "the sublime and beautiful." At these moments, he felt that he was a completely different person from the man who borrowed money to buy a beaver collar. At these moments, he was a hero. At these moments, the Underground Man experienced intense feelings of happiness, faith, hope and love. He believed that some vocation - something for him to do in the real world - would suddenly make itself known, and he would be able to come out of his hole. Of course, when he wasn't feeling like Superman, he was feeling like a loser stuck in a hovel of mud. That was his problem, he says: that he was always either a hero or a man degraded. The hero moments only came in spurts, and they weren't strong enough to stop his "dissipation" . He compares these moments to a sauce: they merely spiced up the main dish that was his degradation - they certainly didn't get rid of it. The thing about these dreamlike moments of happiness, he says, is that they were so removed from reality that he couldn't really apply them to the real world. So while he felt love, joy, and hope in these sublime dreams, they didn't enable him to go out and find love or be happy at work, etc. Essentially, he divided his life into two realms: the real world, and the sphere of art in which his "beautiful and sublime" dreams lived. In the sphere of art, he was a master and hero who always had control of the remote. He could fall in love, and even his shameful deeds had something lofty about them. As you'll see in your text, there are some "Shout-Outs" here that might be confusing. "Manfred" is a reference to Lord Byron's poem Manfred, about a romantic, defiant hero. When the Underground Man talks about Austerlitz, he's referring to Napoleon's great victory there in 1805. Pope Pius VII was always at odds with Napoleon, so if the Pope left Rome and went to Brazil, as the Underground Man fantasizes about here, it would signal further victory on Napoleon's part.) He then pauses; he suspects that we, his readers, find it vulgar that he's talking about all this. He agrees that it is indeed vulgar, but it's even more vulgar that he's talking with us about the fact that it's vulgar and trying to justify its vulgarity. But enough, he says - and we agree. He reiterates that these happy dreams always came in phases; three months was pretty much the max, and then he would feel the need to "plunge back into society." That plunging generally meant a visit to Anton, the "immediate superior" and source of cash that we heard about in the previous chapter. Since Anton is only at home on Tuesday, his day-off, the Underground Man always had to schedule his dreaming to end on Monday nights. He then tells us some more about this Anton character: the guy lived with his two daughters and an aunt. Anton often entertained guests, a variety of boring gentlemen who sat around talking about boring things. Every time the Underground Man visited, he was reminded of how much he didn't like people. Then he could go home again and "defer" his desire to embrace humanity. And yet, somehow, amazingly, he had one friend. Well, better call him an "acquaintance." The guy's name is Simonov, and the Underground Man knows him from school. According to our narrator, Simonov is quiet and not completely stupid. The Underground Man claims that he's had "soulful moments" with him, but that Simonov always seemed embarrassed about these moments after they had passed. The Underground Man was fairly sure that Simonov found him to be repulsive, but he still went to visit him anyway. Now that we know who these guys are, the Underground Man launches into yet another story. Here we go. It's Thursday and the Underground Man is struck by one of his sudden urges to be around people. Since it's not Tuesday, Anton is out of the question, so he decides to go see Simonov. At this point, it's been about a year since he's seen the guy.

