Chapter: The long and the short of it is, gentlemen, that it is better to do
nothing! Better conscious inertia!  And so hurrah for underground!
Though I have said that I envy the normal man to the last drop of my
bile, yet I should not care to be in his place such as he is now
(though I shall not cease envying him).  No, no; anyway the underground
life is more advantageous. There, at any rate, one can ...  Oh, but
even now I am lying!  I am lying because I know myself that it is not
underground that is better, but something different, quite different,
for which I am thirsting, but which I cannot find!  Damn underground!

I will tell you another thing that would be better, and that is, if I
myself believed in anything of what I have just written.  I swear to
you, gentlemen, there is not one thing, not one word of what I have
written that I really believe.  That is, I believe it, perhaps, but at
the same time I feel and suspect that I am lying like a cobbler.

"Then why have you written all this?" you will say to me.  "I ought to
put you underground for forty years without anything to do and then
come to you in your cellar, to find out what stage you have reached!
How can a man be left with nothing to do for forty years?"

"Isn't that shameful, isn't that humiliating?" you will say, perhaps,
wagging your heads contemptuously.  "You thirst for life and try to
settle the problems of life by a logical tangle.  And how persistent,
how insolent are your sallies, and at the same time what a scare you
are in!  You talk nonsense and are pleased with it; you say impudent
things and are in continual alarm and apologising for them.  You
declare that you are afraid of nothing and at the same time try to
ingratiate yourself in our good opinion.  You declare that you are
gnashing your teeth and at the same time you try to be witty so as to
amuse us.  You know that your witticisms are not witty, but you are
evidently well satisfied with their literary value.  You may, perhaps,
have really suffered, but you have no respect for your own suffering.
You may have sincerity, but you have no modesty; out of the pettiest
vanity you expose your sincerity to publicity and ignominy.  You
doubtlessly mean to say something, but hide your last word through
fear, because you have not the resolution to utter it, and only have a
cowardly impudence.  You boast of consciousness, but you are not sure
of your ground, for though your mind works, yet your heart is darkened
and corrupt, and you cannot have a full, genuine consciousness without
a pure heart.  And how intrusive you are, how you insist and grimace!
Lies, lies, lies!"

Of course I have myself made up all the things you say.  That, too, is
from underground.  I have been for forty years listening to you through
a crack under the floor.  I have invented them myself, there was
nothing else I could invent.  It is no wonder that I have learned it by
heart and it has taken a literary form....

But can you really be so credulous as to think that I will print all
this and give it to you to read too?  And another problem: why do I
call you "gentlemen," why do I address you as though you really were my
readers? Such confessions as I intend to make are never printed nor
given to other people to read.  Anyway, I am not strong-minded enough
for that, and I don't see why I should be.  But you see a fancy has
occurred to me and I want to realise it at all costs.  Let me explain.

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but
only to his friends.  He has other matters in his mind which he would
not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in
secret.  But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even
to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored
away in his mind. The more decent he is, the greater the number of such
things in his mind.  Anyway, I have only lately determined to remember
some of my early adventures.  Till now I have always avoided them, even
with a certain uneasiness.  Now, when I am not only recalling them, but
have actually decided to write an account of them, I want to try the
experiment whether one can, even with oneself, be perfectly open and
not take fright at the whole truth.  I will observe, in parenthesis,
that Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility,
and that man is bound to lie about himself.  He considers that Rousseau
certainly told lies about himself in his confessions, and even
intentionally lied, out of vanity.  I am convinced that Heine is right;
I quite understand how sometimes one may, out of sheer vanity,
attribute regular crimes to oneself, and indeed I can very well
conceive that kind of vanity.  But Heine judged of people who made
their confessions to the public.  I write only for myself, and I wish
to declare once and for all that if I write as though I were addressing
readers, that is simply because it is easier for me to write in that
form.  It is a form, an empty form--I shall never have readers.  I have
made this plain already ...

I don't wish to be hampered by any restrictions in the compilation of
my notes.  I shall not attempt any system or method.  I will jot things
down as I remember them.

But here, perhaps, someone will catch at the word and ask me: if you
really don't reckon on readers, why do you make such compacts with
yourself--and on paper too--that is, that you won't attempt any system
or method, that you jot things down as you remember them, and so on,
and so on?  Why are you explaining?  Why do you apologise?

Well, there it is, I answer.

There is a whole psychology in all this, though.  Perhaps it is simply
that I am a coward.  And perhaps that I purposely imagine an audience
before me in order that I may be more dignified while I write.  There
are perhaps thousands of reasons.  Again, what is my object precisely
in writing?  If it is not for the benefit of the public why should I
not simply recall these incidents in my own mind without putting them
on paper?

Quite so; but yet it  is more imposing on paper.  There is something
more impressive in it; I shall be better able to criticise myself and
improve my style.  Besides, I shall perhaps obtain actual relief from
writing. Today, for instance, I am particularly oppressed by one memory
of a distant past.  It came back vividly to my mind a few days ago, and
has remained haunting me like an annoying tune that one cannot get rid
of. And yet I must get rid of it somehow.  I have hundreds of such
reminiscences; but at times some one stands out from the hundred and
oppresses me. For some reason I believe that if I write it down I
should get rid of it. Why not try?

Besides, I am bored, and I never have anything to do.  Writing will be
a sort of work.  They say work makes man kind-hearted and honest.
Well, here is a chance for me, anyway.

Snow is falling today, yellow and dingy.  It fell yesterday, too, and a
few days ago.  I fancy it is the wet snow that has reminded me of that
incident which I cannot shake off now.  And so let it be a story A
PROPOS of the falling snow.




PART II

A Propos of the Wet Snow

  When from dark error's subjugation
  My words of passionate exhortation
    Had wrenched thy fainting spirit free;
  And writhing prone in thine affliction
  Thou didst recall with malediction
    The vice that had encompassed thee:
  And when thy slumbering conscience, fretting
    By recollection's torturing flame,
  Thou didst reveal the hideous setting
    Of thy life's current ere I came:
  When suddenly I saw thee sicken,
    And weeping, hide thine anguished face,
  Revolted, maddened, horror-stricken,
    At memories of foul disgrace.
            NEKRASSOV
            (translated by Juliet Soskice).

 So really the thing to do, the Underground Man says, is...nothing. Which just happens to be what he is doing now, by living underground. It's better to be conscious and live with the inertia that consciousness brings. And yet, he bitterly, bitterly envies the normal man. Although, he wouldn't want to be the normal man under present conditions. But he still envies him. No, wait, it is better to be underground! No, wait, he's lying. He decides that he isn't happy underground, but the normal life isn't any more appetizing. He wants something else altogether, but he doesn't really know what that is. And another thing: he's been lying this whole time. He doesn't believe any of what he just wrote. Although he adds that he may be lying right now by saying that. Then he goes back to supposing what we, his readers, are thinking. Probably, he supposes, we're thinking that he's pretty shameful and humiliated. According to him, we also think that he's silly for trying to solve everything with a logical tangle, that even if he has suffered, he has no respect for his own suffering, and that he doesn't even have the full consciousness of the heart. He then establishes that he is imagining all these things that his reader is supposedly thinking. For forty years, he says, he's been listening to us from a crack in the floor, which presumably made it easy for him to invent the fictional "us" and to put words in our mouth. It gets weirder. Hold on to your hats. The Underground Man wonders why he addresses us at all, since these writings aren't meant to be read by anyone, ever. This warrants some more explanation. Every man, he says, has imagined some sin that he can't share with anyone, ever, not even his best friends. But there are other things - things even more secret - which a man will not admit even to himself. In fact, he argues, the more "decent" a man is, the more of these indecent thoughts he has. Since the Underground Man understands this, he wants to try recalling some former events, to see if he can admit to himself the whole truth of what happened. He then references this German guy Heinrich Heine, who argued that man could never write a true autobiography, since he's definitely going to lie about himself. This is true, he says, but only in the case of people who write autobiographies meant for the public. Since the Underground Man is writing only for himself, he won't have that issue. He has no reason to lie to make himself look better, since no one will ever read his writing. He supposes that we, his non-existent readers, might be asking the question, "If you don't intend on having readers, why are you explaining things to us? Why are you apologizing?" Because, he says, it helps him to imagine an audience. Imagining an audience makes his writing more dignified. OK, then why write on paper instead of just thinking the thoughts? Because putting it on paper is more impressive, he explains. Plus this way, he can do fun things, like revisions. But back to his memories and attempted autobiography. At this very moment, he is afflicted by one particular memory. He thinks that, maybe if he writes it down, he can be rid of it. And also, he's bored, so why not. And thus he begins: the falling snow today is what reminded him of this one particular time.

