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    Notes From Underground
    Notes From Underground
    Notes From Underground
    Ebook161 pages3 hours

    Notes From Underground

    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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    Bitter and unpleasant, the Underground Man lives alone in St. Petersburg. After working in the civil service for many years, he decides to write an account of his opinions on society as they have been shaped by his ordinary life. Although he is insightful and educated, the Underground Man’s ability and cunning have left him with an intense loathing of mankind, which he sets out to preserve in his manuscript.

    In this two part novella, author Fyodor Dostoyevsky presents an opinion of man as an irrational and impossible being, always seeking satisfaction in the institutions of society yet without any hope for success. Notes from the Underground is considered by many to be the first example of existential fiction in which philosophy is presented from an individualized and highly humanized perspective.

    HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 25, 2013
    ISBN9781443429054
    Author

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. Between 1838 and 1843 he studied at the St Petersburg Engineering Academy. His first work of fiction was the epistolary novel Poor Folk (1846), which met with a generally favourable response. However, his immediately subsequent works were less enthusiastically received. In 1849 Dostoevsky was arrested as a member of the socialist Petrashevsky circle, and subjected to a mock execution. He suffered four years in a Siberian penal settlement and then another four years of enforced military service. He returned to writing in the late 1850s and travelled abroad in the 1860s. It was during the last twenty years of his life that he wrote the iconic works, such as Notes from the Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), which were to form the basis of his formidable reputation. He died in 1881.

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    Reviews for Notes From Underground

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    • 5/5
      Amazing how he can twist and turn a thought from nowhere and make it grow into a full blown psychological drama.
    • 4/5
      Short and enjoyable. I can't get enough. Feels like a slice from the mind of one of Dostoevsky's more expanded characters, in a good way. It's all been distilled into 130 pages and it really made me think. How is he so darn good at writing melodramatic and insane people? I probably relate a little too much to this guy.

      And in there, also a nugget of truth re: philosophy of science "Man is so partial to systems and abstract conclusions that he is ready intentionally to distort the truth, to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, only so as to justify his logic.".
    • 3/5
      Shooting from my hip, I'd guess that Notes From The Underground emerged via the tradition of epistolary novels and the recent triumph of Gogol's Diary of a Madman. There is little need here to measure the impact and influence of Dostoevsky's tract. Nearly all of noir fiction is indebted. The monologue as a novella continues to thrive, finding its zenith, perhaps, in the work of Thomas Bernhard.

      Notes is a work for the young. Its transgressions can't begin to shock anymore. Its creative instability has to be appreciated for its technical merit. This hardly works on old sods like me. Somehow in this tale of honor lost and self deception I kept thinking of the Arab Spring. Dangerous potentials are unearthed when you cleave away traditions and don't offer realized possibilities.
    • 5/5
      All of Dostoyevsky's novels are works of genius, but, as far as I am concerned, this is the best one of them all.
    • 4/5
      My first Dostoyevsky reading, and I really enjoyed it. Soon I'll begin reading his longer works, this was a good introduction.
    • 4/5
      Notes from the Underground. Fyodor Dostoevsky. 1993. I tried to like this book, but, alas, I didn’t. I know it is a classic and that people far smarter than I am think it is a great novel. It was just an ordeal to get through. If you want to read Dostoevsky, try Crime and Punishment first.
    • 5/5
      painful articulation of the internal side of a self marginalized person
    • 3/5
      This particular copy of mine has a handful of short stories within it. There are a few pieces that were quite depressing and very fitting as Dostoyevsky works. This was a book that I had to teach to my sophomores when I was teaching 10th grade English and I can't say it had the kids very riveted unfortunately.
    • 5/5
      I do not know enough Russian to fully appreciate it, but I know enough. I can feel 'the space under the floor' of the translation. I can see the absence of something there, that I know the Russian would fully explain.

      My first Dostoyevsky and I am pleased it was this one. The nauseating, twisting anxiety and self loathing. The violent and unrepentant revulsion, bitterness, cruelty and nastiness, and the thrilling, shuddering language of it all. In it I can hear echoes of everything I love now -- Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury! -- And I see the angels and auroachs and the power of my perversion.

      Staggering. Helpful to read certain phrases out loud. Despite being "Notes", it is obviously a piece written to be spoken.
    • 3/5
      I read this for #1001Books, and did not care too much for this one by Dostoevsky -- Underground Man (unnamed protagonist) does ramble on and on! Perhaps I would have appreciated this more with a different translation. Not long after, I read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and loved it.
    • 3/5
      Vrijmoedige monoloog van een eigenzinnig, arrogant en wispelturig man. Het eerste deel is absoluut een sleutel tot het hele oeuvre van Dostojevski, het tweede deel doet erg gogoliaans aan. Onderliggende boodschap: de verscheurde moderne mens als gevolg van het wetenschappelijk positivisme.Eerste lectuur toen ik 17 jaar was, onmiddellijk herkend als sleutelroman
    • 5/5
      A sublimely important book.
    • 3/5
      This guy is batcrap crazy. I don't think I'd ever want him as a friend (though I guarantee I would be his friend, because I seem to attract crazy), but he's certainly amusing to watch/listen to.
    • 3/5
      Ahead of its time, deeply psychological, and enhanced by a crafty translation, this Dostoevsky novella is a brilliant precursor to the Modernist Age of literature.
    • 5/5
      Yes, this is a classic; it's the sort of book that other people write books about. While Part 1, the more philosophical section, is an intense read with plenty of depth and quotable quotes, Part 2 verges on the burlesque in its tragicomic depiction of a series of events that exemplify, in more tangible form, the nature of 'underground'. While the initial philosophy clearly sets the stage for the pastiche that follows, in some way it might be an easier 'in' to the work of Dostoyevsky to read the two in reverse order. The lack of a reliable narrator figure, in particular, is one literary dimension that a reader new to Dostoyevsky needs to discover, and this can become one of the perversely enjoyable facets of the work: navigating the paradoxically self-aware yet simultaneously unaware nature of the 'underground man'.
    • 5/5
      A forty year old man introduces himself: "I AM A SICK MAN . . . I am a wicked (nasty) man." This comes from a man who immediately demonstrates his unsureness and his unreliability, as he touts his superstitiousness and refusal to be treated for his (imagined?) sickness. With a few lines of prose Dostoevsky has introduced the reader to a new type of man, one that we will see traces of in characters like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and others in subsequent novels. What do we make of this narrator and his story?It is a story that is bifurcated into two parts that are very different from each other but intimately connected. The narrator is talking to someone. Perhaps it is the reader or perhaps it is himself, but he is passionate as he speaks out from his "corner" bemoaning the fact that he is not even able to become an insect, much as he would like to. The narration, upon first reading, is strange, but it changes when he draws in the reader by observing that he is not the only one who takes pride in his "sickness". Everyone takes pride in their own sickness. Suddenly we have come upon, become part of, the modern condition. This is the world that Nietzsche and others would later describe and that we live in.The first part is entitled "Underground" and it is a world where the certainties of "2+2=4" and the philosophies of rationalism and utilitarianism are not welcome. The narrator, in his hole, cannot act and is overcome with inertia -- being constantly offended by "the laws of nature". What is a man without wants or desires who is living a life that is determined? Reason is not the answer, so he speculates that "two times two is five is sometimes also a most charming little thing". (p 34) He is bored and so he begins to write as the falling snow reminds him of an anecdote that occurred when he was twenty-four years old.Thus the narration changes as the second part, "Apropos of the Wet Snow" begins. The nature of his pathology and his paranoia becomes clear as he reacts with coworkers and meets a young girl. The bifurcation of the story begins to appear in the narrator who, shortly after meeting the girl, starts to have doubts, thoughts like this:"A sullen thought was born in my brain and passed through my whole body like some vile sensation, similar to what one feels on entering an underground cellar, damp and musty. It was somehow unnatural . . . " (p 88) He begins to doubt himself (maybe he always has). The girl tries to reach out to him but he cannot reciprocate. Ultimately he concludes that life lived in books is better than his real life. He does little, is disappointed, and begins to write.This novel is a tragicomedy of ideas, powerful in the sense that it identifies the direction that much of modern thought will pursue. The dramatic expressiveness of the prose betrays a narrator who is bereft of the will to engage in life. It is a form of nihilism that eats away at the narrator. Dostoevsky's answer, not given in this short novel but found in The Brothers Karamazov and elsewhere, is a faith that is absent here. That does not mean that this is not a rich text, filled with ideas and deep with meaning. It is a book that challenges the reader in ways that resonate forward more than a century later.
    • 4/5
      I think this may be the shortest work by a Russian novelist I have ever read. That being said, I don't know that this book is truly a novel so much as it is an extended short story told from the perspective of a Russian man who tends to rabble and who once drove away a woman who might have been able to love him. Overall, I liked the book, although the first part was certainly difficult to get through, the second (which actually relates a story instead of just philosophizing) more than made up for it.
    • 3/5
      Possibly the first existential novel (novella). The unnamed writer, 40 years old, tells us he is writing to no one but argues that man must choose (free will) and will choose not to live by logic and in fact will choose against logic. The second part, gives us the background of the writer and how he ended up underground. Then the very end, we learn that even this has been edited and we the reader do not know what is the truth. Rating 3.43.
    • 4/5
      My first Dostoyevsky reading, and I really enjoyed it. Soon I'll begin reading his longer works, this was a good introduction.
    • 3/5
      Vrijmoedige monoloog van een eigenzinnig, arrogant en wispelturig man. Het eerste deel is absoluut een sleutel tot het hele oeuvre van Dostojevski, het tweede deel doet erg gogoliaans aan. Onderliggende boodschap: de verscheurde moderne mens als gevolg van het wetenschappelijk positivisme.Eerste lectuur toen ik 17 jaar was, onmiddellijk herkend als sleutelroman
    • 2/5
      I'd been really looking forward to reading some of Dostoevsky's works, and I still am to some extent. It's just a shame that my first experience with his work is such a disappointment. Notes from the Underground starts off well, with its rather enthralling first Part, where the bitter, miserable Underground Man rails against certain types of rationalist thinking. He says a lot of rather insightful things; a lot of it wasn't that eye-opening to me, but it was a very good expression of familiar ideas. It's just a shame that in the second half the book becomes such annoying rubbish. Part Two consists of a story in which the Underground Man does nothing except exhibit the sort of stupid misanthropic behaviour and thinking I was guilty of when I was about 14 (though he does many more extreme things). It's not entertaining or even remotely interesting, it's just boring and irritating. I understand Dostoevsky is making a point and doesn't agree with what this guy says, but that doesn't make it an engaging read. I skimmed through the last few chapters because I'd got so angry at this guy and his general uselessness. However, I've heard a few Dostoevsky fans express similar thoughts about this book, so I've not been too discouraged. Might take a while for me to pick up another one of his books though, because this one has left a seriously bad taste.
    • 5/5
      Dostoevsky's novella is part narrative and part manifesto, all awash in anguish. The book is the indelible cornerstone of existential literature, being a violent confrontation with the human condition and the nature of life. There are a number of quotable passages here, and the writing is smooth and digestible in contrast to the narrator. He is not likable, though he is interesting in much the same way as a car crash or the aftermath of disaster, and it is probable that most readers can relate to his bitterness, though maybe not at such extreme levels.
    • 5/5
      This is a fantastic book that addresses the question of "what is the self?". The underground man can only represent us who find ourselves lost and unsure yet despised by our own ineptitude. For those who have not yet to begin exploring "what a self is" or "what and why makes the self?" I highly suggest you start here.
    • 5/5
      There are some truly brilliant moments in the book that took me completely by surprise, and I was always excited when I had the chance to pick it back up to read after having to put it down.
    • 1/5
      I wish I could rate books with question marks...not for lack of understanding, but rather a lack of surety on the part of my own feelings. "a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are EXPRESSLY gathered together here" I couldn't agree more. Part I of the book is barely-comprehensible rambling that is absolutely painful to read. Dostoyevsky, or the narrator, has a much stronger gift for storytelling than philosophizing. Even so, let it be said that there isn't anything resembling a structured plot...rather a random sampling of recollections that all end with an inane predictability. By the time you get to Part II (the more narrative section), the narrator's ramblings and actions become so repetitive that it's positively trite. Whatever brilliant passages and lines there are to be found (and there are quite a few), they do nothing to redeem the narrator, mainly out of a sense that if given half the opportunity he would instantly change his mind about whatever he just said. Perhaps we can count that as phenomenal characterization...in the 2 dimensional sense. But as I said, there are some ideas and some passages that are worth taking note of, so I can't call it a total loss. Yet it's not a good book via structure or moralizing...which is why I can hardly bring myself to give it any rating. I don't feel indifferent about it, nor do I feel anything as strong as love or hate. What more can I say? Read it if you dare?
    • 5/5
      " Suppose all man ever does is search for this 2 times 2 is 4; he crosses oceans, he sacrifices his life in the search; but to search it out, actually to find it - by God, he's somehow afraid. For he senses that once he finds it, there will be nothing to search for. Workers at least, when they're done working, get their pay, go to a tavern, then wind up with the police - so it keeps them busy for a week. But still, 2 times 2 is 4 is a most obnoxious thing. 2 times 2 is 4 has a cocky look; it stands across your path, arms akimbo, and spits. I agree that sometimes 2 times 2 is 4 is an excellent thing; but if we're going to start praising everything, then 2 times 2 is 5 is sometimes also a most charming little thing." Dostoyevksy, his mordacity fresh from 4 years stay in a Siberian labor camp, is howling across the vast steppe towards Eastern Philosophy. But alas and alack! Fyodor can't Google the nearest Yoga class, he's only got his pen and his tea. I wish he were alive, I'd love to hear what he'd say to "Mrs.Starbucks" review beneath me, which gives Notes 1 star and comedian Steve Martin's "The Pleasure of My Company" 3 stars. "It's not a good book via structure and moralizing"? Talk about 2 times 2 is 4!!! When Dostoyevsky's coming in, you gotta swing the door wide open!!!!
    • 4/5
      This small yet deeply written book is a haphazard rant of nonsense, unless you are familiar with philosophy, Russia, and Dostoevsky himself. A friend had once recommended this to me, but he warned me that I should read up on the content before I actually got around to the book. And so began a brief, yet enlightening, exploration of Nikolai Chernyshevsky, and some brushing up on basic philosophy, sociology, and Russian politics in 1860's. I have to say, all of this background work was indeed very helpful. Perhaps not everyone will be willing to put that much effort into reading one book, but I have to say, you will get a much more rich, comprehensive understanding of this unusual book if you do.The book is narrated by an unnamed character, who calls himself the "Underground Man." It doesn't take the reader long to see that our anti-hero is pathetic, contradictory, and extremely irritating. He is insufferably arrogant, believing the world to revolve around himself. He laments all of the woe that has befallen him, but we very quickly see that he gets a certain pleasure out of his suffering, or rather, out of people noticing his suffering. His comments on the moans of a man with a tooth-ache, growing louder and louder and increasingly pitiful so that no one could possibly escape noticing his condition, is a perfect example. The narrator actually believes that everyone has nothing better to do than notice and anguish over his every misfortune. In the second part of the story, the Underground Man is more the focus, instead of his views. He tells us a few stories from his life, which even further bring to life his pathetic, self-centered character. There is a officer who, every day, walks past our main character. Every day, the narrator steps aside to let the officer pass. This is such a very small instance that no one would remember it, or even make any note of it. However, in the narrator's pride, he builds up an entire, involved story about how the officer is slighting him, pretending not to recognize him every day, and thinks day and night about not letting him pass one day. It is built up and built up, until one day, finally, the narrator fails to step aside. The two men bump shoulders, and that is that. Of course, WE know that the officer never even noticed, but the narrator says "But I knew that he was pretending!"Other similar things are when the narrator forces some former friends to invite him to a dinner (where he insults all of them and ruins their night), and where he becomes involved with a woman, whom he falls in love with. We see him destroy any shred of kinship still felt between him and his friends, and we see him destroy all love that the girl may have had for him.This book is a sputtering, mad, crazy rant of anger and misguided thinking, and yet it is also remarkably well structured. In all of its crazy veering off subject, the random allegories, and the contradictions that the narrator voices over and over, Dostoevsky obviously has a purpose and a vision to this work. Although it never left me breathlessly racing through pages, this book did occupy my thoughts for awhile after I read it, and the narrator was interesting in how utterly unlikable he was.If approached with research (or knowledge) and a readiness to look deeper into this book than what is immediately apparent, "Notes from Underground" is worth the read.
    • 4/5
      Possibly the only book Dostoevsky wrote which leaves me wanting more. I guess that's what happens when you go for 130 pages instead of 800. There's not much to say, except that I really think this isn't over-rated, and I had so many uncomfortable moments of self-recognition that I was scared to think what an a-hole I am. Chilling.
    • 5/5
      This summer, while carrying my edition of the Great short works of Dostoyevsky on holiday, a sly compromise to my partner who forbade me to bring more that two books, I reread Notes from the underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.My first-time reading gave me the immediate sense of dealing with a top piece of literature, but I was nonetheless nonplussed as to the meaning, and before reading the book a second time this summer, I could not remember a single scrap about its contents. This second time round, my understanding and appreciation of the work is greatly enhanced by reading it within the context of several other works by Dostoevsky, all complex and rather depressing.Dostoevsky has this predilection of choosing to focus on characters who a clearly defective in society, as the main character of this novel is clearly a "loser". The first part consists of that type of person's typical self-accusatory ramblings, expressing his misery and self-contempt. The second scene shows him to be a social misfit, rejected, and for good reason, by his former classmates, while in the last scene he reveals himself as a cruel sadist in relation to a girl, who is worse off than he himself.The novel is somewhat difficult to read, because the characters' frame of mind is based on conventions in nineteenth century Petersburg, and not all allusions and references are immediately clear or understandable to the modern, foreign reader. However, the true nature of this anti-hero shines through so clearly, that we cannot mistake the basic meaning of the novel upon close, reading, which may need to be repeated.
    • 2/5
      A thoroughly unpleasant book. A boring whiny rant, occasionally pretending to philosophical insight.

    Book preview

    Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    NotesFromUndergroundCOVER.jpg

    Notes from

    Underground

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    HarperPerennialClassicsLogo.jpg

    CONTENTS

    Cover

    Title Page

    Author’s Note

    Part I—Underground

    I

    II

    III

    IV

    V

    VI

    VII

    VIII

    IX

    X

    XI

    Part II—À Propos of the Wet Snow

    I

    II

    III

    IV

    V

    VI

    VII

    VIII

    IX

    X

    About the Series

    About the Author

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    Author’s Note

    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.

    Part I

    Underground

    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 preeminently a characterless creature; a man of character, an active man is preeminently 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. . .

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