Notes from the Underground
disdainfully, of course, but from which you suffer all the same while
she does not. They express the consciousness that you have no enemy to
punish, but that you have pain; the consciousness that in spite of all
possible Wagenheims you are in complete slavery to your teeth; that if
someone wishes it, your teeth will leave off aching, and if he does
not, they will go on aching another three months; and that finally if
you are still contumacious and still protest, all that is left you for
your own gratification is to thrash yourself or beat your wall with
your fist as hard as you can, and absolutely nothing more. Well, these
mortal insults, these jeers on the part of someone unknown, end at last
in an enjoyment which sometimes reaches the highest degree of
voluptuousness. I ask you, gentlemen, listen sometimes to the moans of
an educated man of the nineteenth century suffering from toothache, on
the second or third day of the attack, when he is beginning to moan,
not as he moaned on the first day, that is, not simply because he has
toothache, not just as any coarse peasant, but as a man affected by
progress and European civilisation, a man who is “divorced from the
soil and the national elements,” as they express it now-a-days. His
moans become nasty, disgustingly malignant, and go on for whole days
and nights. And of course he knows himself that he is doing himself no
sort of good with his moans; he knows better than anyone that he is
only lacerating and harassing himself and others for nothing; he knows
that even the audience before whom he is making his efforts, and his
whole family, listen to him with loathing, do not put a ha’porth of
faith in him, and inwardly understand that he might moan differently,
more simply, without trills and flourishes, and that he is only amusing
himself like that from ill-humour, from malignancy. Well, in all these
recognitions and disgraces it is that there lies a voluptuous pleasure.
As though he would say: “I am worrying you, I am lacerating your
hearts, I am keeping everyone in the house awake. Well, stay awake
then, you, too, feel every minute that I have toothache. I am not a
hero to you now, as I tried to seem before, but simply a nasty person,
an impostor. Well, so be it, then! I am very glad that you see through
me. It is nasty for you to hear my despicable moans: well, let it be
nasty; here I will let you have a nastier flourish in a minute....” You
do not understand even now, gentlemen? No, it seems our development and
our consciousness must go further to understand all the intricacies of
this pleasure. You laugh? Delighted. My jests, gentlemen, are of course
in bad taste, jerky, involved, lacking self-confidence. But of course
that is because I do not respect myself. Can a man of perception
respect himself at all?
V
Come, can a man who attempts to find enjoyment in the very feeling of
his own degradation possibly have a spark of respect for himself? I am
not saying this now from any mawkish kind of remorse. And, indeed, I
could never endure saying, “Forgive me, Papa, I won’t do it again,” not
because I am incapable of saying that—on the contrary, perhaps just
because I have been too capable of it, and in what a way, too. As
though of design I used to get into trouble in cases when I was not to
blame in any way. That was the nastiest part of it. At the same time I
was genuinely touched and penitent, I used to shed tears and, of
course, deceived myself, though I was not acting in the least and there
was a sick feeling in my heart at the time.... For that one could not
blame even the laws of nature, though the laws of nature have
continually all my life offended me more than anything. It is loathsome
to remember it all, but it was loathsome even then. Of course, a minute
or so later I would realise wrathfully that it was all a lie, a
revolting lie, an affected lie, that is, all this penitence, this
emotion, these vows of reform. You will ask why did I worry myself with
such antics: answer, because it was very dull to sit with one’s hands
folded, and so one began cutting capers. That is really it. Observe
yourselves more carefully, gentlemen, then you will understand that it
is so. I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at
least to live in some way. How many times it has happened to me—well,
for instance, to take offence simply on purpose, for nothing; and one
knows oneself, of course, that one is offended at nothing; that one is
putting it on, but yet one brings oneself at last to the point of being
really offended. All my life I have had an impulse to play such pranks,
so that in the end I could not control it in myself. Another time,
twice, in fact, I tried hard to be in love. I suffered, too, gentlemen,
I assure you. In the depth of my heart there was no faith in my
suffering, only a faint stir of mockery, but yet I did suffer, and in
the real, orthodox way; I was jealous, beside myself ... and it was all
from _ennui_, gentlemen, all from _ennui;_ inertia overcame me. You
know the direct, legitimate fruit of consciousness is inertia, that is,
conscious sitting-with-the-hands-folded. I have referred to this
already. I repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all “direct” persons and men
of action are active just because they are stupid and limited. How
explain that? I will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they
take immediate and secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way
persuade themselves more quickly and easily than other people do that
they have found an infallible foundation for their activity, and their
minds are at ease and you know that is the chief thing. To begin to
act, you know, you must first have your mind completely at ease and no
trace of doubt left in it. Why, how am I, for example, to set my mind
at rest? Where are the primary causes on which I am to build? Where are
my foundations? Where am I to get them from? I exercise myself in
reflection, and consequently with me every primary cause at once draws
after itself another still more primary, and so on to infinity. That is
just the essence of every sort of consciousness and reflection. It must
be a case of the laws of nature again. What is the result of it in the
end? Why, just the same. Remember I spoke just now of vengeance. (I am
sure you did not take it in.) I said that a man revenges himself
because he sees justice in it. Therefore he has found a primary cause,
that is, justice. And so he is at rest on all sides, and consequently
he carries out his revenge calmly and successfully, being persuaded
that he is doing a just and honest thing. But I see no justice in it, I
find no sort of virtue in it either, and consequently if I attempt to
revenge myself, it is only out of spite. Spite, of course, might
overcome everything, all my doubts, and so might serve quite
successfully in place of a primary cause, precisely because it is not a
cause. But what is to be done if I have not even spite (I began with
that just now, you know). In consequence again of those accursed laws
of consciousness, anger in me is subject to chemical disintegration.
You look into it, the object flies off into air, your reasons
evaporate, the criminal is not to be found, the wrong becomes not a
wrong but a phantom, something like the toothache, for which no one is
to blame, and consequently there is only the same outlet left
again—that is, to beat the wall as hard as you can. So you give it up
with a wave of the hand because you have not found a fundamental cause.
And try letting yourself be carried away by your feelings, blindly,
without reflection, without a primary cause, repelling consciousness at
least for a time; hate or love, if only not to sit with your hands
folded. The day after tomorrow, at the latest, you will begin despising
yourself for having knowingly deceived yourself. Result: a soap-bubble
and inertia. Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself an
intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to
begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless
vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct
and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the
intentional pouring of water through a sieve?
VI
Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should
have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I
should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least
have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could
have believed myself. Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how
very pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean
that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something
to say about me. “Sluggard”—why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a
career. Do not jest, it is so. I should then be a member of the best
club by right, and should find my occupation in continually respecting
myself. I knew a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being a
connoisseur of Lafitte. He considered this as his positive virtue, and
never doubted himself. He died, not simply with a tranquil, but with a
triumphant conscience, and he was quite right, too. Then I should have
chosen a career for myself, I should have been a sluggard and a
glutton, not a simple one, but, for instance, one with sympathies for
everything sublime and beautiful. How do you like that? I have long had
visions of it. That “sublime and beautiful” weighs heavily on my mind
at forty But that is at forty; then—oh, then it would have been
different! I should have found for myself a form of activity in keeping
with it, to be precise, drinking to the health of everything “sublime
and beautiful.” I should have snatched at every opportunity to drop a
tear into my glass and then to drain it to all that is “sublime and
beautiful.” I should then have turned everything into the sublime and
the beautiful; in the nastiest, unquestionable trash, I should have
sought out the sublime and the beautiful. I should have exuded tears
like a wet sponge. An artist, for instance, paints a picture worthy of
Gay. At once I drink to the health of the artist who painted the
picture worthy of Gay, because I love all that is “sublime and
beautiful.” An author has written _As you will:_ at once I drink to the
health of “anyone you will” because I love all that is “sublime and
beautiful.”
I should claim respect for doing so. I should persecute anyone who
would not show me respect. I should live at ease, I should die with
dignity, why, it is charming, perfectly charming! And what a good round
belly I should have grown, what a treble chin I should have
established, what a ruby nose I should have coloured for myself, so
that everyone would have said, looking at me: “Here is an asset! Here
is something real and solid!” And, say what you like, it is very
agreeable to hear such remarks about oneself in this negative age.
VII
But these are all golden dreams. Oh, tell me, who was it first
announced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things
because he does not know his own interests; and that if he were
enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man
would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and
noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage,
he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else, and we all
know that not one man can, consciously, act against his own interests,
consequently, so to say, through necessity, he would begin doing good?
Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! Why, in the first place,
when in all these thousands of years has there been a time when man has