Notes from the Underground
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 _à
propos_ of the falling snow.
PART II
À 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_).
I
At that time I was only twenty-four. My life was even then gloomy,
ill-regulated, and as solitary as that of a savage. I made friends with
no one and positively avoided talking, and buried myself more and more
in my hole. At work in the office I never looked at anyone, and was
perfectly well aware that my companions looked upon me, not only as a
queer fellow, but even looked upon me—I always fancied this—with a sort
of loathing. I sometimes wondered why it was that nobody except me
fancied that he was looked upon with aversion? One of the clerks had a
most repulsive, pock-marked face, which looked positively villainous. I
believe I should not have dared to look at anyone with such an
unsightly countenance. Another had such a very dirty old uniform that
there was an unpleasant odour in his proximity. Yet not one of these
gentlemen showed the slightest self-consciousness—either about their
clothes or their countenance or their character in any way. Neither of
them ever imagined that they were looked at with repulsion; if they had
imagined it they would not have minded—so long as their superiors did
not look at them in that way. It is clear to me now that, owing to my
unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often
looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and
so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone. I hated my face,
for instance: I thought it disgusting, and even suspected that there
was something base in my expression, and so every day when I turned up
at the office I tried to behave as independently as possible, and to
assume a lofty expression, so that I might not be suspected of being
abject. “My face may be ugly,” I thought, “but let it be lofty,
expressive, and, above all, _extremely_ intelligent.” But I was
positively and painfully certain that it was impossible for my
countenance ever to express those qualities. And what was worst of all,
I thought it actually stupid looking, and I would have been quite
satisfied if I could have looked intelligent. In fact, I would even
have put up with looking base if, at the same time, my face could have
been thought strikingly intelligent.
Of course, I hated my fellow clerks one and all, and I despised them
all, yet at the same time I was, as it were, afraid of them. In fact,
it happened at times that I thought more highly of them than of myself.
It somehow happened quite suddenly that I alternated between despising
them and thinking them superior to myself. A cultivated and decent man
cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself,
and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments. But
whether I despised them or thought them superior I dropped my eyes
almost every time I met anyone. I even made experiments whether I could
face so and so’s looking at me, and I was always the first to drop my
eyes. This worried me to distraction. I had a sickly dread, too, of
being ridiculous, and so had a slavish passion for the conventional in
everything external. I loved to fall into the common rut, and had a
whole-hearted terror of any kind of eccentricity in myself. But how
could I live up to it? I was morbidly sensitive as a man of our age
should be. They were all stupid, and as like one another as so many
sheep. Perhaps I was the only one in the office who fancied that I was
a coward and a slave, and I fancied it just because I was more highly
developed. But it was not only that I fancied it, it really was so. I
was a coward and a slave. I say this without the slightest
embarrassment. Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a
slave. That is his normal condition. Of that I am firmly persuaded. He
is made and constructed to that very end. And not only at the present
time owing to some casual circumstances, but always, at all times, a
decent man is bound to be a coward and a slave. It is the law of nature
for all decent people all over the earth. If anyone of them happens to
be valiant about something, he need not be comforted nor carried away
by that; he would show the white feather just the same before something
else. That is how it invariably and inevitably ends. Only donkeys and
mules are valiant, and they only till they are pushed up to the wall.
It is not worth while to pay attention to them for they really are of
no consequence.
Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no
one like me and I was unlike anyone else. “I am alone and they are
_everyone_,” I thought—and pondered.
From that it is evident that I was still a youngster.
The very opposite sometimes happened. It was loathsome sometimes to go
to the office; things reached such a point that I often came home ill.
But all at once, _à propos_ of nothing, there would come a phase of
scepticism and indifference (everything happened in phases to me), and
I would laugh myself at my intolerance and fastidiousness, I would
reproach myself with being _romantic_. At one time I was unwilling to
speak to anyone, while at other times I would not only talk, but go to
the length of contemplating making friends with them. All my
fastidiousness would suddenly, for no rhyme or reason, vanish. Who
knows, perhaps I never had really had it, and it had simply been
affected, and got out of books. I have not decided that question even
now. Once I quite made friends with them, visited their homes, played
preference, drank vodka, talked of promotions.... But here let me make
a digression.
We Russians, speaking generally, have never had those foolish
transcendental “romantics”—German, and still more French—on whom
nothing produces any effect; if there were an earthquake, if all France
perished at the barricades, they would still be the same, they would
not even have the decency to affect a change, but would still go on
singing their transcendental songs to the hour of their death, because
they are fools. We, in Russia, have no fools; that is well known. That
is what distinguishes us from foreign lands. Consequently these
transcendental natures are not found amongst us in their pure form. The
idea that they are is due to our “realistic” journalists and critics of
that day, always on the look out for Kostanzhoglos and Uncle Pyotr
Ivanitchs and foolishly accepting them as our ideal; they have
slandered our romantics, taking them for the same transcendental sort
as in Germany or France. On the contrary, the characteristics of our
“romantics” are absolutely and directly opposed to the transcendental
European type, and no European standard can be applied to them. (Allow
me to make use of this word “romantic”—an old-fashioned and much
respected word which has done good service and is familiar to all.) The
characteristics of our romantic are to understand everything, _to see
everything and to see it often incomparably more clearly than our most
realistic minds see it;_ to refuse to accept anyone or anything, but at
the same time not to despise anything; to give way, to yield, from
policy; never to lose sight of a useful practical object (such as
rent-free quarters at the government expense, pensions, decorations),
to keep their eye on that object through all the enthusiasms and
volumes of lyrical poems, and at the same time to preserve “the sublime
and the beautiful” inviolate within them to the hour of their death,
and to preserve themselves also, incidentally, like some precious jewel
wrapped in cotton wool if only for the benefit of “the sublime and the