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Dostoevsky - Notes from Underground
.
.
.
And all this came into my mind during the minutes I was
lying on my face on the sofa.
My God! surely I was not envious of her then.
I don't know, to this day I cannot decide, and at the time, of course,
I was still less able to understand what I was feeling than now. I
cannot get on without domineering and tyrannising over someone, but . . .
there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to
reason.
I conquered myself, however, and raised my head; I had to do so sooner
or later . . . and I am convinced to this day that it was just because I
was ashamed to look at her that another feeling was suddenly kindled
and flamed up in my heart . . . a feeling of mastery and possession. My
eyes gleamed with passion, and I gripped her hands tightly. How I
hated her and how I was drawn to her at that minute! The one feeling
intensified the other. It was almost like an act of vengeance. At
first there was a look of amazement, even of terror on her face, but
only for one instant. She warmly and rapturously embraced me.
X
A quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room in
frenzied impatience, from minute to minute I went up to the screen and
peeped through the crack at Liza. She was sitting on the ground with
her head leaning against the bed, and must have been crying. But she
did not go away, and that irritated me. This time she understood it
all. I had insulted her finally, but . . . there's no need to describe
it. She realised that my outburst of passion had been simply revenge,
a fresh humiliation, and that to my earlier, almost causeless hatred
was added now a PERSONAL HATRED, born of envy. . . . Though I do not
maintain positively that she understood all this distinctly; but she
certainly did fully understand that I was a despicable man, and what
was worse, incapable of loving her.
I know I shall be told that this is incredible--but it is incredible to
be as spiteful and stupid as I was; it may be added that it was strange
I should not love her, or at any rate, appreciate her love. Why is it
strange? In the first place, by then I was incapable of love, for I
repeat, with me loving meant tyrannising and showing my moral
superiority. I have never in my life been able to imagine any other
sort of love, and have nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinking
that love really consists in the right--freely given by the beloved
object--to tyrannise over her.
Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a
struggle. I began it always with hatred and ended it with moral
subjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the subjugated
object. And what is there to wonder at in that, since I had succeeded
in so corrupting myself, since I was so out of touch with "real life,"
as to have actually thought of reproaching her, and putting her to
shame for having come to me to hear "fine sentiments"; and did not even
guess that she had come not to hear fine sentiments, but to love me,
because to a woman all reformation, all salvation from any sort of
ruin, and all moral renewal is included in love and can only show
itself in that form.
I did not hate her so much, however, when I was running about the room
and peeping through the crack in the screen. I was only insufferably
oppressed by her being here. I wanted her to disappear. I wanted
"peace," to be left alone in my underground world. Real life oppressed
me with its novelty so much that I could hardly breathe.
But several minutes passed and she still remained, without stirring, as
though she were unconscious. I had the shamelessness to tap softly at
the screen as though to remind her. . . . She started, sprang up, and
flew to seek her kerchief, her hat, her coat, as though making her
escape from me. . . . Two minutes later she came from behind the screen
and looked with heavy eyes at me. I gave a spiteful grin, which was
forced, however, to KEEP UP APPEARANCES, and I turned away from her
eyes.
"Good-bye," she said, going towards the door.
I ran up to her, seized her hand, opened it, thrust something in it and
closed it again. Then I turned at once and dashed away in haste to the
other corner of the room to avoid seeing, anyway. . . .
I did mean a moment since to tell a lie--to write that I did this
accidentally, not knowing what I was doing through foolishness, through
losing my head. But I don't want to lie, and so I will say straight
out that I opened her hand and put the money in it . . . from spite. It
came into my head to do this while I was running up and down the room
and she was sitting behind the screen. But this I can say for certain:
though I did that cruel thing purposely, it was not an impulse from the
heart, but came from my evil brain. This cruelty was so affected, so
purposely made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books, that
I could not even keep it up a minute--first I dashed away to avoid
seeing her, and then in shame and despair rushed after Liza. I opened
the door in the passage and began listening.
"Liza! Liza! " I cried on the stairs, but in a low voice, not boldly.
There was no answer, but I fancied I heard her footsteps, lower down on
the stairs.
"Liza! " I cried, more loudly.
No answer. But at that minute I heard the stiff outer glass door open
heavily with a creak and slam violently; the sound echoed up the stairs.
She had gone. I went back to my room in hesitation. I felt horribly
oppressed.
I stood still at the table, beside the chair on which she had sat and
looked aimlessly before me. A minute passed, suddenly I started;
straight before me on the table I saw. . . . In short, I saw a crumpled
blue five-rouble note, the one I had thrust into her hand a minute
before. It was the same note; it could be no other, there was no other
in the flat. So she had managed to fling it from her hand on the table
at the moment when I had dashed into the further corner.
Well! I might have expected that she would do that. Might I have
expected it? No, I was such an egoist, I was so lacking in respect for
my fellow-creatures that I could not even imagine she would do so. I
could not endure it. A minute later I flew like a madman to dress,
flinging on what I could at random and ran headlong after her. She
could not have got two hundred paces away when I ran out into the
street.
It was a still night and the snow was coming down in masses and falling
almost perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the empty street as
though with a pillow. There was no one in the street, no sound was to
be heard. The street lamps gave a disconsolate and useless glimmer. I
ran two hundred paces to the cross-roads and stopped short.
Where had she gone? And why was I running after her?
Why? To fall down before her, to sob with remorse, to kiss her feet,
to entreat her forgiveness! I longed for that, my whole breast was
being rent to pieces, and never, never shall I recall that minute with
indifference. But--what for? I thought. Should I not begin to hate
her, perhaps, even tomorrow, just because I had kissed her feet today?
Should I give her happiness? Had I not recognised that day, for the
hundredth time, what I was worth? Should I not torture her?
I stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled darkness and pondered
this.
"And will it not be better? " I mused fantastically, afterwards at home,
stifling the living pang of my heart with fantastic dreams. "Will it
not be better that she should keep the resentment of the insult for
ever? Resentment--why, it is purification; it is a most stinging and
painful consciousness! Tomorrow I should have defiled her soul and
have exhausted her heart, while now the feeling of insult will never
die in her heart, and however loathsome the filth awaiting her--the
feeling of insult will elevate and purify her . . . by hatred . . . h'm!
. . . perhaps, too, by forgiveness. . . . Will all that make things easier
for her though? . . . "
And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which
is better--cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is
better?
So I dreamed as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the pain
in my soul. Never had I endured such suffering and remorse, yet could
there have been the faintest doubt when I ran out from my lodging that
I should turn back half-way? I never met Liza again and I have heard
nothing of her. I will add, too, that I remained for a long time
afterwards pleased with the phrase about the benefit from resentment
and hatred in spite of the fact that I almost fell ill from misery.
* * * * *
Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory.
I have many evil memories now, but . . . hadn't I better end my "Notes"
here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I
have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's
hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell
long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally
rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through
divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world,
would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the
traits for an anti-hero are EXPRESSLY gathered together here, and what
matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all
divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less.
We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for
real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come
almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and
we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we
fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something
else? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if
our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for
instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the
spheres of our activity, relax the control and we . . . yes, I assure you
. . . we should be begging to be under control again at once. I know
that you will very likely be angry with me for that, and will begin
shouting and stamping. Speak for yourself, you will say, and for your
miseries in your underground holes, and don't dare to say all of
us--excuse me, gentlemen, I am not justifying myself with that "all of
us. " As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life
carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and
what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have
found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all,
there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully!
Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it
is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in
confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling
to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.
We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and
blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive
to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and
for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and
that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it.
Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I
don't want to write more from "Underground. "
[The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not
refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop
here. ]
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lying on my face on the sofa.
My God! surely I was not envious of her then.
I don't know, to this day I cannot decide, and at the time, of course,
I was still less able to understand what I was feeling than now. I
cannot get on without domineering and tyrannising over someone, but . . .
there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to
reason.
I conquered myself, however, and raised my head; I had to do so sooner
or later . . . and I am convinced to this day that it was just because I
was ashamed to look at her that another feeling was suddenly kindled
and flamed up in my heart . . . a feeling of mastery and possession. My
eyes gleamed with passion, and I gripped her hands tightly. How I
hated her and how I was drawn to her at that minute! The one feeling
intensified the other. It was almost like an act of vengeance. At
first there was a look of amazement, even of terror on her face, but
only for one instant. She warmly and rapturously embraced me.
X
A quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room in
frenzied impatience, from minute to minute I went up to the screen and
peeped through the crack at Liza. She was sitting on the ground with
her head leaning against the bed, and must have been crying. But she
did not go away, and that irritated me. This time she understood it
all. I had insulted her finally, but . . . there's no need to describe
it. She realised that my outburst of passion had been simply revenge,
a fresh humiliation, and that to my earlier, almost causeless hatred
was added now a PERSONAL HATRED, born of envy. . . . Though I do not
maintain positively that she understood all this distinctly; but she
certainly did fully understand that I was a despicable man, and what
was worse, incapable of loving her.
I know I shall be told that this is incredible--but it is incredible to
be as spiteful and stupid as I was; it may be added that it was strange
I should not love her, or at any rate, appreciate her love. Why is it
strange? In the first place, by then I was incapable of love, for I
repeat, with me loving meant tyrannising and showing my moral
superiority. I have never in my life been able to imagine any other
sort of love, and have nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinking
that love really consists in the right--freely given by the beloved
object--to tyrannise over her.
Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a
struggle. I began it always with hatred and ended it with moral
subjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the subjugated
object. And what is there to wonder at in that, since I had succeeded
in so corrupting myself, since I was so out of touch with "real life,"
as to have actually thought of reproaching her, and putting her to
shame for having come to me to hear "fine sentiments"; and did not even
guess that she had come not to hear fine sentiments, but to love me,
because to a woman all reformation, all salvation from any sort of
ruin, and all moral renewal is included in love and can only show
itself in that form.
I did not hate her so much, however, when I was running about the room
and peeping through the crack in the screen. I was only insufferably
oppressed by her being here. I wanted her to disappear. I wanted
"peace," to be left alone in my underground world. Real life oppressed
me with its novelty so much that I could hardly breathe.
But several minutes passed and she still remained, without stirring, as
though she were unconscious. I had the shamelessness to tap softly at
the screen as though to remind her. . . . She started, sprang up, and
flew to seek her kerchief, her hat, her coat, as though making her
escape from me. . . . Two minutes later she came from behind the screen
and looked with heavy eyes at me. I gave a spiteful grin, which was
forced, however, to KEEP UP APPEARANCES, and I turned away from her
eyes.
"Good-bye," she said, going towards the door.
I ran up to her, seized her hand, opened it, thrust something in it and
closed it again. Then I turned at once and dashed away in haste to the
other corner of the room to avoid seeing, anyway. . . .
I did mean a moment since to tell a lie--to write that I did this
accidentally, not knowing what I was doing through foolishness, through
losing my head. But I don't want to lie, and so I will say straight
out that I opened her hand and put the money in it . . . from spite. It
came into my head to do this while I was running up and down the room
and she was sitting behind the screen. But this I can say for certain:
though I did that cruel thing purposely, it was not an impulse from the
heart, but came from my evil brain. This cruelty was so affected, so
purposely made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books, that
I could not even keep it up a minute--first I dashed away to avoid
seeing her, and then in shame and despair rushed after Liza. I opened
the door in the passage and began listening.
"Liza! Liza! " I cried on the stairs, but in a low voice, not boldly.
There was no answer, but I fancied I heard her footsteps, lower down on
the stairs.
"Liza! " I cried, more loudly.
No answer. But at that minute I heard the stiff outer glass door open
heavily with a creak and slam violently; the sound echoed up the stairs.
She had gone. I went back to my room in hesitation. I felt horribly
oppressed.
I stood still at the table, beside the chair on which she had sat and
looked aimlessly before me. A minute passed, suddenly I started;
straight before me on the table I saw. . . . In short, I saw a crumpled
blue five-rouble note, the one I had thrust into her hand a minute
before. It was the same note; it could be no other, there was no other
in the flat. So she had managed to fling it from her hand on the table
at the moment when I had dashed into the further corner.
Well! I might have expected that she would do that. Might I have
expected it? No, I was such an egoist, I was so lacking in respect for
my fellow-creatures that I could not even imagine she would do so. I
could not endure it. A minute later I flew like a madman to dress,
flinging on what I could at random and ran headlong after her. She
could not have got two hundred paces away when I ran out into the
street.
It was a still night and the snow was coming down in masses and falling
almost perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the empty street as
though with a pillow. There was no one in the street, no sound was to
be heard. The street lamps gave a disconsolate and useless glimmer. I
ran two hundred paces to the cross-roads and stopped short.
Where had she gone? And why was I running after her?
Why? To fall down before her, to sob with remorse, to kiss her feet,
to entreat her forgiveness! I longed for that, my whole breast was
being rent to pieces, and never, never shall I recall that minute with
indifference. But--what for? I thought. Should I not begin to hate
her, perhaps, even tomorrow, just because I had kissed her feet today?
Should I give her happiness? Had I not recognised that day, for the
hundredth time, what I was worth? Should I not torture her?
I stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled darkness and pondered
this.
"And will it not be better? " I mused fantastically, afterwards at home,
stifling the living pang of my heart with fantastic dreams. "Will it
not be better that she should keep the resentment of the insult for
ever? Resentment--why, it is purification; it is a most stinging and
painful consciousness! Tomorrow I should have defiled her soul and
have exhausted her heart, while now the feeling of insult will never
die in her heart, and however loathsome the filth awaiting her--the
feeling of insult will elevate and purify her . . . by hatred . . . h'm!
. . . perhaps, too, by forgiveness. . . . Will all that make things easier
for her though? . . . "
And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which
is better--cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is
better?
So I dreamed as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the pain
in my soul. Never had I endured such suffering and remorse, yet could
there have been the faintest doubt when I ran out from my lodging that
I should turn back half-way? I never met Liza again and I have heard
nothing of her. I will add, too, that I remained for a long time
afterwards pleased with the phrase about the benefit from resentment
and hatred in spite of the fact that I almost fell ill from misery.
* * * * *
Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory.
I have many evil memories now, but . . . hadn't I better end my "Notes"
here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I
have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's
hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell
long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally
rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through
divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world,
would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the
traits for an anti-hero are EXPRESSLY gathered together here, and what
matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all
divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less.
We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for
real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come
almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and
we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we
fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something
else? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if
our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for
instance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the
spheres of our activity, relax the control and we . . . yes, I assure you
. . . we should be begging to be under control again at once. I know
that you will very likely be angry with me for that, and will begin
shouting and stamping. Speak for yourself, you will say, and for your
miseries in your underground holes, and don't dare to say all of
us--excuse me, gentlemen, I am not justifying myself with that "all of
us. " As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life
carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and
what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have
found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all,
there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully!
Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it
is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in
confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling
to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.
We are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and
blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive
to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and
for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and
that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it.
Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I
don't want to write more from "Underground. "
[The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not
refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop
here. ]
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