There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our
insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in
cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite.
insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in
cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite.
Dostoevsky - Notes from Underground
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Title: Notes from the Underground
Author: Feodor Dostoevsky
Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #600]
Release Date: July, 1996
Language: English
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Notes from the Underground
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
PART I
Underground*
*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. --AUTHOR'S NOTE.
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 pre-eminently a characterless
creature; a man of character, an active man is pre-eminently 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. . . .
I, for instance, have a great deal of AMOUR PROPRE. I am as suspicious
and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf. But upon my word I
sometimes have had moments when if I had happened to be slapped in the
face I should, perhaps, have been positively glad of it. I say, in
earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover even in that
a peculiar sort of enjoyment--the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but
in despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one
is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position. And
when one is slapped in the face--why then the consciousness of being
rubbed into a pulp would positively overwhelm one. The worst of it is,
look at it which way one will, it still turns out that I was always the
most to blame in everything. And what is most humiliating of all, to
blame for no fault of my own but, so to say, through the laws of
nature. In the first place, to blame because I am cleverer than any of
the people surrounding me. (I have always considered myself cleverer
than any of the people surrounding me, and sometimes, would you believe
it, have been positively ashamed of it. At any rate, I have all my
life, as it were, turned my eyes away and never could look people
straight in the face. ) To blame, finally, because even if I had had
magnanimity, I should only have had more suffering from the sense of
its uselessness. I should certainly have never been able to do
anything from being magnanimous--neither to forgive, for my assailant
would perhaps have slapped me from the laws of nature, and one cannot
forgive the laws of nature; nor to forget, for even if it were owing to
the laws of nature, it is insulting all the same. Finally, even if I
had wanted to be anything but magnanimous, had desired on the contrary
to revenge myself on my assailant, I could not have revenged myself on
any one for anything because I should certainly never have made up my
mind to do anything, even if I had been able to. Why should I not have
made up my mind? About that in particular I want to say a few words.
III
With people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up for
themselves in general, how is it done? Why, when they are possessed,
let us suppose, by the feeling of revenge, then for the time there is
nothing else but that feeling left in their whole being. Such a
gentleman simply dashes straight for his object like an infuriated bull
with its horns down, and nothing but a wall will stop him. (By the
way: facing the wall, such gentlemen--that is, the "direct" persons and
men of action--are genuinely nonplussed. For them a wall is not an
evasion, as for us people who think and consequently do nothing; it is
not an excuse for turning aside, an excuse for which we are always very
glad, though we scarcely believe in it ourselves, as a rule. No, they
are nonplussed in all sincerity. The wall has for them something
tranquillising, morally soothing, final--maybe even something
mysterious . . . but of the wall later. )
Well, such a direct person I regard as the real normal man, as his
tender mother nature wished to see him when she graciously brought him
into being on the earth. I envy such a man till I am green in the
face. He is stupid. I am not disputing that, but perhaps the normal
man should be stupid, how do you know? Perhaps it is very beautiful,
in fact. And I am the more persuaded of that suspicion, if one can
call it so, by the fact that if you take, for instance, the antithesis
of the normal man, that is, the man of acute consciousness, who has
come, of course, not out of the lap of nature but out of a retort (this
is almost mysticism, gentlemen, but I suspect this, too), this
retort-made man is sometimes so nonplussed in the presence of his
antithesis that with all his exaggerated consciousness he genuinely
thinks of himself as a mouse and not a man. It may be an acutely
conscious mouse, yet it is a mouse, while the other is a man, and
therefore, et caetera, et caetera. And the worst of it is, he himself,
his very own self, looks on himself as a mouse; no one asks him to do
so; and that is an important point. Now let us look at this mouse in
action. Let us suppose, for instance, that it feels insulted, too (and
it almost always does feel insulted), and wants to revenge itself, too.
There may even be a greater accumulation of spite in it than in L'HOMME
DE LA NATURE ET DE LA VERITE. The base and nasty desire to vent that
spite on its assailant rankles perhaps even more nastily in it than in
L'HOMME DE LA NATURE ET DE LA VERITE. For through his innate stupidity
the latter looks upon his revenge as justice pure and simple; while in
consequence of his acute consciousness the mouse does not believe in
the justice of it. To come at last to the deed itself, to the very act
of revenge. Apart from the one fundamental nastiness the luckless
mouse succeeds in creating around it so many other nastinesses in the
form of doubts and questions, adds to the one question so many
unsettled questions that there inevitably works up around it a sort of
fatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of
the contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action who stand
solemnly about it as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it till their
healthy sides ache. Of course the only thing left for it is to dismiss
all that with a wave of its paw, and, with a smile of assumed contempt
in which it does not even itself believe, creep ignominiously into its
mouse-hole. There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our
insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in
cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years
together it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most
ignominious details, and every time will add, of itself, details still
more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own
imagination. It will itself be ashamed of its imaginings, but yet it
will recall it all, it will go over and over every detail, it will
invent unheard of things against itself, pretending that those things
might happen, and will forgive nothing. Maybe it will begin to revenge
itself, too, but, as it were, piecemeal, in trivial ways, from behind
the stove, incognito, without believing either in its own right to
vengeance, or in the success of its revenge, knowing that from all its
efforts at revenge it will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom
it revenges itself, while he, I daresay, will not even scratch himself.
On its deathbed it will recall it all over again, with interest
accumulated over all the years and . . .
But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in
that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for
forty years, in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful
hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires
turned inward, in that fever of oscillations, of resolutions determined
for ever and repented of again a minute later--that the savour of that
strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies. It is so subtle, so
difficult of analysis, that persons who are a little limited, or even
simply persons of strong nerves, will not understand a single atom of
it. "Possibly," you will add on your own account with a grin, "people
will not understand it either who have never received a slap in the
face," and in that way you will politely hint to me that I, too,
perhaps, have had the experience of a slap in the face in my life, and
so I speak as one who knows. I bet that you are thinking that.
There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our
insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in
cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years
together it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most
ignominious details, and every time will add, of itself, details still
more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own
imagination. It will itself be ashamed of its imaginings, but yet it
will recall it all, it will go over and over every detail, it will
invent unheard of things against itself, pretending that those things
might happen, and will forgive nothing. Maybe it will begin to revenge
itself, too, but, as it were, piecemeal, in trivial ways, from behind
the stove, incognito, without believing either in its own right to
vengeance, or in the success of its revenge, knowing that from all its
efforts at revenge it will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom
it revenges itself, while he, I daresay, will not even scratch himself.
On its deathbed it will recall it all over again, with interest
accumulated over all the years and . . .
But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in
that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for
forty years, in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful
hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires
turned inward, in that fever of oscillations, of resolutions determined
for ever and repented of again a minute later--that the savour of that
strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies. It is so subtle, so
difficult of analysis, that persons who are a little limited, or even
simply persons of strong nerves, will not understand a single atom of
it. "Possibly," you will add on your own account with a grin, "people
will not understand it either who have never received a slap in the
face," and in that way you will politely hint to me that I, too,
perhaps, have had the experience of a slap in the face in my life, and
so I speak as one who knows. I bet that you are thinking that. But
set your minds at rest, gentlemen, I have not received a slap in the
face, though it is absolutely a matter of indifference to me what you
may think about it. Possibly, I even regret, myself, that I have given
so few slaps in the face during my life. But enough . . . not another
word on that subject of such extreme interest to you.
I will continue calmly concerning persons with strong nerves who do not
understand a certain refinement of enjoyment. Though in certain
circumstances these gentlemen bellow their loudest like bulls, though
this, let us suppose, does them the greatest credit, yet, as I have
said already, confronted with the impossible they subside at once. The
impossible means the stone wall! What stone wall? Why, of course, the
laws of nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics. As
soon as they prove to you, for instance, that you are descended from a
monkey, then it is no use scowling, accept it for a fact. When they
prove to you that in reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to
you than a hundred thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this
conclusion is the final solution of all so-called virtues and duties
and all such prejudices and fancies, then you have just to accept it,
there is no help for it, for twice two is a law of mathematics. Just
try refuting it.
"Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a
case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your permission, she
has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or
dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently
all her conclusions. A wall, you see, is a wall . . . and so on, and so
on. "
Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and
arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact
that twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall
by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to
knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because
it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.
As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did
contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as
twice two makes four. Oh, absurdity of absurdities! How much better
it is to understand it all, to recognise it all, all the
impossibilities and the stone wall; not to be reconciled to one of
those impossibilities and stone walls if it disgusts you to be
reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable, logical
combinations to reach the most revolting conclusions on the everlasting
theme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself somehow to blame,
though again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the least,
and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into
luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for
you to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never
will have, an object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a
bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no
knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these
uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the
more you do not know, the worse the ache.
IV
"Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding enjoyment in toothache next," you
cry, with a laugh.
"Well, even in toothache there is enjoyment," I answer. I had
toothache for a whole month and I know there is. In that case, of
course, people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not
candid moans, they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole
point. The enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans;
if he did not feel enjoyment in them he would not moan. It is a good
example, gentlemen, and I will develop it. Those moans express in the
first place all the aimlessness of your pain, which is so humiliating
to your consciousness; the whole legal system of nature on which you
spit 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
acted only from his own interest? What is to be done with the millions
of facts that bear witness that men, CONSCIOUSLY, that is fully
understanding their real interests, have left them in the background
and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger,
compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were,
simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, wilfully,
struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the
darkness. So, I suppose, this obstinacy and perversity were pleasanter
to them than any advantage. . . . Advantage! What is advantage? And will
you take it upon yourself to define with perfect accuracy in what the
advantage of man consists? And what if it so happens that a man's
advantage, SOMETIMES, not only may, but even must, consist in his
desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not
advantageous. And if so, if there can be such a case, the whole
principle falls into dust. What do you think--are there such cases?
You laugh; laugh away, gentlemen, but only answer me: have man's
advantages been reckoned up with perfect certainty? Are there not some
which not only have not been included but cannot possibly be included
under any classification? You see, you gentlemen have, to the best of
my knowledge, taken your whole register of human advantages from the
averages of statistical figures and politico-economical formulas. Your
advantages are prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace--and so on, and so
on. So that the man who should, for instance, go openly and knowingly
in opposition to all that list would to your thinking, and indeed mine,
too, of course, be an obscurantist or an absolute madman: would not he?
But, you know, this is what is surprising: why does it so happen that
all these statisticians, sages and lovers of humanity, when they reckon
up human advantages invariably leave out one? They don't even take it
into their reckoning in the form in which it should be taken, and the
whole reckoning depends upon that. It would be no greater matter, they
would simply have to take it, this advantage, and add it to the list.
But the trouble is, that this strange advantage does not fall under any
classification and is not in place in any list. I have a friend for
instance . . . Ech! gentlemen, but of course he is your friend, too; and
indeed there is no one, no one to whom he is not a friend! When he
prepares for any undertaking this gentleman immediately explains to
you, elegantly and clearly, exactly how he must act in accordance with
the laws of reason and truth. What is more, he will talk to you with
excitement and passion of the true normal interests of man; with irony
he will upbraid the short-sighted fools who do not understand their own
interests, nor the true significance of virtue; and, within a quarter
of an hour, without any sudden outside provocation, but simply through
something inside him which is stronger than all his interests, he will
go off on quite a different tack--that is, act in direct opposition to
what he has just been saying about himself, in opposition to the laws
of reason, in opposition to his own advantage, in fact in opposition to
everything . . . I warn you that my friend is a compound personality and
therefore it is difficult to blame him as an individual. The fact is,
gentlemen, it seems there must really exist something that is dearer to
almost every man than his greatest advantages, or (not to be illogical)
there is a most advantageous advantage (the very one omitted of which
we spoke just now) which is more important and more advantageous than
all other advantages, for the sake of which a man if necessary is ready
to act in opposition to all laws; that is, in opposition to reason,
honour, peace, prosperity--in fact, in opposition to all those
excellent and useful things if only he can attain that fundamental,
most advantageous advantage which is dearer to him than all. "Yes, but
it's advantage all the same," you will retort. But excuse me, I'll
make the point clear, and it is not a case of playing upon words. What
matters is, that this advantage is remarkable from the very fact that
it breaks down all our classifications, and continually shatters every
system constructed by lovers of mankind for the benefit of mankind. In
fact, it upsets everything. But before I mention this advantage to
you, I want to compromise myself personally, and therefore I boldly
declare that all these fine systems, all these theories for explaining
to mankind their real normal interests, in order that inevitably
striving to pursue these interests they may at once become good and
noble--are, in my opinion, so far, mere logical exercises! Yes,
logical exercises. Why, to maintain this theory of the regeneration of
mankind by means of the pursuit of his own advantage is to my mind
almost the same thing . . . as to affirm, for instance, following Buckle,
that through civilisation mankind becomes softer, and consequently less
bloodthirsty and less fitted for warfare. Logically it does seem to
follow from his arguments. But man has such a predilection for systems
and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth
intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to
justify his logic. I take this example because it is the most glaring
instance of it.
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Title: Notes from the Underground
Author: Feodor Dostoevsky
Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #600]
Release Date: July, 1996
Language: English
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Notes from the Underground
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
PART I
Underground*
*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. --AUTHOR'S NOTE.
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 pre-eminently a characterless
creature; a man of character, an active man is pre-eminently 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. . . .
I, for instance, have a great deal of AMOUR PROPRE. I am as suspicious
and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf. But upon my word I
sometimes have had moments when if I had happened to be slapped in the
face I should, perhaps, have been positively glad of it. I say, in
earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover even in that
a peculiar sort of enjoyment--the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but
in despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one
is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position. And
when one is slapped in the face--why then the consciousness of being
rubbed into a pulp would positively overwhelm one. The worst of it is,
look at it which way one will, it still turns out that I was always the
most to blame in everything. And what is most humiliating of all, to
blame for no fault of my own but, so to say, through the laws of
nature. In the first place, to blame because I am cleverer than any of
the people surrounding me. (I have always considered myself cleverer
than any of the people surrounding me, and sometimes, would you believe
it, have been positively ashamed of it. At any rate, I have all my
life, as it were, turned my eyes away and never could look people
straight in the face. ) To blame, finally, because even if I had had
magnanimity, I should only have had more suffering from the sense of
its uselessness. I should certainly have never been able to do
anything from being magnanimous--neither to forgive, for my assailant
would perhaps have slapped me from the laws of nature, and one cannot
forgive the laws of nature; nor to forget, for even if it were owing to
the laws of nature, it is insulting all the same. Finally, even if I
had wanted to be anything but magnanimous, had desired on the contrary
to revenge myself on my assailant, I could not have revenged myself on
any one for anything because I should certainly never have made up my
mind to do anything, even if I had been able to. Why should I not have
made up my mind? About that in particular I want to say a few words.
III
With people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up for
themselves in general, how is it done? Why, when they are possessed,
let us suppose, by the feeling of revenge, then for the time there is
nothing else but that feeling left in their whole being. Such a
gentleman simply dashes straight for his object like an infuriated bull
with its horns down, and nothing but a wall will stop him. (By the
way: facing the wall, such gentlemen--that is, the "direct" persons and
men of action--are genuinely nonplussed. For them a wall is not an
evasion, as for us people who think and consequently do nothing; it is
not an excuse for turning aside, an excuse for which we are always very
glad, though we scarcely believe in it ourselves, as a rule. No, they
are nonplussed in all sincerity. The wall has for them something
tranquillising, morally soothing, final--maybe even something
mysterious . . . but of the wall later. )
Well, such a direct person I regard as the real normal man, as his
tender mother nature wished to see him when she graciously brought him
into being on the earth. I envy such a man till I am green in the
face. He is stupid. I am not disputing that, but perhaps the normal
man should be stupid, how do you know? Perhaps it is very beautiful,
in fact. And I am the more persuaded of that suspicion, if one can
call it so, by the fact that if you take, for instance, the antithesis
of the normal man, that is, the man of acute consciousness, who has
come, of course, not out of the lap of nature but out of a retort (this
is almost mysticism, gentlemen, but I suspect this, too), this
retort-made man is sometimes so nonplussed in the presence of his
antithesis that with all his exaggerated consciousness he genuinely
thinks of himself as a mouse and not a man. It may be an acutely
conscious mouse, yet it is a mouse, while the other is a man, and
therefore, et caetera, et caetera. And the worst of it is, he himself,
his very own self, looks on himself as a mouse; no one asks him to do
so; and that is an important point. Now let us look at this mouse in
action. Let us suppose, for instance, that it feels insulted, too (and
it almost always does feel insulted), and wants to revenge itself, too.
There may even be a greater accumulation of spite in it than in L'HOMME
DE LA NATURE ET DE LA VERITE. The base and nasty desire to vent that
spite on its assailant rankles perhaps even more nastily in it than in
L'HOMME DE LA NATURE ET DE LA VERITE. For through his innate stupidity
the latter looks upon his revenge as justice pure and simple; while in
consequence of his acute consciousness the mouse does not believe in
the justice of it. To come at last to the deed itself, to the very act
of revenge. Apart from the one fundamental nastiness the luckless
mouse succeeds in creating around it so many other nastinesses in the
form of doubts and questions, adds to the one question so many
unsettled questions that there inevitably works up around it a sort of
fatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of
the contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action who stand
solemnly about it as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it till their
healthy sides ache. Of course the only thing left for it is to dismiss
all that with a wave of its paw, and, with a smile of assumed contempt
in which it does not even itself believe, creep ignominiously into its
mouse-hole. There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our
insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in
cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years
together it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most
ignominious details, and every time will add, of itself, details still
more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own
imagination. It will itself be ashamed of its imaginings, but yet it
will recall it all, it will go over and over every detail, it will
invent unheard of things against itself, pretending that those things
might happen, and will forgive nothing. Maybe it will begin to revenge
itself, too, but, as it were, piecemeal, in trivial ways, from behind
the stove, incognito, without believing either in its own right to
vengeance, or in the success of its revenge, knowing that from all its
efforts at revenge it will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom
it revenges itself, while he, I daresay, will not even scratch himself.
On its deathbed it will recall it all over again, with interest
accumulated over all the years and . . .
But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in
that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for
forty years, in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful
hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires
turned inward, in that fever of oscillations, of resolutions determined
for ever and repented of again a minute later--that the savour of that
strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies. It is so subtle, so
difficult of analysis, that persons who are a little limited, or even
simply persons of strong nerves, will not understand a single atom of
it. "Possibly," you will add on your own account with a grin, "people
will not understand it either who have never received a slap in the
face," and in that way you will politely hint to me that I, too,
perhaps, have had the experience of a slap in the face in my life, and
so I speak as one who knows. I bet that you are thinking that.
There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our
insulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in
cold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years
together it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most
ignominious details, and every time will add, of itself, details still
more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own
imagination. It will itself be ashamed of its imaginings, but yet it
will recall it all, it will go over and over every detail, it will
invent unheard of things against itself, pretending that those things
might happen, and will forgive nothing. Maybe it will begin to revenge
itself, too, but, as it were, piecemeal, in trivial ways, from behind
the stove, incognito, without believing either in its own right to
vengeance, or in the success of its revenge, knowing that from all its
efforts at revenge it will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom
it revenges itself, while he, I daresay, will not even scratch himself.
On its deathbed it will recall it all over again, with interest
accumulated over all the years and . . .
But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in
that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for
forty years, in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful
hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires
turned inward, in that fever of oscillations, of resolutions determined
for ever and repented of again a minute later--that the savour of that
strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies. It is so subtle, so
difficult of analysis, that persons who are a little limited, or even
simply persons of strong nerves, will not understand a single atom of
it. "Possibly," you will add on your own account with a grin, "people
will not understand it either who have never received a slap in the
face," and in that way you will politely hint to me that I, too,
perhaps, have had the experience of a slap in the face in my life, and
so I speak as one who knows. I bet that you are thinking that. But
set your minds at rest, gentlemen, I have not received a slap in the
face, though it is absolutely a matter of indifference to me what you
may think about it. Possibly, I even regret, myself, that I have given
so few slaps in the face during my life. But enough . . . not another
word on that subject of such extreme interest to you.
I will continue calmly concerning persons with strong nerves who do not
understand a certain refinement of enjoyment. Though in certain
circumstances these gentlemen bellow their loudest like bulls, though
this, let us suppose, does them the greatest credit, yet, as I have
said already, confronted with the impossible they subside at once. The
impossible means the stone wall! What stone wall? Why, of course, the
laws of nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics. As
soon as they prove to you, for instance, that you are descended from a
monkey, then it is no use scowling, accept it for a fact. When they
prove to you that in reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to
you than a hundred thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this
conclusion is the final solution of all so-called virtues and duties
and all such prejudices and fancies, then you have just to accept it,
there is no help for it, for twice two is a law of mathematics. Just
try refuting it.
"Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a
case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your permission, she
has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or
dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently
all her conclusions. A wall, you see, is a wall . . . and so on, and so
on. "
Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and
arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact
that twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall
by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to
knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because
it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.
As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did
contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as
twice two makes four. Oh, absurdity of absurdities! How much better
it is to understand it all, to recognise it all, all the
impossibilities and the stone wall; not to be reconciled to one of
those impossibilities and stone walls if it disgusts you to be
reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable, logical
combinations to reach the most revolting conclusions on the everlasting
theme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself somehow to blame,
though again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the least,
and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into
luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for
you to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never
will have, an object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a
bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no
knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these
uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the
more you do not know, the worse the ache.
IV
"Ha, ha, ha! You will be finding enjoyment in toothache next," you
cry, with a laugh.
"Well, even in toothache there is enjoyment," I answer. I had
toothache for a whole month and I know there is. In that case, of
course, people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not
candid moans, they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole
point. The enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans;
if he did not feel enjoyment in them he would not moan. It is a good
example, gentlemen, and I will develop it. Those moans express in the
first place all the aimlessness of your pain, which is so humiliating
to your consciousness; the whole legal system of nature on which you
spit 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
acted only from his own interest? What is to be done with the millions
of facts that bear witness that men, CONSCIOUSLY, that is fully
understanding their real interests, have left them in the background
and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger,
compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were,
simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, wilfully,
struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the
darkness. So, I suppose, this obstinacy and perversity were pleasanter
to them than any advantage. . . . Advantage! What is advantage? And will
you take it upon yourself to define with perfect accuracy in what the
advantage of man consists? And what if it so happens that a man's
advantage, SOMETIMES, not only may, but even must, consist in his
desiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not
advantageous. And if so, if there can be such a case, the whole
principle falls into dust. What do you think--are there such cases?
You laugh; laugh away, gentlemen, but only answer me: have man's
advantages been reckoned up with perfect certainty? Are there not some
which not only have not been included but cannot possibly be included
under any classification? You see, you gentlemen have, to the best of
my knowledge, taken your whole register of human advantages from the
averages of statistical figures and politico-economical formulas. Your
advantages are prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace--and so on, and so
on. So that the man who should, for instance, go openly and knowingly
in opposition to all that list would to your thinking, and indeed mine,
too, of course, be an obscurantist or an absolute madman: would not he?
But, you know, this is what is surprising: why does it so happen that
all these statisticians, sages and lovers of humanity, when they reckon
up human advantages invariably leave out one? They don't even take it
into their reckoning in the form in which it should be taken, and the
whole reckoning depends upon that. It would be no greater matter, they
would simply have to take it, this advantage, and add it to the list.
But the trouble is, that this strange advantage does not fall under any
classification and is not in place in any list. I have a friend for
instance . . . Ech! gentlemen, but of course he is your friend, too; and
indeed there is no one, no one to whom he is not a friend! When he
prepares for any undertaking this gentleman immediately explains to
you, elegantly and clearly, exactly how he must act in accordance with
the laws of reason and truth. What is more, he will talk to you with
excitement and passion of the true normal interests of man; with irony
he will upbraid the short-sighted fools who do not understand their own
interests, nor the true significance of virtue; and, within a quarter
of an hour, without any sudden outside provocation, but simply through
something inside him which is stronger than all his interests, he will
go off on quite a different tack--that is, act in direct opposition to
what he has just been saying about himself, in opposition to the laws
of reason, in opposition to his own advantage, in fact in opposition to
everything . . . I warn you that my friend is a compound personality and
therefore it is difficult to blame him as an individual. The fact is,
gentlemen, it seems there must really exist something that is dearer to
almost every man than his greatest advantages, or (not to be illogical)
there is a most advantageous advantage (the very one omitted of which
we spoke just now) which is more important and more advantageous than
all other advantages, for the sake of which a man if necessary is ready
to act in opposition to all laws; that is, in opposition to reason,
honour, peace, prosperity--in fact, in opposition to all those
excellent and useful things if only he can attain that fundamental,
most advantageous advantage which is dearer to him than all. "Yes, but
it's advantage all the same," you will retort. But excuse me, I'll
make the point clear, and it is not a case of playing upon words. What
matters is, that this advantage is remarkable from the very fact that
it breaks down all our classifications, and continually shatters every
system constructed by lovers of mankind for the benefit of mankind. In
fact, it upsets everything. But before I mention this advantage to
you, I want to compromise myself personally, and therefore I boldly
declare that all these fine systems, all these theories for explaining
to mankind their real normal interests, in order that inevitably
striving to pursue these interests they may at once become good and
noble--are, in my opinion, so far, mere logical exercises! Yes,
logical exercises. Why, to maintain this theory of the regeneration of
mankind by means of the pursuit of his own advantage is to my mind
almost the same thing . . . as to affirm, for instance, following Buckle,
that through civilisation mankind becomes softer, and consequently less
bloodthirsty and less fitted for warfare. Logically it does seem to
follow from his arguments. But man has such a predilection for systems
and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth
intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to
justify his logic. I take this example because it is the most glaring
instance of it.
