Notes from a Dead House (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I lived for several years among murderers, profligates, and inveterate villains, but I can say positively, never in my life have I met such total moral degradation, such decisive depravity, and such insolent baseness as in A—v. With us there was a parricide from the nobility; I have already mentioned him; but I was convinced by many details and facts that even he was incomparably more honorable and humane than A—v. Before my eyes, during my life in prison, A—v turned into and remained a piece of meat with teeth and a stomach, and with an unquenchable thirst for the coarsest, most brutish carnal pleasures, and to satisfy the least and most whimsical of these pleasures, he was capable of cold-blooded murder, cutting throats, anything so long as it left no traces. I am not exaggerating; I got to know A—v well. He was an example of what the carnal side of man can come to, unrestrained by any inner norm, any lawfulness. And how revolting it was for me to look at his eternally mocking smile! He was a monster, a moral Quasimodo.1 Add to that the fact that he was cunning and intelligent, good-looking, even somewhat educated, and not without abilities. No, better fire, better plague and famine, than such a man in society!