Notes from the Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure? Answer: Of himself.

tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect.

I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thorough-going illness.

every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease. I stick to that.

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.

will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation;

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.

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

“Our choice is usually mistaken from a false view of our advantage.

over-philosophical; it’s the result of forty years underground!

But I repeat for the hundredth time, there is one case, one only, when man may consciously, purposely, desire what is injurious to himself, what is stupid, very stupid—simply in order to have the right to desire for himself even what

man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point!

Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact beyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction and chaos also?

he only loves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters;

perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself,

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.

Always

There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge into contemplation.

Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you.

when we do come out into the light of day and break out we talk and talk and talk.

I have been for forty years listening to you through a crack under the floor. I have invented them myself, there was nothing else I could invent.

Writing will be a sort of work. They say work makes man kind-hearted and honest.

that there was no one like me and I was unlike anyone else. “I am alone and they are everyone,” I thought—and pondered.

Either to be a hero or to grovel in the mud—there was nothing between.

I had the patience to sit like a fool beside these people for four hours at a stretch, listening to them without knowing what to say to them or venturing to say a word.

I purposely began to make all the progress I could with my studies and forced my way to the very top.

my wretched little clock hissed out five.

I imagine it would be better to talk of something more intelligent.”

I’ll sit here and drink, for I look upon you as so many pawns, as inanimate pawns.

“So this is it, this is it at last—contact with real life,” I muttered

“Look, monster, at my hollow cheeks and my rags! I’ve lost everything—my career, my happiness, art, science, the woman I loved, and all through you. Here are pistols. I have come to discharge my pistol and . . . and I . . . forgive you. Then I shall fire into the air and he will hear nothing more of me. . .

Somewhere behind a screen a clock began wheezing, as though oppressed by something, as though someone were strangling it.

My head was full of fumes. Something seemed to be hovering over me, rousing me, exciting me, and making me restless.

Love is a holy mystery and ought to be hidden from all other eyes, whatever happens.

“Why, you . . . speak somehow like a book,”

While for you neither tear, nor sigh, nor remembrance; no one in the whole world will ever come to you, your name will vanish from the face of the earth—as though you had never existed, never been born at all!

My life was no life at all; my life has been thrown away like a dish-clout; it was drunk away in the tavern at the Haymarket; let me out, kind people, to live in the world again.’”

Her eyes were a light hazel, they were lovely eyes, full of life, and capable of expressing love as well as sullen hatred.

I was exhausted, shattered, in bewilderment. But behind the bewilderment the truth was already gleaming. The loathsome truth.

Why is it strange? In the first place, by then I was incapable of love, for I repeat, with me loving meant tyrannizing and showing my moral superiority.

Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a struggle.

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.

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!

which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings?

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.

have found comfort in deceiving yourselves.