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such persons as the writer of these notes not only may, but positively must, exist in our society,
Porque las circunstancias de la sociedad, los personajes son importantes
very many elements absolutely opposite to that. I felt them positively swarming in me,
Cuales son?
purposely would not let them come out.
However, I assure you I do not care if you are. . . .
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.
Es un mundo de los estúpidos
Porque los estúpidos viven hasta tiene sesenta años?
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 swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thorough-going illness.
Pensar demasiado es una enfermad
(There are intentional and unintentional towns.)
I bet you think I am writing all this from affectation,
Por decir este, se ve como le importa que los demás creen
people do pride themselves on their diseases,
La gente hacen las excusas por sus acciones por sus circunstancias de vida
También pensar es una enfermedad
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.
Repulsión del bueno
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,
Que hacía?
into positive real enjoyment!
Regret then pleasure
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.
La naturaleza de humanos: difícil cambiar
over-acute consciousness,
Thought that is overly intellectual
even in that a peculiar sort of enjoyment—the enjoyment, of course, of despair;
Real
I have all my life, as it were, turned my eyes away and never could look people straight in the face.)
Autism?
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.
Critica de Darvinismo
El narrador tiene el rencor y también está bajo de la tierra.. más la hipocresía
El narrador
conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years,
Contra el darwinismo
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.
Ser Vacío
Those moans express in the first place all the aimlessness of your pain, which is so humiliating to your consciousness;
La frustración de no tener algo en ponerse la ira
end at last in an enjoyment which sometimes reaches the highest degree of voluptuousness.
as a man affected by progress and European civilization,
he is only amusing himself like that from ill-humor, from malignancy. Well, in all these recognitions and disgraces it is that there lies a voluptuous pleasure.
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?
What is a man of perception? The man who sees things at face value or deeper?
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.
Remorse is too painful
Of course, a minute or so later I would realize wrathfully that it was all a lie, a revolting lie, an affected lie, that is, all this penitence, this emotion, these vows of reform.
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 offense 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,
To feel something
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
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The need to be endlessly active
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.
Rationalization
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.
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
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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.
I should have respected myself because I should at least have been capable of being lazy;
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.
Man seeks to be defined
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.
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.
so that everyone would have said, looking at me: “Here is an asset! Here is something real and solid!”
Does like to hear good things about himself from others
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?
Hobbes?
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?
