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 recognized 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 savor of that strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies.
Fourty Years comes from the time that Israelites wandered in the desert. One should note the narrator is 40 years old. This work seems to be developing the "lacerations, lacerations" theme in Brothers Karamozov and Crime and Punishment.
