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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Notes from the Underground, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Notes from the Underground
+
+Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
+
+Translator: Constance Garnett
+
+Release Date: July, 1996 [eBook #600]
+[Most recently updated: December 26, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Judith Boss. HTML version by Al Haines
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND ***
+
+
+
+
+Notes from the Underground
+
+by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
+
+
+Contents
+
+ NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
+
+ PART I Underground
+ I
+ II
+ III
+ IV
+ V
+ VI
+ VII
+ VIII
+ IX
+ X
+ XI
+
+ PART II À Propos of the Wet Snow
+ I
+ II
+ III
+ IV
+ V
+ VI
+ VII
+ VIII
+ IX
+ X
+
+
+
+
+NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND[*]
+A NOVEL
+
+
+* 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.
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+Underground
+
+
+
+
+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 vérité_. 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 vérité_. 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. 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. Only
+look about you: blood is being spilt in streams, and in the merriest
+way, as though it were champagne. Take the whole of the nineteenth
+century in which Buckle lived. Take Napoleon—the Great and also the
+present one. Take North America—the eternal union. Take the farce of
+Schleswig-Holstein.... And what is it that civilisation softens in us?
+The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for
+variety of sensations—and absolutely nothing more. And through the
+development of this many-sidedness man may come to finding enjoyment in
+bloodshed. In fact, this has already happened to him. Have you noticed
+that it is the most civilised gentlemen who have been the subtlest
+slaughterers, to whom the Attilas and Stenka Razins could not hold a
+candle, and if they are not so conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka
+Razins it is simply because they are so often met with, are so ordinary
+and have become so familiar to us. In any case civilisation has made
+mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more
+loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and
+with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now
+we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination,
+and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for
+yourselves. They say that Cleopatra (excuse an instance from Roman
+history) was fond of sticking gold pins into her slave-girls’ breasts
+and derived gratification from their screams and writhings. You will
+say that that was in the comparatively barbarous times; that these are
+barbarous times too, because also, comparatively speaking, pins are
+stuck in even now; that though man has now learned to see more clearly
+than in barbarous ages, he is still far from having learnt to act as
+reason and science would dictate. But yet you are fully convinced that
+he will be sure to learn when he gets rid of certain old bad habits,
+and when common sense and science have completely re-educated human
+nature and turned it in a normal direction. You are confident that then
+man will cease from _intentional_ error and will, so to say, be
+compelled not to want to set his will against his normal interests.
+That is not all; then, you say, science itself will teach man (though
+to my mind it’s a superfluous luxury) that he never has really had any
+caprice or will of his own, and that he himself is something of the
+nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ, and that there are,
+besides, things called the laws of nature; so that everything he does
+is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of
+nature. Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and
+man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will become
+exceedingly easy for him. All human actions will then, of course, be
+tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of
+logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still,
+there would be published certain edifying works of the nature of
+encyclopaedic lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly
+calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or
+adventures in the world.
+
+Then—this is all what you say—new economic relations will be
+established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical
+exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the
+twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be
+provided. Then the “Palace of Crystal” will be built. Then ... In fact,
+those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is
+my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then
+(for what will one have to do when everything will be calculated and
+tabulated), but on the other hand everything will be extraordinarily
+rational. Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom
+sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not
+matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say
+people will be thankful for the gold pins then. Man is stupid, you
+know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is
+so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation.
+I, for instance, would not be in the least surprised if all of a
+sudden, _à propos_ of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a
+gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical,
+countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all:
+“I say, gentleman, hadn’t we better kick over the whole show and
+scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to
+the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish
+will!” That again would not matter, but what is annoying is that he
+would be sure to find followers—such is the nature of man. And all that
+for the most foolish reason, which, one would think, was hardly worth
+mentioning: that is, that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he
+may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his
+reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to
+one’s own interests, and sometimes one _positively ought_ (that is my
+idea). One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice, however
+wild it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy—is that
+very “most advantageous advantage” which we have overlooked, which
+comes under no classification and against which all systems and
+theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these
+wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has
+made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice?
+What man wants is simply _independent_ choice, whatever that
+independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course,
+the devil only knows what choice.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+“Ha! ha! ha! But you know there is no such thing as choice in reality,
+say what you like,” you will interpose with a chuckle. “Science has
+succeeded in so far analysing man that we know already that choice and
+what is called freedom of will is nothing else than—”
+
+Stay, gentlemen, I meant to begin with that myself I confess, I was
+rather frightened. I was just going to say that the devil only knows
+what choice depends on, and that perhaps that was a very good thing,
+but I remembered the teaching of science ... and pulled myself up. And
+here you have begun upon it. Indeed, if there really is some day
+discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices—that is, an
+explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they
+develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on,
+that is a real mathematical formula—then, most likely, man will at once
+cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who would want
+to choose by rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human
+being into an organ-stop or something of the sort; for what is a man
+without desires, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in
+an organ? What do you think? Let us reckon the chances—can such a thing
+happen or not?
+
+“H’m!” you decide. “Our choice is usually mistaken from a false view of
+our advantage. We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our
+foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a
+supposed advantage. But when all that is explained and worked out on
+paper (which is perfectly possible, for it is contemptible and
+senseless to suppose that some laws of nature man will never
+understand), then certainly so-called desires will no longer exist. For
+if a desire should come into conflict with reason we shall then reason
+and not desire, because it will be impossible retaining our reason to
+be _senseless_ in our desires, and in that way knowingly act against
+reason and desire to injure ourselves. And as all choice and reasoning
+can be really calculated—because there will some day be discovered the
+laws of our so-called free will—so, joking apart, there may one day be
+something like a table constructed of them, so that we really shall
+choose in accordance with it. If, for instance, some day they calculate
+and prove to me that I made a long nose at someone because I could not
+help making a long nose at him and that I had to do it in that
+particular way, what _freedom_ is left me, especially if I am a learned
+man and have taken my degree somewhere? Then I should be able to
+calculate my whole life for thirty years beforehand. In short, if this
+could be arranged there would be nothing left for us to do; anyway, we
+should have to understand that. And, in fact, we ought unwearyingly to
+repeat to ourselves that at such and such a time and in such and such
+circumstances nature does not ask our leave; that we have got to take
+her as she is and not fashion her to suit our fancy, and if we really
+aspire to formulas and tables of rules, and well, even ... to the
+chemical retort, there’s no help for it, we must accept the retort too,
+or else it will be accepted without our consent....”
+
+Yes, but here I come to a stop! Gentlemen, you must excuse me for being
+over-philosophical; it’s the result of forty years underground! Allow
+me to indulge my fancy. You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent
+thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and
+satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a
+manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life
+including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this
+manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply
+extracting square roots. Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to
+live, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my
+capacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my
+capacity for life. What does reason know? Reason only knows what it has
+succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn; this
+is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature acts
+as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or
+unconsciously, and, even if it goes wrong, it lives. I suspect,
+gentlemen, that you are looking at me with compassion; you tell me
+again that an enlightened and developed man, such, in short, as the
+future man will be, cannot consciously desire anything disadvantageous
+to himself, that that can be proved mathematically. I thoroughly agree,
+it can—by mathematics. 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 is very stupid and not
+to be bound by an obligation to desire only what is sensible. Of
+course, this very stupid thing, this caprice of ours, may be in
+reality, gentlemen, more advantageous for us than anything else on
+earth, especially in certain cases. And in particular it may be more
+advantageous than any advantage even when it does us obvious harm, and
+contradicts the soundest conclusions of our reason concerning our
+advantage—for in any circumstances it preserves for us what is most
+precious and most important—that is, our personality, our
+individuality. Some, you see, maintain that this really is the most
+precious thing for mankind; choice can, of course, if it chooses, be in
+agreement with reason; and especially if this be not abused but kept
+within bounds. It is profitable and sometimes even praiseworthy. But
+very often, and even most often, choice is utterly and stubbornly
+opposed to reason ... and ... and ... do you know that that, too, is
+profitable, sometimes even praiseworthy? Gentlemen, let us suppose that
+man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only
+from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?)
+But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally
+ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the
+ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect;
+his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity, perpetual—from the
+days of the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period. Moral obliquity and
+consequently lack of good sense; for it has long been accepted that
+lack of good sense is due to no other cause than moral obliquity. Put
+it to the test and cast your eyes upon the history of mankind. What
+will you see? Is it a grand spectacle? Grand, if you like. Take the
+Colossus of Rhodes, for instance, that’s worth something. With good
+reason Mr. Anaevsky testifies of it that some say that it is the work
+of man’s hands, while others maintain that it has been created by
+nature herself. Is it many-coloured? May be it is many-coloured, too:
+if one takes the dress uniforms, military and civilian, of all peoples
+in all ages—that alone is worth something, and if you take the undress
+uniforms you will never get to the end of it; no historian would be
+equal to the job. Is it monotonous? May be it’s monotonous too: it’s
+fighting and fighting; they are fighting now, they fought first and
+they fought last—you will admit, that it is almost too monotonous. In
+short, one may say anything about the history of the world—anything
+that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one
+can’t say is that it’s rational. The very word sticks in one’s throat.
+And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there
+are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages
+and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives
+as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to
+their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to
+live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that
+those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves,
+playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you:
+what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange
+qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea
+of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the
+surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing
+else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation
+of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite,
+man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and
+would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical
+absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his
+fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar
+folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to
+himself—as though that were so necessary—that men still are men and not
+the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so
+completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the
+calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a
+piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and
+mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would
+purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to
+gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive
+destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to
+gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man
+can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and
+other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his
+object—that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key!
+If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated—chaos
+and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it
+all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself,
+then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain
+his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man
+really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute
+that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his
+skin, it may be by cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being
+tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still
+depends on something we don’t know?
+
+You will scream at me (that is, if you condescend to do so) that no one
+is touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my
+will should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own
+normal interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic.
+
+Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to
+tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two make
+four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that!
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Gentlemen, I am joking, and I know myself that my jokes are not
+brilliant, but you know one can take everything as a joke. I am,
+perhaps, jesting against the grain. Gentlemen, I am tormented by
+questions; answer them for me. You, for instance, want to cure men of
+their old habits and reform their will in accordance with science and
+good sense. But how do you know, not only that it is possible, but also
+that it is _desirable_ to reform man in that way? And what leads you to
+the conclusion that man’s inclinations _need_ reforming? In short, how
+do you know that such a reformation will be a benefit to man? And to go
+to the root of the matter, why are you so positively convinced that not
+to act against his real normal interests guaranteed by the conclusions
+of reason and arithmetic is certainly always advantageous for man and
+must always be a law for mankind? So far, you know, this is only your
+supposition. It may be the law of logic, but not the law of humanity.
+You think, gentlemen, perhaps that I am mad? Allow me to defend myself.
+I agree that man is pre-eminently a creative animal, predestined to
+strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering—that is,
+incessantly and eternally to make new roads, _wherever they may lead_.
+But the reason why he wants sometimes to go off at a tangent may just
+be that he is _predestined_ to make the road, and perhaps, too, that
+however stupid the “direct” practical man may be, the thought sometimes
+will occur to him that the road almost always does lead _somewhere_,
+and that the destination it leads to is less important than the process
+of making it, and that the chief thing is to save the well-conducted
+child from despising engineering, and so giving way to the fatal
+idleness, which, as we all know, is the mother of all the vices. 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? Tell
+me that! But on that point I want to say a couple of words myself. May
+it not be that he loves chaos and destruction (there can be no
+disputing that he does sometimes love it) because he is instinctively
+afraid of attaining his object and completing the edifice he is
+constructing? Who knows, perhaps he only loves that edifice from a
+distance, and is by no means in love with it at close quarters; perhaps
+he only loves building it and does not want to live in it, but will
+leave it, when completed, for the use of _les animaux domestiques_—such
+as the ants, the sheep, and so on. Now the ants have quite a different
+taste. They have a marvellous edifice of that pattern which endures for
+ever—the ant-heap.
+
+With the ant-heap the respectable race of ants began and with the
+ant-heap they will probably end, which does the greatest credit to
+their perseverance and good sense. But man is a frivolous and
+incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the
+process of the game, not the end of it. And who knows (there is no
+saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind
+is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other
+words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must
+always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four,
+and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of
+death. Anyway, man has always been afraid of this mathematical
+certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted that man does nothing but
+seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacrifices his
+life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it, dreads, I assure
+you. He feels that when he has found it there will be nothing for him
+to look for. When workmen have finished their work they do at least
+receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken to the
+police-station—and there is occupation for a week. But where can man
+go? Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him when he has
+attained such objects. He loves the process of attaining, but does not
+quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd. In
+fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it
+all. But yet mathematical certainty is after all, something
+insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of
+insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms
+akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes
+four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due,
+twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
+
+And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the
+normal and the positive—in other words, only what is conducive to
+welfare—is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards
+advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being?
+Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as
+great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily,
+passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact. There is no
+need to appeal to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself,
+if you are a man and have lived at all. As far as my personal opinion
+is concerned, to care only for well-being seems to me positively
+ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too,
+to smash things. I hold no brief for suffering nor for well-being
+either. I am standing for ... my caprice, and for its being guaranteed
+to me when necessary. Suffering would be out of place in vaudevilles,
+for instance; I know that. In the “Palace of Crystal” it is
+unthinkable; suffering means doubt, negation, and what would be the
+good of a “palace of crystal” if there could be any doubt about it? And
+yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is,
+destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole origin of
+consciousness. Though I did lay it down at the beginning that
+consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes
+it and would not give it up for any satisfaction. Consciousness, for
+instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four. Once you have
+mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to understand.
+There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five senses and plunge
+into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though
+the same result is attained, you can at least flog yourself at times,
+and that will, at any rate, liven you up. Reactionary as it is,
+corporal punishment is better than nothing.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+You believe in a palace of crystal that can never be destroyed—a palace
+at which one will not be able to put out one’s tongue or make a long
+nose on the sly. And perhaps that is just why I am afraid of this
+edifice, that it is of crystal and can never be destroyed and that one
+cannot put one’s tongue out at it even on the sly.
+
+You see, if it were not a palace, but a hen-house, I might creep into
+it to avoid getting wet, and yet I would not call the hen-house a
+palace out of gratitude to it for keeping me dry. You laugh and say
+that in such circumstances a hen-house is as good as a mansion. Yes, I
+answer, if one had to live simply to keep out of the rain.
+
+But what is to be done if I have taken it into my head that that is not
+the only object in life, and that if one must live one had better live
+in a mansion? That is my choice, my desire. You will only eradicate it
+when you have changed my preference. Well, do change it, allure me with
+something else, give me another ideal. But meanwhile I will not take a
+hen-house for a mansion. The palace of crystal may be an idle dream, it
+may be that it is inconsistent with the laws of nature and that I have
+invented it only through my own stupidity, through the old-fashioned
+irrational habits of my generation. But what does it matter to me that
+it is inconsistent? That makes no difference since it exists in my
+desires, or rather exists as long as my desires exist. Perhaps you are
+laughing again? Laugh away; I will put up with any mockery rather than
+pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry. I know, anyway, that I
+will not be put off with a compromise, with a recurring zero, simply
+because it is consistent with the laws of nature and actually exists. I
+will not accept as the crown of my desires a block of buildings with
+tenements for the poor on a lease of a thousand years, and perhaps with
+a sign-board of a dentist hanging out. Destroy my desires, eradicate my
+ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you. You will say,
+perhaps, that it is not worth your trouble; but in that case I can give
+you the same answer. We are discussing things seriously; but if you
+won’t deign to give me your attention, I will drop your acquaintance. I
+can retreat into my underground hole.
+
+But while I am alive and have desires I would rather my hand were
+withered off than bring one brick to such a building! Don’t remind me
+that I have just rejected the palace of crystal for the sole reason
+that one cannot put out one’s tongue at it. I did not say because I am
+so fond of putting my tongue out. Perhaps the thing I resented was,
+that of all your edifices there has not been one at which one could not
+put out one’s tongue. On the contrary, I would let my tongue be cut off
+out of gratitude if things could be so arranged that I should lose all
+desire to put it out. It is not my fault that things cannot be so
+arranged, and that one must be satisfied with model flats. Then why am
+I made with such desires? Can I have been constructed simply in order
+to come to the conclusion that all my construction is a cheat? Can this
+be my whole purpose? I do not believe it.
+
+But do you know what: I am convinced that we underground folk ought to
+be kept on a curb. Though we may sit forty years underground without
+speaking, when we do come out into the light of day and break out we
+talk and talk and talk....
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+The long and the short of it is, gentlemen, that it is better to do
+nothing! Better conscious inertia! And so hurrah for underground!
+Though I have said that I envy the normal man to the last drop of my
+bile, yet I should not care to be in his place such as he is now
+(though I shall not cease envying him). No, no; anyway the underground
+life is more advantageous. There, at any rate, one can ... Oh, but even
+now I am lying! I am lying because I know myself that it is not
+underground that is better, but something different, quite different,
+for which I am thirsting, but which I cannot find! Damn underground!
+
+I will tell you another thing that would be better, and that is, if I
+myself believed in anything of what I have just written. I swear to
+you, gentlemen, there is not one thing, not one word of what I have
+written that I really believe. That is, I believe it, perhaps, but at
+the same time I feel and suspect that I am lying like a cobbler.
+
+“Then why have you written all this?” you will say to me. “I ought to
+put you underground for forty years without anything to do and then
+come to you in your cellar, to find out what stage you have reached!
+How can a man be left with nothing to do for forty years?”
+
+“Isn’t that shameful, isn’t that humiliating?” you will say, perhaps,
+wagging your heads contemptuously. “You thirst for life and try to
+settle the problems of life by a logical tangle. And how persistent,
+how insolent are your sallies, and at the same time what a scare you
+are in! You talk nonsense and are pleased with it; you say impudent
+things and are in continual alarm and apologising for them. You declare
+that you are afraid of nothing and at the same time try to ingratiate
+yourself in our good opinion. You declare that you are gnashing your
+teeth and at the same time you try to be witty so as to amuse us. You
+know that your witticisms are not witty, but you are evidently well
+satisfied with their literary value. You may, perhaps, have really
+suffered, but you have no respect for your own suffering. You may have
+sincerity, but you have no modesty; out of the pettiest vanity you
+expose your sincerity to publicity and ignominy. You doubtlessly mean
+to say something, but hide your last word through fear, because you
+have not the resolution to utter it, and only have a cowardly
+impudence. You boast of consciousness, but you are not sure of your
+ground, for though your mind works, yet your heart is darkened and
+corrupt, and you cannot have a full, genuine consciousness without a
+pure heart. And how intrusive you are, how you insist and grimace!
+Lies, lies, lies!”
+
+Of course I have myself made up all the things you say. That, too, is
+from underground. 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. It is no wonder that I have learned it by heart
+and it has taken a literary form....
+
+But can you really be so credulous as to think that I will print all
+this and give it to you to read too? And another problem: why do I call
+you “gentlemen,” why do I address you as though you really were my
+readers? Such confessions as I intend to make are never printed nor
+given to other people to read. Anyway, I am not strong-minded enough
+for that, and I don’t see why I should be. But you see a fancy has
+occurred to me and I want to realise it at all costs. Let me explain.
+
+Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but
+only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would
+not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in
+secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even
+to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored
+away in his mind. The more decent he is, the greater the number of such
+things in his mind. Anyway, I have only lately determined to remember
+some of my early adventures. Till now I have always avoided them, even
+with a certain uneasiness. Now, when I am not only recalling them, but
+have actually decided to write an account of them, I want to try the
+experiment whether one can, even with oneself, be perfectly open and
+not take fright at the whole truth. I will observe, in parenthesis,
+that Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility,
+and that man is bound to lie about himself. He considers that Rousseau
+certainly told lies about himself in his confessions, and even
+intentionally lied, out of vanity. I am convinced that Heine is right;
+I quite understand how sometimes one may, out of sheer vanity,
+attribute regular crimes to oneself, and indeed I can very well
+conceive that kind of vanity. But Heine judged of people who made their
+confessions to the public. I write only for myself, and I wish to
+declare once and for all that if I write as though I were addressing
+readers, that is simply because it is easier for me to write in that
+form. It is a form, an empty form—I shall never have readers. I have
+made this plain already ...
+
+I don’t wish to be hampered by any restrictions in the compilation of
+my notes. I shall not attempt any system or method. I will jot things
+down as I remember them.
+
+But here, perhaps, someone will catch at the word and ask me: if you
+really don’t reckon on readers, why do you make such compacts with
+yourself—and on paper too—that is, that you won’t attempt any system or
+method, that you jot things down as you remember them, and so on, and
+so on? Why are you explaining? Why do you apologise?
+
+Well, there it is, I answer.
+
+There is a whole psychology in all this, though. Perhaps it is simply
+that I am a coward. And perhaps that I purposely imagine an audience
+before me in order that I may be more dignified while I write. There
+are perhaps thousands of reasons. Again, what is my object precisely in
+writing? If it is not for the benefit of the public why should I not
+simply recall these incidents in my own mind without putting them on
+paper?
+
+Quite so; but yet it is more imposing on paper. There is something more
+impressive in it; I shall be better able to criticise myself and
+improve my style. Besides, I shall perhaps obtain actual relief from
+writing. Today, for instance, I am particularly oppressed by one memory
+of a distant past. It came back vividly to my mind a few days ago, and
+has remained haunting me like an annoying tune that one cannot get rid
+of. And yet I must get rid of it somehow. I have hundreds of such
+reminiscences; but at times some one stands out from the hundred and
+oppresses me. For some reason I believe that if I write it down I
+should get rid of it. Why not try?
+
+Besides, I am bored, and I never have anything to do. Writing will be a
+sort of work. They say work makes man kind-hearted and honest. Well,
+here is a chance for me, anyway.
+
+Snow is falling today, yellow and dingy. It fell yesterday, too, and a
+few days ago. I fancy it is the wet snow that has reminded me of that
+incident which I cannot shake off now. And so let it be a story _à
+propos_ of the falling snow.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+À Propos of the Wet Snow
+
+
+When from dark error’s subjugation
+My words of passionate exhortation
+    Had wrenched thy fainting spirit free;
+And writhing prone in thine affliction
+Thou didst recall with malediction
+    The vice that had encompassed thee:
+And when thy slumbering conscience, fretting
+    By recollection’s torturing flame,
+Thou didst reveal the hideous setting
+    Of thy life’s current ere I came:
+When suddenly I saw thee sicken,
+    And weeping, hide thine anguished face,
+Revolted, maddened, horror-stricken,
+    At memories of foul disgrace.
+                    NEKRASSOV (_translated by Juliet Soskice_).
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+At that time I was only twenty-four. My life was even then gloomy,
+ill-regulated, and as solitary as that of a savage. I made friends with
+no one and positively avoided talking, and buried myself more and more
+in my hole. At work in the office I never looked at anyone, and was
+perfectly well aware that my companions looked upon me, not only as a
+queer fellow, but even looked upon me—I always fancied this—with a sort
+of loathing. I sometimes wondered why it was that nobody except me
+fancied that he was looked upon with aversion? One of the clerks had a
+most repulsive, pock-marked face, which looked positively villainous. I
+believe I should not have dared to look at anyone with such an
+unsightly countenance. Another had such a very dirty old uniform that
+there was an unpleasant odour in his proximity. Yet not one of these
+gentlemen showed the slightest self-consciousness—either about their
+clothes or their countenance or their character in any way. Neither of
+them ever imagined that they were looked at with repulsion; if they had
+imagined it they would not have minded—so long as their superiors did
+not look at them in that way. It is clear to me now that, owing to my
+unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often
+looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and
+so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone. I hated my face,
+for instance: I thought it disgusting, and even suspected that there
+was something base in my expression, and so every day when I turned up
+at the office I tried to behave as independently as possible, and to
+assume a lofty expression, so that I might not be suspected of being
+abject. “My face may be ugly,” I thought, “but let it be lofty,
+expressive, and, above all, _extremely_ intelligent.” But I was
+positively and painfully certain that it was impossible for my
+countenance ever to express those qualities. And what was worst of all,
+I thought it actually stupid looking, and I would have been quite
+satisfied if I could have looked intelligent. In fact, I would even
+have put up with looking base if, at the same time, my face could have
+been thought strikingly intelligent.
+
+Of course, I hated my fellow clerks one and all, and I despised them
+all, yet at the same time I was, as it were, afraid of them. In fact,
+it happened at times that I thought more highly of them than of myself.
+It somehow happened quite suddenly that I alternated between despising
+them and thinking them superior to myself. A cultivated and decent man
+cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself,
+and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments. But
+whether I despised them or thought them superior I dropped my eyes
+almost every time I met anyone. I even made experiments whether I could
+face so and so’s looking at me, and I was always the first to drop my
+eyes. This worried me to distraction. I had a sickly dread, too, of
+being ridiculous, and so had a slavish passion for the conventional in
+everything external. I loved to fall into the common rut, and had a
+whole-hearted terror of any kind of eccentricity in myself. But how
+could I live up to it? I was morbidly sensitive as a man of our age
+should be. They were all stupid, and as like one another as so many
+sheep. Perhaps I was the only one in the office who fancied that I was
+a coward and a slave, and I fancied it just because I was more highly
+developed. But it was not only that I fancied it, it really was so. I
+was a coward and a slave. I say this without the slightest
+embarrassment. Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a
+slave. That is his normal condition. Of that I am firmly persuaded. He
+is made and constructed to that very end. And not only at the present
+time owing to some casual circumstances, but always, at all times, a
+decent man is bound to be a coward and a slave. It is the law of nature
+for all decent people all over the earth. If anyone of them happens to
+be valiant about something, he need not be comforted nor carried away
+by that; he would show the white feather just the same before something
+else. That is how it invariably and inevitably ends. Only donkeys and
+mules are valiant, and they only till they are pushed up to the wall.
+It is not worth while to pay attention to them for they really are of
+no consequence.
+
+Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no
+one like me and I was unlike anyone else. “I am alone and they are
+_everyone_,” I thought—and pondered.
+
+From that it is evident that I was still a youngster.
+
+The very opposite sometimes happened. It was loathsome sometimes to go
+to the office; things reached such a point that I often came home ill.
+But all at once, _à propos_ of nothing, there would come a phase of
+scepticism and indifference (everything happened in phases to me), and
+I would laugh myself at my intolerance and fastidiousness, I would
+reproach myself with being _romantic_. At one time I was unwilling to
+speak to anyone, while at other times I would not only talk, but go to
+the length of contemplating making friends with them. All my
+fastidiousness would suddenly, for no rhyme or reason, vanish. Who
+knows, perhaps I never had really had it, and it had simply been
+affected, and got out of books. I have not decided that question even
+now. Once I quite made friends with them, visited their homes, played
+preference, drank vodka, talked of promotions.... But here let me make
+a digression.
+
+We Russians, speaking generally, have never had those foolish
+transcendental “romantics”—German, and still more French—on whom
+nothing produces any effect; if there were an earthquake, if all France
+perished at the barricades, they would still be the same, they would
+not even have the decency to affect a change, but would still go on
+singing their transcendental songs to the hour of their death, because
+they are fools. We, in Russia, have no fools; that is well known. That
+is what distinguishes us from foreign lands. Consequently these
+transcendental natures are not found amongst us in their pure form. The
+idea that they are is due to our “realistic” journalists and critics of
+that day, always on the look out for Kostanzhoglos and Uncle Pyotr
+Ivanitchs and foolishly accepting them as our ideal; they have
+slandered our romantics, taking them for the same transcendental sort
+as in Germany or France. On the contrary, the characteristics of our
+“romantics” are absolutely and directly opposed to the transcendental
+European type, and no European standard can be applied to them. (Allow
+me to make use of this word “romantic”—an old-fashioned and much
+respected word which has done good service and is familiar to all.) The
+characteristics of our romantic are to understand everything, _to see
+everything and to see it often incomparably more clearly than our most
+realistic minds see it;_ to refuse to accept anyone or anything, but at
+the same time not to despise anything; to give way, to yield, from
+policy; never to lose sight of a useful practical object (such as
+rent-free quarters at the government expense, pensions, decorations),
+to keep their eye on that object through all the enthusiasms and
+volumes of lyrical poems, and at the same time to preserve “the sublime
+and the beautiful” inviolate within them to the hour of their death,
+and to preserve themselves also, incidentally, like some precious jewel
+wrapped in cotton wool if only for the benefit of “the sublime and the
+beautiful.” Our “romantic” is a man of great breadth and the greatest
+rogue of all our rogues, I assure you.... I can assure you from
+experience, indeed. Of course, that is, if he is intelligent. But what
+am I saying! The romantic is always intelligent, and I only meant to
+observe that although we have had foolish romantics they don’t count,
+and they were only so because in the flower of their youth they
+degenerated into Germans, and to preserve their precious jewel more
+comfortably, settled somewhere out there—by preference in Weimar or the
+Black Forest.
+
+I, for instance, genuinely despised my official work and did not openly
+abuse it simply because I was in it myself and got a salary for it.
+Anyway, take note, I did not openly abuse it. Our romantic would rather
+go out of his mind—a thing, however, which very rarely happens—than
+take to open abuse, unless he had some other career in view; and he is
+never kicked out. At most, they would take him to the lunatic asylum as
+“the King of Spain” if he should go very mad. But it is only the thin,
+fair people who go out of their minds in Russia. Innumerable
+“romantics” attain later in life to considerable rank in the service.
+Their many-sidedness is remarkable! And what a faculty they have for
+the most contradictory sensations! I was comforted by this thought even
+in those days, and I am of the same opinion now. That is why there are
+so many “broad natures” among us who never lose their ideal even in the
+depths of degradation; and though they never stir a finger for their
+ideal, though they are arrant thieves and knaves, yet they tearfully
+cherish their first ideal and are extraordinarily honest at heart. Yes,
+it is only among us that the most incorrigible rogue can be absolutely
+and loftily honest at heart without in the least ceasing to be a rogue.
+I repeat, our romantics, frequently, become such accomplished rascals
+(I use the term “rascals” affectionately), suddenly display such a
+sense of reality and practical knowledge that their bewildered
+superiors and the public generally can only ejaculate in amazement.
+
+Their many-sidedness is really amazing, and goodness knows what it may
+develop into later on, and what the future has in store for us. It is
+not a poor material! I do not say this from any foolish or boastful
+patriotism. But I feel sure that you are again imagining that I am
+joking. Or perhaps it’s just the contrary and you are convinced that I
+really think so. Anyway, gentlemen, I shall welcome both views as an
+honour and a special favour. And do forgive my digression.
+
+I did not, of course, maintain friendly relations with my comrades and
+soon was at loggerheads with them, and in my youth and inexperience I
+even gave up bowing to them, as though I had cut off all relations.
+That, however, only happened to me once. As a rule, I was always alone.
+
+In the first place I spent most of my time at home, reading. I tried to
+stifle all that was continually seething within me by means of external
+impressions. And the only external means I had was reading. Reading, of
+course, was a great help—exciting me, giving me pleasure and pain. But
+at times it bored me fearfully. One longed for movement in spite of
+everything, and I plunged all at once into dark, underground, loathsome
+vice of the pettiest kind. My wretched passions were acute, smarting,
+from my continual, sickly irritability I had hysterical impulses, with
+tears and convulsions. I had no resource except reading, that is, there
+was nothing in my surroundings which I could respect and which
+attracted me. I was overwhelmed with depression, too; I had an
+hysterical craving for incongruity and for contrast, and so I took to
+vice. I have not said all this to justify myself.... But, no! I am
+lying. I did want to justify myself. I make that little observation for
+my own benefit, gentlemen. I don’t want to lie. I vowed to myself I
+would not.
+
+And so, furtively, timidly, in solitude, at night, I indulged in filthy
+vice, with a feeling of shame which never deserted me, even at the most
+loathsome moments, and which at such moments nearly made me curse.
+Already even then I had my underground world in my soul. I was
+fearfully afraid of being seen, of being met, of being recognised. I
+visited various obscure haunts.
+
+One night as I was passing a tavern I saw through a lighted window some
+gentlemen fighting with billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown out
+of the window. At other times I should have felt very much disgusted,
+but I was in such a mood at the time, that I actually envied the
+gentleman thrown out of the window—and I envied him so much that I even
+went into the tavern and into the billiard-room. “Perhaps,” I thought,
+“I’ll have a fight, too, and they’ll throw me out of the window.”
+
+I was not drunk—but what is one to do—depression will drive a man to
+such a pitch of hysteria? But nothing happened. It seemed that I was
+not even equal to being thrown out of the window and I went away
+without having my fight.
+
+An officer put me in my place from the first moment.
+
+I was standing by the billiard-table and in my ignorance blocking up
+the way, and he wanted to pass; he took me by the shoulders and without
+a word—without a warning or explanation—moved me from where I was
+standing to another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me.
+I could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved
+me without noticing me.
+
+Devil knows what I would have given for a real regular quarrel—a more
+decent, a more _literary_ one, so to speak. I had been treated like a
+fly. This officer was over six foot, while I was a spindly little
+fellow. But the quarrel was in my hands. I had only to protest and I
+certainly would have been thrown out of the window. But I changed my
+mind and preferred to beat a resentful retreat.
+
+I went out of the tavern straight home, confused and troubled, and the
+next night I went out again with the same lewd intentions, still more
+furtively, abjectly and miserably than before, as it were, with tears
+in my eyes—but still I did go out again. Don’t imagine, though, it was
+cowardice made me slink away from the officer; I never have been a
+coward at heart, though I have always been a coward in action. Don’t be
+in a hurry to laugh—I assure you I can explain it all.
+
+Oh, if only that officer had been one of the sort who would consent to
+fight a duel! But no, he was one of those gentlemen (alas, long
+extinct!) who preferred fighting with cues or, like Gogol’s Lieutenant
+Pirogov, appealing to the police. They did not fight duels and would
+have thought a duel with a civilian like me an utterly unseemly
+procedure in any case—and they looked upon the duel altogether as
+something impossible, something free-thinking and French. But they were
+quite ready to bully, especially when they were over six foot.
+
+I did not slink away through cowardice, but through an unbounded
+vanity. I was afraid not of his six foot, not of getting a sound
+thrashing and being thrown out of the window; I should have had
+physical courage enough, I assure you; but I had not the moral courage.
+What I was afraid of was that everyone present, from the insolent
+marker down to the lowest little stinking, pimply clerk in a greasy
+collar, would jeer at me and fail to understand when I began to protest
+and to address them in literary language. For of the point of
+honour—not of honour, but of the point of honour (_point
+d’honneur_)—one cannot speak among us except in literary language. You
+can’t allude to the “point of honour” in ordinary language. I was fully
+convinced (the sense of reality, in spite of all my romanticism!) that
+they would all simply split their sides with laughter, and that the
+officer would not simply beat me, that is, without insulting me, but
+would certainly prod me in the back with his knee, kick me round the
+billiard-table, and only then perhaps have pity and drop me out of the
+window.
+
+Of course, this trivial incident could not with me end in that. I often
+met that officer afterwards in the street and noticed him very
+carefully. I am not quite sure whether he recognised me, I imagine not;
+I judge from certain signs. But I—I stared at him with spite and hatred
+and so it went on ... for several years! My resentment grew even deeper
+with years. At first I began making stealthy inquiries about this
+officer. It was difficult for me to do so, for I knew no one. But one
+day I heard someone shout his surname in the street as I was following
+him at a distance, as though I were tied to him—and so I learnt his
+surname. Another time I followed him to his flat, and for ten kopecks
+learned from the porter where he lived, on which storey, whether he
+lived alone or with others, and so on—in fact, everything one could
+learn from a porter. One morning, though I had never tried my hand with
+the pen, it suddenly occurred to me to write a satire on this officer
+in the form of a novel which would unmask his villainy. I wrote the
+novel with relish. I did unmask his villainy, I even exaggerated it; at
+first I so altered his surname that it could easily be recognised, but
+on second thoughts I changed it, and sent the story to the
+_Otetchestvenniya Zapiski_. But at that time such attacks were not the
+fashion and my story was not printed. That was a great vexation to me.
+
+Sometimes I was positively choked with resentment. At last I determined
+to challenge my enemy to a duel. I composed a splendid, charming letter
+to him, imploring him to apologise to me, and hinting rather plainly at
+a duel in case of refusal. The letter was so composed that if the
+officer had had the least understanding of the sublime and the
+beautiful he would certainly have flung himself on my neck and have
+offered me his friendship. And how fine that would have been! How we
+should have got on together! “He could have shielded me with his higher
+rank, while I could have improved his mind with my culture, and, well
+... my ideas, and all sorts of things might have happened.” Only fancy,
+this was two years after his insult to me, and my challenge would have
+been a ridiculous anachronism, in spite of all the ingenuity of my
+letter in disguising and explaining away the anachronism. But, thank
+God (to this day I thank the Almighty with tears in my eyes) I did not
+send the letter to him. Cold shivers run down my back when I think of
+what might have happened if I had sent it.
+
+And all at once I revenged myself in the simplest way, by a stroke of
+genius! A brilliant thought suddenly dawned upon me. Sometimes on
+holidays I used to stroll along the sunny side of the Nevsky about four
+o’clock in the afternoon. Though it was hardly a stroll so much as a
+series of innumerable miseries, humiliations and resentments; but no
+doubt that was just what I wanted. I used to wriggle along in a most
+unseemly fashion, like an eel, continually moving aside to make way for
+generals, for officers of the guards and the hussars, or for ladies. At
+such minutes there used to be a convulsive twinge at my heart, and I
+used to feel hot all down my back at the mere thought of the
+wretchedness of my attire, of the wretchedness and abjectness of my
+little scurrying figure. This was a regular martyrdom, a continual,
+intolerable humiliation at the thought, which passed into an incessant
+and direct sensation, that I was a mere fly in the eyes of all this
+world, a nasty, disgusting fly—more intelligent, more highly developed,
+more refined in feeling than any of them, of course—but a fly that was
+continually making way for everyone, insulted and injured by everyone.
+Why I inflicted this torture upon myself, why I went to the Nevsky, I
+don’t know. I felt simply drawn there at every possible opportunity.
+
+Already then I began to experience a rush of the enjoyment of which I
+spoke in the first chapter. After my affair with the officer I felt
+even more drawn there than before: it was on the Nevsky that I met him
+most frequently, there I could admire him. He, too, went there chiefly
+on holidays, He, too, turned out of his path for generals and persons
+of high rank, and he too, wriggled between them like an eel; but
+people, like me, or even better dressed than me, he simply walked over;
+he made straight for them as though there was nothing but empty space
+before him, and never, under any circumstances, turned aside. I gloated
+over my resentment watching him and ... always resentfully made way for
+him. It exasperated me that even in the street I could not be on an
+even footing with him.
+
+“Why must you invariably be the first to move aside?” I kept asking
+myself in hysterical rage, waking up sometimes at three o’clock in the
+morning. “Why is it you and not he? There’s no regulation about it;
+there’s no written law. Let the making way be equal as it usually is
+when refined people meet; he moves half-way and you move half-way; you
+pass with mutual respect.”
+
+But that never happened, and I always moved aside, while he did not
+even notice my making way for him. And lo and behold a bright idea
+dawned upon me! “What,” I thought, “if I meet him and don’t move on one
+side? What if I don’t move aside on purpose, even if I knock up against
+him? How would that be?” This audacious idea took such a hold on me
+that it gave me no peace. I was dreaming of it continually, horribly,
+and I purposely went more frequently to the Nevsky in order to picture
+more vividly how I should do it when I did do it. I was delighted. This
+intention seemed to me more and more practical and possible.
+
+“Of course I shall not really push him,” I thought, already more
+good-natured in my joy. “I will simply not turn aside, will run up
+against him, not very violently, but just shouldering each other—just
+as much as decency permits. I will push against him just as much as he
+pushes against me.” At last I made up my mind completely. But my
+preparations took a great deal of time. To begin with, when I carried
+out my plan I should need to be looking rather more decent, and so I
+had to think of my get-up. “In case of emergency, if, for instance,
+there were any sort of public scandal (and the public there is of the
+most _recherché:_ the Countess walks there; Prince D. walks there; all
+the literary world is there), I must be well dressed; that inspires
+respect and of itself puts us on an equal footing in the eyes of the
+society.”
+
+With this object I asked for some of my salary in advance, and bought
+at Tchurkin’s a pair of black gloves and a decent hat. Black gloves
+seemed to me both more dignified and _bon ton_ than the lemon-coloured
+ones which I had contemplated at first. “The colour is too gaudy, it
+looks as though one were trying to be conspicuous,” and I did not take
+the lemon-coloured ones. I had got ready long beforehand a good shirt,
+with white bone studs; my overcoat was the only thing that held me
+back. The coat in itself was a very good one, it kept me warm; but it
+was wadded and it had a raccoon collar which was the height of
+vulgarity. I had to change the collar at any sacrifice, and to have a
+beaver one like an officer’s. For this purpose I began visiting the
+Gostiny Dvor and after several attempts I pitched upon a piece of cheap
+German beaver. Though these German beavers soon grow shabby and look
+wretched, yet at first they look exceedingly well, and I only needed it
+for the occasion. I asked the price; even so, it was too expensive.
+After thinking it over thoroughly I decided to sell my raccoon collar.
+The rest of the money—a considerable sum for me, I decided to borrow
+from Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin, my immediate superior, an unassuming
+person, though grave and judicious. He never lent money to anyone, but
+I had, on entering the service, been specially recommended to him by an
+important personage who had got me my berth. I was horribly worried. To
+borrow from Anton Antonitch seemed to me monstrous and shameful. I did
+not sleep for two or three nights. Indeed, I did not sleep well at that
+time, I was in a fever; I had a vague sinking at my heart or else a
+sudden throbbing, throbbing, throbbing! Anton Antonitch was surprised
+at first, then he frowned, then he reflected, and did after all lend me
+the money, receiving from me a written authorisation to take from my
+salary a fortnight later the sum that he had lent me.
+
+In this way everything was at last ready. The handsome beaver replaced
+the mean-looking raccoon, and I began by degrees to get to work. It
+would never have done to act offhand, at random; the plan had to be
+carried out skilfully, by degrees. But I must confess that after many
+efforts I began to despair: we simply could not run into each other. I
+made every preparation, I was quite determined—it seemed as though we
+should run into one another directly—and before I knew what I was doing
+I had stepped aside for him again and he had passed without noticing
+me. I even prayed as I approached him that God would grant me
+determination. One time I had made up my mind thoroughly, but it ended
+in my stumbling and falling at his feet because at the very last
+instant when I was six inches from him my courage failed me. He very
+calmly stepped over me, while I flew on one side like a ball. That
+night I was ill again, feverish and delirious.
+
+And suddenly it ended most happily. The night before I had made up my
+mind not to carry out my fatal plan and to abandon it all, and with
+that object I went to the Nevsky for the last time, just to see how I
+would abandon it all. Suddenly, three paces from my enemy, I
+unexpectedly made up my mind—I closed my eyes, and we ran full tilt,
+shoulder to shoulder, against one another! I did not budge an inch and
+passed him on a perfectly equal footing! He did not even look round and
+pretended not to notice it; but he was only pretending, I am convinced
+of that. I am convinced of that to this day! Of course, I got the worst
+of it—he was stronger, but that was not the point. The point was that I
+had attained my object, I had kept up my dignity, I had not yielded a
+step, and had put myself publicly on an equal social footing with him.
+I returned home feeling that I was fully avenged for everything. I was
+delighted. I was triumphant and sang Italian arias. Of course, I will
+not describe to you what happened to me three days later; if you have
+read my first chapter you can guess for yourself. The officer was
+afterwards transferred; I have not seen him now for fourteen years.
+What is the dear fellow doing now? Whom is he walking over?
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+But the period of my dissipation would end and I always felt very sick
+afterwards. It was followed by remorse—I tried to drive it away; I felt
+too sick. By degrees, however, I grew used to that too. I grew used to
+everything, or rather I voluntarily resigned myself to enduring it. But
+I had a means of escape that reconciled everything—that was to find
+refuge in “the sublime and the beautiful,” in dreams, of course. I was
+a terrible dreamer, I would dream for three months on end, tucked away
+in my corner, and you may believe me that at those moments I had no
+resemblance to the gentleman who, in the perturbation of his chicken
+heart, put a collar of German beaver on his great-coat. I suddenly
+became a hero. I would not have admitted my six-foot lieutenant even if
+he had called on me. I could not even picture him before me then. What
+were my dreams and how I could satisfy myself with them—it is hard to
+say now, but at the time I was satisfied with them. Though, indeed,
+even now, I am to some extent satisfied with them. Dreams were
+particularly sweet and vivid after a spell of dissipation; they came
+with remorse and with tears, with curses and transports. There were
+moments of such positive intoxication, of such happiness, that there
+was not the faintest trace of irony within me, on my honour. I had
+faith, hope, love. I believed blindly at such times that by some
+miracle, by some external circumstance, all this would suddenly open
+out, expand; that suddenly a vista of suitable activity—beneficent,
+good, and, above all, _ready made_ (what sort of activity I had no
+idea, but the great thing was that it should be all ready for me)—would
+rise up before me—and I should come out into the light of day, almost
+riding a white horse and crowned with laurel. Anything but the foremost
+place I could not conceive for myself, and for that very reason I quite
+contentedly occupied the lowest in reality. Either to be a hero or to
+grovel in the mud—there was nothing between. That was my ruin, for when
+I was in the mud I comforted myself with the thought that at other
+times I was a hero, and the hero was a cloak for the mud: for an
+ordinary man it was shameful to defile himself, but a hero was too
+lofty to be utterly defiled, and so he might defile himself. It is
+worth noting that these attacks of the “sublime and the beautiful”
+visited me even during the period of dissipation and just at the times
+when I was touching the bottom. They came in separate spurts, as though
+reminding me of themselves, but did not banish the dissipation by their
+appearance. On the contrary, they seemed to add a zest to it by
+contrast, and were only sufficiently present to serve as an appetising
+sauce. That sauce was made up of contradictions and sufferings, of
+agonising inward analysis, and all these pangs and pin-pricks gave a
+certain piquancy, even a significance to my dissipation—in fact,
+completely answered the purpose of an appetising sauce. There was a
+certain depth of meaning in it. And I could hardly have resigned myself
+to the simple, vulgar, direct debauchery of a clerk and have endured
+all the filthiness of it. What could have allured me about it then and
+have drawn me at night into the street? No, I had a lofty way of
+getting out of it all.
+
+And what loving-kindness, oh Lord, what loving-kindness I felt at times
+in those dreams of mine! in those “flights into the sublime and the
+beautiful”; though it was fantastic love, though it was never applied
+to anything human in reality, yet there was so much of this love that
+one did not feel afterwards even the impulse to apply it in reality;
+that would have been superfluous. Everything, however, passed
+satisfactorily by a lazy and fascinating transition into the sphere of
+art, that is, into the beautiful forms of life, lying ready, largely
+stolen from the poets and novelists and adapted to all sorts of needs
+and uses. I, for instance, was triumphant over everyone; everyone, of
+course, was in dust and ashes, and was forced spontaneously to
+recognise my superiority, and I forgave them all. I was a poet and a
+grand gentleman, I fell in love; I came in for countless millions and
+immediately devoted them to humanity, and at the same time I confessed
+before all the people my shameful deeds, which, of course, were not
+merely shameful, but had in them much that was “sublime and beautiful”
+something in the Manfred style. Everyone would kiss me and weep (what
+idiots they would be if they did not), while I should go barefoot and
+hungry preaching new ideas and fighting a victorious Austerlitz against
+the obscurantists. Then the band would play a march, an amnesty would
+be declared, the Pope would agree to retire from Rome to Brazil; then
+there would be a ball for the whole of Italy at the Villa Borghese on
+the shores of Lake Como, Lake Como being for that purpose transferred
+to the neighbourhood of Rome; then would come a scene in the bushes,
+and so on, and so on—as though you did not know all about it? You will
+say that it is vulgar and contemptible to drag all this into public
+after all the tears and transports which I have myself confessed. But
+why is it contemptible? Can you imagine that I am ashamed of it all,
+and that it was stupider than anything in your life, gentlemen? And I
+can assure you that some of these fancies were by no means badly
+composed.... It did not all happen on the shores of Lake Como. And yet
+you are right—it really is vulgar and contemptible. And most
+contemptible of all it is that now I am attempting to justify myself to
+you. And even more contemptible than that is my making this remark now.
+But that’s enough, or there will be no end to it; each step will be
+more contemptible than the last....
+
+I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time
+without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society. To
+plunge into society meant to visit my superior at the office, Anton
+Antonitch Syetotchkin. He was the only permanent acquaintance I have
+had in my life, and I wonder at the fact myself now. But I only went to
+see him when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached
+such a point of bliss that it became essential at once to embrace my
+fellows and all mankind; and for that purpose I needed, at least, one
+human being, actually existing. I had to call on Anton Antonitch,
+however, on Tuesday—his at-home day; so I had always to time my
+passionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a
+Tuesday.
+
+This Anton Antonitch lived on the fourth storey in a house in Five
+Corners, in four low-pitched rooms, one smaller than the other, of a
+particularly frugal and sallow appearance. He had two daughters and
+their aunt, who used to pour out the tea. Of the daughters one was
+thirteen and another fourteen, they both had snub noses, and I was
+awfully shy of them because they were always whispering and giggling
+together. The master of the house usually sat in his study on a leather
+couch in front of the table with some grey-headed gentleman, usually a
+colleague from our office or some other department. I never saw more
+than two or three visitors there, always the same. They talked about
+the excise duty; about business in the senate, about salaries, about
+promotions, about His Excellency, and the best means of pleasing him,
+and so on. 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 became stupefied, several
+times I felt myself perspiring, I was overcome by a sort of paralysis;
+but this was pleasant and good for me. On returning home I deferred for
+a time my desire to embrace all mankind.
+
+I had however one other acquaintance of a sort, Simonov, who was an old
+schoolfellow. I had a number of schoolfellows, indeed, in Petersburg,
+but I did not associate with them and had even given up nodding to them
+in the street. I believe I had transferred into the department I was in
+simply to avoid their company and to cut off all connection with my
+hateful childhood. Curses on that school and all those terrible years
+of penal servitude! In short, I parted from my schoolfellows as soon as
+I got out into the world. There were two or three left to whom I nodded
+in the street. One of them was Simonov, who had in no way been
+distinguished at school, was of a quiet and equable disposition; but I
+discovered in him a certain independence of character and even honesty
+I don’t even suppose that he was particularly stupid. I had at one time
+spent some rather soulful moments with him, but these had not lasted
+long and had somehow been suddenly clouded over. He was evidently
+uncomfortable at these reminiscences, and was, I fancy, always afraid
+that I might take up the same tone again. I suspected that he had an
+aversion for me, but still I went on going to see him, not being quite
+certain of it.
+
+And so on one occasion, unable to endure my solitude and knowing that
+as it was Thursday Anton Antonitch’s door would be closed, I thought of
+Simonov. Climbing up to his fourth storey I was thinking that the man
+disliked me and that it was a mistake to go and see him. But as it
+always happened that such reflections impelled me, as though purposely,
+to put myself into a false position, I went in. It was almost a year
+since I had last seen Simonov.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+I found two of my old schoolfellows with him. They seemed to be
+discussing an important matter. All of them took scarcely any notice of
+my entrance, which was strange, for I had not met them for years.
+Evidently they looked upon me as something on the level of a common
+fly. I had not been treated like that even at school, though they all
+hated me. I knew, of course, that they must despise me now for my lack
+of success in the service, and for my having let myself sink so low,
+going about badly dressed and so on—which seemed to them a sign of my
+incapacity and insignificance. But I had not expected such contempt.
+Simonov was positively surprised at my turning up. Even in old days he
+had always seemed surprised at my coming. All this disconcerted me: I
+sat down, feeling rather miserable, and began listening to what they
+were saying.
+
+They were engaged in warm and earnest conversation about a farewell
+dinner which they wanted to arrange for the next day to a comrade of
+theirs called Zverkov, an officer in the army, who was going away to a
+distant province. This Zverkov had been all the time at school with me
+too. I had begun to hate him particularly in the upper forms. In the
+lower forms he had simply been a pretty, playful boy whom everybody
+liked. I had hated him, however, even in the lower forms, just because
+he was a pretty and playful boy. He was always bad at his lessons and
+got worse and worse as he went on; however, he left with a good
+certificate, as he had powerful interests. During his last year at
+school he came in for an estate of two hundred serfs, and as almost all
+of us were poor he took up a swaggering tone among us. He was vulgar in
+the extreme, but at the same time he was a good-natured fellow, even in
+his swaggering. In spite of superficial, fantastic and sham notions of
+honour and dignity, all but very few of us positively grovelled before
+Zverkov, and the more so the more he swaggered. And it was not from any
+interested motive that they grovelled, but simply because he had been
+favoured by the gifts of nature. Moreover, it was, as it were, an
+accepted idea among us that Zverkov was a specialist in regard to tact
+and the social graces. This last fact particularly infuriated me. I
+hated the abrupt self-confident tone of his voice, his admiration of
+his own witticisms, which were often frightfully stupid, though he was
+bold in his language; I hated his handsome, but stupid face (for which
+I would, however, have gladly exchanged my intelligent one), and the
+free-and-easy military manners in fashion in the “’forties.” I hated
+the way in which he used to talk of his future conquests of women (he
+did not venture to begin his attack upon women until he had the
+epaulettes of an officer, and was looking forward to them with
+impatience), and boasted of the duels he would constantly be fighting.
+I remember how I, invariably so taciturn, suddenly fastened upon
+Zverkov, when one day talking at a leisure moment with his
+schoolfellows of his future relations with the fair sex, and growing as
+sportive as a puppy in the sun, he all at once declared that he would
+not leave a single village girl on his estate unnoticed, that that was
+his _droit de seigneur_, and that if the peasants dared to protest he
+would have them all flogged and double the tax on them, the bearded
+rascals. Our servile rabble applauded, but I attacked him, not from
+compassion for the girls and their fathers, but simply because they
+were applauding such an insect. I got the better of him on that
+occasion, but though Zverkov was stupid he was lively and impudent, and
+so laughed it off, and in such a way that my victory was not really
+complete; the laugh was on his side. He got the better of me on several
+occasions afterwards, but without malice, jestingly, casually. I
+remained angrily and contemptuously silent and would not answer him.
+When we left school he made advances to me; I did not rebuff them, for
+I was flattered, but we soon parted and quite naturally. Afterwards I
+heard of his barrack-room success as a lieutenant, and of the fast life
+he was leading. Then there came other rumours—of his successes in the
+service. By then he had taken to cutting me in the street, and I
+suspected that he was afraid of compromising himself by greeting a
+personage as insignificant as me. I saw him once in the theatre, in the
+third tier of boxes. By then he was wearing shoulder-straps. He was
+twisting and twirling about, ingratiating himself with the daughters of
+an ancient General. In three years he had gone off considerably, though
+he was still rather handsome and adroit. One could see that by the time
+he was thirty he would be corpulent. So it was to this Zverkov that my
+schoolfellows were going to give a dinner on his departure. They had
+kept up with him for those three years, though privately they did not
+consider themselves on an equal footing with him, I am convinced of
+that.
+
+Of Simonov’s two visitors, one was Ferfitchkin, a Russianised German—a
+little fellow with the face of a monkey, a blockhead who was always
+deriding everyone, a very bitter enemy of mine from our days in the
+lower forms—a vulgar, impudent, swaggering fellow, who affected a most
+sensitive feeling of personal honour, though, of course, he was a
+wretched little coward at heart. He was one of those worshippers of
+Zverkov who made up to the latter from interested motives, and often
+borrowed money from him. Simonov’s other visitor, Trudolyubov, was a
+person in no way remarkable—a tall young fellow, in the army, with a
+cold face, fairly honest, though he worshipped success of every sort,
+and was only capable of thinking of promotion. He was some sort of
+distant relation of Zverkov’s, and this, foolish as it seems, gave him
+a certain importance among us. He always thought me of no consequence
+whatever; his behaviour to me, though not quite courteous, was
+tolerable.
+
+“Well, with seven roubles each,” said Trudolyubov, “twenty-one roubles
+between the three of us, we ought to be able to get a good dinner.
+Zverkov, of course, won’t pay.”
+
+“Of course not, since we are inviting him,” Simonov decided.
+
+“Can you imagine,” Ferfitchkin interrupted hotly and conceitedly, like
+some insolent flunkey boasting of his master the General’s decorations,
+“can you imagine that Zverkov will let us pay alone? He will accept
+from delicacy, but he will order half a dozen bottles of champagne.”
+
+“Do we want half a dozen for the four of us?” observed Trudolyubov,
+taking notice only of the half dozen.
+
+“So the three of us, with Zverkov for the fourth, twenty-one roubles,
+at the Hôtel de Paris at five o’clock tomorrow,” Simonov, who had been
+asked to make the arrangements, concluded finally.
+
+“How twenty-one roubles?” I asked in some agitation, with a show of
+being offended; “if you count me it will not be twenty-one, but
+twenty-eight roubles.”
+
+It seemed to me that to invite myself so suddenly and unexpectedly
+would be positively graceful, and that they would all be conquered at
+once and would look at me with respect.
+
+“Do you want to join, too?” Simonov observed, with no appearance of
+pleasure, seeming to avoid looking at me. He knew me through and
+through.
+
+It infuriated me that he knew me so thoroughly.
+
+“Why not? I am an old schoolfellow of his, too, I believe, and I must
+own I feel hurt that you have left me out,” I said, boiling over again.
+
+“And where were we to find you?” Ferfitchkin put in roughly.
+
+“You never were on good terms with Zverkov,” Trudolyubov added,
+frowning.
+
+But I had already clutched at the idea and would not give it up.
+
+“It seems to me that no one has a right to form an opinion upon that,”
+I retorted in a shaking voice, as though something tremendous had
+happened. “Perhaps that is just my reason for wishing it now, that I
+have not always been on good terms with him.”
+
+“Oh, there’s no making you out ... with these refinements,” Trudolyubov
+jeered.
+
+“We’ll put your name down,” Simonov decided, addressing me. “Tomorrow
+at five-o’clock at the Hôtel de Paris.”
+
+“What about the money?” Ferfitchkin began in an undertone, indicating
+me to Simonov, but he broke off, for even Simonov was embarrassed.
+
+“That will do,” said Trudolyubov, getting up. “If he wants to come so
+much, let him.”
+
+“But it’s a private thing, between us friends,” Ferfitchkin said
+crossly, as he, too, picked up his hat. “It’s not an official
+gathering.”
+
+“We do not want at all, perhaps ...”
+
+They went away. Ferfitchkin did not greet me in any way as he went out,
+Trudolyubov barely nodded. Simonov, with whom I was left _tête-à-tête_,
+was in a state of vexation and perplexity, and looked at me queerly. He
+did not sit down and did not ask me to.
+
+“H’m ... yes ... tomorrow, then. Will you pay your subscription now? I
+just ask so as to know,” he muttered in embarrassment.
+
+I flushed crimson, as I did so I remembered that I had owed Simonov
+fifteen roubles for ages—which I had, indeed, never forgotten, though I
+had not paid it.
+
+“You will understand, Simonov, that I could have no idea when I came
+here.... I am very much vexed that I have forgotten....”
+
+“All right, all right, that doesn’t matter. You can pay tomorrow after
+the dinner. I simply wanted to know.... Please don’t...”
+
+He broke off and began pacing the room still more vexed. As he walked
+he began to stamp with his heels.
+
+“Am I keeping you?” I asked, after two minutes of silence.
+
+“Oh!” he said, starting, “that is—to be truthful—yes. I have to go and
+see someone ... not far from here,” he added in an apologetic voice,
+somewhat abashed.
+
+“My goodness, why didn’t you say so?” I cried, seizing my cap, with an
+astonishingly free-and-easy air, which was the last thing I should have
+expected of myself.
+
+“It’s close by ... not two paces away,” Simonov repeated, accompanying
+me to the front door with a fussy air which did not suit him at all.
+“So five o’clock, punctually, tomorrow,” he called down the stairs
+after me. He was very glad to get rid of me. I was in a fury.
+
+“What possessed me, what possessed me to force myself upon them?” I
+wondered, grinding my teeth as I strode along the street, “for a
+scoundrel, a pig like that Zverkov! Of course I had better not go; of
+course, I must just snap my fingers at them. I am not bound in any way.
+I’ll send Simonov a note by tomorrow’s post....”
+
+But what made me furious was that I knew for certain that I should go,
+that I should make a point of going; and the more tactless, the more
+unseemly my going would be, the more certainly I would go.
+
+And there was a positive obstacle to my going: I had no money. All I
+had was nine roubles, I had to give seven of that to my servant,
+Apollon, for his monthly wages. That was all I paid him—he had to keep
+himself.
+
+Not to pay him was impossible, considering his character. But I will
+talk about that fellow, about that plague of mine, another time.
+
+However, I knew I should go and should not pay him his wages.
+
+That night I had the most hideous dreams. No wonder; all the evening I
+had been oppressed by memories of my miserable days at school, and I
+could not shake them off. I was sent to the school by distant
+relations, upon whom I was dependent and of whom I have heard nothing
+since—they sent me there a forlorn, silent boy, already crushed by
+their reproaches, already troubled by doubt, and looking with savage
+distrust at everyone. My schoolfellows met me with spiteful and
+merciless jibes because I was not like any of them. But I could not
+endure their taunts; I could not give in to them with the ignoble
+readiness with which they gave in to one another. I hated them from the
+first, and shut myself away from everyone in timid, wounded and
+disproportionate pride. Their coarseness revolted me. They laughed
+cynically at my face, at my clumsy figure; and yet what stupid faces
+they had themselves. In our school the boys’ faces seemed in a special
+way to degenerate and grow stupider. How many fine-looking boys came to
+us! In a few years they became repulsive. Even at sixteen I wondered at
+them morosely; even then I was struck by the pettiness of their
+thoughts, the stupidity of their pursuits, their games, their
+conversations. They had no understanding of such essential things, they
+took no interest in such striking, impressive subjects, that I could
+not help considering them inferior to myself. It was not wounded vanity
+that drove me to it, and for God’s sake do not thrust upon me your
+hackneyed remarks, repeated to nausea, that “I was only a dreamer,”
+while they even then had an understanding of life. They understood
+nothing, they had no idea of real life, and I swear that that was what
+made me most indignant with them. On the contrary, the most obvious,
+striking reality they accepted with fantastic stupidity and even at
+that time were accustomed to respect success. Everything that was just,
+but oppressed and looked down upon, they laughed at heartlessly and
+shamefully. They took rank for intelligence; even at sixteen they were
+already talking about a snug berth. Of course, a great deal of it was
+due to their stupidity, to the bad examples with which they had always
+been surrounded in their childhood and boyhood. They were monstrously
+depraved. Of course a great deal of that, too, was superficial and an
+assumption of cynicism; of course there were glimpses of youth and
+freshness even in their depravity; but even that freshness was not
+attractive, and showed itself in a certain rakishness. I hated them
+horribly, though perhaps I was worse than any of them. They repaid me
+in the same way, and did not conceal their aversion for me. But by then
+I did not desire their affection: on the contrary, I continually longed
+for their humiliation. To escape from their derision I purposely began
+to make all the progress I could with my studies and forced my way to
+the very top. This impressed them. Moreover, they all began by degrees
+to grasp that I had already read books none of them could read, and
+understood things (not forming part of our school curriculum) of which
+they had not even heard. They took a savage and sarcastic view of it,
+but were morally impressed, especially as the teachers began to notice
+me on those grounds. The mockery ceased, but the hostility remained,
+and cold and strained relations became permanent between us. In the end
+I could not put up with it: with years a craving for society, for
+friends, developed in me. I attempted to get on friendly terms with
+some of my schoolfellows; but somehow or other my intimacy with them
+was always strained and soon ended of itself. Once, indeed, I did have
+a friend. But I was already a tyrant at heart; I wanted to exercise
+unbounded sway over him; I tried to instil into him a contempt for his
+surroundings; I required of him a disdainful and complete break with
+those surroundings. I frightened him with my passionate affection; I
+reduced him to tears, to hysterics. He was a simple and devoted soul;
+but when he devoted himself to me entirely I began to hate him
+immediately and repulsed him—as though all I needed him for was to win
+a victory over him, to subjugate him and nothing else. But I could not
+subjugate all of them; my friend was not at all like them either, he
+was, in fact, a rare exception. The first thing I did on leaving school
+was to give up the special job for which I had been destined so as to
+break all ties, to curse my past and shake the dust from off my
+feet.... And goodness knows why, after all that, I should go trudging
+off to Simonov’s!
+
+Early next morning I roused myself and jumped out of bed with
+excitement, as though it were all about to happen at once. But I
+believed that some radical change in my life was coming, and would
+inevitably come that day. Owing to its rarity, perhaps, any external
+event, however trivial, always made me feel as though some radical
+change in my life were at hand. I went to the office, however, as
+usual, but sneaked away home two hours earlier to get ready. The great
+thing, I thought, is not to be the first to arrive, or they will think
+I am overjoyed at coming. But there were thousands of such great points
+to consider, and they all agitated and overwhelmed me. I polished my
+boots a second time with my own hands; nothing in the world would have
+induced Apollon to clean them twice a day, as he considered that it was
+more than his duties required of him. I stole the brushes to clean them
+from the passage, being careful he should not detect it, for fear of
+his contempt. Then I minutely examined my clothes and thought that
+everything looked old, worn and threadbare. I had let myself get too
+slovenly. My uniform, perhaps, was tidy, but I could not go out to
+dinner in my uniform. The worst of it was that on the knee of my
+trousers was a big yellow stain. I had a foreboding that that stain
+would deprive me of nine-tenths of my personal dignity. I knew, too,
+that it was very poor to think so. “But this is no time for thinking:
+now I am in for the real thing,” I thought, and my heart sank. I knew,
+too, perfectly well even then, that I was monstrously exaggerating the
+facts. But how could I help it? I could not control myself and was
+already shaking with fever. With despair I pictured to myself how
+coldly and disdainfully that “scoundrel” Zverkov would meet me; with
+what dull-witted, invincible contempt the blockhead Trudolyubov would
+look at me; with what impudent rudeness the insect Ferfitchkin would
+snigger at me in order to curry favour with Zverkov; how completely
+Simonov would take it all in, and how he would despise me for the
+abjectness of my vanity and lack of spirit—and, worst of all, how
+paltry, _unliterary_, commonplace it would all be. Of course, the best
+thing would be not to go at all. But that was most impossible of all:
+if I feel impelled to do anything, I seem to be pitchforked into it. I
+should have jeered at myself ever afterwards: “So you funked it, you
+funked it, you funked the _real thing!_” On the contrary, I
+passionately longed to show all that “rabble” that I was by no means
+such a spiritless creature as I seemed to myself. What is more, even in
+the acutest paroxysm of this cowardly fever, I dreamed of getting the
+upper hand, of dominating them, carrying them away, making them like
+me—if only for my “elevation of thought and unmistakable wit.” They
+would abandon Zverkov, he would sit on one side, silent and ashamed,
+while I should crush him. Then, perhaps, we would be reconciled and
+drink to our everlasting friendship; but what was most bitter and
+humiliating for me was that I knew even then, knew fully and for
+certain, that I needed nothing of all this really, that I did not
+really want to crush, to subdue, to attract them, and that I did not
+care a straw really for the result, even if I did achieve it. Oh, how I
+prayed for the day to pass quickly! In unutterable anguish I went to
+the window, opened the movable pane and looked out into the troubled
+darkness of the thickly falling wet snow. At last my wretched little
+clock hissed out five. I seized my hat and, trying not to look at
+Apollon, who had been all day expecting his month’s wages, but in his
+foolishness was unwilling to be the first to speak about it, I slipped
+between him and the door and, jumping into a high-class sledge, on
+which I spent my last half rouble, I drove up in grand style to the
+Hôtel de Paris.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+I had been certain the day before that I should be the first to arrive.
+But it was not a question of being the first to arrive. Not only were
+they not there, but I had difficulty in finding our room. The table was
+not laid even. What did it mean? After a good many questions I elicited
+from the waiters that the dinner had been ordered not for five, but for
+six o’clock. This was confirmed at the buffet too. I felt really
+ashamed to go on questioning them. It was only twenty-five minutes past
+five. If they changed the dinner hour they ought at least to have let
+me know—that is what the post is for, and not to have put me in an
+absurd position in my own eyes and ... and even before the waiters. I
+sat down; the servant began laying the table; I felt even more
+humiliated when he was present. Towards six o’clock they brought in
+candles, though there were lamps burning in the room. It had not
+occurred to the waiter, however, to bring them in at once when I
+arrived. In the next room two gloomy, angry-looking persons were eating
+their dinners in silence at two different tables. There was a great
+deal of noise, even shouting, in a room further away; one could hear
+the laughter of a crowd of people, and nasty little shrieks in French:
+there were ladies at the dinner. It was sickening, in fact. I rarely
+passed more unpleasant moments, so much so that when they did arrive
+all together punctually at six I was overjoyed to see them, as though
+they were my deliverers, and even forgot that it was incumbent upon me
+to show resentment.
+
+Zverkov walked in at the head of them; evidently he was the leading
+spirit. He and all of them were laughing; but, seeing me, Zverkov drew
+himself up a little, walked up to me deliberately with a slight, rather
+jaunty bend from the waist. He shook hands with me in a friendly, but
+not over-friendly, fashion, with a sort of circumspect courtesy like
+that of a General, as though in giving me his hand he were warding off
+something. I had imagined, on the contrary, that on coming in he would
+at once break into his habitual thin, shrill laugh and fall to making
+his insipid jokes and witticisms. I had been preparing for them ever
+since the previous day, but I had not expected such condescension, such
+high-official courtesy. So, then, he felt himself ineffably superior to
+me in every respect! If he only meant to insult me by that
+high-official tone, it would not matter, I thought—I could pay him back
+for it one way or another. But what if, in reality, without the least
+desire to be offensive, that sheepshead had a notion in earnest that he
+was superior to me and could only look at me in a patronising way? The
+very supposition made me gasp.
+
+“I was surprised to hear of your desire to join us,” he began, lisping
+and drawling, which was something new. “You and I seem to have seen
+nothing of one another. You fight shy of us. You shouldn’t. We are not
+such terrible people as you think. Well, anyway, I am glad to renew our
+acquaintance.”
+
+And he turned carelessly to put down his hat on the window.
+
+“Have you been waiting long?” Trudolyubov inquired.
+
+“I arrived at five o’clock as you told me yesterday,” I answered aloud,
+with an irritability that threatened an explosion.
+
+“Didn’t you let him know that we had changed the hour?” said
+Trudolyubov to Simonov.
+
+“No, I didn’t. I forgot,” the latter replied, with no sign of regret,
+and without even apologising to me he went off to order the _hors
+d’œuvres_.
+
+“So you’ve been here a whole hour? Oh, poor fellow!” Zverkov cried
+ironically, for to his notions this was bound to be extremely funny.
+That rascal Ferfitchkin followed with his nasty little snigger like a
+puppy yapping. My position struck him, too, as exquisitely ludicrous
+and embarrassing.
+
+“It isn’t funny at all!” I cried to Ferfitchkin, more and more
+irritated. “It wasn’t my fault, but other people’s. They neglected to
+let me know. It was ... it was ... it was simply absurd.”
+
+“It’s not only absurd, but something else as well,” muttered
+Trudolyubov, naively taking my part. “You are not hard enough upon it.
+It was simply rudeness—unintentional, of course. And how could Simonov
+... h’m!”
+
+“If a trick like that had been played on me,” observed Ferfitchkin, “I
+should ...”
+
+“But you should have ordered something for yourself,” Zverkov
+interrupted, “or simply asked for dinner without waiting for us.”
+
+“You will allow that I might have done that without your permission,” I
+rapped out. “If I waited, it was ...”
+
+“Let us sit down, gentlemen,” cried Simonov, coming in. “Everything is
+ready; I can answer for the champagne; it is capitally frozen.... You
+see, I did not know your address, where was I to look for you?” he
+suddenly turned to me, but again he seemed to avoid looking at me.
+Evidently he had something against me. It must have been what happened
+yesterday.
+
+All sat down; I did the same. It was a round table. Trudolyubov was on
+my left, Simonov on my right, Zverkov was sitting opposite, Ferfitchkin
+next to him, between him and Trudolyubov.
+
+“Tell me, are you ... in a government office?” Zverkov went on
+attending to me. Seeing that I was embarrassed he seriously thought
+that he ought to be friendly to me, and, so to speak, cheer me up.
+
+“Does he want me to throw a bottle at his head?” I thought, in a fury.
+In my novel surroundings I was unnaturally ready to be irritated.
+
+“In the N—— office,” I answered jerkily, with my eyes on my plate.
+
+“And ha-ave you a go-od berth? I say, what ma-a-de you leave your
+original job?”
+
+“What ma-a-de me was that I wanted to leave my original job,” I drawled
+more than he, hardly able to control myself. Ferfitchkin went off into
+a guffaw. Simonov looked at me ironically. Trudolyubov left off eating
+and began looking at me with curiosity.
+
+Zverkov winced, but he tried not to notice it.
+
+“And the remuneration?”
+
+“What remuneration?”
+
+“I mean, your sa-a-lary?”
+
+“Why are you cross-examining me?” However, I told him at once what my
+salary was. I turned horribly red.
+
+“It is not very handsome,” Zverkov observed majestically.
+
+“Yes, you can’t afford to dine at cafés on that,” Ferfitchkin added
+insolently.
+
+“To my thinking it’s very poor,” Trudolyubov observed gravely.
+
+“And how thin you have grown! How you have changed!” added Zverkov,
+with a shade of venom in his voice, scanning me and my attire with a
+sort of insolent compassion.
+
+“Oh, spare his blushes,” cried Ferfitchkin, sniggering.
+
+“My dear sir, allow me to tell you I am not blushing,” I broke out at
+last; “do you hear? I am dining here, at this cafe, at my own expense,
+not at other people’s—note that, Mr. Ferfitchkin.”
+
+“Wha-at? Isn’t every one here dining at his own expense? You would seem
+to be ...” Ferfitchkin flew out at me, turning as red as a lobster, and
+looking me in the face with fury.
+
+“Tha-at,” I answered, feeling I had gone too far, “and I imagine it
+would be better to talk of something more intelligent.”
+
+“You intend to show off your intelligence, I suppose?”
+
+“Don’t disturb yourself, that would be quite out of place here.”
+
+“Why are you clacking away like that, my good sir, eh? Have you gone
+out of your wits in your office?”
+
+“Enough, gentlemen, enough!” Zverkov cried, authoritatively.
+
+“How stupid it is!” muttered Simonov.
+
+“It really is stupid. We have met here, a company of friends, for a
+farewell dinner to a comrade and you carry on an altercation,” said
+Trudolyubov, rudely addressing himself to me alone. “You invited
+yourself to join us, so don’t disturb the general harmony.”
+
+“Enough, enough!” cried Zverkov. “Give over, gentlemen, it’s out of
+place. Better let me tell you how I nearly got married the day before
+yesterday....”
+
+And then followed a burlesque narrative of how this gentleman had
+almost been married two days before. There was not a word about the
+marriage, however, but the story was adorned with generals, colonels
+and kammer-junkers, while Zverkov almost took the lead among them. It
+was greeted with approving laughter; Ferfitchkin positively squealed.
+
+No one paid any attention to me, and I sat crushed and humiliated.
+
+“Good Heavens, these are not the people for me!” I thought. “And what a
+fool I have made of myself before them! I let Ferfitchkin go too far,
+though. The brutes imagine they are doing me an honour in letting me
+sit down with them. They don’t understand that it’s an honour to them
+and not to me! I’ve grown thinner! My clothes! Oh, damn my trousers!
+Zverkov noticed the yellow stain on the knee as soon as he came in....
+But what’s the use! I must get up at once, this very minute, take my
+hat and simply go without a word ... with contempt! And tomorrow I can
+send a challenge. The scoundrels! As though I cared about the seven
+roubles. They may think.... Damn it! I don’t care about the seven
+roubles. I’ll go this minute!”
+
+Of course I remained. I drank sherry and Lafitte by the glassful in my
+discomfiture. Being unaccustomed to it, I was quickly affected. My
+annoyance increased as the wine went to my head. I longed all at once
+to insult them all in a most flagrant manner and then go away. To seize
+the moment and show what I could do, so that they would say, “He’s
+clever, though he is absurd,” and ... and ... in fact, damn them all!
+
+I scanned them all insolently with my drowsy eyes. But they seemed to
+have forgotten me altogether. They were noisy, vociferous, cheerful.
+Zverkov was talking all the time. I began listening. Zverkov was
+talking of some exuberant lady whom he had at last led on to declaring
+her love (of course, he was lying like a horse), and how he had been
+helped in this affair by an intimate friend of his, a Prince Kolya, an
+officer in the hussars, who had three thousand serfs.
+
+“And yet this Kolya, who has three thousand serfs, has not put in an
+appearance here tonight to see you off,” I cut in suddenly.
+
+For one minute every one was silent. “You are drunk already.”
+Trudolyubov deigned to notice me at last, glancing contemptuously in my
+direction. Zverkov, without a word, examined me as though I were an
+insect. I dropped my eyes. Simonov made haste to fill up the glasses
+with champagne.
+
+Trudolyubov raised his glass, as did everyone else but me.
+
+“Your health and good luck on the journey!” he cried to Zverkov. “To
+old times, to our future, hurrah!”
+
+They all tossed off their glasses, and crowded round Zverkov to kiss
+him. I did not move; my full glass stood untouched before me.
+
+“Why, aren’t you going to drink it?” roared Trudolyubov, losing
+patience and turning menacingly to me.
+
+“I want to make a speech separately, on my own account ... and then
+I’ll drink it, Mr. Trudolyubov.”
+
+“Spiteful brute!” muttered Simonov. I drew myself up in my chair and
+feverishly seized my glass, prepared for something extraordinary,
+though I did not know myself precisely what I was going to say.
+
+“_Silence!_” cried Ferfitchkin. “Now for a display of wit!”
+
+Zverkov waited very gravely, knowing what was coming.
+
+“Mr. Lieutenant Zverkov,” I began, “let me tell you that I hate
+phrases, phrasemongers and men in corsets ... that’s the first point,
+and there is a second one to follow it.”
+
+There was a general stir.
+
+“The second point is: I hate ribaldry and ribald talkers. Especially
+ribald talkers! The third point: I love justice, truth and honesty.” I
+went on almost mechanically, for I was beginning to shiver with horror
+myself and had no idea how I came to be talking like this. “I love
+thought, Monsieur Zverkov; I love true comradeship, on an equal footing
+and not ... H’m ... I love ... But, however, why not? I will drink your
+health, too, Mr. Zverkov. Seduce the Circassian girls, shoot the
+enemies of the fatherland and ... and ... to your health, Monsieur
+Zverkov!”
+
+Zverkov got up from his seat, bowed to me and said:
+
+“I am very much obliged to you.” He was frightfully offended and turned
+pale.
+
+“Damn the fellow!” roared Trudolyubov, bringing his fist down on the
+table.
+
+“Well, he wants a punch in the face for that,” squealed Ferfitchkin.
+
+“We ought to turn him out,” muttered Simonov.
+
+“Not a word, gentlemen, not a movement!” cried Zverkov solemnly,
+checking the general indignation. “I thank you all, but I can show him
+for myself how much value I attach to his words.”
+
+“Mr. Ferfitchkin, you will give me satisfaction tomorrow for your words
+just now!” I said aloud, turning with dignity to Ferfitchkin.
+
+“A duel, you mean? Certainly,” he answered. But probably I was so
+ridiculous as I challenged him and it was so out of keeping with my
+appearance that everyone including Ferfitchkin was prostrate with
+laughter.
+
+“Yes, let him alone, of course! He is quite drunk,” Trudolyubov said
+with disgust.
+
+“I shall never forgive myself for letting him join us,” Simonov
+muttered again.
+
+“Now is the time to throw a bottle at their heads,” I thought to
+myself. I picked up the bottle ... and filled my glass.... “No, I’d
+better sit on to the end,” I went on thinking; “you would be pleased,
+my friends, if I went away. Nothing will induce me to go. I’ll go on
+sitting here and drinking to the end, on purpose, as a sign that I
+don’t think you of the slightest consequence. I will go on sitting and
+drinking, because this is a public-house and I paid my entrance money.
+I’ll sit here and drink, for I look upon you as so many pawns, as
+inanimate pawns. I’ll sit here and drink ... and sing if I want to,
+yes, sing, for I have the right to ... to sing ... H’m!”
+
+But I did not sing. I simply tried not to look at any of them. I
+assumed most unconcerned attitudes and waited with impatience for them
+to speak _first_. But alas, they did not address me! And oh, how I
+wished, how I wished at that moment to be reconciled to them! It struck
+eight, at last nine. They moved from the table to the sofa. Zverkov
+stretched himself on a lounge and put one foot on a round table. Wine
+was brought there. He did, as a fact, order three bottles on his own
+account. I, of course, was not invited to join them. They all sat round
+him on the sofa. They listened to him, almost with reverence. It was
+evident that they were fond of him. “What for? What for?” I wondered.
+From time to time they were moved to drunken enthusiasm and kissed each
+other. They talked of the Caucasus, of the nature of true passion, of
+snug berths in the service, of the income of an hussar called
+Podharzhevsky, whom none of them knew personally, and rejoiced in the
+largeness of it, of the extraordinary grace and beauty of a Princess
+D., whom none of them had ever seen; then it came to Shakespeare’s
+being immortal.
+
+I smiled contemptuously and walked up and down the other side of the
+room, opposite the sofa, from the table to the stove and back again. I
+tried my very utmost to show them that I could do without them, and yet
+I purposely made a noise with my boots, thumping with my heels. But it
+was all in vain. They paid no attention. I had the patience to walk up
+and down in front of them from eight o’clock till eleven, in the same
+place, from the table to the stove and back again. “I walk up and down
+to please myself and no one can prevent me.” The waiter who came into
+the room stopped, from time to time, to look at me. I was somewhat
+giddy from turning round so often; at moments it seemed to me that I
+was in delirium. During those three hours I was three times soaked with
+sweat and dry again. At times, with an intense, acute pang I was
+stabbed to the heart by the thought that ten years, twenty years, forty
+years would pass, and that even in forty years I would remember with
+loathing and humiliation those filthiest, most ludicrous, and most
+awful moments of my life. No one could have gone out of his way to
+degrade himself more shamelessly, and I fully realised it, fully, and
+yet I went on pacing up and down from the table to the stove. “Oh, if
+you only knew what thoughts and feelings I am capable of, how cultured
+I am!” I thought at moments, mentally addressing the sofa on which my
+enemies were sitting. But my enemies behaved as though I were not in
+the room. Once—only once—they turned towards me, just when Zverkov was
+talking about Shakespeare, and I suddenly gave a contemptuous laugh. I
+laughed in such an affected and disgusting way that they all at once
+broke off their conversation, and silently and gravely for two minutes
+watched me walking up and down from the table to the stove, _taking no
+notice of them_. But nothing came of it: they said nothing, and two
+minutes later they ceased to notice me again. It struck eleven.
+
+“Friends,” cried Zverkov getting up from the sofa, “let us all be off
+now, _there!_”
+
+“Of course, of course,” the others assented. I turned sharply to
+Zverkov. I was so harassed, so exhausted, that I would have cut my
+throat to put an end to it. I was in a fever; my hair, soaked with
+perspiration, stuck to my forehead and temples.
+
+“Zverkov, I beg your pardon,” I said abruptly and resolutely.
+“Ferfitchkin, yours too, and everyone’s, everyone’s: I have insulted
+you all!”
+
+“Aha! A duel is not in your line, old man,” Ferfitchkin hissed
+venomously.
+
+It sent a sharp pang to my heart.
+
+“No, it’s not the duel I am afraid of, Ferfitchkin! I am ready to fight
+you tomorrow, after we are reconciled. I insist upon it, in fact, and
+you cannot refuse. I want to show you that I am not afraid of a duel.
+You shall fire first and I shall fire into the air.”
+
+“He is comforting himself,” said Simonov.
+
+“He’s simply raving,” said Trudolyubov.
+
+“But let us pass. Why are you barring our way? What do you want?”
+Zverkov answered disdainfully.
+
+They were all flushed, their eyes were bright: they had been drinking
+heavily.
+
+“I ask for your friendship, Zverkov; I insulted you, but ...”
+
+“Insulted? _You_ insulted _me?_ Understand, sir, that you never, under
+any circumstances, could possibly insult _me_.”
+
+“And that’s enough for you. Out of the way!” concluded Trudolyubov.
+
+“Olympia is mine, friends, that’s agreed!” cried Zverkov.
+
+“We won’t dispute your right, we won’t dispute your right,” the others
+answered, laughing.
+
+I stood as though spat upon. The party went noisily out of the room.
+Trudolyubov struck up some stupid song. Simonov remained behind for a
+moment to tip the waiters. I suddenly went up to him.
+
+“Simonov! give me six roubles!” I said, with desperate resolution.
+
+He looked at me in extreme amazement, with vacant eyes. He, too, was
+drunk.
+
+“You don’t mean you are coming with us?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I’ve no money,” he snapped out, and with a scornful laugh he went out
+of the room.
+
+I clutched at his overcoat. It was a nightmare.
+
+“Simonov, I saw you had money. Why do you refuse me? Am I a scoundrel?
+Beware of refusing me: if you knew, if you knew why I am asking! My
+whole future, my whole plans depend upon it!”
+
+Simonov pulled out the money and almost flung it at me.
+
+“Take it, if you have no sense of shame!” he pronounced pitilessly, and
+ran to overtake them.
+
+I was left for a moment alone. Disorder, the remains of dinner, a
+broken wine-glass on the floor, spilt wine, cigarette ends, fumes of
+drink and delirium in my brain, an agonising misery in my heart and
+finally the waiter, who had seen and heard all and was looking
+inquisitively into my face.
+
+“I am going there!” I cried. “Either they shall all go down on their
+knees to beg for my friendship, or I will give Zverkov a slap in the
+face!”
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+“So this is it, this is it at last—contact with real life,” I muttered
+as I ran headlong downstairs. “This is very different from the Pope’s
+leaving Rome and going to Brazil, very different from the ball on Lake
+Como!”
+
+“You are a scoundrel,” a thought flashed through my mind, “if you laugh
+at this now.”
+
+“No matter!” I cried, answering myself. “Now everything is lost!”
+
+There was no trace to be seen of them, but that made no difference—I
+knew where they had gone.
+
+At the steps was standing a solitary night sledge-driver in a rough
+peasant coat, powdered over with the still falling, wet, and as it were
+warm, snow. It was hot and steamy. The little shaggy piebald horse was
+also covered with snow and coughing, I remember that very well. I made
+a rush for the roughly made sledge; but as soon as I raised my foot to
+get into it, the recollection of how Simonov had just given me six
+roubles seemed to double me up and I tumbled into the sledge like a
+sack.
+
+“No, I must do a great deal to make up for all that,” I cried. “But I
+will make up for it or perish on the spot this very night. Start!”
+
+We set off. There was a perfect whirl in my head.
+
+“They won’t go down on their knees to beg for my friendship. That is a
+mirage, cheap mirage, revolting, romantic and fantastical—that’s
+another ball on Lake Como. And so I am bound to slap Zverkov’s face! It
+is my duty to. And so it is settled; I am flying to give him a slap in
+the face. Hurry up!”
+
+The driver tugged at the reins.
+
+“As soon as I go in I’ll give it him. Ought I before giving him the
+slap to say a few words by way of preface? No. I’ll simply go in and
+give it him. They will all be sitting in the drawing-room, and he with
+Olympia on the sofa. That damned Olympia! She laughed at my looks on
+one occasion and refused me. I’ll pull Olympia’s hair, pull Zverkov’s
+ears! No, better one ear, and pull him by it round the room. Maybe they
+will all begin beating me and will kick me out. That’s most likely,
+indeed. No matter! Anyway, I shall first slap him; the initiative will
+be mine; and by the laws of honour that is everything: he will be
+branded and cannot wipe off the slap by any blows, by nothing but a
+duel. He will be forced to fight. And let them beat me now. Let them,
+the ungrateful wretches! Trudolyubov will beat me hardest, he is so
+strong; Ferfitchkin will be sure to catch hold sideways and tug at my
+hair. But no matter, no matter! That’s what I am going for. The
+blockheads will be forced at last to see the tragedy of it all! When
+they drag me to the door I shall call out to them that in reality they
+are not worth my little finger. Get on, driver, get on!” I cried to the
+driver. He started and flicked his whip, I shouted so savagely.
+
+“We shall fight at daybreak, that’s a settled thing. I’ve done with the
+office. Ferfitchkin made a joke about it just now. But where can I get
+pistols? Nonsense! I’ll get my salary in advance and buy them. And
+powder, and bullets? That’s the second’s business. And how can it all
+be done by daybreak? and where am I to get a second? I have no friends.
+Nonsense!” I cried, lashing myself up more and more. “It’s of no
+consequence! The first person I meet in the street is bound to be my
+second, just as he would be bound to pull a drowning man out of water.
+The most eccentric things may happen. Even if I were to ask the
+director himself to be my second tomorrow, he would be bound to
+consent, if only from a feeling of chivalry, and to keep the secret!
+Anton Antonitch....”
+
+The fact is, that at that very minute the disgusting absurdity of my
+plan and the other side of the question was clearer and more vivid to
+my imagination than it could be to anyone on earth. But ....
+
+“Get on, driver, get on, you rascal, get on!”
+
+“Ugh, sir!” said the son of toil.
+
+Cold shivers suddenly ran down me. Wouldn’t it be better ... to go
+straight home? My God, my God! Why did I invite myself to this dinner
+yesterday? But no, it’s impossible. And my walking up and down for
+three hours from the table to the stove? No, they, they and no one else
+must pay for my walking up and down! They must wipe out this dishonour!
+Drive on!
+
+And what if they give me into custody? They won’t dare! They’ll be
+afraid of the scandal. And what if Zverkov is so contemptuous that he
+refuses to fight a duel? He is sure to; but in that case I’ll show them
+... I will turn up at the posting station when he’s setting off
+tomorrow, I’ll catch him by the leg, I’ll pull off his coat when he
+gets into the carriage. I’ll get my teeth into his hand, I’ll bite him.
+“See what lengths you can drive a desperate man to!” He may hit me on
+the head and they may belabour me from behind. I will shout to the
+assembled multitude: “Look at this young puppy who is driving off to
+captivate the Circassian girls after letting me spit in his face!”
+
+Of course, after that everything will be over! The office will have
+vanished off the face of the earth. I shall be arrested, I shall be
+tried, I shall be dismissed from the service, thrown in prison, sent to
+Siberia. Never mind! In fifteen years when they let me out of prison I
+will trudge off to him, a beggar, in rags. I shall find him in some
+provincial town. He will be married and happy. He will have a grown-up
+daughter.... I shall say to him: “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....”
+
+I was actually on the point of tears, though I knew perfectly well at
+that moment that all this was out of Pushkin’s _Silvio_ and Lermontov’s
+_Masquerade_. And all at once I felt horribly ashamed, so ashamed that
+I stopped the horse, got out of the sledge, and stood still in the snow
+in the middle of the street. The driver gazed at me, sighing and
+astonished.
+
+What was I to do? I could not go on there—it was evidently stupid, and
+I could not leave things as they were, because that would seem as
+though ... Heavens, how could I leave things! And after such insults!
+“No!” I cried, throwing myself into the sledge again. “It is ordained!
+It is fate! Drive on, drive on!”
+
+And in my impatience I punched the sledge-driver on the back of the
+neck.
+
+“What are you up to? What are you hitting me for?” the peasant shouted,
+but he whipped up his nag so that it began kicking.
+
+The wet snow was falling in big flakes; I unbuttoned myself, regardless
+of it. I forgot everything else, for I had finally decided on the slap,
+and felt with horror that it was going to happen _now, at once_, and
+that _no force could stop it_. The deserted street lamps gleamed
+sullenly in the snowy darkness like torches at a funeral. The snow
+drifted under my great-coat, under my coat, under my cravat, and melted
+there. I did not wrap myself up—all was lost, anyway.
+
+At last we arrived. I jumped out, almost unconscious, ran up the steps
+and began knocking and kicking at the door. I felt fearfully weak,
+particularly in my legs and knees. The door was opened quickly as
+though they knew I was coming. As a fact, Simonov had warned them that
+perhaps another gentleman would arrive, and this was a place in which
+one had to give notice and to observe certain precautions. It was one
+of those “millinery establishments” which were abolished by the police
+a good time ago. By day it really was a shop; but at night, if one had
+an introduction, one might visit it for other purposes.
+
+I walked rapidly through the dark shop into the familiar drawing-room,
+where there was only one candle burning, and stood still in amazement:
+there was no one there. “Where are they?” I asked somebody. But by now,
+of course, they had separated. Before me was standing a person with a
+stupid smile, the “madam” herself, who had seen me before. A minute
+later a door opened and another person came in.
+
+Taking no notice of anything I strode about the room, and, I believe, I
+talked to myself. I felt as though I had been saved from death and was
+conscious of this, joyfully, all over: I should have given that slap, I
+should certainly, certainly have given it! But now they were not here
+and ... everything had vanished and changed! I looked round. I could
+not realise my condition yet. I looked mechanically at the girl who had
+come in: and had a glimpse of a fresh, young, rather pale face, with
+straight, dark eyebrows, and with grave, as it were wondering, eyes
+that attracted me at once; I should have hated her if she had been
+smiling. I began looking at her more intently and, as it were, with
+effort. I had not fully collected my thoughts. There was something
+simple and good-natured in her face, but something strangely grave. I
+am sure that this stood in her way here, and no one of those fools had
+noticed her. She could not, however, have been called a beauty, though
+she was tall, strong-looking, and well built. She was very simply
+dressed. Something loathsome stirred within me. I went straight up to
+her.
+
+I chanced to look into the glass. My harassed face struck me as
+revolting in the extreme, pale, angry, abject, with dishevelled hair.
+“No matter, I am glad of it,” I thought; “I am glad that I shall seem
+repulsive to her; I like that.”
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+... Somewhere behind a screen a clock began wheezing, as though
+oppressed by something, as though someone were strangling it. After an
+unnaturally prolonged wheezing there followed a shrill, nasty, and as
+it were unexpectedly rapid, chime—as though someone were suddenly
+jumping forward. It struck two. I woke up, though I had indeed not been
+asleep but lying half-conscious.
+
+It was almost completely dark in the narrow, cramped, low-pitched room,
+cumbered up with an enormous wardrobe and piles of cardboard boxes and
+all sorts of frippery and litter. The candle end that had been burning
+on the table was going out and gave a faint flicker from time to time.
+In a few minutes there would be complete darkness.
+
+I was not long in coming to myself; everything came back to my mind at
+once, without an effort, as though it had been in ambush to pounce upon
+me again. And, indeed, even while I was unconscious a point seemed
+continually to remain in my memory unforgotten, and round it my dreams
+moved drearily. But strange to say, everything that had happened to me
+in that day seemed to me now, on waking, to be in the far, far away
+past, as though I had long, long ago lived all that down.
+
+My head was full of fumes. Something seemed to be hovering over me,
+rousing me, exciting me, and making me restless. Misery and spite
+seemed surging up in me again and seeking an outlet. Suddenly I saw
+beside me two wide open eyes scrutinising me curiously and
+persistently. The look in those eyes was coldly detached, sullen, as it
+were utterly remote; it weighed upon me.
+
+A grim idea came into my brain and passed all over my body, as a
+horrible sensation, such as one feels when one goes into a damp and
+mouldy cellar. There was something unnatural in those two eyes,
+beginning to look at me only now. I recalled, too, that during those
+two hours I had not said a single word to this creature, and had, in
+fact, considered it utterly superfluous; in fact, the silence had for
+some reason gratified me. Now I suddenly realised vividly the hideous
+idea—revolting as a spider—of vice, which, without love, grossly and
+shamelessly begins with that in which true love finds its consummation.
+For a long time we gazed at each other like that, but she did not drop
+her eyes before mine and her expression did not change, so that at last
+I felt uncomfortable.
+
+“What is your name?” I asked abruptly, to put an end to it.
+
+“Liza,” she answered almost in a whisper, but somehow far from
+graciously, and she turned her eyes away.
+
+I was silent.
+
+“What weather! The snow ... it’s disgusting!” I said, almost to myself,
+putting my arm under my head despondently, and gazing at the ceiling.
+
+She made no answer. This was horrible.
+
+“Have you always lived in Petersburg?” I asked a minute later, almost
+angrily, turning my head slightly towards her.
+
+“No.”
+
+“Where do you come from?”
+
+“From Riga,” she answered reluctantly.
+
+“Are you a German?”
+
+“No, Russian.”
+
+“Have you been here long?”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“In this house?”
+
+“A fortnight.”
+
+She spoke more and more jerkily. The candle went out; I could no longer
+distinguish her face.
+
+“Have you a father and mother?”
+
+“Yes ... no ... I have.”
+
+“Where are they?”
+
+“There ... in Riga.”
+
+“What are they?”
+
+“Oh, nothing.”
+
+“Nothing? Why, what class are they?”
+
+“Tradespeople.”
+
+“Have you always lived with them?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“How old are you?”
+
+“Twenty.”
+
+“Why did you leave them?”
+
+“Oh, for no reason.”
+
+That answer meant “Let me alone; I feel sick, sad.”
+
+We were silent.
+
+God knows why I did not go away. I felt myself more and more sick and
+dreary. The images of the previous day began of themselves, apart from
+my will, flitting through my memory in confusion. I suddenly recalled
+something I had seen that morning when, full of anxious thoughts, I was
+hurrying to the office.
+
+“I saw them carrying a coffin out yesterday and they nearly dropped
+it,” I suddenly said aloud, not that I desired to open the
+conversation, but as it were by accident.
+
+“A coffin?”
+
+“Yes, in the Haymarket; they were bringing it up out of a cellar.”
+
+“From a cellar?”
+
+“Not from a cellar, but a basement. Oh, you know ... down below ...
+from a house of ill-fame. It was filthy all round ... Egg-shells,
+litter ... a stench. It was loathsome.”
+
+Silence.
+
+“A nasty day to be buried,” I began, simply to avoid being silent.
+
+“Nasty, in what way?”
+
+“The snow, the wet.” (I yawned.)
+
+“It makes no difference,” she said suddenly, after a brief silence.
+
+“No, it’s horrid.” (I yawned again). “The gravediggers must have sworn
+at getting drenched by the snow. And there must have been water in the
+grave.”
+
+“Why water in the grave?” she asked, with a sort of curiosity, but
+speaking even more harshly and abruptly than before.
+
+I suddenly began to feel provoked.
+
+“Why, there must have been water at the bottom a foot deep. You can’t
+dig a dry grave in Volkovo Cemetery.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Why? Why, the place is waterlogged. It’s a regular marsh. So they bury
+them in water. I’ve seen it myself ... many times.”
+
+(I had never seen it once, indeed I had never been in Volkovo, and had
+only heard stories of it.)
+
+“Do you mean to say, you don’t mind how you die?”
+
+“But why should I die?” she answered, as though defending herself.
+
+“Why, some day you will die, and you will die just the same as that
+dead woman. She was ... a girl like you. She died of consumption.”
+
+“A wench would have died in hospital ...” (She knows all about it
+already: she said “wench,” not “girl.”)
+
+“She was in debt to her madam,” I retorted, more and more provoked by
+the discussion; “and went on earning money for her up to the end,
+though she was in consumption. Some sledge-drivers standing by were
+talking about her to some soldiers and telling them so. No doubt they
+knew her. They were laughing. They were going to meet in a pot-house to
+drink to her memory.”
+
+A great deal of this was my invention. Silence followed, profound
+silence. She did not stir.
+
+“And is it better to die in a hospital?”
+
+“Isn’t it just the same? Besides, why should I die?” she added
+irritably.
+
+“If not now, a little later.”
+
+“Why a little later?”
+
+“Why, indeed? Now you are young, pretty, fresh, you fetch a high price.
+But after another year of this life you will be very different—you will
+go off.”
+
+“In a year?”
+
+“Anyway, in a year you will be worth less,” I continued malignantly.
+“You will go from here to something lower, another house; a year
+later—to a third, lower and lower, and in seven years you will come to
+a basement in the Haymarket. That will be if you were lucky. But it
+would be much worse if you got some disease, consumption, say ... and
+caught a chill, or something or other. It’s not easy to get over an
+illness in your way of life. If you catch anything you may not get rid
+of it. And so you would die.”
+
+“Oh, well, then I shall die,” she answered, quite vindictively, and she
+made a quick movement.
+
+“But one is sorry.”
+
+“Sorry for whom?”
+
+“Sorry for life.” Silence.
+
+“Have you been engaged to be married? Eh?”
+
+“What’s that to you?”
+
+“Oh, I am not cross-examining you. It’s nothing to me. Why are you so
+cross? Of course you may have had your own troubles. What is it to me?
+It’s simply that I felt sorry.”
+
+“Sorry for whom?”
+
+“Sorry for you.”
+
+“No need,” she whispered hardly audibly, and again made a faint
+movement.
+
+That incensed me at once. What! I was so gentle with her, and she....
+
+“Why, do you think that you are on the right path?”
+
+“I don’t think anything.”
+
+“That’s what’s wrong, that you don’t think. Realise it while there is
+still time. There still is time. You are still young, good-looking; you
+might love, be married, be happy....”
+
+“Not all married women are happy,” she snapped out in the rude abrupt
+tone she had used at first.
+
+“Not all, of course, but anyway it is much better than the life here.
+Infinitely better. Besides, with love one can live even without
+happiness. Even in sorrow life is sweet; life is sweet, however one
+lives. But here what is there but ... foulness? Phew!”
+
+I turned away with disgust; I was no longer reasoning coldly. I began
+to feel myself what I was saying and warmed to the subject. I was
+already longing to expound the cherished ideas I had brooded over in my
+corner. Something suddenly flared up in me. An object had appeared
+before me.
+
+“Never mind my being here, I am not an example for you. I am, perhaps,
+worse than you are. I was drunk when I came here, though,” I hastened,
+however, to say in self-defence. “Besides, a man is no example for a
+woman. It’s a different thing. I may degrade and defile myself, but I
+am not anyone’s slave. I come and go, and that’s an end of it. I shake
+it off, and I am a different man. But you are a slave from the start.
+Yes, a slave! You give up everything, your whole freedom. If you want
+to break your chains afterwards, you won’t be able to; you will be more
+and more fast in the snares. It is an accursed bondage. I know it. I
+won’t speak of anything else, maybe you won’t understand, but tell me:
+no doubt you are in debt to your madam? There, you see,” I added,
+though she made no answer, but only listened in silence, entirely
+absorbed, “that’s a bondage for you! You will never buy your freedom.
+They will see to that. It’s like selling your soul to the devil.... And
+besides ... perhaps, I too, am just as unlucky—how do you know—and
+wallow in the mud on purpose, out of misery? You know, men take to
+drink from grief; well, maybe I am here from grief. Come, tell me, what
+is there good here? Here you and I ... came together ... just now and
+did not say one word to one another all the time, and it was only
+afterwards you began staring at me like a wild creature, and I at you.
+Is that loving? Is that how one human being should meet another? It’s
+hideous, that’s what it is!”
+
+“Yes!” she assented sharply and hurriedly.
+
+I was positively astounded by the promptitude of this “Yes.” So the
+same thought may have been straying through her mind when she was
+staring at me just before. So she, too, was capable of certain
+thoughts? “Damn it all, this was interesting, this was a point of
+likeness!” I thought, almost rubbing my hands. And indeed it’s easy to
+turn a young soul like that!
+
+It was the exercise of my power that attracted me most.
+
+She turned her head nearer to me, and it seemed to me in the darkness
+that she propped herself on her arm. Perhaps she was scrutinising me.
+How I regretted that I could not see her eyes. I heard her deep
+breathing.
+
+“Why have you come here?” I asked her, with a note of authority already
+in my voice.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know.”
+
+“But how nice it would be to be living in your father’s house! It’s
+warm and free; you have a home of your own.”
+
+“But what if it’s worse than this?”
+
+“I must take the right tone,” flashed through my mind. “I may not get
+far with sentimentality.” But it was only a momentary thought. I swear
+she really did interest me. Besides, I was exhausted and moody. And
+cunning so easily goes hand-in-hand with feeling.
+
+“Who denies it!” I hastened to answer. “Anything may happen. I am
+convinced that someone has wronged you, and that you are more sinned
+against than sinning. Of course, I know nothing of your story, but it’s
+not likely a girl like you has come here of her own inclination....”
+
+“A girl like me?” she whispered, hardly audibly; but I heard it.
+
+Damn it all, I was flattering her. That was horrid. But perhaps it was
+a good thing.... She was silent.
+
+“See, Liza, I will tell you about myself. If I had had a home from
+childhood, I shouldn’t be what I am now. I often think that. However
+bad it may be at home, anyway they are your father and mother, and not
+enemies, strangers. Once a year at least, they’ll show their love of
+you. Anyway, you know you are at home. I grew up without a home; and
+perhaps that’s why I’ve turned so ... unfeeling.”
+
+I waited again. “Perhaps she doesn’t understand,” I thought, “and,
+indeed, it is absurd—it’s moralising.”
+
+“If I were a father and had a daughter, I believe I should love my
+daughter more than my sons, really,” I began indirectly, as though
+talking of something else, to distract her attention. I must confess I
+blushed.
+
+“Why so?” she asked.
+
+Ah! so she was listening!
+
+“I don’t know, Liza. I knew a father who was a stern, austere man, but
+used to go down on his knees to his daughter, used to kiss her hands,
+her feet, he couldn’t make enough of her, really. When she danced at
+parties he used to stand for five hours at a stretch, gazing at her. He
+was mad over her: I understand that! She would fall asleep tired at
+night, and he would wake to kiss her in her sleep and make the sign of
+the cross over her. He would go about in a dirty old coat, he was
+stingy to everyone else, but would spend his last penny for her, giving
+her expensive presents, and it was his greatest delight when she was
+pleased with what he gave her. Fathers always love their daughters more
+than the mothers do. Some girls live happily at home! And I believe I
+should never let my daughters marry.”
+
+“What next?” she said, with a faint smile.
+
+“I should be jealous, I really should. To think that she should kiss
+anyone else! That she should love a stranger more than her father! It’s
+painful to imagine it. Of course, that’s all nonsense, of course every
+father would be reasonable at last. But I believe before I should let
+her marry, I should worry myself to death; I should find fault with all
+her suitors. But I should end by letting her marry whom she herself
+loved. The one whom the daughter loves always seems the worst to the
+father, you know. That is always so. So many family troubles come from
+that.”
+
+“Some are glad to sell their daughters, rather than marrying them
+honourably.”
+
+Ah, so that was it!
+
+“Such a thing, Liza, happens in those accursed families in which there
+is neither love nor God,” I retorted warmly, “and where there is no
+love, there is no sense either. There are such families, it’s true, but
+I am not speaking of them. You must have seen wickedness in your own
+family, if you talk like that. Truly, you must have been unlucky. H’m!
+... that sort of thing mostly comes about through poverty.”
+
+“And is it any better with the gentry? Even among the poor, honest
+people who live happily?”
+
+“H’m ... yes. Perhaps. Another thing, Liza, man is fond of reckoning up
+his troubles, but does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he
+ought, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for
+it. And what if all goes well with the family, if the blessing of God
+is upon it, if the husband is a good one, loves you, cherishes you,
+never leaves you! There is happiness in such a family! Even sometimes
+there is happiness in the midst of sorrow; and indeed sorrow is
+everywhere. If you marry _you will find out for yourself_. But think of
+the first years of married life with one you love: what happiness, what
+happiness there sometimes is in it! And indeed it’s the ordinary thing.
+In those early days even quarrels with one’s husband end happily. Some
+women get up quarrels with their husbands just because they love them.
+Indeed, I knew a woman like that: she seemed to say that because she
+loved him, she would torment him and make him feel it. You know that
+you may torment a man on purpose through love. Women are particularly
+given to that, thinking to themselves ‘I will love him so, I will make
+so much of him afterwards, that it’s no sin to torment him a little
+now.’ And all in the house rejoice in the sight of you, and you are
+happy and gay and peaceful and honourable.... Then there are some women
+who are jealous. If he went off anywhere—I knew one such woman, she
+couldn’t restrain herself, but would jump up at night and run off on
+the sly to find out where he was, whether he was with some other woman.
+That’s a pity. And the woman knows herself it’s wrong, and her heart
+fails her and she suffers, but she loves—it’s all through love. And how
+sweet it is to make up after quarrels, to own herself in the wrong or
+to forgive him! And they both are so happy all at once—as though they
+had met anew, been married over again; as though their love had begun
+afresh. And no one, no one should know what passes between husband and
+wife if they love one another. And whatever quarrels there may be
+between them they ought not to call in their own mother to judge
+between them and tell tales of one another. They are their own judges.
+Love is a holy mystery and ought to be hidden from all other eyes,
+whatever happens. That makes it holier and better. They respect one
+another more, and much is built on respect. And if once there has been
+love, if they have been married for love, why should love pass away?
+Surely one can keep it! It is rare that one cannot keep it. And if the
+husband is kind and straightforward, why should not love last? The
+first phase of married love will pass, it is true, but then there will
+come a love that is better still. Then there will be the union of
+souls, they will have everything in common, there will be no secrets
+between them. And once they have children, the most difficult times
+will seem to them happy, so long as there is love and courage. Even
+toil will be a joy, you may deny yourself bread for your children and
+even that will be a joy, They will love you for it afterwards; so you
+are laying by for your future. As the children grow up you feel that
+you are an example, a support for them; that even after you die your
+children will always keep your thoughts and feelings, because they have
+received them from you, they will take on your semblance and likeness.
+So you see this is a great duty. How can it fail to draw the father and
+mother nearer? People say it’s a trial to have children. Who says that?
+It is heavenly happiness! Are you fond of little children, Liza? I am
+awfully fond of them. You know—a little rosy baby boy at your bosom,
+and what husband’s heart is not touched, seeing his wife nursing his
+child! A plump little rosy baby, sprawling and snuggling, chubby little
+hands and feet, clean tiny little nails, so tiny that it makes one
+laugh to look at them; eyes that look as if they understand everything.
+And while it sucks it clutches at your bosom with its little hand,
+plays. When its father comes up, the child tears itself away from the
+bosom, flings itself back, looks at its father, laughs, as though it
+were fearfully funny, and falls to sucking again. Or it will bite its
+mother’s breast when its little teeth are coming, while it looks
+sideways at her with its little eyes as though to say, ‘Look, I am
+biting!’ Is not all that happiness when they are the three together,
+husband, wife and child? One can forgive a great deal for the sake of
+such moments. Yes, Liza, one must first learn to live oneself before
+one blames others!”
+
+“It’s by pictures, pictures like that one must get at you,” I thought
+to myself, though I did speak with real feeling, and all at once I
+flushed crimson. “What if she were suddenly to burst out laughing, what
+should I do then?” That idea drove me to fury. Towards the end of my
+speech I really was excited, and now my vanity was somehow wounded. The
+silence continued. I almost nudged her.
+
+“Why are you—” she began and stopped. But I understood: there was a
+quiver of something different in her voice, not abrupt, harsh and
+unyielding as before, but something soft and shamefaced, so shamefaced
+that I suddenly felt ashamed and guilty.
+
+“What?” I asked, with tender curiosity.
+
+“Why, you...”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Why, you ... speak somehow like a book,” she said, and again there was
+a note of irony in her voice.
+
+That remark sent a pang to my heart. It was not what I was expecting.
+
+I did not understand that she was hiding her feelings under irony, that
+this is usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when
+the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded, and that
+their pride makes them refuse to surrender till the last moment and
+shrink from giving expression to their feelings before you. I ought to
+have guessed the truth from the timidity with which she had repeatedly
+approached her sarcasm, only bringing herself to utter it at last with
+an effort. But I did not guess, and an evil feeling took possession of
+me.
+
+“Wait a bit!” I thought.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+“Oh, hush, Liza! How can you talk about being like a book, when it
+makes even me, an outsider, feel sick? Though I don’t look at it as an
+outsider, for, indeed, it touches me to the heart.... Is it possible,
+is it possible that you do not feel sick at being here yourself?
+Evidently habit does wonders! God knows what habit can do with anyone.
+Can you seriously think that you will never grow old, that you will
+always be good-looking, and that they will keep you here for ever and
+ever? I say nothing of the loathsomeness of the life here.... Though
+let me tell you this about it—about your present life, I mean; here
+though you are young now, attractive, nice, with soul and feeling, yet
+you know as soon as I came to myself just now I felt at once sick at
+being here with you! One can only come here when one is drunk. But if
+you were anywhere else, living as good people live, I should perhaps be
+more than attracted by you, should fall in love with you, should be
+glad of a look from you, let alone a word; I should hang about your
+door, should go down on my knees to you, should look upon you as my
+betrothed and think it an honour to be allowed to. I should not dare to
+have an impure thought about you. But here, you see, I know that I have
+only to whistle and you have to come with me whether you like it or
+not. I don’t consult your wishes, but you mine. The lowest labourer
+hires himself as a workman, but he doesn’t make a slave of himself
+altogether; besides, he knows that he will be free again presently. But
+when are you free? Only think what you are giving up here? What is it
+you are making a slave of? It is your soul, together with your body;
+you are selling your soul which you have no right to dispose of! You
+give your love to be outraged by every drunkard! Love! But that’s
+everything, you know, it’s a priceless diamond, it’s a maiden’s
+treasure, love—why, a man would be ready to give his soul, to face
+death to gain that love. But how much is your love worth now? You are
+sold, all of you, body and soul, and there is no need to strive for
+love when you can have everything without love. And you know there is
+no greater insult to a girl than that, do you understand? To be sure, I
+have heard that they comfort you, poor fools, they let you have lovers
+of your own here. But you know that’s simply a farce, that’s simply a
+sham, it’s just laughing at you, and you are taken in by it! Why, do
+you suppose he really loves you, that lover of yours? I don’t believe
+it. How can he love you when he knows you may be called away from him
+any minute? He would be a low fellow if he did! Will he have a grain of
+respect for you? What have you in common with him? He laughs at you and
+robs you—that is all his love amounts to! You are lucky if he does not
+beat you. Very likely he does beat you, too. Ask him, if you have got
+one, whether he will marry you. He will laugh in your face, if he
+doesn’t spit in it or give you a blow—though maybe he is not worth a
+bad halfpenny himself. And for what have you ruined your life, if you
+come to think of it? For the coffee they give you to drink and the
+plentiful meals? But with what object are they feeding you up? An
+honest girl couldn’t swallow the food, for she would know what she was
+being fed for. You are in debt here, and, of course, you will always be
+in debt, and you will go on in debt to the end, till the visitors here
+begin to scorn you. And that will soon happen, don’t rely upon your
+youth—all that flies by express train here, you know. You will be
+kicked out. And not simply kicked out; long before that she’ll begin
+nagging at you, scolding you, abusing you, as though you had not
+sacrificed your health for her, had not thrown away your youth and your
+soul for her benefit, but as though you had ruined her, beggared her,
+robbed her. And don’t expect anyone to take your part: the others, your
+companions, will attack you, too, win her favour, for all are in
+slavery here, and have lost all conscience and pity here long ago. They
+have become utterly vile, and nothing on earth is viler, more
+loathsome, and more insulting than their abuse. And you are laying down
+everything here, unconditionally, youth and health and beauty and hope,
+and at twenty-two you will look like a woman of five-and-thirty, and
+you will be lucky if you are not diseased, pray to God for that! No
+doubt you are thinking now that you have a gay time and no work to do!
+Yet there is no work harder or more dreadful in the world or ever has
+been. One would think that the heart alone would be worn out with
+tears. And you won’t dare to say a word, not half a word when they
+drive you away from here; you will go away as though you were to blame.
+You will change to another house, then to a third, then somewhere else,
+till you come down at last to the Haymarket. There you will be beaten
+at every turn; that is good manners there, the visitors don’t know how
+to be friendly without beating you. You don’t believe that it is so
+hateful there? Go and look for yourself some time, you can see with
+your own eyes. Once, one New Year’s Day, I saw a woman at a door. They
+had turned her out as a joke, to give her a taste of the frost because
+she had been crying so much, and they shut the door behind her. At nine
+o’clock in the morning she was already quite drunk, dishevelled,
+half-naked, covered with bruises, her face was powdered, but she had a
+black-eye, blood was trickling from her nose and her teeth; some cabman
+had just given her a drubbing. She was sitting on the stone steps, a
+salt fish of some sort was in her hand; she was crying, wailing
+something about her luck and beating with the fish on the steps, and
+cabmen and drunken soldiers were crowding in the doorway taunting her.
+You don’t believe that you will ever be like that? I should be sorry to
+believe it, too, but how do you know; maybe ten years, eight years ago
+that very woman with the salt fish came here fresh as a cherub,
+innocent, pure, knowing no evil, blushing at every word. Perhaps she
+was like you, proud, ready to take offence, not like the others;
+perhaps she looked like a queen, and knew what happiness was in store
+for the man who should love her and whom she should love. Do you see
+how it ended? And what if at that very minute when she was beating on
+the filthy steps with that fish, drunken and dishevelled—what if at
+that very minute she recalled the pure early days in her father’s
+house, when she used to go to school and the neighbour’s son watched
+for her on the way, declaring that he would love her as long as he
+lived, that he would devote his life to her, and when they vowed to
+love one another for ever and be married as soon as they were grown up!
+No, Liza, it would be happy for you if you were to die soon of
+consumption in some corner, in some cellar like that woman just now. In
+the hospital, do you say? You will be lucky if they take you, but what
+if you are still of use to the madam here? Consumption is a queer
+disease, it is not like fever. The patient goes on hoping till the last
+minute and says he is all right. He deludes himself And that just suits
+your madam. Don’t doubt it, that’s how it is; you have sold your soul,
+and what is more you owe money, so you daren’t say a word. But when you
+are dying, all will abandon you, all will turn away from you, for then
+there will be nothing to get from you. What’s more, they will reproach
+you for cumbering the place, for being so long over dying. However you
+beg you won’t get a drink of water without abuse: ‘Whenever are you
+going off, you nasty hussy, you won’t let us sleep with your moaning,
+you make the gentlemen sick.’ That’s true, I have heard such things
+said myself. They will thrust you dying into the filthiest corner in
+the cellar—in the damp and darkness; what will your thoughts be, lying
+there alone? When you die, strange hands will lay you out, with
+grumbling and impatience; no one will bless you, no one will sigh for
+you, they only want to get rid of you as soon as may be; they will buy
+a coffin, take you to the grave as they did that poor woman today, and
+celebrate your memory at the tavern. In the grave, sleet, filth, wet
+snow—no need to put themselves out for you—‘Let her down, Vanuha; it’s
+just like her luck—even here, she is head-foremost, the hussy. Shorten
+the cord, you rascal.’ ‘It’s all right as it is.’ ‘All right, is it?
+Why, she’s on her side! She was a fellow-creature, after all! But,
+never mind, throw the earth on her.’ And they won’t care to waste much
+time quarrelling over you. They will scatter the wet blue clay as quick
+as they can and go off to the tavern ... and there your memory on earth
+will end; other women have children to go to their graves, fathers,
+husbands. 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! Nothing but filth and mud, however you knock at your coffin lid
+at night, when the dead arise, however you cry: ‘Let me out, kind
+people, to live in the light of day! 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.’”
+
+And I worked myself up to such a pitch that I began to have a lump in
+my throat myself, and ... and all at once I stopped, sat up in dismay
+and, bending over apprehensively, began to listen with a beating heart.
+I had reason to be troubled.
+
+I had felt for some time that I was turning her soul upside down and
+rending her heart, and—and the more I was convinced of it, the more
+eagerly I desired to gain my object as quickly and as effectually as
+possible. It was the exercise of my skill that carried me away; yet it
+was not merely sport....
+
+I knew I was speaking stiffly, artificially, even bookishly, in fact, I
+could not speak except “like a book.” But that did not trouble me: I
+knew, I felt that I should be understood and that this very bookishness
+might be an assistance. But now, having attained my effect, I was
+suddenly panic-stricken. Never before had I witnessed such despair! She
+was lying on her face, thrusting her face into the pillow and clutching
+it in both hands. Her heart was being torn. Her youthful body was
+shuddering all over as though in convulsions. Suppressed sobs rent her
+bosom and suddenly burst out in weeping and wailing, then she pressed
+closer into the pillow: she did not want anyone here, not a living
+soul, to know of her anguish and her tears. She bit the pillow, bit her
+hand till it bled (I saw that afterwards), or, thrusting her fingers
+into her dishevelled hair, seemed rigid with the effort of restraint,
+holding her breath and clenching her teeth. I began saying something,
+begging her to calm herself, but felt that I did not dare; and all at
+once, in a sort of cold shiver, almost in terror, began fumbling in the
+dark, trying hurriedly to get dressed to go. It was dark; though I
+tried my best I could not finish dressing quickly. Suddenly I felt a
+box of matches and a candlestick with a whole candle in it. As soon as
+the room was lighted up, Liza sprang up, sat up in bed, and with a
+contorted face, with a half insane smile, looked at me almost
+senselessly. I sat down beside her and took her hands; she came to
+herself, made an impulsive movement towards me, would have caught hold
+of me, but did not dare, and slowly bowed her head before me.
+
+“Liza, my dear, I was wrong ... forgive me, my dear,” I began, but she
+squeezed my hand in her fingers so tightly that I felt I was saying the
+wrong thing and stopped.
+
+“This is my address, Liza, come to me.”
+
+“I will come,” she answered resolutely, her head still bowed.
+
+“But now I am going, good-bye ... till we meet again.”
+
+I got up; she, too, stood up and suddenly flushed all over, gave a
+shudder, snatched up a shawl that was lying on a chair and muffled
+herself in it to her chin. As she did this she gave another sickly
+smile, blushed and looked at me strangely. I felt wretched; I was in
+haste to get away—to disappear.
+
+“Wait a minute,” she said suddenly, in the passage just at the doorway,
+stopping me with her hand on my overcoat. She put down the candle in
+hot haste and ran off; evidently she had thought of something or wanted
+to show me something. As she ran away she flushed, her eyes shone, and
+there was a smile on her lips—what was the meaning of it? Against my
+will I waited: she came back a minute later with an expression that
+seemed to ask forgiveness for something. In fact, it was not the same
+face, not the same look as the evening before: sullen, mistrustful and
+obstinate. Her eyes now were imploring, soft, and at the same time
+trustful, caressing, timid. The expression with which children look at
+people they are very fond of, of whom they are asking a favour. Her
+eyes were a light hazel, they were lovely eyes, full of life, and
+capable of expressing love as well as sullen hatred.
+
+Making no explanation, as though I, as a sort of higher being, must
+understand everything without explanations, she held out a piece of
+paper to me. Her whole face was positively beaming at that instant with
+naive, almost childish, triumph. I unfolded it. It was a letter to her
+from a medical student or someone of that sort—a very high-flown and
+flowery, but extremely respectful, love-letter. I don’t recall the
+words now, but I remember well that through the high-flown phrases
+there was apparent a genuine feeling, which cannot be feigned. When I
+had finished reading it I met her glowing, questioning, and childishly
+impatient eyes fixed upon me. She fastened her eyes upon my face and
+waited impatiently for what I should say. In a few words, hurriedly,
+but with a sort of joy and pride, she explained to me that she had been
+to a dance somewhere in a private house, a family of “very nice people,
+_who knew nothing_, absolutely nothing, for she had only come here so
+lately and it had all happened ... and she hadn’t made up her mind to
+stay and was certainly going away as soon as she had paid her debt...”
+and at that party there had been the student who had danced with her
+all the evening. He had talked to her, and it turned out that he had
+known her in old days at Riga when he was a child, they had played
+together, but a very long time ago—and he knew her parents, but _about
+this_ he knew nothing, nothing whatever, and had no suspicion! And the
+day after the dance (three days ago) he had sent her that letter
+through the friend with whom she had gone to the party ... and ...
+well, that was all.
+
+She dropped her shining eyes with a sort of bashfulness as she
+finished.
+
+The poor girl was keeping that student’s letter as a precious treasure,
+and had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me
+to go away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely
+loved; that she, too, was addressed respectfully. No doubt that letter
+was destined to lie in her box and lead to nothing. But none the less,
+I am certain that she would keep it all her life as a precious
+treasure, as her pride and justification, and now at such a minute she
+had thought of that letter and brought it with naive pride to raise
+herself in my eyes that I might see, that I, too, might think well of
+her. I said nothing, pressed her hand and went out. I so longed to get
+away ... I walked all the way home, in spite of the fact that the
+melting snow was still falling in heavy flakes. I was exhausted,
+shattered, in bewilderment. But behind the bewilderment the truth was
+already gleaming. The loathsome truth.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+It was some time, however, before I consented to recognise that truth.
+Waking up in the morning after some hours of heavy, leaden sleep, and
+immediately realising all that had happened on the previous day, I was
+positively amazed at my last night’s _sentimentality_ with Liza, at all
+those “outcries of horror and pity.” “To think of having such an attack
+of womanish hysteria, pah!” I concluded. And what did I thrust my
+address upon her for? What if she comes? Let her come, though; it
+doesn’t matter.... But _obviously_, that was not now the chief and the
+most important matter: I had to make haste and at all costs save my
+reputation in the eyes of Zverkov and Simonov as quickly as possible;
+that was the chief business. And I was so taken up that morning that I
+actually forgot all about Liza.
+
+First of all I had at once to repay what I had borrowed the day before
+from Simonov. I resolved on a desperate measure: to borrow fifteen
+roubles straight off from Anton Antonitch. As luck would have it he was
+in the best of humours that morning, and gave it to me at once, on the
+first asking. I was so delighted at this that, as I signed the IOU with
+a swaggering air, I told him casually that the night before “I had been
+keeping it up with some friends at the Hôtel de Paris; we were giving a
+farewell party to a comrade, in fact, I might say a friend of my
+childhood, and you know—a desperate rake, fearfully spoilt—of course,
+he belongs to a good family, and has considerable means, a brilliant
+career; he is witty, charming, a regular Lovelace, you understand; we
+drank an extra ‘half-dozen’ and ...”
+
+And it went off all right; all this was uttered very easily,
+unconstrainedly and complacently.
+
+On reaching home I promptly wrote to Simonov.
+
+To this hour I am lost in admiration when I recall the truly
+gentlemanly, good-humoured, candid tone of my letter. With tact and
+good-breeding, and, above all, entirely without superfluous words, I
+blamed myself for all that had happened. I defended myself, “if I
+really may be allowed to defend myself,” by alleging that being utterly
+unaccustomed to wine, I had been intoxicated with the first glass,
+which I said, I had drunk before they arrived, while I was waiting for
+them at the Hôtel de Paris between five and six o’clock. I begged
+Simonov’s pardon especially; I asked him to convey my explanations to
+all the others, especially to Zverkov, whom “I seemed to remember as
+though in a dream” I had insulted. I added that I would have called
+upon all of them myself, but my head ached, and besides I had not the
+face to. I was particularly pleased with a certain lightness, almost
+carelessness (strictly within the bounds of politeness, however), which
+was apparent in my style, and better than any possible arguments, gave
+them at once to understand that I took rather an independent view of
+“all that unpleasantness last night”; that I was by no means so utterly
+crushed as you, my friends, probably imagine; but on the contrary,
+looked upon it as a gentleman serenely respecting himself should look
+upon it. “On a young hero’s past no censure is cast!”
+
+“There is actually an aristocratic playfulness about it!” I thought
+admiringly, as I read over the letter. “And it’s all because I am an
+intellectual and cultivated man! Another man in my place would not have
+known how to extricate himself, but here I have got out of it and am as
+jolly as ever again, and all because I am ‘a cultivated and educated
+man of our day.’ And, indeed, perhaps, everything was due to the wine
+yesterday. H’m!” ... No, it was not the wine. I did not drink anything
+at all between five and six when I was waiting for them. I had lied to
+Simonov; I had lied shamelessly; and indeed I wasn’t ashamed now....
+Hang it all though, the great thing was that I was rid of it.
+
+I put six roubles in the letter, sealed it up, and asked Apollon to
+take it to Simonov. When he learned that there was money in the letter,
+Apollon became more respectful and agreed to take it. Towards evening I
+went out for a walk. My head was still aching and giddy after
+yesterday. But as evening came on and the twilight grew denser, my
+impressions and, following them, my thoughts, grew more and more
+different and confused. Something was not dead within me, in the depths
+of my heart and conscience it would not die, and it showed itself in
+acute depression. For the most part I jostled my way through the most
+crowded business streets, along Myeshtchansky Street, along Sadovy
+Street and in Yusupov Garden. I always liked particularly sauntering
+along these streets in the dusk, just when there were crowds of working
+people of all sorts going home from their daily work, with faces
+looking cross with anxiety. What I liked was just that cheap bustle,
+that bare prose. On this occasion the jostling of the streets irritated
+me more than ever, I could not make out what was wrong with me, I could
+not find the clue, something seemed rising up continually in my soul,
+painfully, and refusing to be appeased. I returned home completely
+upset, it was just as though some crime were lying on my conscience.
+
+The thought that Liza was coming worried me continually. It seemed
+queer to me that of all my recollections of yesterday this tormented
+me, as it were, especially, as it were, quite separately. Everything
+else I had quite succeeded in forgetting by the evening; I dismissed it
+all and was still perfectly satisfied with my letter to Simonov. But on
+this point I was not satisfied at all. It was as though I were worried
+only by Liza. “What if she comes,” I thought incessantly, “well, it
+doesn’t matter, let her come! H’m! it’s horrid that she should see, for
+instance, how I live. Yesterday I seemed such a hero to her, while now,
+h’m! It’s horrid, though, that I have let myself go so, the room looks
+like a beggar’s. And I brought myself to go out to dinner in such a
+suit! And my American leather sofa with the stuffing sticking out. And
+my dressing-gown, which will not cover me, such tatters, and she will
+see all this and she will see Apollon. That beast is certain to insult
+her. He will fasten upon her in order to be rude to me. And I, of
+course, shall be panic-stricken as usual, I shall begin bowing and
+scraping before her and pulling my dressing-gown round me, I shall
+begin smiling, telling lies. Oh, the beastliness! And it isn’t the
+beastliness of it that matters most! There is something more important,
+more loathsome, viler! Yes, viler! And to put on that dishonest lying
+mask again! ...”
+
+When I reached that thought I fired up all at once.
+
+“Why dishonest? How dishonest? I was speaking sincerely last night. I
+remember there was real feeling in me, too. What I wanted was to excite
+an honourable feeling in her.... Her crying was a good thing, it will
+have a good effect.”
+
+Yet I could not feel at ease. All that evening, even when I had come
+back home, even after nine o’clock, when I calculated that Liza could
+not possibly come, still she haunted me, and what was worse, she came
+back to my mind always in the same position. One moment out of all that
+had happened last night stood vividly before my imagination; the moment
+when I struck a match and saw her pale, distorted face, with its look
+of torture. And what a pitiful, what an unnatural, what a distorted
+smile she had at that moment! But I did not know then, that fifteen
+years later I should still in my imagination see Liza, always with the
+pitiful, distorted, inappropriate smile which was on her face at that
+minute.
+
+Next day I was ready again to look upon it all as nonsense, due to
+over-excited nerves, and, above all, as _exaggerated_. I was always
+conscious of that weak point of mine, and sometimes very much afraid of
+it. “I exaggerate everything, that is where I go wrong,” I repeated to
+myself every hour. But, however, “Liza will very likely come all the
+same,” was the refrain with which all my reflections ended. I was so
+uneasy that I sometimes flew into a fury: “She’ll come, she is certain
+to come!” I cried, running about the room, “if not today, she will come
+tomorrow; she’ll find me out! The damnable romanticism of these pure
+hearts! Oh, the vileness—oh, the silliness—oh, the stupidity of these
+‘wretched sentimental souls!’ Why, how fail to understand? How could
+one fail to understand? ...”
+
+But at this point I stopped short, and in great confusion, indeed.
+
+And how few, how few words, I thought, in passing, were needed; how
+little of the idyllic (and affectedly, bookishly, artificially idyllic
+too) had sufficed to turn a whole human life at once according to my
+will. That’s virginity, to be sure! Freshness of soil!
+
+At times a thought occurred to me, to go to her, “to tell her all,” and
+beg her not to come to me. But this thought stirred such wrath in me
+that I believed I should have crushed that “damned” Liza if she had
+chanced to be near me at the time. I should have insulted her, have
+spat at her, have turned her out, have struck her!
+
+One day passed, however, another and another; she did not come and I
+began to grow calmer. I felt particularly bold and cheerful after nine
+o’clock, I even sometimes began dreaming, and rather sweetly: I, for
+instance, became the salvation of Liza, simply through her coming to me
+and my talking to her.... I develop her, educate her. Finally, I notice
+that she loves me, loves me passionately. I pretend not to understand
+(I don’t know, however, why I pretend, just for effect, perhaps). At
+last all confusion, transfigured, trembling and sobbing, she flings
+herself at my feet and says that I am her saviour, and that she loves
+me better than anything in the world. I am amazed, but.... “Liza,” I
+say, “can you imagine that I have not noticed your love? I saw it all,
+I divined it, but I did not dare to approach you first, because I had
+an influence over you and was afraid that you would force yourself,
+from gratitude, to respond to my love, would try to rouse in your heart
+a feeling which was perhaps absent, and I did not wish that ... because
+it would be tyranny ... it would be indelicate (in short, I launch off
+at that point into European, inexplicably lofty subtleties a la George
+Sand), but now, now you are mine, you are my creation, you are pure,
+you are good, you are my noble wife.
+
+‘Into my house come bold and free,
+Its rightful mistress there to be’.”
+
+
+Then we begin living together, go abroad and so on, and so on. In fact,
+in the end it seemed vulgar to me myself, and I began putting out my
+tongue at myself.
+
+Besides, they won’t let her out, “the hussy!” I thought. They don’t let
+them go out very readily, especially in the evening (for some reason I
+fancied she would come in the evening, and at seven o’clock precisely).
+Though she did say she was not altogether a slave there yet, and had
+certain rights; so, h’m! Damn it all, she will come, she is sure to
+come!
+
+It was a good thing, in fact, that Apollon distracted my attention at
+that time by his rudeness. He drove me beyond all patience! He was the
+bane of my life, the curse laid upon me by Providence. We had been
+squabbling continually for years, and I hated him. My God, how I hated
+him! I believe I had never hated anyone in my life as I hated him,
+especially at some moments. He was an elderly, dignified man, who
+worked part of his time as a tailor. But for some unknown reason he
+despised me beyond all measure, and looked down upon me insufferably.
+Though, indeed, he looked down upon everyone. Simply to glance at that
+flaxen, smoothly brushed head, at the tuft of hair he combed up on his
+forehead and oiled with sunflower oil, at that dignified mouth,
+compressed into the shape of the letter V, made one feel one was
+confronting a man who never doubted of himself. He was a pedant, to the
+most extreme point, the greatest pedant I had met on earth, and with
+that had a vanity only befitting Alexander of Macedon. He was in love
+with every button on his coat, every nail on his fingers—absolutely in
+love with them, and he looked it! In his behaviour to me he was a
+perfect tyrant, he spoke very little to me, and if he chanced to glance
+at me he gave me a firm, majestically self-confident and invariably
+ironical look that drove me sometimes to fury. He did his work with the
+air of doing me the greatest favour, though he did scarcely anything
+for me, and did not, indeed, consider himself bound to do anything.
+There could be no doubt that he looked upon me as the greatest fool on
+earth, and that “he did not get rid of me” was simply that he could get
+wages from me every month. He consented to do nothing for me for seven
+roubles a month. Many sins should be forgiven me for what I suffered
+from him. My hatred reached such a point that sometimes his very step
+almost threw me into convulsions. What I loathed particularly was his
+lisp. His tongue must have been a little too long or something of that
+sort, for he continually lisped, and seemed to be very proud of it,
+imagining that it greatly added to his dignity. He spoke in a slow,
+measured tone, with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the
+ground. He maddened me particularly when he read aloud the psalms to
+himself behind his partition. Many a battle I waged over that reading!
+But he was awfully fond of reading aloud in the evenings, in a slow,
+even, sing-song voice, as though over the dead. It is interesting that
+that is how he has ended: he hires himself out to read the psalms over
+the dead, and at the same time he kills rats and makes blacking. But at
+that time I could not get rid of him, it was as though he were
+chemically combined with my existence. Besides, nothing would have
+induced him to consent to leave me. I could not live in furnished
+lodgings: my lodging was my private solitude, my shell, my cave, in
+which I concealed myself from all mankind, and Apollon seemed to me,
+for some reason, an integral part of that flat, and for seven years I
+could not turn him away.
+
+To be two or three days behind with his wages, for instance, was
+impossible. He would have made such a fuss, I should not have known
+where to hide my head. But I was so exasperated with everyone during
+those days, that I made up my mind for some reason and with some object
+to _punish_ Apollon and not to pay him for a fortnight the wages that
+were owing him. I had for a long time—for the last two years—been
+intending to do this, simply in order to teach him not to give himself
+airs with me, and to show him that if I liked I could withhold his
+wages. I purposed to say nothing to him about it, and was purposely
+silent indeed, in order to score off his pride and force him to be the
+first to speak of his wages. Then I would take the seven roubles out of
+a drawer, show him I have the money put aside on purpose, but that I
+won’t, I won’t, I simply won’t pay him his wages, I won’t just because
+that is “what I wish,” because “I am master, and it is for me to
+decide,” because he has been disrespectful, because he has been rude;
+but if he were to ask respectfully I might be softened and give it to
+him, otherwise he might wait another fortnight, another three weeks, a
+whole month....
+
+But angry as I was, yet he got the better of me. I could not hold out
+for four days. He began as he always did begin in such cases, for there
+had been such cases already, there had been attempts (and it may be
+observed I knew all this beforehand, I knew his nasty tactics by
+heart). He would begin by fixing upon me an exceedingly severe stare,
+keeping it up for several minutes at a time, particularly on meeting me
+or seeing me out of the house. If I held out and pretended not to
+notice these stares, he would, still in silence, proceed to further
+tortures. All at once, _à propos_ of nothing, he would walk softly and
+smoothly into my room, when I was pacing up and down or reading, stand
+at the door, one hand behind his back and one foot behind the other,
+and fix upon me a stare more than severe, utterly contemptuous. If I
+suddenly asked him what he wanted, he would make me no answer, but
+continue staring at me persistently for some seconds, then, with a
+peculiar compression of his lips and a most significant air,
+deliberately turn round and deliberately go back to his room. Two hours
+later he would come out again and again present himself before me in
+the same way. It had happened that in my fury I did not even ask him
+what he wanted, but simply raised my head sharply and imperiously and
+began staring back at him. So we stared at one another for two minutes;
+at last he turned with deliberation and dignity and went back again for
+two hours.
+
+If I were still not brought to reason by all this, but persisted in my
+revolt, he would suddenly begin sighing while he looked at me, long,
+deep sighs as though measuring by them the depths of my moral
+degradation, and, of course, it ended at last by his triumphing
+completely: I raged and shouted, but still was forced to do what he
+wanted.
+
+This time the usual staring manoeuvres had scarcely begun when I lost
+my temper and flew at him in a fury. I was irritated beyond endurance
+apart from him.
+
+“Stay,” I cried, in a frenzy, as he was slowly and silently turning,
+with one hand behind his back, to go to his room. “Stay! Come back,
+come back, I tell you!” and I must have bawled so unnaturally, that he
+turned round and even looked at me with some wonder. However, he
+persisted in saying nothing, and that infuriated me.
+
+“How dare you come and look at me like that without being sent for?
+Answer!”
+
+After looking at me calmly for half a minute, he began turning round
+again.
+
+“Stay!” I roared, running up to him, “don’t stir! There. Answer, now:
+what did you come in to look at?”
+
+“If you have any order to give me it’s my duty to carry it out,” he
+answered, after another silent pause, with a slow, measured lisp,
+raising his eyebrows and calmly twisting his head from one side to
+another, all this with exasperating composure.
+
+“That’s not what I am asking you about, you torturer!” I shouted,
+turning crimson with anger. “I’ll tell you why you came here myself:
+you see, I don’t give you your wages, you are so proud you don’t want
+to bow down and ask for it, and so you come to punish me with your
+stupid stares, to worry me and you have no sus-pic-ion how stupid it
+is—stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! ...”
+
+He would have turned round again without a word, but I seized him.
+
+“Listen,” I shouted to him. “Here’s the money, do you see, here it is,”
+(I took it out of the table drawer); “here’s the seven roubles
+complete, but you are not going to have it, you ... are ... not ...
+going ... to ... have it until you come respectfully with bowed head to
+beg my pardon. Do you hear?”
+
+“That cannot be,” he answered, with the most unnatural self-confidence.
+
+“It shall be so,” I said, “I give you my word of honour, it shall be!”
+
+“And there’s nothing for me to beg your pardon for,” he went on, as
+though he had not noticed my exclamations at all. “Why, besides, you
+called me a ‘torturer,’ for which I can summon you at the
+police-station at any time for insulting behaviour.”
+
+“Go, summon me,” I roared, “go at once, this very minute, this very
+second! You are a torturer all the same! a torturer!”
+
+But he merely looked at me, then turned, and regardless of my loud
+calls to him, he walked to his room with an even step and without
+looking round.
+
+“If it had not been for Liza nothing of this would have happened,” I
+decided inwardly. Then, after waiting a minute, I went myself behind
+his screen with a dignified and solemn air, though my heart was beating
+slowly and violently.
+
+“Apollon,” I said quietly and emphatically, though I was breathless,
+“go at once without a minute’s delay and fetch the police-officer.”
+
+He had meanwhile settled himself at his table, put on his spectacles
+and taken up some sewing. But, hearing my order, he burst into a
+guffaw.
+
+“At once, go this minute! Go on, or else you can’t imagine what will
+happen.”
+
+“You are certainly out of your mind,” he observed, without even raising
+his head, lisping as deliberately as ever and threading his needle.
+“Whoever heard of a man sending for the police against himself? And as
+for being frightened—you are upsetting yourself about nothing, for
+nothing will come of it.”
+
+“Go!” I shrieked, clutching him by the shoulder. I felt I should strike
+him in a minute.
+
+But I did not notice the door from the passage softly and slowly open
+at that instant and a figure come in, stop short, and begin staring at
+us in perplexity I glanced, nearly swooned with shame, and rushed back
+to my room. There, clutching at my hair with both hands, I leaned my
+head against the wall and stood motionless in that position.
+
+Two minutes later I heard Apollon’s deliberate footsteps. “There is
+some woman asking for you,” he said, looking at me with peculiar
+severity. Then he stood aside and let in Liza. He would not go away,
+but stared at us sarcastically.
+
+“Go away, go away,” I commanded in desperation. At that moment my clock
+began whirring and wheezing and struck seven.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+“Into my house come bold and free,
+Its rightful mistress there to be.”
+
+
+I stood before her crushed, crestfallen, revoltingly confused, and I
+believe I smiled as I did my utmost to wrap myself in the skirts of my
+ragged wadded dressing-gown—exactly as I had imagined the scene not
+long before in a fit of depression. After standing over us for a couple
+of minutes Apollon went away, but that did not make me more at ease.
+What made it worse was that she, too, was overwhelmed with confusion,
+more so, in fact, than I should have expected. At the sight of me, of
+course.
+
+“Sit down,” I said mechanically, moving a chair up to the table, and I
+sat down on the sofa. She obediently sat down at once and gazed at me
+open-eyed, evidently expecting something from me at once. This naïveté
+of expectation drove me to fury, but I restrained myself.
+
+She ought to have tried not to notice, as though everything had been as
+usual, while instead of that, she ... and I dimly felt that I should
+make her pay dearly for _all this_.
+
+“You have found me in a strange position, Liza,” I began, stammering
+and knowing that this was the wrong way to begin. “No, no, don’t
+imagine anything,” I cried, seeing that she had suddenly flushed. “I am
+not ashamed of my poverty.... On the contrary, I look with pride on my
+poverty. I am poor but honourable.... One can be poor and honourable,”
+I muttered. “However ... would you like tea?....”
+
+“No,” she was beginning.
+
+“Wait a minute.”
+
+I leapt up and ran to Apollon. I had to get out of the room somehow.
+
+“Apollon,” I whispered in feverish haste, flinging down before him the
+seven roubles which had remained all the time in my clenched fist,
+“here are your wages, you see I give them to you; but for that you must
+come to my rescue: bring me tea and a dozen rusks from the restaurant.
+If you won’t go, you’ll make me a miserable man! You don’t know what
+this woman is.... This is—everything! You may be imagining
+something.... But you don’t know what that woman is! ...”
+
+Apollon, who had already sat down to his work and put on his spectacles
+again, at first glanced askance at the money without speaking or
+putting down his needle; then, without paying the slightest attention
+to me or making any answer, he went on busying himself with his needle,
+which he had not yet threaded. I waited before him for three minutes
+with my arms crossed _à la Napoléon_. My temples were moist with sweat.
+I was pale, I felt it. But, thank God, he must have been moved to pity,
+looking at me. Having threaded his needle he deliberately got up from
+his seat, deliberately moved back his chair, deliberately took off his
+spectacles, deliberately counted the money, and finally asking me over
+his shoulder: “Shall I get a whole portion?” deliberately walked out of
+the room. As I was going back to Liza, the thought occurred to me on
+the way: shouldn’t I run away just as I was in my dressing-gown, no
+matter where, and then let happen what would?
+
+I sat down again. She looked at me uneasily. For some minutes we were
+silent.
+
+“I will kill him,” I shouted suddenly, striking the table with my fist
+so that the ink spurted out of the inkstand.
+
+“What are you saying!” she cried, starting.
+
+“I will kill him! kill him!” I shrieked, suddenly striking the table in
+absolute frenzy, and at the same time fully understanding how stupid it
+was to be in such a frenzy. “You don’t know, Liza, what that torturer
+is to me. He is my torturer.... He has gone now to fetch some rusks; he
+...”
+
+And suddenly I burst into tears. It was an hysterical attack. How
+ashamed I felt in the midst of my sobs; but still I could not restrain
+them.
+
+She was frightened.
+
+“What is the matter? What is wrong?” she cried, fussing about me.
+
+“Water, give me water, over there!” I muttered in a faint voice, though
+I was inwardly conscious that I could have got on very well without
+water and without muttering in a faint voice. But I was, what is
+called, _putting it on_, to save appearances, though the attack was a
+genuine one.
+
+She gave me water, looking at me in bewilderment. At that moment
+Apollon brought in the tea. It suddenly seemed to me that this
+commonplace, prosaic tea was horribly undignified and paltry after all
+that had happened, and I blushed crimson. Liza looked at Apollon with
+positive alarm. He went out without a glance at either of us.
+
+“Liza, do you despise me?” I asked, looking at her fixedly, trembling
+with impatience to know what she was thinking.
+
+She was confused, and did not know what to answer.
+
+“Drink your tea,” I said to her angrily. I was angry with myself, but,
+of course, it was she who would have to pay for it. A horrible spite
+against her suddenly surged up in my heart; I believe I could have
+killed her. To revenge myself on her I swore inwardly not to say a word
+to her all the time. “She is the cause of it all,” I thought.
+
+Our silence lasted for five minutes. The tea stood on the table; we did
+not touch it. I had got to the point of purposely refraining from
+beginning in order to embarrass her further; it was awkward for her to
+begin alone. Several times she glanced at me with mournful perplexity.
+I was obstinately silent. I was, of course, myself the chief sufferer,
+because I was fully conscious of the disgusting meanness of my spiteful
+stupidity, and yet at the same time I could not restrain myself.
+
+“I want to... get away ... from there altogether,” she began, to break
+the silence in some way, but, poor girl, that was just what she ought
+not to have spoken about at such a stupid moment to a man so stupid as
+I was. My heart positively ached with pity for her tactless and
+unnecessary straightforwardness. But something hideous at once stifled
+all compassion in me; it even provoked me to greater venom. I did not
+care what happened. Another five minutes passed.
+
+“Perhaps I am in your way,” she began timidly, hardly audibly, and was
+getting up.
+
+But as soon as I saw this first impulse of wounded dignity I positively
+trembled with spite, and at once burst out.
+
+“Why have you come to me, tell me that, please?” I began, gasping for
+breath and regardless of logical connection in my words. I longed to
+have it all out at once, at one burst; I did not even trouble how to
+begin. “Why have you come? Answer, answer,” I cried, hardly knowing
+what I was doing. “I’ll tell you, my good girl, why you have come.
+You’ve come because I talked sentimental stuff to you then. So now you
+are soft as butter and longing for fine sentiments again. So you may as
+well know that I was laughing at you then. And I am laughing at you
+now. Why are you shuddering? Yes, I was laughing at you! I had been
+insulted just before, at dinner, by the fellows who came that evening
+before me. I came to you, meaning to thrash one of them, an officer;
+but I didn’t succeed, I didn’t find him; I had to avenge the insult on
+someone to get back my own again; you turned up, I vented my spleen on
+you and laughed at you. I had been humiliated, so I wanted to
+humiliate; I had been treated like a rag, so I wanted to show my
+power.... That’s what it was, and you imagined I had come there on
+purpose to save you. Yes? You imagined that? You imagined that?”
+
+I knew that she would perhaps be muddled and not take it all in
+exactly, but I knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it, very
+well indeed. And so, indeed, she did. She turned white as a
+handkerchief, tried to say something, and her lips worked painfully;
+but she sank on a chair as though she had been felled by an axe. And
+all the time afterwards she listened to me with her lips parted and her
+eyes wide open, shuddering with awful terror. The cynicism, the
+cynicism of my words overwhelmed her....
+
+“Save you!” I went on, jumping up from my chair and running up and down
+the room before her. “Save you from what? But perhaps I am worse than
+you myself. Why didn’t you throw it in my teeth when I was giving you
+that sermon: ‘But what did you come here yourself for? was it to read
+us a sermon?’ Power, power was what I wanted then, sport was what I
+wanted, I wanted to wring out your tears, your humiliation, your
+hysteria—that was what I wanted then! Of course, I couldn’t keep it up
+then, because I am a wretched creature, I was frightened, and, the
+devil knows why, gave you my address in my folly. Afterwards, before I
+got home, I was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, I
+hated you already because of the lies I had told you. Because I only
+like playing with words, only dreaming, but, do you know, what I really
+want is that you should all go to hell. That is what I want. I want
+peace; yes, I’d sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so
+long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go
+without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I
+always get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know that
+I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard. Here I have been
+shuddering for the last three days at the thought of your coming. And
+do you know what has worried me particularly for these three days? That
+I posed as such a hero to you, and now you would see me in a wretched
+torn dressing-gown, beggarly, loathsome. I told you just now that I was
+not ashamed of my poverty; so you may as well know that I am ashamed of
+it; I am more ashamed of it than of anything, more afraid of it than of
+being found out if I were a thief, because I am as vain as though I had
+been skinned and the very air blowing on me hurt. Surely by now you
+must realise that I shall never forgive you for having found me in this
+wretched dressing-gown, just as I was flying at Apollon like a spiteful
+cur. The saviour, the former hero, was flying like a mangy, unkempt
+sheep-dog at his lackey, and the lackey was jeering at him! And I shall
+never forgive you for the tears I could not help shedding before you
+just now, like some silly woman put to shame! And for what I am
+confessing to you now, I shall never forgive you either! Yes—you must
+answer for it all because you turned up like this, because I am a
+blackguard, because I am the nastiest, stupidest, absurdest and most
+envious of all the worms on earth, who are not a bit better than I am,
+but, the devil knows why, are never put to confusion; while I shall
+always be insulted by every louse, that is my doom! And what is it to
+me that you don’t understand a word of this! And what do I care, what
+do I care about you, and whether you go to ruin there or not? Do you
+understand? How I shall hate you now after saying this, for having been
+here and listening. Why, it’s not once in a lifetime a man speaks out
+like this, and then it is in hysterics! ... What more do you want? Why
+do you still stand confronting me, after all this? Why are you worrying
+me? Why don’t you go?”
+
+But at this point a strange thing happened. I was so accustomed to
+think and imagine everything from books, and to picture everything in
+the world to myself just as I had made it up in my dreams beforehand,
+that I could not all at once take in this strange circumstance. What
+happened was this: Liza, insulted and crushed by me, understood a great
+deal more than I imagined. She understood from all this what a woman
+understands first of all, if she feels genuine love, that is, that I
+was myself unhappy.
+
+The frightened and wounded expression on her face was followed first by
+a look of sorrowful perplexity. When I began calling myself a scoundrel
+and a blackguard and my tears flowed (the tirade was accompanied
+throughout by tears) her whole face worked convulsively. She was on the
+point of getting up and stopping me; when I finished she took no notice
+of my shouting: “Why are you here, why don’t you go away?” but realised
+only that it must have been very bitter to me to say all this. Besides,
+she was so crushed, poor girl; she considered herself infinitely
+beneath me; how could she feel anger or resentment? She suddenly leapt
+up from her chair with an irresistible impulse and held out her hands,
+yearning towards me, though still timid and not daring to stir.... At
+this point there was a revulsion in my heart too. Then she suddenly
+rushed to me, threw her arms round me and burst into tears. I, too,
+could not restrain myself, and sobbed as I never had before.
+
+“They won’t let me ... I can’t be good!” I managed to articulate; then
+I went to the sofa, fell on it face downwards, and sobbed on it for a
+quarter of an hour in genuine hysterics. She came close to me, put her
+arms round me and stayed motionless in that position. But the trouble
+was that the hysterics could not go on for ever, and (I am writing the
+loathsome truth) lying face downwards on the sofa with my face thrust
+into my nasty leather pillow, I began by degrees to be aware of a
+far-away, involuntary but irresistible feeling that it would be awkward
+now for me to raise my head and look Liza straight in the face. Why was
+I ashamed? I don’t know, but I was ashamed. The thought, too, came into
+my overwrought brain that our parts now were completely changed, that
+she was now the heroine, while I was just a crushed and humiliated
+creature as she had been before me that night—four days before.... And
+all this came into my mind during the minutes I was lying on my face on
+the sofa.
+
+My God! surely I was not envious of her then.
+
+I don’t know, to this day I cannot decide, and at the time, of course,
+I was still less able to understand what I was feeling than now. I
+cannot get on without domineering and tyrannising over someone, but ...
+there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to
+reason.
+
+I conquered myself, however, and raised my head; I had to do so sooner
+or later ... and I am convinced to this day that it was just because I
+was ashamed to look at her that another feeling was suddenly kindled
+and flamed up in my heart ... a feeling of mastery and possession. My
+eyes gleamed with passion, and I gripped her hands tightly. How I hated
+her and how I was drawn to her at that minute! The one feeling
+intensified the other. It was almost like an act of vengeance. At first
+there was a look of amazement, even of terror on her face, but only for
+one instant. She warmly and rapturously embraced me.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+A quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room in
+frenzied impatience, from minute to minute I went up to the screen and
+peeped through the crack at Liza. She was sitting on the ground with
+her head leaning against the bed, and must have been crying. But she
+did not go away, and that irritated me. This time she understood it
+all. I had insulted her finally, but ... there’s no need to describe
+it. She realised that my outburst of passion had been simply revenge, a
+fresh humiliation, and that to my earlier, almost causeless hatred was
+added now a _personal hatred_, born of envy.... Though I do not
+maintain positively that she understood all this distinctly; but she
+certainly did fully understand that I was a despicable man, and what
+was worse, incapable of loving her.
+
+I know I shall be told that this is incredible—but it is incredible to
+be as spiteful and stupid as I was; it may be added that it was strange
+I should not love her, or at any rate, appreciate her love. Why is it
+strange? In the first place, by then I was incapable of love, for I
+repeat, with me loving meant tyrannising and showing my moral
+superiority. I have never in my life been able to imagine any other
+sort of love, and have nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinking
+that love really consists in the right—freely given by the beloved
+object—to tyrannise over her.
+
+Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a
+struggle. I began it always with hatred and ended it with moral
+subjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the subjugated
+object. And what is there to wonder at in that, since I had succeeded
+in so corrupting myself, since I was so out of touch with “real life,”
+as to have actually thought of reproaching her, and putting her to
+shame for having come to me to hear “fine sentiments”; and did not even
+guess that she had come not to hear fine sentiments, but to love me,
+because to a woman all reformation, all salvation from any sort of
+ruin, and all moral renewal is included in love and can only show
+itself in that form.
+
+I did not hate her so much, however, when I was running about the room
+and peeping through the crack in the screen. I was only insufferably
+oppressed by her being here. 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.
+
+But several minutes passed and she still remained, without stirring, as
+though she were unconscious. I had the shamelessness to tap softly at
+the screen as though to remind her.... She started, sprang up, and flew
+to seek her kerchief, her hat, her coat, as though making her escape
+from me.... Two minutes later she came from behind the screen and
+looked with heavy eyes at me. I gave a spiteful grin, which was forced,
+however, to _keep up appearances_, and I turned away from her eyes.
+
+“Good-bye,” she said, going towards the door.
+
+I ran up to her, seized her hand, opened it, thrust something in it and
+closed it again. Then I turned at once and dashed away in haste to the
+other corner of the room to avoid seeing, anyway....
+
+I did mean a moment since to tell a lie—to write that I did this
+accidentally, not knowing what I was doing through foolishness, through
+losing my head. But I don’t want to lie, and so I will say straight out
+that I opened her hand and put the money in it ... from spite. It came
+into my head to do this while I was running up and down the room and
+she was sitting behind the screen. But this I can say for certain:
+though I did that cruel thing purposely, it was not an impulse from the
+heart, but came from my evil brain. This cruelty was so affected, so
+purposely made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books, that
+I could not even keep it up a minute—first I dashed away to avoid
+seeing her, and then in shame and despair rushed after Liza. I opened
+the door in the passage and began listening.
+
+“Liza! Liza!” I cried on the stairs, but in a low voice, not boldly.
+There was no answer, but I fancied I heard her footsteps, lower down on
+the stairs.
+
+“Liza!” I cried, more loudly.
+
+No answer. But at that minute I heard the stiff outer glass door open
+heavily with a creak and slam violently; the sound echoed up the
+stairs.
+
+She had gone. I went back to my room in hesitation. I felt horribly
+oppressed.
+
+I stood still at the table, beside the chair on which she had sat and
+looked aimlessly before me. A minute passed, suddenly I started;
+straight before me on the table I saw.... In short, I saw a crumpled
+blue five-rouble note, the one I had thrust into her hand a minute
+before. It was the same note; it could be no other, there was no other
+in the flat. So she had managed to fling it from her hand on the table
+at the moment when I had dashed into the further corner.
+
+Well! I might have expected that she would do that. Might I have
+expected it? No, I was such an egoist, I was so lacking in respect for
+my fellow-creatures that I could not even imagine she would do so. I
+could not endure it. A minute later I flew like a madman to dress,
+flinging on what I could at random and ran headlong after her. She
+could not have got two hundred paces away when I ran out into the
+street.
+
+It was a still night and the snow was coming down in masses and falling
+almost perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the empty street as
+though with a pillow. There was no one in the street, no sound was to
+be heard. The street lamps gave a disconsolate and useless glimmer. I
+ran two hundred paces to the cross-roads and stopped short.
+
+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! I longed for that, my whole breast was being
+rent to pieces, and never, never shall I recall that minute with
+indifference. But—what for? I thought. Should I not begin to hate her,
+perhaps, even tomorrow, just because I had kissed her feet today?
+Should I give her happiness? Had I not recognised that day, for the
+hundredth time, what I was worth? Should I not torture her?
+
+I stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled darkness and pondered
+this.
+
+“And will it not be better?” I mused fantastically, afterwards at home,
+stifling the living pang of my heart with fantastic dreams. “Will it
+not be better that she should keep the resentment of the insult for
+ever? Resentment—why, it is purification; it is a most stinging and
+painful consciousness! Tomorrow I should have defiled her soul and have
+exhausted her heart, while now the feeling of insult will never die in
+her heart, and however loathsome the filth awaiting her—the feeling of
+insult will elevate and purify her ... by hatred ... h’m! ... perhaps,
+too, by forgiveness.... Will all that make things easier for her
+though? ...”
+
+And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which
+is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?
+
+So I dreamed as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the pain
+in my soul. Never had I endured such suffering and remorse, yet could
+there have been the faintest doubt when I ran out from my lodging that
+I should turn back half-way? I never met Liza again and I have heard
+nothing of her. I will add, too, that I remained for a long time
+afterwards pleased with the phrase about the benefit from resentment
+and hatred in spite of the fact that I almost fell ill from misery.
+
+
+Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory.
+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. Why, to tell long
+stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in
+my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from
+real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly
+not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an
+anti-hero are _expressly_ gathered together here, and what matters
+most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced
+from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are
+so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real
+life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost
+to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are
+all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and
+fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We
+don’t know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant
+prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us, for instance, a
+little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our
+activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you ... we should
+be begging to be under control again at once. I know that you will very
+likely be angry with me for that, and will begin shouting and stamping.
+Speak for yourself, you will say, and for your miseries in your
+underground holes, and don’t dare to say all of us—excuse me,
+gentlemen, I am not justifying myself with that “all of us.” As for
+what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an
+extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what’s more, you
+have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in
+deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in
+me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don’t even know
+what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us
+alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We
+shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and
+what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at
+being men—men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of
+it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of
+impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past
+have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and
+better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be
+born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don’t want to write more from
+“Underground.”
+
+[The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however. He could not
+refrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop
+here.]
+
+
+
+
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