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Notes from the Underground
2 of 203
Part I
Underground*
*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.
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Notes from the Underground
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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.
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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?
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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
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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;
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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 VERITE. 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 VERITE. For through his innate
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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?
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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,
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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, A 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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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!
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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 ....
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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
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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
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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
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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 ...
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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
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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 A PROPOS
of the falling snow.
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Part II
A 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).
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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,
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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
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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
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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, A
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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
coward- ice 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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
RECHERCHE: 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
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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
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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
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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
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fourteen years. What is the dear fellow doing now?
Whom is he walking over?
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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,
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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,
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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,
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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
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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 Hotel 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.
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‘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 Hotel 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.’
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‘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 TETE-A-TETE, 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.
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‘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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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,
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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
Hotel de Paris.
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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
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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
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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’OEUVRE.
‘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
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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.
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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?’
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‘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 cafes 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,
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‘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
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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
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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!’
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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!’
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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.
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‘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
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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 ....’
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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:
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‘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.
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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
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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
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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.’
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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,
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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.
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‘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.’
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‘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?’
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‘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?’
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‘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?’
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‘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?’
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‘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!’
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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
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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.
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‘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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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,
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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.
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‘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.
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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
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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
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bewilderment the truth was already gleaming. The
loathsome truth.
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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
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IOU with a swaggering air, I told him casually that the
night before ‘I had been keeping it up with some friends
at the Hotel 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 Hotel 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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),
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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, A 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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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 naivete 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.
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‘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;
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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 A LA
NAPOLEON. 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
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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.
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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.
Notes from the Underground
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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
Notes from the Underground
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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.
Notes from the Underground
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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,
Notes from the Underground
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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
Notes from the Underground
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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?
Notes from the Underground
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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
Notes from the Underground
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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
Notes from the Underground
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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
Notes from the Underground
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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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