Underground

Dosdoevsky, "Notes from underground"
Translated by Michael R. Katz, 1989, Noton Critical Edition
or http://www.gutenberg.net/etext96/notun11.txt

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1.�s�b�D�q��D�D��ĳ��
2.�ǥͮɥN�A�Q��r�ۤv��P�ǡA��Q��H�A�o�S�H�z�L�C
3.�U�p��k�l�D�ۥѡA�o�ᮬ��F�o�ۤv��a�}�A�u�]��@�]��|�F�ۤv��ͬ��C�L�רs�ڵ��F�o�A�]��S��R�H��O�C�ƫ�A�L�Q��ᮬ�C

��ϴ�

��I swear to you, gentlemen, that being overly conscious is a disease, a genuine, full-fledged disease.(1-2)

��Nature doesn't ask for your opinion; it doesn't care about your desires or whether you like or dislike its law.(1-3)

��I repeat, I repeat emphatically: all spontaneous men and men of action are so active precisely because they're stupid and limited.(1-5)

��All these splendid systems, all these theories to explain to mankind its real.....are nothing more than logical exercises! Yes, sir, logical exercises.(1-7)

��J�R��

��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.(1-7)

��ۧ�

��Power, it was the power I needed then, I craved the sport, I wanted to reduce you to tears, humiliation, hysteria�X�Xthat's what I needed then!....All I know perfectly well that I'm a scoundrel, a bastard, an egotist, and a sluggard....She understood out of all this what a woman always understands first of all, if she sincerely loves�X�Xnamely, that I myself was unhappy.(2-9)�]�L�k�R�H��ۨ��ۧڤ��ߪ̡^

��I know I shall be told that this is incredible--but it is incredible to be
as spiteful and stupid as I was; it may be added that it was strange I should
not love her, or at any rate, appreciate her love. Why is it strange? In the
first place, by then I was incapable of love, for I repeat, with me loving
meant tyrannising and showing my moral superiority. I have never in my
life been able to imagine any other sort of love, and have nowadays come
to the point of sometimes thinking that love really consists in the right--
freely given by the beloved object--to tyrannise over her.(2-10)�]�R�O�v�O�^

��

��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 estranged from life, we are all cripples,
every one of us, more or less. We are so estranged from it that we feel at
once a sort of ��loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of
it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon ��real life as an effort,
almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in
books. (2-10)�]�P�u��ͬ��/��ơ^

��ʴc

��I was a
spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take
bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A
poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound
very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off
in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!)
When petitioners used to come for information to the table at which I
sat, I used to grind my teeth at them, and felt intense enjoyment when I
succeeded in making anybody unhappy. I almost did succeed. For the
most part they were all timid people--of course, they were petitioners.(1-1)

��Let me explain: the pleasure resulted prcisely from the overly acute consciousness of one's own humiliation; from the feeling that one had ��reached the limit; that it was disgusting.(1-2)

��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. (1-7)�]�H��L�k�ڰ��ʴc�^

��And so, furtively, timidly, in solitude, at night, I indulged in filthy
vice, with a feeling of shame which never deserted me, even at the most
loathsome moments, and which at such moments nearly made me curse.
Already even then I had my underground world in my soul. I was
fearfully afraid of being seen, of being met, of being recognised. I visited
various obscure haunts.(2-1)

��ۥ�

��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 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!"
(1-7)�]�J�M�@�ɩR�w�A�N�δc�ӥ��}�L��^

��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.(1-7)�]�߱�z�ʡA�ҩ��H��O�W�ߪ��^

��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.
(1-8)�]�a�U�Ǥ�O�G�z�ʬO�H��z�ʡF��H��]�]�t��^

��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. (1-8)�]�ҩ��ۤv��O�^��^

��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!
(1-8)

��But you must realize right from the start that you're a slave. Yes, a slave! You give away everything, all your freedom.(2-6)

��

�� I agree that man is
pre-eminently a creative animal, predestined to strive consciously for an
object and to engage in engineering--that is, incessantly and eternally to
make new roads, WHEREVER THEY MAY LEAD. But the reason why he wants
sometimes to go off at a tangent may just be that he is PREDESTINED to make
the road, and perhaps, too, that however stupid the "direct" practical
man may be, the thought sometimes will occur to him that the road
almost always does lead SOMEWHERE, and that ��the destination it leads to is
less important than the process of making it(1-9)�]�H�ͦb��L�{��b�ت��^

��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. (1-9)�]�H�ͦb��L�{��b�ت��^

��

��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. (2-2)�]�ڤ��^��^

��And what loving-kindness, oh Lord, what loving-kindness I felt at
times in those dreams of mine! in those "flights into the sublime and the
beautiful"; though it was fantastic love, though it was never applied to
anything human in reality, yet there was so much of this love that one did
not feel afterwards even the impulse to apply it in reality; that would have
been superfluous. Everything, however, passed satisfactorily by a lazy
and fascinating transition into the sphere of art, that is, into the beautiful
forms of life, lying ready, largely stolen from the poets and novelists and
adapted to all sorts of needs and uses.(2-2)�]��N��ϸo�c�@�ج��ܵ��^

��Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a
sluggard and a glutton, not a simple one, but, for instance, one with
sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful. How do you like that? I
have long had visions of it. That "sublime and beautiful" weighs heavily
on my mind at forty But that is at forty; then--oh, then it would have
been different! I should have found for myself a form of activity in keeping
with it, to be precise, drinking to the health of everything "sublime and
beautiful." I should have snatched at every opportunity to drop a tear into
my glass and then to drain it to all that is "sublime and beautiful." I should
then have turned everything into the sublime and the beautiful; ��in the
nastiest, unquestionable trash, I should have sought out the sublime and
the beautiful. I should have exuded tears like a wet sponge.(1-6)�]��©�]�O��^

��k�h

��"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(1-4)

��

��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!(1-1)

��ߤH�ѺK
2002.5.1