notes_from_underground unhinged by Fyodor Dostoevsky just some snippets, quotes of the day PART I UNDERGROUND I 'I am a sick man....I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it and never have...But still, if i don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well --- let it get worse!' '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 am told that the Petersburg climate is bad for me....But I am remaining in Petersburg: I am not going away from Petersburg! I am not going away because...ech! Why, it is absolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away. But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure? Answer: Of himself. Well, so I will talk about myself' II 'I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why I could not even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But i was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness --- a real thorough-going illness.' 'But gentlemen, whoever can pride himself on his diseases and even swagger over them? Though, after all, every one does do that; people do pride themselves on their diseases, and I do, may be, more than any one...I am firmly persuaded that a great deal f consciousness, every sort of consciousnesss, in fact, is a disease...The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was "beautiful and sublime," 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 ll 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 m normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life i hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last --- into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment!...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 differentyou would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.' 'I say, in earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover even in that a peculiar sort of enjoyment --- the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but in despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position...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.' III '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.' 'But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years, in that acutely recognized and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of oscillations, of resolution 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.' '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 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 thes euncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.' IV 'You laugh? Delighted. My jests, gentlemen, are of course in bad taste, jerky, involved, lacking self-confidence. But of course that is because I do not respect myself. Can a man of perception respect himself at all? ' V 'Come, can a man who attempts to find enjoyment in the very feeling of his own degradation possibly have a spark of respect for himself?...I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way....You know the direct, legitimate fruit of consciousness is inertia, that is, conscious sitting-with-the-hands-folded....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...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 finish anything.' VII '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.' '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.' VIII 'for what is a man without desires, without free will and without choice, if not a stop in an organ?' '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...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...In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.' '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 makes four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that!' 040303 what's it to you? who go blather from