Notes From The Underground | Page 4

spiteful official. I was lying from spite. I
was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and with the officer, and in reality I
never could become spiteful. I was conscious every moment in myself of many, very
many elements absolutely opposite to that. I felt them positively swarming in me, these
opposite elements. I knew that they had been swarming in me all my life and craving
some outlet from me, but I would not let them, would not let them, purposely would not
let them come out. They tormented me till I was ashamed: they drove me to convulsions
and--sickened me, at last, how they sickened me! Now, are not you fancying, gentlemen,
that I am expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking your forgiveness for
something? I am sure you are fancying that ... However, I assure you I do not care if you
are. ...

It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything;
neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect.
Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless
consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the
fool who becomes anything. Yes, a man in the nineteenth century must and morally ought
to be pre-eminently a characterless creature; a man of character, an active man is
pre-eminently a limited creature. That is my conviction of forty years. I am forty years
old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age.
To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond
forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless
fellows. I tell all old men that to their face, all these venerable old men, all these
silver-haired and reverend seniors! I tell the whole world that to its face! I have a right to
say so, for I shall go on living to sixty myself. To seventy! To eighty! ... Stay, let me take
breath ...
You imagine no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you. You are mistaken in that,
too. I am by no means such a mirthful person as you imagine, or as you may imagine;
however, irritated by all this babble (and I feel that you are irritated) you think fit to ask
me who I am--then my answer is, I am a collegiate assessor. I was in the service that I
might have something to eat (and solely for that reason), and when last year a distant
relation left me six thousand roubles in his will I immediately retired from the service and
settled down in my corner. I used to live in this corner before, but now I have settled
down in it. My room is a wretched, horrid one in the outskirts of the town. My servant is
an old country- woman, ill-natured from stupidity, and, moreover, there is always a nasty
smell about her. I am told that the Petersburg climate is bad for me, and that with my
small means it is very expensive to live in Petersburg. I know all that better than all these
sage and experienced counsellors and monitors. ... But I am remaining in Petersburg; I
am not going away from Petersburg! I am not going away because ... ech! Why, it is
absolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away.
But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?
Answer: Of himself.
Well, so I will talk about myself.

II
I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why I could not
even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an
insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an
illness--a real thorough-going illness. For man's everyday needs, it would have been quite
enough to have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the amount
which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy nineteenth century, especially
one who has the fatal ill-luck to inhabit Petersburg, the most theoretical and intentional
town on the whole terrestrial globe. (There are intentional and unintentional towns.) It

would have been quite enough, for instance, to have the consciousness by which all
so-called direct persons and men of action live. I bet you think I am writing all this from
affectation, to be witty at the expense of men of action; and what is more, that from
ill-bred affectation, I am clanking