Notes From The Underground | Page 5

a sword like my officer. But, gentlemen, whoever can
pride himself on his diseases and even swagger over them?
Though, after all, everyone does do that; people do pride themselves on their diseases,
and I do, may be, more than anyone. We will not dispute it; my contention was absurd.
But yet I am firmly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of
consciousness, in fact, is a disease. I stick to that. Let us leave that, too, for a minute. Tell
me this: why does it happen that at the very, yes, at the very moments when I am most
capable of feeling every refinement of all that is "sublime and beautiful," as they used to
say at one time, it would, as though of design, happen to me not only to feel but to do
such ugly things, such that ... Well, in short, actions that all, perhaps, commit; but which,
as though purposely, occurred to me at the very time when I was most conscious that they
ought not to be committed. The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was
"sublime and beautiful," the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to
sink in it altogether. But the chief point was that all this was, as it were, not accidental in
me, but as though it were bound to be so. It was as though it were my most normal
condition, and not in the least disease or depravity, so that at last all desire in me to
struggle against this depravity passed. It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually
believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what
agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people,
and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps,
I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable
enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely
conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done
could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing
and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed
sweetness, and at last--into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment!
I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether
other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too
intense consciousness of one's own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had
reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there
was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time
and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not
wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps
in reality there was nothing for you to change into.
And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal
fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct
result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could
do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one
is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel
once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel. But enough. ... Ech, I have
talked a lot of nonsense, but what have I explained? How is enjoyment in this to be
explained? But I will explain it. I will get to the bottom of it! That is why I have taken up

my pen. ...
I, for instance, have a great deal of AMOUR PROPRE. I am as suspicious and prone to
take offence as a humpback or a dwarf. But upon my word I sometimes have had
moments when if I had happened to be slapped in the face I should, perhaps, have been
positively glad of it. I say, in earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover
even in that a peculiar sort of enjoyment--the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but in
despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely
conscious of the hopelessness of one's position. And when one is slapped in the
face--why then the consciousness of being rubbed into a pulp would positively
overwhelm one.