Notes from Underground - Full Audiobook (Fyodor Dostoevsky) - Notes from Underground [Deluxe Edition]

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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(00:42):
support us in continuing to upload more and more audiobooks
for free. Let's make the world a better place through
books together. Pigeon Publishing House presents Notes from Underground author
Theodor Dostoyevsky preface. Few works in world literature announced themselves

(01:10):
as boldly as Notes from Underground. Written in eighteen sixty four,
this short but seismic text is often considered the first
truly modern novel. In the voice of the bidder Isolated
underground Man, Dostoyevsky anticipates themes that would later dominate the
twentieth century, alienation, existential doubt, and the uneasy freedom of

(01:34):
human will. At its surface, the book appears as a
rambling confession, part philosophical diatribe, part personal memoir. Yet beneath
The Underground Man's contradictions and provocations lies a profound critique
of the rationalist optimism of Dostoyevsky's age. Where utopian thinkers

(01:57):
promised a harmonious society built on recion in progress, Dostoyevsky
responded with this unsettling character, who insists that man will
always sabotage perfection, if only to assert his independence. The
Underground Man is not meant to be admired. He is
frequently spiteful, self pitying, and cruel, and yet his voice

(02:20):
feels disarmingly familiar, even contemporary. In his endless self analysis
and refusal to be reconciled with society, he embodies the
anxieties of modern consciousness. He speaks to the parts of
us that resist easy answers, that bristle against systems, and
that search for meaning in a fractured world. Reading Notes

(02:45):
from Underground is an encounter not only with Dostoyevsky's genius,
but also with the roots of modern thought. It is
a book that unsettles, provokes, and lingers long after the
final page. The reader should not expect comfort here, but
rather a confrontation with the darker recesses of the human spirit,

(03:06):
and perhaps a recognition of their own underground Part one Underground.
I am a sick man. I am a wicked man,
an unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, I

(03:27):
don't know a thing about my sickness, and am not
sure what it is that hurts me. I am not
being treated, and never have been, though I respect medicine
and doctors. What's more, I am also superstitious in the extreme,
well at least enough to respect medicine. I'm sufficiently educated

(03:47):
not to be superstitious. But I am no, sir. I
refuse to be treated out of wickedness. Now you will
certainly not be so good as to understand this well, sir,
but I understand it. I will, not, of course, be
able to explain to you precisely who is going to

(04:09):
suffer in this case from my wickedness. I know perfectly
well that I will, and no waymuch things up for
the doctors by not taking their treatment. I know better
than anyone that by all this I am harming only
myself and no one else. But still, if I don't
get treated, it is out of wickedness. My liver hurts, well,

(04:30):
then let it hurt even worse. I've been living like
this for a long time, about twenty years. I'm forty now.
I used to be in the civil service. I no
longer am. I was a wicked official. I was rude
and took pleasure in it. After all, I didn't accept bribes,

(04:54):
so I had to reward myself asterisk. Both the author
of the notes and the notes themselves are, of course fictional. Nevertheless,
such persons as the writer of such notes not only may,
but even must exist in our society. Taking into consideration
the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed,

(05:18):
I wish to bring before the face of the public
a bit more conspicuously than usual. One of the characters
of a time recently passed. He is one representative of
a generation that is still living out its life. In
this fragment entitled Underground, this person introduces himself his outlook

(05:39):
and seeks, as it were, to elucidate the reasons why
he appeared and had to appear among us. In the
subsequent fragment will come this person's actual notes about certain
events in his life. Fyodor Dostoyevsky at least with that
a bad witticism, But I won't cross it out. I

(06:02):
wrote it thinking it would come out very witty, But
now seeing for myself that I simply had a vile
wish to swigger, I purposely won't cross it out. When
petitioners would come for information to the desk where I sat,
I'd gnash my teeth at them and felt an inexhaustible
delight when I managed to upset someone. I almost always managed.

(06:25):
They were timid people for the most part, petitioners, you know.
But among the fops there was one officer I especially
could not stand. He simply refused to submit and kept
rattling his saber disgustingly. I was at war with him
over that saber for a year and a half. In

(06:47):
the end I prevailed, he stopped rattling. However, that was
still in my youth. But do you know, gentlemen, what
was the main point point about my wickedness? The whole
thing precisely was the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my
being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the

(07:11):
greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked
but was not even an embittered man, that I was
simply frightening sparrows in vain and pleasing myself with it.
I'm foaming at the mouth. But bring me some little doll,
give me some tea with a bit of sugar, and
maybe I'll calm down. I'll even Wyke's tender hearted. Though

(07:32):
afterwards I'll certainly gnash my teeth at myself and suffer
from insomnia for a few months out of shame. Such
is my custom. And I lied about myself just now.
When I said I was a wicked official, I lied
out of wickedness. I was simply playing around, both with

(07:52):
the petitioners and with the officer. But as a matter
of fact, I was never able to become wicked. I
was conscious every moment of so very many elements in myself,
most opposite to that I felt them simply swarming in me.
Those opposite elements. I knew they had been swarming in

(08:13):
me all my life, asking to be let go out
of me. But I would not let them. I would not.
I purposely would not let them out. They tormented me
to the point of shame. They drove me to convulsions,
and finally I got sick of them. Oh how sick
I got. But do you not perhaps think, gentlemen, that

(08:33):
I am now repenting of something before you, that I
am asking your forgiveness for something. I'm sure you think so. However,
I assure you that it is all the same to me,
even if you do not. Just wicked. No, I never
even managed to become anything, neither wicked nor good, neither

(08:54):
a scoundrel nor an honest man, neither a hero nor
an insect. And now I am. I'm living out my
life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and
utterly feudal consolation that it is even impossible for an
intelligent man seriously to become anything, and only fools become something. Yes, sir,

(09:15):
an intelligent man of the nineteenth century must be, and
is morally obliged to be primarily a characterless being, and
a man of character, an active figure, primarily a limited being.
This is my forty year old conviction. I am now
forty years old. And after all, forty years is a

(09:35):
whole lifetime. After all, it's the most extreme old age.
To live beyond forty is indecent but ull immoral. Who
lives beyond forty? Answer me, sincerely, honestly, I'll tell you
who does fools and scoundrels do. I'll say it in
the faces of all the elders, all these venerable elders,

(09:59):
all these silver haired and sweet smelling elders. I'll say
it in the whole world's face. I have the right
to speak this way because I myself will live to
be sixty. I'll live to be seventy, I'll live to
be eighty. Wait, let me catch my breath. You no

(10:23):
doubt think, gentlemen, that I want to make you laugh
here too. You're mistaken. I am not at all such
a jolly man as you think, or as you possibly think. If, however,
irritated by all this chatter, and I already feel you
are irritated, you decide to ask me what precisely am I,

(10:45):
then I will answer you. I am one collegiate assessor.
Point when I served so as to have something to eat,
but solely for that, and when last year one of
my distant relations left me six thousand roubles in his will.
I resigned at once and settled into my I lived
in this corner before as well, but now I've settled
into it. My room is wretched, bad on the eegy

(11:09):
of the city. My servant is a village woman, old,
wicked from stupidity, and always bad smelling. Besides, I'm told
that the Petersburg climate is beginning to do me harm,
and that with my negligible means, life in Petersburg is
very expensive. I know all that, I know it better

(11:30):
than all these experienced in most wise counselors and waggers
of heads. Point two. But I am staying in Petersburg.
I will not leave Petersburg. I will not leave because, ah,
but it's all completely the same whether I leave or not.

(11:51):
But anyhow, what can a decent man speak about with
the most pleasure answer about himself? So then I too
will speak about myself. Two. I would now like to
tell you, gentlemen, whether you do or do not wish
to hear it, why I never managed to become even

(12:14):
an insect. I'll tell you solemnly that I wanted many
times to become an insect. But I was not deemed
worthy even of that. I swear to you, gentlemen, that
to be overly conscious as a sickness, a real, thorough
sickness for man's everyday use, ordinary human consciousness, would be

(12:37):
more than enough. That is a half a quarter of
the portion that falls to the lot of a developed
man in our unfortunate nineteenth century, who, on top of that,
has the added misfortune of residing in Petersburg, the most
abstract and intentional city on the entire globe. Cities can
be intentional or unintentional. As much consciousness, for example, as

(13:02):
that by which all so called ingenuous people and active
figures live, would be quite enough. I'll bet you think
I'm writing all this out of swiger to be witty
at the expense of active figures and swagger of a
bad tone besides rattling my saber like my officer, But
gentlemen who can take pride in his sicknesses and swagger

(13:24):
about them. Besides, though what am I saying? Everyone does it.
It's their sicknesses that everyone takes pride in, and I,
perhaps more than anyone. Let us not argue my objection
was absurd, But all the same, I am strongly convinced

(13:44):
that not only too much consciousness, but even any consciousness
at all, is a sickness. I stand upon it. But
let us also leave that for a moment. Tell me this.
Why was it that, as if by desire, in those
same yes, in those very same moments, when I was
most capable of being conscious of all the refinements of

(14:07):
everything beautiful and lofty, free, as we once used to say,
it happened that instead of being conscious I did such
unseemly deeds, such deeds as well in short, as everyone does, perhaps,
but which with me occurred as if by design, precisely
when I was most conscious that I ought not to
be doing them at all. The more conscious I was

(14:28):
of the good and of all this beautiful and lofty,
the deeper I kept sinking into my mire, and the
more capable I was of getting completely stuck in it.
But the main feature was that this was all in me,
not as if by chance, but as if it had
to be so, as if it were my most normal condition,
and in no way a sickness or a blight, so

(14:50):
that finally I lost any wish to struggle against this blight.
I ended up almost believing and maybe indeed believing that
this perhaps was my normal condition. But at first, in
the beginning, how much torment I endured in this struggle,
I did not believe that such things happened to others,

(15:12):
and therefore kept it to myself all my life as
a secret. I was ashamed. Maybe I am ashamed even now.
It reached the point with me where I would feel
some secret, abnormal, mean little pleasure in returning to my
corner on some most nasty Petersburg night, and being highly
conscious of having once again done a nasty thing that day,

(15:32):
and again that what had been done could in no
way be undone, and I would gnaw, gnawed myself with
my teeth inwardly, secretly tarran sucked myself until the bitterness
finally turned into some shameful, accursed sweetness, and finally into
a decided serious pleasure. Yes, a pleasure, A pleasure, I

(15:55):
stand upon it. The reason I've begun to speak is
that I keep wanting to find out for certain do
other people have such pleasures? I'll explain to you The
pleasure here lay precisely in the too vivid consciousness of
one's own humiliation, in feeling that one had reached the
ultimate wall. That bad as it is, it cannot be otherwise,

(16:18):
that there is no way out for you, That you
will never change into a different person. That even if
you had enough time and faith left to change yourself
into something different, you probably would not wish to change,
And even if you did wish it, you would still
not do anything, because in fact, there is perhaps nothing
to change into. And chiefly and finally, all this occurs

(16:42):
according to the normal and basic laws of heightened consciousness
and the inertia that follows directly from these laws. And consequently,
there is not only nothing you can do to change yourself,
but there is simply nothing to do at all. So
it turns out, for example, as a result of heightened consciousness, right,
you're a scoundrel, as if it were a consolation for

(17:05):
the scoundrel himself to feel that he is indeed a scoundrel.
But enough, eh, I've poured all that out, and what
have I explained? How explain this pleasure? But I will
explain myself. I will carry through to the end. That

(17:25):
is why I took a pen in my hands. I have,
for example, a terrible or more proper I am as
insecure and touchy as a hunchback or a dwarf. Yet
there have indeed been moments when if I had happened
to be slapped, I might even have been glad of it.
I say it seriously. Surely I'd have managed to discover

(17:48):
some sort of pleasure in that as well, the pleasure
of despair, of course, But it is in despair that
the most burning pleasures occur, especially when one is all
too highly conscious of the hopelessness of one position. And here,
with this slap, you'll simply be crushed by the consciousness
of what sort of slime you've been reduced to. But chiefly,

(18:10):
however you shuffle, it still comes out that I always
come out as the first to blame for everything, and
what's most offensive, blamelessly to blame. According to the laws
of nature, so to speak, I'm to blame first because
I'm more intelligent than everyone around me. I've always considered
myself more intelligent than everyone around me, and would you

(18:33):
believe have even felt slightly ashamed of it. At least
I've somehow averted my eyes all my life and never
could look people straight in the face. I'm to blame finally,
because even if there were any magnanimity in me, I
would be the one most tormented by the consciousness of
its utter futility. For I would surely be able to

(18:56):
do nothing with my magnanimity, neither to forgive because my
offender might have hit me according to the laws of nature.
And the laws of nature cannot be forgiven, nor to forget,
because even though it's the laws of nature, it's still offensive. Finally,
even if I should want to be altogether unmagnanimous, if

(19:17):
on the contrary, I should wish to take revenge on
my offender, I wouldn't be able to take revenge on
any one in any way, because I surely wouldn't dare
to do anything even if I could. Why wouldn't I
dare about that? I would like to say a couple
of words, in particular three, what happens, for example, with

(19:45):
people who know how to take revenge in generally how
to stand up for themselves. Once they are overcome, say
by vengeful feeling, then for the time there is simply
nothing left in their whole being but this feeling. Such
a gentleman just lunges straight for his goal like an
enraged bull, horns lowered, and maybe only a wall can

(20:07):
stop him. Incidentally before a wall, these gentlemen, that is,
ingenuous people and active figures quite sincerely fold. For them.
A wall is not a deflection, as it is, for example,
for us people who think and consequently do nothing. It
is not a pretext for turning back, a pretext which

(20:28):
our sort usually doesn't believe in, but is always very
glad to have. No. They fold in all sincerity. For them,
a wall possesses something soothing, morally resolving and final, perhaps
even something mystical. But of the wall later, well, sirs.

(20:49):
It is just such an ingenuous man that I regard
as the real normal man, the way his tender mother
Nature herself wished to see him when she so kindly
conceived him on earth. I envy such a man to
the point of extreme bile. He is stupid. I won't
argue with you about that, But perhaps a normal man

(21:09):
ought to be stupid. How do you know? Perhaps it's
even very beautiful. And I am the more convinced of this,
so to speak, suspicion, seeing that, if, for example, one
takes the antithesis of the normal man, that is, the
man of heightened consciousness, who came, of course not from
the bosom of nature, but from a retort. This is

(21:31):
almost mysticism, gentleman. But I suspect that too, this retort
man sometimes folds before his antithesis so far that he
honestly regards himself, with all his heightened consciousness, as a mouse,
and not a man, a highly conscious mouse, perhaps, but
a mouse all the same. Whereas here we have a man,

(21:53):
and consequently, and so on, and above all, it is he,
he himself, who regards regards himself as a mouse. No
one asks him to, and that is an important point.
Let us now have a look at this mouse in action. Suppose,
for example, that it too is offended, and it is

(22:15):
almost always offended, and it too wishes to take revenge,
for it may have stored up even more spite than
l Home de la naturi tea de la verite. Point,
for the nasty base little desire to pay the offender
back with the same evil may scratch still more nastily
in it than in Home de la naturi te dela verite,
because Lome delu natury te de la verite, with his

(22:38):
innate stupidity, regards his revenge quite simply as justice. Whereas
the mouse, as a result of its heightened consciousness, denies
at any justice. Things finally come down to the business itself,
to the act of revenge itself. The wretched mouse, in
addition to the one original nastiness, has already made, managed

(23:00):
to fence itself about with so many other nastinesses in
the form of questions and doubts. It is patted out
the one question, with so many unresolved questions, that willy nilly,
some fatal slops have accumulated around it, some stinking filth
consisting of its dubiodies, anxieties, and finally of the spit
raining on it from the ingenuous figures who stand solemnly

(23:23):
around it like judges and dictators, guffawing added from all
their healthy gullets. Of course, nothing remains for it but
to wave the whole thing aside with its little paw,
and with a smile of feigned contempt in which it
does not believe itself, slip back shamefacedly into its crack.

(23:44):
There in its loathsome stinking underground are offended, beaten down,
and derided. Mouse at once immerses itself in cold, venomous
and above all everlasting spite for forty years on end.
It will recall its offense of the last most shameful details,
each time adding even more shameful details of its own,

(24:06):
spitefully taunting and chafing itself with its fantasies. It will
be ashamed of its fantasies, but all the same, and
will recall everything, go over everything, keep all sorts of
figments on itself, under the pretext that they too could
have happened, and forgive nothing. It may even begin to

(24:26):
take revenge, but somehow, in snatches with pitdling things from
behind the stove, incognito, believing neither in its right to
revenge itself nor in the success of its vengeance, and
knowing beforehand that it will suffer a hundred times more
from all its attempts at revenge than will the object
of its vengeance, who will perhaps not even scratch at

(24:47):
the bite. On its death bed, it will again recall everything,
adding the interest accumulated over all that time. But it
is precisely in this cold loathsome half to see bear
half belief, in this conscious burying oneself alive from grief
for forty years in the underground, in this assiduously produced

(25:08):
and yet somewhat dubious hopelessness of one's position, in all
this poison of unsatisfied desires penetrating inward, in all this
fever of hesitations, of decisions taken forever, and repentances coming
again a moment later, that the very sap of that
strange pleasure I was talking about consists. It is so subtle,

(25:29):
sometimes so elusive of consciousness, that people who are even
the slightest bit narrow minded, or who simply have strong
nerves will not understand a single trace of it. Perhaps
you will add, grinning, those who have never been slapped
will also not understand, thereby politely hinting that I too
may have experience to slap in my life, and am

(25:52):
therefore speaking as a connoisseur. I'll bet that's what you think.
But calm yourselves, entlemen, I have not received any slaps,
though it's all quite the same to me, whatever you
may think about it. Perhaps I myself am sorry for
having dealt out too few slaps in my life. But enough,

(26:14):
not another word on this subject, which you find so
extremely interesting. I calmly continue about people with strong nerves
who do not understand a certain refinement of pleasure in
the face of some mishaps. For example, these gentlemen may
bellow at the top of their lungs like bulls, and

(26:34):
let's suppose this brings them the greatest honor. But still,
as I've already said, they instantly resign themselves before impossibility.
Impossibility meaning a stone wall. What stone wall? Well, of course,
the laws of nature, the conclusions of natural science mathematics.

(26:57):
Once it's proved to you, for example, the but you
descend it from an ape, there's no use making you
right face. Just take it for what it is. Once
it's proved to you that, essentially speaking, one little drop
of your own fat should be dearer to you than
one hundred thousand of your fellow men, and that in
this result also called virtues and obligations and other ravings

(27:19):
and prejudices will finally be resolved. Go ahead and accept it.
There's nothing to be done, because two times two is mathematics.
Try objecting to that point five, for pity's sake, they'll
shout at you. You can't rebel it's two times two
as four. Nature doesn't ask your permission, It doesn't care

(27:41):
about your wishes or whether you like its laws or not.
You're obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently
all its results as well. And so a wall is
indeed a wall, et cetera, et cetera. My God, But
what do I care about the laws of nature and
arithmetic if for some reason these laws and two times

(28:04):
two as four are not to my liking? To be sure,
I won't break through such a wall with my forehead
if I really have not got strength enough to do it.
But neither will I be reconciled with it, simply because
I have a stone wall here and have not got
strength enough, as if such a stone wall were truly soothing,
and truly contained in itself at least some word on

(28:26):
the world, solely by being two times two as four. Oh,
absurdity of absurdities. Quite another thing is to understand all,
to be conscious of all all impossibilities in stone walls,
not to be reconciled with a single one of these
impossibilities in stone walls. If you were loath to be reconciled,

(28:47):
to reach by way of the most inevitable logical combinations,
the most revolting conclusions on the eternal theme that you yourself
seem somehow to blame even for the stone wall, though
once again it is obviously that you are in no
way to blame, and in consequence of that, silently and
impotently gnashing your teeth to come to a voluptuous standstill

(29:09):
in inertia, fancying that, as it turns out, there isn't
even anyone to be angry with, that there is no
object to be found, and maybe never will be. That
it's all a sleight of hand, a stacked deck, a cheat,
that it's all just slops. Nobody knows what and nobody
knows who. But in spite of all the uncertainties and
stacked decks, it still hurts. And the more uncertain you are,

(29:32):
the more it hurts. Four ah ah ah. Next you'll
be finding pleasure in a toothache, you will exclaim, laughing,
And why not there is also pleasure in a toothache,
I will answer, I had a toothache for a whole month.

(29:55):
I know there is here. Of course, one does not
remain silent angry. One moans, but these are not straightforward moans.
They are crafty moans, and the craftiness is the whole point.
These moans express the pleasure of the one who is
suffering if they did not give him pleasure, he wouldn't
bother moaning. It's a good example, gentlemen, and I shall

(30:20):
develop it. In these moans. There is expressed, first all
the futility of our pain, so humiliating for our consciousness,
and all the lawfulness of nature on which, to be sure,
you spit, but from which you suffer all the same
while it does not. There is express the consciousness that
your enemy is nowhere to be found, and yet there

(30:42):
is pain, the consciousness that, despite all possible Weegenheims six
you or wholly the slave of your teeth, that if
someone wishes, your teeth will stop aching, and if not,
they will go on aching for another three months. And
that finally, if you still do not agree and protest
even so, oh, then the only consolation you have left

(31:02):
is to whip yourself or give your wall a painful
beating with your fist, and decidedly nothing else. Well, sir,
it is with these bloody offenses, with these mockeries from
no one knows whom, that the pleasure finally begins, sometimes
reaching the highest sensuality. I ask you, gentlemen, listen sometime

(31:26):
to the moaning of an educated man of the nineteenth century,
who is suffering from a toothache, say on the second
or third day of his ailment, when he's beginning to moan,
not as he did on the first day. That is
not simply because he has a toothache, not like some
coarse peasant, but like a man touched by development in
European civilization, like a man who has renounced the soil

(31:48):
and popular roots, as they say nowadays point seven, his
moans somehow turned bad na still wicked, and continue for
whole dobs and knights. Yet he himself knows that his
moans will be of no use to him. He knows
better than any one that he is only straining and
irritating himself and others in vain. He knows that even

(32:10):
the public before whom he is exerting himself and his
whole family are already listening to him with loathing, do
not believe even a pennyworth of it, and understand in
themselves that he could moan differently, more simply, without roulades
and flourishes, and that it's just from spite and craftiness
that he is playing around like that. Now. It is

(32:33):
in all these consciousnesses and disgraces that the sensuality consists.
So I'm bothering you, straining your hearts, not letting any
one in the house sleep. Don't sleep, Then you too
should feel every moment that I have a toothache for
you am no longer a hero as I once wished

(32:54):
to appear, but simply a vile little fellow, a chenapan
point eight. Well, so be it. I'm very glad you've
gotten to the bottom of me. It's nasty for you
listening to my mean little moans. Let it be nasty.
Then here's an even nastier roulatte for you. You still

(33:15):
don't understand, gentleman. No, Evidently one must attain a profundity
of development and consciousness to understand all the curves of
this sensuality. You're laughing. I'm very glad, to be sure, gentlemen,
my jokes are in bad tone, uneven, confused, self, mistrustful.

(33:39):
But that is simply because I don't respect myself. How
can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself?
V No, how is it possible? How is it at
all possible for a man to have the slightest respect
for himself? If he is presumed to find pleasure, even

(34:01):
in the very sense of his own humiliation. I am
not speaking this way now out of some cloying repentance.
And generally I hated saying forgive me, Papa. I won't
do it again, not because I was incapable of saying it,
but on the contrary, perhaps precisely because I was all

(34:21):
too capable of it. And how as if on purpose,
I used to bumble into it on occasions when I'd
never thought or dreamed of doing anything wrong. That was
the nastiest thing of all. And there I'd be again, waxing, tenderhearted, repenting,
shedding tears, and certainly hoodwinking myself, though I wasn't pretending

(34:45):
in the least. It was my heart that somehow kept
mucking things up here even the laws of nature could
no longer be blamed. Though still throughout my life the
laws of nature have offended me constantly, more than anything else.
It's nasty to look back on it all, and it
was nasty then as well. For a minute or so later,

(35:09):
I'd be reasoning spitefully that it was all a lie,
a lie, a lowesome, affected lie. That is, all these repentances, tenderheartednesses,
all these vows of regeneration. And you ask why I
twisted and tormented myself. So answer, because it was just

(35:29):
too boring to sit there with folded arms. That's why
I'd get into such flourishes. Really, it was so observe
yourselves more closely, gentlemen, And you'll understand that it is so.
I made up adventures and devised a life for myself
so as to live at least somehow a little. How

(35:52):
many times it happened to mean, well, say, for example,
to feel offended just so for no reason, on purpose,
And I'd know, oh very well that I felt offended
for no reason, that I was affecting it. But you
can drive yourself so far that in the end, really
you do indeed get offended somehow. All my life I've
had an urge to pull such stunts so that in

(36:14):
the end I could no longer control myself. Another time,
twice even I decided to force myself to fall in love,
and I did suffer. Gentlemen, I assure you, deep in
one's soul, it's hard to believe one is suffering. Mockery
is stirring there, But all the same I suffer, and

(36:35):
in a real honest to God way, I get jealous,
lose my temper, and all that from boredom, gentlemen, all
from boredom crushed by inertia. For the direct, lawful, immediate
fruit of consciousness is inertia, that is, a conscious sitting
with folded arms. I've already mentioned this above, I repeat,

(37:00):
emphatically repeat. Ingenuous people and active figures are all active
simply because they are dull and narrow minded. How to
explain it, Here's how, as a consequence of their narrow mindedness,
they take the most immediate and secondary causes for the
primary ones, and thus become convinced more quickly and easily

(37:21):
than others that they have found an indisputable basis for
their doings, And so they feel at ease, And that,
after all, is the main thing. For in order to
begin to act, one must first be completely at ease,
so that no more doubts remain. Well And how am I,
for example, to set myself at ease? Where are the

(37:43):
primary causes on which I can rest? Where are my bases?
Where am I going to get them? I exercise thinking,
And consequently, for me, every primary cause immediately drags with
it yet another still more primary one, and so on
ad infinitum, such as precisely the essence of all consciousness

(38:06):
and thought. So once again it's the laws of nature.
And what finally is the result the same old thing.
Remember I was speaking just now about revenge. You probably
didn't grasp it. I said, a man takes revenge because

(38:28):
he finds justice in it. That means he has found
a primary cause, a basis, namely justice, So he has
set at ease on all sides, and consequently takes his
revenge calmly and successfully, being convinced that he is doing
an honest and just thing. Whereas I do not see

(38:49):
any justice here, nor do I find any virtue in it.
And consequently, if I said about taking revenge, it will
be solely out of wickedness. Wickedness could of course overcome
everything all my doubts, and thus could serve quite successfully
in place of a primary cause, precisely in that it
is not a cause. But what's to be done if

(39:12):
there is also no wickedness in me? I did begin
with that just now. The spite in me again, as
a consequence of those cursed laws of consciousness, undergoes a
chemical breakdown before your eyes. The object vanishes the reasons evaporate,
the culprit is not to be found. The offense becomes

(39:34):
not an offense but a fatom, something like a toothache
for which no one is to blame. And consequently what
remains is again the same way out, that is to
give the wall of painful beating. And so you just
wave it aside because you haven't found the primary cause.
But try getting blindly carried away by your feelings without reasoning,

(39:57):
without a primary cause, driving consciousnness away, at least for
a time. Start hating or fall in love only so
as not to sit with folded arms the day after tomorrow,
at the very latest, you'll begin to despise yourself for
having knowingly hoodwinked yourself. The result a soap bubble and inertia. Oh, gentlemen,

(40:21):
perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only
because throughout my entire life I've never been able to
start or finish anything. Granted, granted, I'm a babbler, a harmless,
irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be
done if the soul and express purpose of every intelligent

(40:41):
man is babbel? That is a deliberate pouring from empty
into void. Six. Oh, if I were doing nothing only
out of laziness, Lord, how I'd respect myself? Then respect

(41:06):
myself precisely, because I'd at least be capable of having
laziness in me. There would be in me at least
one as it were, positive quality, which I myself could
be sure of. Question who is he? Answer? A laser Bones.
Now it would be most agreeable to hear that about myself.

(41:29):
It means I'm positively defined. It means there's something to
say about me. Laser Bones. Now, that is a title
and omission. It's a career, sirs, no joking, it really is.
By rights, I'm then a member of the foremost club,
and my sole occupation is ceaselessly respecting myself. I knew

(41:53):
a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being
a fine judge of la fighte. He regards, guarded it
as his positive merit, and never doubted himself. He died
not merely with a serene but with a triumphant conscience.
And he was perfectly right. And so I would choose
a career for myself. I would be a laser Bones

(42:15):
and a glutton, and not just an ordinary one, but
for example, one sympathizing with everything beautiful and lofty. How
do you like that? I've long been fancying it. This
beautiful and lofty has indeed weighed heavy on my head
in my forty years. But that's my forty years. While

(42:36):
then now then it would be different. I would at
once find an appropriate activity for myself, namely drinking the
health of all that is beautiful and lofty. I would
seize every occasion first to shed a tear into my glass,
and then to drink it. For all that is beautiful
and lofty, I would then turn everything in the world

(42:58):
into the beautiful and law In the vilest, most unquestionable trash,
I would discover the beautiful and lofty. I'd become as
tearful as a sodden sponge. An artist, for example, has
painted a good picture. Point nine, immediately drink the health
of the artist who has painted the good picture, because

(43:21):
I love all that is beautiful and lofty. An author
has written as anyone pleases, then I immediately drink the
health of anyone who pleases, because I love all that
is beautiful and lofty. For this, I'll demand to be respected.
I'll persecute whoever does not show me respect. I live peacefully,

(43:43):
I die solemnly. Why this is charming, utterly charming. And
I'd grow myself such a belly, then I'd fashion such
a triple chin for myself. I'd fix myself up such
a ruby nose, that whoever came along would say, looking
at me, Now there's a plus, there's a real positive,

(44:03):
and think what you will. It's most agreeable to hear
such comments in our negative age, gentlemen, seven, But these
are all golden dreams. Oh tell me who first announced?
Who was the first to proclaim? That man does dirty
only because he doesn't know his real interests, and that

(44:24):
were he to be enlightened, were his eyes to be
open to his real normal interests, man would immediately stop
doing dirty, would immediately become good and noble, because being
enlightened and understanding his real prophet, he would see his
real prophet precisely in the good. And it's common knowledge
that no man can act knowingly against his own prophet. Consequently,

(44:48):
out of necessity, so to speak, he would start doing good.
Oh the babe, oh, the pure innocent child, When was
it to begin with? In all these thousands of years
that man acted solely for his own profit. What is
to be done with the millions of facts testifying to

(45:10):
how people, knowingly, that is, fully understanding their real profit
would put it in second place and throw themselves onto
another path, a risk, a perchance, not compelled by anyone
or anything, but precisely as if they simply did not
want the designated path, and stubbornly, wolfully pushed off onto
another one, difficult, absurd searching for it all but in

(45:34):
the dark. So then the stubbornness and wilfulness were really
more agreeable to them than any profit profit? What is profit?
And will you take it upon yourself to define with
perfect exactitude precisely what man's profit consists in? And what

(45:55):
if it so happens that on occasion man's profit not
only may, but precisily must consist in sometimes wishing what
is bad for himself and not what is profitable. And
if so, if there can be such a case, then
the whole rule goes up in smoke. What do you
think can such a case occur? You're laughing, laugh then, gentleman,

(46:19):
only answer me. Has man's profit been calculated quite correctly?
Isn't there something that not only has not been but
even cannot be fitted into any classification. Because gentlemen, as
far as I know, you have taken your whole inventory
of human profits from an average of statistical figures and

(46:40):
scientifico economic formulas, because profit for you is prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace,
and so on and so forth. So that a man who,
for example, openly and knowingly went against this whole inventory would,
in your opinion well and also in mind of course,
be an obscurant or a complete madman. Right. But here

(47:04):
is the surprising thing. How does it happen that all
these statisticians, sages and lovers of mankind, in calculating human
profits constantly omit one profit. They don't even take it
into account in the way it ought to be taken.
And yet the whole account depends on that. It's no

(47:24):
great trouble just to take it, this profit and include
it in the list. But that's the whole bane of it,
that this tricky prophet doesn't fall into any classification, doesn't
fit into any list. I, for instance, have a friend
and gentleman, but he's your friend as well, And whose

(47:46):
friend is he not preparing to do something? This gentleman,
will at once expound to you with great eloquence and
clarity precisely how he must needs act in accordance with
the laws of reason and truth. Moreover, with passion and excitement,
he will talk to you of real, normal human interests.
With mockery. He will reproach those shortsighted fools who understand

(48:10):
neither their own profit nor the true meaning of virtue.
And then, exactly a quarter of an hour later, without
any sudden extraneous cause, but precisely because of something within
him that is stronger than all his interests, he'll cut
quite a different caper. That is, go obviously against what
he himself was just saying, against the laws of reason,

(48:33):
against his own profit, well, in short, against everything. I
warn you that my friend is a collective person, and
therefore it is somehow difficult to blame him alone. That's
just the thing, gentlemen, that there may well exist something
that is dearer for almost every man than his very
best profit. Or so as not to violate logic, that

(48:56):
there is this one most profitable prophet, precisely the old
obmitted one, the one we were just talking about, which
is chiefer and more profitable than all other profits, and
for which a man is ready, if need be, to
go against all laws, that is, against reason, honor, peace, prosperity,
in short, against all these beautiful, end useful things, only

(49:20):
so as to attain this primary, most profitable profit, which
is dearer to him than anything else. Well, but it
is a prophet. After all, you will interrupt me. I
beg your pardon, sirs, But we shall speak further of it.
And the point is not in a play on words,
but in the fact that this profit is remarkable, precisely

(49:42):
because it destroys all our classifications and constantly shatters all
the systems elaborated by lovers of mankind for the happiness
of mankind, interferes with everything. In short, but before naming
this profit for you, I want to compromise myself personally,
and therefore I boldly declare that all these beautiful systems,

(50:05):
all these theories that explain to mankind it's true normal interests,
so that, striving necessarily to attain these interests, it would
at once become good and noble. All this, in my opinion,
is so far only logistics, yes, sirs, logistics, for merely
to assert this theory of the renewal of all mankind

(50:26):
by means of a system of its own profits. This,
to my mind, is almost the same as well. Let's say,
for example, the same as asserting with Buckle that man
gets softer from civilization and consequently becomes less blood thirsty
and less capable of war point eleven. Logically, it seems
that's what he comes up with. But man is so

(50:49):
partial to systems and abstract conclusions that he is ready
intentionally to distort the truth, to turn a blind eye
and a deaf ear, only so as to justify his logic.
That's why I've chosen this example, because it is an
all too vivid one. Why look around you, blood is
flowing in rivers, and in such a jolly way. Besides,

(51:12):
like Champagne, take this whole nineteenth century of ours, in
which Buckle also lived. Take Napoleon, both the great one
and the present one. Take North America, that everlasting union.
Take finally, this caricature of a Schleswig Holstein twelve. What

(51:33):
is it that civilization softens in US? Civilization cultivates only
a versatility of sensations in man, and decidedly nothing else.
And through the development of this versatility, man may even
reach the point of finding pleasure in blood. Indeed, this

(51:54):
has already happened to him. Have you noticed that the
most refined blood shedders have almost all been the most
civilized gentleman, to whom the various Attilas and Stenka Razins
thirteen sometimes could not hold a candle. And if they
don't strike one as sharply as Attila or Stenka Razin,
it is precisely because they occur too frequently. They are

(52:17):
too ordinary, too familiar a sight. If man has not
become more bloodthirsty from civilization at any rate, he has
certainly become bloodthirsty in a worse a viler way than formerly.
Formerly he saw justice in bloodshed, and with a quiet
conscience exterminated whoever he had to. While now though we

(52:38):
do regard bloodshed as vile, we still occupy ourselves with
this vileness, and even more than formerly, which is worse.
Decide for yourselves. They say that Cleopatra, excuse this example
from Roman history, like to stick golden pins into her
slave girl's breasts and took pleasure, and they're screaming and writhing.

(53:02):
You'll say that this was relatively speaking, in barbarous times.
That now too, the times are barbarous, because again, relatively speaking,
now two pins get stuck in that now two though
man has learned to see more clearly on occasion than
in barbarous times, he is still far from having grown
accustomed to acting as reason in science dictate. But even

(53:25):
so you are perfectly confident that he will not fail
to grow accustomed once one or two old bad habits
have passed. In once common sense and science have thoroughly
re educated and given a normal direction to human nature,
you are confident that man will then voluntarily cease making mistakes,
and willy nilly, so to speak, refuse to set his

(53:47):
will at variance with his normal interests. Moreover, then you
say science itself will teach man, though this is really
a luxury in my opinion, that in fact he has
neither will nor and never did have any, and that
he himself is nothing but a sort of piano key
or a sprig in an organ fourteen. And that furthermore,

(54:09):
there also exists in the world the laws of nature,
so that whatever he does is done not at all
according to his own wanting, but of itself according to
the laws of nature. Consequently, these laws of nature need
only be discovered, and then man will no longer be
answerable for his actions, and his life will become extremely easy.

(54:31):
Needless to say, all human actions will then be calculated
according to these laws mathematically like a table of logarithms
up to one hundred eight thousand and entered into a calendar.
Or better still, some well meaning publications will appear like
the present day encyclopedic dictionaries, in which everything will be

(54:54):
so precisely calculated and designated that there will no longer
be any actions or adventures in the world world. And
it is then this is still you speaking, that new
economic relations will come quite ready made and also calculated
with mathematical precision, so that all possible questions will vanish
in an instant, essentially because they will have been given

(55:17):
all possible answers. Then the crystal palace will get built
point fifteen. Then well, in short, then the bird Kagan
will come flying point sixteen. Of course, there's no guaranteeing
this is me speaking now that it won't, for example,
be terribly boring then, because what is there to do
if everything's calculated according to some little table. But on

(55:40):
the other hand, it will all be extremely reasonable. Of course,
what inventions can boredom not lead to? Golden pins also
get stuck in from boredom, But all that would be nothing.
The bad thing is this is me speaking again that
for all I know, they may be glad of the

(56:00):
golden pins. Then man really is stupid, phenomenally stupid. That is,
he's by no means stupid, but rather he's so ungrateful
that it would be hard to find the likes of him. I,
for example, would not be the least bit surprised if suddenly,
out of the blue, amid the universal future reasonableness, some

(56:23):
gentleman of ignoble or better of retrograde and jeering physiognomy,
should emerge, set his arms a kimbo and say to us, all, well, gentlemen,
why don't we reduce all this reasonableness to dust with
one good kick, for the sole purpose of sending all
these logarithms to the devil and living once more according
to our own stupid will. That would still be nothing.

(56:47):
But what is offensive is that he'd be sure to
find followers. That's how man is arranged, And all this
for the emptiest of reasons, which would seem not even
worth mentioning, namely, that man, whoever he might be, has
always in everywhere like to act as he wants, and
not at all is reason and profit dictate, And one

(57:07):
can want even against one's own profit, and one sometimes
even positively must. This is my i e. Now one's
own free, in voluntary wanting, one's own caprice, however wild,
one's own fancy, though chafed sometimes to the point of madness.
All this is that same most profitable profit, the omitted one,

(57:27):
which does not fit into any classification, and because of
which all systems and theories are constantly blown to the devil.
And where did all these sages get the ie that
man needs some normal, some virtuous wanting. What made them
necessarily imagine that what man needs is necessarily a reasonably

(57:47):
profitable wanting. Man needs only independent wanting, whatever this independence
may cost and wherever it may lead well, and this
wanting the devil knows eight ah ah ah. But in fact,

(58:08):
if you want to know there isn't any wanting, you
interrupt with a gofa. Today's science has even so succeeded
in anatomizing man up that we now know that wanting
in so called free will learn nothing else. But wait, gentlemen,
I myself wanted to begin that way. I confess I

(58:29):
even got scared. I just wanted to cry out that
wanting depends on the devil knows what, and thank God
perhaps for that. But I remembered about this science and
backed off. And just then you started talking. And indeed, well,
if one day they really find the formula for all

(58:49):
our wantings and caprices, that is what they depend on
by precisely what laws they occur, precisely how they spread
what they strive for in such and such a case,
and so on and so forth, a real mathematical formula.
That is, then perhaps man will immediately stop wanting. What's more,
perhaps he will certainly stop who wants to want according

(59:12):
to a little table. Moreover, he will immediately turn from
a man into a sprig in an organ, or something
of the sort. Because what is man without desires, without will,
and without wantings if not a sprig in an organ? Baryl,
what do you think? Let's reckon up the probabilities. Can

(59:33):
it happen or not? Isham you decide? Our wantings are,
for the most part mistake, and owing to a mistaken
view of our profit, we sometimes want pure rubbish, precisely
because in our stupidity we see this rubbish as the
easiest path to the attainment of some preconceived prophet. Well,

(59:54):
but what it's all explained, worked out on a piece
of paper, which is quite possible, because because after all,
it's vile and senseless to believe beforehand that there are
certain laws of nature which man will never learn, then
to be sure, there will be no more so called desires.
For if wanting someday gets completely in cahoots with reason,

(01:00:15):
then essentially we shall be reasoning and not wanting, because
it really is impossible, for example, while preserving reason, to
wane senselessness, and thus knowingly go against reason and wish
yourself harm. And since all wantings and reasonings can indeed
be calculated, because after all, they will someday discover the

(01:00:35):
laws of our so called free will, then consequently, and
joking aside, something like a little table can be arranged
so that we shall indeed want according to this little table.
For if it should someday be worked out and proved
to me that when I made a fig at such
and such a person, it was precisely because I could
not do otherwise, And that I was bound to do

(01:00:57):
it with such and such a finger. Then what is
left so free in me? Especially if I am a
learned man and have completed a course of studies somewhere now,
then I can calculate my life for thirty years ahead.
In short, if this does get arranged, then we really
will have no choice. We'll have to accept it in
any case. And generally we ought tirelessly to repeat to

(01:01:21):
ourselves that precisely, at such and such a moment, in
such and such circumstances, nature does not ask our permission.
That it must be accepted as it is and not
as we fancy. And if we are really aiming at
a little table and a calendar, and well, and even
at a retort, then there's no help for it. We
must accept the retort, or else it will get accepted

(01:01:44):
of itself without you. Yes, sirs, But for me, that's
just where the hitch comes. You will forgive me, gentlemen,
for philosophizing a way. It's a matter of forty years underground.
I'll allow me to indulge my fancy a bit. You see, reason, gentlemen,

(01:02:05):
is a fine thing that is unquestionable. But reason is
only reason, and satisfies only man's reasoning capacity, while wanting
is a manifestation of the whole of life, that is,
the whole of human life, including reason and various little itches.
And though our life in this manifestation often turns out
to be a bit of trash, still it is life,

(01:02:27):
and not just the extraction of a square root. I,
for example, quite naturally want to live so as to
satisfy my whole capacity for living, and not so as
to satisfy just my reasoning capacity alone, which is some
twentieth part of my whole capacity for living. What does
reason know? Reason knows only what it has managed to learn.

(01:02:51):
Some things perhaps it will never learn. This is no consolation,
But why not say it anyway? While human nature acts
as an entire whole, with everything that is in it,
consciously and unconsciously, and though it lies, still it lives.
I suspect, gentlemen, that you are looking at me with pity.
You repeat to me that an enlightened and developed man,

(01:03:13):
such in short as the future man will be, simply
cannot knowingly want anything improfitable for himself. That this is mathematics.
I agree completely, It is indeed mathematics. But I repeat
to you for the hundredth time. There is only one case,
one only, when man may purposely, consciously wish for himself,

(01:03:36):
even the harmful, the stupid, even what is stupidest of all,
namely so as to have the right to wish for himself,
even what is stupidest of all, and not be bound
by an obligation to wish for himself only what is intelligent.
For this stupidest of all, This caprice of ours, gentlemen,
may in fact be the most profitable of anything on

(01:03:57):
earth for our sort, especially in certain cases, and in
particular it may be more profitable than all other profits,
even in the case when it is obviously harmful and
contradicts the most sensible conclusions of our reason concerning prophets,
because in any event, it preserves for us the chiefest
and dearest thing that is our personality, in our individuality.

(01:04:21):
Now some insist that this is indeed the dearest of
all things for man. Wanting may of course converge with reason,
if at once, especially if this is not abused, but
is done with moderation. It is both useful and sometimes
even praiseworthy. But wanting is very often and even for
the most part completely and stubbornly at odds with reason,

(01:04:44):
And and do you know this too is useful and
sometimes even quite praiseworthy. Suppose, gentlemen, that man is not stupid. Really,
it is quite impossible to say he is, for the
sole reason that if he is stupid, who then is intelligent?

(01:05:05):
But even if he isn't stupid all the same, he's
monstrously ungrateful, phenomenally ungrateful. I even think the best definition
of man is a being that goes on two legs
and is ungrateful. But that's still not all. That still
not his chief defect. His chiefest defect is his constant

(01:05:27):
lack of good behavior, constant from the Great Flood to
the Schleswig Holstein period of man's destiny, lack of good
behavior and consequently lack of good sense. For it has
long been known that lack of good sense comes from
nothing else but the lack of good behavior. Try casting
a glance at the history of mankind. Well, what will

(01:05:49):
you see? Majestic? Maybe it is majestic. The colossus of
Rhodes alone, for example, is worth something. Not without reason.
Did mister Ronaevsky seventeen testify that while some say it
was the work of human hands. Others insist it was
created by nature itself. Colorful, Maybe it is colorful. One

(01:06:15):
need only sort through the full dress military and civil
uniforms of all times in all peoples. That alone is
worth something. And if you were to add the uniforms
of the lower civil ranks, you could really break a leg.
No historian would be left standing. Monotonous, well, maybe also monotonous.

(01:06:35):
They fight and fight, They fight now, and fought before
and fought afterwards. You'll agree it's even all to monotonous.
In short, anything can be said about world history, anything
that might just enter the head of the most disturbed imagination.
Only one thing cannot be said, that it is sensible.

(01:06:56):
You'd choke on the first word. And what even comes
upon this sort of thing? All the time, there constantly
appear in life people of such good behavior and good sense,
such sages and lovers of mankind, as precisely maketh their
goal to spend their entire lives in the best behaved
and most sensible way possible, to become, so to speak,

(01:07:18):
a light for their neighbors, essentially in order to prove
to them that one can indeed live in the world
as a person of good behavior, in good sense. And
what then? It is known that, sooner or later, towards
the end of their lives, many of these lovers have
betrayed themselves, producing some anecdote, sometimes even of the most

(01:07:40):
indecent sort. Now I ask you what can be expected
of man as a being endowed with such strange qualities.
Shower him with all earthly blessings, drawn him in happiness
completely over his head, so that only bubbles pop up
on the surface of happiness as on water, give him
such a can satisfaction that he no longer has anything

(01:08:02):
left to do at all except sleep, eat gingerbread, and
worry about the non cessation of world history. And it
is here, just here, that he, this man, out of
shearing gratitude, out of sheer lampoonery, will do something nasty.
He will even risk his gingerbread and wish on purpose
for the most pernicious nonsense, the most non economical meaninglessness,

(01:08:26):
solely in order to mix into all this positive good.
Since his own pernicious, fantastical element, it is precisely his
fantastic dreams, his most banal stupidity, that he will wish
to keep hold of with the sole purpose of confirming
to himself, as if it were so very necessary, that
human beings are still human beings and not piano keys, which,

(01:08:50):
though played upon with their own hands by the laws
of nature themselves, are in danger of being played so
much that outside the calendar, it will be impossible to
want anything, and more than that, even if it should
indeed turn out that he is a piano key, if
it were even proved to him mathematically and by natural science,
he would still not come to reason, but would do

(01:09:12):
something contrary on purpose, solely out of ingratitude alone, essentially
to have his own way. And if he finds himself
without means, he will invent destruction in chaos, he will
invent all kinds of suffering, and still have his own way.
He will launch a curse upon the world. And since
man alone is able to curse, that being his privilege

(01:09:35):
which chiefly distinguishes him from other animals, he may achieve
his end by the curse alone, that is, indeed, satisfy
himself that he is a man and not a piano key.
If you say that all this, the chaos and darkness
and cursing can also be calculated according to a little table,
so that the mere possibility of a prior calculation will

(01:09:57):
put a stop to it all, and reason will claim
its own. Then he will deliberately go mad for the occasion,
so as to do without reason and still have his
own way. I believe in this. I will answer for this,
because the whole human enterprise seems, indeed to consist in
man's proving to himself every moment that he is a
man and not a sprague with his own skin, if

(01:10:20):
need be, but proving it by trogloditism, if need be,
but proving it. And how not sin after that, how
not boast that this has still not come about, and
that wanting so far still depends on the devil knows
what you shout at me, if you do still honor
me with your shouts that no one is taking my

(01:10:41):
will from me here, that all they're doing here is
busily arranging it somehow, so that my will of its
own will coincides with my normal interests, with the laws
of nature, and with arithmetic. Eh, gentlemen, what sort of
will of one's own can there be if it comes
to tables and arithmetics, and the only thing going is

(01:11:01):
two times two as four two times two will be four,
even without my will, as if that were any will
of one's own. Nine, gentlemen, I am joking, of course,
and I myself know that I am not joking very successfully.
But one really cannot take everything as a joke. Maybe

(01:11:25):
I'm grinding my teeth as I joke. Gentlemen, I am
tormented by questions. Resolve them for me. You, for example,
want to make man unlearn his old habits and to
correct his will and conformity with the demands of science
and common sense. But how do you know that man

(01:11:45):
not only can be, but must be remade in this way?
What makes you conclude that man's wanting so necessarily needs
to be corrected? In short, how do you know that
such a correction will indeed be profitable for man? And
if we're to say everything, why are you so certainly
convinced that not to go against real, normal profits guaranteed

(01:12:09):
by the arguments of reason and arithmetic, is indeed always
profitable for man, and is a law for the whole
of mankind. So far, it's still just your supposition. Suppose
it is a law of logic, but perhaps not of
mankind at all. Perhaps you think gentlemen that I am mad,

(01:12:32):
allow me an observation. I agree. Man is predominantly a
creating animal, doomed to strive consciously towards a goal, and
to occupy himself with the art of engineering, that is,
to eternally and ceaselessly make a road for himself that
at least goes somewhere or other. But sometimes he may
wish to swerve aside, precisely because he is doomed to

(01:12:55):
open this road, and also perhaps because stupid. Though the
ingenuous figure generally is, it still sometimes occurs to him
that this road almost always turns out to go somewhere
or other, and the main thing is not where it goes,
but that it should simply be going. And that the
well behaved child, by neglecting the art of engineering, not

(01:13:16):
give himself up to pernicious idleness, which, as is known,
is the mother of all vice. Man loves creating in
the making of roads, that is indisputable. But why does
he so passionately love destruction and chaos as well? Tell
me that but of this I wish specially to say

(01:13:39):
a couple of words myself. Can it be that he
has such a love of destruction and chaos. It's indisputable
that he sometimes loves them very much. That is a
fact because he is instinctively afraid of achieving the goal
and completing the edifice he is creating. How do you know,
Maybe he likes the edit is only from far off

(01:14:01):
and by no means up close. Maybe he only likes
creating it and not living in it, leaving it afterwards.
Aux animo domestiques eighteen such as ants, sheep, and so
on and so forth. Now ants have totally different tastes.
They have a remarkable edifice of the same sort, forever indestructible,

(01:14:23):
the ant hill. With the ant Hill, the most reverend
ants began, and with the ant Hill they will doubtless
end as well, which does great credit to their constancy
and positiveness. But man is a frivolous and unseemly being,
and perhaps similar to a chess player, likes only the
process of achieving the goal, but not the goal itself,

(01:14:47):
And who knows one cannot vouch for it. Perhaps the
whole goal mankind strives for on Earth consists just in
this ceaselessness of the process of achievement alone, that is
to say, in life itself, and not essentially in the goal,
which of course is bound to be nothing other than
two times to his four. That is a formula. And
two times to his four is no longer life, gentlemen,

(01:15:10):
but the beginning of death. At least Man has always
somehow feared this two times to his four, and I
fear it even now. Suppose all man ever does his
search for this two times to his four, he crosses oceans,
He sacrifices his life in the search. But to search
it out actually to find it, by God, he's somehow afraid,

(01:15:32):
for he senses that once he finds it there will
be nothing to search for. Workers, when they're done working,
at least get their pay, go to a pothouse, then
wind up with the police. So it keeps them busy
for a week. But where is man to go? Something awkward,
at any rate can be noticed in him each time

(01:15:54):
he achieves some such goal. Achieving he likes, but having
achieved he does not quite like, And that, of course
is terribly funny. In short, man is comically arranged. There
is apparently a joke in all this, But still two
times two as four is a most obnoxious thing. Two

(01:16:16):
times two is four. Why in my opinion, its sheer
impudence sirs. Two times two as four has a cocky look,
It stands across your path, arms a kimbo, and spits.
I agree that two times two as four is an
excellent thing. But if we're going to start praising everything,
then two times two as five is sometimes also a

(01:16:39):
most charming little thing. And why are you so firmly,
so solidly convinced that only the normal and the positive,
In short, that only well being is profitable for man?
Is reason not perhaps mistaken as to prophets. Maybe man
does not love well being only maybe he loves suffering

(01:17:02):
just as much. Maybe suffering is just as profitable for
him as well being. For man sometimes loves suffering terribly much,
to the point of passion. And that is a fact here.
There's not even any need to consult world history. Just
ask yourself if you're a human being and have had

(01:17:22):
any life at all. As for my personal opinion, to
love just well being alone is even somehow indecent, whether
it's good or bad. It's sometimes also very pleasant to
break something. I, as a matter of fact, take my
stand here neither with suffering nor with well being. I

(01:17:44):
stand for my own caprice, and that it be guaranteed
me when necessary. Suffering, for example, is inadmissible in Vaudeville's
I know that in a crystal palace it is even unthinkable.
Suffering is deaf, it is negation. And what good is
a crystal palace in which one can have doubts? And

(01:18:06):
yet I'm certain that man will never renounce real suffering,
that is destruction and chaos suffering Why this is the
sole cause of consciousness? Though I did declare it the
beginning that consciousness, in my opinion, is man's greatest misfortune.
Still I know that man loves it and will not

(01:18:27):
exchange it for any satisfactions. Consciousness, for example, is infinitely
higher than two times two. After two times to there
would of course be nothing left, not only to do,
but even to learn. The only possible thing to do,
then would be to stop up our five senses and

(01:18:48):
immerse ourselves in contemplation. Well but with consciousness, though the
result comes out the same. That is, again there's nothing
to do. At least one can occasionally whip one's self,
and after all, that livens things up a bit. It
may be retrograde, but still it's better than nothing. X

(01:19:11):
You believe in a crystal edifice forever indestructible, that is,
in an edifice at which one can neither put out
one's tongue on the sly nor make a fig in
the pocket point nineteen. Well, and perhaps I'm afraid of
this edifice precisely because it is crystal and forever indestructible,
and it will be impossible to put out one's tongue
at it, even on the sly. Now look, if instead

(01:19:35):
of a palace there is a chicken coop and it
starts to rain, I will perhaps get into the chicken
coop to avoid a wedding. But all the same, I
will not take the chicken coop for a palace out
of gratitude for its having kept me from the rain.
You laugh, You even say that in that case it
makes no difference chicken coop or mansion. Yes, say I,

(01:19:58):
if one were to live only so as not to
get wet. But what's to be done if I've taken
it into my head that one does not live only
for that, and that if one is to live, it
had better be in a mansion. This is my wanting,
this is my desire. You will scrape it out of me.
Only when you change my desires. So change them, seduce

(01:20:22):
me with something else, give me a different ideal. But meanwhile,
I will not take a chicken coop for a palace let.
It even be so that the crystal edifice is a bluff,
that by the laws of nature it should not even be,
and that I've invented it only as a result of
my own stupidity, as a result of certain old, non

(01:20:43):
rational habits of our generation. But what do I care
if it should not be? What difference does it make
since it exists in my desires, or better, exists as
long as my desires exist. Perhaps you're laughing again, Laugh
if you please. I will accept all mockery. But still

(01:21:06):
I won't say I'm full when I'm hungry. Still I
know that I will not rest with a compromise with
a ceaseless, recurring zero simply because according to the laws
of nature it exists and exists. Really, I will not
take a tenement house with apartments for the poor and
one thousand year lease and the dentist Wiggenheim's shingle for

(01:21:27):
good measure as the crown of my desires, Destroy my desires,
wipe out my ideals, show me something better, and I
will follow you. Perhaps you'll say it's not worth getting involved,
But in that case I can answer you the same way.
Our discussion is serious. If you do not deign to

(01:21:47):
give me your attention. I am not going to bow
and scrape before you. I have the underground, But so
long as I live in desire, let my hand wither
twenty if I bring even one little brick for such
a tenement house. Never mind that I myself have just
rejected the crystal edifice for the sole reason that one

(01:22:09):
cannot taunt it with one's tongue. I said that not
because I have such a love of putting out my tongue.
Perhaps I was angry simply because such an edifice at
which it is possible not to put out one's tongue
has never yet been found among all your edifices. On
the contrary, I would let my tongue be cut off

(01:22:31):
altogether from sheer gratitude, if only it could be so
arranged that I myself never felt like sticking it out again.
What do I care that it's impossible to arrange it so,
and one must content oneself with apartments? Why then, have
I been arranged with such desires. Can it be that

(01:22:52):
I've been arranged simply so as to come to the
conclusion that my entire arrangement is a hoax? Can that
be the whole purpose? I don't believe it, You know what, though,
I'm convinced that our sort, the underground ones, ought to
be kept on a tether. Though we're capable of sitting

(01:23:13):
silently in the underground for forty years, once we do
come out and let loose, we talk, talk, talk eleven.
The final end, gentleman, better to do nothing better conscious inertia,
and so long live the underground. Though I did say

(01:23:37):
that I envy the normal man to the point of
uttermost bile, still I do not want to be him
on those conditions in which I see him, though all
the same, I shall not stop envying him. No, No,
the underground is in any case more profitable there one
can at least eh. But here too, I'm lying because

(01:24:02):
I myself know like two times too, that it is
not at all the underground that is better, but something different,
completely different, which I thirst for but cannot ever find.
Devil take the underground. Even this would be better here
if I myself believed at least something of all I've
just written for I swear to you, gentlemen, that I

(01:24:26):
do not believe a word, not one little word of
all I've just scribbled. That is, I do believe, perhaps,
But at the same time, who knows why I sense
and suspect that I'm lying like a cobbler? Then why
did you write at all? You say to me, And
what if I put you away for some forty years

(01:24:48):
with nothing to do, and then come to you in
the underground after forty years to see how you've turned out?
One cannot leave a man alone and unoccupied for forty years,
can one? But is this not shameful? Is it not humiliating?
You will, perhaps say to me, contemptuously, shaking your heads.

(01:25:10):
You thirst for life, yet you yourself resolve life's questions
with a logical tangle. And how importunate, how impudent your escapades,
Yet at the same time, how frightened you are. You
talk nonsense and are pleased with it. You say impudent things,
yet you keep being afraid and asking forgiveness for them.

(01:25:31):
You insist that you are not afraid of anything, and
at the same time you court our opinion. You insist
that you are gnashing your teeth, and at the same
time you exert your wit to make us laugh. You
know that your witticisms are not witty, but you are
apparently quite pleased with their literary merits. You may indeed

(01:25:53):
have happened to suffer, but you do not have the
least respect for your suffering. There's truth in you, too,
but no integrity. Out of the pettiest vanity, you take
your truth and display it, disgrace it in the marketplace.
You do, indeed want to say something, but you conceal
your final word out of fear because you lack the

(01:26:15):
resolve to speak it out. You have only cowardly insolence.
You boast about consciousness, yet all you do is vacillate,
because though your mind works, your heart is darkened by depravity.
And without a pure heart there can be no full
right consciousness. And how importunate you are, how you foist yourself,

(01:26:36):
how you mug lies lies, lies. To be sure, I
myself have just made up all these words of yours.
This too is from underground. I spent forty years on
end there listening to these words of yours through a crack.

(01:26:57):
I thought them up myself. Since this was all that
would get thought up, no wonder, they got learned by
heart and assumed a literary form. But can it be?
Can it be that you are indeed so gullible as
to imagine I will publish all this, and what's more,
give it to you to read. And here's another puzzle

(01:27:19):
for me. Why indeed do I call you gentlemen? Why
do I address you as if you were actually my readers?
Such confessions as I intend to begin setting forth here
are not published and given to others to read. At
least I do not have so much firmness in myself,
and do not consider it necessary to have it. But

(01:27:41):
you see, a certain fancy has come into my head,
and I want at all costs to realize it. Here's
what it is. In every man's memories. There are such
things as he will reveal not to everyone, but perhaps
only to friends. There are also such as he will
reveal not even to friends, but only to himself, and

(01:28:04):
that in secret. Then finally, there are such as a
man is afraid to reveal even to himself. And every
decent man will have accumulated quite a few things of
this sort. That is, one might even say, the more
decent a man is the more of them he will
have at least, I myself have only recently resolved to

(01:28:26):
recall some of my former adventures, which till now I
have always avoided, even with a certain uneasiness. Now, however,
when I not only recall them, but am even resolved
to write them down, Now, I want precisely to make
a test. Is it possible to be perfectly candid with
oneself and not be afraid of the whole truth? I

(01:28:48):
will observe Incidentally, Haine insists that faithful autobiographies are almost impossible,
and that a man is sure to tell a pack
of lies about himself in his opinion. In Rousseau, for example,
most certainly told a pack of lies about himself and
his confessions, and even did so intentionally out of vanity

(01:29:08):
point twenty one. I'm sure Hainah is right. I understand
very well how one can sometimes slap whole crimes on
oneself solely out of vanity, and I even perceive quite
well what sort of vanity it might be. But Heinah's
opinion concerned a man who was confessing before the public. I, however,
am writing only for myself, and I declare once and

(01:29:31):
for all that even if I write as if I
were addressing readers, that is nearly affront because it's easier
for me to write that way. It's a form, just
an empty form. And I shall never have any readers.
I have already declared as much. I do not want
to hamper myself with anything in preparing my notes. I

(01:29:55):
will not introduce any order or system. Whatever I RecA
I will write down. Now, for example, someone might seize
upon a word and ask me, if you really are
not counting on any readers, why then do you make
such agreements with yourself and on paper. Besides that, you
will introduce no order or system that you will write

(01:30:17):
down whatever you recall, et cetera, et cetera. Why these explanations,
why these apologies? Well, so it goes, I reply. There is, however,
a whole psychology here. Maybe it's also that I'm simply

(01:30:38):
a coward, and maybe also that I'm purposely imagining a
public before me so as to behave more decently while
I write. There may be a thousand reasons, but here
is another thing. For what into what end, in fact
do I want to write? If not for the public,

(01:30:59):
then why not say, simply recall everything mentally without transferring
it to paper, write, sir. But on paper it will
somehow come out more solemnly. There's something imposing in it.
There will be more of a judgment on oneself. It
will gain in style. Besides, maybe I will indeed get

(01:31:20):
relief from the writing. Today. For example, I'm particularly oppressed
by one distant recollection. I recalled it clearly the other day,
and it has since stayed with me, like a nagging
musical tune that refuses to be gotten rid of, and
yet one must get rid of it. I have hundreds

(01:31:42):
of such recollections, but someone out of one hundred emerges
every now and then and oppresses me. I believe, for
some reason that if I write it down, I shall
then be rid of it. So why not try? Finally,
I'm bored, and I the constantly do nothing, and writing

(01:32:03):
things down really seems like work. They say work makes
a man good and honest. Well, here's a chance. At least.
Snow is falling today, almost wet, yellow, dull, and it
was falling yesterday, and it was falling the other day
as well. I think it was apropos of the wet

(01:32:26):
snow that I recalled this anecdote that now refuses to
be gotten rid of, and so let this be a story.
Apropos of the Wet Snow, Point twenty two, Part two.
Apropos of the Wet Snow. When from out of error's darkness,
with a word both sure and arden, I had drawn

(01:32:47):
the fallen soul, and you, filled with deepest torment, curse
the vice that had ensnared you, when so doing wrung
your hands, when punishing with recollection forgetful conscience, you then
told the tale of all that when before me, and
suddenly you hid your face and trembling hands, end filled
with horror, filled with shame, dissolved in tears, indignant as

(01:33:08):
you were, and shaken, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
from the poetry of n. A. Necrosov One. I at
that time I was only twenty four years old. My

(01:33:29):
life then was already gloomy, disorderly, and solitary, to the
point of savagery. I did not associate with anyone, even
avoided speaking, and shrank more and more into my corner
at work in the office. I even tried not to
look at anyone. And I noticed very well that my
colleagues not only considered me an odd man, but as

(01:33:52):
I also kept fancying, seemed to look at me with
a certain loathing. It used to occur to me, why
does no one accept me fancy that people look at
him with loathing? There was one in our office who
had a disgusting and most pock marked face, even somehow
like a bandits. With such an indecent face, I think

(01:34:13):
I wouldn't even have dared to glance at anyone. Another
hadn't changed his uniform for so long that there was
a bad smell in his vicinity. And yet neither of
these gentlemen was embarrassed, either with regard to his clothes
or his face, or somehow morally. Neither the one nor
the other imagined that he was looked at with loathing,

(01:34:36):
And even if they had imagined it, it would have
been all the same to them, so long as their
superiors did not deign to pay heed. It's perfectly clear
to me now that it was I who, owing to
my boundless vanity and hence also my exactingness towards myself,
very often looked upon myself with furious dissatisfaction, reaching the

(01:34:57):
point of loathing, and therefore mentally attribute I did my
view to everyone else. I hated my face, for example,
found it odious, and even suspected that there was some
mean expression in it. And therefore, every time I came
to work, I made a painful effort to carry myself
as independently as possible, so as not to be suspected

(01:35:17):
of meanness, and to express as much nobility as possible
with my face. Let it not be a beautiful face,
I thought, but to make up for that, let it
be agnoble and expressive, and above all an extremely intelligent one.
Yet I knew with certainty and suffering that I would

(01:35:37):
never be able to express all those perfections with the
face I had. The most terrible thing was that I
found it positively stupid. And I would have been quite
satisfied with intelligence. Let's even say I would even have
agreed to a mean expression, provided only that at the
same time my face be found terribly intelligen. Of course,

(01:36:02):
I hated them all in our office from first to last,
and despise them all. But at the same time I
was also as if afraid of them. It happened that
I would suddenly set them above myself. Things were somehow
sudden with me in those days. Now I despised them.
Now I set them above me. A developed and decent

(01:36:23):
man cannot be vain without a boundless exactingness towards himself,
and without despising himself at moments to the point of hatred.
But whether I despised them or set them above me,
I used to drop my eyes before almost everyone I met.
I even made experiments. Will I be able to endure
soanso's glance on me? And I was always the first

(01:36:48):
to drop my eyes. This tormented me to the point
of fury. I was also afraid, to the point of illness,
of being ridiculous, and therefore slavishly worship routine in everything
to do with externals. I loved falling into the common rut,
and feared any eccentricity in myself with all my soul.

(01:37:09):
But how could I hold out? I was morbidly developed,
as a man of our time ought to be developed.
And they were all dull, witted and as like one
another as a flock of sheep. Perhaps to me alone
in the whole office, did it constantly seem that I
was a coward and a slave. It seems so to me,

(01:37:29):
precisely because I was developed, but it not only seemed,
in fact it really was. So I was a coward
and a slave. I say it without any embarrassment. Every
decent man of our time is and must be a
coward in a slave. That is his normal condition. I

(01:37:51):
am deeply convinced of it. He's made that way and
arranged for it. And not in the present time owing
to some sort of chance circumstances, but generally, in all times,
a decent man must be a coward and a slave.
That is the natural law of all decent people on earth.

(01:38:13):
If one of them does happen to get up a
bit of pluck in something, let him not be eased
or pleased by that. He'll still quail before something else.
Such is the sole an everlasting outcome. Only asses in
their mongrels show pluck, and even then only up to
that certain wall. It's not worth paying any attention to them,

(01:38:35):
because they mean precisely nothing. One other circumstance tormented me then,
namely that no one else was like me, and I
was like no one else. I am one, and they
are all thought I and I'd fall the thinking, which
shows what a young popeye still was. Contraries also occurred.

(01:39:03):
It was sometimes so disgusting to go to the office.
It reached the point that I would often come home
from work sick. Then suddenly, for no reason at all,
comes a spell of skepticism and indifference. Everything came in
spells with me. And here I am laughing at my
own intolerance and fastidiousness, reproaching myself with romanticism. One moment

(01:39:26):
I don't even want to speak with anyone, and the
next I go so far that I'm not only chatting away,
but I'm even deciding to become close with them. All
fastidiousness would suddenly disappear at once for no reason at all.
Who knows, Maybe I never had any Maybe it was

(01:39:47):
just an affectation out of books. To this day, I
haven't resolved this question. Once. I even became quite friendly
with them, began visiting their homes, playing preference, drinking vodka,
discussing promotions. But allow me a digression here. We Russians,

(01:40:08):
generally speaking, have never had any stupid translunary German and
more especially French romantics, who are not affected by anything.
Let the earth crumble under them, Let the whole of
France perish on the barricades they are what they are.
They won't change even for the sake of decency, and
they'll go on singing their translunary songs till they're dying day,

(01:40:30):
so to speak, because they're fools. But we in our
Russian land have no fools. That is a known fact.
That's what makes us different from all those other German lands. Consequently,
we have no translunary natures in a pure state. It
was our positive publicists and critics of the time, hunting

(01:40:52):
after Costans Hoglos and Uncle Piotur Ivanovitch's too, in being
foolish enough to take them for our eyes, who heaped
it all on our romantics, holding them to be of
the same translunary sort as in Germany or France. On
the contrary, the properties of our romantic are utterly and

(01:41:12):
directly opposite to those of the translunary European, and no
little European yardstick will fit here. Do permit me the
use of this word romantic, a venerable word, respectable, worthy,
and familiar to all. The properties of our romantic are
to understand everything, to see everything, and to see often

(01:41:34):
incomparably more clearly than our very most positive minds do
not to be reconciled with anyone or anything, but at
the same time not to spurn anything, to get around everything,
to yield to everything, to be politic with everyone, never
to lose sight of the useful practical goal, some nice
little government apartment, a little pension, a little decoration or two.

(01:41:57):
To keep an eye on this goal through all enthusiasms
and little volumes of lyrical verses, and at the same
time also to preserve the beautiful and lofty inviolate in
himself till his dying day, and incidentally to preserve himself
quite successfully as well, somehow in cotton wool, like some
little piece of jewelry. If only, shall we say, for

(01:42:20):
the benefit of that same beautiful and lofty he's a
broad man, our romantic, and the foremost nave of all
our knaves. I can assure you of that, even from experience, naturally,
all this is so if the romantic is intelligent, that
is what am I saying. The romantic is always intelligent.

(01:42:43):
I merely wish to observe that while we do happen
to have had some full romantics, that doesn't count, for
the sole reason that while still in the bloom of life.
They regenerated definitively into Germans end to preserve their little
piece of jewelry more comfortably settled somewhere and Whimer or
the Schwarzwold point three, I, for example, sincerely despise my

(01:43:05):
service employment, And if I didn't go around spitting, it
was only out of necessity, because I was sitting there
getting money for it. The result being you will note
that I still didn't go around spitting. Our romantic would
sooner lose his mind, which however, happens very seldom than

(01:43:27):
start spitting, unless he's got his eye on some other career,
and he will never be kicked out, except perhaps that
he might be carted off to the madhouses the King
of Spain, for in that only if he loses his
mind very much. But among us only the weaklings and
towheads lose their minds, while the countless number of romantics

(01:43:48):
go on to achieve considerable rank, remarkable versatility, and what
capacity for the very most contradictory feelings. I took comfort
in that even then, and am of the same mind. Now.
That is why we have so many broad natures who,
even with the ultimate fall, never lose their ideal, and

(01:44:11):
though they wouldn't lift a finger for their ideal, though
they are inveterate bandits and thieves, all the same, they
respect their original ideal to the point of tears, and
are remarkably honest in their souls. Yes, Sirs, only among
us can the most inveterate scoundrel be perfectly and even
loftily honest in his soul, while not ceasing in the

(01:44:32):
least to be a scoundrel. Time and again I repeat,
such practical rogues come out of our romantics. I use
the word rogue lovingly. They suddenly display such a sense
of reality and such knowledge of the positive that the
amazed authorities in public can only stand dumbfounded, clucking their
tongues at them. The versatility is indeed amazing, and God

(01:44:56):
knows what it will turn and develop into in subsequent circumstances,
and what it promises us for our times to come.
It's not bad material, Sirs. I don't say this out
of any ridiculous or home brewed patriotism. However, I'm sure
you again think I'm laughing, or who knows, maybe contrariwise,

(01:45:20):
that is, you're quite sure, I really think so. In
any event, gentlemen, I shall regard both your opinions as
an honor and especial pleasure, and do forgive me my digression.
Of course, I could not sustain this friendliness with my colleagues.
I'd spit in their eyes, and, as a result of

(01:45:41):
my still youthful inexperience, even stop greeting them, as if
I'd cut them off. However, this happened to me only once. Generally,
I was always alone at home. To begin with, I
mainly used to read. I wished to stifle with external

(01:46:02):
sensations all that was ceaselessly boiling up inside me, and
among external sensations, the only one possible for me was reading.
Reading was of course a great help. It stirred, delighted,
and tormented me. But at times it bored me terribly.

(01:46:23):
I still wanted to move about, and so I'd suddenly
sink into some murky subterranean While debauch not a great
but a measly little debauch, there were measly little passions
in me sharp burning. Because of my permanent morbid irritability,
I was given to hysterical outbursts with tears and convulsions.

(01:46:47):
Apart from reading, I had nowhere to turn. That is,
there was nothing I could then respect in my surroundings,
nothing I would be drawn to. What's more, anguish kept
boiling up, a hysterical thirst for contradictions. Contrasts would appear,
and so I'd set out on debauchery. It is not
at all to justify myself that I've been doing all

(01:47:09):
this talking. But no, that's a lie. I precisely wanted
to justify myself. I make this little note for myself, gentlemen,
I don't want to lie. I've given my word. My
debauchery I undertook solitarily by night, covertly, fearfully, filfully with

(01:47:35):
a shame that would not abandon me at the most
loathsome moments, and at such moments even went so far
as a curse. I was then already bearing the underground
in my soul. I was terribly afraid of somehow being seen,
met recognized. I used to frequent various rather murky places. Once,

(01:47:59):
passing at night by some wretched little tavern, I saw
through the lighted window some gentlemen fighting with their cues
around the billiard table, and one of them being chucked
out the window. At another time I would have been
filled with loathing. But one of those moments suddenly came
over me, and I envied this chucked out gentleman. Envied
him so much that I even went into the tavern,

(01:48:21):
into the billiard room. Perhaps I too will have a fight,
I thought, and get chucked out the window myself. I
was not drunk, but what do you want of me?
Anguish can eat a man into such hysterics. But it
came to nothing. I proved incapable even of jumping out
the window, and left without having had any fight. From

(01:48:45):
the very first, I was brought up short there by
a certain officer. I was standing beside the billiard table,
blocking the way unwittingly, and he wanted to pass. He
took me by the shoulders in silently, with no warning
or explanation, moved me from where I stood to another place,
and then passed by, as if without noticing. I could

(01:49:08):
even have forgiven a beating. But I simply could not
forgive his moving me, and in the end just not
noticing me. Devil knows what I'd have given then, for
a real, more regular quarrel, more decent, more so to speak, literary.
I had been treated like a fly. This officer was

(01:49:29):
a good six feet tall, and I am a short
and skinny man. The quarrel, however, was up to me.
All I had to do was protest a bit, and
of course I'd be chucked out the window. But I
changed my mind and preferred to efface myself spitefully. I
left the tavern, confused and agitated, went straight home, and

(01:49:52):
the next day continued my little debauch, still more timidly,
downtroddenly and sadly than before, as if with a tear
in my eye. Yet I did continue it. Do not think, however,
that I turned coward before the officer out of cowardice.
In my soul. I have never been a coward, though
I constantly turned coward in reality. But don't laugh too quickly.

(01:50:14):
There's an explanation for that. Rest assured, I have an
explanation for everything. Oh if this officer had been one
of those who would agree to fight a duel, But no,
he was precisely one of those gentlemen alas long since vanished,
who preferred to set about it with billiard cues, or,

(01:50:34):
like Lieutenant pyrogovn Gobul five, by means of the authorities.
But they would not fight a duel, and in any
case would regard a duel with our sort the pencil
pushers as indecent, and they generally regarded dueling as something
inconceivable freethinking French, while giving ample offense themselves, especially in

(01:50:55):
cases of six foot tallness. I turned or not from cowardice,
but from the most boundless vanity. I was afraid, not
of six foot tallness, nor of being badly beaten and
chucked out the window. I really would have had physical
courage enough. What I lacked was sufficient moral courage. I

(01:51:17):
was afraid that none of those present, from the insolent
marker to the last putrid and black head covered clerk
with a collar of lard who was hanging about there,
would understand, and that they would all deride me if
I started protesting and talking to them in literary language,
because among us to this day it is impossible to
speak of a point of honor that is not honor,

(01:51:39):
but a point of honor point donar otherwise than in
literary language. In ordinary language there is no mention of
a point of honor. I was quite sure, what a
sense of reality, despite all romanticism, that they would all
simply burst with laughter, and the officer would beat me,
not sim that is, inoffensively, but would certainly start kicking

(01:52:04):
me with his knee, driving me in this manner around
the billiard table, and only then perhaps have mercy and
chuck me out the window. Of course, for me, this
Measley story could not end there. Later, I often met
this officer in the street and made good note of him.
Only I don't know whether he recognized me. Probably not,

(01:52:27):
I conclude that from certain signs. I, however, I looked
at him with spite and hatred. And so it continued
for several years. Sirs, my spite even kept strengthening and
burgeoning with the years. First I quietly began finding things
out about this officer. This was not easy for me

(01:52:51):
because I had no acquaintances. But once someone called him
by his surname in the street while I was following
him at a distance, as if tied to him, and
so I learned his surname. Another time I trailed him
all the way home, and for ten kopeks found out
from the caretaker where he lived on what floor alone

(01:53:11):
or with someone, and so on, in short, everything that
can be learned from a caretaker. Then one morning, though
I had never literaturized. It suddenly came into my head
to describe this officer in the manner of an expose,
as a caricature in a story. It was a delight
to me to write this story. I esposed him, even

(01:53:34):
slandered him a bit. At first I distorted his surname
in a way that made it immediately recognizable. But then,
on riper reflection, I changed it and sent the story
to Fatherland notes. But there were no esposes yet, and
my story wasn't published point six. I found this quite vexing.

(01:53:54):
There were times when I was simply choking with spite.
In the end, I decided to challenge my adversary to
a duel. I composed a beautiful, attractive letter to him,
entreating him to apologize to me, and hinted quite strongly
at a duel in case of refusal. The letter was

(01:54:15):
composed in such a way that if the officer had
even the slightest notion of the beautiful and lofty, he
could not fail to come running to me, to throw
himself on my neck and offer me his friendship. And
that would be so nice. What a life we would have,
What a life he would protect me with? His dignity.

(01:54:36):
I would ennoble him with my development and well ideas,
and there could be so much of this or that. Imagine.
By then, it was already two years since he had
offended me, and my challenge was a most outrageous anachronism
in spite of all the cleverness of my letter in
explaining away and concealing the anachronism. But thank God, to

(01:54:59):
this day I thanked the Almighty with tears. I did
not send my letter. I go cold all over when
I recall what might have happened if I had sent it.
And suddenly, suddenly I got my revenge in the simplest,
the most brilliant way. The brightest I ez suddenly dawned
on me. Sometimes on holidays, I would go to Nevsky

(01:55:23):
Prospect between three and four and stroll along the sunny side.
That is, I by no means went strolling there, but
experienced countless torments, humiliations, and risings of bile. That must
have been just what I needed. I darted like an
eel among the passers by in a most uncomely fashion,

(01:55:43):
ceaselessly giving way now to generals, now to cavalry officers.
In husars now to ladies. In those moments, I felt
convulsive pains in my heart and a hotness in my
spine at the mere thought of the measliness of my
attire and the measliness and triteness of my darting little figure.
This was a torment of torments, a ceaseless, unbearable humiliation

(01:56:05):
from the thought which would turn into a ceaseless and
immediate sensation of my being a fly before that whole world,
a foul, obscene flight, more intelligent, more developed, more noble
than everyone else, that went without saying, but a fly,
ceaselessly giving way to everyone, humiliated by everyone, insulted by everyone.

(01:56:26):
Why I gathered this torment onto myself. Why I went
to Nevsky, I don't know. I was simply drawn there
at every opportunity. I was then already beginning to experience
the influxes of those pleasures of which I have already
spoken in the first chapter, and after the story with
the Officer, I began to be drawn there even more strongly.

(01:56:49):
It was on Nevsky that I met him most often.
It was there that I admired him. He too, used
mostly to go there on holidays, and he too swerved
out of the way before generals in persons of dignity,
and he too slipped among them like an eel. But
those of our sort were even better than our sort,

(01:57:10):
he simply crushed. He went straight at them, as if
there were an empty space before him, and on no
occasion gave way to them. I reveled in my spite
as I watched him, and each time spitefully swerved out
of his way. It tormented me that even in the street,
I simply could not be on an equal footing with him.

(01:57:31):
Why is it invariably you who swerve first? I kept
nagging at myself in furious hysterics, sometimes waking up, say
between two and three in the morning, Why precisely you
and not him. There's no law that says so, It's
not written anywhere. Well, then let it be equal, as

(01:57:54):
is usual when men of delicacy meet. He can yield
by half and you by half, and so you will
pass mutually, respecting each other. But it was never so,
and I still kept swerving, and he did not even
notice that I was giving way to him. And then
a most astonishing thoughts suddenly dawned on me. What I

(01:58:17):
fancied what if I meet him and do not step aside, deliberately,
do not step aside, even if I have to shove him? Ah,
how will that be? This bold thought gradually took such
possession of me that it left me no peace. I
dreamed of it ceaselessly, terribly, and deliberately went more often

(01:58:39):
to Nevsky to picture more clearly how I was going
to do it. When I did it, I was in ecstasy.
The intention seemed more and more probable and possible to me.
Not really to shove him, of course, I thought, growing
kinder in advance from joy, but just so simply not
to give way to bump into him, not so very painfully,

(01:59:03):
but so shoulder against shoulder, only as much as decency warrants,
so that exactly as much as he bumps me, I
will also bump him. I was finally completely decided on it,
But the preparations took a very long time. First of all,
at the time of the performance, one had to look

(01:59:24):
as decent as possible and see to one's attire, just
in case supposing, for example, that a public incident should
get started and the public there is superflu seven accountess
goes Prince Deed goes the whole of literature goes. One
must be well dressed. This makes an impression, and in
some sense will put a straight away on an equal

(01:59:46):
footing in the eyes of high society. To that end,
I asked for an advance on my salary and bought
black gloves and a respectable hat at Hirkins. Black gloves,
it seemed to me, were both more imposing and more
in bontun than the lemon colored ones I had first
presumed upon. The color is too striking. It's too much

(02:00:08):
as if a man wants to make a show of himself,
and I did not by the lemon ones. I had
long since prepared a good shirt with white bone cufflings,
but I was very much detained by the overcoat. My
overcoat was not bad at all in itself. It kept
me warm, but it had a quilted cotton lining, and

(02:00:29):
the color was of raccoon, which constituted the height of
lackey dam. It was necessary to change the collar at
any cost, and to acquire a beaver something like what
officers wore. For that. I began walking about the Gostiny
Arcade eight, and after several attempts, set my sights on
a cheap German beaver. Though these German beavers were out

(02:00:53):
very quickly and acquire a most measly look at first
when new, they even seemed quite decent, and I needed
it for only one time I asked the price. It
was expensive, even so, after some solid reflection, I decided
to sell my raccoon collar and the remaining and for

(02:01:14):
me quite considerable. So I decided to try and borrow
from anton Antoniksticin, my department chief, a humble but serious
and positive man who never loaned money to anyone but
to whom I had, once on entering my post, been
especially recommended by the important personage who had placed me
in the civil service. I was terribly tormented to ask

(02:01:38):
money if anton Antonik seemed to me monstrous and shameful.
I even could not sleep for two or three nights,
but then I generally slept little. At that time, I
was in a fever. My heart was somehow vaguely sinking,
or else it would suddenly start to go thump, thump, thump.
Anton Antonik was surprised at first, then he frowned, then

(02:02:00):
he considered, and after all he gave me the loan,
having me sign an authorization for him to take the
loan money from my salary. Two weeks later. Thus everything
was finally ready. A handsome beaver came to reign in
place of the squalid raccoon, and I gradually began to
get down to business. I really couldn't just decide it

(02:02:21):
straight off, slap dash. The thing had to be handled deafly, precisely, gradually.
But I confess that after many attempts, I even began
to despair. We simply couldn't bump into each other. And
that was that. After all my preparations, after all my premeditations,
it would look as if we were just about to

(02:02:42):
bump into each other, and then again I'd give way
and he would pass by without noticing me. I even
recited prayers while approaching him, asking God to inspire me
with decisiveness. One time I was already quite decided, but
it just ended with me getting under his feet, because
in the very last moment, at some two inches away,

(02:03:05):
I lost courage. He quite calmly walked over me, and
I bounced aside like a ball. That night, I was
sick again, feverish and delirious, and suddenly everything ended in
the best possible way. The night before I resolved finally
not to carry out my pernicious intention and to let

(02:03:27):
it all go for nought. And with that purpose in mind,
I went to Nevsky for the last time, just to
see how I was going to let it all go
for no. Suddenly, within three steps of my enemy, I
unexpectedly decided closed my eyes, and we bumped sullily, shoulder
against shoulder. I did not yield an inch and passed

(02:03:48):
by on a perfectly equal footing. He did not even
look back, and pretended not to notice. But he only pretended.
I'm sure of that to this day, I'm sure of it.
Of Course I got the worst of if he was stronger,
but that was not the point. The point was that

(02:04:09):
I had achieved my purpose, preserved my dignity, yielded not
a step, and placed myself publicly on an equal social
footing with him. I returned home, perfectly avenged for everything.
I was in ecstasy. I exulted in, saying italian Arius.

(02:04:29):
Of course I shall not describe for you what happened
to me three days later. If you've read my first
chapter Underground, you can guess for yourself. The officer was
later transferred somewhere. I haven't seen him for about fourteen years.
What's the sweet fellow doing these days? Whom does he

(02:04:53):
crush now? Two? Then, well, of my little debauch would end,
and I'd feel terribly nauseated. Repentance would come. I'd drive
it away. It was too nauseating. Little by little, however,
I'd get used to that as well. I could get

(02:05:16):
used to anything that is not really get used, but
somehow voluntarily consent to endure it. But I had a
way out that reconciled everything, which was to escape into
everything beautiful and lofty. In dreams, of course, I dreamed terribly.
I would dream for three months at a time, shrinking

(02:05:37):
into my corner. And believe me, in those moments, I
bore no resemblance to that gentleman who, in the panic
of his chicken heart, sat sowing a German beaver to
the collar of his overcoat. I'd suddenly become a hero.
And then I wouldn't even have let the six foot
lieutenant into the house. I couldn't even imagine him. Now.

(02:06:01):
What these dreams of mine were, and how I could
have been satisfied with them is difficult to say now.
But I was satisfied with them then. However, I'm somewhat
satisfied with them even now. Dreams came to me with
a particular sweetness and intensity. After a little debauch. They
came with repentance and tears, with curses and raptures. There

(02:06:25):
were moments of such positive ecstasy, such happiness, that not
even the slightest mockery could be felt in me. By God,
there was faith, hope, love. This was the point that
I blindly believed, then that through some miracle, some external circumstance,
all this would suddenly extend expand suddenly a horizon of

(02:06:48):
appropriate activity would present itself, beneficent, beautiful, and above all
quite ready made, precisely what I never knew, but above
all quite ready made. And thus I would say, suddenly
stepped forth under God's heaven, all but on a white
horse and wreathed in laurels. A secondary role was incomprehensible

(02:07:08):
to me. And that was precisely why in reality I
so calmly filled the last Either hero or mud, there
was no in between, and that is what ruined me,
because in the Mud I comforted myself with being a hero.
At other times, and the hero covered up the mud.
For an ordinary man say, it's shameful to be muddied,

(02:07:30):
but a hero is too lofty to be completely muddied. Consequently,
one can get muddied. Remarkably, these influxes of everything beautiful
and lofty used also to come to me during my
little debauches, precisely when I was already at the very bottom.
They would come just so, in isolated little flashes, as

(02:07:50):
if reminding me of themselves. And yet they did not
annihilate the little debauch with their appearance. On the contrary,
it was as if they enlivened it by const and
came in exactly the proportion required for a good sauce.
The sauce here consisted of contradiction and suffering, of tormenting
inner analysis. And all these torments and tormenticules lent my

(02:08:13):
little debauch a certain piquancy, even meaning, in short, they
fully fulfilled the function of a good sauce. All this
was even not without some profundity. For how could I
consent to a simple, direct tried little Scribner's debauch, and
to bearing all this mud on myself? What was there

(02:08:35):
in it that could seduce me and lure me into
the streets at night. No, Sir, I had a noble
loophole for everything. But how much love, Lord, how much

(02:08:58):
love I used to EXPERI variance in those dreams of mine,
in those escapes into everything beautiful and lofty. Though it
was a fantastical love, though it was never in reality
applied to anything human, There was so much of it,
this love, that afterwards, in reality I never even felt
any need to apply it. That would have been an
unnecessary luxury. Everything, however, would always end most happily with

(02:09:23):
a lazy and rapturous transition to art, that is, to
beautiful forms of being, quite ready made, highly stolen from
poets and novelists, and adapted to every possible service or demand.
For example, I triumph over everyone. Everyone, of course, is
lying in the dust, and is forced to voluntarily acknowledge

(02:09:44):
all my perfections, and I forgive them all. I fall
in love. Being a famous poet in court Chamberlain, I
received countless millions, and donate them immediately to mankind, and then,
in their confess before all the world my disgraces, which
of course are not mere disgraces, but contain an exceeding
amount of the beautiful and lofty of something manfred In

(02:10:07):
point nine. Everyone weeps and kisses me. What blockheads they'd
be otherwise, And I go barefoot and hungry to preach
new ideas and crush the retrograde under Rosterlitz point ten.
Than a march is struck up, an amnesty is granted,
the Pope agrees to quit Rome for Brazil. Then a
ball is given for the whole of Italy at the

(02:10:27):
Villa Borghesa, now on the shores of Lake Como, since
Lake Como has been transferred to Rome, especially for the
occasion eleven. Then comes a scene in the bushes, et cetera,
et cetera. You know what I mean. You will say
that it's vulgar and vile to bring all this out
into the marketplace now after so many raptures and tears,

(02:10:48):
to which I myself have confessed. But why is it vile? Sirs?
Can you really think I'm ashamed of it all, or
that it's all any stupider than whatever there may have been,
gentlemen in your own lives. And besides, believe me, some
of it was by no means badly composed, and not

(02:11:10):
all of it took place on Lake Como. However, You're right.
It is indeed both vulgar and vile. And what's violenst
is that I've now started justifying myself before you and
Viler still is that I'm now making this remark enough, however,
otherwise there will be no end to it. Things will

(02:11:33):
go on getting viler and vilar. I was simply incapable
of dreaming for longer than three months at a time,
and would begin to feel an irresistible need to rush
into society. To rush into society, in my case, meant
to go and visit my department chief, anton Antony Setekin.

(02:11:54):
He was the only permanent acquaintance I've had in my
whole life, and I'm even surprised now at this time circumstance,
But even to him, I used to go only when
such a spell came and my dreams had reached such
happiness that I needed instillly and infallibly to embrace people
in the whole of mankind, for which I had to
have available at least one really existing person. Anton Antonik, however,

(02:12:20):
could be visited only on Tuesdays, his day, and consequently,
my need to embrace the whole of mankind always had
to be addustead to a Tuesday. This anton Antonik was
located near the five corners twelve on the fourth floor,
and in four little rooms, low ceilinged, each one smaller
than the last, of a most economical and yellow appearance.

(02:12:43):
There were two daughters and their aunt who poured tea.
The daughters, one thirteen and the other fourteen, were both pugnosed,
and I was terribly abashed before them because they constantly
whispered together and giggled. The host usually sat in the
study on a leather sofa in front of the desk,

(02:13:03):
along with some gray haired guest, an official from our
own or even some other department. I never saw more
than two or three guests there, always the same ones.
They talked about excise negotiations in the Senate salaries, promotions,
his excellency, ways of making oneself liked, and so on

(02:13:23):
and so forth. I had patience enough to sit it
out by these people like a fool for four hours
on end, listening to them, myself not daring or knowing
how to begin talking with them about anything. My mind
would grow dull. I'd break into a sweat several times.
Paralysis hovered over me. But this was good. And beneficial.

(02:13:46):
On returning home, I'd put off for a while my
desire to embrace the whole of mankind. I had, however,
another acquaintance as it worked, Seemenov, a former schoolfellow. No
doubt there were many of my schoolfellows in Petersburg, but
I did not associate with them, and had even stopped

(02:14:07):
nodding to them in the street. I perhaps got myself
transferred to another department so as not to be together
with them, and to cut off all at once. The
whole of that hateful childhood of mine curses on that school,
on those terrible years of penal servitude. In short, I
parted ways with my fellows as soon as I was

(02:14:29):
set free. There were two or three people left whom
I still greeted when we met. Among them was Seemenov,
who had not been distinguished for anything in our school,
was quiet and equable, but in whom I distinguished a
certain independence of character and even honesty. I do not

(02:14:49):
even think he was so very narrow minded. I had
once had some rather bright moments with him, but they
did not last long, and somehow suddenly cloud over. These
recollections were apparently burdensome for him. And it seemed he
kept being afraid I would lapse into the former tone.

(02:15:10):
I suspected that he found me quite disgusting, but I
kept going to him all the same, having no sure
assurance of it. And so once on a Thursday, unable
to endure my solitude, and knowing that on Thursday's Anton
Antonoka's door was closed, I remembered about Siemonov. On the
way up to his fourth floor apartment, I was precisely

(02:15:33):
thinking that I was a burden to this gentleman, and
that I shouldn't be going to him. But since in
the end such considerations, as if by design, always egged
me on further into some ambiguous situation, I did go in.
It was almost a year since I had last seen Siemonov.

(02:15:53):
Three I found two more of my schoolfellows with him.
They were apparently discussing an important matter. None of them
paid more than the slightest attention to my coming, which
was even strange because I hadn't seen them for years. Obviously,
they regarded me as something like a quite ordinary fly.

(02:16:17):
I had not been treated that way even at school.
Though everyone there hated me, of course, I understood that
they must scorn me now for the unsuccess of my
career in the service, and for my having gone too
much to seed, walking around badly dressed, and so on,
which in their eyes constituted a signboard of my incapacity
and slight significance. But all the same, I did not

(02:16:41):
expect such a degree of scorn. Simonov was even surprised
at my coming before too, he had always seemed surprised
at my coming. All this took me aback. I sat
down in some anguish and began to listen to what
they were talking about. The conversation, a serious and even

(02:17:03):
heated one, was about a farewell dinner which these gentlemen
wanted to organize jointly on the very next day for
their schoolfellows. Verkov, an officer in the army who was
leaving for a province far awaysrz Verkov, had also been
my schoolfellow. All the while, I had begun especially to

(02:17:24):
hate him, starting in the higher grades. In the lower grades,
he had been just a pretty frisky boy whom everybody liked. I, however,
had hated him in the lower grades as well, precisely
for being a pretty and frisky boy. He was always
a bad student and got worse as he went on. Nevertheless,

(02:17:48):
he graduated successfully because he had his protectors. In his
last year at school he received an inheritance two hundred
souls thirteen. And since we were almost all of a
he even began to swagger before us. He was a
vulgarian in the highest degree, but a nice fellow. Nonetheless,

(02:18:08):
even while swaggering, and despite the external fantastic and high
falutin forms of honor and glory in our school, everyone
apart from a very few, minced arounds Verkov. The more
so the more he swaggered. They minced not for the
sake of some sort of prophet, but just so because
he was a man favored with the gifts of nature. Besides,

(02:18:33):
it was somehow an accepted thing among us to regard
Zverkov as an expert in the line of adroitness in
good manners. This last particularly infuriated me. I hated the sharp,
on self doubting tone of his voice, his admiration of
his own witticisms, which came out terribly stupid, though we

(02:18:53):
did have a bold tongue. I hated his handsome but
silly face, for which, by the way, I'd gladly have
traded my intelligent one and his free and easy officer
of the forties heirs. I hated the things he used
to say about his future successes with women. He hadn't
ventured to start up with women, not having his officer's

(02:19:13):
appaulets yet, and was looking forward to them impatiently, and
about how he'd be fighting duels all the time. I
remember myself always taciturn, suddenly lighting into Zverkov when he
was talking with some friends about his future gallantries once
during a recess, got quite playful in the end, like
a puppy in the sun, and suddenly declared that he

(02:19:36):
wouldn't leave a single village maiden on his estate without
his attentions, that this was his droit de seignor fourteen,
and if the peasants dared to protest, he'd give them
all a whipping and heap a double quick rent on
the bearded canal Auro supplauded, but I lit into him,
and not at all out of pity for maidens or
their fathers, but simply because such a little snout was

(02:19:59):
being so applauded. I got the best of him that time.
But Zverkov, though stupid, was gay and impudent, and therefore
laughed it off, and even in such a way that,
in truth I did not quite get the best of him.
The laughter remained on his side. Later he got the
best of me several more times, though not with spite,

(02:20:21):
but just somehow jokingly, in passing with a laugh. I
spitefully and contemptuously refused to reply. Upon graduation, he tried
to make a step towards me. I did not resist
too much, because it flattered me, But we quickly and
naturally parted ways. Later I heard about his barracksy lieutenanty successes,

(02:20:44):
about his carousing. Later, other rumors went around that he
was succeeding in the service. Now he no longer greeted
me in the street, and I suspected he was afraid
of compromising himself by greeting a person as insignificant as
I was. I also saw him in the theater once,

(02:21:05):
in the third circle. Now wearing agg wallets, he was
mincing and twining around the daughters of some ancient general.
In three short years, he had gone very much to seed.
Though he was still quite handsome and androit, he had
become somehow puffy and was beginning to grow fat, one
could see that by the age of thirty he would

(02:21:26):
be completely flabby. It was for this, finally departing Zverkov,
that our fellows wanted to give a dinner. They had
constantly associated with him all those three years, though inwardly
they did not consider themselves on an equal footing with him.
I'm sure of that. Of Simonov's two guests, one was

(02:21:47):
Ferfekin from Russian German stock, short, monkey faced, a fool
who comically mimicked everyone, my bitterest enemy, even in the
lower grades. A mean, impudent little fanfaron who played at
been most ticklishly ambitious, though of course he was a
coward at heart. He was one of those admirers of
Zverkov who flirted with him for his own ends, and

(02:22:10):
often borrowed money from him. Simonov's other guest, true toly Eubov,
was an unremarkable person, a military type, tall with a
cold physiognomy, honest enough but worshiping any success, and capable
only of discussing promotions. He was some sort of distant

(02:22:30):
relation of Zverkov's, and that silly though it was, endowed
him with a certain significance among us he had always
regarded me as nothing, but treated me, if not quite politely,
at least passibly well. So if at seven roubles each,
true toly Ubov said, that makes twenty one for the

(02:22:51):
three of us, we can have a nice dinner. Zverkov
doesn't pay, of course, naturally, not since we're inviting him.
Simonov decided, do you really think Ferfeken broken presumptuously and
fervently like an impudent lackey, boasting of his masters, the

(02:23:12):
generals decorations? Do you really think Zverkov will let us
pay for it all? He'll accept out of delicacy, but
he'll stand us to a half dozen himself. And what
are the four of us going to do with a
half dozen? Trueuly Ubov remarked, having paid attention only to
the half dozen, So it's the three of us for

(02:23:36):
with Zverkov twenty one rubles the Hotel de Paris tomorrow
at five o'clock. Simonov, who had been elected manager, finally concluded,
why twenty one? I said, somewhat agitated, apparently even offended.
If you count me, it's twenty eight roubles, not twenty one.

(02:24:00):
It seemed to me that to offer myself suddenly and
so unexpectedly, would even be a most handsome thing, and
they would all be won over at once, and look
upon me with respect. You want to come to, Simonov
remarked with displeasure, somehow avoiding my eyes. He knew me

(02:24:20):
by heart. It infuriated me that he knew me by heart?
What of it, sir? I would seem to be a
schoolfellow too, And I confess I'm even offended at being
left out. I began seething again. And where does one
go looking for you? Ferfekin rudely butted in you were

(02:24:45):
never on good terms with Zverkov, truly you, Bob, added, frowning.
But once I had fastened on, I would not let go.
It seems to me that no one has any right
to judge about that, retorted in a trembling voice, as
if God knows what had happened. Maybe that's precisely why

(02:25:06):
I want to now, because we weren't on good terms before. Well,
who can understand you and these sublimities? Truely, Eubov smirked,
You'll be put on the list, Simonov decided, turning to
me Tomorrow five o'clock the hotel de Paris, make no mistake,

(02:25:31):
and the money. Ferfekin tried to begin in a half
whisper nodding towards me to Simonov, but he stopped short
because even Siemonov became embarrassed enough said true toly Eubov,
rising let him come if he wants to sew much.

(02:25:51):
But we have our own circle where friends. Ferfekin, angry,
was also reaching for his hat. This isn't an official meeting.
Maybe we don't want you at all. They left. Ferfeken
did not even bow to me as he went out. Truly,
Eubov barely nodded without looking. Simonov, with whom I was

(02:26:15):
left face to face, was in some sort of annoyed perplexity,
and gave me a strange glance. He did not sit down,
nor did he invite me to sit down. H M, yes,
tomorrow then, and will you give me the money now?
Just to know for certain, he muttered in embarrassment. I flushed,

(02:26:40):
But as I flushed, I recalled that I had owed
Semenov fifteen roubles from time immemorial, which however, I had
never forgotten, though I also had never repaid it. You
must see Siemonov that I couldn't have known on coming here,
and I am very annoyed with myself for forgetting all right,

(02:27:00):
all right, never mind, you can pay tomorrow at dinner.
I just wanted to know, please don't. He stopped short
and began pacing the room with even greater annoyance. As
he paced, he started planting his heels and stomping still

(02:27:21):
more heavily. I'm not keeping you, am I, I asked,
after a two minute silence. Oh no, he suddenly roused himself.
That is to tell the truth. Yes, you see, I've
also got to stop by it not far from here,

(02:27:43):
he added in a sort of apologetic voice, and somewhat ashamedly.
Ah my god, why didn't you say so, I exclaimed,
grabbing my cap, but with an appearance of remarkable nonchalance,
which flew down to me from god knows where. It's

(02:28:04):
not far really, just a couple of steps, Simonov kept saying,
as he saw me to the entryway with a bustling
air that did not become him at all tomorrow. Then
at five o'clock sharp, he called out as I went
down the stairs. He was so pleased I was leaving.

(02:28:25):
I however, was furious what possessed me, what possessed me
to pop up like that? I gnashed my teeth striding
along the street. And for that scoundrel, that little pig
of Zverkov, I mustn't go, of course, just spit on it.
Of course I'm not bound, am I? Tomorrow I'll send

(02:28:49):
Simonov a note. But what made me furious was that
I knew I would certainly go. I would go on purpose.
And the more tactless, the more improper was for me
to go, the sooner I would go. And there was
even a positive obstacle to my going. I had no money.
All I had lying there was nine rubles, but of

(02:29:13):
that seven had to go the next day for the
wages of Appollon, my servant, who lived with me for
seven roubles a month, grubbed not included. And not to
pay him his wages was impossible, given Apollon's character. But
of this dog, this thorn in my side, I will
speak some other time. Nevertheless, I knew that even so

(02:29:37):
I would not pay him, but would certainly go. That
night I had the most hideous dreams, no wonder all
evening I was oppressed by recollections of the penal servitude
of my school years, and I could not get rid
of them. I had been tucked away in that school
by distant relations whose dependent I was, and of whom

(02:30:00):
I had no notion. Thereafter, tucked away, orphaned, already beaten
down by their reproaches, already pensive taciturn, gazing wildly about
at everything. My schoolfellows met me with spiteful and merciless derision.
Because I was not like any of them. But I
could not endure derision. I could not get along so

(02:30:21):
cheaply as they got along with each other. I immediately
began to hate them and shut myself away from everyone
in timorous, wounded and inordinate pride. Their crudeness outraged me.
They laughed cynically at my face, my ungaily figure, and
yet how stupid their own faces were. In our school,

(02:30:44):
facial expressions degenerated and would become somehow especially stupid. So
many beautiful children came to us a few years later,
it was disgusting even to look at them. At the
age of sixteen, I gloomily marveled at them. Even then.
I was amazed at the pettiness of their thinking, the

(02:31:06):
stupidity of their pastimes, games, conversations. They had so little
understanding of the most essential things, so little interest in
the most impressive, startling subjects, that I began willy nilly
to regard them as beneath me. It was not injured
vanity that prompted me to do so. And for God's sake,

(02:31:28):
don't come creeping at me with those banal objections that
one is sick of to the point of nausea, that
I was only dreaming. While they already understood real life.
They understood nothing, no real life, and I swear it
was this in them that outraged me most of all.
On the contrary, they took the most obvious, glaring reality

(02:31:49):
in a fantastically stupid way, and were already accustomed to
worshiping success alone. Everything that was just but humiliated in
downtry they laughed at, disgracefully and hardheartedly. They regarded rank
as intelligence. At the age of sixteen, they were already
talking about cushy billets. Of course, much of this came

(02:32:13):
from stupidity, from the bad examples that had ceaselessly surrounded
their childhood. In adolescence, they were depraved to the point
of monstrosity. To be sure, here too, there was more
of the external, more of an assumed cynicism. To be sure, youthfulness,
in a certain freshness could be glimpsed in them, even

(02:32:35):
through the depravity. But even this freshness was unattractive in them,
and showed itself as a sort of knavery. I hated
them terribly, though I was perhaps worse than they were.
They paid me back in kind and did not conceal
their loathing for me, but I no longer had any
wish for their love. On the contrary, I constantly thirsted

(02:32:58):
for their humiliation. To rid myself of their derision, I
purposely began to study as hard as I could, and
worked my way into the number of the best. This
made an impression. Besides, they began, little by little to
realize that I had by then read such books as
they were unable to read, and understood such things not

(02:33:21):
part of our special course, as they had never even
heard of this. They regarded wildly and derisively, but morally
they submitted, the more so as even the teachers paid
attention to me. In this respect. The derision stopped, but
the animosity remained, and cold strained relations set in Towards

(02:33:43):
the end I myself could not stand it. As I
grew older, a need for people, for friends developed. I
tried to start getting closer with some, but the attempt
always came out unnaturally and would simply end of itself.
I also once had a friend, but I was already
a despot in my soul. I wanted to have unlimited

(02:34:05):
power over his soul. I wanted to instill in him
a contempt for his surrounding milieu. I demanded of him
a haughty and final break with that milieu. I frightened
him with my passionate friendship. I drove him to tears,
to convulsions. He was a naive, self giving soul. But
once he had given himself wholly to me, I immediately

(02:34:26):
started to hate him and pushed him away, as if
I had needed him only to gain a victory over him,
only to bring him into subjection. But I could not
be victorious over everyone. My friend was also not like
any of them, and represented the rarest exception. The first
thing I did upon leaving school was quit the special

(02:34:46):
service for which I had been intended, in order to
break all ties, to curse the past and bury it
in the dust, and the devil knows why. After that,
I dragged myself to the Semenov In the morning, I
roused myself early, I jumped out of bed and agitation,
as if all this was going to start happening right away.

(02:35:10):
But then I did believe that some radical break in
my life was coming and could not fail to come
that very day. It may have been lack of habit
or something, but all my life, when faced with any
external event, be it ever so small, I always thought
that right then, some radical break in my life was
going to come. Nevertheless, I went to work as usual,

(02:35:33):
but slipped away two hours early to go home and
get ready. The main thing I thought is that I
mustn't be the first to arrive, or they'll think I'm
all too delighted. But there were thousands of such main things,
and they all agitated me to the point of impotence.
I polished my boots a second time with my own hands.

(02:35:55):
For the life of Immapplon would not have polished them
twice in one day, Finding inordinate I polished them therefore,
having stolen the brushes from the entryway, so that he
would not somehow notice and afterwards begin to despise me
that I carefully inspected my clothes and found that everything
was old, shabby, worn out. I had indeed become too slovenly.

(02:36:22):
My uniform was perhaps in good condition, but I really
couldn't go to dinner in my uniform. And the main
thing was that on my trousers, right on the knee,
there was a huge yellow spot. I could sense already
that this spot alone would rob me of nine tenths
of my dignity. I also knew that it was very

(02:36:43):
mean to think so, but I can't be bothered with thinking.
Now now comes reality, I thought, and my heart sank.
I also knew perfectly well even then that I was
monstrously exaggerating all these facts, But there was nothing to
be done. I could no longer control myself. I was
shaking with fever. In despair, I pictured how coldly and

(02:37:08):
condescendingly that scoundrel's verkov would meet me with what dull
all invincible contempt, The duller trudely Eubov would look at me,
how nastily and impudently that little snot Ferfeken would titter
at my expense, sucking up his verkov. How perfectly Siemonov
would understand it all in himself, and how he would
despise me for the meanness of my vanity, and faintheartedness,

(02:37:31):
and the main thing, how measly non literary commonplace. It
was all going to be. Of course, it would be
best not to go at all, But that was more
impossible than anything else. Once I began to be drawn,
I used to be drawn in all the way over
my head. Afterwards, I'd have been taunting myself for the

(02:37:55):
rest of my life. So you turned coward, turned coward
before reality. That's that's what you did. You turned coward.
On the contrary, I passionately wanted to prove to all
that riff raff that I was, by no means the coward.
I made myself out to be more than that. In
the strongest paroxysm of cowardly fever, I dreamed of getting

(02:38:17):
the best of them, winning them over, carrying them away,
making them love me. If only for my lofty mind
and indubitable wit. They would drop Zverkov. He would sit
on the sidelines, silent and ashamed, and I would crush him. Afterwards,
I would perhaps make peace with him, and we would
pledge eternal friendship. Yet the most bitter and offensive thing

(02:38:39):
for me was that I knew even then, knew fully
and certainly that in fact I needed none of that,
and in fact I had no wish to crush subject
or attract them, and would be the first not to
give a penny for the whole outcome, even if I
achieved it. Oh, how I prayed to God for that
day to pass more quickly. In inexpressible anguish, I kept

(02:39:02):
going to the window, opening the vent and peering into
the dull darkness of thickly falling wet snow. At last,
my wretched little wall clock hissed five. I grabbed my hat, and,
trying not to glance at that balon, who since morning
had been waiting to receive his wages from me, but
in his pride refused to speak, first slipped past him

(02:39:25):
out the door, and in a coach hired for the purpose,
with my last fifty copecks, drove up like a grand
gentleman to the Hotel de Paris. Four. I had already
known the evening before that I would be the first
to arrive, but primacy was no longer the point. Not

(02:39:46):
only were none of them there, but I even had
difficulty finding our room. The table was not quite laid yet,
what did it mean? After much questioning, I finally got
out of the waiters that the dinner had been ordered
for six o'clock, not five. This was confirmed in the bar.

(02:40:09):
I was even ashamed to be asking it was only
five twenty five if they had changed the time. They ought,
in any case, to have informed me. That's what the
city mail is for, and not to have subjected me
to disgrace, both in my own and be it only
the waiter's eyes. I sat down, a waiter began laying

(02:40:30):
the table in his presence. It felt somehow still more offensive.
By six o'clock, in addition to the lighted lamps, candles
were brought into the room. It had not occurred to
the waiter, however, to bring them. When I arrived in
the next room, two customers, gloomy, angry looking, and silent,

(02:40:52):
were having dinner at separate tables in one of the
farther rooms. It was very noisy. There was even shouting.
The guffaws of a whole bunch of people could be heard.
Some nasty French squeals could be heard. It was a
dinner with ladies, quite nauseating. In short, rarely have I

(02:41:12):
spent a nastier moment, so that when at exactly six
o'clock they all came in together, I was glad of
them for the first moment, as of some sort of deliverers,
and almost forgot that I ought to look offended. Zverkov
came at the head of them, obviously the leader. Both
he and they were laughing, But on seeing these, Verkov

(02:41:34):
assumed a dignified air, approached unhurriedly, bending slightly as if
coquettishly at the waist, and gave me his hand benignly,
but not very with a certain cautious, almost senatorial politeness,
as if by offering me his hand he were protecting
himself from something I had been imagining on the contrary,

(02:41:55):
that as soon as he walked and he would start
laughing his former laugh shrill punctuated by little shrieks, and
from the first there would be his flat jokes and witticisms.
I had been preparing myself for them since the previous evening,
but I by no means expected such down the nose,
such excellential benignity. So he now fully considered himself immeasurably

(02:42:19):
superior to me in all respects. If he simply wanted
to offend me with this senatorial air. It was not
so bad. I thought I'd be able to get back
at him somehow. But what if indeed, without any wish
to offend me, the little I E had seriously crept
into a sheep's noddle that he was immeasurably superior to

(02:42:41):
me and could look at me in no other way
than patronizingly. The supposition alone left me breathless, I learned
with surprise of your wish to participate with us. He
began lisping and simpering and drawing the words out, something
that had never happened with him before. We somehow keep

(02:43:02):
missing each other. You shy away from us. More's the pity.
We're not so terrible as you think, well, sir. In
any case, on glaad to renee you, and he casually
turned to place his hat on the windowsill. Have you

(02:43:23):
been waiting? Long, asked true toly Eubov. I arrived at
exactly five o'clock, as I was appointed yesterday, I answered, loudly,
and with an irritation that promised an imminent explosion. Didn't
you inform him that the time had been changed? True
Toly Eubov turned to Simonov. I didn't I forgot, the

(02:43:50):
latter answered, but without any repentance and not even apologizing
to me when to make arrangements for your d'euvs. So
you've been here for an hour already. Ah, poor fellow,
Zverkov exclaimed derisively, because according to his notions, it must
indeed have been terribly funny. Following him, the scoundrel Ferfekin

(02:44:14):
broke up in his scoundrelly voice, yelping like a little
mut He too thought my situation terribly funny and embarrassing.
It's not funny in the least, I cried to Ferfikin,
growing more and more irritated. It's other people's fault, not mine,

(02:44:36):
they neglected to inform me. It's simply absurd, not only absurd,
but something else as well. Truly, you, bob, grumbled naively,
interceding for me. You're too mild, sheer discourtesy, not deliberate,

(02:44:58):
of course, But how is it that Semenov hum if
that had been played on me, observed Ferfekin. I'd but
you should have ordered yourself something, Zverkov interrupted, or just
asked to have dinner without waiting you must agree that

(02:45:19):
I could have done so without any permission, I snapped.
If I waited, it was let's be seated, gentlemen, cried
the entering Siemonov. Everything's ready. I can answer for the champagne.
It's perfectly chilled. I didn't know your address. How is
one to find you? He suddenly turned to me, but again,

(02:45:42):
somehow without looking at me. He obviously had something against me.
He must have changed his mind. Since yesterday everyone sat down,
I too sat down. The table was round. Truly Eubob
ended up on my left, Seemenov on my right. Zverkov

(02:46:06):
sat down across the table, and Ferfeken next to him,
between him and truly Eubov. So, oh, you're in the department.
Zverkov continued to occupy himself with me. Seeing that I
was embarrassed, he seriously imagined I must be treated benignly,

(02:46:27):
end so to speak, encouraged. What does he want me
to throw a bottle at him or something? I thought,
furious from lack of habit, I was becoming irritated with
a somehow unnatural rapidity in the why office, I answered, curtly,

(02:46:47):
staring at my plate, And you find it profitable? Tell me, plaes,
what why is it that made you leave your former
position that I felt like leaving my former position? I
drolled three times longer, now losing almost all control of myself,

(02:47:09):
Ferfekin snorted. Siemonov looked at me ironically. Truly, Eubov stopped
eating and began studying me with curiosity. Zverkov winced, but
declined to notice. We yell, and how's your keep? What keep?

(02:47:29):
Your salary? That is quite the examiner, aren't you? However,
I told him straight out what my salary was. I
was blushing terribly, not a fortune, Zverkov observed pompously. No, sir,

(02:47:50):
can't go dining in Kafer restaurants. Ferfekin added, impudently, in
my opinion, it's even down like poor. Truly you bob
observed seriously, And how thin you've grown, how changed since?
Zverkov added, not without venom, now studying me in my

(02:48:12):
attire with a sort of insolent regret. Oh, come stop
embarrassing him, Ferfekin exclaimed, tittering, My dear sir, I'll have
you know that I am not embarrassed, I finally exploded.
Do you hear, sir? I am having dinner here in
a kaffir restaurant at my own expense, my own and

(02:48:35):
no one else's. Make a note of that, Monsieur Furfikin,
Why at and who here is not dining at his
own expense? If you mean to Ferfekin fastened on, turning
red as a lobster and steering me furiously in the face. Weel,

(02:48:56):
I replied, feeling that I had gone too far. I
supp suppose we'd better occupy ourselves with more intelligent conversation.
So you intend to display your intelligence. Don't worry that
would be quite superfluous here. You just keep cackling away,
And my dear sir, haven't lost your mind by any

(02:49:21):
chance in that deep moment of yours. Enough, gentleman, enough,
Zverkov cried, almightily, How stupid this is, graul Seemonov. Stupid. Indeed,
we gathered as a company of friends to see a
good school chum off on his journey, and you go

(02:49:42):
keeping score. Truly, you boff began to speak rudely, addressing
me alone. You invited yourself yesterday, so don't disrupt the
general harmony. Enough enough, Zverkov shouted, Stop, gentlemen, this won't
do better. Let me tell you how I almost got

(02:50:05):
married two days ago. And there followed some lampoon about
how the gentleman almost got married two days before. There was, however,
not a word in it about marriage. But generals, colonels
and even court dignitaries kept flitting through the story, with
Zverkov among them, and all but at their head approving

(02:50:27):
laughter began. Ferfe Cain even let out little squeals. They
all dropped me, and I sat crushed and annihilated. Lord,
is this any company for me? I thought? And what
a fool I made of myself before them. However, I

(02:50:48):
let Ferfekin go too far. These olks think they'd done
me an honor by giving me a place at their table.
They don't realize that it's I I who am doing
them an honor, and not they may how thin such clothes,
oh cursed trousers. Zverkov has already noticed the yellow spot

(02:51:11):
on the knee. But what's the point. Get up from
the table now this minute, take your hat and simply
leave without saying a word out of scorn, And tomorrow,
if they like a duel scoundrels, am I going to

(02:51:31):
be sorry about seven rubles. Maybe they'll think devil take it.
I'm not sorry about the seven rubles. I'm leaving this minute.
Of course, I stayed. I drank lafite and sherry by
the glassful. In my grief from lack of habit, I

(02:51:55):
was quickly getting drunk, and as my drunkenness increased, so
did my vexation. I suddenly wanted to insult them all
in the boldest fashion and only then leave, to seize
the right moment and show myself, let them say he's
funny but no dummy, and in short, devil take them.

(02:52:17):
I insolently looked around at them all with bleary eyes,
but it was as if they had already forgotten me entirely.
They were having a noisy, loud merry time for themselves.
Zverkov kept on talking. I began to listen. Zverkov was

(02:52:38):
telling about some magnificent lady whom he had finally driven
to a declaration. Naturally he was lying like a horse,
and that he had been especially helped in this matter
by his intimate friend, some princely named Kolia, a Huzar
owner of three thousand souls. And yet there's no sign
of this Kolia owner of three thousand soul at your

(02:53:00):
farewell party, I suddenly butted into the conversation. For a moment,
everyone fell silent, So now you're drunk, True toly Eyubov
finally consented to notice me, casting a sidelong, contemptuous glance
in my direction. Zverkov silently studied me as if I

(02:53:21):
were a little bug. I lowered my eyes. Simonov hurriedly
began pouring champagne. True toly Eubov raised his glass. Everyone
did the same, except for me. Your health and a
good journey, he cried to Zverkov, to those old years, gentlemen,

(02:53:44):
to our future. Hurrah. Everyone drank and fell to kissing. Zverkov.
I did not budge the full glass stood untouched before me.
You're not going to drink, true toly Eubov, having lost
all patience, roared, turning to me threateningly. I wish to

(02:54:08):
make a speech on my own part separately, and then
I will drink, mister true tohly Eubov, disgusting little stinker,
Simonov growled. I straightened up on my chair and feverishly
took my glass, preparing for something extraordinary, and still not
knowing myself precisely what I was going to say. Silence,

(02:54:33):
Ferfekin called out in French, here comes all kinds of intelligence.
Zverkov listened very seriously, realizing what was going on. Lieutenant Zverkov, Sir,
I began, let it be known to you that I
hate phrases, phrasemongers, and tight fitting waists. That is the

(02:54:55):
first point, and the second will follow forthwith everyone stirred greatly.
Second point, I hate gallantry and gallanteizers, especially gallanteizers. Third point,
I love truth, sincerity, and honesty. I went on almost mechanically,

(02:55:17):
because I was already beginning to go numb with horror,
unable to understand how I could be speaking this way.
I love, thought, Monsieur is Verkov. I love true friendship
on an equal footing, and not etchem I love. However,
why not, I too shall drink to your health, Monsieur

(02:55:40):
is Verkov, Charm the circassion girls, shoot the enemies of
the fatherland, and and to your health, Monsieur is Verkov.
Zverkov rose from his chair, bowed to me and said
much obliged to you. He was terribly offended and even

(02:56:01):
turned pale. Devil take it roared trudily Eubov banging his
fist on the table. No, sir, it's a punch in
the mug for that. Ferfikin shrieked. He ought to be
thrown out, Siemonov growled. Not a word, gentleman, not a move,

(02:56:25):
Zverkov cried, solemnly, checking the general indignation. I thank you all,
but I myself am quite capable of proving to him
how much I value his words. Mister Ferfekin, tomorrow you
will give me satisfaction for your present words, I said, lovely,

(02:56:46):
pompously addressing Ferfekin. You mean a duel, sir, at your pleasure,
the man answered, But I must have been so ridiculous
with my challenge, and it was so unsuited to my
figure that everyone, and finally even Ferfekin simply fell over laughing. Yes,

(02:57:06):
drop him. Of course, he's completely drunk now, true toly,
Eubov said, with loathing, I'll never forgive myself for putting
him on the list. Siemonov growled again. Now's the time
to up and hurl a bottle at them all, I thought,

(02:57:27):
took the bottle and poured myself a full glass. No,
i'd better sit it out to the end. I went on,
thinking you'd be glad, gentleman, if I left no chance
of that. I'll purposely sit and drink to the end,

(02:57:47):
as a sign that I attached not the slightest importance
to you. I'll sit and drink because this is a
pothouse and I paid good money to get in. I'll
sit and drink because as I regard you as pawns,
nonexistent pawns. I'll sit and drink and sing if I like, yes, sirs,

(02:58:08):
and sing because I have the right to sing a
chem But I did not sing. I simply tried not
to look at any of them. I assumed the most
independent attitudes and waited impatiently for them to start talking
to me first. But alas they didn't, And oh how

(02:58:29):
I wished, how I wished at that moment to make
peace with them. It struck eight o'clock, and finally nine
they moved from the table to the sofa. Zverkov sprawled
on the couch, placing one foot on a little round table.
The wine was also transferred there. Indeed he did stand

(02:58:52):
them to three bottles of his own. He did not
offer me any, of course, everyone sat clustered around him
on the sofa. They listened to him with all but reverence.
One could see he was loved. But why why, I

(02:59:14):
kept thinking to myself. From time to time they would
get into drunken raptures and kiss each other. They talked
about the Caucasus, about what true passion is about, gambling
about profitable posts in the service, about how big was
the income of the Husar Podkarseevski, whom none of them
knew personally, and rejoiced that it was very big. About

(02:59:37):
the remarkable beauty and grace of Princess D, whom none
of them had ever even seen. Finally it came to
Shakespeare being immortal. I was smiling contemptuously and pacing the
other side of the room, directly opposite the sofa, along
the wall, from the table to the stoven back. I

(02:59:57):
wished with all my might to show that I could
do without them, And yet I purposely clumped with my boots,
coming down hard on the heels. But all in vain.
They paid no attention. I had patience enough to pace
like that right in front of them, from eight o'clock
to eleven in one and the same space from the

(03:00:19):
table to the stove, and from the stove back to
the table. I'm just pacing, and no one can tell
me not to A waiter who kept coming into the room,
paused several times to look at me. My head was
spinning from so much turning. At moments, I thought I
was delirious. I sweated and dried out three times in

(03:00:40):
those three hours. Every once in a while, a thought
pierced my heart with the deepest, most poisonous pain that
ten years, twenty years, forty years would pass, and even
after forty years I would still recall with revulsion and
humiliation these dirtiest, most ridiculous, and most terrible minutes of
my entire life life. For a man to humiliate himself

(03:01:03):
more shamelessly and more voluntarily was really impossible. I fully,
fully understood that, and still I went on pacing from
the table to the stove and back. Oh, if you
only knew what feelings and thoughts I'm capable of, and
how developed I am. I thought at moments, mentally addressing
the sofa where my enemies were sitting. But my enemies

(03:01:28):
behaved as if I were not even in the room.
Once once only they turned to me, namely when Zverkov
began talking about Shakespeare, and I suddenly get fought contemptuously.
I snorted so effectively and nastily that they all broke
off the conversation at once and silently watched me for
about two minutes, seriously, without laughing, as I paced along

(03:01:52):
the wall from table to stove and paid no attention
to them. But nothing came of it. They did not
start talking to me, and after two minutes dropped me again.
It struck eleven gentlemen, cried Zverkov, rising from the sofa.
Now let us all go there, right right, The others

(03:02:14):
began to say. I turned sharply to Zverkov. I was
so worn out, so broken, that I had to finish it,
even if it killed me. I was in a fever,
my hair what with sweat stuck to my forehead and temples. Zverkov,

(03:02:35):
I ask your forgiveness, I said, abruptly and resolutely, yours too, Furfekin,
and everyone's everyone's. I've offended everyone. Aha, So dueling's not
your sport, Furfekin hissed venomously. A sharp pain went through

(03:02:55):
my heart. No, I'm not afraid of a duel, Furfeken,
I'm ready to fight you tomorrow, even after a reconciliation.
I even insist on it, and you cannot refuse me.
I want to prove to you that I'm not afraid
of a duel. You'll have the first shot, and I'll

(03:03:17):
shoot into the air. He's indulging himself, remarked Siemonov. Downright
crack brained, echoed trudely Eubov, let us pass. Why re
you standing in the way? What do you want? Zverkov
responded contemptuously. Their faces were red, their eyes were shiny.

(03:03:42):
They had drunk a lot. I ask your friendship, Zverkov,
I offended you, But why why you offended? M m me.
I'll have you know, my dear sir, that you could never,
under any so circumstances offend me. That's enough out of you,

(03:04:05):
say a side, True toly Eubov clinched. Let's go. Olympia
is mine, gentlemen, It's agreed, cried Zverkov. No objections, No objections,
they answered, laughing. I stood there, spat upon the bunch

(03:04:29):
noisily left the room. True toly Eubov struck up some
stupid song. Simonov stayed behind for a tiny moment to
tip the waiters. I suddenly went over to him. Simonov,
give me six roubles, I said, resolutely and desperately. He

(03:04:54):
looked at me in extreme astonishment, his eyes somehow dull.
He too was drunk. You want to go there with
us too? Yes, I have no money, he snapped, grinned scornfully,
and started out of the room. I seized him by

(03:05:15):
his overcoat. It was a nightmare, Simonov. I saw you
had money. Why do you refuse me? Am I as scoundrel?
Beware of refusing me if you knew, if you knew
why I'm asking. Everything depends on it, my whole future,

(03:05:39):
all my plans. Simonov took out the money and almost
flung it at me. Take it, if you're so shameless,
he said, pitilessly, and ran to catch up with them.
I remained alone for a moment, disorder, leftovers, a broken
wineglass on the floor, spilt wine, cigarette butts, drunkenness and

(03:06:03):
delirium in my head, tormenting anguish in my heart. And finally,
the servant who had seen everything and heard everything, and
kept peeking curiously into my eyes. There, I cried out.
Either they'll all fall on their knees, embrace my legs
and beg for my friendship, or or I'll Slapzverkov's face.

(03:06:28):
V Here it is here, It is at last the
encounter with reality, I muttered, rushing headlong down the stairs.
This is no longer the pope leaving Rome and going
to Brazil. This is no longer a ball on Lake Como.
What a scoundrel you are raced through my head to

(03:06:49):
laugh at that. Now, what of it, I cried, answering myself.
All is lost. Now Their trail was already cold, but
no matter I knew where they had gone. By the
porch stood a lonely jack, a night coachman in a

(03:07:10):
homespun coat, all dusted with the still falling wet and
as if warm snow, it was steamy and stuffy. His
shaggy little piebald nag was also all dusted with snow
and was coughing. I very much remember that. I rushed
to the bast covered sled, But as I raised my
foot to get in the recollection of the way Semenoff

(03:07:32):
had just given me the six roubles cut me down,
and I dropped into the sled like a sack. No
much must be done. To redeem it all, I cried out.
But I will redeem it or perish on the spot.
This very night drive we sat off, A whole whirlwind

(03:07:56):
was spinning in my head, beg for my friendship on
their knees. That they won't do. It's a mirage, a
vulgar mirage, revolting, romantic and fantastic, another ball on Lake Como,
And therefore I must slap Zverkov's face. It's my duty,

(03:08:18):
and so it's decided. I'm flying now to slap his
face faster the jack started snapping the reins. I'll do
it as soon as I walk in. Ought I to
say a few words first, as a preface to the slap. No,

(03:08:40):
I'll just walk in and slap him. They'll all be
sitting in the drawing room, and he'll be on the
sofa with Olympia. Cursed Olympia. She laughed at my face
once and refused me. I'll pull Olympia by the hair
and Zverkov by the ears. No, better buy one ear,

(03:09:02):
and by that ear, I'll lead him around the whole room.
They'll probably all start beating me and kick me out.
It's even certain. Let them still. I slapped him first,
it was my initiative, and by the coat of honor,
that's everything. He's branded now and no beating can wash

(03:09:23):
away that slap. But only a duel. He'll have to fight, yes,
and let them beat me. Now, let them ignoble as
they are truly. You, Bob especially will do the beating.
He's so strong. Ferfakin will fasten on from the side
and certainly grab my hair, that's sure. But let them

(03:09:47):
let them. I'm ready for it. Their sheep's novels will
finally be forced to grasp the tragic in it all.
As they're dragging me to the door, I'll cry out
them that, in fact, they're not worth my little finger. Faster, coachman, faster,

(03:10:07):
I shouted to the jack. He even jumped and swung
his whip for I shouted quite wildly. We'll fight at dawn.
That's settled. It's all over with the department, Ferfeken said
deep moment earlier, instead of department. But where to get

(03:10:30):
the pistols? Nonsense. I'll take an advance on my salary
and buy them and the powder and the bullets. That's
the second's affair. But how will I manage it all?
Before dawn, and where will I find a second? I

(03:10:51):
have no acquaintances. Nonsense, I cried, whirling myself up even
more non sense. The first passerby I speak to in
the street is duty bound to be my second, just
like pulling a drowning man from the water. The most
eccentric situations must be allowed, for were I to ask

(03:11:15):
even the director himself to be my second tomorrow, he
too would have to agree out of knightly feelings alone
and keep the secret anton Antonik. The thing was that
at the same moment I could see more clearly and
vividly than anyone else in the entire world, the whole
most odious absurdity of my suppositions, and the whole other

(03:11:39):
side of the coin. But faster, coachman, faster, you rogue,
eh master, said the backbone of the nation. I suddenly
felt cold all over, and wouldn't it be better better
to go straight home? Now? Oh my god? Why why

(03:12:03):
did I invite myself to this dinner yesterday? But no, impossible?
And that three hour stroll from table to stove. No, they,
they and no one else must pay me for that stroll.
They must wash away that dishonor faster and what if

(03:12:26):
they take me to the police, would they dare they'd
be afraid of a scandal. And what if Sverkov should
refuse the duel out of contempt? That's even certain. But
then I'll prove to them. Then I'll rush to the
posting house. As he's leaving tomorrow. I'll grab him by

(03:12:47):
the leg. I'll tear his overcoat off. As he's getting
into the coach, I'll fasten my teeth on his hand.
I'll bite him. See all of you, what a desperate
man can be driven to? Let him beat me on
the head, and the rest of them from behind, I'll
cry out to all the public, See, here's a young

(03:13:10):
pup going off to charmlessir cassion girls with my spit
on his face. After that, of course, everything's over. The
department has vanished from the face of the earth. I'll
be seized, I'll be taken to court. I'll be thrown
out of work, put in prison, sent to Siberia, exiled,

(03:13:33):
who cares. Fifteen years later, I'll drag myself after him
in rags, a beggar. When I'm let out of prison,
I'll find him somewhere in a provincial capital. He'll be
married and happy. He'll have a grown up daughter. I'll say, look, monster,

(03:13:54):
look at my sunken cheeks and my rags. I lost everything, career, happiness, art, science,
a beloved woman, and all because of you. Here are
the pistols. I've come to discharge my pistol, and and
I forgive you. Here I'll fire into the air, and

(03:14:15):
no more will be heard of me. I even began
to weep, though I knew perfectly well at the same
moment that all this came from Sylvia and from Lhermantoff's
masquerade point fifteen. And suddenly I felt terribly ashamed, so
ashamed that I stopped the horse, got out of the sled,
and stood in the snow in the middle of the street.

(03:14:36):
The jack watched me with amazement inside. What was to
be done? To go there was impossible, The result would
be nonsense. To leave things as they were was also impossible,
because the result would then be Lord, how can I
leave it after such offenses? No, I exclaimed, rushing back

(03:15:03):
to the sled. It's predestined its fate. Drive on, drive
on there, and in my impatience, I hit the coachman
in the neck with my fist what's with you? Why
are you punching? The little peasant cried, lashing the nag, however,

(03:15:23):
so that she started kicking with her hind legs. What
snow was falling in thick flakes. I uncovered myself. I
didn't care about it. I forgot everything else because I
had finally resolved on the slap and felt with horror
that it would happen without fail now presently, and that
no power could stop it. Desolate street lamps flashed sullenly

(03:15:47):
in the snowy haze, like torches at a funeral. Snow
got under my overcoat, my jacket, my necktie and melted there.
I didn't cover myself. All was lost. In any case,
we drove up at last. I jumped out, almost unconscious,
ran up the steps, and began knocking at the door

(03:16:09):
with my hands and feet. My legs especially were growing
weak at the knees. The door was opened somehow quickly,
as if they knew I was coming. Indeed, Simonov had
forewarned them that there might be one more, and they
had to be forewarned there and generally to take precautions.

(03:16:30):
This was one of those fashion shops of the time
which have long since been done away with by the police.
During the day, it was actually a shop, and in
the evening those who had references could come and visit.
I walked with quick steps through the dark store into
the familiar drawing room, where only one candle was burning,

(03:16:51):
and stopped in perplexity. No one was there. Where are they,
I asked some one, but of course they had already
had time to disperse. In front of me stood a
person with a stupid smile, the hostess herself, who knew
me slightly. A moment later, the door opened and another

(03:17:15):
person came in, paying no attention to anything. I was
pacing the room, and I think talking to myself. It
was as if I had been saved from death, and
I joyfully sensed it with my whole being, for I
would have slapped him. I would certainly certainly have slapped him.
But now they're not here, and everything's vanished, everything's changed.

(03:17:40):
I kept looking over my shoulder. I still could not
grasp it. Mechanically. I glanced at the girl who had
come in before me flashed afresh, young, somewhat pale face,
with straight, dark eyebrows and serious, as if somewhat astonished eyes.
I liked it at once. I would have hated her

(03:18:02):
if she'd been smiling. I began to study her more attentively,
and as if with effort. My thoughts were not all collected.
Yet there was something simple, hearted and kind in that face,
yet somehow serious, to the point of strangeness. I was
certain that it was a disadvantage to her there, and

(03:18:22):
that none of those fools had noticed her. However, she
could not have been called a beauty. Though she was tall, strong,
well built, she was dressed extremely simply. Something nasty stung me.
I went straight up to her. By chance, I looked
in a mirror. My agitated face seemed to me repulsive

(03:18:46):
in the extreme, pale, wicked, mean, with disheveled hair. Let
it be, I'm glad of it, I thought, I'm precisely
glad that I'll seem repulsive to her. I like it
sick Somewhere behind a partition, as if under some strong pressure,
as if someone were strangling it. A clock wheezed. After

(03:19:10):
an unnaturally prolonged wheeze, there followed a thin vial and
somehow unexpectedly rapid chiming, as if someone had suddenly jumped forward.
It struck too I came to my senses, though I
had not been asleep, but only lying there half oblivious.
The room, narrow, small and low, encumbered by a huge wardrobe,

(03:19:34):
and littered with cartons, rags, and all sorts of cast
off clothing, was almost totally dark. The candle, but burning
on the table at the other end of the room,
was about to go out, barely flickering every now and
then in a few moments it would be quite dark.
It did not take me long to recover myself. Everything

(03:19:57):
came back to me at once, without acad effort, instantly,
as if it had just been lying in wait to
pounce on me again. And even in my oblivion, there
had still constantly remained some point, as it were, in
my memory that simply refused to be forgotten, around which
my drowsy reveries turned heavily. Yet it was strange. Everything

(03:20:19):
that had happened to me that day seemed to me,
now on awakening, to have happened long long ago, as
if I had long long ago outlived at all. There
were fumes in my head, something was as if hovering
over me, brushing against me, agitating and troubling me. Anguish

(03:20:40):
and bile were again boiling up in me and seeking
a way out. Suddenly I saw two open eyes beside me,
peering at me curiously and obstinately. Their expression was coldly indifferent, sullen,
as if utterly alien. It gave one a heavy feeling.
A sullen thought was born in my brain and passed

(03:21:01):
through my whole body, like some vile sensation, similar to
what one feels on entering an underground cellar, damp and musty.
It was somehow unnatural that these two eyes had only
decided precisely now to begin peering at me. It also
occurred to me that in the course of two hours
I had not exchanged a single word with this being,

(03:21:23):
and had not considered it at all necessary. I had
even liked it for some reason. But now all of
a sudden, there appeared before me the absurd, loathsomely spiderish
notion of debauchery, which without love, crudely and shamelessly begins
straight off with that which is the crown of true love.
We looked at each other like that for a long time,

(03:21:45):
but she did not lower her eyes before mine, nor
did she change their expression. And in the end, for
some reason this made me feel eerie. What's your name?
I asked, curtly, so as to put a quick to it. Liza,
she replied, almost in a whisper, but somehow quite unpleasantly,

(03:22:07):
and looked away. I paused the weather today, the snow nasty,
I said, almost to myself, wearily, putting my hand behind
my head and looking at the ceiling. She did not reply.
The whole thing was hideous. Do you come from around here?

(03:22:32):
I asked after a minute, almost exasperated, turning my head
slightly towards her. No where then, from Riga, she said, reluctantly, German, Russian?
Been here long? Where in this house? Two weeks? She spoke,

(03:23:02):
more and more curtly. The candle went out altogether. I
could no longer make out her face. Do you have
a father and mother? Yes? No I do? Where are
they there in Riga? What are they? Just? Just? What?

(03:23:29):
What are they? Socially tradespeople? You were living with them? Yes?
How old are you? Twenty? Why did you leave them? Just?
This just meant let me alone? This is sickening. We

(03:23:53):
fell silent. God knows why I wouldn't leave. I myself
felt more and more sickened and anguished. Images of the
whole past day began to pass confusedly through my memory,
somehow of themselves without my will. I suddenly recalled a
scene I had witnessed that morning in the street as

(03:24:16):
I was trotting along, preoccupied to work. They were carrying
a coffin out today and almost dropped it, I suddenly
said aloud, not at all wishing to start a conversation,
but just so almost accidentally. A coffin. Yes, in the haymarket.

(03:24:36):
They were carrying it out of abasement. Out of abasement,
not a basement, but the basement floor, you know, down
under from a bad house. There was such filth all around,
eight shells, trash, stink. It was vile silence, A bad

(03:25:00):
day for a burial, I began again, just not to
be silent. Why bad snow slush, I yawned, makes no difference,
she said suddenly, after some silence. No, it's nasty, I

(03:25:22):
yawned again. The grave diggers must have been swearing because
the snow was making it wet, and there must have
been water in the grave. Why water in the grave,
she asked, with a certain curiosity, but speaking even more
rudely and curtly than before. Something suddenly began egging me on.

(03:25:46):
There'd be water in the bottom, for sure, about half
a foot here in the Volkovo you can never dig
a dry grave. Why not? Why not such a watery place.
It's swamp all around here. They just get put down

(03:26:07):
in the water. I've seen it myself many times. I
had never once seen it, and had never been in
the Volkovo cemetery, but had only heard people talk. It
makes no difference to you how you die. But why
should I die? She answered, as if defending herself. You'll

(03:26:31):
die some day, and just the same way as that
one to day. She was also a girl. She died
of consumption. A jill would have died in the hospital.
She already knows about that, I thought, and she said, jill,
not girl. She owed money to the madam. I objected.

(03:26:54):
Egg done more and more by the argument, and worked
for her almost to the end, even though she had consumption.
The cabbies around there were talking with the soldiers and
told them about it, probably her old acquaintances. They were laughing.
They wanted to go and commemorate her in a pothouse

(03:27:17):
here too, I was laying it on thick silence, deep silence,
she did not, even stir So it's better to die
in a hospital, is it? What's the difference anyway? Who
says I'm going to die? She added irritably, If not now,

(03:27:41):
then later, well, and later. That's easy to say. You're
young now, good looking, fresh, so you're worth the price.
But after a year of this life you won't be
the same. You'll fade in a year at any rate.

(03:28:02):
In a year you'll be worth less, I went on, gloatingly.
So you'll go from here to somewhere lower, another house,
a year later to a third house, always lower and lower,
and in about seven years you'll reach the haymarket and
the basement. That's still not so bad. Worse luck will

(03:28:24):
be if on top of that some sickness comes along,
say some weakness of the chest, or you catch cold
or something. Sickness doesn't go away easily in such a life.
Once it gets into you, it may not get out,
And so you'll die. Well, so I'll die, she answered,

(03:28:45):
very spitefully now and stirred quickly. Still, it's a pity
for who a pity about life? Silence? Did you have
a fiance? Eh? What's it to you? But I'm not

(03:29:08):
questioning you, it's nothing to me. Why get angry? Of
course you may have had your own troubles. What's that
to me? It's just a pity for who for you

(03:29:28):
don't bother? She whispered, barely audibly, and stirred again. This
immediately fueled my anger even more. What I was trying
to be so gentle? And she but what do you think?
Is it a good path you're on? Eh? I don't

(03:29:51):
think anything, and that's what's bad that you don't think.
Wake up while you have time, and you do have time.
You're still young, good looking, You could find love. Mary
be happy. Not all the married ones are happy, she

(03:30:12):
snapped in the same rude patter, Not all, of course.
But even so, it's much better than here, a whole
lot better. And with love one can live even without happiness.
Life is good, even in sorrow. It's good to live
in the world, no matter how. And what is there

(03:30:34):
here except stench few? I turned to her with loathing.
I was no longer reasoning coldly. I myself began to
feel what I was saying and became excited. I already
thirsted to expound my cherished little ideas lived out in
my corner. Something in me suddenly lit up, some goal appeared.

(03:31:01):
Never mind my being here, I'm no example for you.
Maybe I'm even worse than you anyway, I was drunk
when I stopped here. I still hasten to justify myself. Besides,
a man is no sort of example for a woman.
It's a different thing. I' may dirty and defoul myself,

(03:31:23):
but all the same, I'm nobody's slave. I'm here, then
I'm gone, and that's all. I've shaken it off and
it's no longer me. But let's admit that you're a
slave from the first beginning. Yes, a slave, you give
up everything, all your will. Later you may want to

(03:31:45):
break these chains, but no, they'll ensnare you more and
more strongly. That's how this cursed chain is. I know it.
I won't even speak about other things. You perhaps wouldn't
understand me, but just tell me, no doubt. You're already
in debt to the madam, so you see, I added,

(03:32:08):
though she did not answer me, but only listened silently
with her whole being. There's a chain for you now.
You'll never get it paid off. That's how they do it,
the same as selling your soul to the devil. Besides I,
how do you know? Maybe I'm just as unfortunate as

(03:32:30):
you are, And so I get into the muck on
purpose from misery. People do drink from grief. Well, so
I'm here from grief. Now, tell me where's the good
in it? Here? You and I came together tonight and
we didn't say a word to each other all the while,
and only afterwards you started peering at me like a

(03:32:51):
wild thing, and I at you. Is that any way
to love? Is that any way for two human beings
to come together? It's simply an outrage, that's what. Yes,
she agreed, abruptly and hastily. I was even surprised by
the hastiness of this. Yes, so perhaps the same thought

(03:33:15):
was wandering through her mind as she was peering at
me just now, So she too is already capable of
certain thoughts. Devil, take it. That's curious. It's a kin,
I reflected, almost rubbing my hands. No, how can I
fail to get the better of such a young soul.

(03:33:37):
It was the game that fascinated me most of all.
She turned her head closer to me, and it seemed
to me in the darkness, propped it with her hand.
Perhaps she was peering at me. How sorry I was
that I couldn't make out her eyes. I heard her
deep breathing. Why why did you come here? I began

(03:34:03):
now with a sense of power. I just and how
good it would be to be living in your father's house, warm, free,
your own nest. And what if it's worse than that?
A thought flashed in me. I must find the right tone.
Sentimentality may not get me far, however it merely flashed.

(03:34:30):
I swear she really did interest me. Besides, I was
somehow unnerved and susceptible, and knavery goes so easily with feeling.
Who can say I hastened to reply? All sorts of
things happen. Now. I'm sure someone wronged you, and it's

(03:34:53):
rather they who are guilty before you, than you before them.
I know nothing of your story, but a girl of
your sort certainly wouldn't come here of her own liking.
What sort of girl am I? She whispered, barely audibly,
But I heard it, Devil take it. I thought, I'm
flattering her. This is vile, or maybe it's good. She

(03:35:19):
was silent. You see, Liza, I'll speak about myself if
i'd had a family. In my childhood, I wouldn't be
the same as I am now. I often think about it.
No matter how bad things are in a family, still
it's your father and mother, not enemies, not strangers. At

(03:35:42):
least once a year they'll show love for you. Still,
you know you belong there. I grew up without a family.
That must be why I turned out this way. I'm
feeling I bided my time again. Maybe she just doesn't know, understand,
I thought. And anyway, it's ridiculous, this moralizing. If I

(03:36:06):
were a father and had a daughter, I think i'd
love my daughter more than my son's. Really, I began obliquely,
as if talking about something else to divert her. I
confess I was blushing. Why is that, she asked, Ah,
so she's listening. I just would. I don't know, Liza.

(03:36:30):
You see, I knew a father who was a stern,
severe man, but he was forever on his knees before
his daughter, kept kissing her hands and feet. Couldn't have
enough of admiring her. Really, she'd be dancing at a
party and he'd stand for five hours in the same spot,
unable to take his eyes off her. He was mad

(03:36:51):
about her. I can understand that she'd get tired of
night and go to sleep, and he would wake up
and start kissing her and making the son of the
crossover her while she slept. He himself went around in
a greasy jacket, was niggardly with everybody, But for her,
he'd have spent his last copeck. He kept giving her

(03:37:11):
rich presents, and what a joy it was for him
if she liked the present. A father always loves his
daughters more than a mother does. It's a delight for
some girls to live at home. And I don't think
i'd even give my daughter in marriage. Why not, she said,
with a slight chuckle. I'd be jealous, by God, how

(03:37:37):
could she kiss another man or love a stranger more
than her father. It's even painful to imagine it. Of course,
that's all nonsense. Of course everyone will finally see reason.
But I think before giving her away, I'd wear myself
out just with worry. I'd reject one suitor after another,

(03:38:01):
But in the end I'd marry her to the one
she herself loved. To a father, the man his daughter
falls in love with herself always seems the worst. That's
how it is. Much harm is done in families. Because
of it, some are glad to sell their daughter and
not give her away honorably. She suddenly said, Ah, that's

(03:38:28):
what it is that happens, Liza, in those cursed families
where there is neither God nor love. I picked up heatedly.
And where there is no love, there is no reason
such families do exist. It's true, but I'm not talking
about them. Evidently you saw no goodness in your family.

(03:38:49):
Since you talk that way, you're one of the truly
unfortunate ones. H Ham. It all comes mainly from poverty.
And is it any better with the masters? Honest? People
have good lives even in poverty. Hm. Yes. Perhaps then

(03:39:14):
there's this Liza. Man only likes counting his grief. He
doesn't count his happiness. But if he were to count properly,
he'd see that there's enough of both lots for him. Well.
And what if everything goes right in the family, God
blesses it. Your husband turns out to be a good
man who loves you, pampers, you never leaves your side.

(03:39:38):
It's good in this family. Oftentimes, even half mixed with grief,
it's still good. And where is there no grief? Perhaps
once you get married. You'll find out for yourself. But
take just the beginning. After you've married someone you love,
there's such happiness at times, so much happiness, I mean,

(03:40:01):
day in and day out in the beginning, even quarrels
with a husband. And well, some women, the more they love,
the more they pick quarrels with their husbands. It's true,
I knew such a woman. You see. She all but said,
I love you very much and torment you out of love,

(03:40:21):
and you ought to feel it. Do you know that
one can deliberately torment a person out of love? Women mainly?
And she thinks to herself. But afterwards, I'll love him
so much for it. I'll caress him so that it's
no sin to torment him a bit now, And at
home everyone rejoices over you, and it's good and cheery

(03:40:45):
and peaceful and honest. Then too, there's the jealous sword.
He goes out somewhere. I knew one like this. She
can't help herself. She jumps out at night and runs
on the slight to see is he there? Is he
in that house? Is he with that woman? Now? That
is bad? And she knows herself that it's bad, and

(03:41:09):
her heart is sinking, and she blames herself, and yet
she loves him. It's all from love. And how good
to make peace after a quarrel, to one up to
him or to forgive, And how good, how good? They
both suddenly feel as if they were meeting anew, getting
married anew, beginning to love anew, And no one, no

(03:41:30):
one ought to know what goes on between a husband
and wife. If they love each other, and whatever quarrel
they may have, they shouldn't call even their mother to
be their judge or hear them tell about each other.
They are their own judges. Love is God's mystery and
should be hidden from all other eyes. Whatever happens, it's

(03:41:53):
holier that way, and better. They respect each other more,
and so much is founded on respect. And if there
was love once, if they were married out of love,
why should love pass? Can't it be sustained? It rarely
happens that it can't be well. And if the husband

(03:42:16):
proves to be a kind and honest man, how can
love pass? The first married love will pass true, But
then an even better love will come. Then their souls
will grow close. They'll decide all their doings together. They'll
have no secrets from each other, and when children arrive,

(03:42:36):
then all of it, even the hardest times, will look
like happiness. One need only love and have courage. Now,
even work brings joy. Now, even if you must occasionally
deny yourself bread for the children's sake, still there is joy,
for they will love you for it later. So you're
laying aside for yourself. The children are growing. You feel

(03:42:59):
you're an exact ample to them, a support for them,
that even when you die, they'll bury your thoughts and
feelings upon themselves. As they receive them from you, they'll
take on your image and likeness point sixteen. So it
is a great duty. How can a father and mother
fail to grow closer? People say it's hard having children.

(03:43:20):
Who says, so, it's a heavenly happiness. Do you love
little children, Liza? I love them terribly. You know, there's
this rosy little boy sucking at your breast. Now what
husband's heart could turn against his wife looking at her
sitting with his child. The baby is rosy, plump, pampered, sprawling.

(03:43:45):
His little hands and feet are pudgy. His nails are
so clean and small, so small, it's funny to see
his eyes seem to understand everything. Already he's sucking and
clutching at your breast with his little hand. Playing the
father comes up, he'll tear himself away from the breast,
bend back, look at his father, laughing as if it

(03:44:07):
really were God knows how funny, and then again again
starts sucking. Or else he'll up and bite his mother's
breast if he's already cutting teeth while giving her a
sidelong Look, see how I bit you. Isn't this the
whole of happiness when they're all free together, husband, wife
and child. A lot can be forgiven for those moments, No, Liza,

(03:44:33):
one must first learn how to live, and only then
accuse others with pictures. I thought to myself, I'll get
you with these pictures. Though by God, I had spoken
with feeling and suddenly blushed. What if she suddenly bursts
out laughing, What will I do with myself? Then the

(03:44:55):
I e infuriated me. I had indeed become a excited
towards the end of my speech, and now my vanity
somehow suffered. The silence continued. I even wanted to nudge her.
It's like you, she began suddenly and stopped. But I

(03:45:18):
already understood everything. Something different was trembling in her voice, now,
not sharp, not rude, not unyielding as before, but something
soft and bashful, so bashful that I myself felt abashed,
felt guilty before her what I asked with tender curiosity.

(03:45:39):
But you what, it's as if you as if it's
from a book, she said, and again something like mockery
suddenly sounded in her voice. I was painfully twinged by
this remark. It was not what I was expecting. I

(03:45:59):
did not even understand that she was purposely assuming a
mask of mockery, That this is the usual last device
of a bashful and chaste hearted person whose soul is
being rudely and importunately pried into, and who will not
surrender till the last minute out of pride, and is
afraid of showing any feeling before you. I should have

(03:46:20):
guessed it from the very timidity with which she ventured
haltingly upon her mockery before she finally brought herself to
express it. But I did not guess, and a wicked
feeling took hold of me. You just wait, I thought, seven, Eh,

(03:46:40):
come now, Liza, what have books got to do with it?
If I myself feel vile for your sake, and not
only for your sake. It all just rose up in
my soul. Can it be? Can it be that you
don't find it vile here? No? Have? It evidently counts

(03:47:00):
for a lot. Devil knows what habit can't make of
a person. But can it be that you seriously think
you'll never get old, that you'll be forever good looking,
and they'll keep you here forever and ever? It's fall
enough even here, needless to say, however, this is what

(03:47:20):
I can tell you about that. I mean about your
present life. Granted you're young, attractive, nice, with a soul
with feelings well, but do you know that when I
came to my senses just now, I immediately felt vile
for being here with you. One has to be drunk
to end up here. But if you were in a

(03:47:41):
different place, living as good people live, I might not
just dangle after you, but simply fall in love with
you and be glad. If you merely glanced at me,
let alone spoke, I'd watch for you by the gate.
I'd stay forever on my knees before you. I'd look
upon you as my fiance and regarded as an honor.

(03:48:01):
I wouldn't dare even think anything impure about you? Well,
here I know I just have to whistle, and like
it or not, you'll go with me. And it's no
longer I who ask your will. But you mind the
merest peasant hires himself out to work, yet his bondage
is in total Besides, he knows there's a term to it.

(03:48:23):
But where is your term? Just think what is it
you're giving up here? What are you putting in bondage?
It's your soul, your soul over which you have no power,
that you put in bondage along with your body. You
give your love to be profaned by any drunkard love.

(03:48:46):
But this is everything. It's a diamond, a maiden's treasure,
this love to deserve, this love of a man would
be ready to lay down his soul to face death.
And what is the value of your life? Now? You're
all bought, bought out right? And why try to obtain love?
If everything is possible without love? There's no worse offense

(03:49:10):
for a girl. Do you understand that? Now I've heard
that they humor you, fools that you are. They allow
you to have lovers here, that's only an indulgence, only
a deception, only a mockery of you. Yet you believe it?
What does he really love you, this lover? I don't

(03:49:31):
believe it. How can he love you when he knows
that you'll be called away from him any moment? He's
a rotter? In that case, does he have even a
drop of respect for you? What do you have in
common with him? He's laughing at you while he steals

(03:49:51):
from you. That's what his love amounts to. You can
be thankful if he doesn't beat you, but maybe he does,
ask yours if you have one, will he marry you?
He'll burst out laughing in your face if he doesn't
spit or give you a beating. And meanwhile, his total
worth is maybe two broken copeks. And for the sake

(03:50:15):
of what, one wonders, have you ruined your life here
for having coffee to drink and being well fed? But
what do they feed you for? Another woman, an honest
one would choke on it because she'd know what they're
feeding her for. You're in debt here, so you'll stay

(03:50:36):
in debt, and you'll be in debt till the final end,
till the time when the client starts spurning you, and
that will come soon. Don't count on your youth. It
all flies by postaste here, so they'll kick you out,
and not simply kick you out, but first start picking

(03:50:57):
on you long beforehand, reproaching you, using you as if
it wasn't you who gave her your health, destroyed your
youth and soul for her in vain, but as if
it was you who ruined her, beggared her, robbed her,
And don't look for any support. The other girls will
also attack you to get in good with her, because
everyone here is a slave and has long since lost

(03:51:19):
all conscience and compassion. There's sunk in meanness, and no
abuse in the world is more foul, mean or offensive
than that. And you'll lay down everything here, everything without stint,
health and youth and beauty and hopes. And at twenty
two you'll look like you're thirty five, and you'll be
lucky if you're not sick. Pray to God for that.

(03:51:42):
You must be thinking now that it's a picnic and
not work at all. But there is not, and never
has been any harder or harsher work in the world
than this. One would think your heart alone would simply
pour itself out in tears, and you won't dare say
a word, not half a word. When they throw you

(03:52:02):
out of here, you'll go as if you were the
one to blame. You'll go to another place, then to
a third, then somewhere else, and finally you'll reach the haymarket,
and there they'll give you the routine beating. It's a
courtesy of the place there. A client can't even be
nice to a girl without beating her first. You don't

(03:52:23):
believe it's so disgusting there, Go and look someday, maybe
you'll see with your own eyes. I once saw a
girl there alone by the door on New Year's Day.
Her own people had kicked her out for the fun
of it, to cool her off a bit because she
was howling too much, and lock the door behind her.

(03:52:46):
At nine o'clock in the morning. She was already completely drunk, disheveled,
half naked, all beaten up. Her face was powdered white,
and her eyes were black and blue. Blood was flowing
from her nose and teeth. Some coachman had just given
her a pasting. She sat down on the stone stairs
holding some kind of salted fish. She was howling and

(03:53:09):
wailing something about her miserable lot beating her fish against
the steps, and coachman and drunken soldiers crowded around the steps,
teasing her. You don't believe you'll be the same. I
wouldn't want to believe it either, But how do you know?
Maybe this same girl, the one with the salted fish,

(03:53:30):
came here from somewhere ten or say, eight years ago,
fresh as a little cherub, innocent, pure, knowing no evil,
and blushing at every word. Maybe she was just like you, proud, touchy,
different from the rest. She had the look of a
princess and knew that complete happiness awaited the one who
would love her and whom she would love. See where

(03:53:54):
it ended up? And what if at the same moment,
as she sat there, drunk and disheveled, beating her fish
on the dirty steps, what if at that moment she
recalled all her former peer years in her father's house
when she was still going to school and the neighbor's
son used to watch for her on the way, assured
her he would love her all his life, that he

(03:54:14):
would make his fates, and they made a vow together
to love each other forever and to be married as
soon as they got bigger. No Liza it will be lucky,
lucky for you if you die quickly of consumption someplace
in a corner in a basement, like that girl in
a hospital. You say, if they take you there, fine,

(03:54:37):
but what if your madam still needs you. Consumption is
that sort of illness. It's not a fever. A person
goes on hoping till the last moment, saying he's well,
it's just self indulgence, but there's profit in it for
the madam. Don't worry. It's true. You've sold your your soul.

(03:55:00):
You will money besides, so you don't dare make a peep.
And when you're dying, they'll all abandon you. They'll all
turn away from you because what good are you. Then
they'll even reproach you for uselessly taking up space and
not dying quickly enough. You'll have a hard time getting
a drink of water. They'll give it to you with

(03:55:22):
a curse. Hurry up and croak, you slut. You're moaning.
People can't sleep. The clients are disgusted. It's true. I've
overheard such words myself. They'll shove you, on the point
of croaking, into the stinkingest corner of the basement, dark damp.
What will you go over in your mind? Then, lying

(03:55:43):
there alone, you'll die. They'll lay you out hurriedly, stranger's hands, grumblingly, impatiently,
And no one will bless you, no one will sigh
over you. All they'll think is how to get you
off their backs quickly. They'll buy a pie, take you
out as they did that poor girl today, and go

(03:56:04):
to a pothouse to commemorate you. There's slush muck, what's
snow in the grave. They won't go to any trouble
over you. Lower her in the nyuka. Look at this
miserable lot going legs up even here the soan, so
shorten the ropes, you rascal. It'll do as it is,

(03:56:27):
what'll do? She's lying on her side. You got a
human being here, don't you. Well, that'll do fill it in.
They won't even want to argue long because of you.
They'll cover you up quickly with what blue play and
go to the pothouse. That's the end of your memory

(03:56:49):
on Earth. Other people's graves are visited by children, fathers, husbands,
But at yours, not a tear, not a sigh, not
a prayer, and no one, no one in the whole
world will ever come to you. Your name will disappear
from the face of the earth, as if you'd never existed,
as if you'd never been born. Mud and swamp, go

(03:57:12):
ahead and knock on your coffin lded night when dead
men rise. Let me out good people to live in
the world. I lived, but saw nothing of life. My
life was used up like an old rag. It got
drunk up in a pothouse on the haymarket. Let me
out good people to live in the world one more time.

(03:57:33):
I watched pathetic, so much so that I myself was
about to have a spasm in my throat, when suddenly
I stopped, raised myself in alarm, and, inclining my head
fearfully with pounding heart, began to listen. I indeed had
reason to be troubled for a long time. Already I
had sensed that I had turned her whole soul over

(03:57:55):
and broken her heart. And the more convinced of it
I was, the more I wished to reach my goal
quickly and as forcefully as possible. It was the game,
the game that fascinated me, not just the game. However,
I knew I'd been speaking stiffly, affectively, even bookishly. In short,
I couldn't speak any other way than as if from

(03:58:17):
a book. But that didn't trouble me. I knew. I
sensed that I'd be understood, and that this very bookishness
might even help things along. But now having achieved my effect,
I suddenly turned coward. No, never, never before had I
witnessed such despair. She was lying prone, her face buried

(03:58:40):
deep in her pillow, which she embraced with both arms.
Her breast was bursting. Her whole young body was shuddering
as in convulsions. Suppressed sobs were straining, tearing her breast,
and would suddenly burst out in wails and cries when
she cling to her pillow. Even more, she did not

(03:59:03):
want anyone there, not a living soul, to learn of
her torment. In tears, she bit the pillow, she bit
into her hand till it bled I saw it later
or clutching her loosened braids, she would go stiff with effort,
holding her breath and clenching her teeth. I started to
say something to her, to bake her to calm down,

(03:59:24):
but felt I didn't dare, And suddenly all in a
sort of fever, myself almost horrified I rushed gropingly in
haphazard haste to get myself ready to go. It was dark.
No matter how I tried, I couldn't finish quickly. Suddenly
I touched a box of matches and a candlestick with

(03:59:45):
a hole, and used candle as soon as light shone
in the room. Liza suddenly rose, sat up and looked
at me, almost senselessly, with a somehow distorted face and
a half crazed smile. I sat down next to her
and took her hands. She recovered herself, made a quick
move as if to embrace me, but did not dare,

(04:00:07):
and quietly bowed her head before me. Liza, my friend.
I shouldn't have forgive me. I tried to begin, but
she squeezed my hands in her fingers with such force
that I realized I was saying the wrong thing and stopped.
Here's my address, Liza, come to me. I will, she whispered, resolutely,

(04:00:30):
still without raising her head, and now I'll go goodbye
Till then I got up. She got up as well,
and suddenly blushed all over, gave a start, grabbed a
shawl that was lying on a chair, and wrapped her
shoulders in it. All the way to the chin. Having
done so, she again smiled somehow painfully blushed, and glanced

(04:00:54):
at me. Strangely, I felt pained. I was in a
hurry to leave to a face. Wait, she said, suddenly,
already in the entryway and right at the door, stopping
me with a hand on my overcoat, and in a flurry,
she set down the candle and ran off. She must
have remembered something or wanted to bring something to show me.

(04:01:17):
As she ran off, she blushed all over, her eyes shone,
a smile appeared on her lips. What could it mean?
Like it or nor? I had to wait? She came
back in a minute, her eyes as if apologizing for something. Generally,
this was no longer the same face, the same look
as before, sullen, mistrustful, and obstinate. Now her eyes were soft,

(04:01:42):
pleading and at the same time trustful, tender, timid. Children
looked that way at someone they love very much when
they're asking for something. She had light brown eyes, beautiful
eyes alive, capable of reflecting both love and sullen hatred
without explaining anything, as if like some higher being, I

(04:02:05):
must know everything without explanations. She handed me a piece
of paper, her whole face simply lit up at that
moment with the most naive, childlike triumph. I unfolded it.
It was a letter to her from some medical student
for the like, a very grandiloquent, flowery, but extremely respectful

(04:02:27):
declaration of love. I don't remember the expressions now, but
I remember very well that through the high flown style
one caught glimpses of true feeling, which cannot be feigned.
When I finished reading, I met her ardent, curious and
childishly impatient gaze on me. Her eyes were riveted to

(04:02:48):
my face, and she waited, impatiently, what would I say?
In a few words, haphazardly, but somehow joyfully and as
if proudly, she explained to me that she had been
in the dancing party somewhere in a family home, the
home of some very very nice people, family people, and
where they still know nothing, nothing at all, because she

(04:03:10):
still quite knew here and just and hasn't at all
decided to stay yet and will certainly leave as soon
as she's paid her debt. Well, And there was this
student dancing and talking with her all evening, and it
turned out he had known her still and riga still
as a child. They had played together only very long ago,
and he knew her parents. But he knows nothing, nothing,

(04:03:32):
nothing about this, and doesn't even suspect. And so the
next day, after the dance three days ago, he sent
her this letter through a girlfriend with whom she'd gone
to the party. And well, that's all. She lowered her
flashing eyes, somehow shyly as she finished telling me, poor

(04:03:53):
little thing. She was keeping this student's letter as a treasure,
and had run to fetch her only treasure, not wishing
me to leave, without knowing that she too was loved
honesty and sincerely, that she too was spoken to respectfully.
Most likely the letter was doomed simply to lie in
a box without consequences, But what matter. I'm sure she

(04:04:17):
would keep it all her life as a treasure, as
her pride and justification. And now at such a moment
she remembered the letter and brought it out to take
naive pride before me, to restore herself in my eyes,
so that I too should see and I too should praise.
I said nothing, pressed her hand and walked out. I

(04:04:38):
wanted so much to leave. I went the whole way
on foot, in spite of the wet snow still falling
in thick flakes. I was worn out, crushed, perplexed. But
the truth was already shining through my perplexity, the nasty
truth eight. It took me a while, however, to consent

(04:05:06):
to recognize this truth, having awakened in the morning after
several hours of deep letting sleep, and having come at
once to a realization of the whole day yesterday, I
was even amazed at my yesterday's sentimentality with Liza, at
all of yesterday's horrors and pities. Now there's a real

(04:05:26):
fit of womanish nerves. Pah, I decided, And why on
earth did I shove my address at her? What if
she comes? However, why not let her come? It's no matter.
But obviously that was not the main and most important thing.

(04:05:46):
Now I had to make haste end, whatever the cost,
quickly saved my reputation in the eyes of Zverkov and Seemenov.
That was the main thing. And I even quite forgot
about life that morning, what with all the bustle. First
of all, I had immediately to return yesterday's debt to Simonov.

(04:06:10):
I resolved on a desperate measure, borrowing a whole fifteen
roubles from Anton Antonovitch. As luck would have it, he
was in the most wonderful spirits that day and handed
me the money at once at my first request. I
was so glad that, as I signed the receipt with
a sort of bravado, I casually told him that yesterday

(04:06:32):
I had done a bit of carousing with some friends
at the hotel to Paris, a farewell party for a schoolmate,
even one might say, a childhood friend, a big krouser,
you know, a spoiled fellow, well naturally from a good family,
a considerable fortune, a brilliant career, witty, charming intrigues. With
all those ladies, you understand, we drank a half dozen

(04:06:55):
too many, and and nothing to it. It was also
spoken very lightly, easily and smugly. Having come home, I
wrote at once to Siemonov. To this day I am
filled with admiration as I recall the truly gentlemanly, good natured,

(04:07:17):
frank tone of my letter, adroitly, nobly, and above all,
with not a word too many. I blamed myself for everything.
I excused myself, if I may still be permitted to
excuse myself, with being quite unaccustomed to wine, and thus
becoming drunk at the first class, which I supposedly drank

(04:07:39):
before them while waiting for them from five to six
in the hotel to Paris. I mainly begged pardon of Siemenov,
and I asked him to convey my explanations to all
the others, especially Zverkov, whom I recall as in a
dream I seem to have insulted. I added that I
would have gone to them all myself, but I had

(04:08:00):
a headache, and above all was ashamed. I remained especially
pleased with a certain lightness, even all but casual, though
perfectly decent, that suddenly reflected itself in my pen and
at once gave them to understand better than any possible reasons,
that I looked upon all that nastiness yesterday quite independently.

(04:08:21):
In no way, by no means was I killed on
the spot, as your good sirs probably think. But on
the contrary, I looked upon it as befits a comely,
self respecting gentleman. The errors of youth are soon forgotten,
as they say, And that certain marquis Ean playfulness even

(04:08:43):
I admired rereading the note, and all because I'm a
developed and educated man. Others in my place wouldn't know
how to extricate themselves, and here I've wriggled out of
it and can go on carousing and all because I'm
an educated and developed men of our times. Besides, maybe

(04:09:04):
it really did all come from the wine yesterday, Asham. Well, no,
not from the wine, and I didn't drink any vodka
between five and six. While I was waiting for them,
I liked to Seemonov lied shamelessly, and even now I'm
not ashamed ah spit on it. However, I'm out of it,

(04:09:28):
That's the main thing. I put six roubles into the letter,
sealed it, and prevailed upon Apleon to take it to
siemonof On. Learning that there was money inside, Apleon became
more respectful and agreed to go. Towards evening, I went
out for a stroll. My head was still aching and

(04:09:52):
dizzy from yesterday. But the more evening advanced and the
twilight thickened, the more my impressions end. After them, my
thoughts as well kept changing and tangling. Something within me,
deep in my heart and conscience, would not die, refuse
to die, and betrayed itself. In a burning anguish, I

(04:10:14):
loitered about, mainly on the most crowded business streets Meshchanskaya
Satavaya around the Yusupov Garden. I had always liked, especially
to stroll along those streets at twilight, precisely when the
crowd thickens, with all sorts of passers by, merchants and tradesmen,
their faces preoccupied to the point of anger, going home

(04:10:35):
from their daily work. I precisely liked this two penny bustle,
this insolent prosiness. But now all this street jostling only
irritated me. The more I simply could not get hold
of myself, could not find the loose ends. Something in
my soul was rising, rising, ceaselessly, painfully, and refused to

(04:10:59):
be still. I returned home thoroughly upset, like as if
some crime lay on my soul. I was constantly tormented
by the thought that Liza would come. What I found
strange was that, of all those memories from yesterday, the
memory of her tormented me somehow, specially, somehow, quite separately.

(04:11:23):
By evening, I had already quite successfully forgotten all the rest,
brushed it aside, and I was still perfectly pleased with
my letter to Seemenov. But with this I was somehow
not so pleased. It was like as if I were
tormented over Eliza alone. What if she comes, I thought, ceaselessly. Well,

(04:11:47):
no matter, let her come, h ham. The only bad
thing is that she'll see, for example, how I live.
Yesterday I showed myself to her such a hero. And now, hm,
it's bad, however, that I've gone so much to seed

(04:12:08):
sheer poverty in the apartment. And I dared go to
dinner yesterday in such clothes, and this oilcloth sofa of mine,
with the stuffing hanging out of it, and this dressing
gown that doesn't even cover me, such tatters. And she'll

(04:12:28):
see all this, and she'll see appleon. The brute is
sure to insult her. He'll pick on her in order
to be rude to me, and I, of course, as
is my custom, will turn coward, start mincing before her,
covering myself with the skirts of my dressing gown, start smiling,

(04:12:48):
start lying, oh, vileness, And that's not even the chief vileness.
There's something cheaper in it. Viler, meaner, yes, meaner, and
again again to put on that dishonorable lying mask. Having

(04:13:09):
arrived at this thought, I simply flared up. Why dishonorable?
What's dishonorable? I spoke sincerely. Yesterday, I remember there was
also true feeling in me. I precisely wanted to evoke
noble feelings in her. If she cried a bit, that's good,

(04:13:32):
it'll have a good effect. But all the same, I
just could not calm down that whole evening, when I'd
already returned home, when it was already past nine, and
by my reckoning, Liza simply could not come. I still
kept imagining her, and I recalled her mostly in one
and the same position. Namely, of all that had happened yesterday,

(04:13:56):
I pictured one moment especially vividly. It was when I
lighted up the room with a match and saw her pale,
distorted face with its tormented eyes, and how pathetic, how unnatural,
how twisted her smile was at that moment. But I
did not know then that even after fifteen years, I
would still be picturing Liza precisely with the pathetic, twisted,

(04:14:19):
needless smile she had at that moment. The next day,
I was again prepared to regard it all as nonsense,
frazzled nerves and above all, exaggeration. I was always aware
of this week linking me, and at times was very
afraid of it. I'm forever exaggerating. That's where I'm lame,

(04:14:40):
I repeated to myself at all hours. But nevertheless, nevertheless,
Liza may still come. This was the refrain with which
all my reasonings at that time concluded. I worried so
much that I sometimes became furious. She'll come. She's sure
it come, I'd exclaim, running up and down my room.

(04:15:05):
If not today then tomorrow. But she'll find me. That's
the cursed romanticism of all these pure hearts. Oh the vileness,
Oh the stupidity, Oh the narrowness of these rotten sentimental souls.
How can one not understand? How indeed can one not understand?

(04:15:28):
But here I myself would stop, and even in great confusion.
And it took so little, so little talk, I thought,
in passing such a little idol and affected idle, besides
a contrived a bookish one, to succeed in turning a
whole human soul the way I wanted. There's virginity for you,

(04:15:50):
there's the freshness of the soil. At times, the thought
occurred to me of going to her myself to tell
her everything and prevail upon her not to come to me.
But here at this thought such spite rose up in
me that I think I would simply have squashed this
cursed Liza if she'd suddenly happened to be there, insulted her,

(04:16:11):
spat upon her, driven her out, struck her. A day passed, however,
then another, then a third. She did not come, and
I began to calm down. I especially took cart and
let myself go after nine o'clock. I sometimes even began
to dream, and that quite sweetly. I save Liza, for example,

(04:16:32):
precisely through her coming to me and my telling her,
I develop her, educateor I finally noticed that she loves me,
loves me passionately. I pretend not to understand. I don't know, however,
why I pretend, probably just for the beauty of it.

(04:16:52):
At last, all confused, beautiful, trembling and weeping, she throws
herself at my feet and says that I am savior
and that she loves me more than anything in the world.
I am amazed. But Liza, I say, can you really
think I haven't noticed your love? I saw everything, I guessed,

(04:17:15):
but I dared not presume first upon your heart, because
I had influence over you, and feared lest you, out
of gratitude, might deliberately make yourself return my love, might
call up by force of feeling that perhaps is not there.
And I did not want that, because that is despotism,
it is indelicate. Well, in short, here I let my

(04:17:36):
tongue run away with me in some such European George
Sandian ineffably noble refinement seventeen. But now now you are mine,
you are my creation, you are pure beautiful, You are
my beautiful wife, and now full mistress of the place.
Come bold and free into my house eighteen and then

(04:17:59):
we begin living happily ever after, go abroad, et cetera,
et cetera. In short, I felt vile and would end
by sticking my tongue out at myself. They won't even
let the slut come, I thought. They don't seem to
allow them out much, especially in the evening. For some reason,

(04:18:21):
it seems certain to me that she must come in
the evening, and precisely at seven o'clock. Though she said
she's not completely bound to them yet, she has some
special privileges there. So h M devil take it she'll come,
She's sure to come. It was a good thing. Applon

(04:18:41):
diverted me at that time with his rudeness, drove me
out of all patients. He was my thorn, a scourge
visited upon me by providence. He and I had been
in constant altercation for several years on end, and I
hated him. My God, how I hated him. I think

(04:19:03):
I've never in my life hated anyone as I did him,
especially at certain moments. He was an elderly, imposing man
who occupied himself part of the time with tailoring. I
don't know why, but he despised me even beyond all measure,
and looked at me with an insufferable haughtiness. But then

(04:19:24):
he looked at everyone with haughtiness. One glance at that
pale haired, slicked down head at the quick he fluffed
up on his forehead and oiled with vegetable oil at
that serious mouth. Forever perst in a v and you
immediately sensed before you a being who never doubted himself.
He was, in the highest degree a pedant, and the

(04:19:46):
most enormous pedant of any I've ever met on earth.
And this was accompanied by a vanity, perhaps befitting only
Alexander of Macedon. He was in love with his every button,
his every finger, nail, absolutetely in love, and he looked it.
He treated me quite despotically, spoke extremely little with me,

(04:20:07):
and if he chanced to let his eyes rest on me,
he did so with affirm majestically, self confident, and permanently
mocking look, which sometimes drove me to fury. He fulfilled
his duties with such an air as if he were
bestowing the highest favor upon me. However, he did almost
exactly nothing for me, and did not even consider himself

(04:20:30):
obliged to do anything. There was no doubting that he
considered me the most complete fool in the whole world,
And if he kept me around, it was solely because
he could get his wages from me. Every month he
agreed to do nothing in my service for seven roubles
a month. Many sins will be forgiven me for him.

(04:20:53):
It sometimes reached such hatred that I'd be all but
thrown into convulsions by his gait alone. But I loathed
his lisp, especially his tongue was a bit longer than
it should have been, or something like that, which caused
him to be forever lisping and sissing, and he was
apparently terribly proud of it, imagining that it lent him

(04:21:15):
a great deal of dignity. He spoke softly, measuredly, placing
his hands behind his back and looking down. He especially
infuriated me when he'd start reading the Salter behind his partition.
I endured many a battle on account of that reading.
But he liked terribly much to read in the evenings

(04:21:38):
in a soft, even voice, chanting as over a dead body. Curiously,
that's how he ended up. He now hires himself out
to read the Psalter over the deceased, and along with
it he exterminates rats and makes shoe polish. But at
the time I was unable to throw him out, as
though he had combined chemically with my existence. Besides, he

(04:22:02):
would not have agreed to leave me for anything. It
was impossible for me to live in Chambers Guarnis nineteen.
My apartment was my mansion, my shell, my case in
which I hid from all mankind and appollon. It seemed
to me devil knows why belonged to that apartment, And
for a whole seven years I was unable to throw
him out. To withhold his wages, for example, for as

(04:22:26):
little as two or three days, was impossible. He'd make
such a to do that I wouldn't even know where
to hide. But in those days I was so embittered
against everyone that I resolved, who knows why or what for,
to punish Appollon and not give him his wages for
another two weeks. I had long been intending to do

(04:22:47):
this for two years or so, solely to prove to
him that he dared not get so puffed up over me,
and that if I wished, I could always not give
him his wages. I decided not to tell him about it,
and even to maintain a deliberate silence in order to
vanquish his pride and make him be the first to
speak of his wages. Then I would take all seven

(04:23:10):
roubles from the drawer to show him that I had
them and had deliberately set them aside, but that I
did not did not simply did not want to give
him his wages. Did not want to because that's how
I wanted it, because such was my will as the master.
Because he was irreverent, because he was a bore, But
that if he asked reverently. Perhaps I would relent and

(04:23:31):
pay him. Otherwise he'd have to wait another two weeks,
wait three weeks, wait a whole month. But angry though
I was, the victory still went to him. I didn't
even hold out for four days. He began with what
he always began with on such occasions, for there had
already been such occasions or attempts. And I will note

(04:23:55):
I knew it all beforehand. I knew his mean tactics
by heart. That is, he usually he began by fixing
me with an extremely stern look, not taking it off
me for several minutes at a time, following me with
his eyes, especially when I came in or was leaving
the house. If, for example, I held out and pretended
not to notice these looks, he would proceed silently, as

(04:24:18):
ever to further tortures. Suddenly, for no reason at all,
he would come softly and smoothly into my room while
I was pacing about or reading, stop by the door,
put one arm behind his back, thrust out one hip,
and fix me with his eyes, no longer so much stern,
as altogether contemptuous. If I suddenly asked him what he wanted,

(04:24:40):
he would make no reply, and go on staring at
me point blank for several seconds more, then pressing his
lips together in some special way with a significant air.
He would turn slowly on his heel and suddenly go
to his room. About two hours later, he would suddenly
emerge again, and again appear before for me in the

(04:25:00):
same way. Sometimes, in my fury, I would no longer
ask what he wanted, but simply raise my head abruptly
and imperiously, and also begin staring point blank at him.
And so we'd stare at each other like that for
about two minutes. Finally he would turn slowly and pompously
and go away for another two hours. If I refused

(04:25:24):
to be brought to reason by all this and continued
my rebellion, he would suddenly begin to sigh as he
looked at me, sigh long and deeply, as if measuring
with each side the full depth of my moral fall.
And of course it would end at last with him
overcoming me completely. I'd get furious, i'd shout, but with that,
which had been the whole point, I'd be forced to comply.

(04:25:46):
This time. However, as soon as the usual stern look
maneuvers began, I immediately lost my temper and fell on
him in a fury. I was all too irritated to
begin with. Stop, I yelled in a frenzy, as he
was turning slowly and silently, one arm behind his back

(04:26:08):
to go to his room. Stop, come back, come back,
I tell you, And I must have bellowed so unnaturally
that he turned and began to study me, even with
a certain surprise. However, he still did not say a word.
And it was this that infuriated me. How dare you

(04:26:31):
come in here without permission and stare at me like that? Answer?
But he, having looked at me calmly for about half
a minute, again began to turn around. Stop, I roared,
running up to him. Don't move so now answer what

(04:26:54):
did you come in here and stare for? If there's
something you want done, directly it it's my duty to
see to it. He replied again, after some silence, lisping
softly and measuredly, raising his eyebrows and calmly shifting his
head from one side to the other, and all that
with horrifying composure. That's not it, That's not what I'm

(04:27:16):
asking you, hangman, I shouted, shaking with anger. I'll tell
you myself hangman, Why you keep coming here? You see
I'm not giving you your wages. In your pride, you
don't want to bow and beg and for that you
come with your stupid staring to punish me, to torture me,
and you don't even are r realize, hangman, how stupid

(04:27:38):
it is. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. He again began to
turn silently, but I grabbed him. Listen, I was shouting
at him, here's the money. See here it is. I
took it out of the drawer, all seven roubles. But

(04:27:59):
you won't get it. You will not get it until
such time as you come respectfully with a guilty head
to ask my forgiveness. Do you hear that can never be?
He replied, with a sort of unnatural self assurance. It
will be. I was shouting, I give you my word

(04:28:22):
of honor. It will be, And there's nothing for me
to ask your forgiveness about. He went on, as if
not noticing my shots at all. Seeing as you yourself
have abused me with hangman, on which offense I can
always apply against you at the precinct, Go apply, I roared,

(04:28:45):
Go now, this minute, this second, and you're still a hangman. Hangman, hangman.
But he just looked at me, then turned and, no
longer listening to my appeal, went smoothly to his place
without a backward glance. There wouldn't be any of this

(04:29:06):
if it weren't for Eliza, I decided to myself. Then,
after a moment's pause, pompously and solemnly, but slowly and
with a pounding heart, I myself proceeded behind his screen
apple on, I said, softly and measuredly, though I was suffocating,

(04:29:27):
go for the police chief at once, without the slightest delay.
He had managed, meanwhile, to sit down at his table,
put on his spectacles, and begin some sewing. But hearing
my order, he suddenly snorted with laughter, Go now this minute,
go or you can't even imagine what will happen. Truly,

(04:29:52):
you're not in your right senses, he observed, without even
raising his head, with the same slow lisp, and continueuing
to thread his needle. Who's ever seen a man go
to the authorities against himself? And as to scaring me,
you're exerting yourself in vain because nothing will happen. Go,

(04:30:15):
I shrieked, grabbing him by the shoulder. I felt I
was about to strike him, and I did not even
hear how. The outer door opened at that moment, softly
and slowly, and some figure entered, stopped, and began gazing
at us in perplexity. I looked, died of shame, and

(04:30:36):
rushed to my room. There, clutching my hair with both hands,
I leaned my head against the wall and stood frozen
in that position. About two minutes later I heard the
slow steps of Apollon. Some one is asking for you
out there, he said, looking at me with particular sternness,

(04:30:57):
then stepped aside and let in Eliza. He did not
want to leave, and stared at us mockingly. Get out,
Get out, I ordered, repeatedly. Quite lost, At that moment,
my clock strained, hissed, and struck seven nine. And now,

(04:31:22):
full mistress of the place, come bold and free into
my house. From the same poetry, I stood before her, destroyed, branded, disgustingly, embarrassed,
and I think smiling, trying as hard as I could
to wrap myself in my ragged, old quilted dressing gown
well exactly as I had pictured to myself recently in

(04:31:45):
fallen spirits. Apollon hovered around us for about two minutes
and then left, But that made it no easier for me.
Worst of all was that she too suddenly became embarrassed,
much more so than I would even have expected from
looking at me. Of course, sit down, I said mechanically,

(04:32:08):
and moved a chair out for her at the table,
while I myself sat on the sofa. She sat down
at once and obediently, staring at me all eyes, apparently
expecting something from me. Right then. The naivety of this
expectation infuriated me, but I restrained myself. The thing to

(04:32:29):
do here would have been to try not to notice anything,
as if it were all quite ordinary. But she and
I sensed vaguely that she was going to pay dearly
for it. All. You find me in an odd situation, Liza,
I began stammering, and knowing that this was precisely not
how I should have begun. No, no, don't think anything

(04:32:53):
of the sort, I cried, seeing her suddenly blush. I'm
not a share of my poverty. On the contrary, I
look upon my poverty with pride. I'm poor, but noble
one can be poor and noble, I went on mumbling, however,

(04:33:15):
would you like some tea? No? She tried to begin. Wait.
I jumped up and ran to apolawn. I really had
to vanish somewhere. Apollon, I whispered in a feverish pattern,
flinging down before him the seven roubles which had remained

(04:33:38):
in my fist all the while. Here's your wages. See,
I'm giving it to you, but for that you must
save me. Go at once and bring some tea in
ten rusks from the tavern. If you refuse to go,
you'll ruin a man's happiness. You don't know what this
woman is. This is everything. You're perhaps having certain thoughts,

(04:34:02):
but you don't know what this woman is. Apollon, who
had already sat down to work and had already put
his spectacles back on at first, without abandoning his needle,
silently cast a sidelong glance at the money. Then, paying
no attention to me, and not answering me at all,
he went on fussing with his thread, which he was

(04:34:24):
still trying to put through the needle. I waited for
about three minutes, standing before him, my arms folded all Napoleon,
My temples were damp with sweat. I was pale, I
could sense it, but thank god, he must have felt
sorry looking at me. Having finished with his needle, he

(04:34:45):
slowly rose from his seat, slowly moved the chair aside,
slowly took off his spectacles, slowly counted the money, and,
at last, having asked me over his shoulder, should he
get a full portion, slowly walked out of the room.
As I was returning to Liza, it occurred to me
on the way, why don't I flee, just as I

(04:35:07):
am in my wretched old dressing gown, wherever my feet
take me, and come, what may? I sat down again.
She looked at me anxiously for several minutes. We said nothing.
I'll kill him, I suddenly cried, banging my fist so

(04:35:27):
hard on the table that the ink splashed out of
the inkstand. Ah, what is it? She cried, with a start.
I'll kill him, I'll kill him. I was shrieking, pounding
on the table, in a perfect frenzy, and at the
same time with a perfect understanding of how stupid it

(04:35:48):
was to be in such a frenzy. You don't know, Liza,
what this hangman is for me. He's my hangman. He's
just gone again at some rusks. He and I suddenly
broke down in tears. It was a fit. Oh how

(04:36:09):
ashamed I was between sobs, but I could no longer
hold them back. She was frightened. What is it? What's
the matter? She kept crying out, bustling around me. Water,
Give me water over there, I murmured in a weak voice, conscious, however,

(04:36:31):
within myself, that I was quite well able to do
without water, and not to murmur in a weak voice.
But I was putting on a show, as they say,
to preserve decency, though the fit was a real one.
She gave me water, looking at me as if lost.
At that moment, Applon brought in the tea. It suddenly

(04:36:54):
seemed to me that this ordinary and prosaic tea was
terribly indecent and measly after all that had happened, and
I blushed. Liza looked at Appleon even fearfully. He went
out without glancing at us. Liza, do you despise me?
I said, looking at her point blank, trembling with impatience

(04:37:18):
to find out what she thought. She became embarrassed and
was unable to reply. Drink your tea, I said, spitefully.
I was angry with myself, but naturally she was going
to bear the brunt of it. A terrible spite against

(04:37:39):
her suddenly boiled up in my heart. I think I
could simply have killed her, to be revenged on her.
I swore mentally not to speak even one word to
her from then on. It's she who caused it all.
I thought our silence had already lasted some five minutes.

(04:37:59):
The tea sat on the table, we didn't touch it.
It went so far that I purposely refused to begin drinking,
so as to make it still harder for her, and
it would have been awkward for her to begin. Several
times she glanced at me in sad perplexity. I was
stubbornly silent. The chief martyr, of course, was myself, because

(04:38:23):
I was fully conscious of all the loathsome baseness of
my spiteful stupidity, and at the same time I simply
could not restrain myself. I want to get out of
there for good. She tried to begin, in order to
break the silence somehow, But poor thing, she precisely ought
not to have started with that at such a moment,

(04:38:44):
stupid as it was to begin with, or to such
a man stupid as I was, to begin with. Even
my heart ache from pity for her ineptness and unnecessary candor.
But something ugly immediately suppressed all pity in it. Even
agny On still more perished the whole world. Another five

(04:39:06):
minutes passed. Perhaps I've disturbed you, she began timidly in
a barely audible voice, and started to get up. But
as soon as I saw this first flash of injured dignity,
I simply trembled with anger and at once burst out,
what did you come to me for? Do tell me? Please?

(04:39:28):
I began suffocating, and not even considering the logical order
of my words. I wanted to speak everything out at
once in one shot. I didn't even care where I began.
Why did you come? Answer? Answer? I kept exclaiming, all

(04:39:50):
but beside myself. I'll tell you why you came, my dear.
You came because of the pathetic words I used with you. Then,
so you went all soft and you wanted more pathetic words. No. Then,
know that I was laughing at you that time, and

(04:40:11):
I'm laughing now. Why do you tremble? Yes? Laughing? I'd
been insulted earlier at dinner by the ones who came
there ahead of me. I came there to give a
thrashing to one of them, the officer, But I didn't succeed.
He wasn't there. I needed to unload my offense on

(04:40:32):
someone to get my own back, and you turned up.
So I poured out my spite and laughed at you.
I'd been humiliated, so I too wanted to humiliate. They'd
ground me down like a rag, so I too wanted
to show my power. That's what it was. And you
thought I came then on purpose to save you, right,

(04:40:54):
that's what you thought. That's what you thought. I knew
she might might perhaps get confused and not understand the details,
but I also knew she'd understand the essence perfectly well.
And so it happened. She turned white as a sheet,
tried to utter something, her mouth twisted painfully, but as

(04:41:16):
if cut down with an axe, she sank onto the chair,
and all the rest of the time she listened to
me with open mouth, with wide open eyes, and trembling
in terrible fear. The cynicism, the cynicism of my words
crushed her. To save you, I went on, jumping up

(04:41:38):
from my chair and running back and forth in front
of her, to save you from what. But maybe I'm
worse than you are. Why didn't you fling it in
my mug when I started reading you my oration? And you?
What did you come here for? To teach us morals?
Or what power? Power? That's what I wanted then, And

(04:42:00):
the game was what I wanted. I wanted to achieve
your tears, your humiliation, your hysterics. That's what I wanted then.
But I couldn't stand it myself because I'm trash. I
got all scared and like a fool, gave you my address.
Devil knows why. And afterwards, even before I got home,

(04:42:20):
I was already cursing you up and down for that address.
I already hated you because I'd lie to you then,
because I only talk a good game. I only dream
in my head. But do you know what I want
in reality? That you all go to hell? That's what
I want peace. I'd sell the whole world for a

(04:42:44):
copeck this minute, just not to be bothered. Shall the
world go to hell? Or shall I not have my tea?
I say, let the world go to hell? But I
should always have my tea. Did you know that or not? Well?
And I do know that I'm a blagguart, a scoundrel,
a self lover a lazer bones. I spent these past

(04:43:08):
three days trembling for fear you might come. And do
you know what particularly bothered me all these three days
that I had presented myself to you as such a
hero then and now you'd suddenly see me in this torn,
old dressing gown, abject vile. I just told you I
was not ashamed of my poverty. No, then that I

(04:43:30):
am ashamed. I'm ashamed of it most of all, afraid
of it more than anything, more than of being a thief,
because I'm so vainan's as if I'd been flayed, and
the very air hurts me. But can you possibly not
have realized even now that I will never forgive you
for having found me in this wretched dressing gown. As
I was hurling myself like a vicious little cur at

(04:43:52):
appollon the resurrector, the former hero, flinging himself like a
mangy shaggy mutted his lack, who just laughs at him,
and those tears a moment ago which like an ashamed woman,
I couldn't hold back before you. I will never forgive you,
and what I'm confessing to you now, I will also

(04:44:14):
never forgive you. Yes, you, you alone must answer for
all this because you turn up here, because I'm a scoundrel,
because I'm the most vile, the most ridiculous, the most petty,
the most stupid, the most envious of all worms on earth,
who are in no way better than I, but who
devil knows why are never embarrassed while I will just

(04:44:35):
go on being flicked all my life by every knit
That's my trait. Besides, what do I care if you
won't understand a word of it? And what tell me? What?
What do I care about you? And whether you're perishing
there or not? Do you understand now that I've spoken
it all out to you, how I'm going to hate

(04:44:57):
you for being here and listening. Because a man speaks
out like this only once in his life, and then
only in hysterics. What more do you want? Why after
all this do you still stick there in front of me,
tormenting me, refusing to leave. But here a strange circumstance

(04:45:19):
suddenly occurred. I was so used to thinking and imagining
everything from books and to picturing everything in the world
to myself as I had devised it beforehand in my dreams,
that at first I didn't even understand this strange circumstance.
What occurred was this Liza, whom I had insulted and crushed,

(04:45:40):
understood far more than I imagined. She understood from it
all what a woman, if she loves sincerely, always understands
before anything else, namely that I myself was unhappy. The
frightened and insulted feeling in her face first gave way
to rueful amazement. And when I began calling myself a

(04:46:02):
scoundrel and a blaggard, and my tears poured down, I
had spoken the entire tirade in tears. Her whole face
twisted in a sort of convulsion. She wanted to get
up to stop me. And when I came to the end,
she paid no attention to my cries why are you here?
Why don't you leave, but only to how very heart
it must have been for me to speak it all out. Besides,

(04:46:26):
she was so downtrodden, poor thing, she considered herself infinitely
beneath me. How could she be angry or offended? She
suddenly jumped from her chair on some irrepressible impulse, and
all yearning towards me, but still timidly, not daring to
move from the spot, stretched out her arms to me.

(04:46:46):
Here my heart too turned over in me. Then she
suddenly rushed to me, threw her arms about my neck,
and burst into tears. I too could not help myself
and broke into such sobbing as had never happened to
me before. They won't let me. I can't be good,

(04:47:09):
I barely articulated, then went to the sofa, fell face down,
and sobbed for a quarter of an hour in real hysterics.
She leaned towards me, embraced me, and remained as if
frozen in that embrace. But still the hitch was that
the hysterics did have to end, And so I am

(04:47:30):
writing the loathesome truth, lying prone on the sofa, my
face buried hard in the wretched leather cushion. I began
little by little, remotely, involuntarily but irresistibly, to feel that
it would be awkward now to raise my head and
look straight into Liza's eyes. What was I ashamed of?
I don't know, but I was ashamed. It also came

(04:47:54):
into my agitated head that the roles were now finally reversed,
that she was now the heroine and I was the
same crushed and humiliated creature, as she had been before
me that night four days ago. And all this came
to me during those minutes when I was still lying
prone on the sofa. My God, But can it be

(04:48:16):
that I envied her? Then? I don't know. To this
day I cannot decide. And then, of course I was
even less able to understand it than now, for without
powering tyranny over someone, I really cannot live. But reasoning
explains nothing, and consequently there's no point in reasoning. I

(04:48:40):
mastered myself, however, and raised my head. Indeed I had
to raise it sometime, and then I am convinced of
it even to this day, Precisely because I was ashamed
to look at her, another feeling suddenly kindled and flared
up in my heart, the feeling of domination and possession.
My eyes gleamed with passion, and I squeezed her hands hard.

(04:49:04):
How I hated her, and how drawn I was to
her At that moment, one feeling intensified the other. This
was almost like revenge. At first, a look as if
of perplexity, even as if of fear, came to her face,
but only for a moment. She embraced me rapturously and

(04:49:26):
ardently X. A quarter of an hour later, I was
running up and down my room in furious impatience, going
to the screen every other minute and peeking at Liza
through a crack. She was sitting on the floor, her

(04:49:46):
head leaning against the bed, and was probably crying. But
she wouldn't leave, and that was what irritated me. This time.
She knew everything I had given her, the fire final insult,
but no use talking about it. She guessed that my
burst of passion was precisely revenge, a new humiliation for her,

(04:50:09):
and that to my previous, almost pointless hatred, there had
now been added to personal envious hatred of her. I
do not insist by the way that she understood it
all clearly. But on the other hand, she fully understood
that I was a loathesome man and above all incapable
of loving her. I know I shall be told that

(04:50:31):
all this is inconceivable, that it is inconceivable to be
as wicked as stupid as I was. Perhaps it will
also be added that it was inconceivable not to love her,
or at least not to appreciate her love. But why inconceivable?
First I was no longer able to love because I

(04:50:51):
repeat for me to love men, to tyrannize and to
preponderize morally. All my life I've been incapable even of
picturing any other love. And I've reached the point now
of sometimes thinking that love consists precisely in the right
voluntarily granted by the beloved object to be tyrannized over.
In my underground dreams as well, I never pictured love

(04:51:13):
to myself otherwise than as a struggle. For me, it
always started from hatred and ended with moral subjugation. And
afterwards I couldn't even picture to myself what to do
with the subjugated object. And how is it inconceivable if
I had managed so to corrupt myself morally, had grown
so unaccustomed to living life that I had dared just

(04:51:35):
before to reproach and shame her for coming to me
to hear pathetic words. And I myself never guessed that
she had come to me not at all to hear
pathetic words, but to love me. Because for a woman,
it is in love that all resurrection, all salvation from
ruin of whatever sort, and all regeneration consists. Nor can
it reveal itself in anything else but this However, I

(04:52:00):
did not hate her all that much. As I was
running about my room and peeking behind the screen through
a crack, I simply felt it unbearably burdensome that she
was there. I wanted her to disappear. I longed for piece.
I longed to be left alone in the underground living

(04:52:21):
life so crushed me, unaccustomed to it as I was,
that it even became difficult for me to breathe. But
several more minutes passed and she still did not get up,
As if she were oblivious, I was shameless enough to
tap softly on the screen to remind her. She suddenly

(04:52:41):
roused herself, started up from her place, and rushed to
look for her scarf, her hat, her fur coat, as
if to escape from me somewhere. Two minutes later, she
came slowly from behind the screen and gave me a
heavy look. I grinned spitefully, though forcely, for decency's sake,
and turned away from her. Look goodbye, she said, making

(04:53:06):
for the door. I suddenly ran to her, seized her hand,
opened it, put and closed it again. Then I turned
at once and quickly sprang away to the opposite corner,
so as at least not to see. I was going
to lie right now to write that I did it
accidentally in distraction, at a loss, out of foolishness. But

(04:53:31):
I don't want to lie, and so I'll say directly
that I opened her hand and put in it out
of malice. The thought of doing it occurred to me
while I was running up and down my room and
she was sitting behind the screen. But this much I
can say with certainty. Although I did this cruelty on purpose,
it came not from my heart but from my stupid head.

(04:53:54):
This cruelty was so affected, so much from the head,
so purposely contrived, so that I myself could not bear
it even for a minute. First I sprang away to
the corner so as not to see. Then, in shame
and despair, I rushed after Liza. I opened the door
to the landing and began to listen Liza. Liza. I

(04:54:19):
called out to the stairway, but timidly, in a low voice.
There was no answer. I thought I could hear her
footsteps down below. Liza. I called more loudly. No answer,
But at that moment I heard from below the tight
glass outer door to the street creek open heavily and

(04:54:42):
slammed tightly shut again. The bang echoed up the stairway.
She was gone. I went back to my room pondering.
I felt terribly heavy. I stopped by the table next
to the chair on which she had been sitting, and
stared senselessly before me. About a minute passed. Suddenly I

(04:55:06):
gave a great start. There before me, on the table,
I saw, in short, I saw a crumpled blue five
rouble bill, the very one I had pressed into her
hand a moment before. It was that bill. It couldn't
have been any other. There wasn't any other in the house,
so she had managed to fling it from her hand

(04:55:27):
onto the table just as I jumped away to the
opposite corner. Well then, I could have expected her to
do that, could have expected No. I was so great
an egoist, I had, in fact, so little respect for
people that I could scarcely imagine she too would do that.

(04:55:52):
I couldn't bear it. A second later, I rushed like
a madman to get dressed, threw on in a flurry
whatever I can fined, and raced headlong after her. She
couldn't have gone more than two hundred steps before I
ran out to the street. It was still, and the
snow was falling heavily, almost perpendicularly, laying a pillow over

(04:56:16):
the sidewalk in the deserted roadway. Not a single passer by,
not a sound to be heard. The street lamps flickered
glumly and uselessly. I ran about two hundred steps to
the intersection and stopped. Where did she go? And why

(04:56:36):
am I running after her? Why to fall down before her,
to weep in repentance, to kiss her feet, to beg forgiveness.
I wanted it. My whole breast was tearing apart. And never,
never will I recall this moment with indifference? But why
came the thought? Won't I hate her maybe to tomorrow,

(04:57:00):
even precisely for kissing her feet today? Will I bring
her happiness? Haven't I learned again today, for the hundredth time,
just how much I'm worth? Won't I torment her to death?
I stood in the snow, peering into the dull darkness
and thought about that, And won't it be better? Yes? Better?

(04:57:25):
I fancied later, back at home, stifling the living pain
in my heart with fantasies. Won't it be better if
she now carries an insult away with her forever an insult.
But this is purification. It's the most stinging and painful consciousness.
By tomorrow I'd have already dirted her soul with myself

(04:57:46):
and worn out her heart. But now the insult will
never die in her, And however vile the dirt that
awaits her, the insult will elevate and purify her through hatred.
HM may be also forgiveness, though by the way, will
all that make it any easier for her? And in

(04:58:08):
fact I'm now asking an idle question of my own
which is better, cheap happiness or lofty suffering? Well? Which
is better? Such were my reveries as I sat at
home that evening, barely alive from the pain in my soul.
Never before had I endured so much suffering and repentance.

(04:58:29):
But could there have been even the slightest doubt as
I went running out of the apartment that I would
turn back halfway? Never have I met Liza again or
heard anything about her. I will also add that for
a long time I remained pleased with the phrase about
the usefulness of insult and hatred, even though I myself

(04:58:51):
almost became sick then from anguish even now, after so
many years, all this comes out somehow none too well
in my recollection. Many things come out none too well
now in my recollections. But shouldn't I just end my
notes here? I think it was a mistake to begin
writing them. At least I've felt ashamed all the while

(04:59:15):
I've been writing this story. So it's no longer literature
but corrective punishment, because, for example, to tell long stories
of how I defaulted on my life through moral corruption
in a corner, through an insufficiency of milieu, through unaccustomed
to what is alive, and through vain, glorious spite in
the underground is not interesting. By God. A novel needs

(04:59:39):
a hero, and here there are purposely collected all the
features for an antihero. And in the first place, all
this will produce a most unpleasant impression. Because we've all
grown unaccustomed to life. We're all lame, each of us
more or less. We've even grown so unaccustomed that at
times we feel a soor of loathing for real living life,

(05:00:02):
and therefore cannot bear to be reminded of it. For
we've reached a point where we regard real living life
almost as labor almost as service, and we all agree
in ourselves that it's better from a book. And why
do we sometimes fuss about why these caprices, these demands
of ours, We ourselves don't know why it would be

(05:00:25):
the worse for us if our capricious demands were fulfilled.
Go on, try giving us more independence, for example, unbind
the hands of any one of us, broaden our range
of activity, relax the tutelage, and we, but I assure
you we will immediately beg to be taken back under tutelage.

(05:00:46):
I know you'll probably get angry with me for that. Shout,
stamp your feet. Speak just for yourself and your miseries
in the underground, and don't go saying we all excuse me, gentlemen,
But I am not justifying myself with this slashness. As
far as I myself am concerned, I have merely carried

(05:01:07):
to an extreme in my life which you have not
dared to carry even halfway. And what's more, you've taken
your cowardice for good sense and found comfort in thus
deceiving yourselves, so that I perhaps come out even more
living than you. Take a closer look, we don't even

(05:01:27):
know where the living lives now, or what it is
or what it's called. Leave us to ourselves without a book,
and will immediately get confused lost. We won't know what
to join, what to hold to, what to love and
what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.
It's a burden for us even to be men, and

(05:01:48):
men with real our own bodies and blood were ashamed
of it. We consider it a disgrace and keep trying
to be some unprecedented omnimen. We're stillborn, and have long
ceased to be born of living fathers, and we like
this more and more. We're acquiring a taste for it.
Soon we'll contrive to be born somehow from an idea.

(05:02:12):
But enough, I don't want to write anymore from underground. However,
the notes of this paradoxalist do not end here. He
could not help himself and went on. But it also
seems to us that this may be a good place
to stop finess about the author. Fyodormi Heailovitch Dostoyevsky eighteen

(05:02:39):
twenty one to eighteen eighty one was one of Russia's
greatest novelists and one of the most influential writers in
world literature. Born in Moscow, he studied engineering before devoting
himself to literature. His early works, including Poor Folk eighteen
forty six, brought him immediate recognition, but his life was

(05:03:01):
soon marked by political arrest, a mock execution, and years
of exile in Siberia. These profound experiences shaped his spiritual
outlook and gave his later works their depth and intensity.
Dostoyevsky's novels explore the extremes of human psychology, moral conflict,

(05:03:23):
and spiritual struggle. His masterpieces including Crime and Punishment eighteen
sixty six, The Idiot eighteen sixty nine, Demons eighteen seventy two,
and The Brothers Karamaziv eighteen eighty, probe questions of freedom, faith, suffering,
and redemption. His characters often wrestle with guilt, doubt, and

(05:03:46):
the search for meaning, reflecting his conviction that human life
is defined not only by reason, but also by irrational
passions and the mystery of the soul. A pioneer of
psychological realism, Dostoyevsky anticipated many themes later explored by existentialists
and modernist thinkers, influencing writers such as Nietzsche, Kafka, Camu,

(05:04:10):
and Sartra. Today, his works continue to challenge and inspire
readers around the world with their emotional intensity and timeless
exploration of the human condition. Pigeon Publishing House presented notes
from Underground author Theodor Dostoyevsky. Thank you for listening to

(05:04:36):
this audiobook. We hope you enjoyed it. If you enjoyed
this classic, follow the show and leave a quick review,
and join us every Tuesday and Thursday for more Timeless stories.

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