Notes from Underground

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  You shout at me (if you do still honor me with your shouts) that no one is taking my 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 arithmetic, and the only thing going is two times two is four? Two times two will be four even without my will. As if that were any will of one's own!

  IX

  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 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 in conformity with the demands of science and common sense. But how do you know that man 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 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? 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 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 give himself up to pernicious idleness, which, as is known, is the mother of all vice. Man loves creating and 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 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 edifice only from far off, and by no means up close; maybe he only likes creating it, and not living in it, leaving it afterwards aux animaux domestiques, 18 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 - the anthill.

  With the anthill the most reverend ants began, and with the anthill 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. And who knows (one cannot vouch for it), perhaps the whole goal mankind strives for on earth consists just in this cease-lessness 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 two is four - that is, a formula; and two times two is four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death. At least man has always somehow feared this two times two is four, and I fear it even now. Suppose all man ever does is search for this two times two is 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. 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 pot-house, 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 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 is four is a most obnoxious thing. Two times two is four - why, in my opinion, it's sheer impudence, sirs. Two times two is four has a cocky look; it stands across your path, arms akimbo, and spits. I agree that two times two is four is an excellent thing; but if we're going to start praising everything, then two times two is five is sometimes also a most charming little thing.

  And why are you so firmly, so solemnly 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 profits? Maybe man does not love well-being only? Maybe he loves suffering 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 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 stand… for my own caprice, and that it be guaranteed me when necessary. Suffering, for example, is inadmissible in vaudevilles, I know that. In a crystal palace it is even unthinkable: suffering is doubt, it is negation, and what good is a crystal palace in which one can have doubts? And 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 at the beginning that consciousness, in my opinion, is man's greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfactions. Consciousness, for example, is infinitely higher than two times two. After two times two 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 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 oneself, and, after all, that livens things up a bit. It may be retrograde, but still it's better than nothing.

  X

  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. 19 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 of a palace there is a chicken coop, and it starts to rain, I will perhaps get into the chicken coop to avoid a wetting, 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, 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 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 nonrational 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 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 a thousand-year lease, and the dentist Wagenheim's shingle for 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 give me your attention, I am not going to bow and scrape before you. I have the underground.

  But so long as I live and desire - let my hand wither 20 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 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 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 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 silently in the underground for forty years, once we do come out and let loose, we talk, talk, talk…

  XI

  The final end, gentlemen: better to do nothing! Better conscious inertia! And so, long live the underground! Though I did say 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! Lying, because I myself know, like two times two, 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 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 it all?" you say to me.

  And what if I put you away for some forty years 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. "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. 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 have happened to suffer, but you do not have the least respect for your suffering. There is 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 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, 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've spent forty years on end there listening to these words of yours through a crack. 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 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 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 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 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 will observe incidentally: Heine insists that faithful autobiographies are almost impossible, and that a man is sure to tell a pack of lies about himself. In his opinion, Rousseau, for example, most certainly told a pack of lies about himself in his confessions, and even did so intentionally, out of vanity. 21 I'm sure Heine 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 Heine's opinion concerned a man who was confessing before the public. I, however, am writing only for myself, and I declare once and for all that even if I write as if I were addressing readers, that is merely a front, 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…