‘Notes From The Underground’ PDF Quick download link is given at the bottom of this article. You can see the PDF demo, size of the PDF, page numbers, and direct download Free PDF of ‘Notes From The Undergroun’ using the download button.
Notes From The Underground PDF Free Download
Notes From The Undergroun
I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why I could not even become an insect.
I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that.
I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness—a real thorough-going illness.
For man’s everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to have the ordinary human consciousness.
That is half or a quarter of the amount which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy nineteenth century, especially one who has the fatal ill-luck to inhabit Petersburg, the most theoretical and intentional town on the whole terrestrial globe.
(There are intentional and unintentional towns.) It would have been quite enough, for instance, to have the consciousness by which all so-called direct persons and men of the action live.
I bet you think I am writing all this from affectation, to be witty at the expense of men of action; and what is more, that from ill-bred affectation, I am clanking a sword like my officer.
But, gentlemen, whoever can pride himself on his diseases and even swagger over them?
Though, after all, everyone does do that; people do pride themselves on their diseases, and I do, maybe, more than anyone.
We will not dispute it; my contention was absurd. But yet I am firmly persuaded that a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a disease.
I stick to that. Let us leave that, too, for a minute.
Tell me this: why does it happen that at the very, yes, at the very moments when I am most capable of feeling every refinement of all that is “sublime and beautiful,” as they used to say at one time, it would, as though of design, happen to me not only to feel but to do such ugly things, such that …
Well, in short, actions that all, perhaps, commit; but which, as though purposely, occurred to me at the very time when I was most conscious that they ought not to be committed.
I ’m a sick man… a spiteful man… an unattractive man, that’s what I am. I suspect there’s something wrong with my liver.
But I don’t understand a damn thing about my illness, nor do I know for sure what’s wrong with me. I’m not being treated for anything and never have been, though I respect doctors and medical science.
Besides, I’m extremely superstitious, at least enough to have respect for medicine. (I’m sufficiently educated not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious.)
It’s because I’m spiteful that I don’t want to have any treatment. Now that’s something you’re probably not inclined to understand. Alright, but I do understand it.
I couldn’t of course explain to you who it is that I will actually hurt by my spite; I know perfectly well that I would be quite unable to foul things up for the doctors by not being treated by them; I’m aware, no one more so, that all this will harm only myself and nobody else.
All the same, if I’m not being treated, it’s entirely out of spite.
There’s something wrong with my liver – well, let it get worse! I’ve been living like this for a long time – about twenty years. I’m forty now. I used to work in the Civil Service, but I don’t any more.
I was a spiteful civil servant. I was rude and took pleasure in being rude. I never accepted bribes, you know, so I had to find some other reward even if it was only that. (A bad joke. But I won’t cross it out.
I wrote it because I thought it would be very witty. Now that I see I wanted to show off horribly, I deliberately won’t cross it out.)
When, occasionally, people came up to my table to ask for information, I used to snarl at them and was delighted every time I succeeded in upsetting them.
I almost invariably succeeded. For the most part they were timid people. Of course – they were petitioners. Among the swankier lot, there was one army officer I particularly detested.
He simply refused to do what he was told and rattled his sword in a disgusting way. I waged war on him about that sword for a year and a half and got the better of him in the end. He stopped rattling.
| Author | Fyodor Dostoevsky |
| Language | English |
| No. of Pages | 168 |
| PDF Size | 0.5 MB |
| Category | Novel |
Notes from the Underground PDF Free Download