White Nights, and Other Stories quotes

It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader.

The sky was so starry, so bright that, looking at it, one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured and capricious people could live under such a sky.

That is a youthful question too, dear reader, very youthful, but may the Lord put it more frequently into your heart!... Speaking of capricious and ill-humoured people, I cannot help recalling my moral condition all that day.

I walked along singing, for when I am happy I am always humming to myself like every happy man who has no friend or acquaintance with whom to share his joy. Suddenly I had a most unexpected adventure.

Leaning on the canal railing stood a woman with her elbows on the rail, she was apparently looking with great attention at the muddy water of the canal.

She was wearing a very charming yellow hat and a jaunty little black mantle. "She's a girl, and I am sure she is dark," I thought.

I at once followed her; but she, divining this, left the embankment, crossed the road and walked along the pavement. I dared not cross the street after her.

My heart was fluttering like a captured bird.

All at once a chance came to my aid.

"Listen, listen!" I interrupted her. "Forgive me if I tell you something else.... I tell you what, I can't help coming here to-morrow,

I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again in my dreams.

I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a whole year. I shall certainly come here to-morrow, just here to this place, just at the same hour, and I shall be happy remembering to-day. This place is dear to me already.

But mind you will come on the condition, in the first place (only be good, do what I ask—you see, I speak frankly), you won't fall in love with me.... That's impossible, I assure you. I am ready for friendship; here's my hand....

But you mustn't fall in love with me, I beg you!

"

"Listen, Nastenka. (It seems to me I shall never be tired of calling you Nastenka.) Let me tell you that in these corners live strange people—dreamers.

The dreamer—if you want an exact definition—is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort.

For the most part he settles in some inaccessible corner, as though hiding from the light of day;

"Ah, Nastenka!

Why, one thanks some people for being alive at the same time with one; I thank you for having met me, for my being able to remember you all my life!

"

My Nastenka was so downcast, so dismayed, that I think she realized at last that I loved her, and was sorry for my poor love.

So when we are unhappy we feel the unhappiness of others more; feeling is not destroyed but concentrated....

I went to meet her with a full heart, and was all impatience. I had no presentiment that I should feel as I do now, that it would not all end happily. She was beaming with pleasure; she was expecting an answer.

I cried. ("Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka," I thought, "how much you have told me in that saying! Such fondness at certain moments makes the heart cold and the soul heavy. Your hand is cold, mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka!...

Oh, how unbearable a happy person is sometimes!

But I could not be angry with you!")

"I was thinking about you," she said after a minute's silence. "You are so kind that I should be a stone if I did not feel it. Do you know what has occurred to me now? I was comparing you two.

Why isn't he you? Why isn't he like you? He is not as good as you, though I love him more than you.

"

"

I have taken all the cobwebs off the ceiling; you can have a wedding or give a party.

"

Oh never, never! May your sky be clear, may your sweet smile be bright and untroubled, and may you be blessed for that moment of blissful happiness which you gave to another, lonely and grateful heart!

My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man's life?

underground

a novel

I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.

I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors.

I know better than any one that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite.

My liver is bad, well—let it get worse!

[1] The author of the diary and the diary itself are, of course, imaginary.

I might even be genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards and lie awake at night with shame for months after. That was my way.

I was lying when I said just now that I was a spiteful official. I was lying from spite.

I was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and with the officer, and in reality I never could become spiteful. I was conscious every moment in myself of many, very many elements absolutely opposite to that.

Now, are not you fancying, gentlemen, that I am expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking your forgiveness for something? I am sure you are fancying that.... However, I assure you I do not care if you are....

It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything: neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect.

Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.

Yes, a man in the nineteenth century must and morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless creature; a man of character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited creature. That is my conviction of forty years.

I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole life-time; you know it is extreme old age.

To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly. I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows.

But I am remaining in Petersburg; I am not going away from Petersburg! I am not going away because ... ech! Why, it is absolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away.

But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?

Well, so I will talk about myself.

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 …

Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful.

In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.

But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity, perpetual—from the days of the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period. Moral obliquity and consequently lack of good sense;

In fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is, after all, something insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence.

Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting.

I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.

But yet mathematical certainty is, after all, something insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting.

I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.

And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive—in other words, only what is conducive to welfare—is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being?

suffering means doubt, negation, and what would be the good of a "palace of crystal" if there could be any doubt about it? And yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is, destruction and chaos.

Why, suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.

Though I did lay it down at the beginning that consciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction. Consciousness, for instance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four.

That is my choice, my desire. You will only eradicate it when you have changed my preference. Well, do change it, allure me with something else, give me another ideal. But meanwhile

I will not take a hen-house for a mansion.

The palace of crystal may be an idle dream, it may be that it is inconsistent with the laws of nature and that I have invented it only through my own stupidity, through the old-fashioned irrational habits of my generation.

But what does it matter to me that it is inconsistent? That makes no difference since it exists in my desires, or rather exists as long as my desires exist. Perhaps you are laughing again? Laugh away;

I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.

I know, anyway, that I will not be put off with a compromise, with a recurring zero, simply because it is consistent with the laws of nature and actually exists.

But do you know what: I am convinced that we underground folk ought to be kept on a curb.

Though we may sit forty years underground without speaking, when we do come out into the light of day and break out we talk and talk and talk....

The long and the short of it is, gentlemen, that it is better to do nothing! Better conscious inertia! And so hurrah for underground!

No, no; anyway the underground life is more advantageous. There, at any rate, one can.... Oh, but even now I am lying!

I am lying because I know myself that it is not underground that is better, but something different, quite different, for which I am thirsting, but which I cannot find! Damn underground!

I will tell you another thing that would be better, and that is, if I myself believed in anything of what I have just written.

I swear to you, gentlemen, there is not one thing, not one word of what I have written that I really believe. That is, I believe it, perhaps, but at the same time I feel and suspect that

I am lying like a cobbler.

"Then why have you written all this?" you will say to me.

Anyway, I am not strong-minded enough for that, and I don't see why I should be. But you see a fancy has occurred to me and I want to realize it at all costs. Let me explain.

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to every one, but only to his friends.

He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret.

But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

The more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.

Anyway, I have only lately determined to remember some of my early adventures. Till now I have always avoided them, even with a certain uneasiness.

Besides, I am bored, and I never have anything to do. Writing will be a sort of work. They say work makes man kind-hearted and honest. Well, here is a chance for me, anyway.

Snow is falling to-day, yellow and dingy.

It fell yesterday, too, and a few days ago. I fancy it is the wet snow that has reminded me of that incident which I cannot shake off now. And so let it be a story à propos of the falling snow.

Perhaps I was the only one in the office who fancied that I was a coward and a slave, and I fancied it just because I was more highly developed. But it was not only that I fancied it, it really was so.

I was a coward and a slave.

I say this without the slightest embarrassment. Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave. That is his normal condition. Of that I am firmly persuaded. He is made and constructed to that very end.

But it was not only that I fancied it, it really was so. I was a coward and a slave. I say this without the slightest embarrassment.

Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave.

That is his normal condition. Of that I am firmly persuaded. He is made and constructed to that very end.

… at the same time to preserve "the good and the beautiful" inviolate within them to the hour of their death, and to preserve themselves also, incidentally, like some precious jewel wrapped in cotton wool if only for the benefit of "the good and the beautiful."

Our "romantic" is a man of great breadth and the greatest rogue of all our rogues, I assure you....

I can assure you from experience, indeed. Of course, that is, if he is intelligent. But what am I saying!

he took me by the shoulders and without a word—without a warning or explanation—moved me from where I was standing to another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me.

I could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me without noticing me.

Devil knows what I would have given for a real regular quarrel—a more decent, a more literary one, so to speak. I had been treated like a fly. This officer was over six foot, while I was a spindly little fellow.

Devil knows what I would have given for a real regular quarrel—a more decent, a more literary one, so to speak.

I had been treated like a fly.

This officer was over six foot, while I was a spindly little fellow. But the quarrel was in my hands. I had only to protest and I certainly would have been thrown out of the window.

But, thank God (to this day I thank the Almighty with tears in my eyes) I did not send the letter to him.

Cold shivers run down my back when I think of what might have happened if I had sent it.

And all at once I revenged myself in the simplest way, by a stroke of genius! A brilliant thought suddenly dawned upon me. Sometimes on holidays I used to stroll along the sunny side of the Nevsky about four o'clock in the afternoon.

Anything but the foremost place I could not conceive for myself, and for that very reason I quite contentedly occupied the lowest in reality.

Either to be a hero or to grovel in the mud—there was nothing between.

That was my ruin, for when I was in the mud I comforted myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and the hero was a cloak for the mud:

"Do you want to join, too?" Simonov observed, with no appearance of pleasure, seeming to avoid looking at me. He knew me through and through.

It infuriated me that he knew me so thoroughly.

"Why not? I am an old schoolfellow of his, too, I believe, and I must own I feel hurt that you have left me out," I said, boiling over again.

Of course, I had better not go; of course, I must just snap my fingers at them. I am not bound in any way. I'll send Simonov a note by to-morrow's post...."

But what made me furious was that I knew for certain that I should go, that I should make a point of going; and the more tactless, the more unseemly my going would be, the more certainly I would go.

And there was a positive obstacle to my going: I had no money. All I had was nine roubles, I had to give seven of that to my servant, Apollon, for his monthly wages. That was all I paid him—he had to keep himself.

"Anyway, in a year you will be worth less," I continued malignantly. "

You will go from here to something lower, another house

; a year later—to a third, lower and lower, and in seven years you will come to a basement in the Haymarket. That will be if you were lucky. But it would be much worse if you got some disease, consumption, say ...

"Not all, of course, but anyway it is much better than the life here. Infinitely better. Besides, with love one can live even without happiness.

Even in sorrow life is sweet; life is sweet, however one lives.

But here what is there but ... foulness. Phew!"

And whatever quarrels there may be between them they ought not to call in their own mother to judge between them and tell tales of one another. They are their own judges.

Love is a holy mystery and ought to be hidden from all other eyes, whatever happens.

That makes it holier and better. They respect one another more, and much is built on respect. And if once there has been love, if they have been married for love, why should love pass away? Surely one can keep it!

but I didn't succeed, I didn't find him; I had to avenge the insult on some one to get back my own again; you turned up, I vented my spleen on you and laughed at you.

I had been humiliated, so I wanted to humiliate; I had been treated like a rag, so I wanted to show my power....

That's what it was, and you imagined I had come there on purpose to save you. Yes? You imagined that? You imagined that?"

That is what I want. I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace.

Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea.

Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard. Here I have been shuddering for the last three days at the thought of your coming.

so you may as well know that I am ashamed of it; I am more ashamed of it than of anything, more afraid of it than of being found out if I were a thief, because

I am as vain as though I had been skinned and the very air blowing on me hurt.

Surely by now you must realize that I shall never forgive you for having found me in this wretched dressing-gown, just as I was flying at Apollon like a spiteful cur.

But at this point a strange thing happened.

I was so accustomed to think and imagine everything from books, and to picture everything in the world to myself just as I had made it up in my dreams beforehand, that I could not all at once take in this strange circumstance.

What happened was this: Liza, insulted and crushed by me, understood a great deal more than I imagined. She understood from all this what a woman understands first of all, if she feels genuine love, that is, that I was myself unhappy.

I have never in my life been able to imagine any other sort of love, and have nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinking that love really consists in the right—freely given by the beloved object—to tyrannize over her.

Even in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a struggle.

I began it always with hatred and ended it with moral subjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the subjugated object.

I was only insufferably oppressed by her being here. I wanted her to disappear. I wanted "peace," to be left alone in my underground world.

Real life oppressed me with its novelty so much that I could hardly breathe.

But several minutes passed and she still remained, without stirring, as though she were unconscious. I had the shamelessness to tap softly at the screen as though to remind her....

Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.

We are oppressed at being men—men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man.

We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough;

We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it.

Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea.

But enough; I don't want to write more from "Underground."

It was worth seeing and hearing how he could sometimes, not sparing himself, consequently with pluck, almost with heroism, dispose of one of his patrons who had infuriated him to madness. But that was at moments....

In short, he was a martyr in the fullest sense of the word, but the most useless and consequently the most comic martyr.

There was a general discussion going on among the guests. All at once I saw our queer friend jump upon his chair, and call out at the top of his voice, anxious for the exclusive attention of the company.

'Where are you off to, Osip Mihailitch? Surely on the eve of such a day you cannot bear malice against me? What wrong have I done you?...' 'Fedosey Nikolaitch,' I said, 'Fedosey Nikolaitch....' In fact,

I melted, gentlemen, I melted like a sugar-stick.

And the roll of notes that was lying in my pocket, that, too, seemed screaming out: 'You ungrateful brigand, you accursed thief!' It seemed to weigh a hundredweight ... (if only it had weighed a hundredweight!)....

I wallowed joyfully in the mud, my dear friends. You see what I am like; they take something from you, and you give them something else as well and say, 'Take that, too.'

They strike you on the cheek and in your joy you offer them your whole back.

Then they try to lure you like a dog with a bun, and you embrace them with your foolish paws and fall to kissing them with all your heart and soul. Why, see what I am doing now, gentlemen!

"What then! I met Fedosey Nikolaitch once, I meant to tell him to his face he was a scoundrel."

"But somehow I couldn't bring myself to it, gentlemen."

At that time I was nearly eleven, I had been sent in July to spend the holiday in a village near Moscow with a relation of mine called T., whose house was full of guests, fifty, or perhaps more.... I don't remember, I didn't count.

But the lovely creature seemed silent and reserved, though no one could have been more attentive and loving if any one needed sympathy.

There are women who are like sisters of mercy in life.

Nothing can be hidden from them, nothing, at least, that is a sore or wound of the heart.

I hid my face in my hands, and quivering like a blade of grass, gave myself up to the first consciousness and revelation of my heart, the first vague glimpse of my nature.

My childhood was over from that moment.

* * * * *

… behind his screen, saying nothing, knowing nothing of the world nor of trouble, saving his half-pence, and now at a frivolous, idle word the man had actually gone off his head, was utterly panic-stricken at the thought he might have a hard time of it....

And it never occurred to him that every one has a hard time of it!

"If he would only take that into consideration," Okeanov said afterwards, "that we all have a hard time, then the man would have kept his head, would have given up his antics and would have put up with things, one way or another."