الفصل الفصل 2 · 第2章

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

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, may be, more than anyone. We will not dispute

it; my contention was absurd. But yet I am firmly persuaded that a

great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a

disease. I stick to that. Let us leave that, too, for a minute. Tell me

this: why does it happen that at the very, yes, at the very moments

when I am most capable of feeling every refinement of all that is

“sublime and beautiful,” as they used to say at one time, it would, as

though of design, happen to me not only to feel but to do such ugly

things, such that ... Well, in short, actions that all, perhaps,

commit; but which, as though purposely, occurred to me at the very time

when I was most conscious that they ought not to be committed. The more

conscious I was of goodness and of all that was “sublime and

beautiful,” the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I

was to sink in it altogether. But the chief point was that all this

was, as it were, not accidental in me, but as though it were bound to

be so. It was as though it were my most normal condition, and not in

the least disease or depravity, so that at last all desire in me to

struggle against this depravity passed. It ended by my almost believing

(perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition.

But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that

struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all

my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even

now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of

secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on

some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had

committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be

undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it,

tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a

sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real

enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I

have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether

other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was

just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it

was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it

was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no

escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even

if time and faith were still left you to change into something

different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish

to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there

was nothing for you to change into.

And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in

accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness,

and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that

consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely

nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness,

that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any

consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he

actually is a scoundrel. But enough.... Ech, I have talked a lot of

nonsense, but what have I explained? How is enjoyment in this to be

explained? But I will explain it. I will get to the bottom of it! That

is why I have taken up my pen....

I, for instance, have a great deal of _amour propre_. I am as

suspicious and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf. But upon

my word I sometimes have had moments when if I had happened to be

slapped in the face I should, perhaps, have been positively glad of it.

I say, in earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover

even in that a peculiar sort of enjoyment—the enjoyment, of course, of

despair; but in despair there are the most intense enjoyments,

especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of

one’s position. And when one is slapped in the face—why then the

consciousness of being rubbed into a pulp would positively overwhelm

one. The worst of it is, look at it which way one will, it still turns

out that I was always the most to blame in everything. And what is most

humiliating of all, to blame for no fault of my own but, so to say,

through the laws of nature. In the first place, to blame because I am

cleverer than any of the people surrounding me. (I have always

considered myself cleverer than any of the people surrounding me, and

sometimes, would you believe it, have been positively ashamed of it. At

any rate, I have all my life, as it were, turned my eyes away and never

could look people straight in the face.) To blame, finally, because

even if I had had magnanimity, I should only have had more suffering

from the sense of its uselessness. I should certainly have never been

able to do anything from being magnanimous—neither to forgive, for my

assailant would perhaps have slapped me from the laws of nature, and

one cannot forgive the laws of nature; nor to forget, for even if it

were owing to the laws of nature, it is insulting all the same.

Finally, even if I had wanted to be anything but magnanimous, had

desired on the contrary to revenge myself on my assailant, I could not

have revenged myself on any one for anything because I should certainly

never have made up my mind to do anything, even if I had been able to.

Why should I not have made up my mind? About that in particular I want

to say a few words.