Notes from Underground

I am a sick man… a wicked man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. Yet, I refuse treatment, for I find a perverse pleasure in my ailments. For twenty years now, I have lived in my corner, a civil servant who has retired, or rather, been cast aside, at the age of forty. I live in St. Petersburg, in a wretched little apartment, a hole, an "underground" where I brood over the injustices and absurdities of the world, and most keenly, of myself. My highly developed consciousness, you see, is both my curse and my greatest asset. It paralyzes me, prevents me from being anything, even a scoundrel, for I see all the contradictory reasons for every action, every thought.

You, my imagined reader, are perhaps a man of action, a man who believes in the crystal palace of reason and progress, where two times two always makes four. But I tell you, two times two makes five can sometimes be a most charming thing! What if man does not want what is advantageous? What if he prefers suffering, caprice, and destruction, merely to assert his own free will? This very freedom, this irrationality, is what makes us human, not the cold calculations of science. To deny this is to deny the very essence of man. I am a product of my age, a man of excessive consciousness, and in me, you will find the truth of your own suppressed desires and contradictions.

Sixteen years ago, I was a young man, still clinging to some semblance of interaction with the world, though always with a lurking sense of alienation and resentment. There was an officer, a large, six-foot brute, who once moved me aside in a tavern as if I were a fly. This slight festered within me, growing into an obsession. For months, I plotted my revenge, rehearsing the moment I would refuse to yield to him on the Nevsky Prospekt, to assert my equal footing, even if it meant being utterly crushed. And one day, I succeeded, bumping shoulders with him, feeling an ecstatic triumph in my petty victory, though he pretended not to notice.

Then came the farewell dinner for Zverkov, a former schoolmate, a successful, boastful officer whom I loathed with every fiber of my being. Simonov, another old acquaintance, was organizing it, and against my better judgment, I insisted on attending, feeling a desperate, contradictory need to be included, yet also a burning desire to humiliate them and myself. I arrived late, uninvited, and proceeded to make a spectacle of myself, insulting them, challenging Zverkov to a duel, and generally behaving in the most abject and spiteful manner imaginable. They paid me no mind, of course, their indifference a far greater wound than any insult. I followed them to a brothel, begging Simonov for money, only to be met with further scorn.

It was there, in that squalid place, that I met Liza. She was a young prostitute, quiet and worn, with eyes that held a flicker of something pure. In a moment of theatrical passion, driven by a desire to assert my superiority, to play the hero, I poured out a torrent of grandiose speeches about her degradation, about the possibility of a new life, a redemption. I gave her my address, telling her to come to me if she truly wanted to escape.

The moment I left her, I regretted it. The thought of her actually appearing at my door, interrupting my carefully constructed underground existence, filled me with dread. For weeks, I lived in agony, fantasizing about her arrival, sometimes imagining a blissful union, other times a confrontation where I would crush her spirit. And then, she came. She found me in my wretched room, arguing with my servant Apollon, looking utterly pathetic. Instead of the noble rescuer I had painted myself to be, I was a trembling, humiliated wretch. My fear of intimacy, my self-loathing, surged forth. I lashed out at her cruelly, tearing down her hopes, asserting my power over her in the most degrading way possible, before collapsing into tears myself.

Liza, in her innocence, saw my suffering. She did not recoil, but embraced me, offering comfort. It was a moment of true human connection, a chance for genuine love and redemption. But I could not bear it. Her selfless act only intensified my shame, my hatred for myself, and by extension, for her. I pushed her away, gave her money, and watched her flee, her hopes shattered. I had sabotaged the one chance for genuine human connection, driven by my own perverse desire for suffering and my inability to accept simple kindness. And so, I retreated further into my underground, a prisoner of my own consciousness, forever dissecting my bitterness, my spite, and the irrationality of man.