Notes From The Underground 47

Notes From The Underground 47

2 mins
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If I feel impelled to do anything, I seem to be pitchforked into it. I should have jeered at myself ever afterwards: ‘So you funked it, you funked it, you funked the REAL THING!’ On the contrary, I passionately longed to show all that ‘rabble’ that I was by no means such a spiritless creature as I seemed to myself. What is more, even in the acutest paroxysm of this cowardly fever, I dreamed of getting the upper hand, of dominating them, carrying them away, making them like me—if only for my ‘elevation of thought and unmistakable wit.’ They would abandon Zverkov, he would sit on one side, silent and ashamed, while I should crush him.


Then, perhaps, we would be reconciled and drink to our everlasting friendship; but what was most bitter and humiliating for me was that I knew even then, knew fully and for certain, that I needed nothing of all this really, that I did not really want to crush, to subdue, to attract them, and that I did not care a straw re-ally for the result, even if I did achieve it. Oh, how I prayed for the day to pass quickly! In unutterable anguish I went to the window, opened the movable pane and looked out into the troubled darkness of the thickly falling wet snow. At last my wretched little clock hissed out five. I seized my hat and, trying not to look at Apollon, who had been all day expect-ing his month’s wages, but in his foolishness was unwilling to be the first to speak about it, I slipped between him and the door and, jumping into a high-class sledge, on which I spent my last half rouble, I drove up in grand style to the Hotel de Paris.


TO BE CONTD..


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