Notes From The Underground 78

Notes From The Underground 78

2 mins
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Next day I was ready again to look upon it all as nonsense, due to over-excited nerves, and, above all, as EXAGGER-ATED. I was always conscious of that weak point of mine, and sometimes very much afraid of it. ‘I exaggerate every-thing, that is where I go wrong,’ I repeated to myself every hour. But, however, ‘Liza will very likely come all the same,’ was the refrain with which all my reflections ended. I was so uneasy that I sometimes flew into a fury: ‘She’ll come, she is certain to come!’ I cried, running about the room, ‘if not today, she will come tomorrow; she’ll find me out! The damnable romanticism of these pure hearts! Oh, the vile-ness—oh, the silliness—oh, the stupidity of these ‘wretched sentimental souls!’ Why, how fail to understand? How could one fail to understand? .


But at this point I stopped short, and in great confusion, indeed. And how few, how few words, I thought, in passing, were needed; how little of the idyllic (and affectedly, bookishly, artificially idyllic too) had sufficed to turn a whole human life at once according to my will. That’s virginity, to be sure! Freshness of soil!

At times a thought occurred to me, to go to her, ‘to tell her all,’ and beg her not to come to me. But this thought stirred such wrath in me that I believed I should have crushed that ‘damned’ Liza if she had chanced to be near me at the time. I should have insulted her, have spat at her, have turned her out, have struck her!


to be contd..


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