But so long as I live and desire - let my hand wither 20 if I bring even one little brick for such a tenement house! Never mind that I myself have just rejected the crystal edifice, for the sole reason that one cannot taunt it with one's tongue. I said that not because I have such a love of putting out my tongue. Perhaps I was angry simply because such an edifice, at which it is possible not to put out one's tongue, has never yet been found among all your edifices. On the contrary, I would let my tongue be cut off altogether, from sheer gratitude, if only it could be so arranged that I myself never felt like sticking it out again. What do I care that it's impossible to arrange it so, and one must content oneself with apartments? Why, then, have I been arranged with such desires? Can it be that I've been arranged simply so as to come to the conclusion that my entire arrangement is a hoax? Can that be the whole purpose? I don't believe it. You know what, though: I'm convinced that our sort, the underground ones, ought to be kept on a tether. Though we're capable of sitting silently in the underground for forty years, once we do come out and let loose, we talk, talk, talk…

XI

The final end, gentlemen: better to do nothing! Better conscious inertia! And so, long live the underground! Though I did say that I envy the normal man to the point of uttermost bile, still I do not want to be him on those conditions in which I see him (though, all the same, I shall not stop envying him. No, no, the underground is in any case more profitable!). There one can at least… Eh! but here, too, I'm lying! Lying, because I myself know, like two times two, that it is not at all the underground that is better, but something different, completely different, which I thirst for but cannot ever find! Devil take the underground!

Even this would be better here: if I myself believed at least something of all I've just written. For I swear to you, gentlemen, that I do not believe a word, not one little word, of all I've just scribbled! That is, I do believe, perhaps, but at the same time, who knows why, I sense and suspect that I'm lying like a cobbler.

"Then why did you write it all?" you say to me.

And what if I put you away for some forty years with nothing to do, and then come to you in the underground after forty years to see how you've turned out? One cannot leave a man alone and unoccupied for forty years, can one?

"But is this not shameful, is it not humiliating!" you will perhaps say to me, contemptuously shaking your heads. "You thirst for life, yet you yourself resolve life's questions with a logical tangle. And how importunate, how impudent your escapades, yet at the same time how frightened you are! You talk nonsense, and are pleased with it; you say impudent things, yet you keep being afraid and asking forgiveness for them. You insist that you are not afraid of anything, and at the same time you court our opinion. You insist that you are gnashing your teeth, and at the same time you exert your wit to make us laugh. You know that your witticisms are not witty, but you are apparently quite pleased with their literary merits. You may indeed have happened to suffer, but you do not have the least respect for your suffering. There is truth in you, too, but no integrity; out of the pettiest vanity you take your truth and display it, disgrace it, in the marketplace… You do indeed want to say something, but you conceal your final word out of fear, because you lack the resolve to speak it out, you have only cowardly insolence. You boast about consciousness, yet all you do is vacillate, because, though your mind works, your heart is darkened by depravity, and without a pure heart there can be no full, right consciousness. And how importunate you are, how you foist yourself, how you mug! Lies, lies, lies!"

To be sure, I myself have just made up all these words of yours. This, too, is from underground. I've spent forty years on end there listening to these words of yours through a crack. I thought them up myself, since this was all that would get thought up. No wonder they got learned by heart and assumed a literary form…

But can it be, can it be that you are indeed so gullible as to imagine I will publish all this and, what's more, give it to you to read? And here's another puzzle for me: why indeed do I call you "gentlemen," why do I address you as if you were actually my readers? Such confessions as I intend to begin setting forth here are not published and given to others to read. At least I do not have so much firmness in myself, and do not consider it necessary to have it. But you see: a certain fancy has come into my head, and I want at all costs to realize it. Here's what it is.

In every man's memories there are such things as he will reveal not to everyone, but perhaps only to friends. There are also such as he will reveal not even to friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. Then, finally, there are such as a man is afraid to reveal even to himself, and every decent man will have accumulated quite a few things of this sort. That is, one might even say: the more decent a man is, the more of them he will have. At least I myself have only recently resolved to recall some of my former adventures, which till now I have always avoided, even with a certain uneasiness. Now, however, when I not only recall them but am even resolved to write them down, now I want precisely to make a test: is it possible to be perfectly candid with oneself and not be afraid of the whole truth? I will observe incidentally: Heine insists that faithful autobiographies are almost impossible, and that a man is sure to tell a pack of lies about himself. In his opinion, Rousseau, for example, most certainly told a pack of lies about himself in his confessions, and even did so intentionally, out of vanity. 21 I'm sure Heine is right; I understand very well how one can sometimes slap whole crimes on oneself solely out of vanity, and I even perceive quite well what sort of vanity it might be. But Heine's opinion concerned a man who was confessing before the public. I, however, am writing only for myself, and I declare once and for all that even if I write as if I were addressing readers, that is merely a front, because it's easier for me to write that way. It's a form, just an empty form, and I shall never have any readers. I have already declared as much…

I do not want to hamper myself with anything in preparing my notes. I will not introduce any order or system. Whatever I recall, I will write down.

Now, for example, someone might seize upon a word and ask me: if you really are not counting on any readers, why then do you make such agreements with yourself, and on paper besides, that you will introduce no order or system, that you will write down whatever you recall, etc., etc.? Why these explanations? Why these apologies?

"Well, so it goes," I reply.

There is, however, a whole psychology here. Maybe it's also that I'm simply a coward. And maybe also that I'm purposely imagining a public before me so as to behave more decently while I write. There may be a thousand reasons.

But here is another thing: for what and to what end, in fact, do I want to write? If not for the public, then why not simply recall everything mentally, without transferring it to paper?

Right, sir; but on paper it will somehow come out more solemnly. There's something imposing in it, there will be more of a judgment on oneself, it will gain in style. Besides: maybe I will indeed get relief from the writing. Today, for example, I'm particularly oppressed by one distant recollection. I recalled it clearly the other day, and it has since stayed with me like a nagging musical tune that refuses to be gotten rid of. And yet one must get rid of it. I have hundreds of such recollections; but some one out of a hundred emerges every now and then and oppresses me. I believe for some reason that if I write it down, I shall then be rid of it. So why not try?