NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND
A monologue from the
novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Notes From the Underground. Trans. Constance Garnett.
New York: Macmillian Company, 1918. |
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NARRATOR: Never mind my being here, I am not an example
for you. I am, perhaps, worse than you are. I was drunk when
I came here, though. Besides, a man is no example for a woman.
It's a different thing. I may degrade and defile myself, but
I am not anyone's slave. I come and go, and that's an end of
it. I shake it off, and I am a different man. But you are a slave
from the start. Yes, a slave! You give up everything, your whole
freedom. If you want to break your chains afterwards, you won't
be able to; you will be more and more fast in the snares. It
is an accursed bondage. I know it. I won't speak of anything
else, maybe you won't understand, but tell me: no doubt you are
in debt to your madam? There, you see--that's a bondage for you!
You will never buy your freedom. They will see to that. It's
like selling your soul to the devil .... And besides ... perhaps,
I too, am just as unlucky--how do you know--and wallow in the
mud on purpose, out of misery? You know, men take to drink from
grief; well, maybe I am here from grief. Come, tell me, what
is there good here? Here you and I ... came together ... just
now and did not say one word to one another all the time, and
it was only afterwards you began staring at me like a wild creature,
and I at you. Is that loving? Is that how one human being should
meet another? It's hideous, that's what it is!
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MONOLOGUES BY FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY |
