Notes from the Underground — notes_p1_ch_06
VI
Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness!
Heavens, how I should have respected myself, then.
I should have respected myself because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself.
Question: What is he?
Answer: A sluggard; how very pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself!
It would mean that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something to say about me.
“Sluggard”—why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career.
Do not jest, it is so.
I should then be a member of the best club by right, and should find my occupation in continually respecting myself.
I knew a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being a connoisseur of Lafitte.
He considered this as his positive virtue, and never doubted himself.
He died, not simply with a tranquil, but with a triumphant conscience, and he was quite right, too.
Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a sluggard and a glutton, not a simple one, but, for instance, one with sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful.
How do you like that?
I have long had visions of it.
That “sublime and beautiful” weighs heavily on my mind at forty But that is at forty; then—oh, then it would have been different!
I should have found for myself a form of activity in keeping with it, to be precise, drinking to the health of everything “sublime and beautiful.
” I should have snatched at every opportunity to drop a tear into my glass and then to drain it to all that is “sublime and beautiful.
” I should then have turned everything into the sublime and the beautiful; in the nastiest, unquestionable trash, I should have sought out the sublime and the beautiful.
I should have exuded tears like a wet sponge.
An artist, for instance, paints a picture worthy of Gay.
At once I drink to the health of the artist who painted the picture worthy of Gay, because I love all that is “sublime and beautiful.
” An author has written _As you will:_ at once I drink to the health of “anyone you will” because I love all that is “sublime and beautiful.
” I should claim respect for doing so.
I should persecute anyone who would not show me respect.
I should live at ease, I should die with dignity, why, it is charming, perfectly charming!
And what a good round belly I should have grown, what a treble chin I should have established, what a ruby nose I should have coloured for myself, so that everyone would have said, looking at me: “Here is an asset!
Here is something real and solid!
” And, say what you like, it is very agreeable to hear such remarks about oneself in this negative age.
