“Notes from the Underground” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: An Anatomy of Human Self-Destructiveness (Part 2)

What is the cause of human self-destructiveness? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of “Notes from the Underground,” and its agonized rumination on whether freedom can be reconciled with love, individuality with virtue, and action with reflection. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: [email protected] subtext podcast. 0:32 Wes: Okay, welcome to part two of our discussion of Dostoevsky's notes from the Underground. We just got done talking about how much civilization sucks. 0:42 Erin: Yep. 0:43 Wes: And the underground man's case in particular, which is extreme. But I think the idea was that he is concerned in particular with his status relative to other people and that's what's blocking him from connecting to other people. But in part two, we're going to see a very tragic and ill conceived attempt to make those sorts of connections. 1:07 Erin: Yeah, I don't know much about civilization, except in theory because I've been underground podcasting here for so long that I don't remember what it's like. But I do think that. Okay, if I wanted to put this in a really obnoxious way, using terminology that I greatly dislike, we could make the distinction between the underground man and. Is it Zverkov? 1:33 Wes: Yeah, I think I called it Zherkov and Zherkov part, but it's actually Zverkov. 1:38 Erin: Zverkov. 1:39 Wes: Z, V. Yeah. Z, V, E, R, O. Yeah. 1:42 Erin: Anyway, it's. 1:45 Wes: It sounds like a. Like he's from the planet Vulcan or something. 1:50 Erin: Yeah. So we could argue maybe. 1:51 Wes: Maybe he's a Klingon. I don't know. Who's. Isn't there a Russian? Didn't Star Trek have like A Russian coded alien species. I don't remember. 2:01 Erin: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. 2:02 Wes: I mean, they were Romulans, I guess they were just Romans. 2:05 Erin: Right, right, right. Yeah. If there was any. Anyway, any justice, they would be Remans. No. 2:17 Wes: Yeah, I think Remans and Romulans. There'd be both. And they'd be talking all the time. 2:21 Erin: Exactly. No, Ferfitchkin is the Klingon as far as the verb goes. No, but anyway, if I wanted to put this in a terrible way that I hate. Okay, I hate this distinction. What I'm setting up is I hate the distinction between EQ and iq, but I will say, right, that's. Zverkov is someone who has high eq. If we had to put things that way, which, again, I'm sorry for doing. So am I wrong to think that his character is portrayed quite sympathetically when we actually see him in action? No. There's the story that we're told of what he was like when they were kids by the underground man, who's very biased, let's put it that way. And then there's how he actually behaves when the underground man invites himself to this dinner in which he knows that he is not wanted, but is putting himself in the situation to make everyone hate him even more and give him more ammunition against himself. Right. And I think that Zverkov actually treats him quite well under the circumstances. No. 3:23 Wes: Yes. I mean, I think for the most part he behaves in a way that's relatively reserved and doesn't take the bait on some of the. The underground man's provocations. I think in the end, of course, they don't. They're not all that nice to him. They laugh at him and they ignore him and. And do all of that stuff. But what else they have done in that situation? They didn't, you know, they didn't beat him or kick him out or. 3:46 Erin: And they're not nice to him only when he is being extremely rude. And then has the hysterical drunken episode of stomping his feet up and down the hall for three hours while they're on. 3:59 Wes: Three hours while he perspires. 4:03 Erin: It's deranged. 4:03 Wes: Funny dealing with someone who's deranged. Yeah, it's funny. It's. It's hard to read. It's him humiliating himself. 4:13 Erin: It's funny in. In the way that, like the first episodes of season one of the Office are funny, you know? 4:19 Wes: Yeah. 4:20 Erin: It's painful. Yeah. 4:21 Wes: Yeah. It's hard not to be repulsed by him and feel sorry for him at the same time, time, because he's someone who is so low functioning, let's use that phrase, add that to low EQ and to the EQ IQ distinction. He's low functioning socially, he doesn't have social graces. And that is what Zverkov actually has in spades, this ability to navigate the social world. So the way the underground man puts it, and this is in chapter three, is that he hated him for these quote, unquote, gifts of nature. He was pretty, he was playful, he was well liked, swaggering, vulgar, but good natured. So all of his, all of his classmates. So this is, this is his account of him while they were at school together and all of his schoolmates groveled before Zverkov, quote, unquote, simply because he had been favored by the gifts of nature. Moreover, it was, as it were, an accepted idea among us that Zverkov was a specialist in regard to tact and the social graces. This last fact particularly infuriated me. I hated the abrupt, self confident tone of his voice, his admiration of his own witticisms, which were often frightfully stupid. Though he was bold in his language. I hated his handsome but stupid face, for which I would, however, have gladly exchanged my intelligent one, and the free and easy military manners in fashion in the 40s. And then Zverkov, you know, there are things about him which are not all that appealing, but just because he's a young man, I mean, he's boasting about how he's going to have all these conquests of women in the future and do all these duels, and the one particularly unsavory thing he tells his schoolmates, he's going to, you know, he inherited an estate with a bunch of serfs and serfs, and he's basically saying he's going to rape all the female villagers and raise the taxes on the serfs if they, if they resist, and then the underground man attacks him for that. But he will say, not out of any compassion or moral concern, but just because he's envious of him and how the others are applauding him like an insect. So lest we think that there's any moral dimension to the underground man's resistance to people like Zverkov, he wants to assure us that in fact there's not. But I think the upshot of this is just that life is unfair in so many different ways, and it's not just about looks or innate talents, but whatever happened to the underground man as a kid? And he alludes to the fact that it's not good. He's socially impaired, and that impairment is not easy to get rid of. It's a matter of habit. You know, you call these things social graces, but he is habitually related to people in a way that he's disposed to look at people in a way that makes it impossible for him to have any real relationships with them. And the only, you know, the fantasy is that he's. Can impress everyone, that he can do these things that he. He does in his own idealized fantasy world, which is to win their respect and admiration by acts of gallantry or whatever it is that he thinks is gonna. Gonna work. It's very rigid and delusional. It doesn't show any actual awareness of how it is that one connects to people in reality. So in other words, it's a narcissist. It's a narcissist or a very impaired narcissist's idea of how one relates to people. And he doesn't have the status or the talent to pull it off, so it's not going to work for him. 8:08 Erin: Yeah. The story about Zherkov marks him as a sociopath, but not any more sociopathic than anybody else in this school, it seems. They're all. I think the underground man says they were all deranged children. But I like this quote that you're pointing to that you read that you said they worshiped him and groveled, not from any interested motive, but simply because he had been favored by the gifts of nature. That's as good a reason as any. No, I mean, you know, the underground man wants to be admired because of his intelligence, which is also a gift of nature. If we're to believe that he's intelligent, as intelligent as he says, which is apparently, you know, so intelligent that he can't even do anything right. Like almost as though Mozart and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky himself and, you know, and all these great geniuses are at the, you know, the fat part of the bell curve. And he's. He's at the very top, right, living in his hovel, not being able to function, but. Right. That's a perfectly reasonable mark of superiority to be favored by the gifts of nature in this way. Right. The fact of the matter is that if he's handsome and charming, people will like him better. 9:20 Wes: Yeah. All is fair in love and war, right? This is what this points to. So whether or not people are going to love you or even like you depends on some things that in ways are really trivial. Like your looks, for instance. Or just your mannerisms, whether they have a quote, unquote transference to that. Right. Is that reminiscent of something that was appealing to them in their early situation with their parents? Okay, that's great. This is what I like. And it's completely irrational and completely arbitrary. And for someone who's socially impaired, it can't simply be figured out and it can't be replicated by rigid status maneuvers if you don't have those social graces. But it also can't even be rectified by being a good person. Like being a good person is not necessarily a way to be as Zverkov and to get, you know, to win friends and influence people. Yeah, you know, because social graces are not about morality. It's about how you navigate the social world in a way that people to like you. And of course, some genuinely good people know how to do it and genuinely bad people know how to do it, but it's independent, independent of morality. And then there are lots of people who are rigidly, quote, unquote, you know, moral. Right. But in the sense that they're harmless and maybe even to the point where they can't even stand up for themselves in social situations. And asserting oneself in those situations is a big part of actually being attractive to people in some way. Being able to deploy one's aggression. For him, aggression is either not there or it just comes out rigidly in these moments where he wants to challenge someone to a duel. For an ordinary person, the aggression might come out as a joke, like the kind that Zverkov is probably good at. You do release some aggression, or you do have these ways of nudging people a little bit in social situations to maintain one's boundaries or one's individuality. But yeah, they're nuanced. For the underground man, it's just all or nothing. He has to retreat or it's going to be. The only way he can keep a sense of self in these social situations is to insult people or challenge them to duels or whatever. I don't know. Does that make sense? 11:34 Erin: It does. I. This is neither here nor there, and I don't think we would have time to go into it. I don't think the social graces are actually divorced from whether or not you're a good person or from some semblance of morality. I mean, I do think that there are social niceties that are there for a reason that have to do with making other people feel comfortable. Right. And making them feel seen and respected that can be co opted for various Ends, of course. But I do think that the social forms are there, for. They may become unloosed from their. From morality, but they. They are there. They are inherently tethered to a kind of morality. 12:09 Wes: Yeah, I think that's a good point. 12:10 Erin: You know, politeness, I think, is tethered to morality for, you know, on a 12:15 Wes: basic level and also for the most part, people. Yeah, there's. There's some. There's something reflected in the capacity to have social graces that it has something positive to say. To say about one's character, even if one also happens to be a sociopath. 12:31 Erin: Yes, yes. I do think that making other people like you or being someone. Not making other people like you, that sounds too forced. But being someone that other people like. I think some. Sometimes you could be a terrible person and people love you. That's. That's absolutely true. But other times it has to do with. It actually has to do with making people feel good when they're around you. And even if you're doing it, even if you are inducing this feeling in other people purely as a way to manipulate them, it involves not talking about yourself all the time or bragging or being obnoxious and generally putting your immediate desires, giving those a backseat in favor of giving other people a chance to speak or to talk about themselves or. You know what I mean? So there is, like, even if you want to take the most jaundiced view of it, right. There is, I think, a way in which you have to be a little bit. You have to seed a little bit of your consideration and evacuate your ego a little bit. Even in the worst cases, usually in order to get someone to like you or to write. 13:36 Wes: Be attuned to what's going on in other people's heads. 13:39 Erin: Yes, yes. And in a positive way, as opposed to in the way that the underground man does. Right. And that involves. Yeah. Putting yourself in someone else's shoes. He wants to do that. You know, as much as he dreams and fantasizes about his moments of glory, he also condemns himself beforehand with what people are going to do that's bad to him. So. So he has these dream people in which all of them worship him. And then prior to getting into a situation which he anticipates is going to be bad, he anticipates the bad behavior of the people he's going to. You know, he. He does the opposite of that. He tries to get into people's heads in order to read bad motives into what they're going to do that are all about him and that are all about how they hate him and they're all a reflection on him and responding to him negatively. So he's not interested in, like, I'm going to go to Zerkov and I'm going to get him to like me by asking him about his job and he's going to talk about himself and that's going to make him feel good. And therefore he's going to associate talking to me with positive feeling about himself. And that's how I'm going to nefariously win him over, you know, because that would actually take too much concern and care about what Zverkov actually likes and what Zverkov actually wants to do. And the underground man is incapable of that. So he, you know, he. And he's. He's invited himself to the dinner, he's anticipating what's going to happen, and he says with despair, I pictured to myself how coldly and disdainfully that scoundrel Zverkov would meet me with what dull witted, invincible contempt. The blockhead. Oh, this is the worst name. Trudyolyubov. Trudy. Trudelyubov would look at me with what impudent rudeness. 15:27 Wes: The Trudaliabiv. 15:30 Erin: Trudaliabov, okay. Would look at me with what impudent rudeness? The insect. The insect. Ferfitchkin would snigger at me in order to curry favor with Zverkov. How completely Simonov would take it all in and how he would despise me for the abjectness of my vanity and lack of spirit. And worst of all, how paltry, unliterary, commonplace it would all be. This guy's just like this insufferable. He's like an 18 year old who goes home and is like, you know, nothing compared to what I now know as a result of taking, you know, freshman level philosophy, right? But, but he's. He's populating their minds with an obsession with him. Like as if all anybody does is sit around and think about what an insect he is, you know, this is truly, truly sick. You know, he can't even. This makes actual people who are actually, you know, social manipulators look good, I think, you know, and then he's. Then he says, 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, right? So then he has this further dream that they're going to worship him and he's going to get the upper hand of. Of Zverkov. And, you know, this is just. It's just brutal. I mean, this guy is so self obsessed, but also hates himself so much. These are painful episodes to read, you know. I then want to kind of puncture the scene and talk about the way he's reading what Zverkov is saying. And is it really so bad? I mean, knowing. So this is the setup. We know that he's going in assuming that everyone is thinking about him all the time and thinking terrible things about him. So then when Zverkov sees him and they've exchanged some words, Zverkov says, and how thin you've grown, how you have changed. Added Zverkov with a shade of venom in his voice, scanning me in my attire with a sort of insolent compassion. I think that's so interesting. Insolent compassion, I think. I mean, I'm picturing in my head the underground man looking really, really bad. Right. He's taken this terrible job. He's dirt poor, you know, I almost don't want to trust his. Right. He's just told us what he thinks is going to happen. We know he's unreliable. And then he's assigning something called insolent compassion, right. To Zverkov's speech. So I don't know, I distrust his take on this whole scene. And it makes me actually like Zverkov or makes me think that maybe he's really. He's looking at this guy and going, oh, my gosh, you know, what happened to him? We know he, at least from the underground man's telling that he had a little bit of admiration for the underground man. He knew that there was something special about him that he didn't have. Right. He was interested in him on a certain level and interested in his intellect. So he has enough in him to actually recognize what could be good in this man who. Or this boy at the time who was a social outcast. And that shows a little bit of perception on his part. He's not just a. Whatever, a dumb jock who would never take any kind of notice or be interested in anybody who, you know, you wouldn't just dismiss him as some kind of weirdo nerd. Right. To put it in modern terms, you know, so we know he has a little bit of sensitivity. And I don't think it's beyond the pale to suggest that he might be looking at him genuinely concerned and when we hear that he has this insolent compassion, I think it's. We could say, is this the underground man giving this the most ungenerous possible read? Because he's expecting that everyone hates him and wants to take him down. 19:04 Wes: I mean, I think he's obviously paranoid and at a certain point, the behavior of others, it's believable that they would react negatively, obviously, the way he's behaving. So that. That's not surprising. But, yeah, I think you're right. You get these initial moments where the others seem to be open. You know, I think it's well conveyed that the others are actually open to him. In a way. It's odd that he's invited himself on this dinner. And in fact, he's the one who cut them off. They didn't cut him off, so he took a different job so he could cut off his classmates. And then I think when he went to see Simonov, he hadn't seen him in like a year or something. And there had been a point where it sounds like Zverkov had actually tried to be his friend. That's what I got from this. And he has had kind of blown him off. And then he had this idea that Zverkov got too big for his britches, was successful, and was cutting him off in the street. But I think we can take that with a grain of salt. And he's, you know, Zverkov might have said, okay, yeah, this guy doesn't want to be my friend. That's okay, and then ignores him in the street. And then the underground man is taking. Taking offense at that. So that's a good point. I think the, you know, the level of paranoia in the underground man definitely makes him an unreliable narrator. 20:22 Erin: What I really like too, about the fact that he's inserted himself into this situation and the fact that this whole episode is illustrating the ways in which he invites the kind of behavior that he seems to want to receive is when he gets there and he's an hour early, they've moved it off by an hour, and he gets there at five. Now it's starting at six. And, you know, you do feel sorry for him because he's so pathetic. And he's sitting there and he, you know, he's just getting angry. And then by the time they show up, he's so grateful that he can't pretend to be annoyed by. Annoyed by them or better than them or disdainful when they come, he's so happy to see them that he blows his cover. But I love Simonov's reaction to, you know, he's. He's saying, hey, you know, I. How come you didn't tell me? I got here an hour early. You know, I've been sitting here and he's expecting Simonov to, like, fall all over himself to apologize. And you kind of feel. I don't know if you felt this way, but I, as a reader, kind of for a second was like, yeah, you know, how come Simonov isn't just saying, gee, I'm sorry I didn't let you know? And Ferfitchkin and Zverkov and the other guy, whose name I won't venture to say again, are saying, you know, they're taking up for him a little bit and saying, oh, gee, that's unfair that you've been waiting here an hour. Oh, what a thing. You know. And Simonov says, well, I don't even know where you live. Like, why do you. You know, how could I have let you know? It's like, oh, of course, you know, this whole thing is about the fact that he doesn't even know these guys. Simonov doesn't even know where he lives. You know, it highlights the fact that he's inserted himself into the situation. So even these rare moments where we have not totally rare moments. I mean, I. I feel sorry for the underground man for a lot of reasons, complex reasons, right throughout. Throughout these. These narratives. But even in the moments where we think for a second that in the right. Or that someone might be really treating him unfairly, it turns out that the reason that that is is actually because of something that the underground man did to shoot himself in the foot in the first place. You know, in other words, he's the prime mover for his own suffering, except for the scenes in the street where he's. He's treated terribly. And when, of course, the. The. The inciting moment, I think, for the. For the whole section is when. Which has happened to me before. This is. I swear, this is a very. Women know this. When the guy moves him by the shoulders out of the way, rather than asking him to move or tapping him on the shoulder. But when he's physically moved, that is just terrible. And that's, you know, and I understand why it incites not that level of spite, but a remarkable level of upset. But otherwise. Yeah, I like the fact that we then see that there are these situations in which he's been the author of all of his problems. 23:12 Wes: Well, he's trying to. He's trying to make himself visible. I think that incident where he's moved out of the way. He had seen some officers fighting, I think, yes, in a bar, and said, okay, I want to go in there and see if I can get someone to fight me. And then stood directly in someone's way. And the guy. Instead of. He expected the guy to be insulted and to say, get. Get the. Get the hell out of my way. If that had happened, at least someone would have seen him and respected him as someone, even a worthy adversary. I think he wants to be seen even as a worthy adversary or even as someone capable of offending someone. There's a certain point where. So at the end of the dinner, he's remorseful and he begs for their forgiveness and says to Zverkov, I insulted you. And Zver says, insulted me. Understand, sir, that never, under any circumstances could you possibly insult me. So he's not as enough of a presence in the world to even be felt as an insult to others. So that level of invisibility, that level of social powerlessness, this is the type of thing, by the way, which is. Motivates people who do school shootings. It's complete lack of. It's like being the invisible man. There's this complete lack of. Of social efficacy in the world, social power. One cannot make one's presence felt to others. And so the only way to do that is violence. Violence becomes a substitute for social power, for the ability to affect other people. Well, now you're gonna know that I exist. Now you're gonna understand that I'm, you know, another subject and capable of doing things, capable of being effective, you know, if not socially effective, murderously effective. And then after that. So he begs, you know, Simonov. Simonov for six rubles and humiliates himself again. And Simonov flings at him and says, you have no sense of shame. And then he has this idea that he's gonna go and follow them to the brothel and slap in the face and get into a duel. Hopefully, if I could just only get into a duel, and then I'll fire the bullet into the air and be very gallant and they can shoot me. So I guess maybe there is a school shooting element explicitly in the air. Except he wants to do it the chivalrous way and ultimately be the one who ends up getting shot. But this is where the story takes a turn and he meets Liza. 25:48 Erin: Well, before we get there, two things. One thing is, you know, it strikes me that your. Your reading of this moment with Zverkov, where he says, you couldn't possibly have insulted me. I mean, that's you know, I wanted to cheer for Zverkov because, you know, it reminds me of how people advise one to behave when one is being targeted by a bully. Right? You let the bully know that they have no effect on you. You know, you don't even see them. You don't even. It doesn't even register, in other words, that if the bully feels that they're not getting anywhere with you, then they'll leave you alone or something, you know, you, you dismiss them, you. You behave as though you're not, you're not even noticing what they're doing. 26:25 Wes: Well, in this case though, it's a. It's a way of saying you're insignificant, you know? 26:30 Erin: Yes, yes, certainly. But I mean, I think that the fact of the matter is that the underground man is behaving in a hectoring. If I'm bullying. A hectoring way. 26:38 Wes: Right. Well, he's the. I think of him as the bullied kid though, who just lashes out. 26:43 Erin: Yes, yes. 26:44 Wes: He doesn't have the status to be a bully in the strict, you know. 26:47 Erin: I see, I see. Yeah. I still feel, I mean, perhaps I'm not registering the full. I didn't register the full import of that, of that moment for the underground man, because it is a little bit passed over in the text as well. You know, he says it and then immediately someone else speaks and they're all kind of talking to each other and then they decide to take off to the brothel. So we don't get a moment where the underground man says how he felt about that, you know, so to me it was just like, haha, you know, good for you, Zverkov, you got your shot in. You know, just regarding the moment when he, when he's moved by the officer. I wasn't sure if I had read that correctly and in fact I don't think he did anything to induce the officer moving him. He says I was standing by the billiard table and in my ignorance blocking up the way and he wanted to pass. He took me by the shoulders and without a word, without a warning or explanation, moved me from where I was standing to another spot and pass by as though he had not noticed me. I could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me without noticing me. So that's the, you know, he's mad because he's not noticed. But again, it's just that. And the, the. The stuff in the street I, that I get. 27:52 Wes: Yeah, and, and I think the next stage in this, his desire to be seen and even to dominate People. At certain point, he says he wants to. You know, the fantasy of going to the dinner with people he's really lost contact with. Is it so it's very pathetic. But is that he can impress them and. And gain their friendship by quote unquote, dominating them in the sense of being witty and. And winning their admiration. Which is part of why Zverkov is such a difficult figure for him, because Zverkov is the person who can do that. Zverkov, you know, does win their admiration and they all fawn on him. And that's what who. The underground Mount, Underground ground man wants to be like. Within meeting Lisa, there's an opportunity here for him to put this desire to dominate into effective use by being sort of a mentor or teacher figure. In the end, of course, we'll see that collapses into a sort of sadism and it doesn't work. Right. But this is his invitation to love. Essentially. In this last part of the novella, he's invited to the possibility of inviting a different form of freedom that involves love. And that specifically, there's an element of this that makes it more possible for him than a typical situation, which is he's dealing with a prostitute that he can look at as being lower in status than him and fallen. And as someone who he can, depending on how you look at it, either educate or manipulate. And he looks at it in different ways, depending on his mood. But this becomes, you know, the foundation is laid for a. For a real relationship. And he moves in that direction, at least on the surface, before it collapses. So this is in. I guess it's chapter five. At the end of that, he arrives at the brothel and he's doing all these nasty things. The sledge driver, which is really like punching him in the back of the neck and urging him on. The peasant's like, what the hell are you doing? So I thought that was very amusing. But. So when he gets there, the other guys are basically. Have all gone off with women, by the way. It took me a while to figure out. It took me an embarrassing long time to figure out that this was a brothel. 30:14 Erin: I knew as soon as they said they were off to see Olympia that they were going to the brothel. 30:18 Wes: Of course. I mean, should have known. Yeah. Fancy name and all that. But Madame Olympia. Is she the madam? 30:27 Erin: Yes. Who once refused. Once refused the underground man. 30:31 Wes: Yeah. 30:32 Erin: Which I think is hysterical. 30:34 Wes: Yeah. You're not good enough for the madam. 30:36 Erin: Yeah. 30:37 Wes: But anyway, so they. Yeah. On going in, he sees Lisa, the girl with the fresh. The young pale face, the grave eyes. It's one of the things that really captures him. Simple and good natured. Good looking or looking, sorry, strong looking. Not necessarily especially good looking. Well built. Kind of sounds like a horse at that point. And then by comparison, he can look. He looks in a mirror and sees himself as harassed. You know, my harassed face struck me as revolting in the extreme. Pale, angry, abject, with disheveled hair. But then he was glad to seem repulsive to her. And then in six, you know, we cut to him waking up after, I guess they've had sex again. Took me a while to figure this out. Like, what the hell is going on? This has all gotten very surreal. Like what? You know, he wakes up. I thought he'd fallen. Just fallen asleep or something. So, you know, so he wakes up to. The clock began. Okay, the clock began gasping as though squeezed hard as though someone were strangling it. This is an odd bit of flowery language, actually. It's really the first. Yeah, I just think it introduces something new, very new at that point into the novella. That level of. That interesting, let's say imagery, Imagery that he's used there. 32:02 Erin: This is the origin, I think, of something I mentioned in the last episode about the re. Enchantment of the world, but in a sick, twisted way. 32:11 Wes: Right. 32:12 Erin: He sees oppression everywhere. He sees meaning everywhere, but the meaning is involving his. His oppression. That's. That's. I wish I had thought of this moment because I was thinking of this subconsciously, you know, in that. I think in developing that. That impression that maybe in the bureaucratic Petersburg society, he wants to. He wants to see in a place, you know, void of meaning. He wants to see meaning in these. These various places. I think it's very interesting that it comes at this hinge moment though, and he's lying in the dark and you know, again, he sees everything as an extension of his own oppression here. I think he's going to rhetorically strangle Liza. 32:51 Wes: Right. 32:52 Erin: So he's actually the. He's performing a complicated function here. But one of them, you could say is he's kind of trying to oppress Lisa into some kind of realization. 33:02 Wes: Yeah, I mean, yeah, you could say he's looking in the mirror again, actually. So the clock, you know, this element of projection and paranoia. But he's now doing it with an inanimate objects, gasping clock. Someone strangling it. Shrill nasty, rapid, rapid chime. He's seeing himself in clock form. And this. I think if we were to break this down into acts, a three act structure. This is the beginning of act three. So the plot point that leads into this is sleeping together. And now he's sort of waking up in a. In a different world. Yeah. I think it's a good point you make about the fact that there's a kind of foreshadowing here of he's a strangled figure, in a sense, but he's going to do some strangling of his own. So, let's see. Suddenly I saw beside me two wide open eyes scrutinizing me curiously and persistently. The look in those eyes was coldly detached, sullen, as if it were utterly remote, it weighed upon me. Then he says he sees something unnatural in those eyes. And then they mentions that they hadn't said a single word to each other in two hours. Now I suddenly realize vividly the hideous idea, revolting as a spider of vice, which, without love, grossly and shamelessly begins with that in which true love finds its consummation. So sex, you know, ideally follows love and is its physical consummation, but in this case, the physical consummation has preceded love, is the cart is put before the horse, in a sense, and as such, it inverts all of it. Instead of something good, it's something vicious. This whole opportunity for love starts backwards, of course. And now the task is sort of to rewind thinking of the clock again. And what he's got to do is rewind Lisa. He's got to try to unprostatize her. He's got to make her over in his own image as someone who. He's got to reform this young lady and make her a good girl. 35:08 Erin: I love your connection to the clock. And I also. Oh, poignant that she's only been a prostitute for, she says, a fortnight. Right. So there's something so hideous about that detail, you know, I don't know why, but I want to, but I have to point that out. I feel compelled. I don't know, is it because she's still. So he's telling her what's going to happen to her? She is. He repeatedly makes mention of the fact that she's barely wise to what he's saying. I mean, he reads a lack of intelligence in her looks, which I don't think we can trust. She's clearly naive, but I don't know that she's unintelligent. And he fast forwards the clock for her and shows her what's going to happen to her at the end in this section, which is. Which I find to be extremely cruel and sadistic and also just so upsetting on so many levels because he's, you know, he's ascribing a moral choice to her circumstances when, you know, this is not a profession that women choose. And then we. Then we learn on top of that that she's actually been sold into prostitution by her family, which is so hideous. But he fast forwards the tape for her to show her what her life is going to be like and why she needs to get out now while she still has a chance. There's this duality to this idea of the two weeks that she's somehow, like, maybe she could still get out, but also that, like, she's just started, she's at the very beginning of a death sentence, basically, you know, and she has the whole long decline yawning before her. This idea that she could still save herself, she could still get out. It seems like a pipe dream to me. And he's just torturing her with the idea that she could maybe that she wouldn't rack up as much debt and could potentially pay her way out now. But I'm not quite sure how the system works. 37:08 Wes: He gives her two different visions of two different possible futures, right? One of them is if you stay and then you'll die and no one will care about you and you get consumption and blah, blah, blah. And then the other one is this vision of a hopeful future with love and a family. And he paints this free, this very nice picture for her. Yeah, the way the conversation starts off is he talks about seeing them carrying a coffin from a basement and it's another prostitute who's died. And then he talks about it, it's a nasty day to be buried. And Lisa's like, it makes no difference. And he talks about graves being waterlogged and asking her, don't you mind how you die? And that's when he gets into the story about how this particular prostitute was in debt to her madam, which he admits. He admits some of this is he's just making up people gossiping and laughing about her after she's died. And. And the girl, Lisa keeps saying, why should I die? I'm young, so I'm not about to die. Why would you. Why are you trying to worry me about that? And then that's when he launches into the. This idea that she's still long young, but you're not always going to be young. And what about marriage? Lisa says, not all married women are happy. And then underground man says, yes, but you can with love. You can live even without happiness. And then. Then there's the part about you giving up your freedom, you're in an accursed bondage, you're in debt to your madam. You'll never buy your freedom. It's like selling your soul to the devil. So I. I wanted to bring up this part in particular just because this ties us into the general seam of freedom in the. In the novel. For him, fantasy, he's. There's a. In a way, he's stuck in a similar situation because it's a degraded one. But his position of fantasy, in some sense is a form of freedom, as we've discussed, because it keeps all possibilities open and because fantasy is a train in which you have absolute power. But in many ways, right, it's just inaction and. And bondage. And I think the same thing in her situation. She's free from her family and her terrible family circumstances. And so that's, in a way, what she's sought out is liberation from oppression and the fact that she can eat right, and in some sense support herself. But it's bondage in this other sense that he's trying to portray. So I don't know, are there other ways that we can fit that into the general question of freedom? I think the love thing, you know, again, I'm just going to repeat this because it came up in the first part, but love represents another possibility for freedom other than fantasy and rational decision making about one's own good and so on. So that's what this is leading up to. 40:06 Erin: Talk of freedom in this context, I think is interesting because looking at the sort of overall structure of how the episode works, his stories are powerful because they're playing on a kind of sentiment. And, you know, I mean, I think, like, there are. There are beautiful moments in the second story, of course, and I don't mean to just paint it with a broad brush and say that it's just entirely manipulative, but it's. But its mode is. I mean, its purpose is a kind of manipulation of her. So, you know, I don't want to say something that makes it seem as though any kind of enlightenment is ultimately a manipulation. Maybe that's the truth. Any kind of education is manipulation just to some particular end. But to look at the superstructure of what he's doing, basically, he's telling her these two stories designed to make her kind of break down into tears, which she does right there. It's like watching a Hallmark movie that's designed to play on her emotions. Actually, you know, playing on her emotions makes me think of a piano key or an organ. Stop. Right. He's trying to induce a certain kind of emotional reaction from her, which he then receives. So he succeeded in emotionally manipulating her into believing in what he is saying. And then he gives her his address. And. And in fact, she. She's so touched and she's. She has a desire to escape her circumstances, so she does come to his house, which creates another set of problems, as we know. 41:30 Wes: But yeah, even in these stories, there's lots of flourishes which are like the infant with the clean, tiny little nails and the way it's at the mother's breast and then flings its head back to look at its father and laugh. Or it's biting the breast and then looking sideways to say, look, I'm biting. All of these very sentimental details imagined by and related by someone, of course, who has no business lecturing anyone about love and family life and hasn't experienced it and can't even have a friend right, absolutely fantasize about this. All this stuff. He can imagine an idealized version of all this stuff and then get another person charged up on that same ideal. It reminds me he had that one friend in school. He said that he would try to dominate, but he would try to make that person cynical. He'd try to win that person over to his own cynicism. In this case, he's kind of. He's trying to win her over to the other horn of the dilemma, which is this potent idealized vision of the. Of the future. 42:35 Erin: Yeah, that. That story about his friend is so harrowing. But, you know, the, the manipulation is made even more twisted by the fact that we know that he doesn't respect this woman. He's just availed himself of her services, and yet he feels so superior to her. And he says she's not being nice enough to him at first, which angers him. Then he says he feels sorry for her. And when she says no need, she wish she whispered hardly audibly, and again made a faint movement. He says that incensed me at once. What? I was so gentle with her and she, you know, I'm being so nice to her. How come she doesn't like the fact that I'm saying that I feel sorry for her and I'm being so condescending. You know, it's, it's. It's absurd. Or the, you know, this. These little moments I noted when she's being reflective and he says so she too was capable of certain thoughts. And then at the. At the bottom of the same. Of the same page, he's saying something that's inducing Some thought in her. And he. He says, I waited again. Perhaps she doesn't understand. I thought, because she's not responding right away, she's thinking, perhaps she doesn't understand, I thought, you know, but she's always assuming that she's not understanding. And really what he's done is he said something that's triggered a thought in her about her own. We learn that she's been sold into the situation by her parents, and he's providing this beautiful, idyllic view of or overly sentimental view of family life, which she has not experienced, nor has he experienced it. Right. Sounds like he was gotten rid of by his family, though he's not in such a bad, bad way, is she? So the manipulation by all that. I mean to say that the manipulation of these sentimentalized rhetorical flourishes seems even more painful in light of the fact that he doesn't have any respect for her. And because we know from this other episode with a friend that he doesn't actually understand love as he's. As he freely admits. He only understands wanting to dominate someone. And as soon as he got that other friend totally, you know, he totally bent him to his will and dominated his spirit and broke him down. He no longer had any respect for him and went away. And we know that's the same thing that's going to happen with. With Lisa. So in light of these conversations about freedom, it seems to me that this type of tugging on the heartstring rhetoric is quite complicated. It seems to be to try to induce her to a state of awareness by which she might seek her own freedom. At the same time, it's something that seems designed to manipulate, which is kind of taking away of her freedom. 45:01 Wes: Yeah, I think there's a parallel here between his underground and her underground. Right. And by trying to get her out of hers, he's trying to get him out of his. And there's a therapeutic method in both cases. So right in the end, she's going to end up sobbing. So, yeah, it's kind of like the end of a good therapy session where he's transformed her in some way, it seems like. And of course, that's what he's trying to do, he says to himself, with this particular story. But unfortunately, he transforms her and then abandons her because he can't join her, he can't transform himself and so become the other part of the love couple, the other part of the dyad, the erotic dyad, let's say. But you're right, highly manipulative in doing this. He does this good cop, bad cop thing, which is like a really. It's a sign of someone who is engaged in this sort of manipulation. Right. The very positive, idealized story. And then he says, you know, I did speak with real feeling. And. And he's worried about her laughing and she's silent, but she starts and to say something and stops. And he hears a quiver of something different in her voice, something soft, something shame faced, which made him feel ashamed and guilty. And then she says, you speak like a book, with a note of irony in her voice. And he says, I did not understand that she was hiding her feelings under irony. That this is usually the last refuge of a modest and chaste soul. People when the privacy of their souls is coarsely and intrusively invaded. And that their pride makes them refuse to surrender to the last moment and shrink from giving expression to the feelings of their feelings before you. 46:38 Erin: That's a great element. 46:40 Wes: Yeah, yeah, It's a good observation. And this is. It's kind of typical. There's. He mixes up. He's such a mix of terribleness and insight and there is compassion there, but there is also at the same time cruelty. And they're just. They're so mixed up with him, he has to alternate between them. So he just cycles so rapidly between them. But in this case, he's coming to understand her particular type of reserve and irony and the type of thing that he might normally feel wounded by because he says, you know, he's worried about having his vanity wounded at this point. And her silence was kind of dangerous. Right. But he's coming to understand that it's not all about him. Her irony is not just to tease him or to insult him. And he's not insulted by the you speak like a book thing, which is a big step forward for him. He sees it in terms of her own suffering, her own defenses, what she needs to do to get by. But then it's right after that that he says, an evil feeling took possession of me. So then he does the bad cop thing and tells this horrific story about, again, it's nominally in the service of getting her to get out of bondage. You're making a slave of your soul and body. You don't have a right to dispose of it in this way. But he paints this picture of disease and the people, even at the brothel, instead of being compassionate towards her when she's older and diseased, seeing her just as a burden, and berating her and showing no appreciation of the years of service that she's given that brothel there's no retirement plan. And then at the end of that, he gives this. And this is kind of in parallel to the very touching moment with the infant. This is sort of the corresponding part of that in the Bad Cop story, which is that. And there your memory on earth will end. He's talking about her death now. Other women and children. Other women have children to go to their graves. Fathers, husbands. While for you neither tear nor sigh, nor remembrance, nor one in the whole world will ever come to you. Your name will vanish from the face of the earth as though you had never existed, never been born at all. Nothing but filth and mud. However you knock at your coffin lid at night when the dead arise, however you cry, however you cry. Let me out, kind people, to live in the light of day. My life was no life at all. My life has been thrown away like a dishcloth or dish clout. I don't know. I think it's dishcloth. It was drunk away in the tavern at the Haymarket. Let me out, kind people to live in the world again. And of course he's talking about himself right into the light of. Light of day, right? He's. He wants to be let out. And that's when she. She despairs and sobs and thrusts her face into the pillow and she's wailing and clenching her teeth and even bites herself, I think. And he's gives this very compassionate rendition of that and her contorted face and half insane smile, all of that. And then that moment where he gives her his. His address. But. Yeah, go. 49:51 Erin: Yeah, well, then. Then the next day. I mean, it's. It's interesting that he has the same. Though he's not the one who is sobbing. He's. She sobbed. It follows the same trajectory as one of his flights of fancy or one of his dreams where then he. Right, so. So to your point, I think he. He induces in her what he would otherwise have induced in himself. And then the next day, there's the. There's the hangover from it, you know, he says, I was positively amazed at my last night's sentimentality with Liza or Lisa, at all those outcries of horror and pity to think of having such an attack in. Of womanish hysteria. Pah. You know, so he. It's interesting. He assigns the womanish hysteria to him, even though he's made a woman hysterical. You know. You know, there's a. There's a kind of duality there. I mean, to that. To that point. And I don't want to pivot too quickly. From Lisa, if we want to stay with her. But what you're putting me in mind of is Apollon. And I wonder if Apollon even exists because he seems to just be, you know, the double of the underground man. You know, he seems to serve. His only function. Seems to be almost like as a projection of an oppressive creature from the underground man's own mind. Right. I think it's fascinating that we get the picture of him so late. He's in the underground man's space with him, you know, watching him from behind a screen, and he doesn't come out until the end. Like he's buried the lead this whole time. And it's like, is this guy really just this. This. His shadow. This. The shadow puppet on the wall, you know, tormenting him, who doesn't really exist? And he's, you know, the underground man is so having drunken hallucinations that he has the servant who's. Who's oppressing him. I don't know what we could say about that, but I think it's. I do love. I love Apollo. I love his. I love his whole thing. He's great. 51:47 Wes: Yeah. He's like the. Well, he's a harsher version of. Who's the John Gielgud character in Arthur. 51:54 Erin: Yes, I love him. 51:55 Wes: That's his name. Do you remember the. Anyway of the butler who's dealing with the rakish. 52:03 Erin: You know, that's one of my favorite movies. 52:06 Wes: I love that movie. We should do that. 52:07 Erin: Oh, let's definitely do that movie. 52:10 Wes: Yeah. 52:10 Erin: I have to find his name or. I'm very upset. Set it's on the. Hobson. 52:17 Wes: Okay. 52:17 Erin: Which is great. 52:18 Wes: So. Yeah. So Hobson, obviously is a more caretaking, compassionate, caretaking figure, but also, you know. No, no nonsense. And Apollon is, according to the underground man, just. Just basically rude and despises him and looks down on him. And we get the funny account of him when he doesn't get to get his wages. Basically just coming up to the underground man and staring at him and kind of reminds me of my cat. 52:46 Erin: We can assume from Apollon what the underground man's name actually is. Right. It's got to be Dionysus. 52:55 Wes: No, he'd be better off if he were. Yeah. Dionysus. 53:00 Erin: He can't even be lazy. Yeah. 53:02 Wes: Vulcan. If he's underground, but There you go. 53:04 Erin: Vulcan's a nicer guy than this, but. Yeah. 53:07 Wes: Yeah. And more productive. But yeah. During this time. Right. He's worried that she's going to come. So. Actually, there is another scene with Lisa Right before he leaves, where she comes to him with this. It's very touching because she has a letter from some guy she met dancing, who wrote her love letter. And she showed it to. This is her first real moment of vulnerability. Well, after the sobbing. But showing it, you know, he's. He's. Gavin given her his address. And so she said, I will come. But then shows him this letter. And to show him that she, too, was honestly and genuinely loved and had been addressed respectfully, she would keep this letter all her life. Her pride and her justification. So very touching. But now, of course, at this point, now that he's back home with his servant, he's depressed and he's worried that she's going to come and see him and see his wretchedness, see his poverty, see his torn house robe. Whatever he's wearing around the house is not very nice. So I guess even with a servant, you can be living in poverty in this world. And then he alternates between that and dreaming of being her salvation and, you know, her flinging herself at his, reforming her and her flinging himself at his feet and. And just ridiculous ideas of love. And this is all interspersed with dealing with Apollon's rudeness. And then, of course, she arrives and there's the horrible denouement, or maybe you call this a climax. 54:45 Erin: I love the back and forth of his mind in this. It's fascinating. He's reflecting on the effect that he's had on her. He says, 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. So he ascribes virginity to her after he had this conversation in which he slept with her. Right then he's saying he's imagining what he's going to say to her. You are mine. You are my creation. You are pure, you are good. You are my noble wife. And then. Then not two sentences later, besides, they won't let her out, the hussy. I thought insanity. And then, you know. But I love. I love the turns because they seem totally. Now, we've had such a. Such a clear picture of this extremely disturbed human being that somehow these turns are. They seem exactly right, you know. And then he's talking about Apollon. He was the bane of my life, the curse laid upon me by Providence. You know, this is in itself, is a little bit of that. You Know sentimental, bookish language. Of course. Right. The description of him is. Is wonderful and how he's. He's so obsessed with himself. But. But anyway. Sorry. The thing I wanted to get to is his lisp. What I loathed particularly was his lisp. The underground man says, and. And he's made fun of someone's speech before. Zverkov, he thinks, has now an affected way of speaking. Right. So he was making fun of the ways Zverkov was. I think it was Zverkov and not Simonov was speaking in that way where it's transcribed in the Garnett translation as, like, multiple vowels strung together with hyphens. So he makes fun of this speech. And I just wonder about that, what there is to say about that. It's just occurring to me now that the fixation on the lisp, making fun of Zverkov's speech pattern, speaking like a book, the highly sentimentalized speech in order to sway Lisa, the affected speech that one puts on, the delight that he thinks that Apollon takes in his own lisp, as though he's, like, proud that he has a lisp. This connection between speech and control and affectation, I don't know what we can make of that, but it's just something that. I'm sure much ink has been spilled about this in journals maybe. 57:07 Wes: But anyway, yeah, you know, after the stuff with Apollon, Lisa arrives and it's. You know, I kind of dreaded. 57:17 Erin: Oh, I know. 57:17 Wes: Reading this. It's just like a horror movie and you know what's gonna happen. 57:21 Erin: And this is like, truly the beginning of cringe comedy. Yeah. 57:24 Wes: And of course, what he does is terribly cruel. It sounds like they may have had sex again. 57:31 Erin: They definitely did. Yeah. Hence the. The money changes hands. That's his insult. 57:37 Wes: Right. And then he tries to pay her and she throws it away, leaving. But. So she came to him. You know, he won her over and got her to be very vulnerable and come to him. And then he acted like a crazy man and sobbed on the sofa for 25. I mean, for 15 minutes straight. And she was very sympathetic, but ultimately rejected her. 58:02 Erin: He gives her the money in such a way that he describes as. As affected, actually. It's an affectation to give her this money. It's so. It's such a cruel flourish or such a. It is like something out of a book or. It's like a lisp, if you will. You know, he says, I did that cruel thing purposely. It was not an impulse from the heart, but came from my evil brain. This Cruelty was so affected, so purposely made up, so completely a product of the brain of books, that I could not even keep it up a minute. So he gives her this money as an affectation of cruelty. So, you know, I think there's a connection here somehow. Back to the lisp, though I won't draw it fully. But then, you know, the last paragraph, the last sad, pathetic paragraph in which he. Oh, no, it's not the last paragraph. I'm sorry, it's the penultimate or third to last. He imagines that this action of giving her money is going to. To be better. The resentment that she's going to carry over his insult is going to be better for her ultimately, than if she had gotten involved with him romantically because he would have inevitably treated her poorly and things would have ended badly between them. He wouldn't have been able to be good to her for long. And now this way, she has a resentment. She can cherish her whole life. So he's. He's infected her like a vampire and. And made her, you know, he thinks that he's given her some of his venom and now she gets to cherish it the way he cherishes his. So he's. He's making other. You know, he's. Or like the zombie disease. He's turning everybody around him into a zombie, too. Yeah, scary. 59:34 Wes: I mean, he's. The way he puts it. Will it not be better that she should keep the resentment of the insult forever? Resentment? Why? It is purification. It is a most stinging and painful consciousness. However, the loathsome, the filth that's awaiting her quote, the feeling of insult, will elevate and purify her. By hatred, perhaps, too, by forgiveness. What is better? Cheap happiness or exalted suffering? Yeah, Very dark vision. And this is. This is what stops him from, you know, he goes out, he pursues her a little bit, but he draws himself up short because apparently this will be better for her. 1:00:11 Erin: Yeah. 1:00:12 Wes: Before that, he had talked of, I think, part of what motivates him to reject her. Well, he says there's a hatred born of envy. And then he says, with me, loving meant tyrannizing and showing my moral superiority. It consists of the right to tyrannize a love object. He didn't imagine love except his struggle. So this. I think he understands that his own envy and sadism make love impossible for him. But this idea of envy is important because, of course, it's because she's outside of him and he can't control her, that ultimately he can't stand the idea of having her as a love object, unless it can be completely controlled, it's too much for him. So he would rather leave her with the insult. 1:00:59 Erin: Oh, in this way he gets to control her in a way. I mean, it is his affectation of giving her this money has now induced. It's infected her with his consciousness, which we know, we've already said is self consciousness. So now if she ever does have, you know, some kind of boyfriend or some relationship where she thinks it's actually more than just under the auspices of her services, she's going to be afraid that she's going to get paid, that she's just being used. Right. So he's made her self aware, you know, given her a bit of his self consciousness to take with her into the future. 1:01:33 Wes: He's impaired her ability to trust again. 1:01:36 Erin: Yes, yes. 1:01:37 Wes: So made her. 1:01:38 Erin: And ours too. Yes. 1:01:40 Wes: Right. 1:01:42 Erin: We'll never be the same. 1:01:44 Wes: So then he moves into. So the very end of this. So this experiment in therapeutic truth telling, where we're the therapist, he comes back to the idea that this is an evil memory. This is, I think, the phrase that he uses before he starts this whole account and then says it's a mistake in writing it down and it's not literature but a quote, unquote, corrective punishment. So this has gone from therapy to punishment. I guess it's two different, really, conceptions of confession. Confession is therapeutic versus confession as confession to a crime that he can be punished for. And I guess our awareness of it is just the punishment. And then that whole bit about novels needing a hero but he's an antihero. And then he says what matters most. It all produces a most unpleasant impression. For we are all divorced from life. We are all cripples, every one of us more or less. We're so divorcement. We feel loathing for life. We see it as effort, we see it as hard work. It's better in books. Why are we perverse? Why do we ask for something else we don't know? Relax the control and we would be begging for petulant. Prayers are answered, we're answered. Relax the control. And we'd be begging to be under control at once. Again at once. So we don't really want freedom. And then this is. I just want to read this whole paragraph that comes next. I have only carried to the extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry halfway. And what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves so that perhaps after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully. Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is and what it is called. Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join onto, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. It's a burden to us even to be human beings, men with our own real body and blood. We are ashamed of it. We think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible, generalized man. And here's a line which I really think is great. We are stillborn and for generations past have not been begotten by living fathers. And that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow of an idea. So what's going on now? Suddenly we got into cultural criticism. And is it that we're too. It sounds like we have too much civilization, too much history behind us, too much culture, too many books, such that we are becoming more and more divorced from life. So it's not just him who's the underground man. We are all on the underground spectrum. Or maybe it's a feature of human self consciousness and culture. Right. Yeah, thanks. I like that. I just popped in my head the underground spectrum, but. Yeah, but it seems. It surprised me. I didn't know that it was going to become about us in this sense that he was just a limiting case of something that was supposed to be about. About us. We're getting punished as well. 1:04:57 Erin: I guess he says at the very beginning that, you know, civilization doesn't make us any better, it just makes us worse, you know. So I suppose this has to be the. This has to be the denouement that not only are we not improvable, but we're the opposite. You know, we're actively getting worse by civilization. And it's strange because he seems to be part of the. Insofar as he uses an idea out of a book to make Lisa nourish a resentment forever. You know, he seems to be part of this infection that he also is railing against or you know, he seems to be putting this insofar as he is, you know, a man of his age and a super civilized man. He seems to be part of the spread of the disease rather than, I don't know, is. And the Notes from Underground itself is a way to kind of disseminate these ideas. Right. So he's ostensibly retreated into the underground. At the same time, he's able to sort of infect everyone else like a zombie. You know, we're all. Lisa's listening to this, listening to this story and becoming affected, infected by self consciousness as a result. So, you know, if the purpose of Dostoevsky's writing this was to refute the utopian ideal, it's interesting that what he responds with, though performative, is so ultimately nihilistic that we're not. You know, I'm not sure what to take from it in the end. 1:06:30 Wes: Well, I think the implication is still that love is the way out. And that seems to be there in the Brothers Karamazov as well. 1:06:36 Erin: Yes, but here it can't be. 1:06:38 Wes: The nihilist is always the foil for him, but he does lean into it in a way that makes him sound like the same thing with Nietzsche. Nihilism is the foil, but it sounds awfully convincing coming out of their mouths. 1:06:50 Erin: Right, right, right, right. 1:06:52 Wes: So we get the hint that love is the way out, but that fails catastrophically. And then we're told there is no way out. There is no possibility for freedom. And it's no longer even just about our physicality or about the fact that we are machines in the world. It's about the fact of self consciousness, which might seem like human culture and self consciousness and civilization might be seen as manifestations of freedom, but he's warning us that in fact, they just confine us even more. So in a way, we're confined by our own freedom. Freedom. We're confined by our self consciousness, we're confined by our rationality, etc. But yeah, why not end on a more positive note about love? He's the underground man, so of course it can't end on a positive note. Of course, maybe, maybe he could have given us. Given us a postscript anyway. All right, so no postscripts anymore for us. What did we call them? 1:07:54 Erin: That's what we call it. 1:07:55 Wes: We call it postscripts. Right? 1:07:56 Erin: Yeah, but we'll still do them. If people want to send us questions, we could do. We could do a show of just 1:08:03 Wes: for subscribers sending questions, and if we get enough, we'll answer them on there. 1:08:08 Erin: Yes. All right, thank you, thank you. 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