Notes from the Underground Hate Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph). We used Constance Garnett's translation.

Quote #10

[Apollon] drove me beyond all patience! He was the bane of my life, the curse laid upon me by Providence. We had been squabbling continually for years, and I hated him. My God, how I hated him! I believe I had never hated anyone in my life as I hated him, especially at some moments. […] He was a pedant, to the most extreme point, the greatest pedant I had met on earth, and with that had a vanity only befitting Alexander of Macedon. He was in love with every button on his coat, every nail on his fingers – absolutely in love with them, and he looked it! In his behaviour to me he was a perfect tyrant. […] My hatred reached such a point that sometimes his very step almost threw me into convulsions. What I loathed particularly was his lisp. […] He maddened me particularly when he read aloud the psalms to himself behind his partition. […] Apollon seemed to me, for some reason, an integral part of that flat, and for seven years I could not turn him away. (2.8.19)

Notice that the Underground Man comments on and mocks stuttering and lisps – first with Zverkov and then with Apollon. Consider this: to his reader, the Underground Man is little more than a voice, talking in the darkness. Identity, then, has much to do with words and voices – which is why he focuses so much on speech.

Quote #11

"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! Tomorrow I should have defiled her soul and have exhausted her heart, while now the feeling of insult will never die in her heart, and however loathsome the filth awaiting her – the feeling of insult will elevate and purify her ... by hatred ... h'm! (2.10.20)

The Underground Man seeks to purify Liza by hatred; does he do the same for himself? Does his self-loathing serve any greater purpose?

Quote #12

I dreamed as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the pain in my soul. Never had I endured such suffering and remorse, yet could there have been the faintest doubt when I ran out from my lodging that I should turn back half-way? I never met Liza again and I have heard nothing of her. I will add, too, that I remained for a long time afterwards pleased with the phrase about the benefit from resentment and hatred in spite of the fact that I almost fell ill from misery. (2.10.22)

Why should the Underground Man name this moment as the greatest suffering and remorse he's ever suffered? What is it about Liza's exit that so disturbs him? Or is he merely exaggerating, which, quite honestly, wouldn't be a first…