How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph). We used Constance Garnett's translation.
Quote #4
And what loving-kindness, oh Lord, what loving-kindness I felt at times in those dreams of mine! in those "flights into the sublime and the beautiful"; though it was fantastic love, though it was never applied to anything human in reality, yet there was so much of this love that one did not feel afterwards even the impulse to apply it in reality; that would have been superfluous. Everything, however, passed satisfactorily by a lazy and fascinating transition into the sphere of art, that is, into the beautiful forms of life, lying ready, largely stolen from the poets and novelists and adapted to all sorts of needs and uses. (2.2.2)
The Underground Man makes no attempt to reconcile his dreams with reality. As will soon become evident, his idea of reality is a world of suffering. Dreams and literature, then, are a world of perfection. There is no happy medium for the Underground Man (as he will establish later on).
Quote #5
With despair I pictured to myself how coldly and disdainfully that "scoundrel" Zverkov would meet me; with what dull-witted, invincible contempt the blockhead Trudolyubov would look at me; with what impudent rudeness the insect Ferfitchkin would snigger at me in order to curry favour 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. (2.3.40)
Interestingly, this interaction ends up being quite literary, given the threat of a duel and the emotionally charged verbal scuffles between the Underground Man and Zverkov.
Quote #6
Of course, after that everything will be over! The office will have vanished off the face of the earth. I shall be arrested, I shall be tried, I shall be dismissed from the service, thrown in prison, sent to Siberia. Never mind! In fifteen years when they let me out of prison I will trudge off to him, a beggar, in rags. I shall find him in some provincial town. He will be married and happy. He will have a grown-up daughter.... I shall say to him: "Look, monster, at my hollow cheeks and my rags! I've lost everything – my career, my happiness, art, science, the woman I loved, and all through you. Here are pistols. I have come to discharge my pistol and ... and I ... forgive you. Then I shall fire into the air and he will hear nothing more of me ...."
I was actually on the point of tears, though I knew perfectly well at that moment that all this was out of Pushkin's Silvio and Lermontov's Masquerade. And all at once I felt horribly ashamed, so ashamed that I stopped the horse, got out of the sledge, and stood still in the snow in the middle of the street. The driver gazed at me, sighing and astonished. (2.5.18-9)
Dostoevsky was actually sent to Siberia himself, after a stint in prison for being a socialist radical. The Underground Man claims that such calamities belong only to realm of literature, but Dostoevsky himself knows that these atrocities are very real.