The Beautiful Delusion of Being Something — Notes from Underground

This is the shortest chapter in Part I and the funniest. It opens with a sigh: if only he had done nothing simply from laziness. Then at least he'd have had one positive quality, something definite that could be said about him. "Sluggard", why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career. He'd be a member of the best club by right, and would find his life's occupation in continually respecting himself.

He offers an example. He knew a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being a connoisseur of Lafitte wine. The man considered this his positive virtue, never doubted himself, and died, not simply with a tranquil conscience, but with a triumphant one. The Underground Man notes: he was quite right.

From there the fantasy takes flight. He'd have been a sluggard and a glutton, not a simple one, but one with sympathies for everything "sublime and beautiful." He would have drunk toasts to every artwork, every author, every passing thing that could be called sublime, weeping into his glass like a wet sponge. He'd find the sublime in the nastiest trash. He'd drain his glass to an artist who painted a picture worthy of Gay, to an author who wrote "As you will", to "anyone you will," because he loves all that is sublime and beautiful.

And he'd demand respect for it. He'd persecute anyone who refused to give it. He'd live at ease and die with dignity. And in time he'd have grown a fine round belly, a treble chin, a ruby nose, so that everyone who looked at him would say: "Here is an asset! Here is something real and solid!"

He closes with the observation that in this negative age, such remarks are very agreeable to hear about oneself. The fantasy is absurd, he knows, but the longing beneath it is real: to be something, anything, that could be pointed at and named.