Quote 1
“Ha,
ha, ha! Next you’ll be finding pleasure in a toothache!” you will
exclaim, laughing.
“And why not? There
is also pleasure in a toothache,” I will answer.
This passage, which begins Chapter IV
of the “Underground” section, illustrates the extent of the Underground
Man’s masochism. In the previous chapter, he has described in great
detail the ways in which he takes pleasure in his own humiliation,
enjoying the extremity of his indecision and powerlessness. The
“you” in the quotation is the Underground Man’s imagined audience,
to which the entire novel is addressed. This audience represents
the perspective of the rational man, who would certainly scoff at
the perverse idea that someone could enjoy something that brings
him pain. The statement that the Underground Man will next be finding
pleasure in a toothache is sarcastic, a dismissal of the absurdity
of the situation. No one in their right mind could take pleasure
in a toothache.
Always ready to take an idea to its extreme, and eager
to disprove any unshakable assumptions his audience might have about
reason and nature, the Underground Man brings the perversity of
his idea to the next level: there is indeed pleasure in a toothache.
He goes on to describe the aesthetic value of the moans of someone
suffering from a toothache. His moans are “conscious” moans, the
moans of a “developed” man who has been exposed to European civilization and
understands that true art has no purpose besides itself. The developed
man will construct elaborate, symphonic moans and groans that will
give him the satisfaction of irritating his friends and family.
The reference to European civilization relates the idea
of the toothache to the question of the value of European culture’s
influence on Russia. Indeed, the Underground Man’s pleasure in his toothache
is an indication not only of his masochism and his desire to perplex
his audience, but of the artificiality of his existence. His enjoyment
of the toothache becomes a parody of his enjoyment of other “developed”
pleasures, encouraged by European literature and philosophy. Dostoevsky
was extremely critical of the way in which this Europeanized, “developed”
way of thinking alienated Russian intellectuals from the real culture
and people of Russia, who worked with the soil as members of a community.
The refinements that the Underground Man exaggerates in this passage
are both a result of and a contributing factor to his isolation
from society.
