Crime and Punishment & Other Great Novels of Dostoevsky
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Contents
Notes from Underground — Part I Underground — Chapter VI
Overview
The narrator craves a fixed identity and imagines embracing laziness as a respectable “career.” He fantasizes as a glutton devoted to the “sublime and beautiful,” demanding respect for his cultivated sentimentality. This irony reveals his need for positive definition amid self-loathing and paralysis.
Summary
The narrator imagines that if he had done nothing out of sheer laziness, he could at least respect himself. A fixed label like “sluggard” would give him a positive definition and a place in the world, something he finds otherwise unattainable.
He fantasizes about choosing a “career” as a refined sluggard and glutton who venerates the “sublime and beautiful.” In this vision, he toasts every instance of art and lofty sentiment, turning even trash into occasions for exaltation and tears, thereby justifying himself through aesthetic devotion.
Carrying the fantasy further, he pictures bodily signs of respectability—a belly, chins, a ruby nose—demanding recognition as something solid and real. The satire exposes his desperation for any stable identity and public esteem, even if built on self-indulgence and hollow sentiment.
Who Appears
- Unnamed narrator (Underground Man)Yearns for a fixed identity; imagines being a self-respecting sluggard and glutton devoted to the “sublime and beautiful.”