Baudelaire said that suffering was "a divine remedy for our impurities” and "one of the prodigious privileges of Art that… suffering put to rhythm and cadence may fill the mind with a calm joy.” I thought these words resonated with what we read in Notes from Underground.
Underground Man takes a rather peculiar stance on human nature—definitely, at least, for the time period in which Dostoyevsky wrote. Instead of having the more optimistic view that people continually improve, Underground Man says that human nature is to actually not attain perfection. Instead, we tend to enjoy the pursuit of things. And apparently we like to suffer.
I think this theory of human nature explains Underground Man’s actions toward Liza. We discussed in class that he really hurts himself when he abuses Liza. But more than that, let’s consider why he feels so wrong after he gives Liza the money—why he seems to display remorse and why he runs after her. Perhaps it’s because we enjoy the pursuit of things…but not attaining the goal. “It was the sport that attracted me,” Underground Man writes. He liked the pursuit, the chase—but can we really say he actually enjoyed hurting Liza?
Or maybe everything I just said is totally wrong—because Underground Man also says that, to him, love means domination over someone else. He (quite creepily) desired to exercise control over Liza’s very soul. So maybe he did mean to hurt her, but he wanted a different reaction than the one he got—perhaps for Liza to still be forgiving toward him, to simply acquiesce to the abuse.
Either way (or neither, since there are probably plenty of other ways to interpret UM’s actions), I think when Underground Man claims to be “incapable of love,” he’s being pretty deterministic. He kind of just gives up instead of trying to teach himself to love other people without being all possessive and weird. Instead of taking his life into his own hands, he just goes, “Aw man, did I really just treat Liza like that? Oh well, not my fault, since I’m completely incapable of love!” Who are you—Voldemort? I mean, really! Well, Dostoyevsky was big on accountability for one’s own actions—so perhaps this instance is just another criticism he had for the Russians of his day.
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I think you have some very worthy points here. I agree that Underground Man is sort of being fatalistic by (a bit dramatically in my opinion) claiming that he in incapable of love. To me, it's also like he's making an excuse for himself.
As for whether or not he actually enjoyed hurting Liza, that's a little more complicated for me to say. He is certainly infuriatingly condescending and rude at times. Perhaps this is his warped way of making sure he is noticed by her. Or perhaps he's so entrenched in the idea that he is incapable of love, he goes two steps further to prove it and show how degrading he can really be. Either way, I liked how Liza left the money behind; even though she didn't say anything outright to Underground Man, she sent a message and stood up for herself. About your point of his liking the pursuit, yes, he ran into the streets after her, but then he just turned around and went home. If he wanted to he could have definitely continued his search; for example, going back to the brothel. Not sure Liza would have appreciated that, but who knows. I think Underground Man also seemed to have a reaction of sorts against her daring to hope for a better life; in a way, he seemed to regress (by giving her the money) as if to remind her that she's stuck even though he was the one who encouraged her to hope in the first place.
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