by Simon Smith
Not sure why this struck me as pertinent, just now, at this very moment
in history, but strike me it did.
With people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up for
themselves in general, how is it done? Why, when they are possessed, let us
suppose, by the feeling of revenge, then for the time there is nothing else but
that feeling left in their whole being. Such a gentleman simply dashes straight
for his object like an infuriated bull with its horns down, and nothing but a
wall will stop him. (By the way: facing the wall, such gentlemen – that is, the
“direct” persons and men of action--are genuinely nonplussed. For them a wall
is not an evasion, as for us people who think and consequently do nothing; it
is not an excuse for turning aside, an excuse for which we are always very
glad, though we scarcely believe in it ourselves, as a rule. No, they are
nonplussed in all sincerity. The wall has for them something tranquillising, morally
soothing, final – maybe even something mysterious... but of the wall later.)
Something else:
Only donkeys and mules are valiant, and they
only till they are pushed up to the wall. It is not worthwhile to pay attention
to them for they really are of no consequence.
Dostoevsky, Feodor. (1996). Notes from the Underground. Urbana,
Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 9, 2019, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/600/600-h/600-h.htm
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