ABSTRACT
“I reached the point where I felt some kind of secret, abnormal, base gratification when I returned to my corner on some awful Petersburg night and felt intensely conscious that again that day I had committed another vile act, that what was done could never be undone again, and then inwardly, secretly I would gnaw, gnaw at myself for it, pestering and sucking the life out of myself until the bitterness eventually turned into some kind of shameful, damned sweetness and finally into a real definite pleasure.” —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
