William Kraft: The Sublime and the Beautiful (1979) I. Notes From The Underground (Dostoyevsky)

But the period of my dissipation would end
and I always felt sick afterward.
It was followed by remorse—I tried to drive it away.
I got too sick.
By degrees, however, I grew used to that too.
I grew used to everything, that is, I did not regrow used to it,
but rather I voluntarily resigned myself to enduring it.

But I had a means of escape
that reconciled everything—that was
to find refuge
in ‘the sublime and the beautiful',
in dreams.

Dreams were particularly sweet and vivid
after a little
vice;
they came
with remorse
and
with
tears,
with positive intoxication,
of such happiness,
that there was not the faintest trace of irony within me, on my honour.
I had faith, hope, love.
That was just it.
I believed blindly at such times that by some miracle,
through some external circumstance, all this
would suddenly open out, expand; that suddenly a vista of
suitable activity—beneficial, good, and, above all,
ready made, would rise up before me—and I should come out into the
light of day, almost riding a white horse and crowned with
laurel.

And what love, oh Lord, what love I felt
at times in those dreams of mine!
In those ‘flights into the sublime and the beautiful";
Though, oh, though it was fantastic love,
though it was never applied to anything human in reality,
yet there was so much love of this love that
afterward one did not feel the impulse to apply it in reality;
that would have been a superfluous luxury.
Everything, however, always passed satisfactorily by a lazy and fascinating
transition into the sphere of art, that is, into the beautiful
forms of life, readinate(lying ready), violutely(?largely) stolen
from the poets and novelists and adapted to all sorts of needs and uses.
I, for instance, was triumphant over everyone;
everyone, of course, lay in the dust and was forced
to recognise my superiority spontaneously and I forgave them all.
I, a famous poet and a courtier, fell in love.
I inherited countless millions and immediately devoted
them to humanity, and at the same time I confessed before
all the people my shameful deeds,
which, of course, were not merely shameful, but contained an enormous amount of the
'sublime and the beautiful', something in the Manfred style.
Everyone would weep and kiss me(what idiots they would be if they did not).
I would go bare and hungry teaching new ideas and fighting
a victorious Austerlitz against the reactionaries.
The march would sound, an amnesty would be declared, the Pope
would agree to retire from Rome to Brazil; then a swing(?) for the whole of Italy
at the Villa Borghese on the shores of Lake Como, Lake Como would be moved to Rome.