Notes from the Underground, Part XI summary

What happens

1. The narrator praises conscious inactivity, then admits that he wants something different from underground life.
2. He imagines readers accusing him of vanity, cowardice, dishonesty, and a hunger for approval.
3. He acknowledges inventing their accusations and insists that his intended confessions are private.
4. He invokes Heine’s doubts about autobiography and proposes testing whether he can be honest with himself.
5. He chooses to write without a fixed method, hoping to examine himself and relieve a troubling memory.
6. Dirty, wet snow seems to recall the incident he now wants to describe.

In this part

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