White Nights

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Somehow I can’t help but be reminded of that weak and sickly girl, at whom you sometimes look with pity, sometimes with a compassionate love, and sometimes you simply do not notice her, but then suddenly, for a moment, she somehow, unexpectedly, becomes inexplicably, wonderfully beautiful, and you, startled and intoxicated, unwittingly ask yourself: What power caused those sad, thoughtful eyes to shine with such fire?

I was walking and singing, because when I am happy I am sure to hum something to myself, like every other happy man who has neither friends nor good acquaintances and who in a joyful moment has nobody with whom he can share his joy.

I’m a dreamer; I have so little real life that I regard such moments

as this one, now, to be so rare that I can’t help repeating these moments in my dreams. I will dream of you all night, for an entire week, all year long.

Two minutes and you have made me happy forever. Yes! happy;

‘Absolutely without stories of any kind! I lived, as they say, on my own, that is, absolutely alone – alone, completely alone – do you understand what it means to be alone?’

tell it splendidly, but could you tell it somehow less splendidly? Otherwise, you talk as though you were reading from a book.’

he desires nothing, because he is above desire, because he has everything, because he is sated, because he himself is the artist of his life and he creates it for himself every hour to suit his latest whim. And,

you deceive yourself, and unwittingly and dispassionately believe that it is a genuine, true passion that disturbs his soul, you unwittingly believe that there is something alive and tangible in his incorporeal daydreams! But, you see, it’s all a delusion – take, for example, the love that has pierced his breast with all its inexhaustible joy, with all its wearisome torments … Just look at him and you’ll be convinced!

“I am free”, and trembling, threw herself into his arms, and with a cry of rapture, they embraced, and in an instant they forgot sorrow, separation, all their torments, the gloomy house, the old man, the dismal garden in their distant homeland, the bench on which, with one last passionate kiss, she had torn herself away from his arms, numb from torments of despair?

‘my whole life and I believe that’s how I’ll end my days!’

I am overcome by moments of such anguish, such anguish … Because at those moments it begins to seem that I will never be able to begin living a real life; because it already seems that I have lost all sense, all feeling for the genuine, the real; because, in the end, I curse myself; because after my fantastic nights I am visited by sobering moments that are horrible! Meanwhile, you hear all around you how the throng of humanity thunders and spins in the whirlwind of life; you hear, you see how people live – they live in reality; you see that life for them is not forbidden, that their life doesn’t vanish like a dream, like a vision, that their life is eternally renewing, eternally young, and not a single hour of it resembles any other; whereas how cheerless and monotonously banal is the timorous fantasy, the slave of a shadow, of an idea, the slave of the first cloud that suddenly obscures the sun and fills with anguish the heart of every true Petersburger, which holds its sun so dear – but what sort of fantasy is there to be found in anguish! You sense that this inexhaustible fantasy is finally growing tired, that it is becoming exhausted under constant strain; because, you see, you are growing into manhood, you are outgrowing your former ideals: they are being smashed to dust, to bits and pieces; and if there is no other life, then you must build it from these bits and pieces. But meanwhile your soul yearns and pleads for something else! And in vain does the dreamer rake ...

What have you done with your years? Where have you buried your best days? Did you live or not? Look, you say to yourself, look how cold the world is becoming. More years will pass, followed by gloomy solitude, and then doddering old age will come on a walking-stick, to be followed by anguish and despondency.

It will be sad, you know, to be left alone, quite alone, and not even have something to regret – nothing, absolutely nothing … because all that I have lost, all this, it was all nothing, a stupid, round zero – it was merely a dream!’

we thank some people for merely living at the same time as we do. I thank you for the fact that I met you, that I will remember you for all my life!’

How could I have been so blind, when everything had already been taken by another, when everything was not mine, when, in the end, even this very tenderness of hers, her attentions, her love … yes, her love for me – was nothing more than joy at the impending meeting with someone else, the desire to thrust her happiness on me?

And so it is that when we are unhappy we more strongly feel the unhappiness of others; feeling is not shattered, but becomes concentrated …

We’ll meet him together. I want him to see that we love each other.’ ‘That we love each other!’ I cried.

Your hand is cold, mine is as hot as fire. How blind you are, Nastenka!

you love him more than anything in the world, and a good deal more than you love yourself.’

‘You see, now we’ll always be together, isn’t that so?’ Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka! If only you knew how lonely I am now!

‘It’s impossible, but I love you, Nastenka! That’s what it is!

I was going to run away from you myself.

was so sorry that I couldn’t help you with this love … that my heart was breaking, and I, I – could not be silent, I had to speak, Nastenka, I had to speak!

‘You feel sorry for me, Nastenka; you simply feel sorry for me, my little friend!

‘Now listen to me,’ she began in a weak and trembling voice, but one in which there was a ring of something that pierced right through my heart and began to ache there sweetly, ‘don’t think that I am so fickle and flighty, don’t think that I can so easily and quickly forget and be untrue … I loved him for a whole year and I swear to God that never, never was I unfaithful to him even in thought.

perhaps all my love amounted to nothing more than my feelings and imagination, just my imagination, perhaps it began as a prank or foolishness, all because I was under Grandmother’s watch.

My head ached and was spinning; fever was stealing its way through my limbs.

I said that I would love you, and I love you now, I more than love you. Oh, my God! If only I could love you both at the same time! Oh, if only you were he!

Thank you! Yes, thank you for that love! Because it is stamped on my memory like a sweet dream that you remember long after waking up;

A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man’s life?