White Nights

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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 ...