White Nights

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

oh why, at such moments does one’s breathing become laboured? Why, by what magic, by what mysterious caprice does the pulse quicken, do tears gush forth from the dreamer’s eyes, his pale, moist cheeks burn as his entire being fills with such irresistible delight? Why do whole sleepless nights pass by like a single instant in inexhaustible merriment and happiness, and when the dawn’s rosy ray shines through the windows and the daybreak illumines the gloomy room with its dubious fantastic light, such as we have in Petersburg, why does our dreamer, exhausted and weary, throw himself on his bed and fall asleep, his tormented and overwhelmed spirit trembling with ecstasy, while his heart aches with a sweet agony? Yes, Nastenka, 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

And this strange, ancestral home, in which she had lived for such a long time, secluded and melancholy, with her sullen, old husband, always silent and peevish, who frightened them, while they, timid as children, dolefully and timorously concealed their love from each other? How they suffered, how fearful they were, and how innocent and pure was their love and how (it goes without saying, Nastenka) malicious people were! And, my God, was it really not she he met later, far from the shores of their homeland, under an alien sky, in the torrid South, in the marvellous Eternal City, in the brilliance of a ball, to the thunder of music, in a palazzo (it absolutely must be a palazzo), drowned in a sea of lights, on this balcony, wreathed with myrtle and roses, where she, upon recognizing him, so hastily took off her mask and whispered: “I am free”,

Oh, bless you, dear girl, for not turning me away from the very first, for making it possible that I can now say that I have lived at least two evenings in my life!’

‘Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka! Do you know you have reconciled me with myself for a good long time? Do you know that now I will not think so badly of myself as I sometimes have done? Do you know that now, perhaps, I will no longer suffer anguish for having committed a crime and sin in my life, because a life like that is a crime and sin? And don’t think that I have been exaggerating anything to you, for God’s sake, Nastenka, don’t think that, because sometimes I am overcome by moments of such anguish, such anguish