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Even before I had actually begun to live, I had fathomed a great deal about life.
Hiding that key was the first evil action in my life.
keys of Heaven? idkidk
It fascinated me, making me oblivious of the present, almost alienating me from reality; in every book I read, I found embodied the laws of the same fatality, the same spirit of adventure which commands the lives of each individual, yet is derived from some basic law of human life, which is the condition of salvation, preservation and happiness.
It seemed some prophecy was gripping my heart.
again, if dostoyevsky finished the novel, this would’ve been a pivot point
And every day hope grew stronger and stronger in my heart, and my yearnings, too, grew greater; yearnings for that future, for that sort of life about which I read every day, and which struck me with such artistic force and poetic fascination.
her dreamer nature returned to her
it was only in dreams that I was so bold, while in reality I was instinctively nervous of the future.
heheheh a hint of the underground nan. to be fair, he brings to an extreme in his life what none of us dare to do (nfu quote reference)
I unconsciously decided to be content for the time being with the world of dreams in which I alone was the master, and in which there was only temptation and joy, while misfortune, if admitted at all, played only a passive, transient role, essential for the sake of contrast and for the sudden turn of destiny that was to give a happy solution to the ecstatic romances in my brain.
a life absolutely divorced from my surroundings,
heheheeh shes a raskolnik
This life was my secret,
The first attack of illness, the first bout of her interminable depression,
from her childhood, netochka has been the victim of abuse and then it just switched to a more subtle form now being passed around aristocratic families. she is always an outsider. now look at this alexandra m; she too is quite out of her mind, or at least on the path of insanity, and serves as a mirror to her father. look at how talent comes back to this book; it was not mentioned once in Prince X’s house.
I began timidly, in a soft voice, to hum the tune to myself. I was soon carried away and got up to go over to the piano.
mmm shes getting musical like her father
After all, in my mind, Katya had never left me. She still seemed to live inside me, especially in all my dreams, in all the romances and adventures of my fantasies, where the two of us always went hand in hand, inseparable. I imagined myself to be the heroine of every novel I read, and I always found a place in the story for Katya, my friend and Princess.
There was a bright light in the room from the slanting rays of the setting sun, which was streaming through the high windows, falling across the parquet floor.
again, dostoyevsky’s favourite image to use when suffering children are involved.
There are moments when all the intellectual and spiritual faculties, painfully overstrained, seem suddenly to blaze with the bright flame of consciousness. At these times the troubled soul, languishing with a presentiment, a foretaste of the future, has something akin to a prophetic vision. And the whole being longs to live, it cries out for life, and the heart, alight with blind, desperate hope, will invoke the future, with all its mystery and incertitude, its storms and tempests, if only it will bring life.
You said you would never forget me. I believe it, and henceforth all my life rests in those words of yours. We must part, our hour has struck! I have known this for a long time, my gentle, my sorrowful beauty, but only now do I understand it.
When you crossed my path I dared not raise my eyes to yours; I was a servant before you. There was no tremor or pain in my heart when I was near you; it told me nothing, it was unmoved.
My soul failed to recognize yours although it found new light beside its beautiful sister soul. I know that, I felt it dimly. That I was able to feel, since the light of God’s day shines on the lowest blade of grass and warms and cherishes it, even though it grows beside a lovely flower.
I could only contemplate you in boundless love, without ever approaching you.
My passion, aroused by you, was not love; I was afraid of love; I dared not love you; love implies reciprocity, equality, and I was not worthy of them… I do not know how it was with me!
My sister, my sister!’
This does now make me think that the S.O. who wrote this letter is a woman, just because of how similarly her love to Alexandra M. is to Netochka's love for Katya. So I can also draw parallels to Netochka, and the author of this letter.
Alexandra M. is the parallel of Efimov and S.O. is the parallel of Netochka. Hmmm
When you kissed me (it happened once and I will never forget it), there was a mist before my eyes and my heart stood still.
yes, you loved me very much, you loved me as a sister loves a brother; you loved me as your own creation, because it was you who resurrected my heart; you awakened my slumbering mind and filled my heart with sweet hope. But I could not and dared not call you my sister, because I could not be your brother; because we were not equal; because you are mistaken in me!
And it is this thought that troubles me, that hammers incessantly through my head and poisons my wounded heart: it still seems to me that you loved the man you thought you found in me, that you were deceived by me.
I was given too much; fortune erred and now she must correct the mistake and take everything back.
My whole soul is full of you.
Teach me how to wrench my life in two, how to tear my heart out of my breast, how to live without it.
How can they throw stones at you? Whose hand will throw the first? Oh, they have no qualms, they will cast a thousand stones.
Alexandra Mikailovna the Adultress :)
I had become an involuntary participant in the lives and personal relations of those who up until that time had comprised my whole world, and I was now becoming afraid for myself.
this is Netochka's whole existence and she is painfully self-aware
I saw a criminal pardoning the sins of the righteous, and my heart was torn.
omg dostoyevsky u genius
pleased me that my artistic life was beginning in these surroundings. I enjoyed the contrast between the petty everyday life, the trivial but vital cares, and the art which awaited me two steps away from this life,
though she’s going down the musician path like her father, her journey is pleasant and starts in aristocracy, which contrasts to her father starting in serfdom.
as if he were making up his face.
‘Annetta,’
She is the only person aside from her mama that has called her Annetta and not Netochka ––– the only person aside from her poor mama that humanises her.
‘I make you blush, I?’ answered Pyotr Alexandrovitch, apparently in a fury. ‘You have blushed for me? Do you mean to tell me I can make you blush for me? It’s for me to blush, not for you, don’t you think?’
oooh and in saying so, he directly mocks S.O.’s letter.
even more parallels to her mother (they are drawn every time Alexandra M. is described to have a deathly face. it’s netochka’s traumatic memory of her dead mama.)
Do you know, I believe – I don’t know why – that this is the last time you will embrace me.’
With the first snow I shall die, but I do not regret it. Farewell.’
the events of chapter three happened in the beginning of winter.
She went up to the piano and struck a few chords; a string snapped and with a clang died away in a long discordant note… ‘Do you hear, Netochka, do you hear?’ she said, pointing to the piano as if it had suddenly inspired her. ‘That string was strained to breaking-point, it could bear it no more and has perished. Do you hear how plaintively the sound dies away?’ She spoke with difficulty. Mute spiritual anguish was reflected in her face, and her eyes were filled with tears.
the string literally dying gives a whole other layer to the meaning of music in this novel. music seems to be alive and works in the cores of all the characters.
I’m like a child now, you must forgive me everything.’
I should probably try and say something about all the emphasis on her childlike nature but честно гоорят, I am stuck at that too. I don’t think it is possible to divine the meaning at this point of the novel, and it is unfortunate because it will never be settled. My best guess is that, like the Brothers Karamazov (this is Dostoyevsky’s first tale f the suffering of children), Alexandra M. is the ‘second party’ of suffering children. She is the party of overgrown children.
This endless suffering, I understand it so well now! This life without a ray of hope… this timid love that asks for nothing!
that was netochka’s own life in her childhood with Efimov.
I began rummaging through the books, looking for something light and frivolous to read aloud to Alexandra Mikhailovna.
idk how i forgot to mention until now but bookishness ––– книжности —- is incredibly important to the character arcs of all Dostoyevskian persons. ehhhh it’s a long explanation but just take the conversation between the underground man and liza in notes from underground. ah yes the struggle of having read almost all dussy fiction.
I wondered… the corner in which I felt so safe and secure would be empty!
‘Very well, then. But I really can’t allow you to receive letters from your lovers in my house…’
then, netochka realises that he didn’t recognise that it was the letter to alexandra m. and possibly have never seen the letter in the first place. also, a parallel: letter to alexandra m. is mistaken to be dedicated to netochka.
You’ll kill her!’ ‘It’s you who are killing her,’ he said, pushing me away.
okayyyy i understand now. if there is an efimov mirror, then pyotr a. is the efimov in aristocracy.
why, I can’t speak directly and openly before her…
what, is it about sensuality? that’s the only reason i could think of why they are censoring themselves. i think they suspect each other of adultery.
young person’s
not called a child anymore. he implies that now, she cannot be excused
I shall say as before, that crime will always remain crime, that sin will always be sin: shameful vile, dishonourable, to whatever height of grandeur you raise the vicious feeling!
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ I said, hardly knowing what I was doing by now, and answering yes to every question, simply to put an end to our agony.
:(. thats her whole life
You can’t harm me with your presence, for I too, I too am a sinner.’
‘Three years ago I found this letter in a book. I presumed it had been forgotten; I read it and learnt everything. Since then it has been in my possession because I had no one to whom I could give it. I could not give it to her. Could I have given it to you? But you must have known the contents of this letter, the whole sorrowful story inside… I don’t know why you’re pretending. It’s a mystery to me. I still can’t understand your dark soul. You wanted to keep up your superiority over her and you have done so. But for what purpose? In order to triumph over a ghost, over the distraught
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So this is how it all ends. If this had been finished, i could leave with a sounder analysis but as it stands, i literally do not know what to think. Dostoyevsky prepared a sweeping romantic drama that explores sin, love, and the suffering of innocent, precocious children. that it ends in such a confrontation, alexandra maybe dead, and katya and netochka never reunited… idk, idk. without a continuation, this is just a tragedy. damn.
