DOSTOYEVSKY: A SHORT INTRO
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, a famous Russian literary figure, was born in Moscow on November 11, 1821. He has written several novels including “Crime & Punishment” and “The Brothers Karamazov”. He is widely known for his profound understanding of human psychology and his ability to bring forth the darkest realms of human nature.
WHITE NIGHTS: A SHORT INTRO
White Nights is a novella, written by Dostoyevsky. Originally written in Russian, it has been translated to English by Constance Garnett. The edition which I read has been published in 2024 in Pakistan by Readings. It spans 79 pages.
SUMMARY
The book describes the story from the perspective of a lonely dreamer who often wanders in the streets of St. Petersburg. One night he meets a lonely young lady named NASTENKA who was weeping on a bridge. They are immediately attracted towards each other; & after a while, the readers find them both talking to each other. The lonely dreamer tells her about his lonesome life & reveals that he has always been dreaming of meeting a woman, yet never in his life has he seen any woman. When they are parting, he asks her if it’s the last time they are meeting but the young lady says that she will visit this place at this time tomorrow. She leaves & the narrator keeps thinking about her.
The next night, i.e. the second night, they formally introduce themselves to each other. First the narrator talks about his nature, which frankly speaking is a very hard narration to digest. Then the young lady introduces herself & reveals a detailed account of her life, revealing that she has been waiting for a man who left a year ago and had promised to marry her upon his arrival. Now that he has arrived but hasn’t met her yet, it has quite saddened her. Then she hands him a letter & asks him to deliver it to a particular address.
The next night when they meet, she reveals her love for the narrator & tells him that you’ve been a very good friend to me. She tells him that any other man in his place would have fallen in love with her but he didn’t. Though she’s unaware that the narrator himself has started liking her.
Upon the next meeting, they become hopeless & think that the man might have changed his mind & isn’t interested in marrying or meeting her. Then, while weeping, she questions the narrator: would you do the same if any girl approached you & told you that she can’t live without you? At this point, the narrator fails to control his emotions & reveals his love for Nastenka, & to the reader’s surprise, she answers him that she knows of him loving her from the day first. Then, the readers see a turn in the story as both the characters try to support each other. They start promising that they will take care of each other. Nastenka tells him that if he loves her, she will slowly forget about the other man. They also decide that the narrator should become the new lodger of Nastenka’s granny & should shift there tomorrow. They are still discussing these things when all of a sudden a man passes near them, & Nastenka can’t help herself but to continuously look at him… “WHO IS IT NASTENKA?” to which she only replies: “IT’S HE…” She leaves with him & the narrator is left alone, again. The narrator ends the story with wishing a good life for Nastenka. The last line of the book says:
“MY GOD, A WHOLE MOMENT OF BLISS! IS THAT TOO LITTLE FOR THE WHOLE OF A MAN’S LIFE?”
DISCUSSION
The novella begins with the epigraph by Ivan Tugenev that says:
“… & WAS IT HIS DESTINED PART,
ONLY ONE MOMENT IN HIS LIFE
TO BE CLOSE TO YOUR HEART?”
This epigraph truly captures the essence of the whole novella, where Nastenka only for a moment comes close to the lonely dreamer & then separates forever.
The narrator describes himself as a lonely dreamer. We see that he readily falls in love with Nastenka, but perhaps it wasn’t love; perhaps he mistook the girl’s kindness for love. In other words, it wasn’t love, rather the illusion of love, for he has never been close to any lady. This verse of Ghulam M. Qasir effectively captures this situation:
یہ بھی اک رنگ ہے شاید مری محرومی کا
کوئی ہنس دے تو محبت کا گماں ہوتا ہے
Similarly, the girl’s attraction to the other man might also be the result of her stricter lifestyle, as she herself says: “Who knows, perhaps my whole love was a mistaken feeling, a delusion, perhaps it began in mischief, in nonsense, because I was kept so strictly by grandmother? perhaps I ought to love another man, not him, a different man, who would have pity on me and… and… But dont let us say any more about that.”
When she leaves with the other man leaving the narrator alone, to me Nastenka seemed the biggest liar of literature. Just before leaving she said: “I love him but I shall get over it, I must get over it, I cannot fail to get over it; I am getting over it, I feel that…. Who knows? Perhaps it will end today, for I hate him, for he has been laughing at me while you’ve been weeping here with me, for you have not repulsed me as he has, for you love me while he has never loved me, for in fact, I love you myself… Yes, I love you! I love you as you love me; I have told you so before, you heard it yourselfــــI love you because you’re better than he is, because you’re nobler than he is, because, because heـــــ” After expressing these emotions, the readers are convinced that she’s going to forget the other guy & start a happy living with the narrator, yet she steps back from her decisions when she sees her lover. Upon seeing him, she says: “it’s he..” PERSONALLY I FOUND THESE WORDS TO BE THE MOST DEVASTATING YET THE MOST OPTIMISTIC TWO WORDS OF THE NOVELLA: “IT’S HE!”. Devastating for the readers as well as the narrator, & optimistic for Nastenka. Dostoyevsky hasn’t used very tough vocabulary, themes or sentence structure in the novella; however, when the narrator describes himself & his nature to Nastenka, that’s truly the hardest part of the story. At one point when he is expressing his feelings, he talks in a very queer way & just when the readers begin to give up, Nastenka tells him to stop because even she couldn’t understand a single thing, to which the narrator replies: “AH, NASTENKA, I WANTED SOMEHOW TO CONVEY TO YOU THAT STRANGE IMPRESSION…”
QUOTATIONS
1: “Ah, Nastenka! Why, one thanks some people for being alive at the same time with one; I thank you for having met me, for my being able to remember you all my life!”
2: “So when we are unhappy, we feel the unhappiness of others more.”
3: “and if I had been fond of you for twenty years, I couldn’t have been fonder of you than I am now.”
4: “I must let myself flow in a river of words, or I shall choke.”
5: “Allow me, Nastenka, to tell my story in the third person, for one feels awfully ashamed to tell it in the first person.”
6: “Now that I sit beside you & talk to you it is strange for me to think of the future, for in the future, there is loneliness again, again this musty, useless life; & what shall I have to dream of when I have been so happy in reality beside you!”
7: “I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.”
SCREEN ADAPTATION OF THE NOVELLA
This novella has also been adapted into a movie. The movie is as heart wrenching as the book itself. It’s quite a good adaptation; however, some of the narrators daydreaming has been added just to show the viewers that he is a dreamer. That daydreaming isn’t part of the book. Also, some of the dialogues & descriptions have been omitted in the movie, yet I consider it a good adaptation of the novella.
RECOMMENDATION
Anyone who wants to read an interesting story, they should go for White Nights. Since it is only 79 pages long, it can be easily read in a day or two. Secondly, there aren’t so many characters in the story. There are just four major characters: the narrator, Nastenka, her granny & her lover. There aren’t dozens of actions & events taking place in the novella; it’s just a few meetings of two people leading to a heartbreaking ending. So, although some parts of the book would definitely seem difficult, but still its recommended.