White nights is a short novel written by Fëdor Dostoevskij and published for the first time in 1848. This novel is set in Saint Petersburg during those summer days, when the sun sets after 22:00.
The story is told in first person. In this way, the reader lives the same turmoil and the same fears as the protagonist. In addition, the fact that the author does not describe physically the protagonist and does not say his name, ensure the reader can relate and identify with him better.
The
story develops in four nights and one morning. On the first night, the
protagonist is walking through the streets of an empty city (because everybody has
gone to countryside), which reflects his loneliness. He lives in solitude: no
one knows him, though he knows everyone’s faces and each house in Saint
Petersburg.
Suddenly,
he meets a girl who is crying. After this meeting, they become friends and
start a relationship based on a pact, which the protagonist will not be able to
keep.
The protagonist,
whose name we do not know, tells the girl, Nasten’ka, he is a dreamer. He says
that he makes beautiful and sweet dreams to escape from his miserable life. For this reason, White Nights is beyond time, always
relatable, indeed everyone daydreams.
“He has suddenly become rich, and it is not for
nothing that the fading sunset sheds its farewell gleams so gaily before him,
and calls forth a swarm of impressions from his warmed heart. Now he hardly
notices the road, on which the tiniest details at other times would strike him.
Now 'the Goddess of Fancy' (if you have read Zhukovsky, dear Nasten’ka) has
already with fantastic hand spun her golden warp and begun weaving upon it
patterns of marvellous magic life—and who knows, maybe, her fantastic hand has
borne him to the seventh crystal heaven far from the excellent granite pavement
on which he was walking his way? Try stopping him now, ask him suddenly where
he is standing now, through what streets he is going—he will, probably remember
nothing, neither where he is going nor where he is standing now, and flushing
with vexation he will certainly tell some lie to save appearances.”
However,
he understands that while he dreams, he
loses the best years of his life.
“And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I
shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again: 'What
have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have
you really lived? Look,' I say to myself, 'how cold it is becoming all over the
world!' And more years will pass and behind them will creep grim isolation.
Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning on a crutch, and behind these
will come unrelieved boredom and despair. The world of fancies will fade,
dreams will wilt and die and fall like autumn leaves from the trees”
Dostoevskij
depicts the dreamer’s interior world, telling
us about his fears, his habits and his regrets. However, after his meeting with
Nasten’ka, the protagonist decides bravely to leave his safe dreams and inhabit
reality. Nevertheless, he loses hope when the girl reveals to the dreamer that
she is in love with someone else. So, he is forced to come back to his dream
world. In spite of everything, however, he is grateful because, thanks to
Nasten’ka, he has been able to feel real emotions and he has lived in the reality
even though only for four nights. Thanks to their meeting, he understands that
the real life may be better than dreams. He will finally say:
“My God,
a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man's life?”
Fëdor Dostoevskij was born in Moscow on 11th November 1821. Dostoevskij‘s father was a doctor and he forced his son to attend military engineering. His mother died because of tuberculosis in 1837, while his father was killed two years later. In 1843, he graduated and, after only a year, he left his military career to dedicate himself to literature. He had a difficult life, he had suffered from epilepsy since he was young.
In 23rd
April 1849, he was arrested because of his participation to a secret society with
subversive aims. Then, he was sentenced to death by shooting, but, when he was
in gallows, the Tsar saved him changing his sentence from death penalty to
penal labour in Siberia for four years. This event influenced his literature,
too. He wrote The Idiot and Crime and Punishment, where he dealt
with death penalty declaiming himself against it. At the end of his four years
in Siberia, he was forced to join the army for two years.
In
1857, he married Marija Isaeva. In 1859, he was discharged because of health
problems. Then he moved to Saint Petersburg.
To overcome
his financial problems, he started to gamble making his condition even worse. This experience influenced his writing The Gambler, where he talked about a man
who is addicted to gambling.
On 28th
January 1881, he died because of emphysema in Saint Petersburg.
He is
considered as one of the greatest Russian writers and thinkers. For this reason,
a crater of Mercury has been named after him.
Angelica, 3scB
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