A digestion of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s White Nights
Appetizer
Translated by Ronald Meyer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s White Nights is a short story based in St. Petersburg which narrates the life cycle of a relationship characterized by candid vulnerability.
Dense Plot Condensed.
Meeting over the course of four nights, the story’s narrator and Nastenka instantly bond over synchronized thoughts and feelings. This companionship balms the loneliness both characters normally suffer. (Due to his shy nature, the narrator’s only human contact is his maid and Nastenka only has contact with her strict and (symbolically and actually) blind grandmother– who keeps track of her granddaughter by safety pinning them together every day.)
While their conversations range in focus, a recurring topic is Nastenka’s love-life: A year prior, Nastenka fell in love with a lodger staying at her home. The lodger had to leave but promised he’d return in a year. However, with the date of his promised return having passed, Nastenka believes herself love-scorned. Despite simultaneously developing romantic feelings for Nastenka, the narrator advises Nastenka not to lose trust in the lodger and even helps her write and mail a letter to the lodger.
While the narrator did not plan on telling Nastenka he loves her, his commitment to secrecy fails when the lodger never replies to Nastenka’s letter. Originally, Nastenka rejects the narrator’s feelings but, a moment later, she decides she actually returns the feelings. Afterwards, for a short period of time, the blissful two walk the streets of St. Petersburg. They giggle and make plans and confess and re-confess feelings. And then, when they return to Nastenka’s home, they find the lodger waiting outside.
Existing somewhere between love-triangle-mania and third-wheel-dom, the narrator experiences: “How she shuddered! How she tore herself from my arms and flew to meet him!… I stood and watched them, crushed. But she had scarecly given him her hand, had scarcely thrown herself into his embrace, when she suddenly turned to me again, and was at my side in a flash, like the wind, and before I had a chance to collect myself, she flung both arms around my neck and kissed me firmly, ardently. Then, without saying a word to me, she rushed to him again, took him by the hand and led him away.” (Dostoyevsky 82). The narrator does not begrudge Nastenka her choice. With Nastenka happy with the lodger and the narrator treasuring the brief bliss he had– the two remain friends.
At Face Value
Risk < Reward: The Narrator
The narrator is horribly shy. His only human contact is his maid. He spends his days walking the streets of St. Petersburg alone– recognizing people but never acknowledging them. When the narrator comes across Nastenka crying in the street, the interaction is unique because he does not avoid contact with her. Recognizing Nastenka as a sensitive creature similar to himself, the narrator overcomes nervousness to create a relationship with her. And the reward of doing so was worth the narrator’s risk.
“”My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole man’s life?”
Dostoyevsky 86
Chewy-Ooey-Gooey.
Cry If You Want To: Nastenka
Forcing laughs. Hiding emotions. Snubbing another to save face. –It is easy to favor protective shells over the edgy or potentially-painful. After all, temperature-controlled rooms are safe and comfortable. And yet, Nastenka chooses to tear down walls and expose herself to elements that induce restless-awkward-discombobulated-disturbed-open-powerless.
She cries in the streets when sad. Blatantly confesses her feelings. Trusts promises. Love easily. Never lies. Says what she means. Does what she says. Owns what she does. And wonders: “– Why not say frankly and immediately what’s in your heart, if you know that you’re not speaking idly? As it is, everyone looks more severe than they actually are, as though they’re all afraid their feelings will be hurt if they reveal them too soon…” (Dostoyevsky 65). Nastenka is the epitome of brazen, sensitive, and virtuous. She is the only character in White Nights given a name and, thus, a concrete identity. Her identity: the ideal woman.
And the story’s mechanisms revolve around this essence. Told from a male perspective– the only point of view a girl can exist from in mid-19th century Russian society– White Nights is a story about Nastenka. Where is Nastenka? What is Nastenka feeling? How can I make Nastenka understand me? Is Nastenka my future?— the many-years-her-senior, self-declared-“dreamer” narrator loves Nastenka because he idealizes her (and her youth). Defined by the pushing force of her grandmother, Nastenka has no freedom to explore the world. She is ignorant-naive-oblivious, but, to the narrator, Nastenka encapsulates humility, chastity, gratitude, temperance, patience, and diligence (all Christian, holy virtues) and is incapable of judging him (as has happened to him in the past).
If Nastenka had not already promised to revolve-around, spin-with, and pirouette-for the lodger, she would be a gear perfectly fitting into the narrator’s rountine of life. However, because Nastenka “loved” the lodger first, her and the narrator cannot have a future together.
Nastenka is a 17 year-old girl who spends her days saftey-pinned to her blind grandmother’s side. She has little freedom, knowledge, or agency. She is but a little girl– AKA the ideal woman. One interpretation of White Nights is it being a story about the narrator’s unrequitted love. However, another digestion frames the narrative to be about a girl who falls in love with the first (and, briefly, the second) man she meets. The story is an ode to the strength found in vulnerability. However, it should be noted that, if read through a contemporary lens, Nastenka’s gospelization of this spirit should not be internalized without reservations.
eat my words. 
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