White Nights (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1848)

[madali]

White Nights (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1848)

When I started the Indian movie “Saawariya”, it said that it was adapted from “White Nights” by Fyodor Dostoevsky. So I stopped the movie and instead decided to read “White Nights” first, a short story of only 50 pages.

The only Dosteovsky story I had read was “Notes from the Underground” which I loved, so I don’t really understand why I didn’t read more of his. “White Nights” is a fantastic read.

The plot itself is very simple and in today’s world almost cliché. It could fit any movie with Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan. A lonely guy meets a girl by accident one night, he falls in love, the girl is pining for someone else, and so on. The whole thing only lasts five nights. What makes it different than a typical love story is the way Dosteovsky writes. His narrator is a pathetic and lonely man, a dreamer whose world is crammed with unhappiness. Dosteovsky’s story is full of darkness and cynicism, with the brief love being a shining hope in the narrator’s life.

“And one asks oneself where are one's dreams. And one shakes one's head and says how rapidly the years fly by! And again one asks oneself what has one done with one's years. Where have you buried your best days? Have you lived or not? Look, one says to oneself, look how cold the world is growing. Some more years will pass, and after them will come gloomy solitude; then will come old age trembling on its crutch, and after it misery and desolation. Your fantastic world will grow pale, your dreams will fade and die and will fall like yellow leaves from the trees.”

From this story and “Notes from the Underground”, I find Dostoevsky refreshing in its darkness and nihilism. A story that is more than 150 years old, and seems to fit so neatly in today’s world. It is nice to know that no matter how far we come, no matter which region or time we are in, loneliness always follows us.

4/5

[X.]

Gotta love the old Russian coot. If you ever get through "Crime and Punishment" let me know: I'll decorate you or something.

[madali]

You make it sound like it is difficult to read. Is it?

[X.]

It's vast and tedious, but ultimately rewarding.

[X.]

White Nights (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1848)

I just finished reading White Nights. It is a very romantic story, perhaps more romantic for the lonely thinker, because it represents everything he wants from love: a beautiful girl, who is a total stranger, who he cannot possess.

The story is split into five days, and features conversations between our hero and Nastenka, the heroine (I mention her by name because our hero is in love with her name) -- both meet on an embankment, where they discuss matters of love and life, and also where they will eventually separate. Only someone as brave as Dostoevsky could bring prickly reality crashing down on his lovestruck hero...

It's almost as if Richard Linklater read White Nights, and thought to himself, "Would it not be interesting to take the same story and set it in Paris?" He might have done just that with Before Sunrise, arguably the most romantic film, for the lonely thinker.

[madali]

This is why when you watch "Saawariya" (bollywood movie based on it) full of melodrama and dances in the rain, you are like, what the fuck?

[X.]

Reading White Nights, I thought it would be perfect for Bollywood, because the story is so intentionally melodramatic. I want to watch Saawariya and see how the director balances the romanticism with Dostoevskian nihilism.