White Nights

Have you lived or not? Look, one says to oneself, look how cold the world is growing

In two minutes you have made me happy for ever.

. . Good-bye, thank you! . . . ”

“Surely . . . surely you don’t mean . . . that we shall never see each other again? . . . Surely this is not to be the end?”

“You see,” said the girl, laughing, “at first you only wanted two words, and now. . . . However, I won’t say anything . . . perhaps we shall meet. . . . ”

You . . . perhaps it was my fancy

Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka! If only you knew how lonely I am now!

“I was thinking about you,” she said after a minute’s silence. “You are so kind that I should be a stone if I did not feel it. Do you know what has occurred to me now? I was comparing you two. Why isn’t he you? Why isn’t he like you? He is not as good as you, though I love him more than you.”

“Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka,” I thought, “how much you have told me in that saying! Such fondness at certain moments makes the heart cold and the soul heavy. Your hand is cold, mine burns
like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka! . . . Oh, how unbearable a happy person is sometimes! But I could not be angry with you!”

one deceives oneself and unconsciously believes that real true passion is stirring one’s soul

And meanwhile the soul longs and craves for something else! And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire, and to rouse up in it again all that was so sweet, that touched his heart, that set his blood boiling, drew tears from his eyes, and so luxuriously deceived him!

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?