White Nights

This short novella perfectly captures the feeling of loneliness, and particularly unrequited love. It's a beautiful narrative from a dreamer's diary that's easier to read than Dostoevsky's other works. The characters are so vivid and human that I wondered, “How was this written in 1848?” They felt like people from today, and the dialogue was spot on.

The main character in this story, a dreamer, as he refers to himself, is so engrossed in his fantasies that he's lost contact with reality, and therefore even the tiniest incidents in real life create a big impression on him. He daydreams to the point of conversing with non-living objects such as windows, streets, and his entire city. Although despite all this, he is very intelligent in many aspects and aware of how self-destructive all of this is, yet he cannot stop it. Until he does so, at least temporarily, for a girl he met recently.

“And now I know more than ever that I have squandered all my best years! I realize that now ... Now, as I sit next to you and talk with you, I feel positively terrified of the future, because in that future loneliness lurks once more, again that musty, pointless existence.”

“God in heaven! A whole moment of bliss! Is that not sufficient even for a man's entire life?”