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    White Nights
    White Nights
    White Nights
    Ebook82 pages1 hour

    White Nights

    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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    The short works of Dostoevsky exist in the very large shadow of his astonishing longer novels, but they too are among literature's most revered works and offer keys to understanding the themes in his longer works. Contained in this volume are the short stories "White Nights," "A Disgraceful Affair," and "The Dream of the Ridiculous Man," three of Dostoevsky's most troubling, moving, and poignant works.

    Alongside A DISGRACEFUL AFFAIR, Harper Perennial will publish the short fiction of Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, Willa Cather, Leo Tolstoy, and Oscar Wilde to be packaged in a beautifully designed, boldly colorful boxset in the aim to attract contemporary fans of short fiction to these revered masters of the form. Also, in each of these selections will appear a story from one of the new collections being published in 2009. A story from Barb Johnson's forthcoming collection will be printed at the back of this volume.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateApr 28, 2009
    ISBN9780061918155
    Author

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in 1821. Between 1838 and 1843 he studied at the St Petersburg Engineering Academy. His first work of fiction was the epistolary novel Poor Folk (1846), which met with a generally favourable response. However, his immediately subsequent works were less enthusiastically received. In 1849 Dostoevsky was arrested as a member of the socialist Petrashevsky circle, and subjected to a mock execution. He suffered four years in a Siberian penal settlement and then another four years of enforced military service. He returned to writing in the late 1850s and travelled abroad in the 1860s. It was during the last twenty years of his life that he wrote the iconic works, such as Notes from the Underground (1864), Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880), which were to form the basis of his formidable reputation. He died in 1881.

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    Reviews for White Nights

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    387 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A beautiful story about unrequited love.
    • 4/5
      Two short writings from Dostoyevsky. Melancholy, passion, pain and black humour with the eyes of a genius.
    • 4/5
      My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?

      White Nights is a sense-stirring cocktail of human failure. Leave it to Uncle Fyodor to delver such a wrenching tale of humiliation, albiet one splashed with a chance love and a lather of anguished poetry Insomniacs gather like moths. Chivalry and hormones lead to an effusion of dialogue. Maybe one should erect a filter when cold-calling pedestrians ambling along the Neva. Slinking slyly, the mad couple burst into tears and nearly wet themselves with serial about-faces. You just have to dig that.
    • 3/5
      A man and young woman meet when he helps her get away form a man following her. They begin meeting in the evenings, walking, and talking. He is shy and very alone, she lives with her elderly grandmother and is on a tight leash.They walk and talk, and she then confesses she is waiting for a former lodger to return to marry her--meanwhile, the narrator is in love. When it appears the man is not returning, these two agree to marry.It goes exactly where you think. Very predictable and so melodramatic!
    • 4/5
      This volume contains the following:
      'White Nights'
      'Notes from the Underground'
      'A Faint Heart'
      'A Christmas Tree and a Wedding'
      'Polzunkov'
      'A Little Hero'
      'Mr. Prohartchin'

      I found Notes from the Underground the most difficult and least interesting of these stories. White Nights, A Faint Heart, and A Little Hero were charming and the others were good. Overall I would recommend this as an introduction to Dostoyevsky.
    • 4/5
      This was the first book by Dostoyevsky I've read, and it was far less dreary than I had expected. The content isn't all sunshine and roses but it's a pleasant little read.
    • 4/5
      In this Danish translation the volume includes White Nights, The Landlady and A Little Hero - two novellas and one short story. The two novellas are in a way portraits of Dostoevskys typical “hero”. Young, poor, lonely, hypersensitive men, with deep longings and itching with restlessness.Both in White Nights and The Landlady the young men are falling in love with women who are already engaged (White Night) or married (The Landlady). White Night is poetic and beautifully written, The Landlady mystical and deeply psychological.Reading Dostoevsky work is a challenge but also rewarding. Not easy litterature, but I’m amazed at how strong an impression his stories have on me is.
    • 5/5
      Only the second work I've read by Dostoyevky(the first was "A Little Hero"), and both were interesting portrayals of individuals trough simple social settings. This one created more of a resonance with me, particularly in the description of the "dreamer".
      What surprised me the most is the way Dostoyevsky pushes the feelings of romance to almost unbearable(and unrealistic) plateaus, and yet retains it firmly subsided and believable.

      A great read.
    • 4/5
      "My night ended with the morning"The narrator is a lonely, incorregible dreamer who meets and falls in love with a young woman during one of his nightly walks in St Petersburg. The problem is that she is betrothed to another man, who left for Moscow a year earlier and who is imminently due to return with a marriage proposal. Over the course of a few nights, the protagonists bare their soul to each other. This chance encounter will change the life of both of them. Like Goethe’s Werther, Dostoyevsky’s narrator is an inherently tragic figure who would probably find little sympathy in the cynical world we live in. The same can be said for the prose, which might seem overindulgent and overtly dramatic. But what an enjoyable read for nostalgic romantics!
    • 5/5
      Early Dostoevsky. Main character is very recognizable; the ending is surprisingly comical (of course it is also very sad). Might work as a Hollywood movie.
    • 3/5
      A portuguese translation of Bélie Nótchi, this short story is really a much too romantic literary piece of work for my taste, but being very short one can finish it quite quickly...

    Book preview

    White Nights - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    White Nights

    Short Story

    Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    Contents

    Begin Reading

    About the Author

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    WHITE NIGHTS

    A Sentimental Love Story (From the Memoirs of a Dreamer)

    TRANSLATED BY DAVID MAGARSHACK

    And was it his destined part

    Only one moment in his life

    To be close to your heart?…

    —Ivan Turgenev

    First Night

    It was a lovely night, one of those nights, dear reader, which can only happen when you are young. The sky was so bright and starry that when you looked at it the first question that came into your mind was whether it was really possible that all sorts of bad-tempered and unstable people could live under such a glorious sky. It is a question, dear reader, that would occur only to a young man, but may the good Lord put it into your head as often as possible!…The mention of bad-tempered and unstable people reminds me that during the whole of this day my behaviour has been above reproach. When I woke up in the morning I felt strangely depressed, a feeling I could not shake off for the better part of the day. All of a sudden it seemed to me as though I, the solitary one, had been forsaken by the whole world, and that the whole world would have nothing to do with me. You may ask who the whole world is. For, I am afraid, I have not been lucky in acquiring a single acquaintance in Petersburg during the eight years I have been living there. But what do I want acquaintances for? I know the whole of Petersburg without them, and that, indeed, was the reason why it seemed to me that the whole world had forsaken me when the whole town suddenly arose and left for the country. I was terrified to be left alone, and for three days I wandered about the town plunged into gloom and absolutely at a loss to understand what was the matter with me. Neither on Nevsky Avenue, nor in the park, nor on the embankment did I meet the old familiar faces that I used to meet in the same place and at the same time all through the year. It is true I am a complete stranger to these people, but they are not strangers to me. I know them rather intimately, in fact; I have made a very thorough study of their faces; I am happy when they are happy, and I am sad when they are overcast with care. Why, there is an old gentleman I see every day on the Fontanka Embankment with whom I have practically struck up a friendship. He looks so thoughtful and dignified, and he always mutters under his breath, waving his left hand and holding a big knotty walking-stick with a gold top in his right. I have, I believe, attracted his attention, and I should not be surprised if he took a most friendly interest in me. In fact, I am sure that if he did not meet me at a certain hour on the Fontanka Embankment he would be terribly upset. That is why we sometimes almost bow to one another, especially when we are both in a good humour. Recently we had not seen each other for two days, and on the third day, when we met, we were just about to raise our hats in salute, but fortunately we recollected ourselves in time and, dropping our hands, passed one another in complete understanding and amity. The houses, too, are familiar to me. When I walk along the street, each of them seems to run before me, gazing at me out of all its windows, and practically saying to me, Good morning, sir! How are you? I’m very well, thank you. They’re going to add another storey to me in May; or, How do you do, sir? I’m going to be repaired tomorrow; or, Dear me, I nearly got burnt down, and, goodness, how I was scared! and so on and so on. Some of them are great favourites of mine, while others are my good friends. One of them is thinking of undergoing a cure with an architect this summer. I shall certainly make a point of coming to see it every day to make sure that its cure does not prove fatal (which God forbid!). And I shall never forget the incident with a pretty little house of a pale pink hue. It was such a dear little house; it always welcomed me with such a friendly smile, and it looked on its clumsy neighbours with such an air of condescension, that my heart leapt with joy every time I passed it. But when I happened to walk along the street only a week ago and looked up at my friend, I was welcomed with a most plaintive cry, They are going to paint me yellow! Fiends! Savages! They spared nothing, neither cornices, nor columns, and my poor friend turned as yellow as a canary. I nearly had an attack of jaundice myself, and even to this day I have not been able to screw up my courage to go and see my mutilated friend, painted in the national colour of the Celestial Empire!

    So now you see, dear reader, how it is that I know the whole of Petersburg.

    I have already said that until I realised what was the trouble with me, I had been very worried and upset for three whole days. In the street I felt out of sorts (this one had gone, that one had gone, and where on earth had the other one got to?), and at home I was not my old self, either. For two evenings I had been racking my brains trying hard to discover what was wrong with my room. What was it made me so peevish when I stayed there? And, greatly perplexed, I began examining my grimy green walls and the ceiling covered with cobwebs which Matryona was such a genius at cultivating. I went over my furniture and looked at each chair in turn, wondering whether the trouble lay there (for it upsets me to see even one chair not in its usual place); I looked at the window—but all to no purpose: it did not make me feel a bit better! I even went so far as to call in Matryona and rebuke her in a fatherly sort of way about the cobwebs and her untidiness in general. But she just gave me a surprised look and stalked out of the room without saying a word, so that the cobwebs still remain cheerfully in their old places. It was only this morning that at last I discovered the real cause of my unhappiness. Oh, so they are all running away

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