The Liminal Encounter: Expression of Loneliness Through Characters of White Nights
- —Sudarshan Poudel
White Nights, published in 1848 by Fyodor Dostoevsky, is an early short story published when the author was only 27. The story is told from the point of view of an unnamed protagonist who calls himself The Dreamer. It revolves around the four nights he spends with a 17-year-old girl named Nastenka. The events unfold during the White Nights—a phenomenon in which the night sky remains bright during the summer months, in St. Petersburg. The young, lonely protagonist, disillusioned by the changing landscape of the city, wanders through the streets at night.
One night, he finds Nastenka crying near an embankment and strikes up a conversation with her after intervening in a moment of distress when a man harasses her. The two quickly discover a mutual understanding and bond over their shared sense of loneliness. The protagonist reveals his timidity, which Nastenka encourages rather than mocks. Thus begins a brief but intimate journey over four nights: they meet, talk, open up, fall in love in their own ways, and eventually part. In this paper, I will examine both characters and reflect on my own reading experience.
The Dreamer
The subtitle of the book is “A sentimental love story from the memoirs of a dreamer.” And indeed, the dreamer is quite sentimental. He is 26 years old—presumably the same age Dostoevsky was when he wrote the story. It is through his perspective that we experience the narrative. He is an educated man who harbors disdain for the real world, as he believes it diminishes the soul’s spirit. Lonely and craving companionship, he lives alone with help from a maid, yet he cannot bear to remain indoors for long.
He often strolls the streets, observing the ever-changing landscape of St. Petersburg, saddened by how the old gives way to the new. It is summer, and many residents are leaving the city for the countryside. Houses are being renovated, and he detests the changes. Although well-read, his intelligence feels like a burden; he is unable to indulge in the superficial comforts of life. In many ways, he resembles other Dostoevskian characters such as the Underground Man and Raskolnikov—highly intelligent, socially anxious, and deeply introspective.
The Dreamer’s loneliness should not simply evoke pity, though that is precisely what he attempts to elicit from others. By invoking pity, he hopes to receive the affection he so desperately craves but cannot attain. This becomes clear during the second night, when Nastenka asks him to share his story. He speaks of himself in the third person, painting a picture so pitiful that one cannot help but feel affectionate sympathy. All the while, he calls himself a ‘Hero.’ This is how his ego manifests.
He frequently quotes authors and seems to live more in his imagination than in the real world. At 26, an age when one might be expected to settle down or find a sense of direction, he remains lost. While he expresses a desire to find love and meaning, his actions are often self-sabotaging. He talks to buildings, observes people from a distance instead of engaging with them, and criticizes the banality of ordinary life—yet he doesn’t even possess that ordinariness himself.
He believes that “a minute of bliss is enough to sustain for the whole of a man’s life,” yet his behavior suggests he is incapable of sustaining such bliss for more than a fleeting instant.
Nastenka
Nastenka, a variation of Anastasia meaning rebirth/resurrection, is a naive character, but her naivety must be understood in the context of her age and circumstances—unlike the protagonist, she is still a child in many ways. Despite being nearly ten years younger, she often comes across as more sensible than the Dreamer. This is evident on the very first night when she directly tells him not to fall in love with her.
She is waiting at the embankment for her lover, a former tenant to whom she had given herself a year prior, in hopes of escaping the stifling control of her blind grandmother. At just 15 years old, Nastenka had spent her life under her grandmother’s strict guardianship. When the tenant entered their lives, she found a glimmer of hope for freedom. One year later, she still clings to that hope.
Her emotional shifts during the four nights are understandable: they stem from a deep desire for liberation. She may be naive, but that naivety is both natural and forgivable. She grew up reading chivalric romances by Sir Walter Scott and the poetic works of Alexander Pushkin, dreaming of a gallant rescue. Whether it is the tenant or the Dreamer, she waits for someone to save her.
In the end, her decision to leave with the tenant is not surprising. It is the most realistic moment in the entire story. Despite the emotional connection with the Dreamer, she chooses a more tangible path, however uncertain, over a dream.
Reading Experience
This book, although popular, is in many ways a preliminary representation of what Dostoevsky eventually became. There are many traits here that would go on to be polished later on. Upon reading the long, rambling monologue on the second night, my friend Sambandh wondered,’ If Dostoevsky wrote this story while he was young, and he was getting paid per word by the publishers?’
The story is presented as a story of solitude and unrequited love. It’s not exactly so. They are both lonely characters who find some solace in each other’s company. But this company serves a different purpose for each of them. Nastenka is content with his company, as it’s nighttime and she is alone, waiting for her lover to come. She sees it as nothing beyond a platonic love where her love emanates not from desire but from shared loneliness or aroused sympathy. Meanwhile, this is the first time the dreamer has spoken this intimately with a girl, and he seems to be giving himself wholeheartedly despite her forbearance.
This is quite evident from one scene in the second night when, upon meeting again, Nastenka casually holds his hands, and the protagonist proceeds to grab them tightly. In this moment, he needs her more than she does. He is also the one who initiated this meeting yesterday, offering to be at the embankment and constantly doing things unasked. The tightly holding hands to show desperation is repeated in the later part as well when it’s Nastenka who holds his hands upon believing that her lover is not coming back.
The predicament of the two characters can also be reflected through their orientation towards the present and the future. Nastenka is hopeful for the future, but never slips away from the present. At the end of their visit, after hearing her love story on the second night, our protagonist looks at the sky and says that it might rain tomorrow. Nastenka, meanwhile, sees how clear the sky is now and says she doesn’t want to worry about the sky that isn’t cloudy yet.
Similarly, during the fourth night, when the two have decided upon being together, our dreamer immediately begins to ponder the future. He sees his predicament reflected in the blue sky and bright moon, and says tomorrow will be a wonderful day. But Nastenka’s eyes are fixed on the ground. She is not looking at the sky but the street, and it is there she sees her lover return for her.
The end recalled to me a Shayari of Dushyant Kumar that goes;
आज सडकोँ पर लिखे हैँ सैकडोँ नारे ना देख,
घर अँधेरा देख तु, आकाश के तारे ना देख
(Ignore millions slogans written in the streets today,
Look at your dark house, not the stars in sky’s display)
Is this a sad story? Yes! But is it an unrequited love story? No! Nastenka, in the letter she sends him the next day, apologizes because she feels certain guilt in evoking hope in the heart of the dreamer. She should not be blamed for raising hope and swiftly crashing it. The author decided to play with the readers’ expectations, but if they had stayed together, life would be more real than the dream of the dreamer. It would not have worked out. Those who believe it could are, for me, the same people who believe Rose and Jack would make a happy couple if they had been together at the end of Titanic. My thesis is that the Dreamer is incapable of holding onto reality. He is someone who looks at the sky, and Nastenka looks at the street. They can admire each other from afar, but can never be together. These “lovers” can only meet at a liminal space (for example, White Nights or the Titanic ship), but they will eventually have to separate. And that’s best for both of them.
The Popularity of White Nights
- —Yunesh Timilsina
“A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man’s life?”
BookTok, Bookstagram, and BookTube are the three book communities I’m familiar with. These platforms play a crucial role in popularising books. Many of these books were labeled as “TikTok Sensations,” to the extent that publishers would even include “TikTok Sensation” on their covers. There was a preconceived notion about the kinds of books that were popular across this social media platform. Such books were mostly contemporary. In 2024, “White Nights” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky resurfaced on the internet, and a large number of people picked it. They read it, discussed it, and shared it across various social media platforms.
I worked at a bookshop for about 15 months, and during my time there and even after that, I had never seen any classical books such as “White Nights” being a sensation across social media. It would still sell, but the quantity was less. It became so popular not only here in Nepal but across the globe. It even became the fourth-best-selling translated book in the UK in 2024, with approximately 50,000 copies sold. The credit for such popularity goes to the book community on social media. But why exactly did it resurface on the social media platform after so long? And why exactly in 2024? Many articles on this topic are available online, through which I have drawn my conclusions.
On the broader level, White Nights” seems simple. The unnamed narrator, a “dreamer,” lives an invisible life on the edges of St. Petersburg. During the ‘White Nights,” he meets Nastenka, a young woman who shares her problems with him. Over the course of four nights, they forge an intense bond. He falls in love with her. But Nastenka’s heart belongs to another, and once reunited with her lost lover, she leaves the narrator to return to his solitude. His brief connection slips away like his own dreams upon waking.
The narrator, at his core, is starving for the connection. He has been loner and dreaming for so long that he now yearns for the real connection. His desperation for connection is visible when he falls in love with Nastenka within a few nights. The kindness shown by her, the conversation shared, and even the touch feels like a salvation to him. The narrator does not truly know Nastenka; he knows only what she symbolizes to him — hope, love, and life itself. He fell in love with not Nastenka but with the idea of her. He projects all his ideals — gentleness, warmth, rescue from loneliness — onto her. Realistically, he barely knows her deeper complexities. But in his mind, she becomes his savior. She becomes the embodiment of all his fantasies.I believe the narrator is not the tragic hero, nor is the White Nights a sad love story. Instead, it is a story of a person who romanticized the idea of a dream and immersed himself in literature to embody loneliness and yearning. He is an idealist who watches life unfold instead of actively participating in it. His pains are inflicted by himself. His passivity is as much a cause of his suffering as his circumstances are. He does not act decisively, does not pursue relationships, does not risk the unpredictability of real life. Instead, he hides in dreams. He might be a tragic figure, but also a warning: if you do not dare to live, you will be left only with dreams that are the shadows of life.
In January 2024, Jack Edwards, a booktuber with over a million subscribers on YouTube, posted on TikTok about the book. Reviewing the book, he says, “In it, two lonely people meet and form a connection over a series of conversations.” It was after that the book went viral across social media. However, this is not the sole reason for its virality.
We share what we love, what we feel, and what resonates with us. Besides, sharing something from your side also adds to your social capital. It might demonstrate intellectual engagement, allowing you to join the book community and spark a conversation with others, ultimately building a connection. People were sharing it, talking about it, means that people were relating to it and connecting to it. Some have related to the narrator so much so that in no way were they in the bubble of “main character syndrome.” Some claimed the narrator to be the epitome of love, while others might have shared the book and read it out of fear of being left out.
Across social media, you can find multiple posts on the loneliness epidemic. It refers to the concerning rise in loneliness and social isolation affecting people. While changes in societal structure are one reason, another, equally significant reason is the impact of technology, particularly social media itself, which I am ranting about. Despite — or perhaps because of — hyperconnectivity, many people are feeling more isolated than ever. Apps, endless scrolling, curated identities: they promise connection but often deliver only surface-level interaction.
In such an environment, Dostoevsky’s portrayal of aching loneliness, of dreaming of connection yet being unable to grasp it truly, feels relevant. The narrator quickly falls in love. In the modern context, we can experience or witness similar phenomena. We experience deep connections with others through late-night messages, lengthy online chats, and one-sided relationships (parasocia), with strangers. Such a connection feels like bread after days of hunger.
Another factor we shouldn’t overlook while discussing its popularity across social media is the “romanticization of pain,” which people often engage in. Many on social media find beauty in sadness and an aesthetic in vulnerability. White Nights fits perfectly into this cultural moment: for many, it is a story that does not belittle suffering but represents it. Many might have been drawn to the book because of its representation as a tragic story. Many might have wanted to relate it to their own life, to find the similarities between their own love stories with the texts that were written nearly two centuries ago.
The very melancholic vibe popular on social media aligns with the melancholic vibe of the white nights. So, sharing stories and books about longing and isolation might also provide a sense of inclusivity. It’s an old classic that feels new to young readers who are tired of modern romance novels and dating app culture. Meeting someone organically, like in White Nights, feels increasingly rare and romantic to today’s readers. Additionally, many readers picked it up expecting a love story but discovered a much deeper, lonelier narrative — yet still found it moving.
The story’s fame can also be credited to the emerging reading community and the growing awareness among new readers about classical works, which, when discussing, Fyodor Dostoevsky, is never overlooked. In such a case, White Nights is a manageable introduction to Russian literature, which can otherwise feel intimidating.
We can argue that the new readers are not just blindly opting for the romantic plot, but for the cathartic feeling the story offers. They might want to understand the loneliness and find a connection through the shared experience by sharing the same material. It baffles me that, if such is the case, the narrator’s solitude becomes a communal act, a shared catharsis, which, I feel, is ironic.
Overall. People are also seeking stories that validate their isolated feelings, and Dostoevsky’s narrator feels like someone from today’s society, not 1848.
Memory: A Gateway to Freedom or Loneliness in White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- —Anju Tamang
“And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”
Charles Bukowski
“TRVTH: Freedom Or Loneliness?” 15 Nov, 2021,
https://blog.trvth.org/2021/11/freedom-or-loneliness.html?utm_source.
Geographically, Nepal doesn’t experience white nights, thus the very concept of describing nights in white color sounds quite absurd. Similarly, in Nepalese literature, nights have always been dark, most of the times “चुक पोखिएको जस्तो रात”: symbolizing mystery, fear, pain, and other negative emotions. So, we think white nights have only symbolic meaning. However, White Nights is literally set during four white nights and a morning. It is a story by Fyodor Dostoevsky, originally published in 1848 with a setting in St. Petersburg. During summer, the sun doesn’t completely set in the Arctic Circle on certain dates, therefore, the places within this region experience midnight sun phenomenon, which is characterized as having prolonged sunlight even in the night. Therefore, the sky casts light even at night, and the night is actually white. Symbolically, the author has chosen this time period to denote the cheerful everyday routine of an unnamed narrator in the story with limited memories with human beings, and profound memories with non-human.
Addressing directly to the readers under the chapter First Night, the narrator clarifies that he doesn’t have any acquaintance in Petersburg though he has been living there for almost eight years. However, he remembers every tiny detail about the houses, and has imaginary conversations with them, along with other infrastructures in the city. This gives him happiness, the conversation. Particularly, the day the narrator is describing makes him feel ‘dejected’ because most of the people are going to summer villa and none asks him to go. This saddens him. He wishes to be invited and be happy, but he has only loneliness. When he gets an opportunity to talk with Nastenka, he is very happy, “It’s like a dream, and I never in my sleep think that I should ever talk with any woman” (Dostoevsky, 11). Therefore, without hesitation, he promises to cherish this memory of meeting her on that night. He is very thankful to live such an experience which he has always been dreaming, “…and I shall be happy remembering today. This place is dear to me already” (13). This memory provides him a sense of freedom, he is confident that he will be happy throughout his life with this memory.
Despite a warning by Nastenka from the first night not to fall in love with her, the narrator falls in love with her on the second, and third night, leading to confession on the fourth night. Nastenka is another dreamer just like him, who is waiting for her lover. The meeting with him makes Nastenka nearer to her dream as she believes that he will help her. However, when she thinks that she has been betrayed by her lover on the fourth night, she is sure to be in love with the narrator, which is dismissed after the arrival of her lover later in the night.
In the next morning, he receives a letter from Nastenka, where she asks for forgiveness and information about her wedding to her lover. Since that day, the narrator has forgotten everything and lives with her memories only. He is reading the letters and memorizing only the nights when he met her. He recalls them for fifteen years: one hand he curses Nastenka for giving such a
memory which haunts his whole life making him miserable, on the other, he sounds happy for getting at least such pleasant meeting and memory which he has always dreamed for.
The Dreamer’s memory as the site of political resistance and freedom
White Nights is one of the earlier publications of Fyodor Dostoevsky which was published when he was 27 years old in 1848. His first novel Poor Folk was published in 1846, a vivid description of the poor working class during the Imperial reign of 1721-1917. This regime was founded by Peter I, the Great after expanding around two centuries of Tsardom, an autocratic rule. Imperial reign was beneficial only for the upper classes, where the majority of the population of peasants and working class had to suffer in poverty and misery.
Dostoevsky’s Poor Folk sympathizes with the lower working class of major cities like Petersburg and Moscow. This led him to be interested in socialism through French intellectuals, a radical school of thought than the traditional Russian Imperialism. Just like Dostoevsky, the narrator in the novel also displays a distinct level of awareness in the very beginning of the text, “…one could not help asking oneself whether ill-humoured and capricious people could live under such a sky. That is a youthful question too, dear reader, very youthful, but may the Lord put it more frequently into your heart!… Speaking of capricious and ill-humoured people, I cannot help recalling my moral condition all that day” (6). Therefore, there is no doubt that the narrator represents an intellect different from Imperial. He is a d/Dreamer, who doesn’t want to change as per the changes done by Imperialism at that time. At that time, St. Petersburg was transforming into a major city, especially after time and again relocation of capital there. This led to major changes in infrastructural development in the city too, which the narrator doesn’t like. He visits the city and observes the houses there, “The villains! The barbarians! They had spared nothing, neither columns, nor cornices, and my poor little friend was as yellow as a canary. It almost made me bilious. And to this day I have not had the courage to visit my poor disfigured friend, painted the colour of the Celestial Empire” (7). Even the name of the new color that neither the house nor the narrator likes is related to the Imperial reign. The narrator doesn’t want to visit the city with new coloured houses because he wants to hold onto the memory of the past images, giving him pleasure. So, the narrator is susceptible to change and having new memories. Like Deray MCkesson writes, “Memory, however, is a choice. History is our re membering, our literal rejoining of our memories, influenced by our biases, desires, and goals”. So, the narrator in the story is choosing to hold onto the memory of the old infrastructures of the city, an authorial display of displeasure against the state.
The Dreamer in the novel represents the youths who don’t want the conservative social norms of Imperial Russia rather they would live in their memory time and again. Like Patrycja Dolowy claims, “Remembering through the body is a process of reclaiming freedom. Its source lies in the internal strength hidden somewhere in the body, even if it is imprisoned”, the narrator’s memory of the encounter and the time he spent with Nastenka is freedom that he wants to hold on. The author uses it to display the resistance by the people to live in the reality of the cruel Imperial regime.
White Nights, dreaming to fill the void, and disillusionment with reality
- —Palisha Maharjan
Detachment, isolation, and loneliness— all comrades standing on the same side of the coin; the universal solution for it all (or what we’ve been conditioned to think, at least) love, as I read this book, these were the main topics that were going round and round in my head.
Many people on the internet seem to think this book is a love story. While the beauty of literature is that it can mean what you want it to mean, I strongly believe that this is not a love story. Of course, love is at its heart, more so a lack of love, but this story is more about detachment, isolation, and loneliness to me. The disillusionment you feel with life living in such conditions and how you cope with it.
‘I was walking and singing, because when I am happy I am sure to hum something to myself, like every other happy man who has neither friends nor good acquaintances and who in a joyful moment has nobody with whom he can share his joy.’
This is what goes through the narrator’s head just before he meets Nastenka, the woman he falls in ‘love’ with.
‘All I dream of everyday is that at long last I will finally meet someone. Oh, if only you knew how many times I’ve fallen in love like that!….’
‘But how, with whom?….’
‘Why with nobody. With an ideal, with the one I see in my dreams. I create entire love stories in my dreams.’
This is what the narrator says on the first night he meets Nastenka.
From these lines, I knew the narrator was going to develop deep emotions for Nastenka, not because everyone on the internet who read this at the time was calling it a love story, but I could tell that from the way the narrator was opening up to Nastenka; he was already projecting his love on to her, this ideal he had in his head.
From the first sentence I quoted, it becomes clear that the narrator is incredibly lonely; he sings to himself in happiness because he has no one to tell it to. To people, being listened to and talking is an incredibly important part of sustenance of life, or that is what I believe. I once went 2 weeks without talking to anyone except for saying ‘yes, no, and okay’, safe to say those 2 weeks weren’t particularly bright times. It’s like this: we humans love to talk, and we feel even more validated when we know we are being listened to, and when someone pays all their undivided attention to us, we feel a sense of belonging. Now, imagine a man who sings to himself in happiness because he has no one to talk to, meets a woman who pays attention to him as he pours his heart out, how could he possibly not develop a deep attachment to her? Especially when that man dreams of this happening every single day? But, is this love?
The narrator has lived alone, absolutely alone, with no stories to tell. And so he encounters a woman who gives his life a story; a meaning, and thus, feels bliss brought on by human connection for the first time in his life (or I assume, since otherwise it is not mentioned). You could say this was love, or just the narrator in his first ever genuine encounter, mistaking someone freeing him from his loneliness as love, or just taking Nastneka for an angel that has come to relieve him from his isolation with the gift of love. Maybe it’s just that the narrator has dreamed about falling in love all his life, he lives in those dreams, and he meets someone that gives him a whiff of his dream coming true he projects all his ideals onto her, and falls in love with an image he’s built of her in his head.
Of course, the book did not have a happy ending for its ‘love story’ because I don’t believe that was the intention. From the beginning, especially from the line, ‘But how have you lived if there is no story?….’ you can sense that Nastenka is starting to pity the narrator. This pity gradually develops into a kind of love which I wholeheartedly think is platonic, then it is revealed that Nastenka also had someone she romantically loved. In the end, when the lover from the past comes for Nastenka, she leaves our narrator for him because with Nastenka and the narrator, her pity was stronger than her love for him. You can’t give your heart to someone whom you are too busy pitying, especially when that love is more sisterly compassion than anything.
Another clear pointer why this relation would never have worked out was this indication of how the narrator was projecting his ideals onto Nastneka.
‘I see God himself has sent you, my good angel’
His loneliness blinded him when he met someone who listened, he wanted her to be everything he dreamed about, comparing her to an ideal he built up in his mind.
In the end, Nastneka leaves the narrator, but he does not blame her; in fact, he treasures their meeting. Maybe in the future, when he feels lonely, he will visit their nights again.
I saw this on the internet that in the entire short story, the narrator says the name Nastenka 136 times, but we don’t even know his name.
He lives in his dreams, detached from the world around him. He does not bother recounting his name because what can his name mean in a life of isolation?
The loneliness explored in this book deeply touched my heart, and I think about this book even now, a year and 18 days after having first read it. I truly love this book, and sure, it is not a love story to me, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn about love from this. Especially, love in relation to idealization, pity, empathy, and above all, loneliness.
‘My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for a whole of man’s life!’
Some people hold onto a moment of happiness and compare every moment in their life they live to it, and feel a sense of bitterness & resentment for the happiness not prolonging, while some people treasure that moment of bliss and remember it to keep moving forward. Our narrator seems to be the latter kind. From this, I derived immense hope, it was as if Dostoevsky was telling me that just because life isn’t good to you now, that doesn’t mean all the moments of happiness you’ve experienced were for naught, and that in itself gives your life meaning. Even if what I hoped to achieve did not come to fruition, it won’t change what I’ve lived or accomplished. While I did say it was mostly about loneliness, the ending left me with a bit of optimism. It felt like there was an end to loneliness; it was not necessarily love, but a change of perspective, of how you would take what you’ve encountered and interpret it.
The narrator’s ‘love’ for Nastenka was fueled by loneliness; a desire for connection it does not mean he did not care for her, actually, because of experiencing a strong human connection like that for presumably the first time, he cared for her even more, and that to him was probably worth the heartbreak. The less you have, the more you treasure it after all. Even if it is not abundant and isn’t the main point, there is still love here, born from misguided illusionment, but still, I believe that love helped the narrator battle the isolation and loneliness going forward. Like I said earlier, this is not a love story, but there is love in it, though it wasn’t purely romantic. To summarize it better, I guess it is a story about disillusionment with life & living in your dreams, and needing human connection to overcome the loneliness and said disillusionment. It tells us how important it is to detach yourself from your dreams to ground yourself in the present, to not only live in your ideals, but live your life. And so, it ends tinged with sadness, but also hope.
