Clavis Libri
Plans Sign in

White Nights · Second Night

The Dreamer and Nastenka's Story

LoveHappinessDream and FantasyMemory and the PastLoneliness and Isolation

Summary of the night

The Second Night is the longest of the book and is divided into two confessions, one before the other. First the Dreamer tells who he is, in a discourse that he himself calls as though written down: the portrait of the Petersburg dreamer, who lives in reverie in a corner and no longer knows whether he has lived. Then Nastenka tells her story: the blind grandmother who pins her to her dress with a pin, the lodger who lends her books and takes her to the opera, the night she went up to his room with a bundle, the promise to return in a year. The year has passed, he has been in the city for three days and has not appeared. The night ends with a letter already written, which she hands to the Dreamer so that he may deliver it to the other.

Second Night

LoveHappinessDream and FantasyMemory and the PastLoneliness and Isolation

Summary of the night

Nastenka arrives laughing; the Dreamer has been on the embankment for two hours. She says she has spent the day thinking about him and has concluded that she acted the day before like a child, trusting someone she did not know, and that, since there is no one to ask, he himself must tell his story. He is frightened: he has no story, he has lived alone.

Forced to tell his own story, he says he has none and, pushed by her, describes in the third person the Petersburg dreamer: a man who hides in a corner, lives invented loves and battles, and wakes from each dream with an emptiness that soon calls for another dream. When she does not laugh and asks him, with pity, whether he has always lived like this, he drops the pose and confesses that he has lost the best years and that he no longer knows whether he has lived. She replies that she too has spent her life confined and proposes to tell her story in exchange for a brother's advice.

Nastenka tells that, orphaned, she lives with her blind grandmother, who pinned her to her dress with a pin to keep watch over her. A young lodger lends her books, takes the two of them to the opera and then nearly disappears; a year earlier, on the eve of his departure for Moscow, she went up to his room with a bundle, and he swore to return and marry her if he could, without binding her with any word. The year has passed and he has been in the city for three days without seeking her out. The Dreamer, who wants to help her, dictates a letter in her name and discovers that she already had one written, and she asks him to deliver it.

Analysis

так, жил, как у нас говорится, сам по себе, то есть один совершенно, — один, один вполне, — понимаете, что такое один?, thus I have lived, as they say around here, on my own, that is to say, entirely alone, alone, completely alone; do you understand what it means to be alone?

He repeats the word until it weighs, and the final question asks the girl to feel what he cannot describe. She understands in her own way: she thinks he has a grandmother like hers. Her answer shows that she knows another loneliness, that of someone bound to the side of another person, and that the two reach the same place by opposite paths.

Unlock with a subscription

Subscription

The complete analysis of every night of White Nights comes with a subscription, along with the explanation of each quote, the quiz, the PDF guide, and the study workbook.

See the plansAlready subscribed? Sign in

Reading of the night

Analysis

Unlock with a subscription