Setting opposite ideas or words side by side, so that one lights up the other through contrast.
In White Nights
I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that moments like this one, like now, I count so rarely that I cannot help repeating them in reverie.
The sentence sets “real life” against “reverie.” The contrast explains why he returns to a lived moment to repeat it in dream: it has little of the real and turns that little into material for fantasy.
First Night: The encounter, the Dreamer
Why is he not you? Why is he not like you? He is worse than you, though I love him more than you.
Third and Fourth Nights and the Morning: The wait and the outcome, Nastenka
It is impossible, but I love you, Nastenka! That's it!
Third and Fourth Nights and the Morning: The wait and the outcome, the Dreamer
My God! A whole minute of bliss! Can that be too little, even for a whole human life?
Third and Fourth Nights and the Morning: The wait and the outcome, the Dreamer
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