Rhetorical question

A question asked without expecting an answer, because the answer is already implied, or because what matters is the doubt it exposes.

In White Nights

Or was he created only for this: / to be, even for an instant, / in the neighborhood of your heart?

The question “Or was he created only for this” expects no answer: it leaves the doubt open between complaint and consolation, and it is this doubt the book will explore up to its last sentence.

First Night: The encounter, the epigraph, by Turgenev

what did you do with your years? where did you bury your best time? Did you live or not?

Second Night: The Dreamer and Nastenka's Story, the Dreamer

perhaps all my love has been an illusion of the senses, of the imagination, perhaps it began as mischief, as trifles, because I lived under my grandmother's watch?

Third and Fourth Nights and the Morning: The wait and the outcome, Nastenka

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