The Theme in the Work
Solitude, in the book, is the state from which everything departs and to which everything returns. The Dreamer has lived for eight years in St. Petersburg without an acquaintance, and the book leaves him, on the last page, in the same room (The spiderweb and the room), with the same maid, imagining himself the same fifteen years from now. Between one end and the other there are four nights in which he is not alone, and what the book shows in them is that companionship does not undo solitude on its own: on the third night, right after Nastenka promises that they will be together forever, he writes that she does not know in what solitude he is now. Solitude is the condition; daydreaming, which the book treats separately, is the way he inhabits it (see Dream and fantasy).
The solitude of the book is not one alone either. The Dreamer's is that of someone who has no one; Nastenka's is that of someone attached to someone else, a blind grandmother who pins her to her dress with a pin (The pin). The two arrive at the same place, the embankment and the daydream, by opposite paths, and that is why they recognize each other.
On the First Night, he perceives his solitude only when the city empties toward the country houses and the faces he knew by sight disappear. It takes him three days to understand the cause of his anguish:
Мне страшно стало оставаться одному, и целых три дня я бродил по городу в глубокой тоске, решительно не понимая, что со мной делается., I became frightened of staying alone, and for three whole days I wandered the city in deep anguish, quite unable to understand what was happening to me.
At the very start, he explains that he hums in the street because whoever is happy and has no friends with whom to share the joy hums alone. The young woman he meets on the embankment also has no one to ask for advice, and says so when she confides in him.
On the Second Night, when she asks for his story, he answers with the word repeated until it weighs:
так, жил, как у нас говорится, сам по себе, то есть один совершенно, — один, один вполне, — понимаете, что такое один?, thus I lived, as one says here, by myself, that is, completely alone, alone, utterly alone; do you understand what it is to be alone?
And he describes the dreamer as a creature that shuts itself into a corner of the city to escape even the light of day:
Селится он большею частию где-нибудь в неприступном углу, как будто таится в нем даже от дневного света, и уж если заберется к себе, то так и прирастет к своему углу, как улитка, He usually settles in some inaccessible corner, as if he hid even from daylight, and once he has got himself home, he clings to his corner like a snail.
In Nastenka's story, Second Night, Nastenka describes the other solitude, that of someone who cannot step away even a pace:
взяла булавку и пришпилила мое платье к своему, да тут и сказала, что так мы будем всю жизнь сидеть, если, разумеется, я не сделаюсь лучше, she took a pin and fastened my dress to hers, and right then said that this is how we would sit our whole lives, unless, of course, I became better.
On the Third Night, at the moment she promises him companionship forever, he writes, without telling her, what he feels:
О! Настенька, Настенька! Если б ты знала, в каком я теперь одиночестве!, Oh, Nastenka, Nastenka! If you only knew what solitude I am in now!
On the Morning, after the letter, he sees the future in his own room:
я увидел себя таким, как я теперь, ровно через пятнадцать лет, постаревшим, в той же комнате, так же одиноким, с той же Матреной, I saw myself as I am now, exactly fifteen years from now, aged, in the same room, as lonely as I am now, with the same Matryona.
And he calls her, as he blesses her, another heart, lonely and grateful:
да будешь ты благословенна за минуту блаженства и счастия, которое ты дала другому, одинокому, благодарному сердцу!, may you be blessed for the minute of bliss and happiness you gave to another heart, a lonely, grateful one!
The Dreamer's solitude comes before Nastenka and after her, and the four nights do not interrupt it: they change what it means. On the First Night it was an emptiness he could not name; on the Third Night it is solitude in the presence of someone, the worst form, that of one who has a person beside him and no place in that person's life; on the Morning it is a destiny seen from outside, fifteen years ahead. The book offers no cure for it, it offers a minute's respite, and leaves it to the Dreamer to decide whether the respite is enough.
Who Embodies It
The Dreamer is the solitude of someone who knows the whole city and no one in it. On the Second Night, after dropping the pose, he says he has lost the best years and that the future is the same solitude:
что же ты сделал с своими годами? куда ты схоронил свое лучшее время? Ты жил или нет?, what have you done with your years? Where did you bury your best time? Did you live or not?
Nastenka is imprisoned solitude. On the Second Night, responding to his speech, she says that if he always lives like this, she too will live her whole life beside her grandmother, and proposes that they stay together whatever happens.
Matryona is solitude unaware of itself: the Dreamer's only daily companion, whom the book places beside him in the fifteen-year picture.
Where It Appears
- First Night: The Dreamer spends three days in anguish without understanding why and discovers that the city has left for the country houses without anyone inviting him.
- Second Night: The Dreamer tells Nastenka that he has lived completely alone and describes the dreamer as a snail clinging to its corner.
- Second Night, Nastenka's story: Nastenka tells how her blind grandmother pinned her to her dress and that they would stay that way their whole lives.
- Third Night: Nastenka asks whether they are now together forever, and the Dreamer writes that she does not know what solitude he is in.
- Morning: The Dreamer sees himself fifteen years from now in the same room, as lonely as he is now, with the same Matryona, and calls himself a lonely heart as he blesses Nastenka.
Where the Readings Diverge
The Dreamer's solitude can be read as a condition surrounding him, the great city emptying out, the faces that do not speak, or as a choice he made, the corner where he hides even from the light. The text gives both: on the First Night he feels abandoned by the city, and on the Second Night he describes himself as someone fleeing it.
The sentence on the Morning about the fifteen years does not decide between the two, because he himself does not know whether the vision comes from the light that has changed or from within him. What the book shows is that when companionship arrived, he received it whole and did not flee, and that it was her choice, not his, that returned him to the room.