“White Nights” (1848)

This long story by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a love story much as perhaps only he could do it—unrequited, of course. The setting is late June or early July in St. Petersburg, which is far enough north that the darkness hours of night are very few or nonexistent (hence “white nights”). Our first-person narrator, another no-name, wanders the streets in his loneliness. Loneliness, loneliness. He sees a woman leaning against a railing and crying. There’s something about her. He’s intrigued but walks by, respecting her privacy (he will not always be so good about respecting boundaries ... what man in a romance ever is?). Then he hears her scream. A man is harassing her and he steps in to help. They strike up a conversation. He tells her about his loneliness, probably not the best next move. I have to say he comes across in many ways as what we now call an “incel” (involuntary celibate), with strange and strangely urgent ideas about women and men. He never crosses the line—he is too passive, like many incels in the clutch—but he comes close to it in his head. He describes the incel’s fatal passivity by putting himself in a category of “dreamer.” A dreamer is essentially passive and a lot like “a nice guy.” Those themes were incidental more or less when Dostoevsky was writing, although they also suggest that “incel” is a very old way of being. Altogether these two meet for four nights, talking about things like his loneliness, her lover who may have abandoned her, their life stories. It’s a classic “nice guy” story as he is forced to reckon with the fact that it will only ever be a friendship, which makes him long for her even more, etc. We all know this story. Once again, though he must go on at some length to do it, Dostoevsky manages a very precise portrait of this kind of incel / nice guy fantasy doomed to bitter disappointment, because women, they decide, don’t like nice guys, etc., etc. Our narrator here may yet be capable of rising above it, but that’s not clear at all by story’s end. All the romance here—and it is here—is supplied by the setting, the long nights of daylight. Dostoevsky, in counterpoint, is his usual slightly bitter realist. It creates a wonderful tension. Great story.

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