Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “White Nights” is a short story about a lonesome dreamer. A friendless man falls in love with a woman. He is a naive man who understands the set rules, but breaks them anyways. He falls for her when he should not. The woman is awaiting another man; its been a year now. She becomes torn between her two interests but keeps faith. The lonesome dreamer is not chosen; he’ll be fantasizing about the white nights for as long as he is alive.
There comes a danger with being a dreamer. Much emotion can be extracted from the dreamers interior. The past, present and future becomes ambiguous. The dreamers desires and past experiences become equivocal. Emotions and narratives are intensified and exaggerated; twisted and turned at the dreamers conscious or unconscious will. Perspectives can be altered. Facts can be hidden and new information can be introduced. Our life is a story that can be read, heard and told in myriad ways depending on the authors mind.
The lonesome dreamer. What of the man who has only ever sat in a room and dreamt up his entire life? A fictional story or a lie? Not of what should have or could be, but what has never even happened? Fabricating; creating a life that has never been lived; not one step taken on any road; only imagined but still very much as real as it gets.
It is such a pitiful, unfortunate way to live. There’s no one to blame but the author himself, for he is the one who has shied away and created his own false narrative.
We are here to live! Not to sleep! Not to be passive cowards! We must be bold and brave. Courage; to take a leap of faith. Life is to be found and experienced, not imagined or tackled within the confines of any mind. If we are to live we must get out of our minds and interact with reality; we are creatures built for stimulation and subsequent adaptation in relation to a higher goal. We must expose ourself to the functional world and play our role within it. Through this we grow and experience what it is like to be more than human; to live a life worthy of being called a great narrative adventure.
The dreamer is a good man if his dreams have the capacity to become real. His memories that can be reveled in for extraction of valuable information, but stored away when necessary.
Dangerous is the man who is covered in dust and cobwebs, who has fabricated a false narrative of his life before his own very eyes. Completely out of touch with reality.
A thousand steps never taken, a million words never spoken, a world of people you’ve never met; all the problems and pain rooted in you.
Summary of White Nights: Summary of White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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