The following post by Austin Benedetto, an undergraduate student at Northwestern University, is another in the series of posts highlighting exemplary work by undergraduates with interests in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought. The NURPRT Forum welcomes any undergraduate student to submit academic writing related to these fields to be considered for publication.
Follow your dreams. It is an idiom thrown around almost daily. While there is wisdom in this adage, there is also a danger. Taken to an extreme, the disciple of such advice may find themselves trapped within a dreamscape. The peril increases if one’s dreams are immoral, illusory, or impossible to fulfill. This begs the question: should one continue to dream?
This is a query with no clear answer. Yet, Dostoevsky’s White Nights serves as an illuminating allegory for the underworld of dreams and fantasies. In this story, we follow the narrator – a self-described “dreamer” (a term I use to refer to the narrator) – through four nights and one final morning.[1] From the beginning, the dreamer is immersed in his own world. He gives personalities to the houses, streets, and strangers he passes by during the abbreviated “white” – or twilight – nights of the St. Petersburg summer. It as if all he needs is his own imagination. His “social life” is solipsistic. This way of being in the world is less absurd than one might think. As Dale Peterson observes in his essay on White Nights, many have tried to “discover themselves” through solitary self-contemplation. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – one of the eminent philosophes from the French Revolution – endorses the practice of isolated contemplation in his final work, Confessions. Through writing and thinking in seclusion, Rousseau claims that it is possible to “affirm [his] subjective truth” without the need for others.[2]
Is this really so bad? Certainly, one should know thyself. The problem is that enlightenment is impossible without concrete sociality: a mode of “being-in-relation” as opposed to a “being-in/for-itself.”[3] This conundrum does not escape the dreamer of White Nights. As he patrols the streets of St. Petersburg on the first “white night,” he notices a melancholic woman and realizes that “this [is] such a moment!” to act.[4] An opportunity for life – to live in relation to others – presents itself, but he remains lost in thought. Silently, he follows the woman until a drunken man begins to pester her. Then, “in a flash,” the dreamer acts; he comes to her rescue.[5] The narrator – or the dreamer – fails to do anything until thought ceases and instincts take over.
While talking to the woman, whom he learns is named Nastenka, the narrator exclaims, “It’s like a dream, and I never guessed even in my sleep that I should ever talk with any woman.”[6] Once again, the dreamer falls back on idealistic modes of speech. When Nastenka expresses shock at the narrator’s reclusive habits, he retorts, “Oh, if only you knew how often I have been in love in that way… with an ideal, with the ones I dream of in my sleep.”[7] Here, the danger of fantasy becomes apparent. The preceding years of the narrator’s life have been spent entirely within in his own mind. He has foregone pursuing his dreams and instead has fallen in love with the act of dreaming. Like Manilov from Dead Souls, who assumed that one could build stone bridges by pondering the possibility of undertaking such a project, the dreamer trades actuality for potentiality. Love, for the dreamer and his ilk, takes place not in the world of flesh and blood but in the ethereal world of Platonic forms.
Their encounter soon ends, and the two agree to reconvene the following night. Before they part, the dreamer exclaims that “perhaps, you [Nastenka] have reconciled me with myself, solved my doubts!”[8] What does such an uncanny statement mean? Is it even accurate? Yuri Corrigan’s formulation of Dostoevsky’s theory of evil will provide insight:
Demonism, we have argued, extends from this psychological paradigm according to which the self, barred from its indwelling sources by virtue of firmly placed taboos, comes to feast upon others as alternative sources, possessing them and annexing their agency, while being possessed and devoured by them in turn.[9]
The dreamer is, at it were, feeding on Nastenka. Instead of journeying outwards, he preys on another’s life to come to terms with his own internal emptiness. But how do we know the dreamer is empty? He confesses, “I have no history…”[10] He is full of fantasies but lacks any memories or values upon which he can ground himself. He has a body without organs, or, said differently, he lacks any internal processes of generating stable meaning.
Despite his ahistorical nature, the dreamer attempts to narrate his upbringing. His effort is contrived at best. Feeling “awfully ashamed to tell [his story] in the first person, he tells it “in the third person”[11] Evasion governs his narration. The dreamer endeavors to make himself an objective third person and, in so doing, fails to realize his subjectivity. Yet, he describes himself as the “artist of his own life” since he “creates [his lived experience] for himself every hour to suit his latest whim.”[12] This project of self-creation, or self-authorship, appears to be a constructive one; however, the fleeting and detached nature of such an undertaking prevents a meaningful or productive outcome. The dreamer is unable to justify himself – and any admission of his failure is itself evasive. He later admits, in the third person, that “one deceives oneself.”[13]
The renowned twentieth century psychologist, Ernest Becker, provides a helpful paradigm to understand White Nights. In his work, The Denial of Death, Becker distinguishes the true artist from the neurotic. Both have fallen from the cultural value system and have “large-scale introversions;” however, the “[the artist] uses [his introversions] as material” while “the neurotic can’t marshal this creative response embodied in a specific work.”[14] Both are reclusive, but the artist can create new values, whereas the neurotic is ensnared within his own inner depths. The neurotic fails to turn a “purely subjective process into an objective” piece of work, one that can point to independent truths and values.[15]
It seems fair to diagnose the dreamer with this pathology. He appears to admit this much when he writes, “[his] fantastic world will grow pale” and that “[his] dreams will fade and die.”[16] The Russian thinker Nikolai Berdiaev might say that the dreamer cannot “transition beyond the limits of this world… and its necessity” because he lacks internal creativity.[17] The narrator’s subjective emptiness prohibits him from ascertaining imperatives that are private and personal while still objective. The result of his “artistic” efforts is anything but a reality-infused life; instead, he remains a prisoner to neurotic oscillations.
Despite the dreamer’s utilization of the third person, he remains partially aware of his degenerative state. Hearing the dreamer rebuke himself for living a superfluous existence, Nastenka feels pity. She claims to know all of him, “thoroughly,” and then proceeds to tell her personal history “without concealment.”[18] Nastenka’s story is more conventional and linear. She reveals that she is in love with another, un-named man, who has promised to marry her upon his return to St. Petersburg. Yet, despite rumors of his recent reappearance, the man has not sought to resume their relations. These developments leave Nastenka in despair and vulnerable to the inordinate openness and receptivity of the dreamer.
Nastenka and the dreamer, in their mutual sorrow, perform a flawed act of self-emptying, a false “kenosis.” By revealing everything “without concealment,” their personalities lose any healthy sense of demarcation or boundary. They are not strong individuals sharing a connection but flimsy spirits desperately grasping onto one another in fear. Yet, as their personal accounts come to an end, there is hope. The dreamer professes his gratitude for “being able to remember [Nastenka] all [his] life.”[19] While the interlocuters may have been excessively forthcoming, it is the dreamer’s first glimpse of a genuine human interaction. He has experienced a memory that is shared between two people. Thus, it seems foolish to classify all this dream-like revelry as evil. In their co-suffering, there may still be hope for the dreamer to reconcile with the world.
Unfortunately, this hope is never realized. The third night begins in a “depressing evocation,”[20] as Peterson would have it, one that foretells this failure:
Today was a gloomy, rainy day without a glimmer of sunlight, like the old age before me. I am oppressed by such strange thoughts, such gloomy sensations; questions still so obscure to me are crowding into my brain—and I seem to have neither power nor will to settle them.[21]
It is important to note that the person speaking is an older version of the dreamer, one who is reflecting on his younger self. As Peterson points out, the use of “the present tense thrusts the reader into a strangely intense recollection.”[22] This insight from Peterson has formal and structural implications, but what is more thought-provoking is the way it underscores the dreamer’s lack of power and will. Little progress has been made. He remains “personality-less” and ahistorical. The dreamer is still without an internal compass.
But how does the narrator end up where he began? To answer this, we must turn to the fourth and final night. Here, the dreamer and Nastenka meet up with the unrealistic or artificial expectation of finally encountering her promised lover. He does not show. Distraught, Nastenka decides she will “forget [her promised lover]”[23] and “get over it,”[24] since she now claims to have fallen in love with the dreamer. Yet we have not left the realm of fantasy, as is evident by her ever-fluctuating pronouncements of love and commitment. At one moment, she loves the dreamer, and, at the next, she reiterates her love for the returning man.
The problem of instability returns, and the dreamer is keen on accepting such uncertainty. As he says: “I would love you so, even if you went on loving the [returning lover] … you would never feel that my love was a burden to you”[25] This proclamation is what Peterson calls, appropriately, “the fantasy of being a phantom lover.”[26] The narrator cannot help but cling to Nastenka, who thus far has served as his only foray into a meaningful, social existence. Even so, he cannot comprehend the truth of the situation. He is akin to a demon searching for something on which to grasp; his imaginations have become a self-serving perversion of reality.
These rapturous but counterfeit declarations of love are accompanied by the actual return of the promised lover. Instantly, Nastenka “[tears] herself out of [the dreamer’s] arms and rushe[s] to meet” him.[27] At this moment, Nastenka’s true feelings become clear, and the dreamer’s phantom love cannot sustain itself. However, right before Nastenka departs with her long-awaited lover, she runs back and gives the dreamer “a warm, tender kiss.”[28] The kiss provides him with entry into the real world – one of being in relation – but it is also treacherous. It is something that the narrator will latch onto as a failed artist. Instead of venturing from memory into creativity, he will remain a prisoner to the moment, forever trapped in and never living beyond recollection.
But is this true – can this memory of the kiss not redeem the dreamer? There is no clear answer; there is only the illusion of one. On the following morning, the narrator receives a letter from Nastenka begging for his forgiveness, so that she can “treasure the memory” of their time together.[29] After reading the note, the dreamer begins to cry. He sees himself “just as [he] [is] now, fifteen years hence,” and “just as solitary.”[30] Evidently, no great transformation has occurred. He continues to be “sad and forbidding”[31]
Nevertheless, the dreamer believes himself falsely redeemed. As he concludes: “My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man’s life?”[32] This salvation, however, is illusory – imaginary. The narrator lives in the same, dingy abode. While a truthful memory is necessary to save a person from despair, it is not sufficient on its own. The novel illustrates this idea by showing the incompatibility between the dreamer’s wistful reminiscences and an honest, self-respecting existence.
Throughout this essay, I have lambasted dreaming, but perhaps there is a middle ground? To this question, White Nights provides no answer. As Peterson notes, the novella may be read as a “critique of Rousseau’s influential cult of sensibility”: the belief that intense emotions and fanciful whims indicate moral superiority.[33] Still, this is not to say that dreams are unimportant. There may exist a reasonable union between reverie and lived experience. My contention is that our aspirations should refrain from fantasy, like Nastenka’s wish to “marry a Chinese prince;” instead, our hopes and dreams should serve as a means to see something beautiful and true in everyday life.[34]
Gary Saul Morson coins this viewpoint, “prosaics.” He defines the term “as way of thinking about human events that focuses on the ordinary, messy, quotidian facts of daily life—in short, on the prosaic.”[35] Prosaics is easier said than done. Morson quotes the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to summarize the problem:
The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something—because it is always before one’s eyes)… And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.[36]
There is much truth in such a statement. So long as the world appears as self-evident or given, it is tempting to retreat into a passive, quasi-mystical mode of existence rather than actively inquiring into the peculiarities of our surroundings. Yet one does not require fantastic dreams to generate value. It is possible to find meaning by looking at what lies right in front of you.
Prose and realist novels play an important role in bringing meaning down to earth. As the English novelist, Virginia Wolf, would have it, the best way to find meaning in life is to frequent “the level [of] ordinary experience, to feel simply, that’s a chair… and yet at the same time, It’s a miracle, it’s an ecstasy.”[37] This is a viewpoint that I call ecstatic prosaics. The word, ecstatic, derives from the Greek term, ekstasis, meaning “standing outside oneself.”[38] Ecstatic prosaics is a style of life where we become genuine artists. One can create meaning and “transition beyond the limits of the world” while remaining grounded in empirical phenomena. The idea sounds contradictory: how can one be awestruck while immersed in the quotidian? On this point, the advice of F. Scott Fitzgerald remains unparalleled. As he writes, the “test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”[39]
Rather than losing ourselves in elaborate dreams or unhealthy attachments, we would be prudent to become artists in the prosaic sense. This means grounding one’s experiences in an acute awareness of our immediate environs. Instead of reaching for the stars, it might be wiser to attend to the little miracles in daily life. One can disperse with the notion that an epic story is needed to justify one’s existence. If there is light at the end of the tunnel, it can only be accessed through the ordinary.
Image: Karl Briullov, Dream of a Young Woman Before Dawn, 1833.
[1] Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights, Translated by Constance Garnett (Independently Published, 2019): 15.
[2] Elizabeth Cheresh Allen, Before They Were Titans: Essays on the Early Works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy (Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2015): 94.
[3] Bakhtin’s conceptions of “I-for-myself” and “I-for-others” may provide further insight on the importance of concrete sociality.
[4] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 9.
[5] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 10.
[6] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 11.
[7] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 13.
[8] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 18.
[9] Yuri Corrigan, Dostoevsky and the Riddle of the Self (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2017): 143-144.
[10] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 20.
[11] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 29.
[12] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 32.
[13] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 33.
[14] Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press, 1973): 185.
[15] As cited in Becker, The Denial of Death, 185.
[16] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 39.
[17] Nikolai Berdiaev, The Meaning of the Creative Act, Translated by Donald A. Lowrie (New York: Collier Books, 1962): 15.
[18] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 40.
[19] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 57.
[20] Allen, Before They Were Titans, 103.
[21] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 59.
[22] Allen, Before They Were Titans, 103.
[23] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 73.
[24] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 79.
[25] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 78.
[26] Allen, Before They Were Titans, 105.
[27] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 85.
[28] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 85.
[29] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 88.
[30] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 90.
[31] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 89.
[32] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 91.
[33] Allen, Before They Were Titans, 107.
[34] Dostoevsky, White Nights, 22.
[35] Gary Saul Morson, Prosaics and Other Provocations: Empathy, Open Time, and the Novel (Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2013): 15.
[36] As Cited in Morson, Prosaics and Other Provocations, 3.
[37] Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, (Project Gutenberg, 2001), https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100101.txt.
[38] Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “ecstasy,” Encyclopedia Britannica (2023), https://www.britannica.com/topic/ecstasy-religion.
[39]F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up,” Esquire (1936), https://fitzgerald.narod.ru/