"Heavy is the sorrow of man! but trouble is not for the weak heart, trouble is close friends with the strong heart; stealthily it sheds a bloody tear, but does not go begging to good people for shameful comfort: your grief, girl, is like a print in the sand – the rain washes it away, the sun dries it, the stormy winds lifts it and blows it away."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Landlady, 1847
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a frustrating and surprisingly shallow short story that, despite all the praise it has accumulated over the years, left me questioning whether its dreamy, lovesick narrator is meant to be sympathized with or simply observed from a careful and critical distance, and whose companion piece in this edition, Bobok, did nothing to soften that disappointment. Book…
