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82 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1848
My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?
‘Because at moments like that I start to think that I am incapable of living a proper life, I seem already to have lost any sort of judgment, any apprehension of the real and actual; because after all, I have cursed my very self; because after my nights of fantasy come moments of sobriety which are appalling…after all one matures, outgrows one’s former ideals: they are shattered into dust and fragments; and if you have no other life, it behooves you to construct one from those same fragments.’
‘But to imagine that I should bear you a grudge, Nastenka! That I should cast a dark cloud over your serene, untroubled happiness; that by my bitter reproaches I should cause distress to your heart, should poison it with secret remorse and should force it to throb with anguish at the moment of bliss; that I should crush a single one of those tender blossoms which you have twined in your dark tresses when you go with him to the altar…. Oh never, never! May your sky be clear, may your sweet smile be bright and untroubled, and may you be blessed for that moment of blissful happiness which you gave to another, lonely and grateful heart!’
A strange anguish had tormented me since early morning. I suddenly had the impression that I had been left all alone, that everyone was shrinking away from me, avoiding me.
“There are, my dear Nastenka, in case you don’t know, some rather strange corners in Petersburg. It’s as if the sun that warms the rest of the city never shines on them, and instead another sun, especially designed for them, supplies them with a different light. In those corners, Nastenka, a life goes on quite unlike the one seething around us, a life that is possible in some far-away dreamland but certainly not here in our over-serious time. That life is a mixture of something out of pure fantasy ardently idealistic, with, alas, something bleak and dull and ordinary, not to say outright vulgar.”
“And how effortlessly, how naturally the dreamer’s world of fantasy springs up! It looks so real and not at all like a mirage! In fact, sometimes he almost believes that his dream life is no figment of the imagination, no self-deception, no delusion, but something real, actual, existing.”
لا تثق أبدا في كلام المرأة عند الغضب أو الفرح أو الحاجه أو التعب أو الملل أو السفر أو الـ ..... إنت فاضي و الا وراك حاجه :)
سوف تلهو بنا الحياة و تسخر
فتعال أحبك الأن أكثر
"نشعر بألم الآخرين شعورًا أعمق حين نكون أشقياء معذبين"
"لحظة بأكملها من السعادة... رباه! هل تحتاج حياة إنسان إلى أكثر من هذا؟"
Whether I walked in the Nevsky, went to the Gardens or sauntered on the embankment, there was not one face of those I had been accustomed to meet at the same time and place all the year. They, of course, do not know me, but I know them. I know them intimately, I have almost made a study of their faces, and am delighted when they are gay, and downcast when they are under a cloud.
I know the houses too. As I walk along they seem to run forward in the streets to look out at me from every window, and almost to say: “Good-morning! How do you do? I am quite well, thank God, and I am to have a new storey in May,” or, “How are you? I am being redecorated to-morrow;” or, “I was almost burnt down and had such a fright,” and so on.
I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again in my dreams. I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a whole year.
May your sky be clear, may your sweet smile be bright and untroubled, and may you be blessed for that moment of blissful happiness which you gave to another, lonely and grateful heart!
My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man's life?
I don’t know why I suddenly pictured my room grown old like Matrona. The walls and the floors looked discoloured, everything seemed dingy; the spiders’ webs were thicker than ever. I don’t know why, but when I looked out of the window it seemed to me that the house opposite had grown old and dingy too, that the stucco on the columns was peeling off and crumbling, that the cornices were cracked and blackened...