White Nights

By: Sampurna Chakraborty

2nd year, BA (hons.) English

Design and edited by: Ragini

"What if love was just a dream you could live in for four nights?"

White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a book for those who love too deeply, think too much, and hope too recklessly. It’s a story that feels like a soft sigh under the night sky, a fleeting moment where love and longing intertwine.

The narrator, a lonely dreamer wandering the streets of St. Petersburg, meets Nastenka, a girl who, like him, aches for connection. Over four magical nights, they exchange secrets, fears, and desires. He listens to her past, she listens to his loneliness, and together, they create a world where they are no longer alone. Their conversations are filled with warmth and melancholy, touching the fragile line between friendship and love. “What had I to do with reality?” the narrator wonders, mirroring the heart of every hopeless romantic who has ever lost themselves in a dream.

There is something painfully beautiful about love that is almost real. The narrator finds himself clinging to hope, believing that perhaps, this time, love will stay. But just as night inevitably turns to day, dreams must surrender to reality. And yet, isn’t that what makes them unforgettable? “My nights came to an end because the sun rose.”

As an overthinker, I felt every word. As a romantic, I mourned with the narrator. As a dreamer, I wished, just for once, that reality would bend to love. But perhaps, as Dostoyevsky teaches us, the true beauty of a white night is in its transience—the way it lingers, then disappears, leaving behind only the memory of its glow.