White nights dostoevsky summary. "White Nights
Night 1
The main character, "The Dreamer" (in the story he is not called by name), lives in St. Petersburg. He is 26 years old, there are no acquaintances and special affections. Description of summer St. Petersburg: desolation, everyone is leaving for their dachas. The hero is tormented by vague anxiety. Wanders around the city, accidentally leaves the outpost, where almost countryside Contrasting the city and the natural life of nature. Comes back late. At the canal he sees a woman who is crying, leaning her elbows on the parapet. The hero wants to approach her, but hesitates. Follows her down the street. A drunken reveler sticks to a stranger, the hero protects her. The woman thanks the savior, offers her friendship, promises to come tomorrow and tell everything about herself.
Night 2
A stranger comes on a date. The "dreamer" tells her about himself, defines what a "dreamer" is. This is a person who lives in an ideal world who is not satisfied with the surrounding reality and in which he cannot find a way and opportunity to express himself. The hero dreams of perfect love... Nastenka (that's the name of the stranger) tells her story. Her father and mother died long ago, and she lives with her grandmother. The grandmother is old, blind and watches her granddaughter, "pinning her with a pin to her dress." They live by renting a room on the mezzanine to tenants. One day they have a young tenant. He gives Nastenka and grandmother books to read - novels by Walter Scott, Pushkin. Then he invites Nastenka to the theater to see The Barber of Seville. Then they go to the theater a few more times. Nastenka falls in love with the tenant, but he seems to have lost interest in her. Then at night, having collected things in a bundle, Nastenka comes to his mezzanine. The tenant is surprised, says that he is poor and cannot marry, but if Nastenka agrees to wait a year, then he will definitely marry her. The tenant leaves for Moscow. A year goes by, but the tenant does not make himself felt, although he came back to St. Petersburg. "Dreamer" offers to hand over the letter, Nastenka agrees.
Night 3
Nastenka and "Dreamer" are waiting for the Tenant, but he does not come. Nastenka cries, says to the main character: “Why is he not you? You are better, but I love him. " The Dreamer tries to calm her down.
Night 4
No tenant. Nastenka is crying, tormented that she herself opened to the Tenant, that she came to him. The "dreamer" confesses his love to her. Nastenka says that her love for the Lodger is passing and that she agrees to marry the "Dreamer". They make plans for the future. But at this moment the Tenant appears. Nastenka rushes to him.
Morning
"Dreamer" receives a letter from Nastenka, where she asks for his forgiveness and promises to keep the friendship.
Ideological and artistic originality
The genre of the work is defined by Dostoevsky as a "sentimental novel", although in form it is a story. Belongs to a cycle of short stories and novellas created in St. Petersburg before Dostoevsky was convicted in the Petrashevsky case.
The story consists of five chapters, which are called "Night 1", "Night 2", etc. Only 4 nights. The fifth chapter is called "Morning", which reflects the dynamics of the development of the plot - sleep / awakening.
The main meaning of the story: a) development of the theme of the "little man", the tradition of Gogol and the natural school; b) the appearance on the pages of the Dostoevsky type of "The Dreamer", which will be developed in his future work. Dobrolyubov in his article "Downed People" said that "The Dreamer" anticipated the features of the hero of the novel "The Humiliated and Insulted". Contemporaries also noted obvious shortcomings: "The Dreamer" is placed outside a clearly defined place and time, there is no mention of his occupations and affections (Druzhinin).
"White Nights". Summary of the work
First night
The hero of the story is called the Dreamer, but we never know the real name. He has been living in the city on the Neva for about 8 years, but is still lonely. The dreamer is a young, educated person with a very romantic state of mind. Wandering around the city on one of the spring nights, he accidentally meets a girl who is bent over the water and crying. Noticing him, she quickly leaves her seat, and the Dreamer continues to follow her. Summary "White Nights" will allow you to plunge into the mysterious atmosphere of the work.
Following the girl, the Dreamer begins to rejoice at the approaching acquaintance. He saves her from a drunken man and makes an appointment. For some reason, she warns him not to fall in love with her.
Second night
The next day comes. A young man is waiting for an upcoming date, and now they are walking along the alleys, and the Dreamer tells her about himself. Nastenka, that is the name of the girl, is amazed at his story. She believes that it is impossible to live alone and promises that she will not leave him.
Later, already from her story, he learns that a blind grandmother lives with her. Once a young tenant settled in the house of Nastenka and her grandmother. He got them interesting novels by Voltaire, Pushkin, invited the girl to the theater. And she understood that she was in love, but the tenant began to avoid her and left for Moscow for a year.
It turns out that exactly a year has passed, and the beloved has already been in the city for several days. The dreamer offers to take the letter to the specified address.
Third night
The letter has been sent to the addressee. Nastenka came much earlier than the appointed time for the meeting, she waited until the last moment, but the young man never came. The girl is at a loss. She says to the Dreamer: "Why is he not like you?" He calms a young girl in love and promises to go to this man again. White Nights ( summary of the story of the same name set out above) continue to give happiness to our hero.
Fourth night
Nastenka is again waiting for her tenant, but he is still gone. Having lost all hope, the girl begins to cry. Here the Dreamer confesses his love to her, and she consents to marriage. The time comes for parting and suddenly a young man appears. Our hero watches as they both, happy, go away ...
In the morning he receives a letter in which he sees a familiar handwriting. The girl asks for his forgiveness, but he does not hold any grudge against her and wishes her great happiness.
The story "White Nights", a summary of which helps to find out the features of the plot, was written in romantic style... The mysterious image of St. Petersburg could not fail to bring two people disappointed in life, but the white nights are over, and people scatter.
A young man of twenty-six years old - a petty official who had lived for eight years in St. Petersburg in the 1840s, in one of the apartment buildings along the Catherine Canal, in a room with cobwebs and smoky walls. After serving him favourite hobby- walks around the city. He notices passers-by and at home, some of them become his "friends". However, he has almost no acquaintances among people. He is poor and lonely. With sadness, he watches how the residents of St. Petersburg are going to their dacha. He has nowhere to go. Going out of town, he enjoys the northern spring nature, which looks like a "stunted and sickly" girl who for a moment becomes "wonderfully beautiful."
Returning home at ten in the evening, the hero sees a female figure at the canal grill and hears a sobbing. Sympathy prompts him to make acquaintance, but the girl runs away fearfully. A drunk is trying to stick to her, and only a "knotty stick", which is in the hero's hand, saves a pretty stranger. They talk to each other. The young man admits that before he knew only the "housewives", he never spoke to the "women" and therefore is very timid. This calms down the fellow traveler. She listens attentively to the story about the "romances" that the guide created in dreams, about falling in love with ideal invented images, about the hope of someday meeting in reality a girl worthy of love. But now she is almost at home and wants to say goodbye. The dreamer begs for a new meeting. The girl “needs to be here for herself,” and she is not against the presence of a new acquaintance tomorrow at the same hour in the same place. Her condition is "friendship", "but you can't fall in love." Like the Dreamer, she needs someone to confide in, someone to ask for advice.
In the second meeting, they decide to listen to each other's "stories". The hero starts. It turns out that he is a "type": in the "strange corners of St. Petersburg" there live similar "creatures of the middle genus" - "dreamers" - whose "life is a mixture of something purely fantastic, hotly ideal and at the same time dull prosaic and ordinary ". They are frightened by the society of living people, as they spend long hours among "magic ghosts", in "ecstatic dreams", in imaginary "adventures". “You say you are reading a book,” Nastenka guesses at the source of the subjects and images of the interlocutor: the works of Hoffmann, Merimee, V. Scott, Pushkin. After delightful, "voluptuous" dreams, it hurts to wake up in "loneliness", in your "musty, unnecessary life." The girl regrets her friend, and he himself understands that "such a life is a crime and a sin." After the "fantastic nights", they already "find moments of sobering up, which are terrible." "Dreams survive", the soul wants " real life". Nastenka promises the Dreamer that now they will be together. And here is her confession. She is an orphan. Lives with an old blind grandmother in a small house of her own. Until the age of fifteen she studied with a teacher, and two last years sitting, "pinned" with a pin to the dress of the grandmother, who otherwise cannot keep track of her. A year ago they had a tenant, a young man of "pleasant appearance." He gave his young mistress books by V. Scott, Pushkin and other authors. I invited them and their grandmother to the theater. Especially memorable was the opera The Barber of Seville. When he announced that he was leaving, the poor recluse decided on a desperate act: she packed her things in a bundle, came into the room to the tenant, sat down and “cried in three streams”. Fortunately, he understood everything, and most importantly, he managed to fall in love with Nastenka before. But he was poor and without a "decent place", and therefore could not immediately marry. They agreed that exactly one year later, after returning from Moscow, where he hoped to "arrange his own affairs," the young man would wait for his bride on a bench near the canal at ten o'clock in the evening. A year has passed. For three days he has been in St. Petersburg. He is not in the appointed place ... Now the hero is clear about the reason for the girl's tears on the evening of their acquaintance. Trying to help, he volunteers to give her a letter for the groom, which he does the next day.
Due to the rain, the third meeting of the heroes takes place only after the night. Nastenka is afraid that the groom will not come again, and cannot hide her excitement from her friend. She feverishly dreams of the future. The hero is sad because he himself loves the girl. And yet, the Dreamer has enough dedication to comfort and reassure the discouraged Nastenka. Touched, the girl compares the groom to a new friend: "Why is he not you? .. He is worse than you, although I love him more than you." And he continues to dream: “Why are we all not like brothers and brothers? Why the most best person always as if something is hiding from the other and is silent from him? Everyone looks as if he is harsher than he really is ... "Gratefully accepting the Dreamer's sacrifice, Nastenka also takes care of him:" you are recovering "," you will love ... "" God bless you with her ! " In addition, now with the hero forever and her friendship.
And finally the fourth night. The girl finally felt abandoned "inhuman" and "cruel". The dreamer again offers help: go to the offender and make him "respect" Nastenka's feelings. However, pride awakens in her: she no longer loves the deceiver and will try to forget him. The "barbaric" act of the tenant sets off the moral beauty of the friend sitting next to him: "Would you not have done that? would you not have thrown the one who would have come to you into the eyes of the shameless mockery of her weak, stupid heart? " The dreamer no longer has the right to hide the truth that the girl has already guessed: "I love you, Nastenka!" He does not want to "torment" her with his "egoism" in a bitter moment, but what if his love turns out to be necessary? Indeed, the answer is: “I don’t love him, because I can only love what is generous, what understands me, what is noble ...” If the Dreamer waits until the old feelings completely subside, then the girl's gratitude and love will go to him alone. Young people happily dream of a joint future. At the moment of their parting, the groom suddenly appears. With a cry, trembling, Nastenka breaks free from the hero's hands and rushes to meet him. The seemingly fulfilling hope for happiness, for a real life, is leaving the Dreamer. He silently looks after the lovers.
The next morning, the hero receives a letter from the happy girl asking for forgiveness for the involuntary deception and with gratitude for his love, which “cured” her “killed heart”. She's getting married the other day. But her feelings are contradictory: “Oh God! if I could love you both at the same time! " And yet the Dreamer must remain "forever friend, brother ...". Again he is alone in a suddenly "aged" room. But fifteen years later, he fondly recalls his short love: “May you be blessed for the minute of bliss and happiness that you gave to another, lonely, grateful heart! A whole minute of bliss! But is this not enough even for the whole human life? .. "
You have read a summary of the story White Nights. We invite you to visit the Summaries section to see other expositions of popular writers.
The hero of the story, the Dreamer (we never know his name), has been living in St. Petersburg for eight years, but has not managed to make a single acquaintance. He is 26 years old. Summer, everyone left for their summer cottages. The dreamer wanders around the city and feels abandoned, not meeting the people he is used to seeing from day to day. Imperceptibly he finds himself at the city outpost and goes on among the fields and meadows, feeling a spiritual relief. Nature amazed him, a half-sick city dweller. Petersburg nature in the spring reminds the hero of a stunted and sick girl who, for a moment, suddenly becomes inexplicably beautiful.
Returning home happy late in the evening, the Dreamer notices a woman - she is bending over the canal parapet and crying. The girl leaves quickly. The hero follows her, not daring to approach. A drunk man sticks to the girl, and the Dreamer rushes to her aid. Then they go together. The dreamer is delighted with an unexpected meeting, tells the girl that tomorrow evening he will come to the channel again and will wait for her. The girl agrees to come, but warns the Dreamer so that he does not think that she is making a date with him. She jokingly warns him not to fall in love with her, she is only ready for friendship with him. They will meet tomorrow. The hero is happy.
Second night
They meet. The girl asks the Dreamer to tell about herself. She herself lives with a blind grandmother, who two years ago began to pin her to her dress. So they sit all day: the grandmother knits blindly, and the granddaughter reads her a book. This has been going on for two years. Girl asks young man tell your story. He tells her that he is a dreamer. There are such types in the hidden corners of St. Petersburg. In communicating with people, they get lost, embarrassed, do not know what to talk about, but in private such a person is happy, he lives “his own special” life, he is immersed in dreams. What he just can't imagine - friendship with Hoffman, St. Bartholomew's Night, the Battle of Berezina and much, much more.
The dreamer is afraid that Nastenka (as it turns out, the name of the girl) will laugh at him, but she only asks him with timid sympathy: "Have you really lived this way all your life?" In her opinion, it is impossible to live like that. The hero agrees with her. He thanks Nastenka for giving him two evenings of real life. Nastenka promises him that she will not leave him. She tells her story. Nastenka is an orphan, her parents died when she was very little. Grandma was rich before. She taught her granddaughter French and on-
I heard her teacher. From the age of fifteen, her grandmother "pinned" her. Grandmother has her own house, and she rents the mezzanine to the tenants.
And now they have a young tenant. He gives his grandmother and Nastenka novels by Walter Scott, works by Pushkin, invites Nastenka and her grandmother to the theater. Nastenka is in love with the young tenant, and he begins to avoid her. And then one day the tenant informs his grandmother that he must go to Moscow for a year. Nastenka, shocked by this news, decides to go with him. She goes up to the young man's room. He tells her that he is poor, cannot marry now, but when he returns from Moscow, they will get married. Exactly a year has passed, Nastenka found out that he had arrived three days ago, but everything did not come to her. The dreamer invites the girl to write him a letter, and he will give it. Nastenka agrees. It turns out that the letter has already been written; all that remains is to deliver it to such and such an address.
Third night
The dreamer recalls his third date with Nastenka. He knows now that the girl does not love him. He carried the letter. Nastenka came ahead of time, she is waiting for her beloved, she is sure that he will come. She is glad that Dreamer did not fall in love with her. The hero is sad at heart. Time goes by, but the Tenant is still gone. Nastenka is hysterically excited. She says to the Dreamer: “You are so kind ... I compared you both. Why is he not you? Why is he not like you? He is worse than you, although I love him more than you. " The dreamer calms Nastenka, assures her that the one she is waiting for will come tomorrow. He promises to go to him again.
The fourth night
Nastenka thought that the Dreamer would bring her a letter, he was sure that the Tenant had already come to the girl. But there is no letter or the Tenant himself. Nastenka desperately says that she will forget him. The dreamer declares his love to her. He so would like Nastenka to fall in love with him. He cries, Nastenka consoles him. She tells him that her love was a deception of feelings, imagination, that she is ready to marry the Dreamer, invites him to move to the grandmother's mezzanine. They will both work and be happy. It's time for Nastenka to go home. And then the Tenant appears. Nastenka rushes to him. The Dreamer watches them both leave.
Morning
The dreamer receives a letter from Nastenka. She asks for his forgiveness, thanks him for his love, calls him her friend and brother. No, the Dreamer is not offended by Nastenka. He wishes her happiness. He had a whole minute of bliss ... "Isn't that enough, even for the whole human life? .."
Option 1
Sentimental romance
(From the memory of a dreamer)
NIGHT ONE
The hero of the story, the Dreamer (we will never know his name), has been living in St. Petersburg for eight years, but has not managed to make a single acquaintance. He is 26 years old. Summer, everyone left for their summer cottages. The dreamer wanders around the city and feels abandoned, not meeting the people he is used to seeing from day to day. Imperceptibly he finds himself at the city outpost and goes further among the fields and meadows, feeling a spiritual relief. Nature amazed him, a half-sick city dweller. Petersburg nature in the spring reminds the hero of a stunted and sick girl who, for a moment, suddenly becomes inexplicably beautiful. Returning home happy late in the evening, the Dreamer notices a woman - she is bending over the canal parapet and crying. The girl leaves quickly. The hero follows her, not daring to approach. A drunk man sticks to the girl, and the Dreamer rushes to her aid. Then they go together. The dreamer is delighted with an unexpected meeting, tells the girl that tomorrow evening he will come to the channel again and will be waiting for her. The girl agrees to come, but warns the Dreamer so that he does not think that she is making a date with him. She jokingly warns him not to fall in love with her, she is only ready for friendship with him. They will meet tomorrow. The hero is happy.
SECOND NIGHT
They meet. The girl asks the Dreamer to tell about herself. She herself lives with a blind grandmother, who two years ago began to pin her to her dress. So they sit all day: the grandmother knits blindly, and the granddaughter reads her a book. This has been going on for two years. The girl asks the young man to tell her story. He tells her that he is a dreamer. There are such types in the hidden corners of St. Petersburg. In communicating with people, they get lost, embarrassed, do not know what to talk about, but in private such a person is happy, he lives “his own special” life, he is immersed in dreams. What he just can't imagine - friendship with Hoffman, St. Bartholomew's Night, the Battle of Berezina and much, much more. The dreamer is afraid that Nastenka (as it turns out, the name of the girl) will laugh at him, but she only asks him with timid sympathy: "Have you really lived like this all your life?" In her opinion, it is impossible to live like that. The hero agrees with her. He thanks Nastenka for giving him two evenings of real life. Nastenka promises him that she will not leave him. She tells her story. Nastenka is an orphan, her parents died when she was very little. Grandma was rich before. She taught her granddaughter French and hired a teacher for her. From the age of fifteen, her grandmother “pinned” her. Grandmother has her own house, and she rents the mezzanine to the tenants. And now they have a young tenant. He gives his grandmother and Nastenka novels by Walter Scott, works by Pushkin, invites Nastenka and her grandmother to the theater. Nastenka is in love with the young tenant, and he begins to avoid her. And then one day the tenant informs his grandmother that he must go to Moscow for a year. Nastenka, shocked by this news, decides to go with him. She goes up to the young man's room. He tells her that he is poor, cannot marry now, but when he returns from Moscow, they will get married. Exactly a year has passed, Nastenka found out that he had arrived three days ago, but everything did not come to her. The dreamer invites the girl to write him a letter, and he will give it. Nastenka agrees. It turns out that the letter has already been written; all that remains is to deliver it to such and such an address. NIGHT THREE The dreamer recalls his third date with Nastenka. He knows now that the girl does not love him. He carried the letter. Nastenka came ahead of time, she is waiting for her beloved, she is sure that he will come. She is glad that Dreamer did not fall in love with her. The hero is sad at heart. Time goes by, but the Tenant is still gone. Nastenka is hysterically excited. She says to the Dreamer: “You are so kind. .. I compared you both. Why is he not you? Why is he not like you? He is worse than you, although I love him more than you. " The dreamer calms Nastenka down, assures her that the one she is waiting for will come tomorrow. He promises to go to him again. NIGHT FOUR Nastenka thought that the Dreamer would bring her a letter, he was sure that the Tenant had already come to the girl. But there is no letter or the Tenant himself. Nastenka desperately says that she will forget him. The dreamer declares his love to her. He so would like Nastenka to fall in love with him. He cries, Nastenka consoles him. She tells him that her love was a deception of feelings, imagination, that she is ready to marry the Dreamer, invites him to move to the grandmother's mezzanine. They will both work and be happy. It's time for Nastenka to go home. And then the Tenant appears. Nastenka rushes to him. The Dreamer watches them both leave. MORNING Dreamer receives a letter from Nastenka. She asks for his forgiveness, thanks him for his love, calls him her friend and brother. No, the Dreamer is not offended by Nastenka. He wishes her happiness. He had a whole minute of bliss ... “Isn't that enough even for the whole human life? .. "
Option 2
A young man of twenty-six years old - a petty official who had lived for eight years in St. Petersburg in the 1840s, in one of the apartment buildings along the Catherine Canal, in a room with cobwebs and smoky walls. After the service, his favorite pastime is walking around the city. He notices passers-by and at home, some of them become his "friends". However, he has almost no acquaintances among people. He is poor and lonely. With sadness, he watches how the residents of St. Petersburg are going to their dacha. He has nowhere to go. Going out of town, he enjoys the northern spring nature, which looks like a "stunted and sickly" girl who for a moment becomes "wonderfully beautiful."
Returning home at ten in the evening, the hero sees a female figure at the canal grill and hears a sobbing. Sympathy prompts him to make acquaintance, but the girl runs away fearfully. A drunk is trying to stick to her, and only a "knotty stick", which is in the hero's hand, saves a pretty stranger. They talk to each other. The young man admits that before he knew only the "housewives", he never spoke to the "women" and therefore is very timid. This calms down the fellow traveler. She listens attentively to the story about the "romances" that the guide created in dreams, about falling in love with ideal invented images, about the hope of someday meeting in reality a girl worthy of love. But now she is almost at home and wants to say goodbye. The dreamer begs for a new meeting. The girl “needs to be here for herself,” and she is not against the presence of a new acquaintance tomorrow at the same hour in the same place. Her condition is "friendship", "but you can't fall in love." Like the Dreamer, she needs someone to confide in, someone to ask for advice.
In the second meeting, they decide to listen to each other's "stories". The hero starts. It turns out that he is a "type": in the "strange corners of St. Petersburg" there live similar "creatures of the middle genus" - "dreamers" - whose "life is a mixture of something purely fantastic, hotly ideal and at the same time dull prosaic and ordinary ". They are frightened by the society of living people, as they spend long hours among "magic ghosts", in "ecstatic dreams", in imaginary "adventures". “You say you are reading a book,” Nastenka guesses at the source of the subjects and images of the interlocutor: the works of Hoffmann, Merimee, V. Scott, Pushkin. After delightful, "voluptuous" dreams, it hurts to wake up in "loneliness", in your "musty, unnecessary life." The girl regrets her friend, and he himself understands that "such a life is a crime and a sin." After the "fantastic nights", they already "find moments of sobering up, which are terrible." "Dreams survive," the soul wants "real life." Nastenka promises the Dreamer that now they will be together.
And here is her confession. She is an orphan. Lives with an old blind grandmother in a small house of her own. Until the age of fifteen she studied with a teacher, and for the last two years she has been sitting, "pinned" with a pin to the dress of her grandmother, who otherwise cannot keep track of her. A year ago they had a tenant, a young man of "pleasant appearance." He gave his young mistress books by V. Scott, Pushkin and other authors. I invited them and their grandmother to the theater. Especially memorable was the opera The Barber of Seville. When he announced that he was leaving, the poor recluse decided on a desperate act: she packed her things in a bundle, came into the room to the tenant, sat down and “cried in three streams”. Fortunately, he understood everything, and most importantly, he managed to fall in love with Nastenka before. But he was poor and without a "decent place", and therefore could not immediately marry. They agreed that exactly one year later, after returning from Moscow, where he hoped to "arrange his own affairs," the young man would wait for his bride on a bench near the canal at ten o'clock in the evening. A year has passed. For three days he has been in St. Petersburg. He is not in the appointed place ... Now the hero is clear about the reason for the girl's tears on the evening of their acquaintance. Trying to help, he volunteers to give her a letter for the groom, which he does the next day.
Due to the rain, the third meeting of the heroes takes place only after the night. Nastenka is afraid that the groom will not come again, and cannot hide her excitement from her friend. She feverishly dreams of the future. The hero is sad because he himself loves the girl. And yet the Dreamer gets enough dedication to comfort and reassure the discouraged Nastenka. Touched, the girl compares the groom to a new friend: "Why is he not you? .. He is worse than you, although I love him more than you." And he continues to dream: “Why are we all not like brothers and brothers? Why does the best person always seem to hide something from the other and keep silent from him? everyone looks as if he is harsher than he really is ... "Gratefully accepting the Dreamer's sacrifice, Nastenka also takes care of him:" you are recovering "," you will love ... "" God bless you with her ! " In addition, now with the hero forever and her friendship.
And finally the fourth night. The girl finally felt abandoned "inhuman" and "cruel". The dreamer again offers help: go to the offender and make him "respect" Nastenka's feelings. However, pride awakens in her: she no longer loves the deceiver and will try to forget him. The "barbaric" act of the tenant sets off the moral beauty of the friend sitting next to him: "Would you not have done that? would you not have thrown the one who would have come to you into the eyes of the shameless mockery of her weak, stupid heart? " The dreamer no longer has the right to hide the truth that the girl has already guessed: "I love you, Nastenka!" He does not want to "torment" her with his "egoism" in a bitter moment, but what if his love turns out to be necessary? And indeed, the answer is: “I don’t love him, because I can only love what is generous, what understands me, what is noble ...” If the Dreamer waits until the old feelings completely subside, then the girl's gratitude and love will go to him alone. Young people happily dream of a joint future. At the moment of their parting, the groom suddenly appears. With a cry, trembling, Nastenka breaks free from the hero's hands and rushes to meet him. The seemingly fulfilling hope for happiness, for a real life, is leaving the Dreamer. He silently looks after the lovers.
The next morning, the hero receives a letter from the happy girl asking for forgiveness for the involuntary deception and with gratitude for his love, which “cured” her “killed heart”. She's getting married the other day. But her feelings are contradictory: “Oh God! if I could love you both at the same time! " And yet the Dreamer must remain "forever friend, brother ...". Again he is alone in a suddenly "aged" room. But fifteen years later, he fondly recalls his short love: “May you be blessed for the minute of bliss and happiness that you gave to another, lonely, grateful heart! A whole minute of bliss! But is this not enough even for the whole human life? .. "
