In the book White Nights, which is 119 pages, Dostoevsky mentions Nastenka 145 times. And yet, we don’t even know the narrator’s name. He doesn’t have a name. Just “I.” That’s all we ever get. But Nastenka? Her name is everywhere—spoken, whispered, repeated like a lifeline. It’s like he’s trying to hold onto her by saying her name over and over, as if that could make her stay. It’s kind of heartbreaking when you think about it. He fades into the background of his own story, while she becomes the centre of everything. We know Nastenka’s dreams, her fears, the way she smiles, the way she cries. But him? He’s just there—watching, waiting, loving her in silence. As if he isn’t really someone, not in the way she is. He’s just a man in love, a man lost in a dream, a man who exists only in the spaces between the times he says Nastenka. And maybe that’s the point. He could be anyone. Anyone who’s ever loved someone who didn’t love them back. Anyone who’s ever spent long nights lost in something that was never really theirs to begin with.
