Between Ideal and Real: Romantic Dream and Identity in "White Nights" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Sfetcu, Nicolae (2025). ”Between Ideal and Real: Romantic Dream and Identity in “White Nights” by Fyodor Dostoevsky”, in Index Academic, I 2025, DOI: 10.58679/IA42545

Contents

Between Ideal and Real: Romantic Dream and Identity in “White Nights” by Fyodor Dostoevsky 1

Abstract 2

Introduction. 2

Alienation and Loneliness of the Individual 3

Romantic Idealism and the Figure of the Dreamer 4

The Nature of Dream versus Reality. 6

The Problem of Identity and Self 7

Conclusion. 9

Bibliography. 11

Abstract

The article analyzes “White Nights” as much more than a sentimental idyll: a philosophical meditation on alienation, romantic idealism, the tension between dream and reality, and the crisis of identity. “The Dreamer,” the anonymous narrator, is a typical Petersburg urban misfit, for whom loneliness is both a curse and a refuge, anticipating existentialist themes. His idealism – nourished by reading and fantasies – is portrayed ambivalently: Dostoevsky admires his inner richness, but exposes his escapism, and the ending (the reappearance of Nastenka’s fiancé) shows the price of breaking away from reality. The “four-night” structure creates a liminal space in which the dream seems to win, until “morning” restores the concrete; however, the moment of happiness remains valuable as a memory. The protagonist’s identity – nameless, split between the ideal self and the almost non-existent social self – is (re)constructed narratively and in dialogue with the otherness (Nastenka), the experience bringing a discreet maturation. The conclusion underlines the universal relevance of the text: dreams can save and deceive, reality can hurt and mature, and art and memory offer a possible reconciliation between the ideal and the real.

Keywords: White Nights, Feodor Dostoevsky, alienation, loneliness of the individual, existentialism, idealism, dreamer, reality, identity, self

Introduction

Fyodor M. Dostoevsky’s story “White Nights,” published in 1848, is a gem of early Russian literature, seemingly a simple romantic idyll, but concealing profound philosophical themes. Suggestively subtitled “A Sentimental Tale from the Diary of a Dreamer,” this first-person account has an unnamed narrator—a solitary young “dreamer” in St. Petersburg—and follows his fleeting encounter, over the course of four summer nights, with a young woman named Nastenka (Wikipedia 2025) (Peterson 2019). Beyond its sentimental and melancholic tone, the text explores several philosophical themes, such as the alienation of the individual, romantic idealism, the dialectical relationship between dream and reality, and the issue of personal identity. Dostoevsky thus manages to combine the romantic atmosphere with a critical analysis of the human condition, anticipating in a way the existential and psychological concerns of his mature works (Peterson 2019). The aim of this academic review is to examine these themes in an argumentative and critical manner, based on the interpretations offered by specialist criticism and textual clues, highlighting how “White Nights” goes beyond the level of a simple story of unrequited love and becomes a philosophical meditation on loneliness, illusion, and identity.

Alienation and Loneliness of the Individual

A first major aspect in “White Nights” is the portrayal of the protagonist’s alienation. The narrator describes himself as cut off from the world, a chronic loner who spends his days wandering the city streets and his nights immersed in his own fantasies. The city of Petersburg becomes a labyrinth of his loneliness: he prefers nocturnal walks, when the streets are empty, precisely because the presence of people during the day causes him an acute sense of ostracism and discomfort (Wikipedia 2025). In the conversation with Nastenka, the narrator admits that he has no personal history, having no friends or real connections – practically, his social life is absent, he lives only in his own mind (Wikipedia 2025). This voluntary isolation qualifies him as a social misfit, like the figure of the “superfluous man” in 19th-century Russian literature. Contemporary literary criticism has noted that the protagonist does indeed embody the Russian archetype of the “superfluous man” (lišnýi čelovek), a dreamy and socially useless intellectual in a kind of inner exile (Suryaningrum and Atmaja 2024). His alienation is therefore not only individual but also typological, representative of an entire Romantic generation disillusioned with prosaic reality.

Dostoevsky vividly describes this state of existential loneliness of the dreamer, resorting to memorable images. The narrator confesses that a “dreamer” like him “is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate kind”, who always retreats into an “inaccessible corner, as if hiding from the light of day”, clinging to his “burrow” like a snail or a tortoise carrying its house on its back (Dostoyevsky 1918). This zoomorphic comparison – the Testudines-man who lives his life in a dark shell – emphasizes the introverted and elusive character of the protagonist, but also his fragility. The “corner” in which he takes refuge is the secure space of his own miserable room, in contrast to the hostile immensity of the modern city. Critics have emphasized that Petersburg, with its twilight “corners”, enhances the hero’s loneliness: the capital becomes a symbol of urban anonymity, where the individual feels lost among the masses and prefers to hide from the world (Nguyen and Do 2024) (Peterson 2019). This social alienation also has a deep psychological dimension – loneliness becomes both a condemnation and a refuge for the narrator. He acutely feels the fact that everyone he knows has finally abandoned him, considering himself “abandoned by everyone” (Nguyen and Do 2024). At the same time, he idealizes his solitude, convincing himself that he leads a “special” life in his interesting “cave” (Nguyen and Do 2024). Passages in the text show him panicked and embarrassed when someone crosses his threshold, as if real contact would completely derail him: this “absurd gentleman” (as he is self-ironically called) becomes confused and ridiculous when he receives a visitor, so that the guest quickly leaves and swears never to return, leaving him even more alone (Dostoyevsky 1918). In this regard, Dostoevsky also highlights the vicious circle of alienation: the hero’s fear and social awkwardness scare away the few people who approach him, thus confirming his belief that he is destined to be alone.

From a philosophical perspective, the protagonist’s alienation takes on existential nuances. He experiences the drama of lack of belonging: on a social level he is an outcast, and on a spiritual level he is a misfit to reality. Specialized literature notes that Dostoevsky anticipated, through such solitary characters, the themes later developed by existentialism – the restlessness of the fragmented individual and the anguish of tragic freedom in a world lacking cohesion (Nguyen and Do 2024). In a passage from the article “Metaphysics of Loneliness”, it is shown that for Dostoevsky loneliness is linked to the “scattering of beings into separate individuals” and to the “throwing” of man into a free but tragic existence, in which each is locked in his own cave” (Nguyen and Do 2024). The hero of “White Nights” perfectly illustrates this state: free to dream, but unable to connect authentically to others, he lives in a prison of his own self. The only possible way out of this solipsism – also suggested by Dostoevsky’s later thinking – would be empathy and authentic human communion (Nguyen and Do 2024). However, in the story, such communion remains only a fragile promise, associated with the appearance of Nastenka, who briefly illuminates the hero’s universe. Thus, “White Nights” delicately approaches the drama of alienation: loneliness as a curse, but also as an inner sanctuary, a dual aspect that will be nuanced in the following sections regarding the dreamer’s idealism and his confrontation with reality.

Romantic Idealism and the Figure of the Dreamer

The main character of “White Nights” is emblematic of the Romantic idealism of his generation. He is even called “The Dreamer”, embodying that type of Romantic hero who lives more in the world of fantasy than in everyday reality. Already from the full title of the story – “White Nights: A Sentimental Story from the Diary of a Dreamer)” (Peterson 2019) – Dostoevsky signals the mixture of sentimentality and refuge in dreaming that characterizes the text. Our Dreamer is an incurable romantic: he feeds his soul with literature and poetry (he invokes authors like Zhukovsky or literary idylls, such as his observations about the “goddess of fantasy” and characters in novels) (Wikipedia 2025) (Dostoyevsky 1918). Basically, he has formed a bookish identity, populated by Romantic ideals and romantic scenarios. He confesses to Nastenka that he has fallen in love countless times “with no one in particular, with an ideal, with the one I dream of in my sleep” (Dostoyevsky 1918), creating “love stories” in his imagination. This statement highlights how deep the ideal of love is in his soul: he dreams of absolute love, prefigured in his mind as a perfect being who still exists only in a dream. Nastenka herself, providentially appearing on a magical night, is immediately invested by the narrator with the aura of the ideal – he sees her as the dreamed angel, his confessor and emotional savior.

The protagonist’s romantic idealism is also manifested in the fact that he rejects the banality of everyday life, considering it unworthy of his aspirations. He states, with pathos, that “such moments are so rare that I cannot help but relive them in my dreams” (Dostoyevsky 1918). In other words, real moments of happiness are so sporadic that they must be relieved in the form of a dream to prolong their existence. The everyday seems to him dull and “killer” for the soul: “the boredom of everyday life kills people, while in a dream they can shape their lives as they wish” – this is, in essence, his philosophy (Wikipedia 2025). In the narrator’s extensive monologue, Dostoevsky captures the conflict between the ideal world of imagination and the real prosaic world: “What does he care about real life, our life!… Such a life seems poor, petty to him…”, while in his dreams he experiences grandiose adventures and creates a “fairytale world” in which he is the main hero (Dostoyevsky 1918). The dreamer sees himself as the “craftsman of his own life”, which he creates moment by moment according to his heart’s desire (Dostoyevsky 1918). In imagination, he can be anyone and play any brilliant role, from the friend of great poets to the lover of an ideal woman – this is the absolute freedom of romantic fantasy. Moreover, the narrator sometimes deliberately confuses the plans: “he is ready to believe at certain moments that all this life is not suggested by feeling, is not a mirage, is not an illusion of the imagination, but that it is concrete, real, substantial” (Dostoyevsky 1918). This tendency highlights his extreme idealism, a kind of voluntary self-deception: he uses the power of his imagination to beautify reality or even to deny it, preferring the beauty of dreams to the painful truth.

The author’s attitude towards this romantic idealism of the hero is, however, ambivalent. On the one hand, “White Nights” has the tone of a sentimental idyll, arousing empathy for the sensitive soul of the dreamer and for the purity of his aspirations. Dostoevsky himself, as a young writer influenced by Romanticism, seems fascinated by the richness of such a character’s inner world and by “the delight of creating a world invented at the will of the heart” (Peterson 2019). Critics have noted that the text does not completely reject reverie, but rather recognizes its spiritual value: in the words of one commentator, “the verdict against crazy dreaming is intertwined with the delight and amazement aroused by the creation of an imaginary world at the command of fantasy” (Peterson 2019). In other words, Dostoevsky criticizes the dreamer’s naivety, but at the same time admires his creative ability to construct illusory happiness. This dual perspective makes the story tonally complex: it has both a tender “romantic pathos” and a subtle irony directed at the protagonist’s self-delusion (Peterson 2019).

On the other hand, there are clear indications that the author views the hero’s escapist idealism critically. Dostoevsky, in the 1840s, participated in the intellectual debate about the conflict between reverie and action in the world. In an 1847 newspaper article, he diagnosed “dreaming” as an “endemic disease of Petersburg,” calling the dreamer “a Petersburg nightmare, the personification of sin, a tragic and mute vision…” (Peterson 2019). This harsh judgment indicates that Dostoevsky perceived the tendency of young people to escape into fantasy as a pathological symptom of his society. The hero of “White Nights” can thus be read as a sympathetic, yet critical, caricature of the young Romantic who “prefers reverie to taking the risks of real human relationships” (Peterson 2019). Some exegetes (such as Dale Peterson) even argue that the story constitutes “a prolonged polemic with Rousseau” and his cult of solitary dreaming, with Dostoevsky criticizing the Rousseau-ist cult of self and feeling through the example of his nostalgic dreamer (Peterson 2019). From this perspective, the end of the story – with the protagonist’s sudden awakening to reality and the suffering that follows – represents the implicit disavowal of unanchored Romantic idealism. The dreamer is forced to confront disillusionment: his love was one-sided and fanciful, and Nastenka, although she bears his affection, follows her own real destiny (reuniting with her fiancé). Thus, the protagonist is left with only the memory of a beautiful and ephemeral dream, the entire story proving to have been an idealized construction meant to fall apart at the dawn of reality.

In conclusion, the romantic idealism in “White Nights” is portrayed with great finesse and nuance. Dostoevsky oscillates between glorifying the dreamer’s spiritual beauty – capable of seeing the world with poetic eyes and finding ecstasy where others see banality – and at the same time exposing the danger of self-delusion. The romantic dream offers character meaning and purpose (without which life would be unbearable), but it also alienates him from reality, condemning him to suffer when the inevitable contact with the truth takes place. This balance between fascination and criticism of the dreamer’s idealism represents perhaps the most interesting philosophical tension of the story, announcing the subsequent complexity of Dostoevsky’s work.

The Nature of Dream versus Reality

The central theme of the story, suggested by the title, is the opposition and interaction between dream and reality. “White Nights” is constructed as a liminal space-time, in which the boundary between the dream world of desires and the concrete world of facts blurs. The natural phenomenon of the white nights of St. Petersburg – those almost luminous summer nights, in which the precise distinction of dawn is difficult – functions symbolically to create an ambiguity between day and night, between dreaming and waking (Peterson 2019). The narrator himself experiences the encounter with Nastenka as a daydream: an improbable, miraculous nocturnal adventure that takes him out of the routine of his isolation. The encounter takes place in the evening, on the banks of the canal, in an almost unreal setting (empty St. Petersburg, bathed in the diffuse light of the white night). The tone of the story becomes deliberately sensory and dreamlike, with an emphasis on the overwhelming emotions and the feeling of unreality that the hero feels: “Am I dreaming? What world am I in?” he exclaims at one point, unable to believe that what is happening to him is real (Dostoyevsky 1918). The sudden fall in love with Nastenka seems to be the fulfillment of a long-forgotten dream, and the four nights spent together take on the aura of an enchanted parenthesis, broken by the usual flow of time.

The narrative structure of the text constantly juxtaposes the plane of dreaming with that of concrete reality. During the four “nights”, the narrator and Nastenka share stories, hopes and emotions in an intimate, idealized atmosphere – it is the kingdom of the common dream, of infinite possibilities. But each subsequent “morning” brings a return to reality: we see the hero returning alone to his small room, tortured by doubts and fears, aware that his happiness is fragile. This alternation culminates in the last section, “Morning,” when reality triumphs definitively: Nastenka’s fiancé returns, she throws herself into his arms, and our dreamer remains on the sidelines, like a mere spectator. The moment is shocking for the protagonist, equivalent to a brutal awakening from a dream. He feels how “the whole kingdom of fantasies collapses around him, collapses without a trace, without a sound, floats like a dream, and he himself cannot remember what he dreamed” (Dostoyevsky 1918). This poetic description perfectly captures the collapse of the ideal world he had built with the dawn (metaphorically speaking), the sandcastle of his fantasies collapses under the weight of reality. The room is dark, his soul is “deserted and sad”, a sign that the spell has been broken and he awakens to his own loneliness (Dostoyevsky 1918).

The confrontation between dream and reality has, in the story, a strong philosophical and psychological charge. The dream represents the aspiration towards the ideal, the capacity of the mind to transcend the limits of the present and to project a more beautiful world. Reality represents the objective truth, with its imperfections and disappointments, but also the only terrain where authentic relationships can exist. Dostoevsky masterfully examines the price the dreamer pays for choosing the dream over the real. As the nights go by, the narrator abandons himself increasingly to daydreaming – he repeats to himself happy moments, idealizes every gesture of Nastenka and imagines a happy future together. There are passages that show how much he deliberately prolongs his ecstasy: after the second meeting, he says “I walked all night; I could not make up my mind to go home. I was so happy… Tomorrow!” (Dostoyevsky 1918), refusing to go home to bed, for fear of losing his joy. These “temporary victories of the dream” over reality give him wings – he even believes, for a few moments, that “this life of ghosts” could be “concrete, real, substantial” (Dostoyevsky 1918). But Dostoyevsky always introduces signs of ephemerality: every night of happiness is followed by a day of uncertainty. Nastenka, although sincere and close, constantly reminds him that her love belongs to someone else and that there is a convention between her and the dreamer (friends without romantic involvement, initially). In the end, reality takes its toll: the real fiancé appears, as was inevitable, shattering the protagonist’s fantasy.

Interestingly, the end of the story also leaves room for a reflection on the value of the dream even after reality has won. Although deeply hurt, the narrator does not deny what happened, but on the contrary expresses his gratitude for the dream he experienced: “Oh, God! One moment of happiness – is it not enough for a man’s whole life?” he exclaims at the end (Combi 2025). This famous line (often quoted by readers and exegetes) offers a consoling philosophical note: even if the dream was illusory, its memory becomes part of the hero’s real life and gives him an irreplaceable meaning and inner richness. Thus, Dostoevsky seems to say that the dream, although contradicted by reality, is not entirely wasted – it can animate and transform the individual’s consciousness. The dreamer has tasted, even if illusory, the happiness of love, and that moment of light will warm his soul in the years of loneliness that will probably follow. Therefore, the opposition dream-reality is not treated simplistically as good versus evil, but with a profound ambivalence: reality brings the hero down to earth and matures him (through suffering), while the dream offered him a revelation of possible happiness and revealed beautiful sides of his personality (empathy, the capacity for love, the courage to dream).

Literary criticism emphasizes that this dream-reality dialectic in “White Nights” thematically prefigures Dostoevsky’s later writings and even concerns of modern philosophy. Ruth Mortimer (1956), in her study of Dostoevsky’s dreams, shows that the author often uses dream episodes to reveal psychological truths of the characters, and in “White Nights” the hero’s romantic dream exposes precisely his need for meaning and love in a reality that does not offer them to him (Connected Papers 2025). Likewise, Suryaningrum and Atmaja (2024) observe how Dostoevsky contrasts the dreamer’s idealism with the gloomy reality of the city and his social condition, emphasizing the tension between “romantic idealization” and “final disillusionment” (Suryaningrum and Atmaja 2024). Finally, the synthesis of the two planes is achieved through the act of narration itself: the protagonist, now awake and alone, transforms his dream into literature, writing “the story of a dreamer’s memories”. Through writing – an act of objectifying his own dream – the hero bridges the ideal inner world and the real outer world. We can interpret the manuscript we are reading (i.e. the story) as the result of his coming to terms with reality: he sublimates his (painful but precious) experience into a personal work of art, giving it a lasting meaning (Peterson 2019). This way, Dostoevsky suggests that although dream and reality seem opposite and irreconcilable, human creativity – art, memory, confession – can unite them, transfiguring both illusion and truth into a new form of spiritual reality.

The Problem of Identity and Self

Another leading thread of the analysis of the story “White Nights” is the problem of the protagonist’s personal identity, closely linked to his condition as an alienated dreamer. The narrator never reveals his name – a significant aspect, since the absence of a proper name indicates an indistinct, fluid identity. He is presented to the reader simply as “The Dreamer”, as if to emphasize that his identity is reduced to this defining feature. In the dialogue with Nastenka, when asked who he is, the hero ends up describing himself also through the prism of typology: “The Dreamer – if you want an exact definition – is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate kind” (Dostoyevsky 1918). He speaks of himself in a general, almost impersonal way, as about a category (“species”) separate from people. This self-presentation highlights a profound identity crisis: the narrator does not perceive himself as a concrete individual with a social role, but as an intermediary entity, stuck between the human condition and the world of fantasy. His real identity is evanescent – he confesses that he has no biography, no past, no relationships, being “a man who lives too much in his mind and too little in real life”. Instead of saying who he is (name, profession, status), he prefers to narrate in metaphorical terms his inner life, defining himself through subjective experiences (dreams, feelings, obsessions). This way of self-definition indicates a split self: on the one hand the real self (the shy young man, without external achievements), on the other the ideal self (the dreamer hero of his own reveries).

Through the narrative technique of retrospective-ironic confession, Dostoevsky emphasizes the duality of identity. The story is written sometime after the events, by a narrator looking back at his younger self. This mature, anonymous narrator attempts to reconstruct his identity by piecing together the memories of those sleepless nights. Dale Peterson observes that there is a “delicate balance” that the narrator wants to achieve: that of “reincarnating his young self while at the same time maintaining a distance from the naivety of that youth,” using gentle irony towards himself (Peterson 2019). Thus, two levels of self-appear in the text: the enthusiastic and deluded dreamer of the time, and the present witness, who writes and judges the experience. The protagonist’s identity is revealed in the palimpsest: he is both the person who experienced the dream and the person who narrates it. This conscious splitting shows a beginning of self-analysis and integration of his fractured identity. The fact that he puts his story on paper “to show who he is and who he was” implies a search for the authentic self (Peterson 2019). Identity is therefore born through narration: by writing, the dreamer assumes both sides (ideal and real) and gives them coherence in a life path.

In terms of relationships with others, the narrator’s identity is shaped (or rather, becomes problematic) by contrast with the identities of other characters. Nastenka, for example, is a character much better anchored in reality: an orphan raised by her grandmother, she has a name, a concrete story (including a real lover), clear goals. Alongside her, the dreamer acutely perceives his identity gaps: he has neither a mentioned family nor social obligations, he lives like a shadow among people. In the central scene of the story, when Nastenka tells him her life story, the narrator realizes that he has nothing like tell – then begins his monologue about the life of a dreamer. We can interpret his identity as being articulated only negatively, through absences: no family ties, no lover, no career, no name. Symbolically, even Nastenka addresses him with the generic title “you” throughout, while he remains the nameless “stranger” until the end. This anonymity universalizes his figure, but at the same time emphasizes his personal drama: who is he really? Is he “a very decent young man, just a little strange” (as Nastenka says to characterize him), or is he simply the incarnation of the Dreamer, without his own individual identity? An important element related to identity is the dreamer’s relationship with his ideal self. As discussed earlier, the hero sees himself as the hero of his imaginary world. In his fantasies, his identity takes on glorious contours – he is a misunderstood poet, a friend of great minds, a devoted lover, etc. (Dostoyevsky 1918). However, his social identity is practically null: he is an obscure official or perhaps a petty bourgeois (it is not specified, but it turns out that he leads a modest life), ignored by everyone, unknown. This discrepancy inevitably produces tension: the protagonist’s identity crisis stems precisely from the conflict between who he thinks (and wants) to be and who he is. The meeting with Nastenka functions as a catalyst for his identity. For the first time, someone looks at him with interest and empathy; in the present

In her presence, the dreamer dares to express his thoughts and, thus, begins to outline a dialogical self. By reflecting in Nastenka’s eyes and words, he acquires a narrative identity (he tells her the story of his imaginary life) and an ethical one (he presents himself as a good, shy man, worthy of pity and friendship). Moreover, Nastenka also offers him a role, that of occasional friend and confidant; for a short time, his identity is defined in relation to her (the friend and potential suitor). But in the end, this role is denied to him (Nastenka remains only grateful, not in love with him). The narrator re-enters solitude, but he is no longer the same as at the beginning: the experience has changed him. The way he says goodbye in the final letter – with dignity and gratitude – indicates a maturation of his identity. He no longer sees himself as just a victim of fate, a ridiculous “absurd gentleman,” but as a man capable of noble feelings who has experienced something valuable, even if ephemeral. And, very importantly, he asserts his identity as a narrator: “Farewell, the face that brought me so much joy… I keep your memory, and this memory is my life, all I have” – the subtext being that his identity will henceforth include this story and that he will keep it alive through remembrance and writing.

From a theoretical perspective, it can be said that “White Nights” investigates identity as narrative and identity as alterity. On the one hand, the protagonist (re)constructs his self by telling stories about himself – both to Nastenka and to us, the readers. The fact that at the end we learn that everything we have read was recorded by him as a memoirist indicates an approach to self-knowledge through writing (Peterson 2019). On the other hand, his identity is clarified by the encounter with the other (Nastenka). Philosophically speaking, it recalls M. Bakhtin’s idea that the self takes shape in dialogue with otherness and the Hegelian concept of recognition: the dreamer needs to be seen by someone else to truly exist. The title “White Nights” can also be interpreted as a metaphor for the identity light brought by temporary communion with a fellow human being: in those illuminated nights, the hero seems to have emerged from the darkness of anonymity and felt that he was truly living.

However, the story does not leave us with a completely positive resolution of the identity problem. On the contrary, the ending returns to the initial scheme: the narrator alone, without Nastenka, with only his memory and his manuscript. His identity remains one of memory and interiority, not a socially concretized relational one. Some recent critics (Suryaningrum and Atmaja 2024) interpret the protagonist’s identity as a result of inherited traumas or shortcomings, suggesting that his identity alienation has deeper causes, perhaps generational, reflecting an unshared emotional baggage (Suryaningrum and Atmaja 2024). The dreamer would thus be a “spiritual orphan” of his time, carrying within himself affective burdens that shape his fragile identity and failed relationships. Without going too far with psychoanalytic speculations, we can nevertheless conclude that “White Nights” is remarkable for the way it turns the story of failed love and the portrait of a solitary bohemian into a meditation on personal identity: who are we in the absence of human connections? can we define ourselves only through our dreams? what legitimizes our existence – inner experiences or external facts? Dostoevsky does not give explicit answers but asks these questions through the fate of his hero. And the reader is left with the paradoxical impression that the dreamer, although “nobody” in the eyes of the world, still has a special spiritual identity, intense and authentic in its own way, which few “ordinary people” possess.

Conclusion

“White Nights” by F. M. Dostoevsky proves, upon careful reading, to be much more than a sentimental story about an episode of platonic love. Its pages intertwine and reflect some of the most important philosophical themes of the human condition: the alienation of the modern individual in an impersonal metropolis, romantic idealism that elevates the soul but also exposes it to illusion, the tension between dream and reality as a way of relating to the world, and the search for identity in the absence of external landmarks. Dostoevsky manages to discuss all of this in the subtext, under the appearance of a confession of unfulfilled love, maintaining a balance between empathy and critical analysis. Through the figure of the Dreamer, he creates a literary archetype – the shy loner who prefers the world of fantasy – and at the same time an existential case study. We see this hero moving from exaltation to agony, from illusion to lucidity, and in this process the reader is invited to meditate on his own dreams and disillusions, on his own relationship with reality and on the need for authentic human connection.

The approach to philosophical themes in “White Nights” is more valuable as they are universally human and surprisingly current. The idea of urban loneliness and of the man who feels invisible in the crowd anticipates the phenomena of alienation in the crowded contemporary society, and the figure of the young social misfit who escapes into the virtual world (today we would say virtual, back then it was the world of books and dreams) is the ancestor of many modern characters. The conflict between the ideal and the real remains eternal: even today people struggle between their aspirations (often fueled by fiction, films, networks) and the constraints of concrete reality. Dostoevsky suggests that balance is difficult – when the ideal collapses, the soul feels a bitter emptiness. However, he leaves open the possibility of reconciliation: either through the art of storytelling (which makes the dream live on in another form), or by cherishing the memory of that “moment of happiness” that can illuminate an entire life (Combi 2025).

From a literary-philosophical point of view, “White Nights” is a representative work for late Russian romanticism, highlighting both its charm and its limits. The dreamer hero is both a product of the romantic era (hypersensitive, imaginative, rebellious towards banality) and a premonitory proto-existentialist character (haunted by questions about the meaning of life, unable to communicate, torn between two worlds). Criticism has shown, moreover, that this story foreshadows in many ways themes that Dostoevsky will explore in depth in “Notes from Underground” (the loneliness of the misanthrope, contempt for reality, pride and self-abasement) (Nguyen and Do 2024). At the same time, the twilight atmosphere of the White Nights and the tone of the confessional also announce the great subsequent Dostoevsky monologues.

In conclusion, “White Nights” is a short work, but dense in philosophical meanings. The present analysis has highlighted the way in which Dostoevsky probes alienation, idealism, dreams and identity, inviting the reader to empathize with a wandering soul and at the same time to judge it critically. The message of the story can be synthesized dialectically: dreams can be saving, but also deceptive; reality can be painful, but also necessary for maturation. And our identity is built somewhere at the intersection of what we dream we will be and what we become through real choices and circumstances. Ultimately, Dostoevsky’s narrator chooses not to deny his dream, but to assume it as part of himself, transforming it into a precious memory – and into a story told to the world. In this gesture lies perhaps the key to the philosophical reconciliation proposed by the text: reality and dream meet in memory and art, where human experience – no matter how ephemeral or imaginary – acquires a universal meaning and value. Without a doubt, this is the perennial lesson that “White Nights” offers us, justifying its special place in the canon of literature with profound philosophical implications.

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