Mila's logs

November quickly flew by, and I’m starting to see Christmas-themed shops and posters all around the city. Being a university student is strange during this time; it feels as if it is still autumn, but the chill of the mornings reminds me of the changing elements.

The perfect book to go back to in December is White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky, in my opinion—which is contradictory considering how the story is set somewhere in summer. White nights themselves, the phenomenon apparently occurs somewhere between June and July in places with high altitudes. Late sunsets, early sunrise, and the darkness never seems to dominate its supposed territory.

The book is a comparably short story, the perfect size that fits into your winter coat to carry around. Be that as it may, I don’t have a copy that I can bring around with me because I read this piece in a cafe in Asagaya, probably over three separate visits. The place reminds me both of a university library somewhere in England and the study of somebody utterly enamored with literature. The rich, deep-colored wooden bookshelves spill over with books, and one of them happened to be White Nights.

The story follows the main character’s chance encounter with a sorrowful woman, narrating through a series of heartaches that come with unrequited love. The fascinating thing is that the story can be viewed from the perspective of any character, and you can surely find the tragic yearning that manifests in each person you focus on. The complexities of their circumstances and emotions are different, the contexts different—but they all have a deeply rooted, human desire to be loved in return.

Oftentimes, I wondered if the desire for feelings to be reciprocated is an indication of fradulent love. If love has to come with a precondition for it to be reciprocated, could you call it love at all? Even further, is it not, in a sense, entitlement to believe the concept of “deservingness” in love, something entirely personal and not of concern to others? But after reading White Nights, I’ve started to see that there is a difference to entitlement and yearning.

There is a quiet resignation on seeing the nature of things unfold, not because reciprocation was deserved, but because it never was deserved. And that realization shatters a dream, an illusion of happiness that never existed outside the scope of one’s imagination and now must come to terms with the remains of a fractured longing. There must be a sense of stupidity, of idiocy, for daring to yearn, when in reality you’ve known all along but chose to ignore that small voice in the corner.

My personal interpretation of the story is that the protagonist never stops loving Nastenka. I’m a firm believer in the eternalness of love, even with faded passion and forgotten voices, the people we’ve loved remain within our words, actions, and the places their footprints have been engraved in.

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