I am a Dreamer... I have so little real life! In reality, I have lived moments such as these so rarely that I hope to make them live again in my dreams. I will dream of you all night, every week, every month, all year round....

This is how the first-person narrator expresses himself when, one night, he meets a weeping girl who also describes herself as a "dreamer." We will never learn his name; hers we discover is Nasten'ka, and she lives with her grandmother, who keeps her pinned to her skirt with a safety pin to prevent her from wandering off. It is a peculiar sort of cloistering, given that Nasten'ka slips out into the night without trouble and has embarked on a relationship with a young neighbor who promised to marry her—an improbable, "tear-jerking" tale that would have seduced no one but our naive Dreamer. On the other hand, he is a young man disillusioned with life, possessing a fantasy sick with anguish, waiting for a

spark from which to flare up a fire to warm the frozen heart, from which to revive that which was once so dear, which touched the soul and made the blood boil, which drew tears from the eyes and deceived so majestically.

And if for Nasten'ka the encounter is a way to console herself and, if you will, a coquettish, self-victimizing pose to win admiration and toy with feelings, for the Dreamer the young woman is the continuation of the Dream, of a fantasy of Love.

Oh Nasten'ka, Nasten'ka, if only you knew how alone I am.

the Dreamer cries out, as though the girl could, or wished to, fill his void. Poor Dreamer! The subtle game of seduction is carried to the point where our Dreamer is ready to marry her, given that Nasten'ka's betrothed has failed to show up to honor his promise of taking her to the altar. Better a Dreamer than an old maid pinned to her grandmother's skirts!

I had looked at her... She had leaned against me more heavily. At that moment a young man passed us by. (...) God, what a cry! What a shudder! How she tore herself from my arms to run toward him. (...) I remained there, for a long time, watching them... In the end, both had vanished from my sight.

In her fine introduction, Sarah Tardino evokes the distant love of the Provençal poet Jaufré Rudel; in this light, Nasten'ka would be a Fantasy of Love, a figure both idealized and real who, as Giosuè Carducci sang, "three times the trembling mouth / with love’s kiss did kiss." Far too much grace for the wretched Dreamer! This interpretation focuses attention on the relationship between the two youths, losing sight of the core of the tale: the Dream. Within a narrative structure hinged upon dialogue, the story is actually a long soliloquy, in which the part recounted by Nasten'ka is merely the distorted mirror of the Dreamer's suffering and of his need to construct a narrative wherein he is the protagonist, the savior of the sorrowful maiden. In this dialogue born of the Dreamer's fantasy, Nasten'ka asks herself

why can we not all be like brothers? (...) Why can one not speak plainly what is in one's heart...?

Why can the Dream not become real, I would add? Why can one not meet someone to confide in, and fall in love with, with whom to escape from loneliness? Or perhaps, it is better to go on dreaming.

Why read it? A fragile tale, difficult to grasp, yet admirably written.

White Nights