Quotes / Fyodor Dostoevsky / White Nights
My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man's life?
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
Genuine Found word for word in the work, in the original and in a public-domain translation.Draft entry, not yet reviewed
Боже мой! Целая минута блаженства! Да разве этого мало хоть бы и на всю жизнь человеческую?..
My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man's life?
- Work
- White Nights, 1848
- Where
- "Morning" (the last section)
The scene
These are the last lines of the story. Over four white nights the lonely narrator has fallen in love with Nastenka, who was waiting for another man; on the fourth night, just as she agrees to love him instead, her lodger returns and she runs to him. The next morning a letter from her asks his forgiveness, and he sees his future in his old housekeeper and his dingy room, fifteen years on and as alone as ever. He blesses her instead of reproaching her, and ends with this.
Read it in the text
Утро
Или луч солнца, внезапно выглянув из-за тучи, опять спрятался под дождевое облако, и всё опять потускнело в глазах моих; или, может быть, передо мною мелькнула так неприветно и грустно вся перспектива моего будущего, и я увидел себя таким, как я теперь, ровно через пятнадцать лет, постаревшим, в той же комнате, так ж одиноким, с той же Матреной, которая нисколько не поумнела за все эти годы.
Но чтоб я помнил обиду мою, Настенька! Чтоб я нагнал темное облако на твое ясное, безмятежное счастие, чтоб я, горько упрекнув, нагнал тоску на твое сердце, уязвил его тайным угрызением и заставил его тоскливо биться в минуту блаженства, чтоб я измял хоть один из этих нежных цветков, которые ты вплела в свои черные кудри, когда пошла вместе с ним к алтарю... О, никогда, никогда! Да будет ясно твое небо, да будет светла и безмятежна милая улыбка твоя, да будешь ты благословенна за минуту блаженства и счастия, которое ты дала другому, одинокому, благодарному сердцу!
Боже мой! Целая минута блаженства! Да разве этого мало хоть бы и на всю жизнь человеческую?..
Комментарии:
(Е. И. Семенов и H. H. Соломина)
MORNING · Constance Garnett
Either the sunbeams suddenly peeping out from the clouds for a moment were hidden again behind a veil of rain, and everything had grown dingy again before my eyes; or perhaps the whole vista of my future flashed before me so sad and forbidding, and I saw myself just as I was now, fifteen years hence, older, in the same room, just as solitary, with the same Matrona grown no cleverer for those fifteen years.
But to imagine that I should bear you a grudge, Nastenka! That I should cast a dark cloud over your serene, untroubled happiness; that by my bitter reproaches I should cause distress to your heart, should poison it with secret remorse and should force it to throb with anguish at the moment of bliss; that I should crush a single one of those tender blossoms which you have twined in your dark tresses when you go with him to the altar.... Oh never, never! May your sky be clear, may your sweet smile be bright and untroubled, and may you be blessed for that moment of blissful happiness which you gave to another, lonely and grateful heart!
My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man's life?
What it says
One moment of real happiness can be enough to fill a whole life.
How it is misread
Quoted as a joyful affirmation of living for the moment. It closes a story of loss: the moment of bliss belonged to someone else's happiness, the dreamer goes back to his solitude, and the line can be read as gratitude, as self-consolation, or as both.
Descent
- Draws onIvan Turgenev, 1843The story's epigraph, misquoted from Turgenev's poem 'The Flower' (1843), asks whether he was created only to stay for a moment near your heart; the last line answers it. Garnett's translation leaves the epigraph out.
Tags
What it is made of
Nearby
- The dreamer, if you want an exact definition, is not a human being but a creature of an intermediate sort. related
- The price of loving someone very much is never loving anyone again. alike 39%
- All this struggle for life that just ends on a random day. alike 37%
- Loving someone means giving them power to destroy you and trusting they won't. alike 36%
- Man is a creature that can get used to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him. alike 35%
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