" 'And I do nothing but dream everyday that I at last I shall meet some one. Oh, if only you know how often I have been in love in that way...'
'How? With whom?'
'Why, with no one, with an ideal, with the one I dream of in my sleep. I make up regular romances in my dreams.' "
To be in love with an ideal is a masterstroke of Dostoevsky. The character was so concentrated on his imagination, that he preferred it to real life, for it suited his needs.
"Let me tell you that in those corners live strange people- dreamers. The dreamer- if you wan an exact definition- is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort. For the most part he settles in some inaccessible corner, as though hiding from the light of day; once he slips into his corner, he grows to it like a snail, or, anyway, he is in that respect very much like that remarkable creature, which is an animal and a house both at once, and is called a tortoise."
My goodness what an interesting symbol. It so that he is at home everywhere he goes because he has his dreams. But are dreams enough? Do they fulfill our every desire? In those vague worlds that can only be reached in the imagination, is there something that always fulfills and never disappoints? Does the dreamer have to separate himself from reality in order to reach that world? -- And so- is he truly happy in playing God?-- He must be very secure in himself to not need anything but his imagination, to reject the whole world...
"At this moment, Nastenka, when we have met at last after such a long separation- for I have known you for ages, Nastaka, because I have been looking for someone for ages, and that is a sign that it was you I was looking for, and it was ordained that we should meet now- at this moment a thousand valves have opened in my head, and I must let myself flow in a river of words, or I shall choke."
"Now it breaks out spasmodically; and the book picked up aimlessly and at random, drops from my dreamer's hand before he haws reached the third page. His imagination is again stirred and at work, and again a new world, a new fascinating life opens vistas before him. A fresh dream- fresh happiness! A fresh rush of delicate, voluptuous poison! What is real life to him! To his corrupted eyes we live, you and I, Nastenka, so torpidly, slowly, insipidly; in his eyes we are all so dissatisfied with our fate, so exhausted by our life! And, truly, see how at first sight everything is cold, morose, as though ill-humoured among us... Poor things! thinks our dreamer. And it is no wonder that he thinks it! Look at these magic phantasms, which so enchantingly, so whimsically, so carelessly and freely group before him in such a magic, animated picture, in which the most prominent figure in the foreground is of course himself, our dreamer, in his precious person. See what varied adventures, what an endless swarm of ecstatic dreams."
Here the character points out the wonders of the imagination, when it serves the desires of its master. Why should it not be better than real life? Why anything is possible, what could be better?
"(...) sometime the mournful hour may strike, when for one day of that pitiful life he would give all his years of fantasy, and would give them not only for joy and for happiness, but without caring to make distinctions in that hour of sadness, remorse and unchecked grief. But so far that threatening time has not arrived- he desires nothing, because he is superior to all desire, because he has everything, because he is satiated, because he is the artist of his own life, and creates it for himself every hour to suit his latest whim. And you know this fantastic world of fairyland is so easily, so naturally created! As though it were not a delusion! Indeed, he is ready to believe at some moments that all this life is not suggested by feeling, is not mirage, not a delusion of the imagination, but that it is concrete, real, substantial!"
Interestingly enough, the character knows there will be a time when it will all end, when he sucked the wonders of the imagination dry. (Just as the book by George Sand: Lelia) And yet it isn't substantial! No matter how close the imagination gets to the real, for let's face it reality is the most spontaneous and refreshing, it still does not reach it! Sure, it travels from world to world "at every whim" and yet cannot reach the most obvious and most attainable: reality itself. He knows, and yet he avoids it.
"Yes, Nastenka, one deceives oneself and unconsciously believes that real true passion is stirring one's soul; one unconsciously believes that there is something living, tangible in one's immaterial dreams! And is it delusion? Here love, for instance, is bound up with all its fathomless joy, all its torturing agonies in his bosom...Only look at him, and you will be convinced! Would you believe, looking at him, dear Nastenka, that he has never known her whom he loves in his ecstatic dreams? Can it be that he has only seen her in seductive visions, and that this passion has been nothing but a dream? Surely they must have spent years hand in hand together- alone the two of them, casting off all the world and each uniting his or her life with the other's? Surely when the hour of parting came she must have lain sobbing and grieving on his bosom, heedless of the tempest raging under the sullen sky, heedless of the wind which snatches and bears away the tears from her black eyelashes? can all of that have been a dream- and that garden, dejected, forsaken, run wild, with its little moss-grown paths, solitary, gloomy, where they used to walk so happily together, where they hoped, grieved, loved, loved each other so long, 'so long and so fondly?' And that strange ancestral house where she spent so many years lonely and ad with her morose old husband, always silent and splenetic, who frightened them, while timid as children hid their love from each other? What torments they suffered, what agonies of terror, how innocent, how pure was their love, and how (I need hardly say Nastenka) malicious people were! And, good Heavens! surely he met her afterwards, far from their native shores, under alien skies, in the hot south in the divinely eternal city, in the in the dazzling splendor of the ball to the crash of music, in a palazzo (it must be in a palazzo), drowned in a sea of lights, on the balcony wreathed in myrtle and roses, where, recognizing him, she hurriedly removes her mask and whispering, 'I am free,' flings herself trembling into his arms, and with a cry of rapture, clinging to one another, in one instant they forget their sorrow and their parting and all their agonies, and the gloomy house and the old man and the dismal garden in that distant land, and the seat on which with a last passionate kiss she tore herself away from his arms numb with anguish and despair..."
Such detail says so much about the speaker. I love how beautifully he is distancing himself, and yet clearly is describing his own fantasies... It has such a beautiful despair and sadness to it, for no matter how marvelous of a fantasy it is, it is still not real. Even he, the poor man, admits that in the end it is not real, even after the adventures and the "years spent together" it is nothing but a mere dream, an illusion. And to live with such a thought! To consciously survive and coldbloodedly live through this mental torture, this sickening paradox, my goodness, that is sheer hell!
"(...) for such a life is a crime and a sin."
Which f reminds me of Chateubriand's novel called Rene- which shows what a torture it is to live that way.
"(...) it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct for the actual, the real"
"(...)and not one hour is the same as another; while fancy is so spiritless, monotonous to vulgarity and easily scared, the slave of shadows of the idea, the slave of the first cloud that shrouds the sun, and overcasts with depression the true Petersburg heart so devoted to the sun- and what is fancy in depression! One feels inexhaustible fancy is weary at last and worn out with continual exercise, because one is growing into manhood, outgrowing one's old ideals: they are being shattered into fragments, into dust; if there is no other life one must build one up from the fragments. And meanwhile the soul longs and craves for something else! And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire, and to rouse up in it again all that was so sweet, that touched his heart, that set his blood boiling, drew tears from his eyes, and so luxuriously deceived him!"
When he says "what is fancy in depression", he says the most important obstacle to our imagination: ourselves. Because we are human, we quickly become tired of the miraculous, "the soul longs and craves for something else". We will not be satisfied! The imagination, no matter how manufactured and spontaneous it gets, it will never be enough! For if we are not satisfied in reality, what makes us think that we will be in other realms? I love the description of this "manufacturing" process, the manufacturing of dreams. The bad thing about the imagination is that it only comes from inside US, we have to "rekindle the fire" and "seek a spark among the embers", there is nothing new and refreshing, it is only the "old dreams", for we soon will suck each dream out. And the next won't be better than the other...until we will run out of dreams...And nothing will satisfy. That is the disadvantage of the imagination, and it apparently outweighs the advantages.
"I love to build up my present in harmony with the irrevocable past, and I often wander like a shadow, aimless, sad and dejected, about the streets and crooked lanes of Petersburg."
"Your fantastic world will grow pale, your dreams will fade and die and will fall like the yellow leaves from the trees..."
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"(...)for all that you have lost, all that, all was nothing, stupid, simple nullity, there has been nothing but dreams!"
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"While I ... I took it all for the genuine thing. I thought that she...
But, my God, how could I have been so blind, when everything had been taken by another already, when nothing was mine; when, in fact, her every tenderness to me, her anxiety, her love ... yes, love for me, was nothing else but joy a the thought of seeing another man so soon, desire to include me, too, in her happiness?"
" 'I love him; but I shall get over it, I must get over it, I cannot fail to get over it; I am getting over it, I feel that ... Who knows? Perhaps it will all end to-day, for I hate him, for he has been laughing at me, while you have been weeping here with me, for you have not repulsed me as he has, for you love me while he has never looked at me, for in fact, I love you myself ... Yes, I love you! I love you as you love me; I have told you so before, you heard it yourself- I love you because you are better than he is, because you are nobler than he is, because, because he--"
This pathetic attempt at rationality I assume is very common. What our noble side wants is not the same as our egoistic side. For we want to be pleased, and need what we cannot have...
"Who knows perhaps my whole love was a mistaken feeling, a delusion- perhaps it began in mischief, in nonsense, because I was kept so strictly by grandmother? Perhaps I out to love another man, not him, a different man, who would have pity on me and...and..."
What doubt there must be in thinking whether the love one is feeling might be a delusion and might not even exist.
"(...) and I saw myself just as I was now, fifteen years hence, older, in the same room, just as solitary, with the same Matryona grown no clever for those fifteen years."
He is seeing his doom! He is calmly looking at his horrible future in the face...what a traumatizing thing for a man. And yet, he himself chose his fate! He CHOSE his doom! My goodness what power the mind has! What power to reject true, real, sincere happiness and go with the "old dreams" instead!
"(...) 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 man's life?"
Such a horribly sad ending! And yet so fitting for this character, for this marvelous story. For he would not have been the character the reader is familiar with if he had accepted an invitation to reality. It was in his nature to refuse, because he had spent his entire life training himself to reject reality- and preferred to stay in his world than not be served at every "whim". That is all he knew. He preferred to live a disillusioned life than feel reality, feel real emotions caused by a real human being.
Why is it that he does not want to live in the real? Is it because there are so many obstacles, and that one cannot so easily achieve his happiness? Is it all about happiness? Or was he just lazy and could not deal with it all, he wanted all his desires satisfied at once- a sort of coward? Or was he happier with his old dreams because at least he knew what to expect, as people live their entire lives in a routine?
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This is the most romantic story Dostoevsky has ever written, and marvelously enough he combined the insane with the romantic. The extreme, fanatical romantic. His characters are so confused and lost that they take everything to the extreme, and prefer to hide from the world in their lukewarm imaginations, instead of tasting life. Which is something to be admired, since they are doing it completely consciously and know exactly what they are missing, and even then, they choose dreams.
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