Lélia by George Sand

"Isn't it sad to revive centuries that no longer exist and force them to entertain us now? Aren't these costumes of the past, which represent vanished generations, a frightening lesson to make us recall the brevity of human life in the midst of all this drunken festivity (...) They have passed on without dreaming of the generations that preceded them or of the ones to follow, without dreaming that they themselves, who were covered with gold and perfume and who surrounded themselves with luxuries, were awaiting the cold of the shroud and the oblivion of the tomb."

Morbid truth. Depressing!

"Nature has nothing rare enough within the treasuring of its naive joys to appease the thirst for happiness within us. We must have heaven, and we don't have it!
That is why we seek heaven in a creature like ourselves, and we expand on this creature all that high energy we've been given to use more nobly. We refuse God the emotion of adoration, an emotion which was put in us to return to God alone. We transfer it to an incomplete, feeble human being who becomes the god of our idolatrous cult."

"My God, is love only to be found in a desirous heart, in a suffering imagination, in the dreams which lull us during lonely nights? Is love an impalpable breath? Is love a meteor that burns and dies. Is it a world? My God, what is love?"

"Reverie can evoke nothing, because in the creations of thought nothing is as beautiful as brute, savage nature. One must look and feel before nature: the greatest poet invents the least."

Nothing in our minds can compare to the spontaneity of nature... it is the ultimate continuously living and refreshing masterpiece- the poet just needs to learn how to describe nature- something that is impossible to do perfectly. For to describe is to analyze. To analyze is to take away from the real meaning. A poet needs to learn how to enjoy nature- and let that be expressed.

"But what use have these voyages been to me? Have I ever seen anything which resembled my fantasies? Oh, how poor nature seemed to me, the sky leaden and the sea narrow, in contrast to the lands, skies and oceans that I crossed in my immaterial flight! What beauty is left to charm us in real life, what strengths are left to enjoy and admire in the human soul when the imagination has spend everything in advance by an abuse of its powers?"

This spending in "advance" was an abuse to the imagination's powers because it has a limit, it only goes so far as our mind has learned. The imagination cannot imagine something that is not connected to something that already exists: it is forever dependent on reality. It would be like craving some spice in a far off land that no one has ever discovered. I suppose the "pleasures" of the imagination consists mostly in the element of disillusion- taking reality and blurring it. Then it goes beyond the reality, into something more, or less- an added ingredient that creates the perfect realm. We fancy whatever we would like to happen in the reality. In the end, it always comes back to reality.

"How grave and solemn are those cries of time, which sound like a death cry, breaking indifferently on the resonant walls of dwellings or on echoless tombs."

"You are right to say that poetry has led men astray. She has desolated the real world, cold, poor, and wretched as it is compared to the dreams she creates. Drunk with her promises, lulled by her sweet mockeries, I could never resign myself to reality. Poetry has created other sensitives in me that nothing on earth could satisfy (...)"

The disadvantages of the imagination: it creates a gap between reality and dreams. This gap provides such a contrast that the poet dreams while looking at his own reality. This shocking contrast can "lead men astray". Meaning: they obsess over something they could never achieve.

"Day by day this power of love increased, exciting my sensitivity and spreading itself unrestrainedly around me. I threw all my thoughts, all my strength into the void of an elusive universe which sent me back all my sensations blunted."

"There is a refuge from God: nothingness."

"Rein in the desire of your ardent soul. Prolong this blind hope and this childishness of the heart with all your strength. These qualities live only for a day and never return. Govern wisely, guard vigilantly, and spend frugally the treasure of your illusions."

There is a fine balance between sucking your imagination dry, and enjoying them cautiously while they last. That is the difference between Sténio- who worshiped the present: nature and all its beauty- and Lélia- who craved for more and more and enjoyed them too much. To a point where they ceased to be illusions but food to feed the soul. They become a form of sustenance and ceased to be concepts and ideals.

"In the silence of the fields, amid austere country life, it is always acknowledged as the voice of God."

No one who lives so close to nature can really treasure and have respect for it without involuntary belief in God- as if believing was the same thing as acknowledging the existence of nature. this shows the wisdom of the ones who are surrounded by nature: an instinctive wisdom.

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I really enjoyed this book. It brought me a more in depth perspective on living in illusions, and living in reality. Sténio lived in a romanticized reality, that worshiped the real in such an honest and youthful way. His romantic ideas found source in the nature he saw. Lélia is a very interesting example on the life in the unreal- when the real becomes dull and unexciting while the mind is constantly spent in fleeting thoughts, thoughts that only give momentary pleasure. I take this character to be as a warning, as Sténio warned the young girl- to be careful how one uses one's illusions, and not to make more of them- expect more of them- than one is meant to. Because then, they cease to be what they are.

It was curious how she found refuge in the silent and solitary and urged the blazing youth to do the same. To give up his youth, and really, become her. She, who had so much suffering. She shouldn't have killed his love for reality by pointing out the cold aspects that make it up= she should have left him in his youth, instead of trying to et him out. I think she was threatened by it, and saw it as a sort of disease- because of her personal experiences.

Magnes was an example of the restraining of one's nature, and how one can't escape one's nature through suppression. It is bound to come out and be worse than before. I wonder why Sand had Magnes kill Lélia. What significance does it show? The one who suppressed his desires killed the one who indulged too much in them. Something to think about.

The Demon by Lermontov

"And long he gazed, with fascination
at the sweet view; as if in a dream
came as on summons from afar
and swam before him, star on star."

"Her dreams, his manner of appearing,
such flattery had not failed to reach
her heart; his sad gaze, the endearing,
the tender strangeness of his speech.
herself not knowing rhyme or reason,
she's pined and languished many days;
her heart may wish to pray in season
to holy saints, to him it prays;
worn out by struggle unabating,
if she lies down on slumber's bed,
her pillow burns, she's suffocating,
she starts up, shivering with dread;
her breast, her shoulders flame, she races
to breathe, she chokes, mist's in her eyes,
her arms are thirsting for embraces,
and on her lips a kiss that dies..."

"
...
my heaven, my hell are in your gaze.
I love you with no earthly passion,
such love that you could never find:
with rapture, in the towering fashion
of an immortal heart and mind."





















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I'm surprised Lermontov depicted this concept- for a devil be attracted to a maiden. This just seems too much of a taboo, especially at that time. I really liked how the demon was fascinated by her beauty. Why, I wonder, did she attract his attention? A mere human being? Personally, I think it was because of the "purity" she represent. Not only because she probably was a virgin, but because she had a pure MIND. Lermontov portrays this very well:

she's pined and languished many days;
her heart may wish to pray in season
to holy saints, to him it prays;

She is so affected! Her whole world is upside down! As much as she tried to keep her piety, she was deterred by him. And yet, she still tries, thinking it is her duty. Only a pure maiden would want to do good when she knows she is entering the realm of temptation. And what temptation? Those are nothing but dreams!

With what passion can a demon love?

The Brute and other Farces by Chekhov

The Brute

"Appearances, I admit, can be deceptive. In appearance, a woman may be all poetry and romance, goddess and angel, muslin and fluff. To look at her exterior is to be transported to heaven. But I have looked at her interior, Mrs. Popov, and what did i find there- in her soul? A crocodile. And, what is more revolting, a crocodile with an illusion, a crocodile that imagines tender sentiments are its own special province, a crocodile that thinks itself queen of the realm of love!

Hilarious! What a caricature of the female! Ha! And he's not that wrong!

Thought the story was very adorable. How word can say the exact opposite of what one feels at the moment, as an attempt to hide oneself. How one's principles and beliefs can be unexpectedly shaken, just as if they never existed, and one is really the opposite of who one thinks they are. And shaken in such a glimpse of a second! As if years of principles could stand against a fraction of a moment!

The Harmfulness of Tobacco

"When she's in a bad mood,s eh calls me dumb bell. Or viper. Or Satan."

I laughed so hard when I read this- i love the emphatic sentences! This was as funny as Gogol's play. How beautifully the element of surprise is used here- to create such ironic humor. This is such a genius parody- depicting such weak men. How pathetic such men are. And i love how the quote so comically shows the weakness, of the men under tyrannical rule- their wife. They are so helpless, and so pathetic! Oh so comic! Wonderful play!

"And to stop, somewhere far away, in the middle of a field, to stand there under the wide heavens like a tree, a post, a scarecrow, and watch the bright, gentle moon overhead and forget, just forget..."

Even he was capable of fantasizing.

Swan Song

"I'm alone, like the wind in the fields."
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Goodness, Chekhov must've been such a great person to be around. Such wit and humor...Too bad he is dead.

--

Pub by Grove Press

The Beloved Returns: Lotte in Weimar by Thomas Mann

"The strange thing was that these pictures and memories had this extreme vividity and brilliance, their fullness of detail, not, as it were, at first hand. It was as though memory had not originally been so concerned to preserve them in all their detail, but had to yield them up afterwards, bit by bit, word by word, out of its very depths. They had been searched out, refashioned, reproduced with all their attendant circumstance- give, so to say, a fresh coat of paint and hung in a strong light,f or the sake of the significance which they had unanticipatedly taken on."

This is referring to Goethe's taking of the memories (Lotte's). But this really relates to me. Of course in my childhood I never thought those moments held any significance for my future life- I just lived them. But now, bits and pieces from them pop out randomly and unexpectedly. Things that I haven't thought about since I've experienced them...it all seems like a dreamworld- and I willingly drown in it.

"(...)but loved without sense or aim, as a poet does."

"He must discover and choose her, realize her worth and draw her out of the darkness of the unknown to giver her his love."

"And in very truth the godlike is not to be taken quite seriously when, that is, it lodges temporarily in the human form."

Yes, the form itself doesn't appreciate the fact that he has been chosen to be a temple of the muse. It's ironic- but apparently, that is the way it naturally needs to be. For if he admired what he had inside of him, then he wouldn't be able to worship the true beauty, radiating out of him.

"(...) you could put no human dependence on it, for it was something like an emotional means to an end that was unreal and extra-human."

These "godlikes" play with their feelings and emotions as if it was something apart from themselves and they are above it.

--answer to previous quote--

"(...) poesy has nothing extra-human, aside from her divinity. (...) Truly she is a mystery, the divine made human'' actually just as human as divine, a phenomenon which reminds me one of the profoundest mysteries of our Christian doctrine- and of some charming pagan ones too. It may be because she is double, being human and divine, or perhaps because she is beauty itself' but she reminds me of that enchanting old picture of the boy who loves to gaze enraptured at his own charms. She tends to mirror herself. Smiling she reflects herself, in language, feeling, thought, and passion. (...) Why should not poesy, why should not the beautiful, recognize herself? She does, even when anguishing with passion; for she is human in her anguish but godlike in her pleasure."

Poesy is vain? That is an interesting concept. And is this vanity also a sin? Or is that all she can do but admire the beauty she reflects? Was the boy vain by looking at his own charms? But if he looked beyond himself, he would have noticed the beauty of the sun setting beyond the fields of grass. Can poesy deny that nature is more beautiful than what she describes? Can a description equal the thing described? Can a thought mirror reality?

Charlotte says:
"Why did he need to grow so great, that youth who tempted and distracted me all summer long, that I must grow great with him and be held in lifelong bonds, into the same painful tension into which I was flung by his aimless adoration? What were my poor foolish words, that they had to be uttered for immortality? When we drove to the ball, in the carriage with my cousins, and talked about novels and the pleasure of dancing, I prattled on, never dreaming, God knows, that I was prattling for the centuries and my words were to stand for ever in cold print! I would have held my tongue or tried to say something more fit for immortality. I am ashamed, Herr Doctor, when I read it, ashamed to stand there with it in my shrine before all the people! The youth, being a poet, should have known how to make my words sound nobler and cleverer, more fitting as I stand there in my niche- it was his duty, since he dragged me into immortality against my will..."

She accepted and her fate, her destiny. What a feeling, to be immortal, to be made immortal by a poet...As she said- in cold print. How much humanity expected from her- even though she was a commoner "dragged into immortality" with the divine poet. And what a contrast- the poet that converses with the muses, the heavenly inspiration, and her- who "prattled" on about dancing. How original! That is why the poet needs this life- to depict the real!

"We gladly conceded that one may scorn poetry when one is embodied poetry itself. In fact, as just that, as the fulfillment of our most poetic dreams, did we regard this noble and handsome human being."

"But as flesh and blood always conflict to some extent with the claims of the ideal, a disappointment of these is inevitable. Frankly, it is an advantage, a clarification of the idea, when flesh and blood are absent."

How much easier it is to believe in something that hasn't a form, emotions, ...opinions! Like Mann said, it is actually easier to believe in such a thing- and even an advantage. But one may ask, an advantage to what? Just that it doesn't contradict the ideal, and does it really benefit the idealist in the end? This again is the whole, reality vs the imagination concept. It wholly depends on what the individual prefers. And for the rare idealist who also prefers reality, he needs to learn to overcome such disappointments- for it will be the death of his ideals!

"He was to us, in truth, more a personification than a person. That is a difficult distinction; perhaps after all it may be just the qualities of a person that enable him to become a personification."

Yes that is difficult; does the personality make up the person or does the person make up the personality?

"(...)as I realized that the great poet is a ruler of men; that the course of his fate, his work, and his life is effective far beyond the confines of his person, and conditions the character, the culture, and the future of the nation!"

What influence can an author(a genius, that is) have! Imagine how many people looked to Goethe to represent their culture- and at the same time, what insufferable pressure was put upon Lotte!

"For what is the possible in comparison with the actual? And yet I often think there is a kind of injustice here- and injustice due to the fact (yes, it is possible in this connection to speak of facts) that actuality takes up all the room and attracts all the admiration to itself. On the other hand, the possible, the unfulfilled, is only an outline, a guess at what might have been. (...) But where the possible still exists, if only in form of longing, of an adumbration, a whisper of what might have been- that is the sign-manual of destruction, of 'pining away'."

Destruction towards what?

"Man cannot tarry long in his conscious mind; must take from time to time refuge in his unconscious, there his being has its roots."

The unconscious is the real man inside

"That is man's prerogative on earth: to call things by name and put them in a system. They cast down their eyes before him, so to speak, when he calls them by name, for to name is to command."

Interesting- forcing authority upon something just because that something is categorized.

"The spiritual, she felt, needed to be poor, ugly, and bare of earthly honour, in order to test aright the capacity of men to honor it."

Reminds me of Christ- how he had to serve to be great.

"It was meant to contract the sense we of ten have, after contact with the beautiful, or rather fretful and condescending estrangement from ordinary life. We turn our backs with regret upon that sphere; the persistent applause down below was evidence of the fact. It was not so much enthusiastic for the actors as a means of clinging yet a little longer to the beautiful before one dropped one's hands and resigned oneself once more to the commonplace."

It is ironic how desperate we are for the beautiful, and yet so eagerly and contently we "resign" ourselves to the fate life has dealt us. A tad bit paradoxical.

"(...) and all reality and achievement are nothing but the impaired possible."

Depicts the delicate line of our lives- how easily they could go in any direction by any little touch- by any tweak- and yet how absolutely defined and even predestined they are. Like a master with his brushes, which could go in any way possible- and yet it hits the canvas at a certain point- on purpose. So that he paints what he was born to paint.

**********
"Say, if you will, that I am the flame, and into me the poor moth flings itself. Yet in the chance and change of things I am the candle too, giving my body that the light may burn."

So in the end it not only "eats" others, but it also consumes the one the flame occupies. As if the genius just needs a body to live (burn) in once every few centuries. Beautiful concept. As if it was beyond him too...

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The book was extremely interesting. Mann dabbles in the worship of the spiritual, which was thought provoking. The story was about Goethe's Lotte- how she dealt with being immortalized, and how Goethe's genius affected him and the people he "sacrificed" to his genius.

Also I think the book was such an insight to the lives of geniuses and even a fragment of their thought processes. It stresses the importance of such a creature for humanity- and what happens when the genius and common man meet (woman in this case) and whom benefits whom. In this case, Goethe benefited so much from observing common life, and that is how he breathed in his genius. Without such innocence such naivety- Lotte would not have been immortalized for centuries past and centuries to come.

--

Pub by Alfred A. Knopf, 1940.

Narrative Poems by Alexander Pushkin & Mikhail Lermontov

Onegin's Journey by Pushkin

"Whatever feelings may have smarted
inside me then, they fled away:
They're all transmitted or departed...
Peace to you storms of yesterday!
Then my imagination ordered
deserts, and billows pearly-bordered,
sea-tumult, summits craggy-browed,
with my ideal, the maiden proud
And sufferings quite beyond redeeming...
and yet new seasons always bring
new visions; humbled is my spring
with its inebriated dreaming,
and, as a poet, I've topped up
the water-quotient in my cup."

The visual imagery here so marvelously describes the energy of the storm, and by positioning the "maiden proud" right in the middle of this electricity, cries out poetry in its most violent form. For what poet does not dream of this exact scene, this scene that is so dramatic which provides so many contrasts? -this extreme violence of nature, and the maiden proud standing it through all.

Also, I was extremely excited to find this book- because it was a "missing part" to the real Eugene Onegin. But of course this did not affect the ending whatsoever, just the journey part of Onegin was explained in more detail in this story/poem.

Pushkin is so extremely entertaining! It is as if one is watching comedy in a play. Like Graf-Nulin; hilariously written!

Mozart and Salieri by Pushkin

"I murdered sounds, and the dissected
Music like a cadaver. Harmony
Became for me an algebra."

I am so afraid of doing that! Goodness. I hope it won't become a science for me- because then it will kill it all.

" No.
To me, nothing's for laughter when a useless
Dauber is botching up Raphael's Madonna;
To me, nothing's for laughter, when some base
Buffoon in an ignoble parody
Degrades the name of Dante..."

I can actually relate to that. Some people don't accept that they don't have talent, and by this denial they blaspheme masterpieces that humble.

" If only
everybody could so feel the strength
Of harmony! But no: for in that case
The world could not continue: no one would
Trouble about life's grosser cares.' and all
Would dedicate themselves to untrammeled art!
How few of us there are, we happy idlers,
Chosen ones who spurn the ignoble call
Of mere utility, priests dedicated
Only to beauty."

Spurn means to disdain. It is interesting that he uses the same word ignoble- for both characters. It shows that they both believe in the same idea, but in different ways. Mozart here, of course, is the real genius. He is the "god: of music- so to speak and the true worshiper. And Salieri is only a novice in his worship. And yet, as he himself describes- he forgot how to truly worship- to get lost in it- and only the "idea" of worship remains. Not the act itself. Salieri raised Mozart up to the stars- consciously knowing that he himself is drifting farther away from it. Maybe that is why it bothers him so much when the old man sings Mozart- because it is insulting the rank of his ideal. Mozart on the other hand is still a worshiper, "a priest", and by getting lost in this harmony, this music, he learned its secrets. One has to let it (the mysteries of the universe, the beauty of nature) teach him. That is true genius. Maybe that is why Salieri killed Mozart- because he knew he had lost it...as I went back in the poem he clearly says,

"No, I can't fight my fate
I've been picked out to stop him, otherwise
We'll all be ruined, music's priests, its servants,
not I alone, with my dull reputation..
No, what use is it, if Mozart lives on
and reaches a new summit? by so doing
will he raise art up higher? No! as soon
As he is gone, it will sink down again:"

There! Mozart only continues to go up higher, while Salieri would descend lower. he raised the bar not only for all humanity to see, but for other Salieris- while knowing what is happening...the contrast will provide greater failure on their part. Because then, it will be all too apparent that they cannot continue being music priests at all, they would know that it is all a lie- that all their harmony became "algebra". And that is something they cannot accept- they failed their "idol".

--
Pub by Vintage Books

The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man by Dostoevsky

"I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me a lone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for any one when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people are only me myself."

Who hasn't had thoughts like these. Maybe everything we have created, maybe it is all a dream. If that is true, then we are damn good creators. (Excuse the expression)

"Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason or desire, not by the head but by the heart"

"A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream?"

"The main thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's everything; nothing else is needed-"

----

I loved the beautiful metaphor/allegory of the world he had found. My goodness it is just so easy to give in to all of these horrible things- and yet how naively and innocently we do it! "and they proclaimed that suffering was a beauty, for in suffering alone was there meaning." They became romantics after killing each other off and taking part in the evil nature of man! A little ironic, but so terribly true. And it is worst of all when raw cruelty comes out of the most innocent of men. - And so to love one another is the ultimate secret! To be what the people of his dream used to be; children!

White Nights by Dostoevsky

" '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.