White Nights · a short reading
A passage from White Nights. Translated by Constance Garnett.
Russian · English
English translation prepared automatically for the Brief. Original sources and creator credits remain the reference.
"You want to know, Nastenka, what our hero, that is I--for the hero of the whole business was my humble self--did in his corner? You want to know why I lost my head and was upset for the whole day by the unexpected visit of a friend? You want to know why I was so startled, why I blushed when the door of my room was opened, why I was not able to entertain my visitor, and why I was crushed under the weight of my own hospitality?"
The work and its creator
Explore the original at Project Gutenberg ↗
Creator: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Nationality / cultural background: Russian
Work / edition: 1918 translation
Translation: Constance Garnett · English
Historical public-domain text. Selected passage; line-end whitespace normalised. No generated quotation.
In the source: FIRST NIGHT; paragraph 100 in the selected body section
Selected for the Brief on 3 Oct 2026. This date records our selection, rather than when the work was created.
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