White Nights

And I realize now, more than ever, that I have lost all my best years!

And I realize now, more than ever, that I have lost all my best years!

And I realize now, more than ever, that I have lost all my best years!

Oh, how unbearable a happy person is sometimes!

No sooner had he written his first novella, Bednyye lyudi (1846; Poor Folk), than he was hailed as the great new talent of Russian literature by the most influential critic of his day, the “furious” Vissarion Belinsky.