The topic stated in the title is explored in various aspects. First of all – the question of “minor forms” in relation to “A Sentimental Novel” (or rather a Romance), as the author called his story, is discussed. Basically, comprehension of the “White Nights” message is given through the decoding of its title, the subtitle, the dedication and the epigraph. Special attention is paid to symbolic meanings of the characters’ names.
“White Nights” is, on the one hand, analyzed as a prophetic sketch of the young author’s personal fate, whose “dreams” had to face bitter reality when one St-Petersburgian white night he had been arrested after a meeting at Petrashevsky’s circle.
On the other hand, the romantic Dostoevsky’s narration is interpreted as an overture to his big-scaled compositions. The characters of the early “minor form” gain their great literary destiny in the realm of the Great Pentateuch, where the “dreamer” notion reveals its new content transforming either into the hero of “Crime and Punishment” or growing into the character of yet another novel – Price Myshkin.
And finally the essay investigates (on certain chosen examples) a truly great cinematographic and also choreographic destiny of the “White nights”.
The “Sentimental Love Story” is full of riddles and it keeps on striking imagination of the readers (information about the newly sparked interest to it opens the essay), critics, and producers. Discussions around its interpretations do not calm down. All of this taken together constitutes a great destiny of the “White Nights” – the “minor form” composition by F.M. Dostoevsky.