This week, I’ve chosen to focus on probably my two favorite readings to date: Gogol’s “The Nose” and Dostoevsky’s “White Nights”. Both stories pandered to the romantic side of me, which I absolutely adored. In “The Nose”, the absurdity of social standing is teased as Kovalyov wakes up without his nose and suffers at its hand as it surpasses him in rank. The narrative of the protagonist wandering around St. Petersburg is cartoonish and charming, especially as he struggles with his love interest’s nagging mother. The ridiculous nature of her letter in response, spinning a missing nose into a proposal acceptance, is hilarious: “If by this you mean to say that I am, as it were, turning up my nose at you, that is, rejecting you out of hand, then I am surprised that you yourself should bring this up, since I, as you are aware, was of a directly contrary opinion, and if you were now to seek the hand of my daughter in the legitimate way I would be prepared forthwith to grant your request, for this has always been the object of my most earnest desire…” (57). The desperate mother peddling her daughter in the face of a rogue nose adds to the sheer madness of the piece and contributes to the social climbing motif in a misogynistic but comical way. The internal struggle of Kovalyov is different yet similar to the struggle of Dostoevsky’s narrator in “White Nights”, as both grapple with a whimsical identity crisis set in a whimsical city — whether stemming from unrequited love or societal insecurity, their experiences are beautifully melancholy. As Dostoevsky’s narrator says, “The dreamer’ – if you want an exact definition – is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort.” Both of these pieces took different spins on the hopeless human condition in a conflicted and cosmic city.