The Landlady

Compelled by an unforeseen circumstance to vacate his mediocre, yet comfortable lodging, the young man in today’s passage finds himself wandering the streets of St. Petersburg searching for an inexpensive refuge in a city where rented rooms are expensive. As was so common with nineteenth century Russian novelists, note how Dostoevsky, in this particular passage, uses this young man’s search for an apartment to create a profile of life for the inhabitants of St. Petersburg.

“The Landlady”

“For a long time he searched, most diligently, but was soon overtaken by new sensations which he had hardly ever experienced before. At first casually and absent-mindedly, then with attentiveness, and finally with intense curiosity, he began to look around him. The crowd and the life of the street, the noise, the movement, the novelty of his situation—all the pettiness and commonplace rubbish of which the practical and busy citizen of St. Petersburg tired of long ago in his fruitless but agitated quest for the possibility of settling down in the peace and quiet of a warm nest somewhere, a nest gained by sweat, toil, and various other means—all this tastelessly coarse ‘prose’ and tedium aroused…..a sort of quietly joyful, luminous sensation.”

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