“Surely you haven't lived like that all your life?”

“All my life, Nastenka,” I answered; “all my life, and it seems to me I shall go on so to the end.”

“No, that won't do,” she said uneasily, “that must not be; and so, maybe, I shall spend all my life beside grandmother. Do you know, it is not at all good to live like that?”

“I know, Nastenka, I know!” I cried, unable to restrain my feelings longer. “And I realize now, more than ever, that I have lost all my best years! And now I know it and feel it more painfully from recognizing….

— Dostoevsky, “White Nights”

[2:42]

**Alberto Giacometti, *Self-Portrait* (1921)**

An early mirror self-portrait by Alberto Giacometti. An expression somewhere between curiosity and contempt on his face. The turn of his shoe in lower right corner, as if leaning against the ankle at that impossible angle. A bluff in the pose. A direction that wants a silhouette but has to settle for a side-look.

[8:21]

**Alberto Giacometti, *Self-Portrait* (1924)**

Full frontal. Head frozen, as if sculpted from stone. Lower arm moving in the lower right half of the image. Something of a “dressed to kill” aura in the pose and presentation.

[11:52]