THE IDIOT: THE JOURNEY FROM RESURRECTION TO CRUCIFIXION I am selective in reading novels, particularly long ones, and I dither to dip my head into middling ones even if they offer some interesting perspectives on life, history or storytelling. I was wary when started reading The Idiot , since the drama spans over 660 pages. Having read the work, my feeling is –Give me another 600 pages of this signature! The Idiot has made deep imprint in my psyche and I am sure it is going to stay with me forever. I may even consider a re-read!If the primary purpose of literature is entertainment spliced with enlightenment, then The Idiot is a spectacular success. Its plot is thick with events, the characters exhibit extremes of unpredictability in behavior and emotions, the events are engrossing and many passages have rare lyrical intensity , intellectual insight and psychological depth. Unlike Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamzov (the only other two novels that I have read), pontificating passages (common in many Russian novels) - eg: the letter of Ippolit and Prince Myshkin’s last debate during the party at the house - are kept to the bare minimum . The novel concentrates on events, situations, actions, moods, misunderstandings, accusations, whimsical outpourings, loneliness and untenable sympathies to engage the reader. Many fine novels end up in catastrophic denouement damaging the overall effectiveness. Surprisingly, The Idiot excels in its finale too. No wonder, this classic has achieved a rare stature of greatness in the realm of art.Most of the central characters of this novel surface at the very beginning when Prince Lyov Nikolayevitch Myshkin returns to Petersburg from a Swiss clinic after a prolonged treatment for epilepsy. The train journey at the beginning introduces two important characters- Parfyon Semyonovitch Rogozhin (someone who stays till the end as a shadow of the Prince, a kind of doppelgänger) and Lebedyev – and soon we enter into the world of two major families of this novel- Epachin and Ivolgin - representing two ends of social strata. The prince soon makes acquaintance of the sole distant relative of him in the city - Lizaveta Prokofyevna, the wife of General Ivan Fyodorovitch , the head of Epachin family. His childlike candor and ‘inimitable idiocy’ soon charms all Epachins including the three daughters, Alexandra, Adelaida, and Aglaya, the latter being the youngest and the most beautiful. It is here he first encounters the portrait of the beautiful and mysterious lady Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov , the tumultuous character that occupies the center stage of this novel. Immediately following this, the Prince meets the chaotic Ivolgin Family: General Ardalion Alexandrovitch , the alcoholic father; Nina Alexandrovna , the gracious mother; the ambitious daughter Varvara Ardalionovna (Varya) ; the son Gavril Ardalionovitch (Ganya) who later rivals the Prince and Kolya , the younger brother of Ganya, the ever ready errant boy of everyone who soon becomes the Prince’s confidante. The greatness of Dostoevsky lies in his imponderable capacity to delve into the depth of all the above characters exposing their goodness and weakness. In a novel of this magnitude, it is quite possible that a modern day author knowingly or unknowingly sidelines some of the characters or sketch a shallow portrayal of them; but not in the case of Dostoevsky. The overall architecture of the novel is also robust and there are signal sentences embedded in the beginning that foreshadows the finale. The reader wonders about the mysterious absence of a central character of this novel for more than 300 pages and yet at the end, everything falls in place in its grand scheme. Everyone that the Prince meets is disarmed with his simplicity, open manners, and for a brief time at least he does manage to bring out some goodness even in the worst of them. He is identified as a "holy fool" by Rogozhin early in the novel. He is loved by almost all characters in this novel, but no one wants to own him. Both Aglaya , the fiancée of Prince, and her mother Lizaveta Prokofyevna are in eternal vacillation whether the Prince would make a good husband. As a character openly confronts him in the novel, My dear Prince, paradise on earth is not easily achieved; but all the same you are counting on paradise in a way; paradise is a difficult thing, Prince, much more difficult than it seems to your wonderful heart.. One cannot help noticing a Christ-like quality in everything that Prince does or speaks. Perhaps one scene in the novel that nakedly showcases the Prince's nature happens immediately after the Prince undergoes the first epileptic seizure after his return. The prince, still recuperating from it, is being visited by the whole Epachin family, when suddenly into this cheerful and elegant though inwardly tense circle burst the fashionable young revolutionaries and nihilists which include the garrulous Ippolit , the ostensible "son of Pavlishchev ", Keller the "boxer". They accuse the Prince that he acted like avaricious man in grabbing a fortune left to him by Pavlishchev , the late benefactor of Prince Myshkin , without sharing it with the ‘so called’ legitimate ones (Ganya proves later that they non-existent) . This is a disagreeable, repulsive and disquieting scene where these misguided young people mercilessly and nakedly inflicts a double pain upon the good Myshkin. The Prince, unaided, stands exposed, critically observed by the entire members of Epachin family and most of the Ivolgin family. And how does the situation end? It ends with Myshkin, despite the minor mistakes he makes during the excitement, behaving exactly according to his kind, gentle, childlike nature, accepting smilingly the unbearable, answering selflessly the most shameless speeches, willing to assume every fault and to search for every fault in himself – and his complete failure in this with the result that he is despised, not by one side or the other, but by both! All turn against him, he has stepped on everyone's toes; for an instant the most extreme social opposites in age and point of view are completely wiped out, all are united and at one in turning their backs with indignation and rage on the single one among them who is pure! Can a pure heart bring solace to this world? I won’t answer it as the readers are sure to find answer as they immerse in this one. Why does no one comprehend the Prince, even though almost all love him in some way, almost everyone finds his empathetic gentleness exemplary? What distinguishes him, the man of magic, from the others, the ordinary folks? Why are they right in snubbing him? Why must they do it, inexorably? Why must things go with him as they did with Jesus, who in the end was abandoned not only by the world but by all his disciples as well?It is because the "idiot's" way of thinking is unlike others. Not that he thinks less logically or in a more childlike and associative way than they – that is not it. His way of thought is magical. This gentle "idiot" completely denies the life, the way of thought and feeling, the world and the reality of other people. His reality is something quite different from theirs. Their reality in his eyes is no more than a shadow, and it is by seeing and demanding a completely new reality that he becomes their enemy. In an excellent introduction to this novel, superbly translated by the best known translator pair in the world of translations , Richard Pevear Larissa Volokhonsky , a letter written by Dostoevsky to his beloved niece Sofia Ivanova is cited :The main idea of the novel is to portray a positively beautiful man. There is nothing more difficult in the world and especially now. All writers, not only ours, but even all European writers, who have merely attempted to portray the positively beautiful, have always given up. Because the task is immeasurable. The beautiful is an ideal, but this ideal, whether ours or that of civilized Europe, is still far from being worked out. There is only one perfectly beautiful person -Christ - so that the appearance of this immeasurably, infinitely beautiful person is, of course, already an infinite miracle The Idiot is constructed out of two impossibilities-the impossibility of a novelistic portrayal of an epileptic living in tranquility and the impossibility of portrayal of a Christ like figure , and beyond that , the failure of that figure to transmute the world around him. I believe Dostoevsky has astonishingly succeeded in this attempt.
Do you answer ‘yes’ to any of the following questions?1. You ever sleep in another person’s house for the first time, not wanting to turn on a light to see your way to the toilet, and run into a wall?2. You ever been in a public building at night and the power fails, and you run into a wall?3. You ever been camping with an overcast night and straggle into the woods to take a pee, and run into a wall of shrubbery?4. You ever been in a leadership reaction course, blindfolded, and run into a wall?5. You ever been deployed to Qatar in the transition billeting tent at night, not wanting to disturb all the soldiers with your mag-light, and run into a tent wall?What do these questions have in common? 3 things. One, you’ve lost your primary sense--eyesight. Two, you’ve run into something through which you can’t pass. Three, to continue you must turn east or west. This is exactly how I felt when I read The Idiot. Lost, in a strange place, against a barrier. (preview: it’s all about the translator, paragraph 10)Then I agonized for a week about posting a review of a piece of monolithic literature to which I award only 2 stars. How the hell, dude, can you award 2 stars to an uber-classic? Did you forget it was Dostoevsky? Do you realize that among your 56 friends on Goodreads that 2 stars is the lowest anyone has rated it? You missed something; you’re ignorant!And I truly subjected myself to several good harangues. I reread the lengthy, academic foreword and afterword. I thought deeply about the book. I stretched my mind, my cognitive abilities, each time against a wall. I was really concerned about your opinion of me, as a reader, as a consumer of serious literature, as a trustworthy, balanced critic of dense writing.Then it appeared to me, like a turn in the dark. Screw you!! I’m not writing this for you. I write reviews to capture how I feel about a specific novel at a particular place and time in my life. It’s completely fair to award 2 stars to Dostoevsky. At this particular time in my life--as I realize the Deepwater Horizon oil spill may have been overblown by the media, as I decide whether or not to delete my Facebook account, as I realize Obama’s economic plan is an absolute failure with unemployment remaining above 9% for the next 12 months and home values not rebounding for 36 months, as I wonder if next will be as tough as the previous year raising my 3 young kids--at this particular time in my life, I didn’t very much enjoy The Idiot. This is where I’m at in time and place with The Idiot, and I’m so glad to capture feelings other than a middling 3 stars (which is sometimes a rounding error). 2 stars is harsh, but fair.I read Crime and Punishment twice, and think The Brothers Karamazov one of the best 5 books I ever read. I’ve been under the spell of Dostoevsky for nearly half my life. So my lean this week into The Idiot was a disappointment.Here’s what the author said about the book: “There’s much in the novel...that didn’t come off, but something did come off. I don’t stand behind my novel, but I do stand behind my idea.” Authors sometimes give themselves a giant pat on the back, but couch it in self-deprecating language. As if to say the ideas in the novel were so august, so pantheon, so divine that their ability to define or make sense of these ideas with terrestrial words resulted, simply, in a spatchcock of human themes. Ignore the writing. The message is in the idea. Come on, Fyodor, we all know you write like an immortal.The Idiot is brimming with philosophical inquiry into people’s lives, society, culture, and history. Immutable, transcendent ideas about which Russian writers always grapple. The authors of the foreword/afterword reveal and underscore dozens of themes in the book. They discuss mechanics and perspectives and symbols. They discuss Russian history and the Russian concept of suffering, and how these were adroitly parsed among the characters. And how the characters themselves represented the unique attributes--in splinter form--of the Russian whole.Well that’s all great. You read it and take from it what you want. I found it tangled, hard to follow, uninteresting. The characters were so weighed down by being representatives of the Russian whole that they failed to be engaging characters by themselves. And so unlike Dostoevsky, I found not a single sentence worth transcribing here. In 660 pages, wow, nothing worth remembering. How unfulfilling. Certainly nothing like THIS powerful, euphonic sentence. (Important) Because I know Fyodor can bring the noise, it leads me to believe that the translation is faulty, dated. Indeed, I read the version translated originally in 1913 by Olga Carlisle. It’s the staid, orthodox version. Perhaps if I read the translation by Larissa Volokonsky, then I would’ve been in measure with the writing. She won the 2002 Efim Etkind Translation Award for her work on The Idiot, for Chris’akes!! Swoon. Cuss. Paradise Lost! Alas, I won’t reread The Idiot. It’s just too long...and me, I’m too slow a reader. I’ll read The Possessed in a couple years. The experts call it a more traditional story on par with CAP and TBK. Dostoevsky is too fine a writer to abandon, and so I won’t.Another problem I had with the Carlisle translation was the melodramatic interpretation of character staging. Let me, for example, open the book to page 580--a random choice--and list every instance on both pages where the character staging is electrified....got up rather late and immediately recalled......first moment she burst into tears......the prince at once reassured her......he was suddenly struck by the strong compassion......Vera blushed deeply......she cried in alarm, quickly drawing her hand away......went away in a strangely troubled state......her father had hurried off......Koyla ran in, also for only a minute......in a great hurry......was in a state of intense and troubled agitation......was deeply and violently moved......poor boy was thunderstruck......quietly burst into tears......he jumped up......hurriedly inquired about......added in haste......was predicting disaster......was asking pointed questions......with a gesture of vexation......accursed morbid mistrustfulness......in the form of an order, abruptly, dryly, without explanation......suddenly turning around......and feverishly looked at his watch...Remember, this came from a total of 1200 printed words. The entire book is similarly charged. I got tired of reading all this ‘juiced’ action. Did Dostoevsky intend 660 pages of melododrama, or was this a translator’s interpretation? I got robbed, man. Bad translation. The review stops here.
What do You think about The Idiot (2003)?
رضا امیرخانی، جایی گفته بود که "اگه قرار بود نویسنده ها پیامبری داشته باشن، پیامبرشون تولستوی خواهد بود." حرف درستیه، ولی این پیامبر از داستایوسکی وحی دریافت میکنه!مناز بین رمان های داستایوسکی، بیشتر از همه عاشق "جنایت و مکافات" و بعد "ابله" هستم. در درجات بعد، قمار باز و برادران کارامازوف و همزاد و...یادم نمیره. تابستون، ماه رمضون، بعد از سحر تا نزدیکای ظهر بیدار میموندم و یه کله "ابله" میخوندم. واقعاً میخکوبم میکرد. همزمان مادرم هم میخوند و با هم راجع بهش صحبت میکردیم. تجربه ی مشترک خوبی بود.این کتابماجرای کلی رمان، راجع به پرنس میشکینه. پرنس میشکین انگار ناظر جهانه. مثل یه بچه، معصومه و به خاطر همین ناظر بی طرف و قابل اعتمادیه. در ابتدای داستان، چشم باز می کنه، دنیای سیاه و آشفته و غیر قابل درک ما رو می بینه و تلاشی هم برای اصلاحش میکنه، ولی موفق نمیشه. در انتهای داستان، انگار به خاطر رنجیدن از این همه زشتی، دوباره چشم می بنده و به دنیای پاک بی خبری بر می گرده.دو نکتهاول این که(view spoiler)[شخصیت "آناستازیا فیلیپونا" خیلی زیاد شبیه شخصیت زن داستان دیگه ی داستایوسکی، قماربازه به اسم "پولینا". و من شدیداً شیفته ی هر دو هستم. خیلی بیشتر از شخصیت پاک و معصوم "سونیا" در "جنایت و مکافات"، هر چند شخصیت سونیا رو هم دوست دارم.آناستازیا، زنی خرابه که از خراب بودنش، بیزار و غمگینه، ولی نمی تونه و نمیخاد که پاک باشه. عاشق پرنس میشکین میشه، چون به نظرش پرنس میشکین پاکه و میتونه آناستازیا رو از پلیدیش نجات بده، ولی وقتی شرایط ازدواجشون مهیا میشه، عمداً این آخرین راه به سمت رستگاری رو خراب میکنه. انگار بیشتر دوست داره در فساد بمونه و غمگین باشه و برای خودش دلسوزی کنه، تا این که واقعاً به سمت پاکی حرکت کنه. یه شخصیت پیچیده ی غیر متعادل و غیر قابل بیان خیلی خیلی زیبایی داره. بیخود نیست که پرنس میشکین از ابتدای داستان، شیفته ش میشه. پرنس میشکین پاکی رو، حسرت پاک بودن رو توی چشم های غمگین آناستازیا میبینه و میخاد نجاتش بده، ولی شکست میخوره. (hide spoiler)]
—Mahdi
This was my first book by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and it is certainly not going to be my last! When I started reading, I was obviously very curious to see what Dostoyevsky's writing and story-telling was like, and why everyone seems to love him so much. I was quickly enthralled in the story, and even though "The Idiot" is a 500-page-book, I finished it within a week. This is the story of the idiot Prince Myshkin who comes to Russia to connect with his relations. I loved how the story opened up in a train with different characters and different stories that were all somehow combined during the narrative. I furthermore loved how this book takes you on quite a journey. Myshkin knows next to no-one when he comes to Russia, but he very quickly makes acquaintances and becomes involved in dramas and intricate situations. I think one of the things I loved the most about this story is how cleverly Dostoyevsky uses the term "Idiot" in different ways that correspond to the story. Once again, this relates to the big journey that he takes the reader on. Mushkin is such a lovable character who undergoes scrutinies and judgments from his surroundings, and you can't help but love him. That basically goes for all characters in this book. Everyone comes alive through Dostoyevsky's vivid descriptions, and it was an amazing reading experience to "meet" each and everyone of them.I obviously also really loved the parts where the characters (hence Dostoyevsky) become philosophical, and I had to underline quite a few passages and observances on life. My only complaint about this book, though, is that one of the most important characters in this book is very well hidden. We rarely hear about her, and when we do, you don't get the most flattering impression of her. I didn't feel a connection to her at all, which saddened me, because in my eyes the story (and the ending) would have been fantastic if only I felt for her a little bit more. Nevertheless, this is an amazing story that you must pick up if you have an interest in Dostoyevsky, or just in Russian literature in general.
—helen the bookowl
The Idiot is a remarkable literary feat; a true accomplishment. It not only shows and represents true human complexity, but it births it, both in the inner workings of its passionate characters, and in the overall story. It's replete with patient, mind testing issues that spring the reader’s level of understanding back-and-fourth; yet its emotional intensity is felt throughout. It speaks truth of our striving human conditions; our emotions which only know the truth of their existence in the moment; yet it is a true and pure novel, like the heart of our unusual but endearing hero, Prince Myshkin: our idiot.Nobody brings the drama like Fyodor: nobody. Yet despite all the exclamation points and the excessively passionate characters -- who all seem to speak with great clarity, with penetrating philosophical insight -- Dostoevsky novels still feel very real to me. Despite its great entertainment value and all the outbursts from its characters, very real emotional boundaries are pushed in very natural, all encompassing ways. What The Idiot bespeaks is something about life that is so real and true that the novel, while very intense, feels completely unexaggerated. Dostoevsky novels don’t take place in, but are a world of both utter emotional madness and pure genius. And they display how the two are often inseparable:"He fell to thinking, among other things, about his epileptic condition, that there was a stage in it just before the fit itself (if the fit occurred while he was awake), when suddenly, amidst the sadness, the darkness of soul, the pressure, his brain would momentarily catch fire, as it were, and all his life's forces would be strained at once in an extraordinary impulse. The sense of life, of self-awareness, increased nearly tenfold in these moments, which flashed by like lightning. His mind, his heart were lit up with an extraordinary light; all his agitation, all his doubts, all his worries were as if placated at once, resolved in a sort of sublime tranquility, filled with serene, harmonious joy, and hope, filled with reason and ultimate cause." These characters, none of them were "all bad" or "all good"; in fact there was not one single character in this entire novel that I didn't feel both sympathy and contempt for, at various stages.The Idiot is epic. The way it played out will have my mind reeling for weeks, I know. And I like that. I like that a lot."But I'll add though that there is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps, the most important of your ideas."
—Ben
