The Idiot

Late last night I finally finished Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel about a "positively good man." The Idiot is both an intimate novel, centered on one man - the "idiot" and the people he knows - and a sweeping one, covering not only the spectrum of humanity, but also faith, politics, and psychology. That's pretty typical for Dostoevsky, but this novel's weak plot arc accentuates the variety to a high degree.

The idiot is Prince Lev Nikolaeyevich Myshkin, introduced at the beginning of the work as a young man returning to his home country from Switzerland. There he successfully underwent treatment for "falling sickness" - epilepsy. He's introduced as a destitute and homeless traveler, coming to a country he hardly remembers. His benefactor has died, and he has no source of income. Nevertheless, he has hope to meet his only surviving family member and to make his way in Petersburg.

On the train he meets another young man, a passionate scoundrel named Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin (Russian names are the best). Rogozhin is also returning to Petersburg, but he has only been gone a few months. He fled in a fever after having stolen a great sum of money from his father in order to buy diamonds for a woman. The woman is Nastasya Filipovna, a prideful beauty that suffers under the cloud of having been raised as a kept woman by a lecherous rich man. Rogozhin's father has now died (his death hastened by his son's betrayal), and Rogozhin has come into an inheritance that he plans to use to buy out Nastasya Filipovna. Despite their contrasting natures, Rogozhin and the Prince hit it off. However, their friendship will eventually turn to rivalry.

I won't go into the rest of the plot here, simply because it's a long book and I wasn't sure where it was going until the very end. I was surprised to find that, though the book is about a "positively good man," and is thus in some ways of lighter tone than the Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment, it is also more tragic. It is, in fact, a tragedy - in a very classical sense. However, the protagonist completely lacks hubris, and so the tragic paradigm is inverted. This is very curious. If the paradigmatic ancient Greek was Oedipus, and his destruction encapsulates the hopeless universe that Sophocles inhabited, what does the failure of Prince Myshkin represent in Dostoevsky's essentially Christian universe?

That's the kind of powerful question that the book leaves with its readers. I loved this book, and I love it more now than ever - indeed, my love for it is still growing as I consider it. But, I don't think I'd recommend it as an introduction to Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment is probably the most accessible (though very dark) of his works because of its focused nature and plot arc, and I might suggest someone start there. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to begin with The Brothers Karamazov, which everyone says is his master work, and certainly is one of the very best novels ever written.