Thoughts on The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky

              This is the third novel from Dostoevsky that I have read out of the 16 he wrote. They keep getting better and better and I may end up reading his entire oeuvre. I read the P & V translation, which seemed pretty good to me. I haven’t read other translations and don’t know Russian so I can’t comment on the accuracy or aesthetics of the translation as compared to the original and others. I’ve heard good and bad things about all the translations, no one in particular seems to stand out to me. One thing I made sure to do was to avoid the introduction until after I finished the book – which was a good idea. I already had that spoiled when I read the P & V translation of Anna Karenina. I did make a mistake, however, when I peered at the blurb on the back of the book when I was about ¾ of the way through. It completely spoiled the ending – that’s the only major gripe I had of this version of the book. Just because a book is old, many read it for the first time, so we shouldn’t give away the ending.

              It appears that Dostoevsky first began work on this novel in much the same way as he did with Crime and Punishment a few years before. His plan was to start off with a wicked person and show how they could be redeemed into a good one. Somewhere along the way, however, he decided to scrap everything and, in his words, “portray a positively beautiful man,” like Don Quixote, Pickwick, or Jean Valjean. Instead of the drama taking place in the “double thoughts” of a single man, it would take place between this spark of innocence and the dross of society that would smother it. He was very skeptical of his ability to be able to artfully portray such a man, calling it an “immeasurable task.” It is, indeed, difficult enough to portray well the competing impulses in man, although Dostoevsky is almost prophetic in that regard, even if he exaggerates a bit to bring these traits out clearly. To portray a nigh sinless and utterly guileless person in a way that still makes them compelling and 3 dimensional; that is probably the pinnacle of difficulty in art. As Lizaveta notes in the novel: “a fool with a heart and no brain is as unhappy as a fool with a brain, but no heart” (Part I, Ch. 7, pg. 81). Besides the examples that he mentioned, I can only think of a few that have been done with success. In ancient literature there is the character of Socrates as he is portrayed in Plato’s dialogues and in modern art, Forrest Gump. So, the inevitable question, did Dostoevsky succeed?

              The answer is a resounding yes – Prince Myshkin is a worthy addition to this tapestry that I will cherish forever.  I think that one of the most powerful functions of literature is to show forth truth in fiction. Exploring how such a person would navigate our society and what that would do to him and what he would do to us is very much a question worth asking and the answer is worth demonstrating. I think Dostoevsky, ever the consummate master of his craft, manages to do this beyond my expectations. This is one of those cases, where beforehand I wouldn’t be able to tell you what I’d like to see, but once I’d seen it I’m sure I’d be able to tell if it were good or not; I was very impressed. Prince Myshkin is sure to be the benchmark for anyone who wants to attempt such a thing in the future. Don Quixote was too ridiculous, but Myshkin is also called the eponymous idiot; perhaps it is the fate a just man to seem insane by us, the wicked. It is no less strange then that this, the story of the most childlike and adorable person, ends on a darker note than what I’ve seen so far in Dostoevsky’s corpus. That’s what makes it believable – I do think society would, does, and will continue to ruin people of exceptional moral caliber like this. Thank God that is not the end of the story.

              Aglaya Ivanovna describes the prince thusly, “I have never met a single person in my life who is equal to him in noble simple-heartedness and infinite trustfulness….anyone who wanted to could deceive him, and whoever deceived him he would forgive afterwards, and it was for that that I loved him” (IV.8.568). As a thoroughly genuine person, the prince often wears his heart on his sleeve and lets out more than he should. One of his first monologues in the book is a diatribe against capital punishment that is sure to stir even the most hardened of hearts. Dostoevsky knows by gnosis and not just episteme about what he is talking of here. He himself faced the barrel of a gun in a mock execution (though he didn’t know that it was mock at the time). He makes the reader viscerally feel that “to be killed by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than to be killed by robbers” (I.2.23) It is obvious that the prince is at least in some sense a reflection of the author since Dostoevsky also had epilepsy He even based the prince’s ecstatic mystical experience on what actually happened to him during epileptic attacks. The prince’s words that he uttered upon seeing Holbein’s portrait The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb were Dostoevsky’s own when he saw the picture in a museum and couldn’t tear his eyes away, “a man could lose his faith looking at that picture.”

              Many would be a bit too hasty to liken the prince to Christ – but I don’t think that’s what Dostoevsky was going for here. The prince, though a good and innocent, even thoroughly childlike man doesn’t have the supreme confidence of Jesus. He does often apologize for his mistakes, admit he makes errors, and even confess to also be a slave of double thoughts, the dreaded logismoi that Evagrius warned us that attempt, often successfully, to lead us astray from our true goal. He even has a terrible urge, so common to us all to forsake and flee our problems and the people who cause them. “he suddenly wanted terribly to leave all this here and go back where he came from, to some far-off, forsaken place, to go at once and even without saying goodbye to anyone” (II.11.307). The imitation of Christ is also foreign to Eastern Orthodox spirituality which sees that we are not to follow in Jesus exact footsteps since there is an immeasurable gulf between the Logos and the creature. Instead we are to live our lives in Christ as St. Paul said. God has nothing to repent or ask forgiveness for, and even the best among us has much to do to change his heart. Another character, Lebedev, adds to this omnipresent theme in Dostoevsky’s works,

“The law of self-destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in mankind. Hurrying, clanging, banging, and speeding, they say, for the happiness of mankind…. For carts that deliver bread to all mankind, without any moral foundations for their action, may quite cold-bloodedly exclude a considerable part of mankind from enjoying what they deliver, as has already happened…... But a friend of mankind with shaky moral foundations is a cannibal of mankind, to say nothing of his vainglory; insult the vainglory of one of these numberless friends of mankind, and he is ready at once to set fire to the four corners of the world out of petty vengeance (III.4.375-378)”

Dostoevsky does rightfully insist that “Compassion is the chief and perhaps the only law of being for all mankind” (II.5.230). This isn’t so simple as it seems though, since like Plato before him he sees that in order to do this correctly, we must have a firm foundation of rock and not of sand. Otherwise and we will end up like 12^th century Catholic monks who “lived sixty times more happily and freely than the rest of mankind at that time. And were, perhaps, at least sixty times fatter than the rest of mankind” (III.4.378).

              Dostoevsky was, above all else, one of the keenest psychologists who ever attempted to peer into the human soul. He is only surpassed by the 4^th century desert father Evagrius, whose insight into the human condition is being vindicated by modern psychologists. He knows that sentimental impulses and making things too abstract are not even neutral, they are downright harmful. As Aglaya Ivanovna writes to her love interest, the prince, “Can one love everyone, all people, all one’s neighbors? I have often asked myself that question. Of course not, and it is even unnatural. In an abstract love for mankind, one almost always loves oneself” (III.10.454). I am with Dostoevsky, that a compassion that is too abstract, too impersonal is not compassion at all. The infinite abyss that resides between individual charity and social charity is demonstrated by the conscientious and tortured atheist with tuberculosis, Ippolit.

“Whoever infringes upon individual charity, infringes upon man’s nature and scorns his personal dignity…. What meaning will this communion of person with another have in the destiny of the person communed with? Here the whole of life stands before us and a countless number of ramifications that are hidden from us. The best chess player, the sharpest of them, can calculate only a few moves ahead…. And how many moves are there, and how much is unknown to us? In sowing your seed, in sowing your charity, your good deed in whatever form it takes, you give away a part of your person and receive intro yourself part of another’s, you mutually commune in each other; a little more attention, and you will be rewarded with knowledge, with the most unexpected discoveries” (III.6.404)

 

Only a devout Christian could pierce the mystery of evil and see the purificatory nature of such atheism in the soul. Like George MacDonald, Dostoevsky sees that if there be a God, then all must be good, and any amount of evil appears to be an arraignment of God’s goodness. It appears to Ippolit that “daily sacrifice requires the lives of a multitude of beings, without whose death the rest of the world could not stand” and that “it was quite impossible to arrange the world otherwise, that is, without the ceaseless devouring of each other.” Indeed, this does seem to be the case, so what should our response be? “Say what you will, all this is impossible and unjust” is the answer that Ippolit offers up. He also has a question for God that can only be rivalled in its plangent urgency by the psalmist, “Can it be that I will have to answer for being unable to comprehend the unknowable?” Unlike the psalmist however, he goes a step further and claims “If it had been in my power not to be born, I probably would not have accepted existence on such derisive conditions” (III.7.414). Ippolit is the manifestation of a recurring type in Dostoevsky’s literature – the atheist who thinks hard on faith and has fundamentally the same worldview as his Christian foil, but ultimately goes a step too far in his readiness to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were. Ippolit is a worthy precursor of Ivan Karamazov, although Ivan is a superior version – we aren’t even sure he is an atheist by the end. What could possibly be the answer to such a devastating critique to Christian faith?

Of course, the answer comes from Ippolit’s foil, Prince Lev Myshkin. His answer hearkens to my own heart and I can attest to it from personal experience, even quite recently in my trip to Wyoming.

“Once he went into the mountains on a clear, sunny day, and wandered about for a long time with a tormenting thought that refused to take shape. Before him was the shining sky, below him the lake, around him the horizon, bright and infinite, as if it went on forever. For a long time, he looked and suffered. He remembered now how he had stretched out his arms to that bright, infinite blue and wept. What had tormented him was that he was a total stranger to it all. What was this banquet, what was this great everlasting feast, to which he had long been drawn, always, ever since childhood, and which he could never join…? Every ‘little fly that buzzes near him in a hot ray of sunlight participates in this whole chorus: knows its place, loves it, and is happy’; every little blade of grass grows and is happy!” (III.7.423).

Like the poet who wrote psalm 42, his soul thirsts for the Lord, and as St. Augustine realized “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.” More recently, David Bentley Hart has added to this symphony in saying that even the unbeliever, in the act of hating and rebelling against God does so out of a more original and primordial desire for God, since it is impossible for us to not seek what at least seems to us to be good, and God is the infinite source and wellspring of all things --  The Good, as such.

              All of the characters in this story are well-crafted and feel real, if a bit theatrical, but that is typical for a Dostoevsky novel. His frantic energy keeps everything at a 10 the whole time; you almost need a rest after reading him, especially coupled with his insightful commentary that will provide endless material for meditation later. He really does adhere to what he mentions in the novel, “Let us not forget that the reasons for human actions are usually incalculably more complex and diverse than we tend to explain them later, and are seldom clearly manifest” (IV.3.484). In fact, we see that paradoxically we all sometimes like to be offended so, even though we should be on the side of the downtrodden, it may be a good idea to be circumspect and shy away from a naïve sentimentality regarding the unfortunate. The character Burdovsky, who is attempting to extort the prince’s fortune, is introduced as follows, “there was a full, dull intoxication with his own rights and, at the same time, something that amounted to a strange and permanent need to be and feel constantly offended” (II.7.258). Ippolit relates an incident when he was returning some lost documents to a doctor whose career had been maliciously sabotaged and as a result he was now in a constant state of anger and hypervigilance which has a snowball effect and leaves us as trapped in our misery as any Tantalus or Sisyphus.

“The gentleman and the lady were decent people, but reduced by poverty to that humiliating state in which disorder finally overcomes every attempt to struggle with it….There are people who take extreme pleasure in their irritable touchiness, and especially when it reaches (which always happens very quickly) the ultimate limit in them; in that instant it even seems they would rather be offended than not be offended. Afterwards these irritable people always suffer terrible remorse…” (III. 6.339).

We are even led to feel sympathy for the capricious theatrics of Nastasya Fillipovna who was abused when she was a teenager and now acts out in wild and dramatic ways, always denying herself happiness. “She has tormented herself all too much with the awareness of her undeserved disgrace… there may be some terrible, unnatural pleasure for her in this constant awareness of disgrace, a sort of revenge on someone” (III.8.434). Whether that someone is her abuser or God, is left ambiguous.

              In fact, the story is rife with ambiguity. Prince Myshkin relates a (as it turns out, true) story very similar to the tale of Deagol and Smeagol in the Lord of the Rings, to Rogozhin, his would-be antagonist. Two friends are hanging out and one, though he’s never stolen anything in his life, is seized with jealously and steals his atheist friend’s watch after killing him while at the same time praying for the Lord’s forgiveness. This causes Rogozhin to erupt in laughter, “The one doesn’t believe in God at all, and the other believes so much that he even stabs people with a prayer” (II.4.220). This is a large looming problem that the novel seeks to explore. In Dostoevsky’s words, “how was it possible to unite such true, beautiful feeling with such obvious, spiteful mockery” (II.7.252)? The author is able to relate with acute vividness the otherworldly strangeness of the world we inhabit and that we often take for granted. Why aren’t good things always beautiful? Why can a beautiful smile conceal soul-crushing depression? How can a man say a beautiful prayer to God while killing his best friend? Why is everything on earth shot through with the beauty and majesty of her Creator, yet also suffused with death, corruption, evil, and decay? Should we choose to have faith in the Good or give in to the utter tyranny of evil? Is this one of the choices that the tragically mentally ill General Ivolgin remarked are so difficult that “a man of the greatest mind occasionally resorts to heads or tails in the last moments” (IV. 4.502)? Until the end, no answer will be given and Dostoevsky can offer none, but he does an excellent job of pointing out the questions and possible paths that reach toward an answer that is yet still over the crest of a hill we cannot see through the fog. As he himself remarks,

“…in any serious human thought born in someone’s head, there always remains something which it is quite impossible to convey to other people, though you may fill whole volumes with writing and spend 35 years trying to explain your thought; there always remains something that absolutely refuses to leave your skull and will stay with you forever; you will die with it, not having conveyed to anyone what is perhaps most important in your idea” (III.5.395)  

Words, though they can express our thoughts, are perhaps best left behind. “I know it’s better for me to sit and be silent. When I persist in being silent, I even seem very reasonable, and what’s more I can think things over” (IV.7.552).

Another issue that the dying Ippolit brings to bear is what constitutes the good life. In his opinion, “it’s better to be unhappy, but to know, than to be happy and live…as a fool.” He has a point, but perhaps the prince also has a point, “So in your opinion I’d be happier if I worried more” (IV.5.521)? Indeed, Christ tells us to worry as little as the lilies in the field (Mt 6:28), so perhaps the prince has chosen the better part and sought the one thing needful as Mary did (Lk 10:42). Is there anything else we should know about how to live? Perhaps the path to wisdom begins with learning you know nothing, slowly working your way to the truth, and maybe even embracing “a carnival sense of the world,” as the Russian fools for Christ exhibit.

“We are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we’re bored, we don’t know how to look, how to understand, we’re all like that, all, you, and I, and they!... it’s sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can’t understand everything at once, we can’t start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand at all.” (IV.7.553)

 Dostoevsky is in good company as Socrates in Phaedrus comments that divinely inspired mania is greater than reason.

              Another answer that the prince has to our earthly dilemma of being trapped in this hellish half-creation erupts out of his mouth suddenly, as if it was a prophetic locution from on high.

“Is it really possible to be unhappy? Oh, what are my grief and my trouble, if I am able to be happy? You know, I don’t understand how it’s possible to pass by a tree and not be happy to see it. To talk with a man and not be happy that you love him!... there are so many things at every step that are so beautiful, that even the most confused person finds beautiful. Look at a child, look at God’s sunrise, look at the grass growing, look into the eyes that are looking at you and love you” (IV.7.553).

Perhaps another way forward is that “the soul is cured by children….” They may even be our best bet in solving these existential riddles since “Grown-ups don’t know that a child can give extremely important advice even in the most difficult matters” (I.6.67).  This book offers much for the reader to chew on, meditate, and ponder as well as offering a rich landscape of characters and a compelling story to engage the mind. I will be revisiting this classic in the future, hopefully I’ll be able to read it in the original Russian someday. I can think of no more fitting way to conclude than to offer the words of General Epanchin to the prince, “May your life begin and blossom…in love” (IV.4.503).