Reading The Idiot: Part One – Themes and Disappointment “For Some Reason”

My 1983 paperback.

The Brothers Karamazov was so entertaining on so many levels that I found myself craving more Dostoevsky.  I immediately started reading The Idiot, my second time through that novel.  Like the previous book, I had not read it in about 40 years and it surprised me.  Once more, my paperback was marked-up on most of the “philosophical and spiritual” sections, but marginalia on the story and characters was completely lacking.  Obviously, I had little appreciation for the narrative back in my twenties.  I remembered almost none of the details.

I tore through the first half of the novel before we left for Cumberland Island, purposely pausing midway.  I completed my 600-page paperback in about a week after returning from our trip.  Initially, I did not know what to make of it.  I needed to ponder the book so I set it aside for a few weeks.

When I got around to thumbing back through my many (new) notations I realized that, while The Idiot was clearly a special work, it disappointed me.  Initially, I thought my sense of letdown was due to the it not being as great as The Brothers Karamazov, which is tough criticism even though it is true.  Only a handful of novels in world literature are of that caliber.  I quickly reconsidered my irrational expectations and unfair disappointment but remained nebulously troubled by the book.

It complicated things that the novel was told in four parts of varying quality.  Part One was clearly the best section of the book.  Parts Two and Three were often a struggle for me to get through.  The world and characters Dostoevsky so intricately creates seemed to be lacking something.  Everyone, including the main character, Myshkin, seemed superficial.  The narrative revealed only the outward surface of things.  Part Four was better but it still did not match the beginning.  For me, The Idiot did not attain what it seemed to be attempting, though it was still, sporadically, a brilliant read.

Dostoevsky creates a complex world in The Idiot. There are a large number of characters, each representing some personality trait(s) Dostoevsky wants to explore.  The novel manifests a robust and sophisticated soup of human interaction.  But the payoff for the time the reader takes to get to know these characters is meager compared with The Brothers Karamazov.  Unlike that work, where most of the characters possess a rich and complex story arc from start to finish, only four characters in The Idiot fit that description.

The Idiot gives the reader the equivalent of a virtual reality in exacting detail into which Dostoevsky plays his characters off of each other.  Apparently, he invented several situations ahead of time and then placed these characters within them.  His intent was to reveal the impact of Myshkin upon society and how society affected Myshkin.  But, it troubled me that the resulting narrative remained only on the surface of things.

Only Myshkin, Rogozhin, Nastasya, and Aglaia have a complete character arc.  Everyone else ends up not being as important as the writing would lead you to believe through the first three parts.  All four meet with catastrophe in the final, abrupt paragraphs of the novel.  No one engages in self-reflection.  No one discovers anything about themselves.  All four main characters simply fall over a cliff.  Whereas, there are several transformations of characters in The Brothers Karamazov, there are exactly none in The Idiot.

Nevertheless, Dostoevsky explores multiple themes in the novel that make it a worthy read.  Among them are three that I particularly noticed: money, murder, and madness.  I used the free online Gutenberg press edition to do some quick calculations.  Money is mentioned 181 times throughout the narrative.  Myshkin is thrown into a world where the other characters value money and material things above almost anything else, except for, perhaps, passion.    Our hero is confused by the dynamics of all of this.  It is surprising how fundamentally similar this superficial and hedonistic society is to our own even though this novel was written in 1868.  That's a noteworthy accomplishment.

There is wonderful episode at the end of Part One where Nastasya throws a tightly coiled bundle of 100,000 rubles into a fireplace, taunting Ganya, to whom she is supposedly betrothed.  If he reaches his hand into the fire and pulls out the cash, it is his to keep.  This is an attempt to expose Ganya's greed but he refuses to do her bidding and, instead, walks away only to faint (a common Dostoevsky ploy) before he can leave the room.  The rubles are Rogozhin's “bid” to “buy” Nastasya's commitment to him.  In the end, she leaves with Rogozhin not because of his money but because he is willing to give it up to be with her.  Hardly any of the money is burned in this strange stunt, by the way.

Murder or kill is mentioned 74 times.  Almost every character is interested in it.  Dostoevsky was fascinated by murders and, according to biographer Konstantin Mochulsky, a famous murder that had occurred in Russia at the time of the writing is frequently alluded to.  “The atmosphere of the novel is poisoned by emanations of blood.  An oppressive expectation, a growing certitude is created.  Death is really present, seeks an executioner of his decrees, and finds him in Rogozhin.  He is chosen because in him the forces of the fallen world attain their greatest tension: the curse of money especially weighs upon him.  Rogozhin emerges from the dark merchant world in which, from generation to generation, money has been accumulated.” (page 359)  In this way the twin themes of money and murder are best reflected through Rogozhin.

Mad, madness, crazy and insane are mentioned just 37 times but this theme is more important than the numbers might imply.  Through the course of the narrative, Myshkin comes to see the world around him as “mad” because of the toxicity of the material world and the manner of what is considered “normal” in high society.  Myshkin typically observes and reacts to this mad world passively until Part Three, Chapter Two when the extravagant behavior of Nastasya, who he hasn't seen in over three months, overwhelms him.  “She's mad!  She's insane!  I assure you!” he declares, which is rather astonishing.  It is the first time Myshkin expresses a judgment upon anyone and we are over 340 pages into the novel.  

He says this “in a shaking voice, for some reason holding out his trembling hands...”  This wording reflects inner turmoil but (this is important for me throughout the novel) the “for some reason” indicates a distinctive wall that Dostoevsky throws up between the reader and the inner life of not just Myshkin but every character in the narrative.  As I mentioned above, the novel always remains on the surface of things.

Dostoevsky wanted to write a novel about a “positively beautiful individual.”  He certainly succeeds in that and Myshkin is an intriguing character, the only significant reason to make the effort (and at times it is an effort) to read the book.  Myshkin is a social misfit.   He does not possess any craft or talent in any acknowledged subject.  He is a kind of “blank slate.”

At the beginning, he is thrust into St. Petersburg society and simply reacts to the world as he encounters it.  People find him awkward and even laughable in his direct honesty sometimes.  He keeps nothing to himself.  He expresses everything openly, like a child.  He is not devoid of education.  He can read and write and he is aware of general events but he has no sense of appropriate behavior in the world.

He has just spent four years in Switzerland being treated for epilepsy.  He is a prince of lower nobility, the last of his line.  He seeks a distant relative, who he has never met, who is supposed to help him get his feet back on the ground.  The servants laugh at him as he waits in the entryway to meet the relative.  He speaks casually to them and reveals everything about himself and his personal affairs.  Over hundreds of pages, Myshkin learns slowly how to conduct himself, but he fails to ever discern any clear understanding of the society in which he is immersed.  For that reason, he is repeatedly called an “idiot” by many characters.

Myshkin is a “positively beautiful person” because he is honest and loving and compassionate regardless of how he is treated.  He responds to those with whom he is attracted and to those that wish him harm in almost exactly the same manner.  This innocence, combined with his strength of natural kindness toward everyone is a distinctive literary accomplishment.  Dostoevsky has created a simple, straightforward person and placed him in an intricate world of wealth and power and desire and greed.

It may be that Dostoevsky did not intend to do anything more with his marvelous creation other than allow him to be heavily affected by the society in which the narrative takes place.  Certainly, he had little impact upon that society itself.  It eventually destroys him.  That seems to be the point.  He does, however, impact the other three major characters.  He becomes the simultaneous object of attraction by the two women and the object of, at first, friendship then ultimately jealousy and hatred by Rogozhin.  Most everyone else in the novel thinks he's silly and stupid or an enigmatic simpleton at best.  He has no impact on any of them at all (nor they upon him, for that matter).

I could not help but think as I was nearing the end of the story that Dostoevsky must have intentionally withheld the interior of these characters.  Neither Myshkin nor anyone else reveals their innermost thoughts and feelings to the reader.  It could be that Myshkin is so simple-minded that he has no meaningful internal life to reveal, so the novel never uncovers the psychological interior of anyone.

Myshkin is a truly honest, compassionate, yet naive person, who becomes innocently attracted to Nastsaya.  After a bit, Nastasya becomes attracted to Myshkin to the point of almost marrying him.  But she is also attracted to Rogozhin, the passionate, chaotic antithesis of Myshkin's beautiful, strong, straightforward personality.  Meanwhile, to everyone's astonishment, Myshkin and Aglaia become attracted to each other, to the point of having a large, aristocratic society pre-engagement dinner.

Other than a slight increase in social competence, Myshkin does not change much from the beginning of the novel to the end.  Neither does anyone else.  Nothing happens to them other than they all become victims of themselves.  The Idiot demands that I pay attention to a lot of interesting ideas and characters and episodes but, unlike The Brothers Karamazov where we have many more character arcs marvelously handled, the author does nothing more with any of his characters than push them through the meatgrinder of high-society Petersburg, and allow them all to meet their various ends.  One will die, one will be sent to Siberia, one will be conned into marriage with a complete fake, one will end up in a sanitarium with little prospect of recovery.  O....K....?   

Mochulsky sympathetically highlights what, for me, is a fundamental problem.  “Myshkin eludes us.  By no direct characteristic can we grasp his essence.  One has only to tear him away from the world in which he lives, to consider him separately and at once his image becomes obscure.  In effect, alone, separately, he does not even exist.  He lives not in space, but in the souls of the people surrounding him, as their love, ideal, or as their hatred, envy, malice.  The nimbus, encircling him, is woven of the rays which issue from their eyes, from their hearts.  His light arises in their darkness, and it is seen only because around it is darkness.” (pp. 352 – 353)

From this perspective, what Dostoevsky accomplishes is a brilliant.  But I only agree to a certain extent.  The fact is, we can only understand “their eyes, their hearts” on the surface of things.  The novel never ventures inside any character's heart.  The reader must infer what is going on through their behavior, which is often inexplicably erratic.  Equally, we are left to infer what is going on inside Myshkin by the way he acts and reacts, often in confusion, without clear purpose (as in the example of his first moment of judging another character mentioned above). 

The Idiot is strikes me as more of an experiment than a planned, structured narrative.  Dostoevsky wanted to see what would happen to a "completely beautiful person" in contemporary Russian society.  Apparently, he had no real idea what would become of Myshkin when he submitted the first part of the book for serial publication.  He only discovered the implications of his themes and ideas as he approached the conclusion.  

This is not to say that the work is a failure.  Indeed, I found it to be a worthwhile read despite my misgivings mentioned above.  There are sections of the novel that are striking, humorous, entertaining and profound.  I'll turn to a few of those sections next.

Note:  Of course, there are tons of videos on YouTube about this novel, as there are with all of Dostoevsky's major works.  They are a mixed bag.  You will find people who think this is his greatest novel (they are wrong).  You will find people who couldn't even finish the book (that's too bad).  But here is the best place to start, in my opinion.  Though I certainly don't agree with everything these guys say, they offer a series of interesting videos on the novel.