Reading The Idiot: Part Two - An Episodic Success

Scan of the execution by firing squad episode.

The Idiot is said to be Dostoevsky's “most personal” novel.  He put a lot of himself and his life experience into it.  Myshkin's epilepsy allows Dostoevsky to explore the subtleties of that affliction, which the author knew well because he was an epileptic himself.  Scattered through the work are Dostoevsky's personal ideas on various subjects from religion to economics.  Perhaps the most famous episode in the novel is a story Myshkin tells of a man facing execution by firing squad.  This is taken directly from Dostoevsky's life.  
 

In his twenties, he associated with men of “socialist” leanings.  It got him into trouble.  In truth, according to Kevin Birmingham, he "was a member of Russia's first revolutionary socialist organization." (page 102) But the authorities never uncovered that truth.  Instead, he was arrested for his participation as a "freethinker" in another philosophical and literary clique.  This led Dostoevsky and all other members of this group to be sentenced to execution.  He stood there waiting for his turn to be shot, only to be reprieved at the last moment and condemned to several years of hard labor in Siberia instead.  (The entire execution was "staged by the tsar to showcase his power and his goodness.")  Regardless, the would-be execution episode is the best of many fantastic mini-stories in The Idiot.  

It is worth noting that the execution episode does go directly into the mind of the person Myshkin is talking about.  The reader knows the intimate thoughts and feelings of the condemned man.  But this takes place in the mind of a character within a story being told to us by the main character of the novel.  Nowhere in the novel do we get the privilege of seeing into the mind of Myshkin himself as is vividly revealed in the story he is telling.  For me, this is a perfect example of what is missing in the novel.   

The book is obviously very personal to Dostoevsky.  What happens to a beautiful person thrust into the middle of high Russian society?  As Dostoevsky shows throughout the novel, this world is almost completely motivated by money and business and materialism.  This world ends up crushing Myshkin, who responds beautifully, compassionately beyond reasonable expectations.  I found Myshkin to be too innocent for his own good.  Which made me question Dostoevsky's idea of a beautiful personality.

Since we don't know Myshkin's thoughts and feelings directly, we have no reason to believe there is any significant substance to this blindly loving character.  He may be beautiful but he is inept and often befuddled.  We see his behavior, we hear him speak and we watch him react but that is as far as Dostoevsky takes us.  This strikes me as odd.  As rule, inside access to the minds of the characters is liberally given throughout The Brothers Karamazov and even with the main character in Crime and Punishment.  Why not here?  

For example, unlike in The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, no one has any dreams or internal dialogues in The Idiot.  Dostoevsky never explores the psychology of any of his characters at all.  The reader is left to interpret everything based upon what is said or told or seen or upon character facial expressions.  We never go inside the mind of anyone.  We have no clue what Myshkin is thinking and can only guess what he is feeling based upon his behavior.

Supposedly, Myshkin is a “Christ-like” character.  Many readers and even Dostoevsky's biographers stress this important comparison.  But it simply does not work for me.  Why attempt to make a character “Christ-like” when their internal landscape of emotions and thoughts is blocked?  It seems ridiculous.  Yet this must be intentional because Dostoevsky opens up his character's minds to the reader in his other novels.  As I mentioned in Part One, the author had several specific “scandalous” situations he wanted to explore, but the actual writing of the novel was largely unplanned.  His approach to the subject matter is not psychological, which is what I was hoping for.  Rather, this story is completely social and environmental.  That's acceptable, most fiction is written that way.  But if you are (supposedly) trying to depict Christ, and especially if you are probably the greatest psychological writer in history, then why take this approach?  Dostoevsky lost a lot of narrative power when he had the opportunity to deliver a knockout punch (as he did in Crime and Punishment, for example).

What Dostoevsky gives us in The Idiot is a story that remains on the surface of things. Occasionally, we are told what a character might think or feel but we are rarely shown the world from that character's perspective as with Dostoevsky's other works.  For example, late in the novel when Myshkin is troubled over Aglaia we read: “It was evident also that she was worried by ill-intentioned people and what was very strange was that she trusted them in this way.  No doubt that inexperienced but hot and proud little head was hatching some special schemes, perhaps ruinous, and utterly wild.  Myshkin was greatly alarmed, and in his perturbation did not know what to decide upon.” (page 516)

The last sentence of that paragraph is typical of what the reader is told throughout the novel.  By and large, Myshkin is a loving but uncertain person.  But the phrasing of “ill-intentioned people” and how “very strange” it is that Aglaia places her trust in others who could harm her are both ideas coming from inside Myshkin's mind and ever so slightly reveal how he sees the world.  “Ill-intentioned” is an innocent and simpleton way to relate to others.  The strangeness of Aglaia's misplaced trust is clearly how he feels inside.  

These glimpses (mentioned only in passing) inside his mind are minimized in favor of a wider intermingling of characters within the novel's virtual world.  While this world is noteworthy, the choice of placing the reader inside the world over being inside the character impoverishes the effect of the novel.  The reader never really knows what is going on inside Dostoevsky's “beautiful person.”   We are only bystanders, observers.

This criticism is not to suggest that the novel is mediocre literature.  On the contrary, it is a great novel, but its greatness is not as refined as The Brothers Karamazov, which takes the reader inside the characters in order to tell the story.  The Idiot is told with all the characters being more or less opaque to each other (and the reader).  No one really understands anyone else.  There is little in the way of actual intimacy.  Myshkin understands almost nothing to begin with though he quickly learns while making himself seem foolish from time to time.  The novel gives us very little interior-psychology to work with, we must accept this.

On the other hand, The Idiot is highly successful as an episodic novel.  There are some incredible sections – like the aforementioned execution episode – where Dostoevsky shines.  There are a wealth of varied moments throughout the novel that make it an entertaining read.  Here are some other examples.

Early in the novel, it is being arranged for Nastasya to marry Ganya.  Myshkin happens to be in the entryway while Ganya is engaged in a rather heated discussion with his mother and sister about his dissatisfaction with the circumstances.  By coincidence, Nastasya is attempting to ring the door bell, but it is apparently broken.  Myshkin sees this and, as no one else is around, he opens the door.  

She immediately mistakes him for a butler, flings her fur coat at him and complains that he should see that the bell is fixed.  Before he can say anything she insists that Myshkin announce her presence.  At “a rather critical moment” in the “quarreling” Myshkin enters the room and deadpan announces Nastasya's name.

“There was complete silence in the room; everyone stared at Myshkin as though they didn't understand him and didn't want to understand him.”  It is a hilarious moment in the typical ridiculous Dostoevsky way.  From the perspective to the quarrelers it is absurd in two ways.  First of all, why is Myshkin, their guest, even making this announcement?  Secondly, why has the woman who is the cause of all this quarreling chosen this instant to visit the house for the first time?  Wonderful to read.  

There are two additional episodes in which Dostoevsky reveals personal insights and opinions that are useful to understanding the author, which reflect why The Idiot is considered his most personal work.  The first is his intimate description of the onset of an epileptic seizure.  This happens in Part Two and it also serves as an example of how the narrative tells the reader about a character's internal psychology but does not actually allow the reader inside their mind as is done in the author's other works.

“He remembered among other things that he always had one minute just before an epileptic fit...when suddenly...there seemed at moments a flash of light in his brain...The sense of life, the consciousness of self, were multiplied ten times...all his uneasiness, all his doubts, all his anxieties were relieved at once;  they were all merged in a lofty calm, full of serene, harmonious joy and hope.  But these moments, these flashes, were only the prelude to that final second (it was never more than a second) with which the fit began...These moments were only an extraordinary quickening of self-consciousness – if the condition was to be expressed in one word – and at the same time of the direct sensation of existence in the most intense degree.” (pp. 218 – 219)

This is an excellent description of what happened within Myshkin's mind, but we are not inside his mind.  The moment loses its potential punch because of this.  The narrative tells us but does not describe it as it happens.  A few pages later, when Rogozhin, in a rage, attempts to stab Myshkin with a knife, a fit occurs.  But we never go into Rogozhin's rage nor do we go into Myshkin as the fit comes on.  It is simply described in a third-person exterior narration without any interior expression at all.  Nevertheless, the rather clinical way the author describes it is insightful to the extent that the reader is told (rather than shown) what a fit is like.

Another episode which is intimate to Dostoevsky involves Myshkin's diatribe against Roman Catholicism in Part Four.  This is one reason I think that everyone should read The Idiot before reading The Brothers Karamazov.  (Obviously, I did this backwards.)  Myshkin seems to be a kind of prototype for Alyosha in Dostoevsky's greatest novel.  In fact, I find Alyosha to be a more complete “beautiful person” than the naive, often hapless and less rational Myshkin.

Anyway, Dostoevsky was critical of “western” influences (such as nihilism, secularism, capitalism, and Catholicism) upon the distinctive and traditional values of Russian culture.  The Idiot spells out the religious side of his critique most blatantly.  It is revealed that Myshkin's guardian converted to Roman Catholicism, which (abruptly, unexpectedly) sends our hero into a rage.  Once again, we don't know his exact thoughts or feelings.  (We don't even know beforehand that he detests the Catholic faith.)  These are only described in their exterior, as he speaks and acts before other characters.

Be that as it may, this affords Dostoevsky a chance to broadside the Catholic Church, which he better accomplishes in the more sophisticated prose with “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter of The Brothers Karamazov.  An irate Myshkin proclaims that Catholicism in “an unchristian religion in the first place!...Roman Catholicism is even worse than atheism itself...Atheism only preaches a negation, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ culminated and defamed by themselves, the opposite of Christ!  It preaches the Antichrist, I declare it does. I assure you it does!  This is the conviction I have long held, and it has distressed me, myself...Roman Catholicism cannot hold its position without universal political supremacy...To my way of thinking Roman Catholicism is not even a religion, but simply a continuation of the Western Roman Empire...” (page 527)

He goes on to declare that socialism, like its “brother” atheism, “springs” from Catholicism.  This unchristian religion has no “moral power” to “quench the spiritual thirst of parched humanity.”  Instead, its power lies in the violence of “sword and blood.”  Finally, with specific regard to Russian Orthodox Christianity, “our Christ whom we have kept and they have never known must shine forth and vanquish the West.” (page 528)

This is a strong attack not only upon Catholicism but upon the whole of western civilization.  It reveals Dostoevsky's personal revulsion toward the cultural force of Europe.  Though he certainly appreciated the art and literature of the so-called “West,” he found the basis for western religion and economics to be a kind of misguided disease.  Myshkin became his perfect character to voice this criticism in Dostoevsky's “most personal” novel.

Other episodes of note include when Rogozhin and Myshkin exchange crosses, and when Ippolit, the young, suicidal philosopher, proclaims: “It's life that matters, nothing but life – the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not that discovery itself, at all.”  When an admiring Aglaia acknowledges Myshkin's inner beauty compared with everyone else by saying: “...yet the mind that matters is better in you than in any of them.  It's something, in fact, they have never dreamed of.”  When Nastasya agrees to marry Myshkin and then, abruptly changes her mind and chooses Rogozhin instead, begging him to “save” her just before the wedding ceremony begins.

There are several marvelous set-piece social events, with complex and interesting interactions by a variety of characters.  Each is wonderful to read in itself and serve to interject differing philosophical commentary or to expose Myshkin to the material shallowness of high-society Petersburg.  

These individual parts are greater than the whole, however.  Dostoevsky wrote The Idiot during a period of personal financial stress.  His publisher paid for installments, which were serialized in a magazine.  In order to get cash flowing, the author simply created these characters and had them interact with one another in a variety of social settings.  What they said and did was rather spontaneous, not fully planned.  Most of what happens in The Idiot was as much a surprise to the author as it is to the reader.  Only late in the writing process, by the time of Part Four, did Dostoevsky really see what was going to ultimately happen in the story.

The narrative has a certain pacing, a building up and falling away that is repeated through each of the novel's four parts.  Then, with shocking abbreviation, the story does not wrap up, it simply falls off a cliff in the final 20 pages of the book.  There is actually very little narrative tension to “resolve” but what is resolved is done so catastrophically.  Dostoevsky sets up and explores this elaborate world, only to have it all end for the four major characters in literally a few paragraphs.  I did not find this impressive.  It was more numbing than anything else, which is why I did not know what to make of the novel when I finished it over a month ago.  

The Idiot succeeds episodically moreso than as a narrative whole.  It is an experiment, not a statement like The Brothers Karamazov.  We are given direct access to the emotions and thoughts of all the characters in the later novel.  Likewise, in Crime and Punishment, we are treated to extended paragraphs of what is going on inside Raskolnikov's mind, we enter his dreams, his thoughts, we know him intimately though the mystery of why he commits his crimes is cleverly kept from the reader.  We get nothing like this anywhere in The Idiot even though this novel is no less profound than the other two.

So, I come back to my initial disappointment.  Upon further reflection it is not so much that The Idiot is not as great as The Brothers Karamazov as it is that there are no psychological experiences within the novel though there are ample opportunities for them.  Instead, we see Myshkin's beauty through his behavior in relationship to other characters, which is fair enough.  But the book I wanted to read would have taken us inside Myshkin's mind.  

Alas, that is not the book Dostoevsky chose to write.  Which seems strange to me, since he supposedly put so much of himself into this novel.  Why didn't he explore the psychological depths as he did in his other works?  Myshkin is supposed to be Christ?  Then he is a confused and naive Christ without ever examining the confusion and naivety.  

Now that I am on the other side of the work, reacquainted with it after decades apart, I wish I read it before I read The Brothers Karamazov.  I think of it as kind of a prelude to that greater work.  Myshkin gives the reader insights into what Dostoevsky would later do with (more successfully) with Alyosha.  Also, “The Grand Inquisitor” is less made mysterious by understanding the author's religious views as presented through Myshkin.

Despite my reservations, The Idiot is an episodically impressive work of classic literature.  The middle portion of the book is a bit tiresome for me but it is still fascinating overall.  The novel reveals so much about Dostoevsky personally that it is probably impossible to say you know the author without reading this particular book.  It is called his most personal, most “Christian” work, and that is probably the case.  But it is not his most powerful or complete novel. 

Note: This video also provides a good summary and analysis of the novel.