The discourse employed in my philosophical and scientific writings inherently differ from those used in literary analysis. Every one of my posts tries to convey some idea or two, and with philosophy, I can cut straight to the idea through other ideas, and with science, I can offer facts to get to the idea. With literature, however, there’s a story, and it takes that story to arrive at an idea that the author is putting forth. But there is something obviously different in, take a movie for example, when someone tells you the message or theme of the movie versus when you watch it and arrive at the thematic message yourself. The latter is moving and inspiring, whereas the former is merely an idea to debate. I take note of this because there are often times I want to discuss a novel but would rather just recommend the novel itself and have you arrive at the same ideas rather than spoiling it and removing all incentive to go read it yourself. But there is one book that I have a peculiar relationship with: The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. No novel has moved me like this one has. However, I nevertheless found it extremely tedious. Thus, it’s not a book that I would just recommend to someone if they asked for a recommendation. It’s about 700 pages, convoluted at times, and full of complex Russian names, history, and drawn out plotlines. So unless someone is already an avid reader, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone just looking for something light or hoping to ease into reading. That said, if there’s any book truly worth diving into, it’s this one—a novel that has inspired me more than any other, yet one that few people ever finish. In what follows, I’ll outline its most basic plot and explain why it moved me so deeply. My hope is that, if you decide to take on the challenge of reading it, you’ll appreciate it even more with these themes in mind. Either way, I’ll explore how its plot and ideas left such a lasting impact on me.
Dostoevsky, in most of his novels, sought to take ideologies to their extreme and allow the reader to vicariously experience the full extent of that ideology. The Idiot is no exception. In fact, this book may be the most extreme. But it nonetheless distinguishes itself in a way that I am eager to explore.
In the Gospel of Matthew, we find that Jesus commissions his twelve disciples to spread the gospel, and upon sending them out, he makes this remark: “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16). In short, the premise of The Idiot is that we follow an individual as “harmless as doves,” beautifully full of pure magnanimity down to his soul, placed in an absolutely corrupted Russian high society. What if someone took the teachings of the gospel like “turn the other cheek,” “go the extra mile,” “give without expecting return,” “forgive seventy times seven times,” or the virtues of being “harmless as doves” to their logical extremes, and neglected the former half of the verse: “be ye therefore wise as serpents”—where the vultures of society take advantage of his excessive magnanimity? I will offer a brief introduction and my experience of reading this novel, along with this character. Will we deem him as righteous, or a plain idiot.
Dostoevsky begins the first couple of chapters by getting the reader to truly care about our protagonist—Prince Myshkin—as he arrives in St. Petersburg, Russia, to begin a new life after recovering in a hospital for his problems with epilepsy. Dostoevsky endears Prince Myshkin to readers by highlighting his vulnerability as a frail, epileptic returning from Swiss treatment and his childlike innocence in conversations. His diligent work herding sheep and being a copyist to secure lodging showcases his humble yet earnest abilities. Most compellingly, Myshkin’s compassion transforms as he recounts the story of a Swiss village’s scorn for Marie, a sick girl shamed for seduction, as he befriends local children, teaches them empathy through stories, and inspires them to secretly provide her food and comfort until her peaceful yet tragic death. Immediately, I had a heart for him; I wanted to be him. His acts of selflessness were inspiring.
Now as the book proceeds, you begin to realize how the family he comes to live with in Moscow, the parents, their daughters, and those who are part of their lives or whom Myshkin meets around town, begin to take advantage of his genuine, almost foolish love. They use him, yet he relentlessly gives and forgives. So much so that you, the reader, even begin to call him an idiot. As I was reading, one chapter after the next, I thought I knew exactly where the plot was going. His love would plant seeds in those around him, and while they used him now, they would thank him later. He would transform the world through his selfless love, like he did with Marie. So as I’m reading, I’m waiting for the resolution. Passing the halfway point, I’m eager to see how the people around him will change and how Dostoevsky will bring it all to a close. As I get closer to the end of the book, and the final pages are getting thinner and thinner, I grow more concerned about how it’s going to end, for there’s not much time left. And as I read the final words, the epilogue, and close the book, I couldn’t believe it. There was no resolution. I had endured over 700 pages of, well, a non-consequentialist Christ-like love? There is something remarkably profound and bold in Dostoevsky writing a story like this because you think you would walk away thinking, “Now why would anyone want to be like that?” for he offers no resolution or rationale for why such magnanimity is “worth it.” But for months after having read it, I couldn’t get Prince Myshkin out of my mind. He didn’t seem to plant a seed in anyone, but he certainly did in me. The moments that lingered with me most were the individual scenes that revealed Myshkin’s character through his actions. I’ll now explore several of these instances.
Myshkin had inherited a large sum of money from a man named Pavlishchev, a guardian who paid for his education, who had passed away. Midway through the novel, a man named Burdovsky, along with his friends, approaches Myshkin, insisting that he, Burdovsky, is actually the illegitimate son of Pavlishchev; thus, claiming that he is owed a large sum of money that by birthright Myshkin had received—that Myshkin had essentially stolen his birthright money. After investigation, it turns out this was entirely fabricated, yet instead of disgracefully scorning Burdovsky for his attempt at extortion, Myshkin’s radical magnanimity is moved by his desperate attempt, recognizing that he must need that money for a reason, and charitably offers him 10,000 rubles anyway, actually apologizing that he couldn’t help sooner.
I must note that part of the genius of Dostoevsky, and by the same token one of the reasons that this novel can feel like a drag, is because this entire scene doesn’t happen over the span of a couple of pages. Quite the contrary. The reader spends many pages and multiple chapters reading this sequence of events, of crooked men trying to extort our beloved protagonist, and when we finally get through it and rejoice over the falsity of it, Myshkin just forgives him. That’s it. That’s the genius of The Idiot. He puts you, the reader, in the story, as we vicariously live out the details of a corrupt society, and right when Dostoevsky has you at the brim of irritability, he turns it on you. Myshkin forgave. Could you? Allow me to demonstrate more examples of this radical magnanimity.
In the final part of the novel, as the drama is building up, there is an entire chapter where the narrative seems to pause as Myshkin has a conversation with a drunken friend titled General Ivolgin. The entire chapter is General Ivolgin telling an obviously fabricated, ego-inflating monologue about serving as Napoleon’s attendant back in the day. And once again, as the reader, there is no meta-analysis, but merely a desire to know what happens next in the plot. So I’m reading, and reading, and reading this long, irrational, tortuous narrative, wondering why we can’t just move on . . . and there Dostoevsky gets me again. Because who is not thinking that, and amidst all the drama of the final act, is patiently listening to the entirely false story yet not once calling him out for it? Myshkin. Following the conversation, Myshkin even asks himself afterword:
“‘Have I been acting rightly in allowing him to develop such vast resources of imagination?’ the prince asked himself. But his answer was a fit of violent laughter which lasted ten whole minutes. He tried to reproach himself for the laughing fit, but eventually concluded that he needn’t do so, since in spite of it he was truly sorry for the old man.”
Can you begin to understand why his compassion is perceived as idiocy? We’ve only begun. After many times of a young nihilist named Hippolyte calling Myshkin an idiot and mocking him, and eventually failing a suicide attempt, Myshkin hosts him for five days without judgment of his tormented rants, treating him not as a troublemaker but as a suffering soul deserving compassion.
Earlier in the narrative, we get to know a woman by the name of Nastasya, who had a devastating past as an orphan and was taken in by a man named Totsky, who raises and educates her but eventually objectifies, exploits, and abuses her. Her reputation was ruined as a “fallen woman” in society via Totsky’s sick actions, but she nevertheless falls into her own destructive behavior. On Myshkin’s first time meeting her, as he happens to be at her birthday party, Myshkin legitimately proposes marriage to her, not by any romantic caprice, but because he wants to save her from continuing to live in her abusive state.
Here I introduce another character—Rogozhin—who is also in love with Nastasya. Now Rogozhin doesn’t take this very well, and despite many encounters with Myshkin throughout the novel, where Rogozhin at one point plots to kill him, Myshkin still treats him as a genuine brother.
Bear with me as I continue to lay out these examples of the plot, and put yourself in Myshkin’s shoes and ask how you would handle each situation.
Nastasya, however, isn’t the only key woman in the narrative. A woman by the name of Aglaya, a much more prominent figure in the novel, begins to strike a love interest in Myshkin, spurred on by his purity. How can I describe her? For one, she’s wildly childish. She expresses her love by almost taunting and testing his grace by constantly picking on him, and unconsciously gets into the habit of allowing herself to become overly controlling and rude because she knows she will be forgiven. The type of mocking behavior and lack of respect, even if pure, that drives men crazy. Not Myshkin, though.
At the climax of the novel, following an entire narrative of ups and downs with these two women in Myshkin’s life—Nastasya and Aglaya—Aglaya loves him but is so held up by his agape love for Nastasya, so much so that she makes him choose between the two. At that moment, Nastasya shows up. Before him is a woman, though childish and naive, who loves him (Aglaya), and a self-sabotaging, fallen woman who constantly betrays and rejects his love despite having an innocent love/pity for him. Might we guess who he chooses? Myshkin chooses Nastasya.
Did I say that was the climax? No, that only sparks the chilling ending. Remember our adversary, Rogozhin, the other man who was in love with Nastasya? Well, even after Myshkin chooses Nastasya, she still leaves him for Rogozhin. But that’s not all. After an entire culmination of jealous, passionate, and possessive love for her, after multiple times of her leaving him, Rogozhin is driven to total darkness where he can’t handle his passionate love for her and knows it will never work out, so he kills her to take control of his passion instead of his passion taking control of him. Rogozhin, still in his mix of horror yet triumph over killing her, takes Myshkin to see what he’s done as she lies dead in bed. Here we get the apotheosis of Myshkin’s absolute magnanimity: Myshkin comforts Rogozhin for having killed Nastasya. Dostoevsky portrays the pinnacle of compassion, and it’s monstrous. We’ve journeyed so far down the trail of goodness that we look back and realize we passed it long ago. Dostoevsky has taken us to the far extreme of magnanimity, and we recoil at it.
During Dostoevsky’s time, there was another prominent philosopher by the name of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that compassion is a weakness and that a will to power is actually a more advanced human trait, emphasizing self-assertion and the pursuit of dominance over others. During this time of turmoil and rising revolutionary and nihilist ideological gravitation in Russia during the late 19th century, heavily spurred on by philosophers and radicals like Nietzsche who wanted to let go of orthodoxy toward a new order in Russia, Dostoevsky was also writing. There are no signs that Dostoevsky ever knew of Nietzsche, but Nietzsche did know about Dostoevsky. Here in this novel, we have two competing ideologies: Nietzsche’s grasping for individual power versus Dostoevsky’s Christ-like magnanimity for others. I pointed out that Dostoevsky was not afraid to push back against his own views by taking them to the extreme. But what makes him so remarkable in my eyes while doing this is that he exposed something in the reader: we are drawn to and inspired by Prince Myshkin. There is no shortage of calling him an idiot in the book, even as the reader, but I nevertheless wanted to aspire to that wild ideal. (I can’t guarantee, nor would I expect, anyone to be “moved” by simply reading the plot points in this essay, but reading the novel is certainly moving.) We see his pure soul as represented by Christ, but Christ also had a steadfastness about him (e.g., standing firm in the face of temptation in the desert or confronting the Pharisees). Nevertheless, when we juxtapose the corruption of others who use and abuse Myshkin and Myshkin himself, we as humans are not inspired to carry only that logical end of grasping for power over the weak but are emotionally moved by Myshkin’s steadfastness in his compassion and magnanimity despite never “sticking up for himself.”
(I will not delve here into figuring out how to balance the line between holding others accountable and being magnanimous, for that is a debate too long for this present task and the subject of debate for theologians for centuries, but rather to just examine these two extremes.)
As I mentioned earlier, there is no “planting of seeds” in the individuals that Myshkin encounters. This is where I thought the message of the novel would be, that we ought to be magnanimous because it will help others. Of course, this can happen, but Dostoevsky is saying something much deeper: that compassion, generosity, and charity ought not be done for their consequences but because they are objectively good for their own sake. And that when you begin to embody goodness, that’s what molds your soul. Myshkin’s soul was pure goodness and sympathy for others. I have a proclivity to want to hold everyone accountable to a degree and have to work on being compassionate. But what if things were the opposite, like Myshkin, where our souls become so pure, and we see into the brokenness of others, that the challenge is the reverse, where discipline comes from holding others accountable? Myshkin draws us to an extreme where goodness seems irrational.
Putting words to a novel as I’m doing now isn’t easy, but that’s the point. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why everyone ought to read. Reading fiction allows us to learn vicariously through characters, helping us internalize lessons on a deeper emotional level rather than just understanding them intellectually. All of the aforementioned scenes from the novel were stapled into my brain for months after reading, and I just couldn’t explain why I admired Myshkin so much, but after year to sit on it, I will try to here. To argue that being a pushover in interactions with others, in public policy, or in relationships is not what Myshkin inspires, despite it being a part of his character. It was something else.
Myshkin is not a blueprint to live by; he is not Christ. But he embodies one half of the equation: “be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Myshkin saw into the souls of others as Christ did, which allowed him to be as harmless as a dove. His foolishness came not from uplifting himself but from uplifting others, especially when they didn’t deserve it. While Nietzsche spoke of uplifting the self, Myshkin sought to uplift others. Now, Myshkin didn’t have the wisdom because the unconditional magnanimity he bestowed on others was often what they didn’t actually need to help them, but he nevertheless cared for them. As I’ve said before, there is a kind of law to interpersonal love, I’ll call it Myshkin’s Law: As you lift someone, some truth, or some virtue up, you must necessarily be lowered. A terrifying reality that Myshkin makes clear. If we want to love others, that’s at the cost of ourselves. It is not to be done for reciprocation, but to know that you will take the hit. And this law—Myshkin’s Law—is a grim reality: if I want to be someone who truly loves, do I want to make that tradeoff? The tradeoff of myself? Christ implemented an unwavering wisdom, but like Myshkin, knew that in pursuing goodness, others would scorn him, call him an idiot, and test his patience, humility, kindness, and faithfulness.
Christ was not motivated by love so that others would “see” him, but loved as he saw into others—he saw into the broken souls of mankind and had a saving mission by which others would collaterally see him. Myshkin didn’t love to plant seeds in others’ lives, but saw into the souls of others, by which he may or may not plant seeds as a byproduct.
To love so that others might see your love is futile. I don’t find motivating, and I hardly believe it is love. Though others will certainly notice, it can’t be the “why” when push comes to shove.
Myshkin is so remarkably compassionate and selfless that he almost doesn’t feel like an individual. In every encounter, he takes on the burdens and misfortunes of others, always seeking what is best for them despite their own self-destructive tendencies.
What was it about Myshkin, despite his flaws, that made him so compelling?
I was inspired as I vicariously lived through Prince Myshkin, because Prince Myshkin vicariously lived through others.