The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  But this general outspokenness can also turn scandalous. Ganya Ivolgin repeatedly denounces the prince to his face and once even slaps him. At Nastasya Filippovna’s party, a parlor game is played in which each guest (the ladies are excused) must tell the worst thing he has done in his life. On the prince’s terrace in Pavlovsk, surrounded by almost the entire cast of characters, a vicious newspaper lampoon about the prince himself is read aloud. And on the same terrace Ippolit reads his “Necessary Explanation,” which, among other things, is a direct attack on the prince for his “Christian” humility and meekness.

  As one reads, however, and even rather early on, one becomes aware that, together with this outspokenness, there is a great reticence in The Idiot. For all its surprising frankness, there is much that goes unsaid, and what goes unsaid is most important. Olga Meerson has written a witty and penetrating study of this question,§ showing how what is normally taboo in society is easily violated in Dostoevsky’s work, but as a way of pointing to the greater significance of what his characters pass over in silence. This is a poetics of opening, but hardly of openness.

  An ironic variation on the influence of the unsaid is the famous phrase “Beauty will save the world.” These words are often attributed to Dostoevsky himself and have been made much of by commentators, but in fact he never said them. Both Ippolit and Aglaya Epanchin refer them to Prince Myshkin, but we never actually hear him say them either. The one time the prince comments on beauty is when he is giving his observations about the faces of Mrs. Epanchin and her daughters. He says nothing of the youngest, Aglaya. The mother asks why, and he demurs: “I can’t say anything now. I’ll say it later.” When she presses him, he admits that she is “an extraordinary beauty,” adding: “Beauty is difficult to judge; I’m not prepared yet. Beauty is a riddle.” This is the prince’s first real moment of reticence in the novel. By the end he will have moved from naïve candor to an anguished silence in the face of the unspeakable.

  Everything is a riddle in The Idiot, everything is two-sided, ambiguous. The structure of reality is double: there is the social world of Petersburg and Pavlovsk, and within it a world infinitely higher and lower, both personal and archetypal. Olga Meerson says in the conclusion of her book:

  Dostoevsky … uses the language of social interactions for non-social purposes. Rather than depicting society, he borrows the sign system of literature — anthropological and fictional — that depicts society, in order to depict and address human conscience, conscious, unconscious, subconscious. Signs of verbal social decorum are transformed by having gained a new function; they no longer apply to the actual social decorum. The latter is constantly and scandalously violated in Dostoevsky precisely by those characters who are exceptionally sensitive to the new, meta-social functions of these signals of decorum.

  The social world is relative, ambivalent, comic, “carnivalized,” as the critic Mikhail Bakhtin preferred to say — a world in which a polite drawing room turns into a public square. The meta-social world is located in the deepest layers of consciousness, of memory, internal in each of us and at the same time transcending each of us. In this world, characters acquire the qualities of folk-tale heroes and villains, of figures in a mystery play, of angels and demons. There is a captive princess, there is a prince who is called upon to save her, and there is a dark force that threatens them both. The heavenly emissary must deliver the world’s soul from bondage, Andromeda from her chains; if he betrays his calling, disaster will follow.

  As if to underscore the distance between social realism and his own “realism of a higher sort,” Dostoevsky refers to two other stories of fallen women: La Dame aux camélias by Dumas fils, and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which the prince finds in Nastasya Filippovna’s rooms near the end of the novel. Nastasya Filippovna will hardly efface herself like Dumas’s heroine; that sentimental resolution suits the taste (and the hopes) of her mediocre seducer, the “bouquet man” Totsky, whom she calls a monsieur aux camélias. Nor will she take her own life in despair, like Emma Bovary. Her fate is enacted in a different realm. The parallels serve to mark the difference. But, owing to the chasteness of his art (as opposed to its obvious scandalousness), Dostoevsky allows himself no direct statement of his idea, no symbolistic abstraction, no simple identification of the “archetypes” behind his fiction. He uses the methods and conventions of the social novel to embody an ultimate human drama.

  Money, the most ambiguous of values, is the medium of the social world. Its fatal quality is treated in all tones, at all levels, in The Idiot. Totsky wants to “sell” Nastasya Filippovna to Ganya for seventy-five thousand roubles; Rogozhin offers a hundred thousand for her. In one of the greatest scenes in the novel, Nastasya Filippovna throws his hundred thousand into the fire with everyone watching and challenges Ganya to pull it out. There are many other variations: the prince’s unexpected inheritance, and Burdovsky’s outrageous attempt, spurred on by his nihilist friends, to claim part of it while maintaining his nihilist principles; General Ivolgin’s theft of Lebedev’s four hundred roubles and his subsequent disgrace; Ptitsyn’s successful moneylending and his dream of owning two houses (or maybe even three) on Liteinaya Street; Evgeny Pavlovich’s rich uncle and his embezzlement of government funds; Ippolit’s story of the impoverished doctor; Ferdyshchenko’s “worst deed”; the repeatedly mentioned newspaper stories of murders for the sake of robbery. The clownish clerk Lebedev, though a petty usurer himself, is also an interpreter of the Apocalypse: “we live in the time of the third horse, the black one, and the rider with a balance in his hand, because in our time everything is in balances and contracts, and people are all only seeking their rights: ‘A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny …’ And with all that they want to preserve a free spirit, and a pure heart, and a healthy body, and all of God’s gifts. But they can’t do it with rights alone, and there will follow a pale horse and him whose name is Death.” His interpretation unwittingly reveals the twofold structure of reality in The Idiot.

  Prince Myshkin has two loves, Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaya, one belonging to each “world” of the novel. He also has two doubles: Rogozhin and Ippolit. There is a deep bond between the dying consumptive nihilist thinker and the impulsive, unreflecting, passionate merchant’s son, between the suicide and the murderer, and Ippolit recognizes it. “Les extrémités se touchent,” he says, quoting Pascal. As late as September 1868, Dostoevsky wrote in his notebook: “Ippolit — the main axis of the novel.” The young nihilist belongs among Dostoevsky’s “rebels against Creation,” along with Kirillov in Demons and Ivan Karamazov. His “Necessary Explanation,” as Joseph Frank has observed,‖ contains all the elements of the prince’s worldview, but with an opposite attitude. Speaking of Holbein’s Christ, he says that it shows nature as “some huge machine of the newest construction, which has senselessly seized, crushed, and swallowed up, blankly and unfeelingly, a great and priceless being.” And he wonders how Christ’s disciples, seeing a corpse like that, could believe “that this sufferer would resurrect,” and whether Christ himself, if he could have seen his own image on the eve of his execution, would have “gone to the cross and died as he did.” Ippolit is also a man sentenced to death by the “dark, insolent, and senselessly eternal power to which everything is subjected,” but instead of meekly accepting his fate, instead of passing by and forgiving others their happiness, as the prince advises, he protests, weeps, revolts. If Ippolit is not finally the main axis of the novel, he poses its central question in the most radical and explicit way.

  Rogozhin, on the other hand, tells the prince that he likes looking at the Holbein painting. The prince, “under the impression of an unexpected thought,” replies: “At that painting! A man could even lose his faith from that painting!” “Lose it he does,” Rogozhin agrees. But to Rogozhin’s direct question, whether he believes in God, the prince gives no direct reply. That is another significant moment of reticence on Myshkin’s part. Instead, he turns the c
onversation to “the essence of religious feeling” and says, “There are things to be done in our Russian world, believe me!” A moment later, at Rogozhin’s request, they exchange crosses and become “brothers.” Yet the exact nature of their brotherhood remains a mystery. From that point on, Rogozhin becomes the prince’s shadow, lurking, menacing, hiding, yet inseparable from him, until the final scene finds them pressed face to face. Dostoevsky’s doubles, which might seem images of personal division, are in fact images of human oneness.

  The Idiot is Dostoevsky’s most autobiographical novel. He gave Prince Myshkin many details of his own childhood and youth, his epilepsy, his separation from life and Russia (the author’s years of hard labor and “exile” in Siberia corresponding to the prince’s treatment in Switzerland), his return with a new sense of mission. More specifically, in Myshkin’s story of the mock execution of an “acquaintance,” Dostoevsky gives a detailed account of his own experience on the scaffold in the Semyonovsky parade ground, at the age of twenty-eight, when he thought he had only three more minutes to live. According to a memoir by another of the condemned men, Fyodor Lvov,a Dostoevsky turned to their comrade Speshnyov and said: “We will be together with Christ.” And Speshnyov, with a wry smile, replied: “A handful of ashes.” As Myshkin puts it: “now he exists and lives, and in three minutes there would be something, some person or thing — but who? and where?” The Idiot is built on that eschatological sense of time. It is the desolate time of Holy Saturday, when Christ is buried, the disciples are scattered and — worse than that — abandoned. “Who could believe that this sufferer would resurrect?” As it turned out, Dostoevsky had not three minutes but thirty-two years to think over Speshnyov’s words and his own response to them. The Idiot marks an important step on that way.

  Richard Pevear

  * In L’Expression du corps chez Dostoevskij (“The Expression of the Body in Dostoevsky”), Paris, 2000.

  † Delivered at Chernogolovka, near Moscow, on May 15, 2000.

  ‡ Dostoevsky, du double à l’unité, Paris, 1963 (in English, Fyodor Dostoevsky: Resurrection from the Underground, New York, 1997).

  § Dostoevsky’s Taboos, published (in English) in Studies of the Harriman Institute, Dresden-Munich, 1998.

  ‖ Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, Princeton, 1995.

  a Published in Literaturnoe nasledstvo (“Literary Heritage”), vol. 63, p. 188; Moscow, 1956.

  TRANSLATORS’ NOTES

  LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  Russian names are composed of first name, patronymic (from the father’s first name), and family name. Formal address requires the use of first name and patronymic. Diminutives are commonly used among family and intimate friends; they have two forms, the familiar and the casual or disrespectful; thus Varvara Ivolgin is called Varya in her family, but Varka by her little brother. A shortened form of the patronymic (i.e., Ivanych for Ivanovich, or Pavlych for Pavlovich), used only in speech, also suggests a certain familiarity. In the following list, stressed syllables are marked. In Russian pronunciation, the stressed vowel is always long, and the unstressed vowels are very short.

  Mýshkin, Prince Lev Nikoláevich

  Baráshkov, Nastásya Filíppovna (Nástya)

  Rogózhin, Parfyón Semyónovich

  Epanchín, General Iván Fyódorovich

  _____, Elizavéta (Lizavéta) Prokófyevna

  _____, Alexándra Ivánovna

  _____, Adelaída Ivánovna

  _____, Agláya Ivánovna

  Ívolgin, General Ardalión Alexándrovich

  _____, Nína Alexándrovna

  _____, Gavríla Ardaliónovich (Gánya, Gánechka, Gánka)

  _____, Varvára Ardaliónovna (Várya, Várka)

  _____, Nikolái Ardaliónovich (Kólya)

  Lébedev, Lukyán Timoféevich

  _____, Véra Lukyánovna

  Teréntyev, Ippolít (no patronymic)

  Ptítsyn, Iván Petróvich (Vánka)

  Radómsky, Evgény Pávlovich

  Shch., Prince (no first name, patronymic, or last name)

  Tótsky, Afanásy Ivánovich

  Ferdýshchenko (no first name or patronymic)

  Keller, Lieutenant, ret. (“the fist gentleman”; no first name or patronymic)

  Pavlíshchev, Nikolái Andréevich

  Dárya Alexéevna (“the sprightly lady”; no last name)

  Burdóvsky, Antíp (no patronymic)

  Belokónsky, Princess (“old Belokonsky”; no first name or patronymic)

  A NOTE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF ST PETERSBURG

  The city was founded in the early eighteenth century by a decree of the emperor Peter the Great. It is built on the delta of the river Neva, which divides into three main branches: the Big Neva, the Little Neva, the Nevka. On the left bank of the Neva is the city center, where the government buildings, the Winter Palace, the Senate, the Summer Palace and Summer Garden, the theaters, and the main thoroughfares such as Nevsky Prospect and Liteiny Prospect (Liteinaya Street in Dostoevsky’s time) are located. Here, too, were the Semyonovsky and Izmailovsky quarters, named for army regiments stationed there. On the right bank of the Neva before it divides is the area known as the Vyborg side; on the right bank between the Nevka and the Little Neva is the Petersburg side, where the Peter and Paul Fortress, the oldest structure of the city, stands; between the Little Neva and the Big Neva is Vassilievsky Island. Further north are smaller islands such as Kamenny Island and Elagin Island, which were then mainly garden suburbs. To the south, some fifteen or twenty miles from the city, are the suburbs of Tsarskoe Selo (“the Tsar’s Village”) and Pavlovsk, where much of the action of The Idiot takes place.

  PART ONE

  I

  TOWARDS THE END of November, during a warm spell, at around nine o’clock in the morning, a train of the Petersburg–Warsaw line was approaching Petersburg at full steam. It was so damp and foggy that dawn could barely break; ten paces to right or left of the line it was hard to make out anything at all through the carriage windows. Among the passengers there were some who were returning from abroad; but the third-class compartments were more crowded, and they were all petty business folk from not far away. Everyone was tired, as usual, everyone’s eyes had grown heavy overnight, everyone was chilled, everyone’s face was pale yellow, matching the color of the fog.

  In one of the third-class carriages, at dawn, two passengers found themselves facing each other just by the window—both young men, both traveling light, both unfashionably dressed, both with rather remarkable physiognomies, and both, finally, willing to get into conversation with each other. If they had known what was so remarkable about the one and the other at that moment, they would certainly have marveled at the chance that had so strangely seated them facing each other in the third-class carriage of the Petersburg–Warsaw train. One of them was of medium height, about twenty-seven years old, with curly, almost black hair, and small but fiery gray eyes. He had a broad, flat nose and high cheekbones; his thin lips were constantly twisting into a sort of impudent, mocking, and even malicious smile; but his forehead was high and well formed and made up for the lack of nobility in the lower part of his face. Especially notable was the deathly pallor of his face, which gave the young man’s whole physiognomy an exhausted look, despite his rather robust build, and at the same time suggested something passionate, to the point of suffering, which was out of harmony with his insolent and coarsesmile and his sharp, self-satisfied gaze. He was warmly dressed in an ample lambskin coat covered with black cloth and had not been cold during the night, while his neighbor had been forced to bear on his chilled back all the sweetness of a damp Russian November night, for which he was obviously not prepared. He was wearing a rather ample and thick sleeveless cloak with an enormous hood, the sort often worn by winter travelers somewhere far abroad, in Switzerland or northern Italy, for instance, certainly not reckoning on such long distances as from Eydkuhnen1 to Petersburg. But what was proper and quite satisfactory in Italy turned out to be no
t entirely suitable to Russia. The owner of the cloak with the hood was a young man, also about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, slightly taller than average, with very blond, thick hair, sunken cheeks, and a sparse, pointed, nearly white little beard. His eyes were big, blue, and intent; their gaze had something quiet but heavy about it and was filled with that strange expression by which some are able to guess at first sight that the subject has the falling sickness. The young man’s face, however, was pleasant, fine, and dry, but colorless, and now even blue with cold. From his hands dangled a meager bundle made of old, faded foulard, containing, apparently, all his traveling possessions. On his feet he had thick-soled shoes with gaiters—all not the Russian way. His black-haired companion in the lambskin coat took all this in, partly from having nothing to do, and finally asked, with that tactless grin which sometimes expresses so unceremoniously and carelessly people’s pleasure in their neighbor’s misfortunes: