A review by sidharthvardhan
A Faint Heart by Fyodor Dostoevsky

4.0

"Yes, this happiness has upset him, I was right there," he said to himself. "Upon my word, he has made me quite depressed, too, that man will make a tragedy of anything! What a feverish creature! Oh, I must save him! I must save him!"

When we think of a faint heart, we usually take it to mean one who gets nervous while facing a danger of some sort … but there are people, some of the best, who can’t feel equal to happiness that might fell their way, especially if the happiness has come suddenly after a long period of suffering. The emotional turbulence might just be too much for them

“you would like there to be no one unhappy in the whole world when you are getting married.... Yes, brother, you must admit that you would like me, for instance, your best friend, to come in for a fortune of a hundred thousand all of a sudden, you would like all the enemies in the world to be suddenly, for no rhyme or reason, reconciled, so that in their joy they might all embrace one another in the middle of the street, and then, perhaps, come here to call on you ……. Because you are happy, you want every one, absolutely every one, to become happy at once. It hurts you and troubles you to be happy alone. And so you want at once to do your utmost to be worthy of that happiness, and maybe to do some great deed to satisfy your conscience”

I wonder what hope can such a person has to survive. It is such a sad little story. Vasya’s character is a little like Myshkin – both have great hearts, lack confidence due to their lack of physical well being, are easily excitable and both end up with similar fate. Once again, FD is reminding us that there is such a thing as too much of sensitiveness.