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A review by joshknape
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
3.0
I never finished The Idiot, getting to the end of Book III before the extreme complexity of the plot and cast, and my inability to concentrate enough to absorb them, led me to give up and read only synopses of what happened in book IV. (The ending was unexpected.)
The Idiot is an incredibly difficult novel to follow, in comparison with the other Dostoyevsky works I have read (Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov). Especially if you don't read it all at once, possibly because you tend to get distracted by other books as I do; that makes understanding the plot even harder.
The reason it's so much more difficult is because those novels are both nominally murder dramas with very small casts, but the plot of The Idiot is purely social intrigue and its cast is enormous in comparison. Simultaneously appearing characters have similar social positions, relatively similar personalities, and even similar names. One family has daughters named Aglaya, Alexandra and Adelaida; and there are a General Epanchin and a General Ivolgin. Many characters have multiple nicknames per Russian custom, and many are related to others by blood or marriage. It's a headache.
This complicated network of characters participate in an equally complicated plot, a tangled web of relationships (social, familial, personal, financial) and interactions that often involve corruption, betrayal, and callousness. If it weren't Dostoyevsky, it might be called a soap opera. Keeping track of all the characters, their relationships, and their attitudes toward Prince Myshkin takes so much concentration that I don't feel able to study Myshkin, the protagonist, as much as I want to. (The main reason I started The Idiot in the first place is because my novel in progress has a somewhat similar character, and I hoped for inspiration.)
Although the protagonist and central figure is certainly Myshkin, the character most difficult to understand is not him, Nastasya, Rogozhin, Lebedyev or anyone else; it's Aglaia, by far. (Ganya is a distant second.) Aglaia is said to be, while not saintly like Myshkin, some sort of innocent, and certainly different and separate from the corruption and intrigue of her family and the characters they interact with. But her innocence was never clear to me, especially in light of her confused and vacillating behavior toward Myshkin. She has to be the most complex character.
The Idiot could be described as "Dostoyevsky does Henry James," really--it is a plot type and a cast James could have written.
The Idiot is an incredibly difficult novel to follow, in comparison with the other Dostoyevsky works I have read (Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov). Especially if you don't read it all at once, possibly because you tend to get distracted by other books as I do; that makes understanding the plot even harder.
The reason it's so much more difficult is because those novels are both nominally murder dramas with very small casts, but the plot of The Idiot is purely social intrigue and its cast is enormous in comparison. Simultaneously appearing characters have similar social positions, relatively similar personalities, and even similar names. One family has daughters named Aglaya, Alexandra and Adelaida; and there are a General Epanchin and a General Ivolgin. Many characters have multiple nicknames per Russian custom, and many are related to others by blood or marriage. It's a headache.
This complicated network of characters participate in an equally complicated plot, a tangled web of relationships (social, familial, personal, financial) and interactions that often involve corruption, betrayal, and callousness. If it weren't Dostoyevsky, it might be called a soap opera. Keeping track of all the characters, their relationships, and their attitudes toward Prince Myshkin takes so much concentration that I don't feel able to study Myshkin, the protagonist, as much as I want to. (The main reason I started The Idiot in the first place is because my novel in progress has a somewhat similar character, and I hoped for inspiration.)
Although the protagonist and central figure is certainly Myshkin, the character most difficult to understand is not him, Nastasya, Rogozhin, Lebedyev or anyone else; it's Aglaia, by far. (Ganya is a distant second.) Aglaia is said to be, while not saintly like Myshkin, some sort of innocent, and certainly different and separate from the corruption and intrigue of her family and the characters they interact with. But her innocence was never clear to me, especially in light of her confused and vacillating behavior toward Myshkin. She has to be the most complex character.
The Idiot could be described as "Dostoyevsky does Henry James," really--it is a plot type and a cast James could have written.