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A review by muzzystbrigid
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4.0
8.3/10
This might be the most Dostoevsky book I’ve yet to come across. Although I’ve only familiarized myself with 5 of his texts, this one seems to peer into his own psyche, analyzing and critiquing it morris than the rest (note I’ve yet to read Brothers Karamazov). To put it in a metaphor, if Crime and Punishment is his “Goodfellas” then The Idiot would be his “Taxi Driver.”
Mainly this has to do with the ideas presented and how they’re addressed. Crime and Punishment is largely about the weighty topics of guilt and redemption while told on a very tight and personal level, while The Idiot is about the simple concept of “fitting in” and is projected onto the layout of Russian society, more specifically its societal upper echelon. A big idea on a small scale vs. a smaller idea on a large scale.
There are many similarities one can draw to the comparison previously made between Dostoevsky and Scorsese and I’m sure anyone familiar with the works reference has already made most of them. However, there is one that I’d like to highlight that really hammers this home: redemption.
In Crime and Punishment, we get a very lukewarm ending for Raskolnikov where he faces retribution; legal, mental, and spiritual, for his actions. When we look back and ask ourselves, “is this fitting,” most would inwardly shrug and say, “I guess so,” akin to the audiences reaction to Henry Hill’s dismay after ratting and retiring to a normal civilian lifestyle.
While in the Idiot, we’re left with a Myshkin, who in his own eyes did all the right things yet was left as broken of a man as he was when we first heard his story and sickness. He tried to live by the moral compass that he pocketed in his soul, but that along with his invalid health and the reaction to his funny behaviors left him heading on a train back to Switzerland. This is reminiscent of Travis Bickle’s ending where he finds justice in his own eyes yet finds it hard to be at peace with himself or to earn social and romantic validation.
Now what’s the point of these comparisons to film? Because that’s what the driving point of the question this book poses. It all comes to a focal point in a chapter wherein Myshkin and Rogozhin comment on a Holbein painting of Jesus Christ freshly taken off a cross and laid in a tomb. It’s a rather bleak and frightening scene, one inducing claustrophobia, anxiety, and hopelessness. Rogozhin first comments on how it’s made him question, doubt, then lose his faith and then gets brought up again multiple times throughout as a mode of conversation surrounding the Russian soul and religion.
This leads to many discussions between Myshkin and other characters in the book such as Lebedyev and the “dignitary” Byelokonsky that span many pages and are full of profound and keen observations. As great as those are, the most impressive one is the conversation never had: can one who is truly and earnestly Christian get by in the world today, specifically a Russian one?
Dostoevsky’s answer to this, as one might guess from what I’ve said so far is no. Prince Myshkin serves as the Christian martyr of this story and boy does he take a beating. He gets tricked, manipulated, condescended, disgraced, trampled on, and practically thrown away by the world around him simply due to his naivety, ignorance, and his inability to be a man of action. Although regarded by those who deceive him as a smart man with a golden soul, he always seems out of the loop, a step behind, and a pawn in everyone else’s plan and not his own man. What Dostoevsky is saying here is something iterated in the Bible many times over, that the word of the Lord and the ways of the world do not equate and are not complementary.
Along with this, the idea of Christian perfection is also addressed and examined. Although Myshkin is presented to us as an innocent orthodox Christian, he is a man of some vice as he controversially had a relation with Nastasya Fillipovna which many deemed as his mistress and is largely pulled apart by his weakness for the fairer sex, namely by the former and for the middle daughter of the Epanchin family, Aglaia Ivanovna. Not only does this reaffirm Dostoevsky’s stance that Christian perfection is unattainable by man, but even the pursuit of that while living in the ways of the world, more specifically the opulent one of the higher class, one cannot do both of “serve two masters” as it were.
This brings us back to the painting. We have a defeated Myshkin who tried to live as God intended while still participating in the rather Godless circle of society and he was left as sick as he was in the beginning. He is essentially a social dead-man-walking whose decline and current state is like that of a deceased person who has been laid to rest, much like the Holbein depiction of the Christ. This leaves the Christian with a few options. Give it all up and wish for a fast and painless death, this is explored through Ippolit and his suicide attempt. One could continue and try to do the same, we can see this through the drunken Revelation interpreter, Lebedyev. Another option would be rejecting it all and embracing a lifestyle of lunatic degeneracy, as observed through Rogozhin and Nastasya. And then there’s the one we don’t know, the one that clings back to Christ and holds on to the mystery of faith. A key point left out by Dostoevsky and one I believe he did on purpose. As much as this book is intended for all to read, he gives this perspective as an alternative to the way of the world that takes you down kicking and screaming with it. The alternatives to faith presented are all less than ideal while choosing it does not clearly show wherein one will end up or how they will go about the journey.
That is the side of the “easy yoke” that Dostoevsky invites you to ponder during and after reading The Idiot, wether or not a submission to God will leave you better off is up to you to decide. The only help he gives is painting a picture of the alternatives which all are less than ideal in their own ways, essentially giving a much more expanded, romantic, tragic, Russian, engaging, and human take on Pascal’s wager.
Also, like most of Dostoevsky’s books, it has really good female characters.
This might be the most Dostoevsky book I’ve yet to come across. Although I’ve only familiarized myself with 5 of his texts, this one seems to peer into his own psyche, analyzing and critiquing it morris than the rest (note I’ve yet to read Brothers Karamazov). To put it in a metaphor, if Crime and Punishment is his “Goodfellas” then The Idiot would be his “Taxi Driver.”
Mainly this has to do with the ideas presented and how they’re addressed. Crime and Punishment is largely about the weighty topics of guilt and redemption while told on a very tight and personal level, while The Idiot is about the simple concept of “fitting in” and is projected onto the layout of Russian society, more specifically its societal upper echelon. A big idea on a small scale vs. a smaller idea on a large scale.
There are many similarities one can draw to the comparison previously made between Dostoevsky and Scorsese and I’m sure anyone familiar with the works reference has already made most of them. However, there is one that I’d like to highlight that really hammers this home: redemption.
In Crime and Punishment, we get a very lukewarm ending for Raskolnikov where he faces retribution; legal, mental, and spiritual, for his actions. When we look back and ask ourselves, “is this fitting,” most would inwardly shrug and say, “I guess so,” akin to the audiences reaction to Henry Hill’s dismay after ratting and retiring to a normal civilian lifestyle.
While in the Idiot, we’re left with a Myshkin, who in his own eyes did all the right things yet was left as broken of a man as he was when we first heard his story and sickness. He tried to live by the moral compass that he pocketed in his soul, but that along with his invalid health and the reaction to his funny behaviors left him heading on a train back to Switzerland. This is reminiscent of Travis Bickle’s ending where he finds justice in his own eyes yet finds it hard to be at peace with himself or to earn social and romantic validation.
Now what’s the point of these comparisons to film? Because that’s what the driving point of the question this book poses. It all comes to a focal point in a chapter wherein Myshkin and Rogozhin comment on a Holbein painting of Jesus Christ freshly taken off a cross and laid in a tomb. It’s a rather bleak and frightening scene, one inducing claustrophobia, anxiety, and hopelessness. Rogozhin first comments on how it’s made him question, doubt, then lose his faith and then gets brought up again multiple times throughout as a mode of conversation surrounding the Russian soul and religion.
This leads to many discussions between Myshkin and other characters in the book such as Lebedyev and the “dignitary” Byelokonsky that span many pages and are full of profound and keen observations. As great as those are, the most impressive one is the conversation never had: can one who is truly and earnestly Christian get by in the world today, specifically a Russian one?
Dostoevsky’s answer to this, as one might guess from what I’ve said so far is no. Prince Myshkin serves as the Christian martyr of this story and boy does he take a beating. He gets tricked, manipulated, condescended, disgraced, trampled on, and practically thrown away by the world around him simply due to his naivety, ignorance, and his inability to be a man of action. Although regarded by those who deceive him as a smart man with a golden soul, he always seems out of the loop, a step behind, and a pawn in everyone else’s plan and not his own man. What Dostoevsky is saying here is something iterated in the Bible many times over, that the word of the Lord and the ways of the world do not equate and are not complementary.
Along with this, the idea of Christian perfection is also addressed and examined. Although Myshkin is presented to us as an innocent orthodox Christian, he is a man of some vice as he controversially had a relation with Nastasya Fillipovna which many deemed as his mistress and is largely pulled apart by his weakness for the fairer sex, namely by the former and for the middle daughter of the Epanchin family, Aglaia Ivanovna. Not only does this reaffirm Dostoevsky’s stance that Christian perfection is unattainable by man, but even the pursuit of that while living in the ways of the world, more specifically the opulent one of the higher class, one cannot do both of “serve two masters” as it were.
This brings us back to the painting. We have a defeated Myshkin who tried to live as God intended while still participating in the rather Godless circle of society and he was left as sick as he was in the beginning. He is essentially a social dead-man-walking whose decline and current state is like that of a deceased person who has been laid to rest, much like the Holbein depiction of the Christ. This leaves the Christian with a few options. Give it all up and wish for a fast and painless death, this is explored through Ippolit and his suicide attempt. One could continue and try to do the same, we can see this through the drunken Revelation interpreter, Lebedyev. Another option would be rejecting it all and embracing a lifestyle of lunatic degeneracy, as observed through Rogozhin and Nastasya. And then there’s the one we don’t know, the one that clings back to Christ and holds on to the mystery of faith. A key point left out by Dostoevsky and one I believe he did on purpose. As much as this book is intended for all to read, he gives this perspective as an alternative to the way of the world that takes you down kicking and screaming with it. The alternatives to faith presented are all less than ideal while choosing it does not clearly show wherein one will end up or how they will go about the journey.
That is the side of the “easy yoke” that Dostoevsky invites you to ponder during and after reading The Idiot, wether or not a submission to God will leave you better off is up to you to decide. The only help he gives is painting a picture of the alternatives which all are less than ideal in their own ways, essentially giving a much more expanded, romantic, tragic, Russian, engaging, and human take on Pascal’s wager.
Also, like most of Dostoevsky’s books, it has really good female characters.