Fydor Dostoyevsky - The Idiot reviewed

Han’s Holbien’s painting, Christ’s Body in the Tomb that inspired The Idiot

This book charts the journey of Mhyskin, a sheltered prince back into 19th Century Russian society following his medically induced exile in Switzerland.  He embodies the Christian morality and generosity of soul that Dostoyevsky prized.  His singular lack of malice or avarice generates suspicion and ridicule from the worldly chattering classes of St Petersburg.  It is both a tragic story for the suffering endured by saintly Mhyskin, and also an indictment of the vice-ridden society who spurn and torment this angelic figure.  Like his other works, the typically bleak setting is dotted with the desperate, dying and deluded.   

One of the most memorable dialogues happen almost at the beginning of the book, where Mhyskin reflects on capital punishment and the emotions felt by the condemned.  This part is not a work of fiction.  Dostoevsky himself was sentenced to death, before a last-minute commutation for labour in Siberia instead.  Thus, the dialogue is a haunting autobiographical account of an experience that clearly plagued his psyche thereafter.  

“ The chief and worst pain may not be in the body suffering but in one’s knowing for certain that in an hour, and then in ten minutes, and then in half a minute and then now, at the very moment, the soul will leave the body and that one will cease to be a man, and that’s bound to happen; the worst part is that it’s certain… anyone murdered by brigands, whose throat is cut at night in a wood, or something of that sort, must surely hope to escape till the last moment… in the other case all that last hope, that makes dying ten times easier, is taken away for certain. There is the sentence and the whole awful torture lies in the fact that there is certainly no escape, and there is no torture in the world so terrible… it was of this torture and of this agony that Christ spoke, too. No, you can’t treat a man like that “

Mhyskin is a memorable character.  From what the reader knows about his inner life from the narrative, we know that he is not simple, as almost everyone he meets assumes, he is rather entirely good.  He acts out of pure generosity and benevolence.  Any quarrel another character has with him is either out of jealousy for his goodness, or because his naivety inadvertently infringes on another’s baser aims.  However, this intimacy is not enough to give flesh to Mhyskin as an understandable character.  He is unrealistic and memorable in the sense of a caricature or symbol of Christian goodness.  He offers no direct insight into more ignoble human psychology.  

Nastasya Filippovna is another remarkable character.  Her enduring impact is not so much of what she does in the narrative, but the sense of dread and anticipation she inspires in the minds of other characters.  She is a woman with a tortured past.  Emotionally scarred by an orphaned childhood and guardianship under the debauched Totsky, she is sneered at by the upper echelons of Petersburg society.  However, her breath-taking beauty and seductive charms mean that she is never ignored.  She stirs destructive jealousy in the hearts of the women, and desire in the hearts of the men.  She is caught between her essential innocence and her self-loathing embrace of her fallen state.   Flitting between these two minds mean that she is prone to dramatic reversals and flight.  Breaking promises mean that she breeds trouble wherever she goes.  Mhyskin is smitten with her from their first meeting and offers her a chance to attain respectability in the cruel eyes of St Petersburg society.  Her kinder nature loves him and recognises his semi-divinity.  However, her self-destructive urges kick in, which ensures a repeated dance of offering him hope, and then snatching it away.  This tragic dalliance ultimately culminates in her suicide.  This shatters his psyche and is the final blow he can take before being forced back to the Alps.   

Despite extraordinary reflections on capital punishment, and some brilliantly formed characters, I feel that the themes of this book are much more limited in scope than those of Crime and Punishment.  The latter explores man’s potential for redemption and the moral framework of the Western mind.  While the simply critiques the snobbery and hypocrisies of 19th century Russian aristocrats.  Moreover, the multiple settings, complicated weaving narratives and large cast meant that it was harder to follow than Dostoyevsky’s other works.