The Idiot (Modern Library Classics) | Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Idiot (Modern Library Classics) | Fyodor Dostoevsky | TRULY A WORLD CLASSIC

books:

The Idiot (Modern ...

	The Idiot (Modern Library Classics) Fyodor Dostoevsky Modern Library, 2003 - 720 pages average customer review:based on 84 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

very thought-provoking

Myshkin is comparable to some of the saintly, childlike, and innocent characters in the writings of George MacDonald. I do not have any objection to the title "The Idiot."

One gets the idea that it's ridiculous and somehow wrong to be at odds with (or different from) the rest of society. Reading "The Idiot" has lightened and comforted my heart, and encouraged me to be content and well-satisfied with _being myself_ and being a follower of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said this about children: "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

TRULY A WORLD CLASSIC

I originally purchased this classic because the author had epilepsy, his main character has epilepsy, and I have epilepsy. This is a book you actually have to read, unlike what is being popularly puplished now, where you can just skim the pages. The character development is delicious!

for more information click here

Classic Dostoyevsky

"The Idiot" is the story of Prince Myshkin, a simple-minded, almost Christ-like figure given to seizures.
It's not Dostoyevsky's best novel, and its ending is somewhat abrupt and disappointing, but it's probably better than ninety percent of all the other novels written by any author since. It's brilliant, and it contains some of Dostoyevsky's finest writing. A passage in which the book's protagonist walks into a room and then into a girl's eyes springs immediately to mind, and has stayed with me ever since I first read this book years ago.
And, unlike Dostoyevksy's more widely read works, in this book, Dostoyevsky often takes the opportunity to digress from the novel's story and tell his personal opinions on what he's writing about, whether the subject be an event in the story or a particular theme the author feels strongly about. These digressions present a great opportunity for the reader to really get to know this amazing writer.
But the story and the characters are reasons enough to give this book a go, preferably after first reading "The Brothers Karamazov," "Crime and Punishment," or some of Dostoyevky's shorter works.
It's a great book, very rewarding, and well worth your time.

for more information click here

An Unintentional Mockery?

First, let me respond to another review on the B&N edition. It seems that many long works of the 19th century are "guilty" of the same thing--saying a lot more than necessary to make the point. Yes, The Idiot, like Les Miserable, like War and Peace, could have been reduced to 200 to 300 pages, even less, but that wasn't the style of the time. My recommendation in approaching these works, as with much we ever do, is to take the Zen approach: enjoy the process of life presented in the book without much attention to the goal. Once one reaches the goal, in the case finishing the book, the person is at once unfulfilled again, needing something else to read and intrigue the mind. So enjoy the present moment in the book, any book.

That being said, The Idiot is rather curious to me on one point. I don't know if this is part of Russian style, but why did Dostoevsky find it necessary, in virtually every case, to use full names, even when one person is addressing a close friend or family member. Also, why does virtually every person have 2 names, names which aren't even similar to each other? I highly recommend, if you want to keep the characers straight, that you keep a list in your book as characters show up as to what their dual names are. I mean, you will find one person addressed with their two different names in adjacent sentences, making it seem like two different people are referred to, but it's one person. It is for this one reason that I gave the work 4 stars. If it represents the historical formality and idiosyncresy of the time, then I give four stars instead of five for 19th-century Russian idiocy.

Finally, the point of the book. Who is the idiot here? It is clear that Myshkin, who is naive and having epilepsy, is the idiot. But his naivety is not weird, really. His naivety is actually compassion, a Christ-like attribute. And certainly, epilepsy is not a mood disorder or mental limitation, except maybe it was perceived that way at the time. The question is whether Dostoevsky actually perceived Myshkin as an idiot. I believe it is possible he did not; that is, the author may have been mocking the general population's definition of idiot. When I finished the book, and actually before finishing, I realized that while Myshkin is the idiot of the title, he is actually about the only sane person in the story. Virtually all the other characters act like idiots, morons, jerks, etc. It may be that Dostoevsky was mocking "normal" society. If he wasn't, he nonetheless did so, and quite effectively and satisfyingly.

for more information click here

Show me an idea that binds men together

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Prince Myshkin is one of the most pure, childlike, beautiful, yet naïve figures in christian literature. He is beautiful simply because he is ridiculous at the same time, despite his always good intentions. In almost every respect, he is very similar to the still famous Don Quixote. The reader can't help feeling compassion for Servantes' hero's unawareness of his own worth and his ridiculousness at the same time. Dostoyevsky's hero arouses the reader's sympathy for pretty much the same reasons. He certainly is not the main protagonist of this novel, in the sense that being almost an onlooker, he's an understanding listener, allows himself to be drawn to a complex underground intrigue he stepped right into, and that unwillingly, he attracts around him all the characters of this book and lends his ear to their confessions and revelations. He commiserates with those who try to lie to him, cheat him, mock him, and throughout the narrative he remains an outsider, an "idiot" in the classic meaning of the word. And in this respect the reader may find him somewhat irritating. Sometimes. At least I do.

Dostoyevsky dispatches Myshkin back to Russia as a redeemer, and to me, precisely this messianic content of this novel is in glaring contradiction to the content of all his other major novels. In him, one can see how Russia is reflected. The prince is not a bearer of a philosophy of any kind whatsoever. His function is not to act in any way, or to alter the course of the action by the continuity of his deeds. His function is simply to disseminate the aura of a new state of being, and let happen what may happen.

"The idiot" is Dostoyevsky's book of salvation, and Prince Myshkin, just like Christ, tried to save without overcoming the implacability of destiny. There is no other character in russian literature quite like him. He is the personification of the highest potentialities of the russian spirit. And his motherland, whom he wants to save, is in total disarray at the time of his return. To save through compassion, the highest form of christian love: that's what he wants to achieve. And as soon as he arrives, he realizes the hopelessness of his mission. He can not simply save through compassion alone. This grim fatalism begins on the very first page of the novel, when the prince, on his way back home, meets Rogozhin in the train. And they are both here together at the beginning, just as they will be at the very end of the book. Myshkin hovers above the fatal pursuit of Nastassya Filippovna by Rogozhin like an angel wringing his hands over the Crucifixion. In the end, he embracing Rogozhin, the murderer by the bedside of Nastassya's lifeless body transforms the killing into a ritual sacrifice.

A lot of long passages and even whole pages throughout this novel seem to have been written by a restless, uneasy, sometimes even feverish mind. I learned that Dostoyevsky was epileptic only immediately after having finished this novel. To be honest, I wasn't surprised that much.

"The idiot", like all the books the great russian writer has ever written, is certainly not an easy read at all. Sometimes, it requires rereading certain passages again and again. "Crime and punishment" has always been my personal favorite Dostoyevsky novel. Yet, I think "The idiot" is an extremely well-written novel in which we see ourselves, and the world the book is about happens to be ours too.

for more information click here