The Idiot (Modern Library Classics) | Fyodor Dostoevsky | A beauty of a book ...always timely

The Idiot (Modern Library Classics) | Fyodor Dostoevsky | sublimely inaccessible

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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
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highly recommended

A beauty of a book ...always timely

I read this book for the first time when I was 15 or 16, and promptly declared it my favorite book. When I read it again in my 30s, it rang even more true. The society in this book is not so different from ours, obsessed with money, beauty, social standing, celebrity, and so forth. People are restless, flawed, seeking peace, while at the same time self-hating, self-destructive, and seeking out danger. What happens to this perfectly good, loving, honest human being, Myshkin, comes to seem inevitable given what we know about human nature, then and now.

sublimely inaccessible

This is one of the more famous of Dostoyevsky's novels, and quite rightly so as it has his very-unique blend of psychology, philosophy and an unrelenting view of the bleakest recesses of the soul.

I read the novel in the original Russian, so this isn't a review of any particular translation but the work itself.

In brief, the book centres around a Prince who has returned to Russia after being treated for mental illness in Switzerland since his childhood (hence the idiot). He quickly becomes involved within the upper-middle eschellons of St Petersburgian society, as people become fascinated by his direct honesty, simplicity and compassion. He becomes emotionally involved with a Fallen Woman, and this develops into a love triangle with another woman, ultimately ending in --- you guessed it! - tragedy. The Idiot is portrayed as the symbol of a child-like innocence: he genuinely wants everyone to live in harmony and love. However, the falseness, politics and backstabbing of the world of Russian middle-nobility will have none of that.

The plot is quite complicated - but not in terms of twists. The story is quite simple in terms of what happened, however much of it is told inside-out, focusing on the internal world of the characters. So, if you feel like you've missed something - a reason for a character's comment, an event etc, chances are, this will be revealed later on.

Dostoyevsky dwells on the extreme minute aspects of the emotional lives of his charactes. This is the richest aspect of the novel - and these emotions possess all the contradiction and chaos that real people have. There are no total heroes in the book - but I found a part of myself identifying with the Prince, as the grown child who just doesn't want to accept the "adult" behaviour of interpersonal relationships. I think it's expected in reading the book that some characters will be loathed, some found amusing and admired, some arousing interest - but not loved. This is because the world portrayed within the book is very inaccessible. It's hard to identify with anyone in terms of more than the generality of emotion - not just because the setting is remote, but because the characters experience thoughts and ideas that are so different to what most people would. I think this inaccessability was deliberate - as we feel not-quite-at-home in the world of the book, so it highlights how the Prince is not quite at home there - and that's where the sublime feeling is derived from.

On a side note, be prepared for the difficulty of keeping track of names, as people are called by their surnames on certain occasions and the rest is first name and father's name. With heaps of characters and many Russian names, it all becomes a mess. But with some concentration (perhaps making a cast of characters?) that can be overcome and a great read will be had.

A great book that will interact with your emotional world - if you don't mind heavy reading.

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4.75 Stars

There certainly will never be another book like The Idiot. As every high school student knows, the central maxim of creative writing is, "Show; don't tell." Henry James, who criticized the novels of Dostoyevsky as big, lumbering dinosaurs, epitomized this method of literary exegesis. In The Idiot, Dostoyevsky wrote nearly 700 pages of "telling" and almost no "showing" to speak of. The book doesn't really have a plot: though linear, there is little cohesion; in addition, Dostoyevsky takes frequent times outs from telling his story to expound on such philosophical issues as capital punishment, morality, humility, materialism, and the order of chaos. Indeed, the previous subject, or the lack there of, is really the theme and the focus of the book. In reading The Idiot, it becomes quite clear why Christ was crucified. Dostoyevsky portrays the Russia of his time as a mad, chaotic world characterized by an obsession with decadent materialism. In such a swirling mass of "isms", one struggles to find a rational and coherent foothold; morality and virtue have no place. The Christian ideal -- which now seems to have disappeared from the world, if, indeed, it ever actually existed -- of humility, submission, deference, tolerance, and turning the other cheek, as personified in Prince Myshkin, the novel's title character and protagonist, also has no place. Dostoyevsky saw the Christ-like figure of Myshkin as the only hope that Russian culture and society had: he was Dostoyevsky's redemptive figure. Unfortunately, as Dostoyevsky clearly and vividly portrays in this dark and bleak novel, such a person would most likely never be able to integrate him or herself into a culture as far gone into decadence and negative modes of thinking -- atheism, nihilism, etc. -- as his Russia was. Does this sound familiar, or does it not? The book and it multiple messages are clearly still very relevant today. One literary scholar quite accurately called this Dostoyevsky's most contemporary novel. One senses that it is even more applicable to today's (post-Communist and once again being invaded by capitalism and Western materialism) Russia than to the Russia of Dostoyevsky's own time. The book is not an especially exciting read: there is a multitude of dialogue and very few things (with the exceptions of Nastashya's two big incidents) which can be called "exciting" take place. The novel, as mentioned before, is also very fragmented: it is seemingly not structured at all, and events happen apparently at random and with no connection to each other. This, of course, relates back to the chaos of order -- or, in relation to the novel itself, the order of chaos. The discontinuity of the novel reflects and comments upon the discontinuity of society and the world itself. This is precisely why we still read Dostoyevsky today, and why we should always read him: the anomie of Dostoyevsky is the eternal anomie of mankind.

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The Mind That Matters

Another reviewer states that The Idiot should not be a first foray into Dostoevsky's works....which I disagree with....

Having first read 'Crime and Punishment' and the dark complexity of a good man driven to tortured madness by having committed an unspeakable act, no matter how well-intentioned it might be...I found this novel lacking in comparison....and might suggest this as a starting point, in order to gain an insight into the writing style and illumination of theme one needs to appreciate such a complex author...

Prince Myshkin, the 'good man' protagonist of this novel, is purported by other reviewers to be either a representation of Christ; or a representation of the author himself, a man 'flawed' by his alcoholism and gambling addiction, illustrated as an affliction of epilepsy in the character of Myshkin....a 'defect' which makes him less than desirable to those around him...

However, Myshkin's wealth brings him admiration, frienship, even love; in the persons of some unscrupulous and amoral characters who seek him out for their own personal agendas, regardless of his 'idiocy' while Dostoevksy plays out their affect on this 'pure' man as they attempt to corrupt him as well. The characters are vain, ill-tempered gold-diggers and social climbers, and Myshkin's is tasked with remaining 'pure' in the face of such influence on him.

The novel is long, yes, and takes some attention in order to wade through the myriad characters and situations; and a bit of adeptness at 'reading between the lines' in order to recognize the theme that the author was exploring. However, though I do find it lack-lustre in comparison to C&P, it is a worthwhile read and deserves its place in the annals of classic literature.

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They're all crazy!

I am a big Dostoyevsky head, but this is certainly one of his weaker novels. If you're starting on Dostoyevsky, go for the big one, The Brothers Karamazov, or the little one, Notes from Underground.

King Dosty creates a fantastic set of characters and gets out his axe grinder; it comes together fairly slowly, but completing the book will be rewarding. Gracing the pages we have nihilists, slavophobes, endearing characters and despicables. Dostoyevsky was attempting to depict an honest, pure man (Prince Myshkin). Chances are all readers will like and admire Myshkin until about 3/4 of the way through, where things start to get really hairy:

A scene is delightfully prepared with humor; Prince Myshkin, about to marry a Aglaia Epanchin (a beautiful young daughter of a well-off general) is exposed to aristocratic 'society' at a party. The way Dostoyevsky prepares you is reminiscent of some of Tolstoy's depictions of aristocrats; humorously jibing and illustrating their ridiculousness, yet appreciating the fact that they are human beings. Anyhow, the party is a make-or break opportunity for Myshkin; if he pleases the aristos, the Epanchin family will approve of the marriage and he will live happily ever afer with beautiful Aglaia. All Myshkin has to do is keep his mouth shut (as the Epanchins begged him to do beforehand), but regrettably, he does not. Impassioned, the Prince delivers a few splutterings about religion and Russia's destiny to one of the distinguished aristos. It appears that Myshkin here is really a mouthpeice for Dostoyevsky himself - and not the Ivan Karamazov doubting part of Dostoyevsky, what Myshkin says at this interval is what Dostoyevsky *really* believes. And the beliefs are rather too much for me to swallow: Catholicism is, in Myshkin's opinion, worse than atheism, the nihilist socialists have a deep hatred of Russia, etc.. we see the true extent of Dostoyevsky's reactionary religious beliefs. The aristocrat gentlemen try to mollify Myshkin a little, but to no avail; they leave seeing him as an oddity. The marriage with Aglaia falls through.

After reading Myshkin's outburst, I could only blink a few times. Is this what Alyosha K. would say if pressed the same way? Thank goodness he didn't, otherwise Brothers K would have been a bit less enduring...

But the book is still not a bad book! At the very least, Dostoyevsky shows how absolutely nutty people can become when it comes to passionate love. This isn't a simple love triangle, its a love quadrilateral!! But beyond the love story, you'll see social criticism, political and philosophical debates, pyschological analysis... in short, the typical complex and awesome Dostoyevsky novel. But, as I said above, its not Dosty at his best. Oh - and its a tragedy. You didn't think the Christ-man would be accepted by the sinful world, did you?

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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