The Idiot

This article is about the Dostoyevsky novel. For other uses, see The Idiot (disambiguation).

The Idiot

Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of The Idiot Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of The Idiot
Author	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Original title	Идиот
Language	Russian language
Genre	Novel
Publication date	1869
Publication place	Russia
Media type	Print (hardcover and paperback)
Preceded by	The Gambler
Followed by	The Possessed

The Idiot (Russian: Идиот, Idiot) is a novel written by 19th century Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published serially in Russkiy Vestnik between 1868 and 1869. The Idiot is ranked beside some of Dostoevsky's other works as one of the most brilliant literary achievements of the "Golden Age" of Russian literature. It was not published in English until the 20th century.

Plot introduction

Twenty-six-year-old Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin returns to Russia after spending several years at a Swiss sanatorium. Scorned by the society of St. Petersburgh for his idiocy, generosity and innocence, he finds himself at the centre of a struggle between a beautiful kept woman and a gorgeous, virtuous girl, both of whom win his affection. Unfortunately, Myshkin's very goodness seems to precipitate disaster, leaving the impression that, in a world obsessed with money, power, and sexual conquest, a sanatorium may be the only place for a saint.

Plot summary

Prince Lyov Nikolayevich Myshkin, a fair-haired young man in his late twenties and a descendant of one of the oldest Russian lines of nobility, arrives in St. Petersburg on a November morning. He has spent the last four years in a Swiss clinic for treatment of his "idiocy" and epilepsy.

Myshkin's only relation in St. Petersburg is the very distant Lizaveta Prokofyevna Yepanchin. Madame Yepanchin is the wife of General Yepanchin, a wealthy and respected man in his late fifties. The prince makes the acquaintance of the Yepanchins, who have three daughters, Alexandra, Adelaida, and Aglaya, the latter being the youngest and the most beautiful.

General Yepanchin has an ambitious and rather vain assistant by the name of Gavril Ardalyonovich Ivolgin (nicknamed Ganya) whom Myshkin also meets during his visit to the household. Ganya, though he is actually in love with Aglaya, is in the midst of trying to marry Anastassya Filippovna Barashkov, an extraordinarily beautiful "fatal woman" who was once the mistress of the aristocrat Totsky. Totsky has promised Ganya 75,000 rubles if he marries the "fallen" Nastassya Filippovna. As Myshkin is so innocent and naïve, Ganya openly discusses the subject of the proposed marriage in front of the prince.

The prince rents a room in the Ivolgin apartment, also occupied by Ganya, his sister, Varvara Ardalyonovna (Varya); his mother, Nina Alexandrovna; teenage brother, Nikolai (Kolya); his father, General Ivolgin; and another lodger by the name of Ferdyshchenko.

Nastassya Filippovna arrives and begins to insult Ganya's family, which has refused to accept her as a possible wife for Ganya. Myshkin, however, stops her, putting her behavior to shame. Suddenly a rowdy crowd of drunks and rogues arrives, headed by Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin, a dark-haired twenty-seven-year-old who is passionately in love with Nastassya Filippovna. Rogozhin promises to bring 100,000 rubles to Nastassya Filippovna's birthday party scheduled for that evening at which she is to announce whom she shall marry.

Among the guests at the party are Totsky, General Yepanchin, Ganya, Ferdyshchenko, Ptitsyn—a usurer friend of Ganya's who is a suitor to Varya Ivolgin—and a few others. With the help of Kolya, Prince Myshkin arrives, uninvited. Following the prince's advice, Nastassya Filippovna refuses Ganya's proposal. Rogozhin arrives with the promised 100,000 rubles, but suddenly Myshkin himself offers to marry Nastassya Filippovna, announcing that he has recently learned he has a large inheritance. Though shocked at such a generous offer by an honest and generous heart, Nastassya Filippovna only deems herself worthy of being with Rogozhin, so she leaves the party with Rogozhin and his gang.

Prince Myshkin spends the next six months following Nastassya Filippovna as she runs from Rogozhin to the prince and back. Myshkin's inheritance turns out to be smaller than expected, and it shrinks further as he satisfies the claims of creditors and alleged relatives, many of which are fraudulent. Finally, the Prince returns to St. Petersburg and visits Rogozhin's house, which is a dark and dreary place. They discuss religion and exchange crosses.

However, later that day, Rogozhin, motivated by jealousy, attempts to stab Myshkin in the hall of the prince's hotel, but the prince is saved when he has a sudden epileptic fit. Several days later, Myshkin leaves for Pavlovsk, a nearby town popular for summer residence among St. Petersburg nobility. The prince rents several rooms from Lebedev, a rogue functionary. Most of the novel's characters—the Yepanchins, the Ivolgins, Varya and her husband Ptitsyn, and Nastassya Filippovna—spend the summer in Pavlovsk as well.

Burdovsky, a young man who claims himself to be the son of Myshkin's late benefactor, Pavlishchev, comes to the prince and demands money from him as a "just" reimbursement for Pavlishchev's support of the Prince. Burdovsky is supported by a group of insolent young men who include the consumptive seventeen-year old Hippolite Terentyev, a friend of Kolya Ivolgin. Although Burdovsky's claim is obviously fraudulent—he is not Pavlishchev's son at all—Myshkin is ready and willing to help Burdovsky financially.

The prince spends much of his time at the Yepanchins'. Soon, those around him realize that he is in love with Aglaya and that she most likely returns his feelings. However, a haughty, willful, and capricious girl, she refuses to admit her love for Prince Myshkin, and often openly mocks him. Aglaya's family begins to treat him as her fiancé, and they even hold a dinner party with many renowned guests who are members of Russian high society.

Myshkin, during the course of an agitated and ardent speech on religion and the future of aristocracy, accidentally breaks a beautiful Chinese vase. Later in the evening he has a mild epileptic fit. The guests and the family are convinced that the seemingly sickly prince is not a good match for Aglaya.

Aglaya, however, does not renounce Myshkin, and even arranges a meeting between herself and Nastassya Filippovna, who has been writing letters to Aglaya to convince her to marry Myshkin. During this meeting, the two women force the Prince to choose between his romantic love for Aglaya and his compassionate pity-love for Nastassya Filippovna. Myshkin hesitates briefly, which prompts Aglaya to run off, breaking all hope of an engagement between them. Nastassya Filippovna wishes to marry the Prince again, but in the end she proves unable to bring herself to do so, instead running off with Rogozhin at the last minute.

The Prince follows the two to St. Petersburg the next day and finds that Rogozhin has slain Nastassya Filippovna during the night. The two men keep vigil over her body, which Rogozhin has laid out in his study. Rogozhin is sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in Siberia, Prince Myshkin loses his mind and returns to the Swiss sanitarium, and Aglaya, against the wishes of her family, marries a wealthy exiled Polish count who is discovered to be neither wealthy, nor a count nor an exile - at least, not a political exile - and who turns her against her family.

Major themes

Dostoyevsky's motives in writing The Idiot stem from his desire to depict the "positively good man". This man is naturally likened to Christ in many ways. Dostoyevsky uses Myshkin's introduction to the Petersburg society as a way to contrast the nature of Russian society at the time and the isolation and innocence of this good man. This is highlighted by his conflicts and relationship with Rogozhin. Indeed, Myshkin and Rogozhin are contrasted from the outset. Myshkin is associated with light, Rogozhin with dark. For example, in their initial descriptions on the train, Myshkin is described as having light hair and blue eyes, while Rogozhin has "dark features". Rogozhin's house is submerged in darkness, with iron bars on the windows. He is not only an embodiment of darkness, but surrounded by it. The two characters are clearly antithetical. If Myshkin should be seen as Christ, Rogozhin could easily be seen as the Devil. "Rog", in Russian, means horn, adding credence to such an assertion, although the primary association of his name is with rogozha ("bast"), possibly hinting at his humble origins. The novel effectively serves to show the folly of altruistic kindness in a society that is rife with self-advancement and unscrupulous behavior, as Myshkin is consistently manipulated and exploited by others around him.

Despite their difference, Myshkin and Rogozhin are both after Nastasya Filippovna—good and bad (and mediocre, in the image of Ganya) strive for the same thing. Love itself is shown in various manifestations, spurred by various motives. While vain Ganya wishes to marry Nastasya in order that he might, through acquisition of a large dowry, spark some of the individuality which he senses he lacks, Rogozhin loves Nastasya with a deep passion. Myshkin, however, loves her out of pity, out of Christian love. This love for her supersedes even the romantic love he has for Aglaia. It is important to note that Aglaia developed a great appreciation for Myshkin's purity of heart and capacity for empathic love, even that which he felt for Nastasya. Aglaia and her sisters came to identify Myshkin with the protagonist of a famous Russian poem by Pushkin, "The Poor Knight", because of the Prince's quixotic, tragic quest to defend the honor of Nastasya in the face of the ridicule, and at times contempt, of all his acquaintances. And she grew to love him not in spite of this, but even more so because of it. At a gathering at the Prince's home that included her family and several of the Prince's friends, Aglaia flushes hotly when Kolya enigmatically and ironically declares "There's nothing better than the Poor Knight!" Though the comment is partially mocking him, in the depths of Aglaia's heart she agrees with this fully. In the end, though, Aglaia cannot completely eradicate her jealousy of Nastasya, and cannot measure up to the heights of the Prince's sympathetic love when he apparently scorns her in a final effort to save Nastasya.

There is a parallel between Rogozhin and the Russian upper-class society. The materialistic society which praises the values Myshkin represents and professes itself to be "good", cannot accommodate Prince Myshkin; Rogozhin, though he truly loves Nastasya, commits murder in the end. Nastasya herself has been corrupted by a depraved society. Her beauty and initial innocence have led Totsky (perhaps the most repugnant of characters in the novel) to keep her as a concubine and she falls into a quasi-madness, so strongly aching for freedom that she rejects moderate behaviors in favor of the extremity of running off with Rogozhin.

Adaptations and tributes

• Several filmmakers have produced adaptations of the novel, among them L'idiot (Georges Lampin 1946), a 1951 version by Akira Kurosawa, a 1958 version by Russian director Ivan Pyryev, Salil Dutta's "Aparichito", a 1969 Bengali film, and Mani Kaul's 1992 Hindi version
• In 2001, Down House, a tongue-in-cheek modern adaptation/parody of the novel, was filmed by Russian director Roman Kachanov, using the late 1990s Moscow underworld of mafia and drug addicts as the setting; it featured Fyodor Bondarchuk as the Prince and the co-writer of the script, Ivan Okhlobystin as Rogozhin.
• Christian Bale's character in The Machinist is seen reading The Idiot in the opening minutes of the film
• Iggy Pop's 1977 album The Idiot is titled in reference to James Osterberg, Tony Visconti and David Bowie's love of the book
• In 2003 Russian State Television produced a 10-part, 8-hour mini-series of the work, which is available with English subtitles.
• In 1999 Czech director Saša Gedeon produced a modern cinematic reinterpretation of The Idiot entitled The Return of the Idiot (Návrat idiota).
• The Polish director Andrzej Wajda adapted the last chapter of The Idiot as the feature film Nastasja in 1994.
• The Russian composer Nikolai Myaskovsky planned an opera on The Idiot during World War I, but did not complete it.
• The Harlan Ellison short story Prince Myshkin and Hold the Relish features a friendly debate on Dostoevsky and The Idiot between the narrator and a vendor at Pink's Hot Dogs in Los Angeles.
• In 2008, the theatre director Katie Mitchell premiered "...some trace of her", a multimedia exploration of the novel's central themes.
• The famous Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky planned an adaptation after The Idiot, but had died before it was realized.
• The German novelist Hermann Hesse wrote in 1919 a short piece about the book called Thoughts on The Idiot of Dostoevsky, later released in a compilation of essays called My Belief: Essays on Life and Art.
• In Act 1, Scene 2 of Mel Brooks' musical The Producers, Max Bialystock jokingly addresses Leo Bloom as "Prince Miskin." This also occurs in the original film.
• In the 1998 pilot episode of T.V. show "Seven Days", Frank Parker (played by Jonathan LaPaglia) has a copy of The Idiot on his desk inside the insane asylum, and in the film The Machinist actor Christian Bale drops a copy of the "Th Idiot" while falling asleep.
• In 2009 Lithuanian theatre director Eimuntas Nekrošius directed "Idiotas", performance in 4 parts.
• In 1985, Polish director Andrzej Zulawski directed the feature film "L'Amour Braque" (Limpet Love), as an homage to Dostoevsky's "The Idiot". Its end credits state that "The film is inspired by Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" and intended as a homage to the great writer". It stars Sophie Marceau as what most likely is the part of Nastasja Philipovna.
• BBC Radio 7 broadcast a 4-episode adaptation of "The Idiot" entitled "Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot," in June 2010. It starred Paul Rhys as Prince Myshkin.
• Simon Gray's stage adaptation was produced by the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic Theatre, London in 1970, starring Derek Jacobi.
• Vladimir Bortko directed a 2003 adaptation of The Idiot for Russia 1.
• In June 2011, Russian Director Victor Sobchak adapted this story into a short 2 hour play at The Theatre Collection in Camden, above The Lord Stanley Arms pub. London born, Indian actor Ajay Nayyar played the role of Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin

English translations

Since The Idiot was first published in Russian, there have been a number of translations into English over the years, including those by:

• Frederick Whishaw (1887)
• Constance Garnett (1913)
  • Revised by Anna Brailovsky (2003)
• Eva Martin (1915)
• David Magarshack (1955)
• John W. Strahan (1965)
• Henry and Olga Carlisle (1980)
• Alan Myers (1992)
• Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2002)
• David McDuff (2004)
• Ignat Avsey (2010)

The Constance Garnett translation was for many years accepted as the definitive English translation, but more recently it has come under criticism for being dated. The Garnett translation, however, still remains widely available because it is now in the public domain. Some writers, such as Anna Brailouvsky, have based their translations on Garnett's. Since the 1990s new English translations have appeared that have made the novel more accessible to English readers. The Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation (2000) states that the Alan Myers version is the best currently available, though since then, new translations by David McDuff and Pevear & Volokhonsky have also been well received.

External links

• The Idiot; full text in English
• The Idiot at Project Gutenberg (Eva Martin translation)
• Full text of The Idiot in Russian
• Spoken word recording of the Eva M Martin (1915) English translation