Book Review || The Idiot (1869)
"Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women."
: 🌕 : SPOILER ALERT : 🌕 :
All around are memories of clarity. These may render the review of a novel deemed classically valuable a daunting task. Yet, as I sit here in the wake of my own frustrated experience with Dostoevsky’s behemoth, mongrel-like plot, I wonder whether one should ever feel anything other than confident when endeavouring to pray for the rapture of a bind into the dust of ash where it belongs.
“There are people of whom it is difficult to say something that would present them at once and entirely, in their most typical and characteristic aspect; they are those people who are usually called ‘ordinary,’ ‘the majority,’ and who really do constitute the overwhelming majority of any society.”
My sentiments, as always, are mangled with the awareness I hold of the truth as it exists outside of myself. Dostoevsky is known to have turned up his nose at the products he brought into the world; the languishing, downtrodden opinion of his own stories, in some ways, mirrors my encounter with them over one hundred years later. Therefore, one must wonder who amongst us is the idiot?
There is perhaps little need to ask such a blatantly crass question. Readers are at their leisure to capture their emotional reactions to a story, regardless of its quality, & boast of a superb magnitude of glory, the likes of which the Lord our God would appraise.
It was important to me to sit with my emotions before writing this review. Although I do not allow myself to be swayed by the reading experiences of others, a perusal through their personal reviews engraved my mind with a groove containing no end & no beginning; I write now as I find myself utterly conflicted by the majority’s opinion.
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This will have been the second book by Dostoevsky that I have read. Many years ago, before I began writing down such titanically winded reviews, I read “The Gambler” (1866). I remember having a mild appreciation for what it presented, yet I now scrape the barrel for depth that no longer resides in my memories of the story.
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When I say that I enjoy reading, I mean it quite literally. I thrill at the pages laid smoothed over the palms of my hands as though they were being lifted to the heavens, brightened by the God who wanders in the darkness behind clouds.
Regardless of my opinions of the story that I meet on the page, the activity itself is what I love. Of course, one learns an awful lot about oneself through the dedication of another; through words, & collections of prose that riddle a monstrous series of events, I am found over & over again. Yet, coming to the collection I have found in this book, for a redundancy of movements it is, I persisted only so that I could set myself free.
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In essence, this is a story about ignorance. The main character, Lev—the prince—has returned to Russia, having spent nearly his entire life—twenty-four years—in a Swiss sanitarium. Russia welcomes him with frost; the scene sets a tone for the reader to undertake a waltz through the sullen underbelly of theology & a collective social ideology of criminal undertakings & raving lunacy. Amidst this, the reader meets a slew of characters whose dialogue is merely included so as to grant the reader the opportunity to believe themselves a Luther set on writing a thesis pertaining to simplified matters of the heart.
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Whereas it might be easy to view this book for the loyalist gift it is to adoring fans of the author, within the plot itself, one is easily lost to the sequence of trysts that he employs to shake himself from the stranger’s grasp.
Dostoevsky is a man whose stories are lined with philosophical rambling. On occasion, a character will reflect the school of thought most valued by the society of their day, only for the author to contradict his creation. This is not a fault, rather, as valuable as rhetoric is, Dostoevsky does not appease the reader who will be consuming the art he has created. What, then, is the purpose of this book?
Thus far, the review at hand has teetered dangerously close to the edge. One might have come to this point & chosen to believe that I have no wits about me. So be it. Indeed, I have approached my review in this way intentionally. Having read the pages that Dostoevsky crafted, the string that has knotted itself around my brain has been made gooey & soured, with fibres breaking apart. When I ask what the purpose of the book is, it is not to discount the art of writing such a piece. I admit that the study of theology is impressive.
Dostoevsky’s ability to speak to himself via his characters accounts for an important addition to this plot. The prince does not seem to be able to adjust to the reality in which he finds himself & though a reader will, perhaps as I have, find themselves tired of his dedication to his own ignorance, Dostoevsky understood that within Russia’s borders, the nihilist’s perspectives of those who awake to a country on the cusp of war, newfound liberties, deepened relations with the Western world & their values; the role of religion accounted perhaps for less than what it had previously been believed to bring to their society.
What is a reader to interpret from this? As the Russian landscape changed & was challenged by the legislature that took into account the perspectives of people without lust for money, without land to call their own, without the ability to simply exist, the characters directly reflect on their lack of control over their circumstances.
Should a reader fault them for their dedication to abusing the naivety of another? Would a reader do whatever was in their power to keep their status in society? What is the value of social status if not the reputation of a fighter?
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The prince is a character who is easy to forget exists at all. Amidst the slew of people who wander on & off the page, the prince seems to remain stagnant. Perhaps his calm demeanour is meant to represent the Christian ideology—the peace, the tranquillity, the forgiving spirit of just & easy belief in the Almighty. Yet, Lev does not understand Russia’s circumstances enough to forgive her for the peril in which the mass of society finds itself. Is it enough to believe something to be true, or must one first understand a peril to be able to earnestly forgive it?
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My main qualm with this plot is that it repeats itself. Lev represents whatever Dostoevsky deemed important. On occasion, his ease at forgiving malevolent fiends reminds the reader that his idiocy was not a malady but a product of his life. Any other character might well have been the same as the prince had they, too, been raised in a home where they did not need to fight for survival. What, then, makes his circumstance different than the raving incoherency of the other characters?
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Readers will be required to choose their preferred method of interpretation. Whether a person decides that religion is a reflection of human society, or perhaps that the world as we know it is guided by an omniscient being who is neutral to all things. The reader may appreciate that Lev is not an idiot but a man who has forgiven humanity for its shortcomings. Sacrificing his mental fortitude for their sins committed against him & each other, he returns to the sanitarium like the Son to His Father.
On the other hand, readers may review this work & find that their patience has been worn thin. Although Lev has decided to forgive every single bad behaviour he encounters—every murder & attempt at violence & thievery—the world around him does not care whether or not he understands the complexity of their goals.
Here, the liberal nihilistic perspective is raised. If nothing happens that matters, or rather if everything one does results in the end of one's life—no matter if that be on this day or the next—why seek forgiveness from a mind that does not perplex at the sermon summoned by humanity?
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To my great despair, after reading 400 pages of this story, I found that I cared naught for any of it, & still, I had further to go. The earlier parts of the novel felt crisp & new, & presented readers with the foundation for theological discourse, which soon found its footing as the characters grew familiar both to each other & to the reader.
Yet, too soon, Dostoevsky decided to repeat sequences so that they lost their value. One may wonder whether this was intentional. Did the author decide to repeat his scenes in an effort to trick readers into ringing every ounce of faith & intellectualism from the story?
I wanted to believe that Dostoevsky had more to say than what he was, leaving the characters with sour, tired words. Nearly every woman in this novel was an uninspiring louse. The older female characters screamed & blew fire into their own lungs, compounding a rage that was ever-merited.
Every ounce of my patience soon flew out the window when I found myself reading the very same dialogue over & over again. Who was I to care that Aglaya would not love the prince; why should I care about something so trite when all around, something was brewing which would impact us all?
Perhaps here, the reader is met with their bias. I could not feel anything at all when the heart was pierced by the dagger or when the prince, simple & naive as he chose to be, pivoted to the gloom of his own lack of understanding. Why would I care about this?
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As the novel opens to readers, there are few details given which may leave them with the feeling of investment. Dostoevsky writes about a man on a train having conversations with ego-driven strangers who come back around later in the story. He brings forward the death of men by suicide & the sexually adulterous proclivities of a woman who is never described with any tact.
As one roams over these occurrences, one knows, as the nihilist does, that none of this will come to anything. The century will come to a close, everyone will die, & the next idiot will enter stage left, look around owl-eyed & hopeful that the message they hold in their heart is the truth, so help them, God.
Yet, in truth, the repetitive nature of these sequences is hardly in our control. After all, as the prince left Switzerland, the stage on which he entered was empty. The characters were in the wings, waiting for the moment in which they might boom to the trumpet of their calling & make clear the nature of their existence & the pernicious cause of their pedagogy. Does this leave the reader with the ability to feel tormented by what has happened?
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Dostoevsky’s writing is soured by my impatience. His critiques of his surroundings levitate over the plot he has written, like the narrator who wishes to remind readers that in a single day, light & darkness may covet the same skyline.
For the naive reader, or perhaps on a kinder note, the reader with just cause to walk beside the prince as he perishes in the doom of his homeland, the story will feel like a breath of stale air, a reminder that in all things, the naive require protecting. Although, one might forget to speak the name of those from whom one is coddled.
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Ultimately, I grew weary & rather unamused by the disappearing act of the author. His exit from the world has left my eyes ablaze in the sky, where I am sure he twiddles his thumbs with the ghosts he believed resided in the gallows of the sun’s rays.
Had I the chance to speak to him frankly, I might not have endeavoured to say anything at all. I suppose this is my fault for, as he feared, I am the nihilist of his nightmares who wanders the graves in which his kin are buried, knowing that no matter what I do, one day, I too will lay in the earth that will consume me until I am nothing.
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In these pensive thoughts brought forward into letters, forming words onto which the reader can nibble for sustenance, one finds the pernicious prize that Dostoevsky left behind. Into the murky depths, Lev escapes, bringing to his surroundings the emotional bounds of a sphincter beating through the bush of thorns directed at his softness.
Perhaps, cruellest of all, is the tendency of his friends to remind him that he is viewed by them & others as the idiot who returned to a place he was ill-equipped to survive. Matted by the rat who cozies itself for slumber lies the seething rumble of age-old philosophy, from Spencer to the Origin.
If you would like to read this story, please visit this link — « The Idiot » by Fyodor Dostoevsky
C. 💌