The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky - Diana L. Burgin (essay date 1983)
Diana L. Burgin (essay date 1983)
SOURCE: Burgin, Diana L. “Prince Myshkin, the True Lover and ‘Impossible Bridegroom’: A Problem in Dostoevskian Narrative.” The Slavic and East European Journal 27, no. 2 (summer 1983): 158-75.
[In the following essay, Burgin analyzes the ambivalent nature of Myshkin's love for Nastasya Filippovna, arguing that it is not so much a character defect as it is “a problem of Dostoevskian narrative and the limitations of the novelistic genre as a vehicle of Dostoevskian truth.”]
“The truth … very often seems impossible.”
—General Ivolgin to Prince Myškin
I
The Idiot's statement on love, human and divine, hinges on the true perception of its hero, Prince Myškin, as a lover in every sense of the word. Yet, ironically, no aspect of Myškin's “problematic” character has created more critical controversy than the apparently ambiguous...
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