The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky - Robert Hollander (essay date 1974)

Robert Hollander (essay date 1974)

SOURCE: Hollander, Robert. “The Apocalyptic Framework of Dostoevsky's The Idiot.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 7, no. 2 (1974): 123-39.

[In the following essay, Hollander argues that critics who have commented on the aesthetic failure of The Idiot have not considered that a thematic interpretation of the novel based on the Book of Revelation does indeed bring the characters and events together.]

The Idiot1 is frequently described as being an aesthetic failure. One major complaint is that, formally at least, the parts do not constitute a whole. The problem is well expressed by one of Dostoevsky's most schooled and intelligent readers: “The first part of The Idiot was conceived and written as a self-contained unity, which may perhaps best be read as an independent novella. After this point, however, it is clear from...

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