[In the following essay, Woodward maintains that the character and conduct of Prince Myshkin, while baffling at times, “reflect a deliberately contrived method of characterization” by the author.]

“For me”, writes Robert Lord, “The Idiot remains the most challenging and obscure of Dostoevskij's novels, and Prince Myshkin his most baffling and impenetrable creation”.¹ Many readers would doubtless concur with this view. Nor is Lord alone in attributing the novel's exceptional obscurity, in part, to flaws in Dostoevskij's conception. Arguing that “the novel consists of three quite separate and ill-fitting sections” and that “there are three distinct Myshkins, a different one in each section”,² he essentially reiterates the views of Robert Hollander,³ Edward Wasiolek⁴ and numerous other critics who have also noted comparable inconsistencies in the portraits of Lebedev, Ganja and Radomskij. But although it would probably be acknowledged by most readers that in the transition from Part I to Part II the personalities of Myškin and Lebedev do undergo significant changes and that at the end of the novel Radomskij commands appreciably greater respect than on his first appearances, the argument that such inconsistencies are indicative of flaws in the novel is not so easily acceptable. For while inconsistency may well appear to be incompatible with the notion of a coherent over-all design, it can equally be argued, as A. P. Skaftymov demonstrated more than fifty years ago,⁵ that at least the major inconsistencies identified by criticism—those perceived in the portrait of Myškin—were an integral part of Dostoevskij's conception, and reinforcement of this claim is the purpose of this article. On the basis of a re-examination of certain aspects of the Prince's portrait it is hoped to show that the inconsistencies of his character and conduct reflect a deliberately contrived method of characterisation.

Standing in the sequence of the four major novels between Crime and Punishment and The Devils, The Idiot clearly displays important features of both. As F. F. Seeley has observed, it revolves, like the former, around a single hero, who is cloaked in the same obscurity as the hero of the latter.⁶ But despite this obscurity, there would now appear to be little sympathy for the view that the duality of Myškin's character is “only apparent”⁷ and that he is a failure only in the sense in which Christ was a failure.⁸ Most readers would now regard him as substantially different from the “positively beautiful person” described in Dostoevskij's oft-quoted letter to his niece⁹ and point to such obvious indicators of imperfection as his epilepsy, his impotence, his naivety, his bizarre attire, and his lack of such virtues as grace and restraint.

The precise nature of this imperfection, however, has received differing interpretations, which are basically of two main types. On the one hand, there are those critics who take the traditional view that Myškin, unlike Raskol´nikov, is an essentially passive and well-intentioned figure and attribute his failure solely to such defects as those indicated by Radomskij in his concluding judgement: an “excess of compassion over love”,¹⁰ a “deficient sense of reality”,¹¹ and a humility that imposes on others “a greater moral burden than in their human weakness they can carry”.¹² On the other hand, there is the much sterner verdict pronounced by the small minority of commentators who ascribe a fundamental duality to the Prince's character and allege that the gulf that separates him from the Stavrogin-like Idiot of the early plans of the novel is by no means so wide as appearances would suggest. For the most extreme formulation of this view we must again turn to Lord, who detects “cunning and ambiguity” behind the Prince's “charm and otherworldliness” and argues vigorously that he retains, especially in Part I, “many of the sinister characteristics evident in the rough drafts”.¹³

The most appropriate point from which to begin an assessment of these judgements is clearly the Prince's relationship with Rogožin, which is the principal source of information in the novel about the complexity of his personality. The usual view, of course, is that it is a relationship based on contrast, and it is commonly held that Rogožin is the Prince's “double”, the incarnation of the “human” attributes that Myškin lacks. Thus George Steiner refers to him unequivocally as “Myshkin's original sin” and perceives “the strident bitterness of suicide” in his attempt to murder the Prince.¹⁴ Notably different from this view is the interpretation offered by Richard Peace. Objecting that the word strast´ (“passion”), which is coupled with Rogožin's name in the Notebooks¹⁵ and qualified by the epithet bol´naja (“sick”) in a reference to him by Myškin in the final version of the novel,¹⁶ signifies fanaticism rather than physical passion,¹⁷ he draws attention to the clear evidence of Rogožin's association with the religious sect of the Castrates and accordingly regards him as embodying “the dark side of the Russian religious mind“, tainted by fanaticism and heresy, as opposed to the “positive aspect” symbolised by Myškin.¹⁸ This reinterpretation is convincingly argued, and it offers a plausible explanation of the Prince's failure: the aspect of the Russian religious temperament that he symbolises is subverted by the contrasting aspect symbolised by Rogožin. But how, we may ask, are the Prince's inconsistencies or deficiencies to be accounted for in terms of this interpretation? The question receives no clear answer. In both interpretations, in fact, the contrast between the two characters is treated, like that which exists between Raskol´nikov's conflicting selves as symbolised by Svidrigajlov and Sonja, as basically a contrast between black and white with the result that in neither case is the complexity of the relationship and of the Prince's portrait fully conveyed. Placing the major emphasis on the contrast, both interpretations obscure the equally significant parallel that Dostoevskij combines with it. They obscure, in short, the “overlap” of personalities with which the contrast coexists and thus conceal the crucial factor to which the Prince's deficiencies and the inconsistencies in his conduct may ultimately be related.

Significantly this procedure of combining parallel and contrast is introduced to the reader at the very beginning of the novel—in the physical portraits of the two characters on the first two pages. Naturally enough, the contrasting features are the more striking. Rogožin is short and dark; he has small, grey, fiery eyes and a face with high cheek-bones; and his lips are “continually curved in an insolent, mocking and even malicious smile” (p. 5). The Prince, in contrast, is “a little taller than average” and “very fair” and has “large, blue, dreamy eyes”, “sunken cheeks” and a thin face that is also pleasant. Their clothing too is sharply contrasted. But it is quite wrong to argue that “the entire scene is constructed on the contrast between the characters”.¹⁹ Even before the contrast is developed the narrator is at pains to stress their similarity. He describes the two travellers as “both young men, both travelling with little luggage, both not very well dressed, both with rather striking faces, and both desirous of entering into conversation with one another”. The inelegant, but literal, translation reflects the conspicuous anaphoric repetition of the pronoun oba (‘both’) and thus the strong emphasis on identity conveyed by the Russian, and even with the transition to the contrasting elements in the more detailed portraits the conflicting parallel is by no means submerged. Thus the Prince's “sunken cheeks” and “colourless features” seem to be mirrored in Rogožin's “emaciated look” and “deathly pallor”; they are not only “both young men”, but even, it seems, the same age—“about twenty-seven” (Rogožin), “twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age” (Myškin); they are also both fatherless, the death of Rogožin's father being reported (p. 9) two pages after the reference to the death of Myškin's substitute father Pavliščev; they are both returning to St. Petersburg after periods of illness (a little over four years in the case of Myškin, four weeks in the case of Rogožin); and Myškin has spent five years in one source of heresy (the West), while Rogožin has spent five weeks in another (Pskov, a centre for the Old Believers²⁰). With each successive disclosure, therefore, the parallel, no less than the contrast, between the two strangers is notably reinforced.

This curious combination of contrasting and parallel features establishes at the outset a pattern in the representation of the relationship that is sustained throughout the novel. Again, of course, it is the contrast that consistently makes the dominant impression. From beginning to end the “fanatical” Rogožin and “humble” Prince appear to confront one another as opposites. Yet fanaticism or “passion” (strast´), as Peace has observed,²¹ is also a feature of Myškin's personality, as indicated by his performance at the engagement party in Part IV, and in his case too it is associated not only with illness (his epilepsy) but also with heresy, for just as the “passionate” Idiot of the early drafts of the novel²² was linked with the sect of Jumpers (Prygunčiki),²³ so the Prince of the final version is linked by his “passionately” expounded religious teaching with the Old Believers and, more specifically, the sect of Flagellants (pp. 452-3). And it is perhaps in this connection that we should note the “chastity” or “virginity” of Rogožin hinted by the Greek source of his Christian name Parfen, for it reminds us not only of his association with the Castrates but also of the Prince's impotence, suggesting the possibility that the latter affliction may similarly allude to heretical inclinations.²⁴

But however that may be, there can be little doubt about the allusive force of Rogožin's surname. The allusion, it is now generally held, is to his connection with the Moscow sect of Old Believers known as the Rogožniki or Rogožskoe soglasie.²⁵ Hence the significance of his elopement to Moscow with Nastas´ja Filippovna and his subsequent three-month sojourn there. Moreover, his connection with the city is reflected equally in his personality and family background, for, as M. S. Al'tman has written, “the entire cast and mould (I would even say ‘structure’) of his character reveal him to be a Muscovite, a typical representative of the patriarchal merchant class of Moscow, not St. Petersburg. Only the necessity of linking Rogožin with the other, specifically Petersburg, characters of the novel compelled Dostoevskij to transplant the ‘Muscovite murderer’ to Petersburg.”²⁶ Even the immense wealth of Rogožin's family has some relevance to this point, for just as the Castrates were noted for their ability to accumulate wealth, so they, like the other sects of Old Believers, were far more closely associated with Moscow than with St. Petersburg. In the light of these details, therefore, Myškin's connections with Moscow acquire an obvious importance. Not only does he spend six months there at the beginning of Part II, presumably encountering during his stay, in addition to Rogožin, the Old Believers who inspire him with the heretical notion of a Russian Christ, but he too is linked with the city by his family background. His maternal grandfather, we are told, was “a Moscow merchant of the third guild” (p. 139), and from the latter's deceased and “very rich” brother the Prince receives the legacy that reinforces still further the similarity of his position to that of the “Muscovite murderer”. Thus Moscow, wealth, the merchant class, the sects and legacies are all additional links that Dostoevskij forges between his two ostensibly contrasting heroes.

The crucial point, however, is that the “overlap” in their physical portraits, backgrounds and circumstances provides the basis for an “overlap” of personality that is by no means limited to their common susceptibility to “passion”. It extends much further, producing the most striking of the discordant or inconsistent notes in the Prince's portrait which the reader finds so disconcerting. Thus there are clear indications, for example, that the emotion of jealousy, which, together with greed or the desire to possess, is the main driving force behind Rogožin's actions, is as well known to the Myškin of the final version as to the Idiot of the third preliminary plan, who was described in the Notebooks as “an Iago”.²⁷ Appearances suggest, of course, that in seeking to interpose himself between Rogožin and Nastas´ja Filippovna the Prince is merely intent on protecting her from the fate that he foresees, and indeed this is perhaps the only purpose of which he is consciously aware. But if ends may be judged by the means adopted to accomplish them, his actions can only be regarded as evidence of less noble motivation. Even in Part I his conduct arouses suspicions, for in announcing in the famous concluding scene the possibility that he may benefit from his great-uncle's will (p. 139), he is essentially competing with Rogožin in the objectionable “auction” for Nastas´ja's person. Hence Rogožin's dismay at his sudden disclosure. “Rogožin”, we read, “looked on in bewilderment, and in terrible anxiety switched his gaze now to the Prince, now to Pticyn” (p. 139). But it is in Part II, in which we receive our first substantial insights into the subconscious workings of the Prince's mind, that the discords become resonant and unmistakable. His obsession in chapter 5 with the lingering memory of the knife that had caught his eye in a shop-window after his return to St. Petersburg the day before admits of only one interpretation, particularly when viewed in the light of his similar obsession in chapter 3 with the identical knife in Rogožin's house (p. 180). In conjunction with his impatience to ascertain whether Rogožin is keeping watch outside Nastas´ja's apartment, the two episodes suggest a readiness to kill that is plainly more indicative of jealousy than of even the most hypertrophied protective instinct. The conclusion can only be that Rogožin's attempt on the Prince's life is preceded by the latter's thought of a pre-emptive strike. Here for the first time the Prince is obliquely endowed with the capacity for violence that is later discerned by Ippolit, who becomes convinced that, like Rogožin in his dreams, the Prince would like to suffocate him with a wet towel (p. 465). In the eyes of Ippolit the Prince is momentarily indistinguishable from the menacing, destructive image of his contrasting “brother”, and we are reminded by this fusion of the paradox expressed by the Prince's name—of the coexistence of humility and destructive power conveyed by the combination of the surname (derived from myš´ ‘mouse’) with the Christian name Lev (‘lion’). And even the surname by itself may conceivably have been intended to express the same paradox, for it was possibly derived not only from myš´, but also, as Močul´skij has suggested, from the “Myškin district” of Jaroslav province—the home of the peasant Balabanov whose widely reported murder of the artisan Suslov by slitting his throat provided Dostoevskij with the subject of the second of the three stories that the Prince relates to Rogožin in Part II, chapter 4 (p. 183).²⁸

Recalling, therefore, the climactic events of the early chapters of Part II, we are not unduly surprised when Kolja, referring to the Prince's attitude to Ganja's relationship with Aglaja, remarks to him much later: “You are not a sceptic, but a victim of jealousy!” (p. 261). His collision with Rogožin in chapter 5 of Part II results not from the contrast between them, but from their common capacity for jealousy and violence, and the Prince's dawning consciousness of this fact must undoubtedly be considered the major cause of the crisis of personality that culminates in his epileptic attack. The raised knife of Rogožin on the staircase is a reminder of the knife that he himself had wished to raise, forcing from his lips the anguished cry: “Parfen, I do not believe it!” (p. 195)—a cry of disbelief directed, in effect, against the evidence that confronts him of the fatal “overlap”. The contrast between the two phases of the fit is often taken to allude to the flaw in the Prince's teaching, but it may equally be seen to symbolise the conflicting impulses that dictate his actions. Striking in the description of the second phase is the recurrence of the image of darkness, which is inseparably associated with the figure of Rogožin throughout the novel. The “total darkness” that now envelops the Prince's mind is the unmistakable identification mark of the “someone else” who dwells within him. “A terrible, unimaginable scream”, we read, “that is unlike anything else breaks forth from the victim's breast. Everything human seems to disappear in that scream, and it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, for an observer to imagine or admit that it is this same man screaming. It even seems as if someone else is screaming from within this man” (p. 195). Overwhelming the Prince at the moment of maximum tension between himself and Rogožin, the fit is the culminating expression of the “overlap” between their conflicting personalities, identifying with Rogožin the “strange and terrible demon” that the Prince senses in the depths of his own being while recalling the knife in the shop-window (p. 193). And it is precisely his recognition of this “demon” within him that ultimately explains, as Simon Lesser has noted, his inability to condemn Rogožin after his murder of Nastas´ja Filippovna.²⁹ The consciousness of his own guilt removes the right to judge, and in the darkness of the last night the two heroes sink together into the state of idiocy in which they are finally joined.

To the end, therefore, parallel and contrast are both sustained, explaining Myškin's lament to Keller towards the end of Part II about the “dual thoughts” that continually plague him (p. 258). But at this point we may appropriately refer to one of his later conversations with Ippolit—to his similar lament in chapter 5 of Part IV about the difference between past and present generations. “In those days”, he remarks in reference to the past, “people were somehow men of one idea, but now they are more nervous, more developed, more sensitive. They are somehow men of two or three ideas at once. […] Present-day man is broader and, I swear to you, it is this that prevents him from being so all-of-a-piece as people were in those days […]” (p. 433). Anticipating the comments of Dmitrij Karamazov on the breadth of human nature, this statement too is clearly a definition of Myškin's own predicament that likewise complements the description of the epileptic fit. But it may also perhaps be read as offering oblique confirmation of conclusions on the composition of the Prince's portrait that are prompted by his relationships with the other major characters in the novel. Indicating a still more complex psychological condition than that which has concerned us thus far, the reference to “three ideas” suggests that the “overlap” with the personality of Rogožin is not an exhaustive explanation of the Prince's “inconsistencies”. It reminds us that Rogožin is only one of the three characters with whose lives the Prince's fate is indissolubly connected and that almost from the beginning the relationships between the four of them formed the basis of Dostoevskij's conception.³⁰ The statement prompts us, in other words, to look beyond the Prince's relationship with Rogožin for evidence of similar “overlaps” with the personalities of Nastas´ja and Aglaja. The personalities of the two major female characters in the novel, it suggests, should likewise be regarded not only as centres of dramatic interest in their own right, but also as additional keys to the mystery posed by the central hero.

To interpret the statement in this way is to illuminate at once the significance of the numerous common details in the biographies of the Prince and Nastas´ja that have been noted by Michael Holquist,³¹ for they indicate an exact repetition of the procedure employed in the representation of the Myškin-Rogožin relationship. Again the coexistence of parallel and contrast on the psychological level is underpinned by parallel and contrasting biographical experience. The indicators of the parallel are rapidly accumulated in the opening chapters of the novel: the title “Princess” that Nastas´ja is accorded when first mentioned to the Prince by Lebedev and Rogožin (p. 11);³² the loss of her father in early childhood; her acquisition of a substitute father (in the figure of Tockij); the wholly rural environment of her childhood, which recalls the narrator's comment that Myškin “grew up in the country and spent his whole life there” (p. 24); the German steward and Swiss governess responsible for her early education; the four-year period spent on the remote, idyllic estate of Otradnoe; and the female landowner in whose charge she was placed there.³³ Moreover, Nastas´ja too, of course, is the victim of an illness, though both its nature (her self-destructive demand for vengeance) and its cause (the perversity of the substitute father) point up the contrast as much as the parallel. And even in her physical portrait, as in that of Rogožin, the “overlap” is apparent—in the thinness and pallor of her face with its sunken cheeks and its striking expression of childlike ingenuousness (pp. 27, 68).

Once more, therefore, the echoes of Myškin's biography and portrait are plainly too numerous to be passed off as mere coincidence. Again the self-evident element of contrast in the relationship coexists with a parallel produced by such an uncanny succession of coincidences that once more the notion of partial identity is clearly suggested, and it is surely in the light of this contrived “overlap” of identities that we should regard the curious sense of mutual recognition that Myškin and Nastas´ja experience at their first meeting (p. 89). Here there is surely little need to follow Močul´skij's example and ascribe a mythical substructure to the novel in order to explain this shared experience.³⁴ Resulting directly and logically from the “overlap”, it denotes an instinctive awareness on the part of them both that each is, in part, a reflection of the other. Each confronts the other with an image of beauty that is fatally flawed and accordingly reacts with anguish and pain. Hence Myškin's statement that Nastas´ja's beauty is “even unbearable” (p. 68). “I cannot bear Nastas´ja Filippovna's face”, he says to Radomskij (p. 484), and in conversation with Aglaja he remarks: “If only you knew the horror with which I recall the time that I spent with her” (p. 361). The eyes of Nastas´ja haunt him as persistently as the eyes of Rogožin. “He feared Nastas´ja Filippovna herself”, the narrator informs us. “He recalled several days later that almost the whole time during those feverish hours her eyes appeared before him …” (p. 467). Of course, he pities her and longs to save her from the fate that he foresees, but he is terrified by the reflection that he sees in her of his own imperfection, for the Idiot himself bears the scars of humiliation, and he too is a victim of pride. “Perhaps you imagine”, Aglaja says to him, “that you are a field-marshall and that you have defeated Napoleon”. “I honestly do think of that”, he replies, “especially when I'm falling asleep. Only it's always the Austrians that I defeat, not Napoleon” (p. 354). Thus in his dreams Myškin sees himself not as the conqueror of Napoleon, but as Napoleon himself, the victor at Marengo and idol of Raskol´nikov. The destructive pride of Nastas´ja, like the destructive passion of Rogožin, is an inalienable element of the Prince's personality, rising in dreams from its hidden depths and evoking once more the image of the Idiot that Dostoevskij first conceived.³⁵

Pride is also, of course, the dominant psychological trait of Aglaja, and her beauty too arouses feelings of fear in the Prince.³⁶ Certainly his relationship with Aglaja is not underpinned by the same kind of biographical and physical links that connect him with Nastas´ja and Rogožin, but the basis for an equally close relationship is provided by their ties of blood, which receive conspicuous emphasis in Part I in the references to her mother. Thus on three distinct occasions in the first eighteen pages of the novel (pp. 8-9, 15, 18) the parallel is stressed between the positions of the Prince and Lizaveta Prokof´evna as the last Prince and Princess Myškin. Even more striking is the similar emphasis in chapters 6 and 7 of Part I on their psychological kinship. On hearing herself described by Myškin as “a perfect child in everything, everything, in good and bad alike”, Lizaveta Prokof´evna replies to him: “I believe that your character is just like mine, and I'm glad of it; we're like two drops of water” (p. 65). The full significance of this remark becomes clear only in the light of her comment to Myškin about Aglaja more than two-hundred pages later (in chapter 1 of Part III): “She is exactly like me, the very picture of me in every respect” (p. 273). The remark seems to confirm that the role of Lizaveta Prokof´evna in Part I is almost that of a substitute for her youngest daughter. The emphasis, in other words, on Myškin's blood relationship and psychological affinities with Lizaveta Prokof´evna may be seen in retrospect as characterising his relationship and affinities with Aglaja. And perhaps even the name Epančin, which is presumably derived from the noun epanča (defined by Dal' as širokij bezrukavyj plašč ‘a wide, sleeveless cloak’)³⁷ is meant to reinforce the connection between them, for the outstanding feature of Myškin's attire when he first presents himself to the reader is precisely a epanča—“a rather wide and thick cloak without sleeves” (dovol´no širokij i tolstyj plašč bez rukavov) (p. 6).

The princely rank and childlike qualities of Lizaveta Prokof'evna, however, are by no means the only allusions to Aglaja's affinities with the Prince.³⁸ Equally revealing is the narrator's very first comment on “the last Princess Myškin” in the opening sentence of Part One, chapter 5: “The general's wife was jealous of the dignity of her family” (p. 44)—a feature of her personality which by this time has already been brought to the reader's attention by the Prince's conversation with the Epančins' servant in chapter 2, in which he remarks: “I have heard on good authority that she attaches great value to her family (porodu svoju)” (p. 18). The duplication, we may infer, is not coincidental, for the importance of these statements soon becomes apparent. Indirectly they define the nature of Aglaja's pride, differentiating it at once from the pride of Nastas´ja. They explain not only her fastidious pride in her “purity” (čistota) which determines her contempt for Nastas´ja in the scene of their confrontation, but also the indignation with which she asks Myškin: “Why have you no pride?” (p. 283). But here, of course, she seriously misjudges the Prince, for her distinctive brand of aristocratic pride is just as well known to him as the morbid, offended pride of Nastas´ja, as he eloquently confirms in his “passionate” monologues at the engagement party in Part IV. There he exclaims to his audience: “When I returned here to Petersburg, I promised myself that I would see without fail the best people, people belonging to the oldest families, of ancient lineage, to whom I belong myself and among whom I am in the front rank by birth. I am sitting with princes, like myself, am I not?” (p. 456). And once more it is significant that an aspect of the Prince's personality that conflicts with his customary image is exposed to scrutiny on the very verge of an epileptic attack, for only three pages later Aglaja hears with horror the same “wild scream” which marks the culmination of his struggle in Part II with the instincts that relate him to Rogožin. Once more the Prince's personality seems to crumble under the impact of attitudes and emotions that are primarily associated with another character—a character to whom, as to Rogožin, he considers himself related as “a brother”.³⁹

Like the Prince's relationships, therefore, with Rogožin and Nastas´ja, his relationship with Aglaja seems to be developed on the basis of a psychological “overlap” which Dostoevskij motivates by reference to non-psychological connections. There are occasions, it is true, when “in some strange and scarcely discernible manner”, as Lord has remarked, they “are like the complementary halves of some composite personality”,⁴⁰ but at other times the two “halves” become psychologically indistinguishable, and we then obtain a glimpse of the “Aglaja element” that coexists with the “Rogožin” and “Nastas´ja elements” in the depths of the Prince's complex personality. Directly relevant, we might conclude, to his relationships with all three characters are the comments that he makes on appearance and reality in conversation with General Epančin in Part I, chapter 3: “It seems to me that we appear to be such different people … through many circumstances, that we cannot have many points in common. But I don't believe in that idea myself, for it often only seems that there are no points in common, whereas in reality they emphatically exist […]” (p. 24).

These words seem to allude directly to the procedure to which this article has been devoted—to the procedure of “overlapping portraits” which lies, it is suggested, at the basis of the portrait of the novel's central figure. Each of the other three major characters in the novel, it is argued, is not so much a contrasting “double” of the Prince as a projection of a subconscious aspect of his personality which is at variance with the image that he normally or consciously presents, and it is precisely the tension between the conscious image and the subconscious impulses objectivised in Rogožin, Nastas´ja and Aglaja that chiefly explains the perplexing inconsistencies of his sphinx like⁴¹ character and conduct. Such is the conclusion that is prompted by the recurrent combination in all three relationships of striking contrast and equally striking parallel. Certainly the complete substantiation of this argument would require a much more detailed study than is possible here. It should obviously include, for example, a study of the relationships with one another of the three characters whose portraits have been considered only in relation to that of the Prince, for if it is true that they are basically projections of aspects of a single personality, we would expect the differences between them similarly to coexist with significant common features, and indeed such features are immediately detectable on both the psychological and non-psychological levels. Moreover, the illness that links Ippolit with Myškin and the offended pride that links him with Nastas´ja are merely two of the many clear indications in the novel that the procedure of “overlapping” extends much further than the three major relationships, lending credence perhaps to Lord's contention that all the other characters “are, in a certain sense, Myškin's own projections”.⁴² But the three relationships that have been examined are not only the principal keys to the mystery of the Prince's personality; they are also the major determinants of the novel's structure, for while the main events of Part I are the Prince's meetings with Rogožin, Aglaja and Nastas´ja in turn, the most important sections of Parts II, III and IV are respectively devoted to his relationships with each of them in the same sequence—with Rogožin in Part II, Aglaja in Part III and Nastas´ja in Part IV. To a significant degree, in short, the novel is constructed on the basis of the Prince's dialogues with the inconsistencies of his own personality as externalised in the figures of the other three members of the central quartet. And as the end approaches, we observe, in the words of Albert Guerard, “a conspicuous narrowing of the lens”⁴³—a process that culminates in Part IV in the scene of the meeting between Nastas´ja and Aglaja, which opens with Rogožin's remark: “In the whole house there is no one now apart from the four of us” (p. 468). The four separate paths thus finally converge to form the single path that leads to destruction—to Nastas´ja's death, Rogožin's madness, the Prince's idiocy and Aglaja's flight.

Notes

1. R. Lord, Dostoevsky: Essays and Perspectives, London 1970, p. 101.

2. Ibid., p. 86.

3. R. Hollander, “The Apocalyptic Framework of Dostoevsky's The Idiot”, Mosaic 7, no. 2, 1974, p. 126.

4. E. Wasiolek (ed.), The Notebooks for “The Idiot”, Chicago & London 1967, pp. 4, 8-9.

5. A. P. Skaftymov, “Tematičeskaja kompozicija romana ‘Idiot’”, N. L. Brodskij (ed.), Tvorčeskij put´ Dostoevskogo, Leningrad 1924, pp. 131-85.

6. F. F. Seeley, “Aglaja Epančina”, Slavic and East European Journal 18, 1974, p. 1.

7. D. D. Oblomievskij, “Knjaz' Myškin”, Dostoevskij: Materialy i issledovanija 2, Leningrad 1976, p. 287.

8. Cf. E. Wasiolek, Dostoevsky: The Major Fiction, Cambridge, Mass. 1964, p. 109.

9. Cf. F. M. Dostoevskij, Pis'ma 2, edited and with commentary by A. S. Dolinin, Moskva & Leningrad 1928, p. 71.

10. G. Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in Contrast, London 1959, p. 171.

11. S. O. Lesser, “Saint and Sinner—Dostoevsky's ‘Idiot’”, Modern Fiction Studies 4, no. 3, 1958, p. 211.

12. M. Krieger, “Dostoevsky's ‘Idiot’: The Curse of Saintliness”, in R. Wellek (ed.), Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays, New Jersey 1962, p. 48.

13. Lord, pp. 81, 86.

14. Steiner, p. 152.

15. Cf. F. M. Dostoevsky, Polnoe sobranie sočinenij 9, Leningrad 1974, p. 220. This edition of Dostoevskij's works is referred to hereafter as PSS.

16. Cf. Myškin's remark to Ganja about Rogožin: “It seemed to me that there is a great deal of passion in him and even a kind of sick passion” (PSS 8, p. 28). All references to the final version of the novel are to this edition and are hereafter included in the text.

17. R. Peace, Dostoevsky: An Examination of the Major Novels, Cambridge 1971, p. 85.

18. Ibid., p. 94.

19. E. I. Čigareva, “Rol´ romaničeskoj intrigi v romane F. M. Dostoevskogo ‘Idiot’”, Sbornik naučnych studenčeskich rabot. Po materialam naučnoj studenčeskoj konferencii, posvjaščennoj 250-letiju so dnja roždenija M. V. Lomonosova, mart 1961 g., Moskva 1962, p. 260.

20. Cf. L. Grossman, Dostoevskij, Moskva 1962, p. 425.

21. Peace, pp. 92-3.

22. Cf., for example, the comment: “The Idiot, always cold-blooded, suddenly frightens the heroine with the force of his passion (strasti)” (PSS 9, p. 161).

23. Cf. ibid., pp. 157, 192.

24. A clear indication of Myškin's sensitivity to the Old Believers is his ability to recognise one instinctively in the portrait of Rogožin's father (p. 173).

25. Cf. Peace, p. 86, and M. S. Al´tman, Dostoevskij: Po vecham imen, Saratov 1975, p. 72.

26. Altman, p. 72.

27. PSS 9, p. 161.

28. Cf. K. Močul´skij, Dostoevskij: Žizn´ i tvorčestvo, Paris 1947, p. 280.

29. Cf. Lesser, p. 217.

30. Cf. Močul´skij, p. 281.

31. M. Holquist, Dostoevsky and the Novel, Princeton 1977, pp. 114-15.

32. Although Nastas´ja's father is described as “a retired officer of good noble family” (p. 35), her actual entitlement to the title is left somewhat vague.

33. Cf. the two female landowners, relations of Pavliščev, with whom Myškin spends the period preceding his departure for Switzerland (p. 25).

34. Cf. Močul´skij, pp. 308-9.

35. In the first plan of the novel the Idiot was endowed not only with “powerful passions”, but also with a “boundless pride”. “It is from pride”, we read, “that he wishes to control and conquer himself” (PSS 9, p. 141).

36. “You are so beautiful,” he remarks to her, “that one is afraid to look at you” (p. 66).

37. V. Dal', Tolkovyj slovar ´živogo velikorusskogo jazyka 1, Moskva 1956, p. 520.

38. The narrator, we note, is intent from the beginning on indicating the noble rank of General Epančin's daughters. “It is true,” he remarks in Part I, chapter 1, “that they were only Epančins, but on their mother's side they were of princely rank …” (p. 15).

39. Cf. the signature “Your brother, Prince L. Myškin” beneath his letter to Aglaja in Part II, chapter 1 (p. 157).

40. Lord, p. 89.

41. Cf. the author's comment in the Notebooks: “Present the Prince as a sphinx” (PSS 9, p. 248).

42. Lord, p. 95.

43. A. J. Guerard, “On the Composition of Dostoevsky's The Idiot”, Mosaic 8, no. 1, 1974-75, p. 205.