SOURCE: Lesser, Simon O. “Saint and Sinner—Dostoevsky's Idiot.” Modern Fiction Studies 4 (autumn 1958): 211-24.

[In the following essay, Lesser examines Myshkin's inner struggle in The Idiot, claiming that Dostoevsky's intention was to demonstrate the stupidity and shortcomings of his character and the tragedy these flaws caused.]

The theme of The Idiot is the inadequacy of mere goodness in the world of today. The Idiot is the modern morality story in the same sense that Hamlet is the modern rendition of the Oedipus situation.

It is easy to miss the point of the novel entirely because it has, with one conspicuous exception, no great analogues. The exception is Don Quixote; and it is not by accident that references to the poor knight find their way into the Russian version of the same story. The perennial theme of modern fiction is that of a great man being torn and finally overcome by some one emotional weakness: lust, ambition, jealousy. Whatever the external situation, the fundamental internal conflict is always between what Freud would call the id—the emotional, instinctual, unsocialized part of our personality—and either the superego, which embodies our ideals and values: our conscience; or the ego: the directing, rational part of our personality, the prudent little judge who mediates between the id and superego and reconciles the demands of both with the demands of reality. In The Idiot, as in Don Quixote, the fundamental conflict is between the superego and the ego. Myshkin suffers from the noblest and most endearing of all possible weaknesses: an excess of goodness. His fatal flaw is an undeveloped ego: a sense of reality so deficient that it not only prevents him from accomplishing good, but causes him to fail everyone, himself included, in the long run and to leave behind him during his brief encounter with nineteenth-century Russian society a trail of defeats and destruction. As Freud—and Dostoevsky—knew, the unbridled superego can be as dangerous as the id. Many of our notions of right and wrong are accepted early and uncritically. They are no safer a guide to the complicated problems of life than our instinctual impulses. Both those impulses and the instructions from the superego must be weighed by the conscious intelligence and related to the objective situation. It is amazing, in a way, that there are not more novels along the lines of Don Quixote and The Idiot—our own century has of course added The Trial—for the harm done by an over-developed and tyrannical superego, in a person with a deficient sense of reality, is a familiar phenomenon in life.

So weak is Myshkin's sense of reality that in the last analysis he is an idiot. There are of course ironies on ironies in calling him that. He is morally so superior to, and in many respects so much wiser and more penetrating than, the characters who think of him as an idiot that our first tendency is to laugh at them. But if we set up the simplest operational definition of intelligence: self-knowledge and a capacity to appraise people and situations accurately enough so that one can thread one's way safely through the jungle of the world, we see at once that Myshkin is indeed an idiot; a second irony is the literalness of the title. We balk at perceiving Myshkin's “idiocy” because his intellectual weaknesses are weaknesses we admire. We are aware of our own malice and envy, our tendency to do less than justice to the qualities of almost all other human beings—all, indeed, but a handful whose accomplishments in some curious way feed our own narcissism. How then can we despise a man who suffers from an excess of generosity, who “sees the good” in everyone and everything? Or, hating ourselves for our concessions to expediency, how can we despise a man who is invariably honest and candid?

We face the same difficulty in taking a critical view of Myshkin's actions. We know our own timidity and cowardice. How can we despise a man who acts spontaneously and, though frail, even rashly, manifesting no fear? We know how incapable we are of accepting the words of Jesus about the lilies of the field; an anxious, wizened old man possesses our soul and keeps even our charities within bounds. How can we feel contempt for a man who is unfailingly and excessively generous? Nothing blocks us perhaps from perceiving the childishness of Myshkin, his probable sexual impotence, but even this deficiency, particularly since it has a physical cause, we tend to judge indulgently.

Yet Dostoevsky wants to see the stupidity and shortcomings of Myshkin: The Idiot is the story of the tragedy they cause. To understand the novel, we must shed our illusions and view Myshkin's character and conduct with our everyday eyes. In our hearts we know the futility of pure goodness and the stupidity of naive generosity. There is a level, as we shall see, on which Myshkin's “goodness” is immoral and cruel. It is admirable perhaps but also foolish to accept everyone and everything. The appropriate reaction to something hateful is hatred. We should shrink from the potential murderer, not welcome him to our circle of friends. We should be on guard against involvements with neurotic people, for example, women whose neurosis feeds our own. We should be sensible enough not to permit our generous and admirable tendencies—kindness, let us say, or candor—to carry us away. There are times when it is prudent to be silent or even to lie—perhaps even do things of dubious propriety, for example, open letters not intended for our eyes but which may contain information it is essential for us to have if we are to act wisely. So much Dostoevsky is saying, it might be maintained, explicitly. One other equally important thing is implied. This is the wrongness of completely repressing our instinctual needs. Myshkin is doubly crippled by his sexual innocence: he is incapable in the end of satisfying either of the women with whom he becomes involved—this is a failure of response—and he has no healthy guiding impulse to give order to his own life.

The complete man would perhaps be an amalgam of the three men whose destinies become interlocked in the first chapter of the novel—idealistic, sensual, prudent. The amalgam is unlovely, but it is man. Anyone who, like Myshkin, tries to deny, or simply lacks, some of the components is doomed, more surely than the mixed and imperfect ordinary man, to defeat and destruction by society.

Of course, there is a final, mocking irony in Dostoevsky's title: in a more perfect world the prince's “idiocy” would be something else again. Before the story proper opens, Myshkin has scored his one notable triumph. He has brought peace and ultimate happiness to the wronged and despised Marie. But, significantly, he has achieved this idyllic victory by influencing the hearts of children, and the woman he helps is herself child-like, making no demands on life; she is surprised and satisfied by pity.

Only in a world of children and Maries, or as Aglaia perceived, in a world where he did not get involved in action at all, could Myshkin possibly succeed and his “idiocy,” his unrealistic acceptance of everything, be regarded as entirely admirable.

II.

In writing The Idiot, Dostoevsky faced the, it would seem, insuperable problem of dramatizing pure goodness and certain failures of response—failure, for example, to react adequately to the cruelty perceived in Rogozhin. Now for fictional purposes these qualities have a dubious value, for they seldom lead to action. They suggest the spectator rather than the participant, the person acted upon rather than the person setting a chain of events in motion; and neither of these roles is adequate for the central character of a novel. Making a completely faultless character believable also presented difficulties—and difficulties which had to be solved if The Idiot was to be a flesh-and-blood novel, not a bodiless allegory. Perhaps Dostoevsky divined very early during the gestation of the book that his hero's goodness would have to be alloyed with weakness or evil. Otherwise the ultimate failure and even destructiveness of the goodness would possess no narrative significance, would seem unrelated to character; it would represent a basically expository comment on the wickedness of the world.

Dostoevsky's difficulties were resolved when, in developing the eighth plan for The Idiot, he selected a Christ-like character for his protagonist and proceeded to endow him with his own variety of masochism. In retrospect it is easy to see that no other kind of hero could have fulfilled Dostoevsky's narrative and thematic purposes. Myshkin's goodness is based upon masochism, and the masochistic man invites reactions and involvements; he has a principle of action, albeit a neurotic one; his passivity is only apparent. Myshkin's goodness, his moral masochism, rests on a denial of his lusts and hatreds; it is an extension of his personal or, using the term broadly, his sexual masochism. A man whose goodness has this kind of underlying structure can be an active and wholly credible agent of destruction.

Inevitably, the people with whom such a character would become most closely involved would be sadistic, full of the passion and hatred he represses. He would be attracted by such people and they by him. The masochistic person seeks people who will use him cruelly; the sadistic, people he can torture. There is even more to it than this. According to Freud, neither masochism nor sadism is ever found in isolation. While one characteristic may be dominant, every masochist or sadist has some element of the opposite tendency in his makeup, so that he is drawn to other sadistic-masochistic people not only by his needs but by his ability to identify and sympathize with them.

Thus we have Rogozhin, Nastasya Filippovna, and Aglaia, the only kind of people with whom Myshkin could have established deep emotional relationships. The nature of the other principal characters in The Idiot, and the prince's relation with them, is inherent in his personality structure. The dominant traits of the three principal characters have an almost formal symmetry. Myshkin is apparently an example of pure masochism; in Rogozhin sadism is dominant; Nastasya, vindictive to all men but bent on self-destruction, has both qualities in equal proportion.

There is nothing mechanical about the actual working out of the relationships, however. The relationship between Myshkin and Nastasya is underscored and echoed by the relationship between him and Aglaia. Aglaia is a genteel bourgeois counterpart of the fiercer Nastasya. The relative breadth of Nastasya's reaction to Myshkin, as compared with Rogozhin's, is another asymmetrical factor. She reacts to his moral as well as his sexual masochism, in this respect serving as a link with the novel's minor characters. In the proposal scene which ends Part I, for example, she thrice rebukes Myshkin for regarding her, unrealistically, as an innocent. Rogozhin, the sensual man of instinct, is almost completely oblivious to the prince's moral masochism. From the time he first meets him, and expresses distrust of his disclaimer of interest in women, to the time he expresses his fear that Myshkin's “pity” may prove a more powerful weapon than his own passionate, sadistic love, he is almost wholly concerned with the prince as a sexual rival.

Rogozhin's reaction to Myshkin makes up in intensity for anything it lacks in breadth. The relationship between the two men frames the book dramatically and cuts to its heart psychologically. When it is fully understood, The Idiot has yielded its ultimate secrets. The most deeply buried parts of Myshkin's personality come to light in his relationship with Rogozhin.

The dominant traits of Rogozhin and Myshkin, and the nature of the relationship which is to bind them together, are brought out in the short initial chapter of the novel. The first word Rogozhin addresses to Myshkin—he of course does not then know his name—reveals his cruelty. Myshkin's masochism is disclosed almost as promptly by his willingness to answer any question, however impertinent or inappropriate. As the two men part after this first meeting, Rogozhin extends a patronizing invitation to Myshkin and offers him aid; and the prince—though we later find he possesses considerable means—abjectly accepts the offer.

In this initial chapter we are also given a wealth of information about the woman for whom these men will soon be bitterly competing, who will serve to ripen the relationship between them. By the end of Part I of the novel Myshkin and Rogozhin are destined to be implacable rivals for the hand of this woman. By the end of Part II, in her cruelty, confusion, and vacillation, she will have twice run away from each of them, feeding their hatred for one another at the same time that she enmeshes each of them more deeply in a sadistic-masochistic relationship with her. By the end of the novel, every possibility of a non-tragic solution of the affair exhausted, the two men—themselves on the verge of destruction—are destined to be reunited over the corpse of this woman. She, Nastasya Filippovna, has of course been murdered by Rogozhin. It is indicative of the rapidity with which Dostoevsky develops his plot that by the end of Chapter 3, the probability of this murder has been consciously foreseen by Myshkin.

The relationship between Myshkin and Rogozhin reaches its climax in Part II of the novel. The dramatic focus of Chapters 3 to 5 of this part is on the impulse the prince and Rogozhin feel to kill one another. The prince, of course, represses his murderous impulses, but they are revealed to us none the less, once our eyes are open, with unmistakable clarity. Rogozhin's impulses are more obviously revealed and are of course confirmed in the end by his actual attempt to kill Myshkin.

The section which brings the relationship of the two men to a head begins with the prince seeking out Rogozhin in his gloomy home. In the ensuing conversation the motives each man has for hating the other—as well as the motives each has for hating Nastasya—are clearly revealed. With what anguish we can imagine, Rogozhin tells Myshkin that he is the one Nastasya loves and that if she marries him, Rogozhin, it will only be as a way of seeking her own destruction. Rogozhin also shows an awareness of Nastasya's sadism and of the contempt she feels for him. Nor does he attempt to deny the sadistic nature of his love for her: he accepts Myshkin's charge that he wants to marry Nastasya only to pay her back for the torment she has caused him, just as he had previously accepted the charge when it was made by Nastasya herself. At the end of Chapter 4, he announces the decision against which he is fighting and which is the ultimate source of his hatred of the prince: he offers to surrender Nastasya to him. How incapable he is of this renunciation his subsequent attempt to kill Myshkin reveals.

But the prince is no more capable of finally renouncing Nastasya than is Rogozhin. He has come to see his friend to assure him that if it is true, as he has heard, that Rogozhin and Nastasya have been reconciled and are to be married, despite his own feeling that the marriage will be ruinous for her, he will not interfere. Yet that very evening he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the house on the “Petersburg Side” where he believes Nastasya to be staying. It is a stroke of genius that his compulsive desire to see her asserts itself at this time, for his impulse to kill Rogozhin also reveals itself most clearly on this same day, and it is psychologically and artistically right that his libidinal and aggressive repressions should crumble simultaneously. Myshkin's thoughts while he is walking to Nastasya's also show that no one has surpassed Dostoevsky as a psychologist. The prince keeps reassuring himself about the purity of his intentions. He tells himself that he wishes he could see Rogozhin, so that the two friends could visit Nastasya together. In fact, he does see him a few minutes later—Nastasya, it turns out, has gone to Pavlovsk—and is so guilt-ridden he cannot speak to him at all.

Myshkin's desire for Nastasya is of course also the primary basis of his repressed hostility toward Rogozhin. In the scene where the prince visits his friend it emerges very clearly that, just as Rogozhin is suspicious of Myshkin's “pity,” so Myshkin is jealous of Rogozhin's passionate love, a kind of love of which he feels himself incapable. The scene at Rogozhin's house also reminds us that Myshkin has a more legitimate reason for wishing Rogozhin out of the way—his desire to protect Nastasya against the laxly curbed violence he perceives in his friend.

Myshkin's murderous impulses toward Rogozhin must of course be revealed to us by unconscious manifestations. Myshkin cannot become aware of them; a principal purpose of his epileptic fits, one of which he feels impending, is to keep such an “idea” from consciousness. Two other factors may keep a hurried reader of The Idiot from becoming aware of the murderous rage against which Myshkin is struggling. The first is his apparent innocence of such impulse. The second is our conscious and sympathetic awareness of the prince's fear of Rogozhin. Our initial impulse is to assume that the prince's preoccupation with knives and the subject of murder stems from this fear, from the need he feels to defend himself. But on closer examination it becomes clear that Myshkin's awareness of Rogozhin's desire to kill him—an awareness for which he reproaches himself—is screening the still more terrible idea that he, Myshkin, wants to kill his friend. He is probably as sensitive as he is to what Rogozhin is feeling because of the murderous hate in his own heart.

The evidence for this hate, when we open our eyes to see it, is unmistakable; as though compensating for the fact that he could not be more explicit, Dostoevsky has piled on clue upon clue. It is Myshkin, not Rogozhin, who twice unconsciously, in a state of extreme agitation, picks up a knife which is lying on his friend's table. Later that afternoon the prince realizes that for some hours previously “he had at intervals begun suddenly looking for something.” The “something” proves to be an item he had seen in a hardware store window—a knife with a staghorn handle. It materializes that he has been haunted all day by thoughts of murder. He has been thinking of Lebedyev's nephew, whom he has confused with the murderer of whom Lebedyev spoke at the time he introduced his nephew to the prince. During dinner he has discussed the crime committed by this murderer with his waiter.

The fact that Myshkin is guilty of the same murderous and erotic impulses which are more nakedly revealed in Rogozhin is of the greatest structural importance. It explains his ability to forgive Rogozhin's attempt upon his life—forgive him, it might almost be said, in advance of the attempt. It is a key to understanding the entire relationship between the prince and Rogozhin. It is basic to our emotional acceptance of the overwhelming final scene of The Idiot. Myshkin cannot find it in his heart to reproach Rogozhin for the murder of Nastasya for very much the same reason that Hamlet cannot bring himself to kill Claudius: he is himself filled with guilt. Even consciously he has cause to reproach himself: not only has he failed to protect Nastasya, but his inability even at the very last, at Pavlovsk, to give her up has set in motion the final chain of events leading to her death. Unconsciously he knows that his complicity is far deeper and more encompassing than this. Through his identification with Rogozhin he has acted out the sadism and lust for Nastasya he tries so desperately to deny. Through his identification with her he has responded to those feelings, thus satisfying unacknowledged passive and feminine tendencies. In his own person he has felt homosexual love and murderous hate for Rogozhin and irresistible desire for Nastasya. Though these feelings have been repudiated and repressed, at the core of his being Myshkin knows that he is guilty of lusts and hatreds no less terrible than those to which his passionate companions have yielded.

III.

Except for the chapters which have been discussed and much of Chapter 1, which summarizes what has happened between the time of the proposal scene and Myshkin's reappearance in St. Petersburg six months later, Parts II and III of The Idiot are concerned with Myshkin's efforts to extricate himself from the neurotic triangular situation in which he is involved and make a reasonably normal adjustment to Russian society. Only failure to perceive this, it seems to me, can account for the charge, in part baseless and in part irrelevant, that this middle section of the novel is diffuse and structurally deficient. It is, of course, less intense than Part I. But this loss of intensity is inevitable, for it is of the essence of Myshkin's efforts to achieve stability that Rogozhin and Nastasya must tend to disappear from his life. Some diffuseness is also inevitable, for Dostoevsky is trying to show us the prince's ability to cope with a wide variety of people and problems, of the sort that a man in his position would not fail to encounter. In this section of the book Dostoevsky is giving his hero his chance. Not until we are convinced that he is incapable of taking advantage of it are we fully prepared for The Idiot's tragic conclusion. Considering the prince's position in society, it is essential that he be given a broad test. Considering the nature of the relationships he is attempting to escape and establish, it is essential that the test extend over some period of time.

As a matter of fact, the technical skill and economy with which this portion of the novel are developed cannot be passed by without some comment. The loss of intensity is fully compensated for by an accrual of richness which is the despair of anyone trying to write about the book. We not only see Myshkin's relationships with many characters, but we see those characters live and breathe apart from him—see them in their setting, see their vanities, ambitions, intrigues. The Idiot's minor characters are without exception interesting in their own right—so interesting that we may fail to observe the structural roles they play. But our knowledge of them, and of the way they treat one another, provides indispensable background information for judging Myshkin's responses. The way Lebedyev tortures General Ivolgin to punish him for his theft shows us, for example, how far the prince goes in the other direction in his indulgence of the old man. The interrelationships of the secondary characters, which are also casually and, it appears, effortlessly revealed to us, are also used to advance the action of the novel; consider, for example, the use made of the relationship between Ganya and Ippolit, and between each of them and Aglaia.

On examination we find that Dostoevsky achieves the rich, realistic, peopled texture of the middle part of the book by focusing on just four families—the Epanchins, Lebedyevs, Ivolgins and Ptitsyns—and Mrs. Ptitsyn is the already introduced Varya Ivolgin. Even the “Burdovsky incident,” while perhaps spun out too much in length, is developed with great economy so far as use of characters is concerned. Burdovsky is—apparently—the bastard son of Myshkin's benefactor, Pavlishtchev, and we have already been introduced to Lebedyev's nephew. The two characters who do not stem from the past, Keller and Ippolit, are used extensively in the further development of the story, and the latter is a friend of Kilya Ivolgin. The Burdovsky affair can by no means be regarded as simply an interpolated incident designed to show Myshkin's attitude toward social problems and ability to handle affairs. All of the characters involved in it have links with the larger movement of the novel.

A final brilliant technical achievement of the middle part of The Idiot is the way in which Dostoevsky makes the presence of Nastasya and Rogozhin felt, even though it is essential that their actual appearances on the scene be held to a minimum. The presence of Nastasya in particular is felt with cumulative intensity toward the end of Part III, even though she and Myshkin do not encounter one another face to face until the section's final pages. Without bringing her on the scene often, Dostoevsky, in preparation for the final catastrophe, shows how deeply she and Myshkin are still involved with one another. Her interest in the prince is revealed by their one encounter, the testimony of Rogozhin, and, as Aglaia realizes, in inverted fashion by the several letters she has written Aglaia and her effort to eliminate Yevgeny Pavlovitch as a suitor for that young lady so that she will be free to marry Myshkin. His interest in Nastasya is shown by his intervention to protect her during the altercation at the band concert and, even more portentously, by his dreaming of her while awaiting Aglaia's arrival for their early morning rendezvous.

The main focus of the middle section of The Idiot, however, is on Myshkin's efforts to make a normal adjustment to society. These efforts center on his relationship with the Epanchin family, and, above all, of course, with Aglaia. Though the Epanchins constitute Myshkin's bridge to the ordinary life of his time and place, it is to be noted that they are by no means a typical bourgeois family. If only because of the warm, impulsive character of Lizaveta Prokofyevna, they have a touch of eccentricity about them and are fully aware of it themselves. Aglaia is no run-of-the-mill specimen of the well-brought-up upper-middle-class young lady. She is not only the most remarkable and beautiful of the three sisters, but in any group, however large, would stand out for her intelligence, high spirit and intrepidity. In the character of the Epanchins and Aglaia, Dostoevsky has tilted the scales in Myshkin's favor. If he cannot achieve satisfactory relations with them, his case, it is clear, is hopeless.

Like Nastasya, Aglaia is what Freud would call a castrating type of woman—a type encountered frequently enough in modern fiction and modern life. Her sadism is revealed by her treatment of Yevgeny Pavlovitch and Ganya as well as by her treatment of Myshkin himself. It is recognized by her not too perceptive father. Her mother comments on her daughter's cruelty at the time she drags Myshkin to the Epanchin home when she finds he has misinterpreted a note from Aglaia and again a little later on:

“She is exactly, exactly like me, the very picture of me in every respect,” the mother used to say to herself. “Self-willed, horrid little imp: Nihilist, eccentric, mad and spiteful, spiteful, spiteful! Good Lord, how unhappy she will be!”

Aglaia's sadism, however, is tempered and redeemed by her intelligence and her deep and growing love for Myshkin. It may be, too, that only a woman possessed of a certain masculine firmness could take the prince seriously as a suitor. Aglaia is compelled to arrange rendezvous, to make Myshkin face his relationship with herself and Nastasya realistically, to reveal her own love with a nakedness that must have shamed her, to maneuver the prince into proposing to her. Her tendency to tease and torment her “suitor” is understandable enough. Aglaia errs only once, and this error is one we cannot fail to admire: in her determination to clear up the matter of Myshkin's relation with Nastasya once and for all she overreaches herself and sets the stage for The Idiot's crushing reversal.

Just as Myshkin's sexual masochism keeps us doubtful, throughout the middle section of the novel, about his ability to establish a good relationship with Aglaia, so his moral masochism makes us question his ability to adjust to society. His behavior in handling the Burdovsky affair is so meek that, on one level, it outrages the Epanchins. He is so lenient in his judgment of Ippolit that even the kindly Prince S. chides him for his lack of realism. He shows no ability to protect himself—does not know when he is being chaffed, readily forgives Keller and Lebedyev for exploiting him, is unwilling to accept reports about intrigues even when there is every reason to credit them. A curious and more disturbing fact is that Myshkin frequently provokes the attack of the very people he tries to help. His motives are mistrusted and his ingenuousness makes it difficult for him to attain his idealistic ends. Without being sure of our ground, we are inclined to wonder if there is not some truth in the charge levelled against him by Lebedyev's nephew:

“Yes, prince, one must do you justice, you do know how to make use of your … well, illness (to express it politely); you've managed to offer your friendship and money in such an ingenious way that now it's impossible for an honourable man to take it under any circumstances. That's either a bit too innocent or a bit too clever. … You know best which.”

While we are troubled by this charge and by the recurring evidence of Myshkin's ineffectuality, on the whole, throughout the middle section of the novel, we are inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. By and large his relations with people seem to be going along well enough and, as has been mentioned, his shortcomings are amiable ones. Dostoevsky dramatizes this fact: we are inclined to judge the prince in kindly fashion not only because we cannot condemn such faults as he reveals, but because we see him much of the time through indulgent and admiring eyes—Kolya's and Vera Lebedyev's, for example, and Madame Epanchin's and Aglaia's. It is the judgment of the latter two, above all, that is decisive. While we have some forebodings, our dominant feeling, at the end of Part III of The Idiot, is that we are on the eve of the prince's engagement to Aglaia—and this engagement does in fact become a reality early in Part IV. Seeing Myshkin through the hopeful, loving eyes of his intended and her mother—who so much resembles her that, like Aglaia, she continues to feel warmly toward him even when her mind tells her he is impossible—we begin to believe that somehow he may “make out” despite his unworldliness. At the end of this middle section of the novel the prince's affairs are apparently prospering.

IV.

But of course his situation is really precarious. We have been prepared openly in the first part of the novel and subterraneously throughout the middle part for the possibility that the prince will not be able to free himself from Nastasya or cope with his other problems. He has still hardly demonstrated his capacity for affairs, and what success he has had may be attributed in part to the happiness and confidence he feels as a result of his relationship with Aglaia. And her indulgence softens and extenuates his failures.

Thus Myshkin's worldly success and the solution of his personal problems both pivot around Aglaia. Ironically, the consummation of his relationship with her is jeopardized by the very growth of his love and his partial success in freeing himself from Nastasya. The compulsive attraction he feels for Nastasya undoubtedly fades in intensity during the middle portion of the novel. However, simultaneously, his pity for her grows; he comes to the conclusion that she is mad and desperately in need of help. At this point in the story there is no doubt for which woman Myshkin feels the more normal, complete love. But with his fatal flaw of masochism there is no doubt either that, in any showdown, he will choose the woman he loves least, the woman for whom he feels deepest pity, the woman who will bring him most pain.

Myshkin's showdown occurs in Chapters 6 to 8 of Part IV. His ability to make an adjustment to society, being the matter of lesser intensity, is disposed of first. The decisive test comes during the party which the Epanchins have planned to introduce Myshkin, now formally engaged to Aglaia, to society. In particular they are eager for him to make a good impression on Madame Epanchin's influential friend, Princess Byelokonsky. The party is planned with some apprehension and, even though it pains her to do so, Aglaia does not hesitate to brief her fiancé about how he should conduct himself.

There is a shift of focus here which permits Dostoevsky to show us Myshkin's shortcomings magnified. Whereas before we have seen him much of the time through the clement eyes of the Epanchins, in this scene we see them watching his conduct anxiously. Still another technical device is employed to disclose Myshkin's ineptness. In previous scenes, we have seen the prince in relation to people whom we knew and for whom we felt some sympathy. If he judged them too charitably we were inclined in turn to be charitable toward him. But most of the people at the Epanchin party we do not know or have met only casually. We have no emotional investment in them, and when Myshkin's judgment of them is absurdly overgenerous, nothing prevents us from perceiving the fact. It is even easier to perceive the stupidity of his view of the party as a whole and of his willingness to whitewash the Russian aristocracy en masse.

Even in this scene, there are some residual traces of ambiguity. Within limits the prince's sincerity and intensity seem admirable precisely because he is with a group that takes nothing very seriously and has long since forgotten the meaning of simple honesty. It is significant, too, that despite the prince's fiasco and the pain he has caused them, both Aglaia and her mother continue to feel warmly toward him. Even at the end of Chapter 7, his position is not completely hopeless.

But on the whole Dostoevsky does not spare Myshkin in this scene. In addition to dramatizing his failure, and giving us the negative reactions of such a kindly observer as Adelaida, Dostoevsky intervenes as omniscient novelist at a half dozen points to call attention to the prince's ineptness. In this scene, too, we finally come to see why Myshkin's readiness to forgive defeats its apparent purpose. In judging the Epanchins' guests, he is so indulgent that his ingenuousness has precisely the effect of irony. His appraisal of the aristocracy is so at variance with the facts that it makes his listeners more keenly aware of their shortcomings. Instead of providing expiation, it increases their sense of guilt.

It may be that Dostoevsky is saying that one is not in a position either to blame or forgive another unless one first understands him. It is clear in any case that many of the people drawn to Myshkin want understanding as well as forgiveness, and are disappointed when they receive only the latter.

Perhaps the most obvious example is General Ivolgin. In contrast to Lebedyev, who has tortured Ivolgin in reprisal for his theft and ridiculed him for his lying, Myshkin says nothing about the former and accepts the most outrageous lies with no show of incredulity. At first Ivolgin is delighted and feels a rush of affection for the prince. But that evening he writes him a letter in which he informs him that “he was parting with him, too, forever, that he respected him, and was grateful to him, but that even from him he could not accept ‘proofs of compassion which were derogatory to the dignity of a man who was unhappy enough without that.’” On reflection it is easy enough to understand this later reaction. Although the course Myshkin follows is apparently dictated by kindness, what he is doing is playing make-believe with the General. Ivolgin is aware of his tendency to lie; he would probably respond either to a serious analysis of the tendency or to the sort of chaffing which suggests that his being found out in a lie has not led to any diminution of affection. The prince's course of disregarding the General's lying is not without a trace of malice, for it implies that it is hopeless to talk to him, that he is beyond redemption. Madame Epanchin's treatment of the General dramatizes the fact that there is a sensible middle course between the deliberate cruelty of Lebedyev and the unsatisfactory form of forgiveness offered by Myshkin: she is critical but at the same time tolerant and, above all, perfectly straightforward.

Even after the fiasco of the engagement party, it is still theoretically possible for Myshkin to make some sort of adjustment to society, for he still has Aglaia's love. But one of the purposes of that scene is to prepare us for Myshkin's graver failure in the climactic scene of the novel where for the first time he, Nastasya, Aglaia, and Rogozhin come together to work out their destiny. It is one of the ironies of the book that Aglaia, the most likable of the four central characters, plays so prominent a part in this catastrophic meeting. She has suggested the meeting and it is her harshness to Nastasya which stings her into attempting to prove her continued power over Myshkin. But of course the decisive failure is his. It is not a moral failure in the usual sense of the term. It is a neurotic failure, the final triumph of his masochism. He chooses the woman he most pities, not the one he most loves.

Once that choice is made, the triangular situation of Part I is re-established—with one decisive difference. Every possible solution of the situation of Myshkin, Nastasya, and Rogozhin which does not involve their destruction has now been eliminated. We are reconciled to a tragic liquidation of their relationship and even prepared for the specific series of events which now follow so swiftly—Nastasya's final recoil from Myshkin, her murder by the tormented Rogozhin, the prince's forgiveness. It is a measure of Dostoevsky's greatness that horrible as the final scene of The Idiot is—it is a scene that few writers would attempt—we do not balk at accepting its truth for a minute.