Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from an asylum inSwitzerland. As he becomes embroiled in the franticamatory and financiaI intrigues which centre arounda cast of brilliantly realised characters and whichultimately lead to tragedy, he emerges as a uniquecombination of the Christian ideal of perfection andDostoevsky's own views, afflictions and manners.ttis serene selflessness is contrasted with the worldlyqualities of every other character in the novel.Dostoevsky supplies a harsh indJctment of the Russianruling class of his day who have created a world whichcannot accommodate the goodness of this idiot.

PART I

PART II

PART III

          PART 1

          CHAPTER 1

 AT nine o"clock in the morning, towards the end of November, theWarsaw train was approaching Petersburg at full speed. It wasthawing, and so damp and foggy that it was difficult to distinguishanything ten paces from the line to right or left of the carriage win-dows. Some of the passengers were returning from abroad, but thethird-class compartments were most crowded, chiefly with peopleof humble rank, who had come a shorter distance on business. All ofcourse were fired and shivering, their eyes were heavy after thenight"s journey, and all their faces were pale and yellow to matchthe fog.

 In one of the third-class carriages, two passengers had, from earlydawn, been sitting facing one another by the window. Both wereyoung men, not very well dressed, and travelling with little luggage;both were of rather striking appearance, and both showed a desireto enter into conversation. If they had both known what wasremarkable in one another at that moment, they would have beensurprised at the chance which had so strangely brought them oppo-site one another in a third-class carriage of the Warsaw train. Oneof them was a short man about twenty-seven, with almost blackcurly hair and small, grey, fiery eyes. He had a broad and flat noseand high cheek bones. His thin lips were continually curved in aninsolent, mocking and even malicious smile. But the high and well-shaped forehead redeemed the ignoble lines of the lower part of theface. What was particularly striking about the young man"s face wasits death-like pallor, which gave him a look of exhaustion in spite ofhis sturdy figure, and at the same time an almost painfully passion-ate expression, out of keeping with his coarse and insolent smile andthe hard and conceited look in his eyes. He was warmly dressed in afull, black, sheepskin-lined overcoat, and had not felt the cold atnight, while his shivering neighbour had been exposed to the chilland damp of a Russian November night, for which he was evidentlyunprepared. He had a fairly thick and full cloak with a big hood,such as is often used in winter by travellers abroad in Switzerland,or the North of Italy, who are not of course proposing such a jour-ney as that from Eydtkuhnen to Petersburg. But what was quitesuitable and satisfactory in Italy turned out not quite sufficient forRussia. The owner of the cloak was a young man, also twenty-six orTHE IDIOTtwenty-seven years old, above the average in height, with very fairthick hair, with sunken cheeks and a thin, pointed, almost whitebeard. His eyes were large, blue and dreamy; there was somethinggentle, though heavy-looking in their expression, something of thatstrange look from which some people can recognise at the firstglance a victim of epilepsy. Yet the young man"s face was pleasing,thin and clean-cut, though colourless, and at this moment blue withcold. He carried a little bundle tied up in an old faded silk handker-chief, apparently containing all his belongings. He wore thick-soledshoes and gaiters, all in the foreign style. His dark-haired neighbourin the sheepskin observed all this, partly from having nothing to do,and at last, with an indehcate smile, in which satisfaction at the mis-fortunes of others is sometimes so unceremoniously and casuallyexpressed, he asked:

 "Chilly?"

 And he twitched his shoulders.

 "Very," answered his neighbour, with extraordinary readiness,"and to think it"s thawing too. What if it were freezing? I didn"texpect it to be so cold at home. I"ve got out of the way of it."

 "From abroad, eh?"

 "Yes, from Switzerland."

 "Phew! You don"t say so!" The dark-haired man whistled andlaughed.

 They fell into talk. The readiness of the fair young man in theSwiss cloak to answer all hiS companion"s inquiries was remarkable.He betrayed no suspicion of the extreme impertinence of some ofhis misplaced and idle questions. He told him he had been a longwhile, over four years, away from Russia, that he had been sentabroad for his health on account of a strange nervous disease, some-thing of the nature of epilepsy or St. Vitus"s dance, attacks oftwitching and trembling. The dark man smiled several times as hehstened, and laughed, especially when, in answer to his inquiry,"Well, have they cured you?" his companion answered, "No, theyhaven"t."

 "Ha! You must have wasted a lot of money over it, and we believein them over here," the dark man observed sarcastically,

 "Perfectly true!" interposed a badly dressed, heavily built man ofabout forty, with a red nose and pimpled face, sitting beside them. He seemed to be some sort of petty official, with the typical fail-ings of his class. "Perfectly true, they only absorb all the resources ofRussia for nothing!"

 "Oh, you are quite mistaken in my case!" the patient fromSwitzerland replied in a gende and conciliatory voice. "I can"t dis-pute your opinion, of course, because I don"t know all about it, butmy doctor shared his last penny with me for the journey here; andhe"s been keeping me for nearly two years at his expense."

 "Why, had you no one to pay for you?" asked the dark man.

 "No; Mr. Pavlishtchev, who used to pay for me there, died twoyears ago. I"ve written since to Petersburg, to Madame Epanchin, adistant relation of mine, but I"ve had no answer. So I"ve come "

 "Where are you going then?"

 "You mean, where am I going to stay? ... I really don"t know yet...

 " Somewhere..."

 "You"ve not made up your mind yet?" And both his listenerslaughed again.

 "And I shouldn"t wonder if that bundle is all you"ve got in theworld?" queried the dark man.

 "I wouldn"t mind betting it is," chimed in the red-nosed officialwith a gleeful air, "and that he"s nothing else in the luggage van,though poverty is no vice, one must admit."

 It appeared that this was the case; the fair-haired young manacknowledged it at once with peculiar readiness.

 "Your bundle has some value, anyway," the petty official went on,when they had laughed to their heart"s content (strange to say, theowner of the bundle began to laugh too, looking at them, and thatincreased their mirth), "and though one may safely bet there is nogold in it, neither French, German, nor Dutch - one may be sure ofthat, if only from the gaiters you have got on over your foreignshoes - yet if you can add to your bundle a relation such as MadameEpanchin, the General"s lady, the bundle acquires a very differentvalue, that is if Madame Epanchin really is related to you, and youare not labouring under a delusion, a mistake that often happens...through excess of imagination."

 "Ah, you"ve guessed right again," the fair young man assented~ "Itreally is almost a mistake, that"s to say, she is almost no relation; somuch so that I really was not at all surprised at getting no answer. Itwas what I expected."

 "You simply wasted the money for the stamps~ H"m! . . . anywayyou are straightforward and simple-hearted, and that"s to yourcredit. H"m! . . . I know General Epanchin, for he is a man everyone knows; and I used to know Mr. Pavlishtchev, too, who paidyour expenses in Switzerland, that is if it was Nikolay AndreyevitchPavlishtchev, for there were two of them, cousins. The other livesin the Crimea. The late Nikolay Andreyevitch was a worthy man……

       INTRODUCTION

WRITING ABROAD for the first time, Dostoevsky started planning TheIdiot during his tragic stay in Geneva where his first child was born andswifdy died during the late summer of 1867. After the success of Cr/meand Punishment, the first of the four parts of The Idiot was serializedin the magazine Russky vestnik from January to February 1868 andwas greeted enthusiastically. The novel was eventually finished inFlorence some eighteen months later. Critics ignored it, but Dostoevskyclaimed that it was his own favourite among his works. In Englandtoday Dostoevsky is the most widely read and influential of allRussian novelists, and The Idiot is considered to be one of hismost profound masterpieces.

Like its immediate predecessor, The Idiot is a novel which demon-strates Dostoevsky"s gift for penetrating character analysis, and dealswith profound religious and political concepts. Dostoevsky had beenintensely moved by Hans Holbein"s painting of Christ taken from thecross which he had seen in Basel, and this was clearly the inspirationbehind his determination to make of his single, dominant hero, whathe calls "a positively good man". Aware that the "good" heroes ofcontemporary fiction tended to be comic figures, Dostoevsky resolvedto present Prince Myshkin seriously, as an idiot who embodies Christianvirtue. Paradoxically, the humorous elements ofhis brilliant portrayal ofMyshldn seem to be a deliberate form of self-derision on Dostoevsky"spart, and create what biographer Ronald Hingley calls "an unresolvedtension" between seriousness and humour.

The idiot, who has suffered since childhood from some unspecifiedmental illness so that his every response comes from the heart ratherthan the head, is endowed with very real traits. As he becomesembroiled in the various intrigues of the plot, he emerges as a uniquecombination of the Christ-like qualities of humility, love and selflessness,with Dostoevsky"s own views, afflictions and manners. Like his creator,who is known to have suffered particularly violent fits whilst writing thisnovel, Myshkin is an epileptic and given to expounding on all sorts ofsocial ills. His serene selflessness and Christian love serve as a structuralyardstick in the novel against which the worldly qualities and passions ofevery other character are measured.

  Other characters are powerfully drawn too, many of them derivingfrom real-hfe counterparts just as certain events in the novel arebased on actual events. His notes reveal that Dostoevsky was fond ofincorporating topical Russian crimes into his fiction, and the case ofOlga Umetskaya, a young peasant girl who set fire to her family"s housein revenge for their abusive cruelty to her, obsessed him and inspiredearly drafts of The Idiot. The murder of Nastasya Filippovna was basedon an actual Moscow murder, and the final bedroom scene evolvesdirectly from Shakespeare"s Othello.

  The Idiot is often compared unfavourably with Crime and Punishmenton account of its rambling structure. Dostoevsky had plotted anddiscarded eight versions of the first part of the novel alone before finallyconsolidating his characters, which may account for the unconventionalform of the work High entertainment is afforded by the intricate puzzleof amorous relationships and financial conspiracies that constitute theplot, but the significance of these is only apparent in the light of thecontrast presented by the idiot to all the protagonists, and of hiseventual failure to function effectively in their profane world. Almostever-present, Myshkin links every aspect of the novel, as does the finelysustained tension of Dostoevsky"s narrative.

  Finally, The Idiot conveys bleak despair as Dostoevsky provides aharsh indictment of the real world and particularly of the Russian rulingclass of his day. It is their supreme failure that a positively good mancannot survive in the world thay have created. Dostoevsky produced TheIdiot at the height of his literary powers and it is a work of genius thathas profound and timeless relevance. His own moralizing may haveseemed futile, but retrospectively, Prince Myshkin"s warnings to thearistocrats in the novel are seen to have been prophetic.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in 1821 in the MariinskayaHospital for the Poor in one of the most wretched areas of Moscow. His family,on both sides, was of the impoverished Russian middle-class, his father being anarmy doct~ HIS mother died in 1837 He studied at the St PetersburgMilitary Engineering Academy from 1838-1843, but he turned his back on acareer as an engineer for the more precarious life of a writer His first publishedwork was a translation of Balzac"s Eug~nie Grandet (I 844). His first originalwork to be published was the widely acclaimed story Poor Folk (1846). InApril 1849 he was arrested with others and placed in solitary confinement inthe Fortress of St Peter and St Paul for membership of the socialist Petrashevskycircle and, after a mock execution on a freezing morning which left an indelibleimpression on his mind and drove a fellow convict mad, his death sentence wascommuted to imprisonment for four years in a Siberian penal establishment,followed by four years as a private soldier In 1860-1861 his book Notes from the House of the Dead, based on his experiences in prison, appeared in thejournal Tune, which he had founded with his brother Mikhail. Time was suppressed in 1863. In 1862 Dostoevsky visited England, France, Germany and Italy. In England the things which most impressed themselves on him were the Worm Exhibition, the poverty of Whitechapel and the prostitutes plying their trade in the Haymarket.

Some of his experiences of his 1862 trip abroad were used in his book Notes from the Underground (1864). HIS wife and brother died in 1864, leaving him to support their dependants, and in the face of heavy financial commitments he wrote Crime and Ptmishment, which was published in 1866 and which became an immediate and prodigious success. In 1867 he married his young secretary, Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, a union that was blessed with children and much happiness, for she nursed him in his epilepsy, loyally bore his maniafor gambling, helped him to overcome his frquent depressions brought on by dark and gloomy thoughts, and assisted him in his work with her flair for business - a quality her husband lacked. Other great works followed, such as The Idiot (1868), The Devils (1872), A Raw Youth (1875) and The~ Brothers Karamazov (1880). Despite his success as an author Dostoevsky lived his entire life in a precarious financial state, sometimes on the brink of starvation, on occasion having to flee from his creditors, and once having to pawn his overcoat and last shirt. He died in 1881 of a lung haemorbage associated with an attack of epilepsy, and was followed to his grave by 40, 000 mourning Russians. His reputation, founded on his acute psychological and philosophical insight imo the depths of the human soul, has increased in stature during the twentieth century, and he stands today secure as one of the giants of Russian literature.