Who wrote the story is an idiot. Legendary Christian books: Fyodor Dostoevsky "The Idiot". Interesting facts about the novel

PHENOMENOLOGICAL READING OF THE NOVEL "IDIOT" F.M. DOSTOYEVSKY
Trukhtin S.A.

1) Many researchers of F.M. Dostoevsky agree that the novel "The Idiot" is the most mysterious of all his works. At the same time, this mystery is usually associated, ultimately, with our inability to understand the artist's intention. However, after all, the writer left, although not in very large numbers, but still in a fairly intelligible form, indications about his ideas, even various preliminary plans for the novel were preserved. So, it has already become commonplace to mention that the work was conceived as a description of a “positively beautiful person”. In addition, numerous inserts in the text of the novel from the Gospel left no doubt that the main character, Prince Myshkin, is indeed a bright, extremely wonderful image, that he is almost a “Russian Christ”, and so on. And so, despite all this seemingly transparency, the novel, by common consent, still remains unclear.
Such secrecy of the construction allows us to talk about the mystery that beckons us and makes us want to look more closely behind the shell of the form stretched over the semantic frame. We feel that something is hidden behind the shell, that it is not the main thing, but the main thing is its basis, and it is on the basis of this feeling that the novel is perceived as one behind which there is something hidden. At the same time, since Dostoevsky, despite a sufficient number of explanations, could not fully reveal the meaning of his creation, we can conclude from this that he himself was not fully aware of its essence and betrayed, as is often the case in creativity, the desired for what really happened, i.e. for the real. But if so, then it makes no sense to trust documentary sources too much and hope that they will somehow help, but you should once again take a closer look at the final product, which is the object of this research.
Therefore, without questioning the fact that Myshkin is indeed a good person, in general, not a bad one, nevertheless, I would like to object to this already common approach, in which the failed project of Christ is explored.
2) “Idiot” is Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin. The fact that this name contains some kind of contradiction, I would say ironic, has been noticed for a long time (see, for example,). Obviously, the proximity of the names of Leo and Myshkin somehow doesn’t even harmonize with each other at all, they get in the way and get confused in our heads: either our hero is like a lion, or a mouse. And it seems that the main thing here is not in the associations that arise with these animals, but in the presence of the contradiction itself, which is indicated by their proximity. Similarly, internal, immanent inconsistency is also indicated by the fact that the hero is a figure with a high title of prince, who suddenly receives a low content of "idiot". Thus, our prince, even at the first superficial acquaintance, is a highly contradictory figure and far from that perfect form, which, it would seem (in view of Dostoevsky's preliminary notes) can be associated or identified with him. After all, perfection, by its nature, stands on some edge that separates the earthly, erroneous and absurd from the infallible ideal, endowed with only positive properties - positive in the sense of the absence of any shortcomings, incompleteness in them. No, our hero is not without flaws, with some such raisins of irregularity, which, in fact, make him a man and do not give us the right to identify him with some speculative Absolute, which in everyday life is sometimes called God. And it is not for nothing that the theme of Myshkin's humanity is repeated several times in the novel: in ch. Part I. Nastasya Filippovna (hereinafter - N.F.) says: “I believed in him ... as a person”, and further in ch. 16. Part I: “I saw a person for the first time!”. In other words, A. Manovtsev is right when he stated that "... we see in him (in Myshkin - S.T.) ... the most ordinary person." Dostoevsky, perhaps in his rational consciousness, imagined a kind of Myshkin and Christ, and maybe even the “Russian Christ”, as G.G. Yermilov, but the hand brought out something different, different, much more humane and close. And if we understand the novel "The Idiot" as an attempt by its author to express the inexpressible (the ideal), then one should seem to admit that he has not fulfilled his idea. On the other hand, Prince Myshkin also found himself in a situation of impossibility to fulfill his mission, which suggests the true result of the novel: he turns out to be inseparable from the failure of some idea by our hero - a man named Prince Myshkin. This result emerges objectively, structurally, regardless of whether Fyodor Mikhailovich strove for it or not.
The last circumstance, i.e. whether Dostoevsky was striving for the collapse of Myshkin’s project, or there was no such initially formulated desire, but it was drawn, as it were, “by itself”, at the end of the work, all this is a rather intriguing topic. In a way, this is again a return to the question of whether the author of the masterpiece explicitly understood what he was creating. Again, I am inclined to give a negative answer here. But on the other hand, I will argue that the writer had some kind of hidden thought, hidden primarily for himself, which beat inside his mind and did not give him rest. Apparently, it was the inner demand to explain to oneself the essence of this thought that served as the motive for the creation of this truly great and integral work. This thought sometimes broke out of the subconscious, as a result of which a network of peculiar islands arose, relying on which one can try to pull out the meaning for which the novel was written.
3) It is best to start the study from the beginning, and since we are trying to comprehend the essence, this beginning should be essential, and not formal. And if in form the whole story begins to be told from the meeting of Myshkin and Rogozhin in the community with Lebedev on the train, then in essence everything begins much earlier, with Lev Nikolayevich’s stay in distant and comfortable Switzerland and his communication with local residents. Of course, the novel presents a brief history of the hero before his Swiss period, but it is rather faded and concise compared to the description of the main events that are associated with the relationship between the prince and the Swiss girl Marie. These relationships are very remarkable and, in fact, are the key to understanding the entire novel, therefore, it is in them that the semantic beginning is contained. The correctness of this position will become apparent over time, as our entire point of view is presented, and now the reader may recall that a similar position is held, for example, by T.A. Kasatkina, who drew attention to the story with the donkey: in Switzerland, Myshkin heard his cry (after all, as she subtly noticed, the donkey screams in such a way that it looks like the cry “I”) and realized his self, his I. True, it is difficult to agree with the fact that it was from the moment the prince heard “I”, i.e. heard, therefore, realized his I, his whole project began to unfold, since, after all, Dostoevsky is not talking about awareness. But nevertheless it seems absolutely true that being abroad, in magnificent Switzerland with its wonderful nature and “white thread of a waterfall” is precisely the state from which the semantic shell of the novel begins to unfold.
The cry of the donkey “I” is the discovery by the hero of his subjectivity in himself, and the story with Marie is the creation by him of that project, which later turns out to be destroyed. Therefore, it would be more correct to say that the story with the donkey is, rather, not a semantic beginning, but a prelude to this beginning, which could have been omitted without losing content, but which was inserted by the writer as that gap in the formal narrative canvas, through which our minds squeeze in search of meaning. The cry of a donkey is an indication of the methodology by which one should move, or, in other words, it is an indication (label) of the language of narration. What is this language? This is the language of "I".
In order to be more clearly understood, I will speak more radically, perhaps at a risk, but on the other hand, saving time due to secondary explanations: the donkey shouts that Myshkin has reflection, and he, indeed, suddenly sees this ability in himself and, consequently, acquires clarity of inner gaze. From that moment on, he is able to use reflection as a tool with a special language and philosophy inherent in this tool. Myshkin becomes a philosopher-phenomenologist and all his activities should be evaluated taking into account this most important circumstance.
Thus, abroad, the prince's focus on the phenomenological attitude of consciousness is revealed. At the same time, at the end of the novel, through the lips of Lizaveta Prokofievna, Dostoevsky tells us that “all this ... Europe, all this is one fantasy.” Everything is correct! In these words of Lizaveta Prokofievna, a clue to the secret of the novel leaked out, which itself is not yet a secret, but an important condition for its comprehension. Of course, abroad is Myshkin's fantasy, in which he discovers his self-I. What kind of fantasy? It doesn't matter which one - any. Abroad is not the physical residence of the prince, no. Abroad is his immersion in himself, the fantasizing of an ordinary person, which he really is, about certain circumstances.
Note that this interpretation differs from the one according to which Switzerland is presented as a paradise and, accordingly, Myshkin is seen as a “Russian Christ”, descended from heaven (from a Swiss paradise) to sinful (i.e., to Russian) earth. At the same time, one cannot fail to note some similarities with the proposed approach. Indeed, paradise is essentially immaterial, as is the result of fantasy; the exit from paradise presupposes materialization, just as the exit from the state of fantasizing presupposes the conversion of consciousness from itself into the external world, i.e. involves the implementation of transcendence and reshaping by the consciousness of itself.
Thus, the dissimilarity between the “evangelical” (let's call it that) approach and what is proposed in this work can hardly have strong ontological grounds, but rather is a consequence of our desire to get rid of excessive mysticism, which is wafted every time when it comes to divine. By the way, Fyodor Mikhailovich himself, although he inserted quotations from the Gospel into the novel, urged not to start talking about God in an explicit form, since “all talk about God is not about that” (ch. 4, part II). Therefore, following this call, we will use not the evangelical language, but the language that literate philosophers think, and with the help of which it is possible to draw out what is hidden in the human Myshkin. This other language is certainly not reducible to Evangelical language, and its use may yield new non-trivial results. If you like, the phenomenological approach to Prince Myshkin (namely, this is what is proposed to be done in this work) is a different perspective that does not change the object, but gives a new layer of understanding. At the same time, only with this approach can one understand the structure of the novel, which, in the fair opinion of S. Young, is most closely connected with the consciousness of the hero.
4) Now, with the understanding that everything begins with some fantasy of Lev Nikolaevich, we should sort it out at the expense of the subject of fantasy. And here we come to the story of Marie and Myshkin's attitude towards her.
Briefly, it can be summarized as follows. Once upon a time there was a girl Marie, she was seduced by a certain rogue, and then thrown out like a surviving lemon. Society (pastor, etc.) condemned her and excommunicated her, while even innocent children threw stones at her. Marie herself agreed that she had acted badly and took bullying at herself for granted. Myshkin, on the other hand, took pity on the girl, began to look after her, and convinced the children that she was not to blame for anything, and even more than that, she was worthy of pity. Gradually, not without resistance, the whole village community switched to the prince's point of view, and when Marie died, the attitude towards her was completely different than before. The prince was happy.
From the point of view of the phenomenological approach, this whole story can be interpreted as the fact that in his mind Myshkin was able to combine with the help of logic (he acted with the help of persuasion, used logical arguments) the public morality of the village and pity for those who deserve it. In other words, our hero simply created a speculative scheme in which social morality does not contradict pity, and even corresponds to it, and this correspondence is achieved in a logical way: logically pity is docked with morality. And now, having received such a speculative construction, the prince felt happiness in himself.
5) Next, he returns to Russia. Obviously, as it has often been noted, Russia in the novel acts as some kind of opposite to the West, and if we agreed that the West (more precisely, Switzerland, but this clarification is not important) is a designation of the phenomenological setting of consciousness, reflection, then, in contrast to it It is logical to identify Russia with the external setting in which people are most of the time and in which the World is presented as an objective reality independent of them.
It turns out that after creating a speculative scheme for arranging the World, Myshkin emerges from the world of his dreams and turns his eyes to the real world. Why does he do this, if not for some purpose? It is clear that he has a goal, which he tells us (Adelaide) at the beginning of the novel: “... I really, perhaps, a philosopher, and who knows, maybe I really have an idea to teach” (ch. 5, part I) , and further adds that he thinks it is smarter than everyone to live.
After that, everything becomes clear: the prince constructed a speculative scheme of life and decided, in accordance with this scheme, to build (change) life itself. According to him, life must obey certain logical rules, i.e. be logical. This philosopher imagined a lot about himself, and everyone knows how it ended: life turned out to be more complicated than far-fetched schemes.
Here it can be noted that, in principle, the same thing happens with Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, who put his logical manipulations (about Napoleon, about louse and law, etc.) above his own emotions, which are opposed to conceptual ones. arguments. He stepped over them, as a result, emotions punished him through the pangs of fear, and then - conscience.
It turns out that in the novel "The Idiot" Fyodor Mikhailovich remains true to his general idea about the existentiality of the human soul, within which a person is guided primarily by the flow of sensations, existence, but his essential side is secondary and not so important in order to live a decent and happy life.
6) What is the peculiarity of the novel "The Idiot" in comparison with other works of Dostoevsky? Actually, this is what we have to find out. At the same time, having at our disposal an understanding of the general idea that goes beyond the scope of a single novel and encompassing the entire life outlook of the writer in his mature creative years, as well as having the right to use the language of phenomenology as the most accurate tool in this situation, we will somewhat change the structure of our presentation and begin follow the outline of the narrative of the work, trying to catch the thoughts of its creator. After all, the structure of the presentation depends not only on the level of understanding, but also on the tools that the researcher has. And since our understanding, as well as the tools, have been enriched, it is logical to change the approach with new opportunities.
7) The novel begins with Myshkin traveling by train across Russia, returning from Switzerland, and getting to know Rogozhin. In fact, this action represents the transition of the hero's consciousness from the state of fantasizing (abroad) to external consciousness (Russia). And since from the very beginning Rogozhin demonstrates his riot, the element of life, and later on throughout the whole novel this property of his does not weaken at all, the prince’s consciousness emerges into reality in parallel, or simultaneously with dipping him into a stream of uncontrollable life sensations that Rogozhin personifies . Moreover, later (ch. 3, part II) we learn that, according to Rogozhin himself, he did not study anything and does not think about anything (“Yes, do I think!”), So he is far from what - or comprehension of reality and there is nothing in it, except for bare sensations. Consequently, this hero is a simple, meaningless existence, a being with which Prince Myshkin enters reality in order to streamline it.
It is important that in this entrance into reality, another remarkable meeting of Myshkin takes place - with Nastasya Filippovna (hereinafter - N.F.). He hasn't seen her yet, but he already knows about her. Who is she, magical beauty? All will be revealed soon. In any case, it turns out to be that to which Rogozhin's rampage is directed, to which existence is heading.
At the Epanchins, to whom Myshkin comes immediately upon arrival in St. Petersburg, he already meets the very face (photo) of N.F., which strikes him and reminds him of something. From the story about the fate of N.F. a certain similarity between this heroine and Mari is quite clearly evident: both suffered, both are worthy of pity, and both are rejected by society in the person of the village flock - in the case of Mari, and in the person of people attached to the nobility, in particular, the Yepanchins - in the case of N.F. . At the same time, N.F. - some not so Marie, not quite similar to her. Indeed, she was able to “build” her offender Totsky in such a way that any woman would envy. She lives in full prosperity, is beautiful (unlike Marie) and she has a lot of suitors. Yes, and her name is her name and patronymic, solidly and proudly - Nastasya Filippovna, although she is only 25 years old, while the main character, Prince Myshkin, is sometimes called less respectfully, by her last name, and the daughters of the Epanchins, despite their entry into secular circles, and are often called by simple names, although those are approximate peers of the “humiliated and insulted” heroine. In general, N.F. turns out to be not identical to Marie, although she resembles her. First of all, it reminds Myshkin himself, because from the very first glance at her, he felt that he had seen her somewhere, felt her vague connection with himself: “... I imagined you like that ... as if I saw somewhere ... I saw your eyes as if I had seen it somewhere… maybe in a dream…” (ch. 9, part I). Similarly, N.F. on the very first day of their acquaintance, after the intercession of the prince for Varya Ivolgina, he confesses the same thing: “I saw his face somewhere” (ch. 10, part I). Apparently, here we have a meeting of heroes who were familiar in another world. Rejecting gnosticism and all mysticism, and adhering to the accepted phenomenological approach, it is best to accept that N.F. - this is what was remembered in Myshkin's mind as Marie, i.e. is an object of compassion. Only in real life this object looks completely different than in fantasy, and therefore complete recognition does not occur either on the part of the prince or on the part of the object of pity (Mari-N.F.): the subject and object met again, albeit in a different hypostasis.
Thus, N.F. is an object that requires compassion. According to the prince's project, the World should be harmonized by bringing morality and pity into a logical correspondence, and if this is done, then happiness will come, apparently, universal, universal happiness. And since N.F. is the object of pity, and society, which condemns her for no reason and rejects her from itself, is represented primarily by the Yepanchin family, the idea of ​​the prince is concretized by the demand for himself to convince the Yepanchins, and others, to edit their attitude towards N .F. towards pity. But this is exactly what stumbles upon resistance (quite expected and reminiscent of the situation in Switzerland) from society in the very first minutes: it is not ready for such compassion.
Myshkin, in accordance with his project, must overcome this resistance, but will he succeed in his plan? After all, he finds himself in a difficult situation. On the one hand, the object of pity tends to exist (Rogozhin). On the other hand, a society that gives a moral assessment, therefore, evaluates in general, does not strive for it, i.e. does not evaluate it adequately.
The point here is as follows: if being strives for something, then this something must be something opposite to it. What is the opposite of being? The being is opposed to its being, the being of being. Then N.F. turns out to be the personification of the being of all that exists, and a being that is worthy of pity, in the sense that all the nuances of one’s soul should be directed towards it in order to gain an adequate state of consciousness. Simply put, it is pity as a process (or act) that is the one through which the object of pity is able to be perceived adequately, i.e. through which being can be known. And here is the society, i.e. that subjectivity that gives an assessment is not ready to evaluate, in fact - to know being; the subject refuses to know. This is a logical contradiction (after all, the subject is the one who cognizes) and Myshkin must overcome.
8) Rogozhin-being is constantly striving for N.F.-being, which constantly eludes him, but does not let go, but, on the contrary, beckons. Society-subject does not want to evaluate what is called to be evaluated - being.
Here we can recall Heidegger, who said that being shows itself only in the situation of our preoccupation with it. In Dostoevsky, Heidegger’s existential analogue of concern is pity, pity, so that Myshkin, turning into reality, reveals the unwillingness of some subjectivity (society) to move towards revealing its essence, its meaning, its ontological center. A society without a foundation - this is how the prince perceives the reality that has come upon him. This does not at all fit with his speculative ideas about the world order, in which society is epistemologically conditioned through pity and compassion. And then he decides to make a breakthrough: in the house of N.F. (ch. 16, part I) he offers her his respect: "I will respect you all my life." The prince decided to repeat what he performed in Switzerland (constructed in his mind) and take the place of that subjectivity that would carry out an act of mercy - cognition. Thus, the World, apparently, should find its existential center, be filled with its foundation and harmonize. Moreover, according to his plan, the entire Oikoumene of the universe should be harmonized, since this was precisely his original idea.
Thus, Myshkin's idea was embodied in his decision to replace himself, his I, with something objective (society), independent of him. He decided to replace (or, perhaps, make it dependent on, which does not fundamentally change things) the natural and objective things that happen in the World as it develops naturally, with his subjective Self.
Myshkin in reality repeated his scheme: he personally, by his example, began to show all people the need for pity - firstly, and secondly, he decided to use logical reasoning to convince society to show compassion. Only in his mind (in Switzerland) was Marie the object of his attention, but in reality (in St. Petersburg) - N.F. He succeeded with Marie, but will he succeed with N.F.? And in general, should one act in reality the way it appears in the imagination?
9) To answer this question in the first part, the topic of execution sounds very actively (ch. 2, 5).
At the beginning (Chapter 2), it is heartfeltly told about the experience of the condemned to death, and it is told on behalf of Myshkin as if Dostoevsky himself sets out all this (and we know that there are historical reasons for this, his personal experience), as if it is not Myshkin before us , and Fedor Mikhailovich personally directly shares his experiences and thoughts. There is a feeling that the author is trying to convey his idea to readers in a pure, undistorted form and wants the reader to accept it without a doubt. What idea is he preaching here? It is quite clear what kind - a person before a deliberate death is quite clearly aware of the horror of the situation that has arisen, which consists in seeing his end, his finiteness. The consciousness of a person in the second before inevitable death is faced with the obviousness of the fact of its limitations. In the fifth chapter, this theme is developed: it is said that a few minutes before the execution, one can change one's mind and redo this and that, that this limited period of time allows the consciousness to accomplish something, but not everything. Consciousness turns out to be limited, in contrast to life itself, which, next to death, turns out to be infinity.
Apparently, Dostoevsky in the plots with the death penalty wants to say: the human consciousness exists inside this huge, infinite World and it is secondary to it. After all, a limited consciousness is limited because it is not capable of everything, in particular, it is not capable of absorbing the reality and infinity of this World. In other words, the possibility in consciousness is not like what is possible in living reality. It is precisely this non-similarity of consciousness and the external world that is emphasized most sharply and convexly “in a quarter of a second” before death.
And if so, then Dostoevsky needs stories about people's experiences before execution in order to show the impossibility of transferring the results of thinking into reality directly, without their coordination with life itself. The author prepares the reader to reject Myshkin's seemingly generous act towards N.F., when he invites her to be with him, when he offers to "respect her all my life." This action of the prince, from the ordinary point of view, normal, natural, turns out to be false, erroneous from the point of view of the philosophical analysis of the novel.
The feeling of this fallacy is intensified against the background of the fact that he invites Adelaide to draw a scene before the moment of execution: Adelaide, as part of society, is not able to see the meaning (this is also expressed in the fact that she, along with everyone else, does not appreciate and does not feel sorry for N.F. .) and does not know for himself a real, full-fledged pictorial theme (goal). A prince who is able to understand people, easily characterizes them and sees the meaning of current events, so that it is even strange for the reader to listen to his self-characterization as “sick” or even “idiot”, this prince advises Adelaide to write, apparently, the main and most relevant for him on that moment meaning - a picture with an image, in fact, denoting a person's awareness of his limitations, imperfections. In fact, Myshkin invited Adelaide to affirm the fact of totality, the primacy of this World in relation to the consciousness of the individual. And now he, who thinks so, suddenly decides to crush life reality with his idealistic idea and thereby affirm the opposite of what he himself insisted on a little earlier. This is a clear mistake, which later cost him dearly.
10) But why then did Myshkin make this mistake, what led him to it? At first he had a scheme of the world order, but did not put it into practice, something kept him from it. But at some point this restriction was lifted. This is what needs to be dealt with now.
First of all, let us recall the important circumstance that Myshkin appears on the pages of the novel as a very insightful analyst, a connoisseur of human souls, able to see both the meaning of what is happening and the essence of human nature. For example, when Ganya first appeared before him with a false smile, the prince immediately saw another in him, and he felt about him that “He must, when alone, look completely different and maybe never laugh” (Ch. 2, part I). Further, in the Epanchins' house, at the first meeting, he suggests to Adelaide the plot for the picture, the meaning of which lies in the depiction of the act of awareness by the prisoner of his death, his limitations, i.e. he teaches to see the meaning of what is happening (ch. 5, part I). Finally, he gives the classical one in terms of simplicity and correctness, i.e. a very harmonious characterization of the Epanchin ladies: Adelaide (the artist) is happy, Alexandra (the eldest daughter) has a secret sadness, and Lizaveta Prokofievna (maman) is a perfect child in everything good and in everything bad. The only person he could not characterize was Aglaya, the youngest daughter of the family.
Aglaya is a special character. The prince says to her: “You are so beautiful that you are afraid to look at you”, “Beauty is difficult to judge ... beauty is a mystery”, and later it is reported that he perceives it as “light” (ch. 10, part III). According to the philosophical tradition coming from Plato, light (the sun) is usually regarded as a condition for vision, knowledge of being. It is not clear whether Dostoevsky was familiar with this tradition and therefore it is better (from the point of view of obtaining reliable results) to pay attention not to this characteristic of Aglaya, but to another, completely obvious and without any objections, i.e. on her beauty, which you are “afraid to look at”, and which is a mystery. Prince Myshkin refuses to solve this riddle, and not only refuses, but is afraid to do it.
In other words, Aglaya is an intriguing exception of an as yet obscure nature. Everything else lends itself to the vision of Myshkin, and this is the main thing: our hero is generally able to move from reality to thoughts about it, and, almost universally recognized, he does this very skillfully and believably. Here Myshkin moves from reality to thoughts filled with real content, arising from reality, having roots in reality, so that they can be called real thoughts. Thus, for him and for all of us, the existence of a connection between reality and thoughts in general is obvious and, consequently, the question is raised about the possibility of a reverse transformation: thoughts - reality. Is it possible, is it possible to realize your ideas in reality? Are there any restrictions here? Again we have come to the question that has already been raised, but now we already understand its inevitable nature.
11) In this regard, we will continue our search for the reason for Myshkin's removal of the ban on the use of purely logical constructions in life. We found out that he began to carry out the activity of his external consciousness (that is, being in the setting of the natural perception of the world) through the implementation in the Yepanchins' house of a completely legitimate transformation: reality - real thought. But then he goes to settle in Ghana in an apartment, in a room. There he meets with the entire Gani family, including a very remarkable person - the head of the family, retired general Ivolgin. The exclusivity of this general lies entirely in his constant fantasizing. He invents stories and fables, sucking them out of his finger, out of nothing. Here, too, when meeting Myshkin, he comes up with a story about the fact that Lev Nikolayevich’s father, who was actually convicted (perhaps unfairly) in the case of the death of one of his subordinate soldiers, is not guilty due to the fact that this same soldier, whom, by the way, buried in a coffin, found in another military unit some time after the funeral. Indeed, if a person is alive, then he is not dead, and if so, then purely logically follows the innocence of Father Myshkin due to the absence of corpus delicti, although in reality this whole story is nothing more than fiction: a dead person cannot be resurrected. But with General Ivolgin, he is resurrected, so that his ideas are cut off from life. At the same time, the general insists on their authenticity. It turns out that this dreamer is trying to pass off his thoughts, which do not have solid grounds in reality, as thoughts with precisely such grounds. At the same time, the trick is that the prince, apparently, believes him. He commits himself to a scheme according to which unreal thoughts are identified with real ones. He, who sees the meaning, i.e. as if he who sees thoughts does not see the difference between real and unreal thoughts. The beauty of the logical construction, within which his father turns out to be innocent, suppresses the laws of life, and Myshkin loses control over himself, becomes fascinated and falls under the influence of the syllogism. For him, the right (truthful) is not what comes from life, but what is harmonious, beautiful. Subsequently, through Ippolit, we will be given the words of Myshkin that "beauty will save the world." This famous phrase is usually savored by all researchers, but in my humble opinion there is nothing but showiness here, and within the framework of our interpretation, this maxim would be more correct to portray as Dostoevsky's emphasis on exactly the opposite of what is usually perceived, i.e. not the positive character of this phrase, but the negative one. After all, Myshkin’s statement that “beauty will save the world” most likely means “everything beautiful will save the world,” and since a harmonious syllogism is unconditionally beautiful, it also falls here, and then it turns out: “syllogism (logic) will save the world.” This is the opposite of what, in fact, the writer is trying to show in all his work.
Thus, we can say that it was beauty that turned out to be the reason for Myshkin's implementation of his most important mistake: he identified (ceased to distinguish) a thought based on reality with a thought torn off from it.
12) Our position can be criticized on the grounds that in our country beauty acts as a kind of pointer to the negative, although it can also carry positive features. For example, the Yepanchin sisters and N.F. beautiful or even beauties, but they are not at all something negative, bad, etc. It should be answered that beauty has many faces and, as Fyodor Mikhailovich put it, “mysterious”, i.e. contains hidden parts. And if the open side of beauty strikes, hypnotizes, delights, etc., then the hidden side should be different from all this and be something that is separated from all these positive emotions. In fact, Alexandra, despite the high position of her father, beauty and meek disposition, is still not married, and this saddens her. Adelaide can't see the point. Aglaya is cold, and later we learn that she is very contradictory. N.F. throughout the novel is called "sick", "crazy", etc. In other words, in all these beauties there is one or another flaw, a wormhole, which is the stronger, the more obvious the beauty of each of them. Consequently, beauty in Dostoevsky is not at all a synonym for solid positivity, virtue, or something else in this spirit. Actually, it’s not in vain that he exclaims through Myshkin about N.F.’s photograph: “... I don’t know if it’s good? Ah, for good! Everything would be saved! Dostoevsky here, as it were, says that “if there were no flaws in beauty and the idea of ​​beauty corresponded to life! Then everything would be brought into harmony, and the logical scheme would be saved, would be accepted by life! After all, if beauty were indeed a kind of ideality, then it would turn out that the ideal logical scheme, as extremely beautiful, does not differ from the feeling that we get from a beautiful reality, therefore, any harmonious syllogism (and there are no other syllogisms) turns out to be identical with some (beautiful) reality, and the prohibition in the form of limited consciousness on Myshkin's fulfillment of his speculative idea would be fundamentally lifted. Myshkin seeks through beauty, in particular, through the beauty of logic, to justify his project.
13) An example that confirms our idea about the negative load of beauty in Dostoevsky in his novel is the scene in the house of N.F., in which the guests talk about their bad deeds (ch. 14, part I). Indeed, here Ferdyshchenko tells a true story about his latest infamy, which causes general indignation. And here are the obviously fictitious statements of the "venerable" gene. Epanchin and Totsky turn out to be quite good-looking, from which they only benefited. It turns out that the truth of Ferdyshchenko appears in a negative light, and the fiction of Epanchin and Totsky - in a positive light. A beautiful fairy tale is more pleasant than a rough truth. This pleasantness both relaxes people and allows them to perceive beautiful lies as truth. They just want it to be so, so, in fact, it is their aspirations for good that they often confuse with the good itself. Myshkin made a similar mistake: beauty for him turned out to be the criterion of truth, in his striving for it as the ultimate value, everything beautiful began to acquire attractive features.
14) And why, let me ask, did beauty become the criterion of truth for Myshkin?
Truth is a thought corresponding to reality, and if beauty, or, in a different transcription, harmony, turns out to be decisive here, then this is possible only in a situation where the harmony of the World is initially assumed, its arrangement according to some super-idea of ​​divine or some other supreme origin. In fact, this is nothing but the teaching of St. Augustine, and ultimately Platonism, when the Platonic matrix of being predetermines the grasping of the being by the consciousness.
Being deeply convinced of the falsity of the predestination of human existence, Dostoevsky builds the entire novel on this. He plunges Myshkin into believing in the existence of some single pre-established harmony of the universe, within which everything beautiful and harmonious is declared true, having unconditional roots in reality, connected with it in such a way that they cannot be divided without damage and, therefore, impossible to separate. Therefore, beauty for him turns into a kind of principle (mechanism) for identifying any idea, including a clearly false (but beautiful), with the truth. A lie, being beautifully presented, becomes similar to the truth and even ceases to differ from it.
Thus, Myshkin's fundamental, most basic mistake, as presented by Dostoevsky, is his inclination towards the teachings of Plato. It should be noted that A.B. Krinitsyn, when he rightly stated “... in the aura, the prince sees something that is for him a truer reality than what is seen in reality”, but, unfortunately, he did not formulate this matter explicitly.
15) A follower of Plato, Myshkin, accepted beauty (pre-established harmony) as a criterion of truth and, as a result, confused the beautifully concocted gene. Ivolgin a false idea with a real thought. But this was not yet the final reason for him to begin to put his speculative project into practice, i.e. so that he takes the place of society and proposes to N.F. its high rating. To make this possible, i.e. in order to finally remove the restriction on the right to use his scheme, he needed something else additional, namely, he needed to get proof that a mental prediction based on reality was justified and embodied in what was expected. In this case, the following chain of schemes is built:
1) real thought = unreal thought (fantasy);
2) real thought turns into reality,
from which the unconditional conclusion is obtained:
3) fantasy turns into reality.
To get this chain, i.e. in order to obtain the right to implement paragraph 3, Myshkin needed paragraph 2, and he received it.
Indeed, the prince came from Switzerland with a letter of inheritance. And although at first he had clearly not enough chances, the matter was not obvious, but nevertheless, on the basis of the letter he received, he assumed the reality of the opportunity that had arisen and tried to put the real idea into practice. At first, as we know, he somehow did not succeed: and gene. Yepanchin and everyone else who could help him simply brushed him off whenever he started talking about his business. The situation seemed completely deplorable, because it was upon receipt of this letter that the prince got out to Russia, and here it happens that no one wants to hear about him. One gets the impression that the World is resisting Myshkin's desire to find out the question that concerns him, as if saying: "What are you, dear prince, drop it, forget it and live a normal life, like everyone else." But Myshkin does not forget everything, and does not want to be like everyone else.
And now, when the reader has almost forgotten about the existence of the letter, at the very peak of the events of the first part of the novel, in N.F.’s apartment, Myshkin suddenly remembers it, recalls it as a very important matter that he never lost sight of and kept in mind, because I remembered it when, it would seem, everything can be forgotten. He takes out a letter and announces the possibility of receiving an inheritance. And, lo and behold, the assumption comes true, the inheritance is practically in his pocket, the beggar turns into a rich man. It's like a fairy tale, like a miracle that came true. However, it is important that this tale had a real background, so here we have the fact that Myshkin carried out his plan and received proof of the legitimacy of the transformation: real thoughts turn into reality.
All! The logical chain has been built, and from it one can draw an unconditional (from the point of view of this constructed semantic construction) conclusion about the justice and even the need for transformation: fantasy is reality. Therefore, Myshkin, without hesitation at all, rushes to carry out his project - he takes the place of the evaluating society and offers a high assessment of N.F. (“I will respect you all my life”). So the erroneous Platonism of the prince (erroneous - from the point of view of Dostoevsky) turns into a gross life mistake - the realization of his abstract fantasy.
16) Dostoevsky plunges the prince into the implementation of his project, into the pity of N.F., i.e. to the knowledge of being. But it turns out to be completely different from what he expected to see, remembering the story with Marie. After all, Marie, as an object of pity (being), is completely motionless and only perceives those movements towards her that are carried out by Myshkin. Unlike her, N.F. suddenly, completely unexpected for Myshkin, she becomes active, and she pities him herself, because she rejects all his proposals, motivating this by the fact that she considers herself a fallen woman and does not want to drag him along with her to the bottom.
It must be said that the activity of N.F. catches the eye from the very beginning: could she train both Totsky and the rest of society without this activity? Of course not. Then perhaps it has nothing to do with being; maybe it does not mean being, but something else?
No, all these doubts are in vain and N.F., of course, means what they strive to know (in the context of Dostoevsky's poetics - to regret), i.e. being. In fact, in the novel she appears before us (and Myshkin) gradually: at first we hear about her, then we see her face, and only then does she herself appear, hypnotizing the prince and making him her servant. So there is only mystery. But isn't life mysterious? Further, in ch. 4, part I we read: her “look looked - it was as if he asked a riddle”, etc. Here N.F. is quite obviously an object that needs to be unraveled, i.e. cognition. N.F. - this is being, beckoning to itself, but elusive, it is worth noticing it. However, it does not seem to be the way it really is. For example, in the Ivolgins (ch. 10, part I), Myshkin, who knows how to recognize the essence, says to N.F.: “Are you the way you now imagined. Can it be!”, and she agrees with this: “I’m really not like that…”. In other words, N.F. in the philosophical construction of the novel, it denotes being not only according to the formal features mentioned above (its opposite being, Rogozhin, strives for being-N.F.), but also because of the numerous coincidences of the characteristics that are immanent in being with the characteristics of her person.
Thus, in contrast to the being that Myshkin imagined in his Swiss fantasies, in reality the being turned out to be different, not immobile and passive, but with a certain degree of activity, which itself rushed towards it and turned it into its object of pity. What do we have here? The first is that being turns out to be active, the second is the discovery by the subject of the fact that he himself also turns out to be an object. Myshkin found himself on the threshold of immersion in himself, in reflection.
17) Entering into reflection is not an easy task, and before this happens, the events described in the second part of the novel will take place. However, before embarking on their comprehension, it is useful to think about why Dostoevsky needed to plunge Myshkin into the recesses of his own Self?
Apparently, he is simply trying to follow the course of the functioning of consciousness: Myshkin's desire to harmonize the World results in an attempt to cognize being and he becomes a subject, revealing the activity of the object to which he rushed. The existential (essential) meaning of this object quite naturally (Dostoevsky prepared us in advance for this nature) turns out to be not what our hero expected to see. In this case, a closer look at the subject of cognition is required, which is expressed in the fact that since being does not seem to us as it really is, and it is given only in a distorted form in the form of phenomena, then it is necessary to study these phenomena, or reflections of the root cause. object in the mind. So there is a need for a reflective view of things.
18) The second part of the novel begins with Myshkin adjusting his consciousness to the phenomenological vision of the World. For this, he has a good base in the form of the inheritance he received, which, in addition to giving the prince the right to become a subject of knowledge and pushing him to fulfill his mission, showed him and everyone else the existence of his ego. After all, property in its essence is a deeply selfish thing and, no matter how you treat it, is a consequence of the owner's egoism. Therefore, at the moment when Myshkin became rich, he acquired an ego-center in himself. If not for this, then perhaps he would not have had to become a phenomenologist; but Dostoevsky endowed it with property, directing (obviously, deliberately) the conveyor of events in a certain direction.
19) At the beginning of the second part, Myshkin leaves for Moscow to draw up an inheritance, in other words, to constitute his ego. Rogozhin and N.F. follow him there, and this is understandable: the existent (Rogozhin) and the being of the existent (N.F.) coexist only in the presence of a subject (Myshkin), while their coexistence is like a certain pulsation, when they either unite (identify) for a moment, then they separate (assert their difference). Similarly, the prince for a moment converges with N.F. and immediately diverges; the same thing with Rogozhin. This trinity Rogozhin - Myshkin - N.F. (Myshkin - in the middle as an intermediary between them) cannot live without each other, but they do not converge with each other forever.
It is important that Dostoevsky describes the stay of this trio in Moscow as if from the outside, from other people's words, as if retelling what he heard. This circumstance is interpreted by researchers in different ways, but I assume that this indicates a refusal to describe in detail the process (act) of registration, i.e. the constitution of the ego-center. It is definitely difficult to say why this is so, but, most likely, Fedor Mikhailovich simply does not see the mechanics of this process and puts in a black box what happens during it. He seems to be saying: here in a certain state of consciousness (in Moscow), the formation of one's pure Self (ego - center) somehow takes place; how this happens is unknown; we only know that this self-constituting takes place against the background of the presence of the external pole of being and being, presence in a form in which it is impossible otherwise. Another possible explanation for the fleeting view of the writer on the events in Moscow may be his unwillingness to unnecessarily drag out the narrative with secondary scenes that are not directly related to the main idea of ​​the work.
20) Nevertheless, the question arises why Dostoevsky needs Myshkin to acquire an ego - the center, if he already seems to have possessed it from the moment he heard the cry of a donkey in Switzerland.
The fact is that the ego-center in Switzerland did not possess the property of substantiality, it was purely fictional, fantasized: the prince at that time accepted the existence of a certain ego-center, but he had no reason for this. Now, after turning his gaze to real life, he received such a foundation (inheritance) and already on this basis he set off to grasp a new, substantial ego - center.
It must be said that this act is deeply reflexive, and its fulfillment must mean the prince's gradual entry into the phenomenological setting of consciousness. For its part, this movement, strictly speaking, is impossible without the presence of the ego - the center that provides it. Dostoevsky, apparently, decided to break this vicious circle, assuming that at first the ego-center is put forward as a hypothesis (as a fantasy). Further, there is an appeal to the reality of this World, where this hypothesis is substantiated and taken already as a postulate, so far without piercing the shell of reflection. And only having a postulated ego-center, the subject decides to approach himself, to reflection.
21) Now consider the form in which Myshkin's approach to the inner state of consciousness is described.
Immediately upon arrival from Moscow to St. Petersburg, when leaving the train car, he seemed to see “the hot look of someone’s two eyes,” but “having looked more closely, he no longer distinguished anything” (ch. 2, part II). Here we see that Myshkin has a kind of hallucination, when he begins to imagine certain phenomena that either exist or not. It is similar to that reflexive state in which you doubt what you saw: either you saw reality itself, or its glare. Further, after some time, the prince comes to Rogozhin's house, which he found almost on a whim; he almost guessed this house. In this place, an association immediately arises with actions in a dream, when almost supernatural abilities are suddenly acquired and one begins to do things that would seem impossible in the waking state, not at all suspecting their unnaturalness. Similarly, the guessing of Rogozhin's house among the numerous buildings of St. Petersburg seems to be something unnatural, as if Myshkin had become a bit of a magician, or, more precisely, as if he found himself in a kind of dream in which the observed reality loses its materiality and turns into a phenomenal stream of consciousness. This stream began to prevail already at the station, when the prince dreamed of a pair of eyes looking at him, but it began to be fully expressed as our hero approached Rogozhin's house. The presence in real consciousness with fluctuation jumps into reflection is gradually replaced by a situation where these fluctuations intensify, increase in time, and, finally, when the prince found himself inside the house, the jump suddenly grew to such an extent that it became stable, and, along with reality, was designated as an independent fact of Myshkin's being. This does not mean that the prince is completely immersed in reflection; he still realizes that reality does not depend on him, is independent as a substantial force, but he already knows about the existence of the World from the point of view of "phenomenological brackets" and is forced to accept this together with reality itself.
22) What was the stability of the appearance of the reflexive vision of the World in Myshkin? This was expressed primarily in the fact that the former vague, fleeting hallucinations now, in Rogozhin's house, acquired quite clear outlines, and he saw the same eyes that he fancied at the station - Rogozhin's eyes. Of course, Rogozhin himself did not admit that he really was spying on the prince, and therefore the reader has some feeling that he was really hallucinating at the station, but now the phantom eyes have materialized and ceased to be mystical otherworldly. What used to be semi-nonsense has now acquired the property of “strange”, but not at all mystical. Rogozhin's "strange" look indicates either that he himself has changed, or the changes that have taken place in Myshkin, to whom everything begins to seem different in the new state. But throughout the whole novel (except for the very end) Rogozhin practically does not change, and Myshkin, on the contrary, undergoes significant metamorphoses, therefore, in this case, the acceptance that Rogozhin suddenly acquired a “strange”, unusual look encounters resistance from the entire structure of the work. . It is easier and more consistent to consider this episode as the result of the fact that it was the prince who changed in his mind and the narrator, who recounts the events in the third person, simply gives out the flow of events without comment in a new perspective of vision.
Further, the prince ceases to control what he himself carries out. This is illustrated by the example of the topic with a knife (ch. 3, part II): the knife, as it were, "jumped" into his hands. Here the object (knife) appears in the field of view of the subject (prince) unexpectedly, without his efforts and intentions. It seems that the subject ceases to control the situation and loses his activity, loses himself. Such a half-asleep state can in some way resemble a state in the phenomenological setting of consciousness, in which the whole World is felt as some kind of viscosity, and even one’s own actions begin to be perceived as someone else’s, so that picking up a knife can easily seem like someone else’s act (action) , but not your own, and, consequently, the appearance of this knife in your hands, as well as the appeal to the knife of consciousness, turns out to be a “jump” that seems to be independent of you. The mind here refuses to associate the appearance of a knife in the hands with the activity of consciousness, as a result, there is a feeling that the object either “itself” fell into your hands, or someone else put effort into it.
23) Thus, the prince in Rogozhin's house acquires a stable reflective vision of the World. And then he receives a warning not to get involved in this matter, a warning in the form of a picture with the murdered Christ.
Myshkin had seen this picture of Holbein while still abroad, but here, at Rogozhin's, he met with a copy of it.
At this point, one could probably speculate about the fact that the original of the painting was in Basel, and its copy was in Russia. But it seems that Dostoevsky did not pay much attention to this circumstance, it was more important for him to once again show the hero something significant, directly related to the course of action.
Many researchers of the novel “The Idiot” (see for example) believe that through this picture the writer sought to show the impossibility of overcoming the laws of nature, because in it Christ, who died in considerable suffering, does not resurrect in fact depicted. Moreover, his entire tormented body gives rise to great doubt whether he will be able to rise again in three days, as required by Scripture. I will allow myself to use this idea, since it is precisely this idea that, apparently, is the main thing for Dostoevsky here, since, in fact, it is a reminder of the existence of nature, the real World, the laws of which are so strong that they keep within their framework even those who are called from break them out. And even more so all this applies to a mere mortal Myshkin. For him, this picture appears after acquiring a reflective attitude of consciousness and calls not to go deep into one's abyss, not to break away from reality, not to enter into solipsism. She seems to say: "prince, watch!". This line is further strengthened against the background of the fact that the theme of death in the novel, as explained above, should show the limitations of the human being and should keep him from presenting himself as an all-encompassing and omnipotent infinity.
24) Myshkin's warning didn't work. Indeed, leaving Rogozhin's house with a reflexive vision of the World and a warning about the danger lurking in it, the prince wandered around the city almost not like a carnal person, but like a shadow and became like an immaterial phantom, which is a pure phenomenon of someone's consciousness. Whose? Obviously, he has become a phenomenon of his own consciousness, his own reflection. He is no longer he, but another, ceasing to give an account of his actions, as if someone invisible were leading him by the hand. At the same time, his idea of ​​​​the last seconds before epilepsy, the onset of which he suddenly began to expect, is given: in these seconds, “the feeling of life, self-consciousness almost multiplied tenfold.” In fact, here we are talking about touching your pure Self, so that at the moment of epilepsy (according to the prince) there is an identification with your pure being, when “time will be no more”, since it, pure being, or, in other words, pure Self, the transcendental ego, the ego is the center (all this is one), time itself, and for this reason alone cannot be in the temporal flow (just as something cannot be in itself, i.e., designate the place of its presence relative to itself). Later, Husserl and Heidegger would come to the same conclusion, considering the existence of man as self-temporality.
Before epilepsy, i.e. in a borderline state, from the position of which the pure “I” is already visible, although it does not appear in an obvious form, Myshkin comes to the conclusion: “What is it that this is a disease? ... What does it matter that this tension is abnormal, if the very result, if a minute of sensation, remembered and considered already in a healthy state, turns out to be harmony, beauty in the highest degree, gives an unheard-of and hitherto unexplained feeling of fullness, proportion, reconciliation and enthusiastic prayerful fusion with the highest synthesis of life? In other words, here the hero comes to the affirmation of the highest moment of life in self-identification with his pure being; the meaning of life is turning to oneself, a kind of meditation; such a reflection, in which there is an infinite reflection of oneself in oneself, when the differentiation between the self-identifying center and what this center is called upon to compare with itself is lost; his transcendental subject and object merge into one point and turn into the Absolute.
It turns out that before epilepsy Myshkin is inclined to become the center of the constitution of this whole World, he forgot (or did not understand, or did not perceive) the warning of Holbein's painting.
25) Myshkin accepted the presence of inner being, in which, as at one point, all his thoughts and sensations merge. But how then to be with N.F., which also represents being, moreover, such a being that is beyond the consciousness of the prince? This outer pole, as a sign worth knowing, threatens to elude him, and his whole project is in jeopardy. In other words, he faces the task of getting out of the current situation, i.e. the task of substantiating the existential significance of N.F. in new conditions, and here he puts forward his famous formula: "Compassion is the main and, perhaps, the only law of the existence of all mankind."
Peering into this phrase more closely, it is easy to notice an amazing thing: being (note, not existence!), it turns out, has a certain law. How can it be that being (non-existent), the ultimate semantic generalization, has a law, i.e. the rule to which it is subject. After all, such a rule is nothing but a certain meaningfulness, and then it turns out that the ultimate meaning is subordinate to meaningfulness. Even if we assume that this meaningfulness is ultimate, it still turns out to be absurd: the ultimate obeys itself, i.e. denotes itself as inferior to itself.
All these contradictions are removed if the "law of being" is considered as "the law of bringing being into consciousness", in other words, "the law of knowing being", which immediately refers to the "method of knowing being". The latter is already devoid of any contradictions and absurdities. In this case, everything becomes clear and understandable: compassion, or pity, is plunging into someone else's soul, accepting its experiences as one's own. Compassion involves the merging of human emotions into one whole, into a single living organism, and it is through it, according to the plan of Myshkin the phenomenologist, that the distinction between each individual ego-center for all people is removed, so that internal and external being for each subject (and for the prince also) merge into one whole. Being in a state of reflection ceases to threaten the overall project. It is only necessary to correct the immediate goals: now it is necessary to cognize not the external world, but the internal one, and only then, through the operation of pity, proceed to generalization to the human community, i.e. to the whole universe. By and large, all this is an expression of the prince's Fichteanism, with the only difference being that in Fichte the task of transcendence was resolved with the help of free will, and in Myshkin (as presented by Dostoevsky) with the help of the existential of pity, which Heidegger in the 20th century It will move into the existential of care.
26) What do we have? In general, we have the following: Prince Myshkin came up with (decided) that the world should be improved. He began to realize this improvement by cognizing it. Naturally, this process was replaced by the desire, first of all, to see (to know) one's pure Self, from the position of which (according to the prince's plan) one can only correctly and consistently fulfill one's mission. And in this state, he moves after a familiar pair of eyes (ch. 5, part II), until they materialize in Rogozhin, who raised a knife over him, apparently the same one that “jumped” into his, Myshkin’s, hands and which we, the readers, associate with disobedience to the will of the subject. This independence, like something inevitable, hung over the prince and was ready to prove his omnipotence over him, but he exclaimed, “Parfyon, I don’t believe it!” and all of a sudden it ended.
The prince was in deep reflection (we found this out above), and in this state he refused to perceive the danger looming over him as a reality. For him, the whole World began to appear as a phenomenological stream of pure consciousness, devoid of material substantiality. Therefore, he did not believe in the reality of Rogozhin's attempt to kill him: he did not believe that Parfyon was serious and did not joke, but he did not believe that Parfyon with a knife was real, not fictional. His preliminary feelings that Rogozhin wanted to kill him intensified to the idea that Rogozhin was the result of only his own sensations and the perception of these sensations by his own consciousness. "Parfion, I don't believe it!" - this is a painting in solipsism, in which Myshkin is hopelessly bogged down, despite the recent warning by Holbein's painting.
As soon as this happened, as soon as he indicated his hopeless self-absorption, Dostoevsky immediately plunged him into an epileptic fit. Immediately before this, Myshkin's consciousness appears "an extraordinary inner light", and then "his consciousness died out instantly, and complete darkness ensued." It turns out that although the prince, before the seizure, aspired to the center of constitution, to the pure I, and during epilepsy at its first moment, he, apparently, reaches it (when he sees an "extraordinary inner light"), but immediately after that, everyone leaves. thoughts and images, so that the center reached ceases to be the center. Consequently, in the movement towards oneself there is a moment of loss of everything, including the loss of oneself; at the same time, this moment comes by itself, without the desire of the subject, thereby denoting the loss of any activity by the subject, the denial of himself by the subject, so that the movement towards the ego-center ends in a complete collapse, loss of purpose, and therefore it, this movement, is false, erroneous.
In other words, Dostoevsky shows that the method of harmonization (improvement) of the World chosen by Myshkin turns out to be useless, leading to nowhere, to nothing. Cognition of one's ego-center does not give anything, and a new attempt in a new direction is required to achieve the goal.
27) The prince began to carry out such an attempt in Pavlovsk, where he went after the Yepanchins.
Pavlovsk is some new state of consciousness, different from St. Petersburg, but not far from it. And since in the St. Petersburg period we saw Myshkin both in a natural attitude of consciousness (the first part of the novel) and in a state of solipsism (Chapter 5, Part II), then the Pavlovian state must differ somewhat from both, i.e. should be between them. In other words, in Pavlovsk, our hero equally accepts the existence of the external and the internal, without taking any one-sided position. Myshkin starts a new attempt to implement his project as a dualist.
28) Before considering all the subsequent news, it is useful to analyze the question of what Dostoevsky means in the novel a painful state.
To begin with, we note that not only Myshkin, who suffers from a periodic mental disorder, but also seemingly mentally healthy N.F. are called crazy, an idiot. and Aglaya. In their direction, sometimes one or another character throws something like “she’s crazy,” etc. In particular, with regard to N.F. more than once Lev Nikolaevich himself expressed himself in this spirit. What could this madness mean?
Laut is inclined to believe that in Dostoevsky's entire work there is a "cruel formula": all thinking is a disease, i.e. a madman is one who thinks. I don’t know what about all the things of Fyodor Mikhailovich, but in The Idiot the situation seems to be somewhat different.
Indeed, it does not seem accidental that the epithet "crazy" and so on. always expresses the one who never reflects, or at least at the moment of utterance is in the position of reality: Myshkin in relation to himself (ch. 3, 4, part I), Ganya in relation to Myshkin many times, Elizaveta Prokofievna - to Aglaya , gen. Epanchin and Myshkin - towards N.F. throughout the novel, and so on. And since the "crazy", "abnormal" in our minds is automatically positioned as different from others, this difference should be in opposition to ordinary reality. Madness in the work means not so much thinking, as Laut believed, but the fact that a character with such a property is directly related to the ideal side of the World, that his carnal form is only an appearance that does not reflect its content, and the content itself is not carnal, not material, in the sense that it has no essential relation to it. "Crazy" is some kind of ideal substance.
29) Dualism is usually understood as the point of view when the existence of both the real and the ideal worlds is equally accepted (as opposed to monism, in which the World is one, and the real and the ideal are its different sides). So Myshkin's dualism resulted in his stratification into two doubles opposite in spirit - Yevgeny Pavlovich Radomsky and Ippolit.
Quite a lot has been written about doubles in The Idiot, and everyone agrees that Ippolit is the double of the prince. That this is indeed the case, there is no doubt. After all, he, like the prince, periodically hallucinates, abides in himself, and betrays this reflection of his as something significant, so that this tubercular appears to be the double that characterizes the reflexive side of Myshkin.
At the same time, practically no one noted that Yevgeny Pavlovich was also a double. Only he no longer represents the personification of reflection, but, on the contrary, demonstrates his aspiration for life as it is in its pragmatic truthfulness. Yevgeny Pavlovich is the double that was born from the real part of Myshkin's consciousness.
From what has been said, you can wince: somehow quickly and simply all this is given out. And where is the evidence - the dear reader will ask - and why did the prince become precisely a dualist, and why did two doubles “leave” him (and not three, four ... ten)?
Questions are legitimate, but they should not be addressed to the one who decrypts, but to the one who encrypted. I'm just stating the facts, which boil down to the fact that after the hero falls into epilepsy and leaves for Pavlovsk, two heroes with opposite aspirations and characters appear on the narrative stage next to Myshkin, reminiscent of Myshkin himself in different periods of time: Evgeny Pavlovich reminds him in the first part of the novel, when he speaks well and sensibly about completely different, but certainly real things concerning the characters of people, and the relationship between them, and Russian orders; Hippolyte, on the other hand, resembles the prince in the first five chapters of the second part of the novel with his shadows and the desire to perceive the whole world in phenomenological brackets.
It can be assumed that Dostoevsky plunges the hero first into deep reflection, and then into dualism in order to show his general position from different angles, and to show it so that no one has any doubts about its falsity. In other words, Fyodor Mikhailovich, apparently, sought to form the most convincing error of Myshkin, which consists in his desire to harmonize the World in a logical way, i.e. in an effort to improve the World, ultimately, not by doing something worthwhile in this life, but by simple and useless cognition. And life, no matter how you know it, will still remain a mystery, and there is nothing left but to live it worthily, doing your own thing. But Myshkin did not accept this, went the other way and came to nowhere.
30) But why, after all, dualism? It is easy to come to this in the following way. We saw two obvious doubles of Myshkin. Physically, they are performed as heroes independent of each other, and it is this independence of them that allows us to conclude that the prince now appears to us as one who sees two different worlds, each of which is filled with its own essential content and, in the limit, has in its basis its own substance: one is the substance of not-I, the other is I.
Note that sometimes (see for example) "purl doubles" of the protagonist are called such characters as gene. Ivolgin, Lebedev, Ferdyshchenko, Keller. But all this is nothing more than a misunderstanding. Do the vileness of Lebedev and Ferdyshchenko have any basis in Myshkin's spirituality? Of course not. But a double in its status should be a continuation of its primary source in some, even if only one, property. Otherwise, twinning (if I may say so) is nullified, ceases to be ontologically conditioned, and becomes a mere game of the researcher's imagination. The hero must, as it were, continue in his doubles, and the move with doubles makes sense only as a way to more clearly reflect the side of interest to him. What are the essential, relevant qualities that pass from Myshkin to the gene. Ivolgin, Lebedev, Ferdyshchenko, Keller? Yes, none. There is nothing so significant in these, in general, minor characters that would connect them with the main character. They serve only to either fill the narrative with the necessary colors, or to ensure the connection of the prince with the whole world (as is the case with Lebedev). Perhaps the exception in terms of importance here is the gene. Ivolgin, however, he cannot be considered a double of Myshkin, since he did not take over something Myshkin, but, on the contrary, Myshkin took over from him the identification of real and purely fantasy thoughts.
31) Dualism is different. In one case, while accepting the equivalence of the inner world of phenomena, the process of cognition itself is carried out from the point of view of the unconditional reality of the external world. In another case, taking on faith the reality in calm serenity, the position of the Self is actualized.
Upon arrival in Pavlovsk, Myshkin could choose any of these options. Moreover, remembering the recent failure, he could go the first way. This, of course, still would not mean a direct rejection of the attempt to equip the World through its cognition, but it would bring it closer to reality, if not ontologically, but axiologically, making it possible to create a basis for overcoming the situation of a global error. However, everything went wrong, despite another warning he received from the mysterious Aglaya.
Indeed, Aglaya did not see the prince for six months, and when they met, she immediately read to him (first of all to him) Pushkin's poem "On the Poor Knight" (ch. 7, part II). What is it about and, most importantly, why is it given?
In order to at least slightly dispel the veil of fog, let's try to give a brief interpretation of the poem.
;) A poor knight lived in the world,
Silent and simple
Looks gloomy and pale,
Bold and direct in spirit.
Interpretation: Someone lived.
;) He had one vision,
Incomprehensible to the mind -
And deeply impressed
It hit him in the heart.
Interpretation: He came up with one idea that he liked.
;) Since then, burning soul
He did not look at women
He is to the grave with no one
I didn't want to say a word.
Interpretation: He ignored all other ideas.
;) He has a rosary around his neck
I tied it instead of a scarf,
And from the face of a steel lattice
Didn't raise it to anyone.
Interpretation: He closed himself on his idea.
;) Full of pure love,
True to a sweet dream
A.M.D. with my own blood
He wrote on the shield.
Interpretation: He was sincere in his aspirations.
;) And in the deserts of Palestine,
Meanwhile, on the rocks
Paladins rushed into battle,
Loudly naming the ladies

Lumen coeli, sancta Rosa!
He exclaimed, wild and zealous,
And like thunder its threat
Defeated the Muslims.
Interpretation: He was strong with his idea.
;) Returning to your distant castle,
He lived, strictly imprisoned,
All silent, all sad,
Like a fool he died.
Interpretation: In the end, he completely went into his idea, went into himself, as a result of which everything ended for him.

In other words, the “poor knight” is a symbol of someone who, with honest intentions, “obsessed” with his idea, does not pay attention to the violence of life and, despite all his original strength, dies with nothing. With this poem, Aglaya seems to be shouting: “Prince, do not go crazy, break away from your thoughts and schemes, pay attention to all the rest of the diversity of the World.” At the same time, she says, and quite seriously and sincerely, that she respects the “knight” for his focus on the ideal, idea, i.e. it supports cognition as such and does not seek to distract Myshkin from his project. Such inconsistency can only mean that Aglaya is not against cognition (especially since in the poem she changed the initials A.M.D. to N.F.B. and thereby designated N.F. as the object of Myshkin’s aspiration), but she is against deep ( subjective) idealism. In fact, she is trying to push the hero into that dualism in which reality is accepted not in the mode of calm faith, but as an environment for action.
32) But even more radically than Aglaya, Myshkin is agitating to abandon his idea, Lizaveta Prokofievna. Indeed, as soon as she learned about the arrival of the prince in Pavlovsk and about his fit, she almost immediately came to visit him, i.e. came to pity him. By this, Dostoevsky, through it as a part of society, is trying to tell us that society and the whole World are quite harmonious, that public morality completely absorbs pity and does not contradict it, that the World is known in the usual, natural rhythm. This rhythm, of course, is not what it is in the prince's imagination, and it is not N.F. who is enveloped in pity, but he himself; those. the prince, who considers himself a subject, himself found himself in the sphere of cognition (as in the case of the scene at the end of the first part, where he offers Nastastya Filippovna his pity, and she begins to pity him in response), and for him this turns out to be illogical. But the main thing is not in the logical completeness of what is happening, but in its consistency with human feelings: the prince fell ill, they came to take pity on him, to find out what happened, how he is doing. The world turns out to be quite harmonious, if you simply perceive it as it is and do not try to squeeze its existence into invented frames. Thus, the author of the novel, through Lizaveta Prokofievna, tries not only to show the uselessness of idealism (solipsism), as is done through Aglaya (reading Pushkin's poem), but seeks in general to show the senselessness of the project to improve the World, since this World is already harmonious due to the fulfillment of existing norms of behavior.
33) Despite all the efforts of Aglaya and Lizaveta Prokofievna, the prince is stubborn like the donkey that breathed into him the awareness (not yet the vision) of his own identity (from the German Ichheit).
Indeed, after Aglaya read The Poor Knight, i.e. Immediately after her agitation, five guests came to Myshkin (Ch. 7, 8, Part II), among whom was Ippolit, who, by the way, enters the cycle of events in this way: together with his friends, he began to demand some then right. Right comes from truth, and the latter from correctness (such, in any case, you can build a chain). It turns out that the new guests, together with Hippolyte, began to demand from the prince that he recognize the correctness of their position. What is it? If we discard all the husks, it turns out that they came to bargain for money on a deliberately false, concocted case. In other words, their position is arrogant, undisguised selfishness. And now it turns out that Myshkin accepts this point of view and agrees with their claims. He accepts not only the existence of the ego - that would be half the trouble - but he believes that the point of view of these impudent people (the point of view of the ego) is more correct and consistent than the opposite, coming from Lizaveta Prokofievna, who began to shame the aliens for their impudence, and Evgeny Pavlovich, who supported her. Moreover, Myshkin's opinion practically did not change even after Ganya, this standard representative of society, quite consistently and articulately proved the groundlessness of claims against the prince. Nothing worked! The prince turned towards Hippolyte, i.e. in the direction of idealistic dualism, preaching the activity of the Self and the passivity of the non-Self, which immediately affected subsequent events.
34) The main thing that happened after the prince accepted the point of view of Hippolytus was the loss of his activity: if before that it was the prince who served as the center around which all events developed, and from which all the vibes of bewitching others emanated, now Hippolytus has become such a center - the inner part Myshkin, who became the new conductor of the event flow, and Myshkin himself was left out. Andersen's shadow seized power over its former master.
The transition of the prince to idealistic dualism leads to the fact that his idealistic side in the person of Ippolit declares his claims regarding his absolute correctness: “it only takes a quarter of an hour to talk to the people at the window, and he will immediately ... agree on everything” (ch. 10, part .II). So, he went out to the window for a second, stuck his head in, blurted out something, and that's it! However, in order to convince the people, one must live with them, one must know them; to convince the people, if it is possible, is not a matter of an attack, but a matter of a lifetime. But Ippolit, who did not sniff at real difficulties, does not understand all this and imagines himself to be some kind of genius. In general, Dostoevsky exposes him here as a kind of ambitious person who has come off the earth, who imagines the unimaginable about himself. It is therefore natural that Hippolyte considers himself almost the Absolute, in which the object and the subject merge together, are identified, so that this narcissistic type is constantly crying and feeling sorry for himself, i.e. turns its knowledge back upon itself; he himself is both an object and a subject rolled into one.
35) The prince, although leaning towards Hippolytus, still does not renounce dualism, stands on the border between the real and ideal worlds and perceives what is happening in them quite critically.
Indeed, Hippolytus somehow (ch. 10, part II) declares to society: "You are most afraid of our sincerity." Sincerity can be understood as the removal of boundaries between people. Hippolyte professes a phenomenological point of view and considers the whole world to be a product of his consciousness. For him, people are phantoms, phenomena of consciousness, constituted by his transcendental center, which can only remove the boundaries between phantom people due to the fact that it sees the essential meaning of each such phenomenon that it itself initially laid down. Standing up for sincerity, Ippolit affirms this position.
And so the prince catches him in contradiction, noticing his bashfulness, and tells everyone this.
Shyness means incorrect, excessive exposure to the public of something personal, intimate. It turns out, ashamed, Ippolit refutes his own demand to reveal his soul to everyone. The prince saw this contradiction and pointed it out to everyone, including Hippolyte himself. In other words, Hippolyte found himself in a situation of lies, a mistake that went on public display. The last circumstance pissed him off: this egoist cannot tolerate pointing out his wrongness, because, being in solipsism, he imagines his exclusivity.
36) Myshkin became a dualist-idealist, who still sees the falsity of entering into solipsism (yet the previous experience of the futility of striving for one's own pure Self had an effect). Thus, Dostoevsky prepared him for a new breakthrough in the cognition of being.
And here we see the appearance of the enchanting N.F. in a horse-drawn carriage (ch. 10, part II), which informs Yevgeny Pavlovich about his financial affairs, and addresses him as “you”. Of course, she is not addressing Yevgeny Pavlovich himself as such, but to him as Myshkin's double, and since she is on a short footing with the latter, Yevgeny Pavlovich - some kind of his shadow - also found himself in a situation of "you". All this unexpected message has one goal: N.F. how the outer existential pole of the World calls Myshkin - it is him, and no one else - not to forget about the external element; it reminds of itself, of its significance, of the significance of reality.
N.F. confused the prince: he was just about to lean towards idealism, as he is pointed out (life itself points out) to the elemental reality of things. The ground is slipping from under his feet, and he no longer knows which point of view is correct - the external consciousness or the internal one. As a result, he begins to doubt everything. Even the appearance of N.F. in a horse-drawn carriage it seems to him some unreal event; reality becomes unreality; everything gets confused, and much more so than before: if earlier fantasy seemed to him in the form of reality (“a pair of eyes” by Rogozhin), now reality seems to be fantasy. In general, the prince finally got confused in the coordinate system.
What should he do? Abandon your project? After all, it is impossible to improve the World without a solid foundation! But no, “it is impossible to escape,” because “he is faced with such tasks that he now has no right not to solve, or at least not to use all his strength to solve them.”
37) Myshkin was faced with the task of deciding on his position: if he is a dualist, then which dualism should he choose - idealistic (internal) or realistic (external)? The seemingly solved problem becomes relevant again, and even more significant than before, since its solution is no longer an ordinary routine work, but represents the removal of a fundamental restriction on the feasibility of his entire idea.
With this, he enters into a dialogue with Keller on the topic of double thoughts and in fact admits not only that these double thoughts are difficult to fight, but that he still has no way out of the situation (which arose, we recall, after the appearance of N.F. . in a horse-drawn carriage): thinking about one thing is accompanied by the discovery that the previous thinking turned out to be about something else, which was hidden in the wilds of consciousness. Similarly: you think that you have found a justification for one point of view, but in fact this justification hides a completely opposite position. In formal terms, this means that in any thesis, an antithesis is visible. Myshkin came to see this, i.e. he acquired the necessary condition for understanding the immanence to the World of the dialectical functioning of consciousness. His original monism was replaced by dualism, from which he evolved to look towards dialectics, within which opposites are interdependent. But ontologically, the latter (in the case of its consistent implementation) is again monism, so that the prince, having gone through the cycle of the dialectical spiral, approached the approaches to his original point of view, but not in the spontaneous version characteristic of the philistine mood, but in a deeply verified conviction which was preceded by the serious work of his whole being.
38) Dostoevsky put Myshkin on the path of cultivating the dialectic in himself. And if the vision of the existence of differences, i.e. coexistence of the thesis and antithesis, represents embarking on this path, the first step along it is the denial of any unambiguity in anything, including differences, in other words, skepticism (which, by the way, was very fashionable in Germany at the time Dostoevsky was writing the novel there). And the prince does it: in a conversation with Kolya Ivolgin, he recognizes himself as a skeptic, i.e. doubters, demonstrating this by distrusting Kolya's report that Ganya seems to have some views on Aglaya (ch. 11, part II). His doubt is the beginning of a clear understanding that he is doing something wrong or wrong.
39) The prince turned his face to dialectics and obviously (consciously), as part of his strategic searches, moved towards it. And here the figure of Aglaya begins to assert itself in full force.
Aglaya is probably the most enigmatic heroine of the novel. Finally, it's time to talk about her. What is she like?
Here are just some of its properties: beautiful, cold, contradictory. Moreover, her contradiction does not have the character of a total negation, but is only a continuation of the assertion; her thesis is given out through the antithesis. For example, at the end of the second part, Lizaveta Prokofievna realized that Aglaya was “in love” with the prince (it would be more correct to talk about her attraction to him) after it turned out that she did not want to see him: the mother knows her daughter and betrays her hidden sides. Further, it should be remembered that Aglaya is perceived by the prince as "light". Finally, she is not opposed to Myshkin being related to the ideal (remember the episode with the “poor knight”), but she is opposed to plunging him into the empty nothingness of solipsism. So who is she?
Dialectical logic! It is in this interpretation of Aglaya that the inability of the analyst Myshkin, who sees the essence of everything, to recognize it from the very beginning of his acquaintance, becomes quite clear. He could not then, on his very first appearance in the Yepanchins' house, give her a description, because this act is not just an element of thinking, but is thinking about thinking, which at that time was still closed to him. He did not accept the necessity of dialectics, hence he did not see it at all.
But when he finally saw the need for dialectical constructions, it was then that the theme of his marriage to Aglaya began to unfold in full force: now he began to need her and he (more precisely, Dostoevsky, of course) considered it completely natural to move towards their connection , as a result of which the subject (Myshkin) must receive on legal grounds (read - at the level of natural regularity) dialectical logic (Aglaya). Similarly, the desire of the beautiful Aglaya for sexually no Myshkin (if you look at the situation from an everyday point of view) becomes understandable: in order to realize itself, dialectics needs someone who will carry out an act of dialectical thinking, i.e. need a subject. Without a subject - the carrier of activity - any logic turns into the absence of movement, so that dialectical logic, as the very embodiment of the movement of thought, without the carrier of this movement turns into its complete opposite, into peace, into thoughtlessness. Without a subject, dialectics is nullified, because it does not exist “by itself”, like, say, a stone on the bank of a river, which exists even without our preoccupation with it. If you like, dialectics is the very "concern" of the subject in its conscious form.
40) Well, Lev Nikolaevich the dialectician is already progress; and although he has not yet become one, but only wants to become one, all the same, positive shifts in relation to the initial premises are evident. Now that he has become a doubter, his natural step is the implementation of a synthesis: doubt is not just a vision of the existence of separate thesis and antithesis, but it is also the assumption of their coherence (after all, doubt concerns
any difference, including the difference in the thesis-antithesis pair), so that the natural development of doubt is to overcome it through the creation of a single base in which opposites are removed and become part of the whole.
Myshkin is trying to carry out such a synthesis through an operation familiar to him, which can be conditionally called "disclosure of his soul", when he begins to be completely frank in front of his double - Yevgeny Pavlovich (ch. 2, part III). Briefly, the plot here is as follows: Myshkin admits (publicly) to Yevgeny Pavlovich that he considers him the most noble and best person; he is embarrassed and replies that the prince did not want to say that; Myshkin agrees, but goes on to say that he has ideas he shouldn't talk about; everyone is confused.
What do we have here? The prince, on the one hand, believes that it is indecent to be frank (he has such ideas that he should not talk about), but saying this is already a kind of lifting the veil over his secrets, which confuses everyone, and therefore this statement lies in itself a contradiction. Thus, he understands the existence of boundaries between people and himself - like the existence of a boundary between the thesis and antithesis. At the same time, he himself does not accept these boundaries and considers it possible for himself to remove them. At the beginning of the novel, in the Epanchins' house, the prince also removed these boundaries, demonstrating his ability to see the essence of other people as if he climbed into their soul and saw it from the inside. But then he tactfully stopped at the very border of someone else's soul and did not really go deep into it inside. This was expressed in the fact that he gave people characteristics of an objective nature. Now the prince does not see the possibility or the need to be tactful and touches the inner intimate sides of the people with whom he communicates, as if the souls of these people are fused with his own, or almost fused. At the same time, we called the way he uses to infiltrate other people “opening his soul”, or, in other words, “turning himself inside out” (all this can be considered as a kind of anticipation of the future intersubjective world of Husserl). By betraying his ins and outs, intimate side of himself that only touches him, he tries to destroy the boundaries between himself and others, and destroy them very thoroughly, thoroughly and get to their essential core - conscience, the irritation of which causes pity for the other, i.e. e. in this case, to himself, Myshkin. Through this, he tries to initiate society towards synthetic cognition.
Such an attempt at synthesis, generalization, which simultaneously sees an attempt to study the possibility of influencing society and directing its pity-cognition in the right direction (in this case, on oneself) does not work, because people resist deep interference in their essence. Indeed, in essence, Myshkin, by assuming the possibility of removing the boundaries between the souls of people, is trying to present them not as really existing with their inherent boundaries, but as phenomena of his consciousness, which are constituted by himself, and, therefore, are transparent to him in the sense of the possibility (more precisely, the competence) to touch their essential features. In people, such an attempt is met with bewilderment and, ultimately, a rebuff.
By and large, the prince here demonstrates his total commitment to the same moves that Hippolyte, his inner double, recently carried out, and which he himself recently not only condemned, but pointed out as their inconsistency. It turns out, in spite of everything, that Myshkin is an inveterate idealist in the sense that he considers his self to be the primary substance. He cannot tear himself away from this, since, apparently, this is his fundamental essence. He may like Yevgeny Pavlovich, and he even admires him, but this side of his personality is not the main thing for him. Actually, this is the whole tragedy of Myshkin - he is immersed in himself and in no way can he escape from this. His reflection has no outlet. It is in this spirit that the remark of Prince Shch. Myshkin should be understood: "... paradise on earth is not easy to get, but you still count on paradise to a certain extent." Paradise here serves as an analogue of some idea, an ideal substance, which, according to Myshkin, should be realized in reality.
41) Myshkin's attempt at synthesis failed. Everyone noticed this, including Aglaya. But if society did not accept the very idea of ​​performing some action on it, even if it was synthetic, then Aglaya supported the very attempt: “Why are you talking here (the word“ this ”should be understood as“ frankness ”- S.T.) here? Aglaya suddenly cried out, why are you telling them this? Them! Them!" In other words, Aglaya-dialectics did not accept Myshkin's revelation as a correct dialectical move, but approved the intention to implement it. Along with the best epithets with which she awards the prince, she does not consider it possible to marry him: he is not yet ready to become her bearer-expressor. However, she needs a subject and she sets up a date with our hero. But before it happens, we will witness two important scenes.
42) After an unsuccessful attempt at a synthetic union of opposites (knowledge of the World) under the code name "opening one's soul", Myshkin is plunged by Dostoevsky into a situation where he defends N.F. (Chapter 2, part III). In fact, this is N.F. herself. initiates this noble act of the prince, as he again demonstrates his activity. By and large, she is fighting to ensure that our hero does not go deep into himself, more precisely, she continues to fight for this, since all her activity - both former and current - is aimed only at this goal: to make Myshkin a realist. This time her efforts are justified, the prince stands up for her. This is the second time he stands up for someone: for the first time it happened at the beginning of the novel, in the Ivolgin family, and now, in Pavlovsk, he again shows his ability to act. Yes, he is an inveterate idealist - again he does not reason, but does something. At the same time, if at the Ivolgins his actions were completely spontaneous and aimed at protecting someone who, being innocent, is still not rejected by society, now he has defended the very quintessence of the one who should be pitied (know).
What he did not succeed at the logical level (and he did not succeed in plunging the whole society into a situation of accepting a frank conversation, i.e. removing all boundaries through the revelation of thinking), happened at the level of realizing his natural humanity. Like Lizaveta Prokofievna, who came to visit him after his illness, so he himself, in his spontaneous immediacy, turns out to be much closer to the knowledge of being than any speculation on this score. The laws of nature, perceived through the sensory stream, turn out to be not only a simple limiting condition that separates a person and his consciousness from omnipotence and infinity, but the same laws allow him to overcome themselves and move on to other laws (within, of course, the same naturalness) through an act of action, which crosses out any manipulation of ideas, but at the same time is impossible without focusing on the existential pole, which is, in fact, the idea of ​​an idea. The action turns out to be a true synthetic generalization, which Myshkin sought to obtain, but a generalization not logical, but rather extra-logical or even alogical.
The situation that arose threatened to result in Myshkin completely leaving the realm of the ideal, and thus getting out of the control of Aglaya, who, by its status of logical dialectics, presupposes speculation and, consequently, immersion in the realm of thought, i.e. - to the ideal. She needs a communion with the ideal (however, not plunging into solipsism - we saw this earlier), and everything that is purely realistic, without elements of the ideal, she clearly rejects. An example of this is her rejection of a quite worthy groom (both in terms of money, and in terms of social status, and in terms of his appearance, etc.) Evgeny Pavlovich, since he is a realistic pragmatist, without the gift of fantasizing, i.e. having nothing of the ideal in itself. Here, the term "ideal" in our country carries an exclusively ontological load and is not a synonym for "the best" and so on.
All this explains why Aglaya did not accept the intercession of the prince, called it all a "comedy." She needs a prince - a subject (that is, one who has a "main mind" - the ability to comprehend the existence of things) and she does not intend to just let him go. The next move is hers, she will make it at the appointed date, but for now you can take a break from her.
43) After the prince shows glimpses of realism, it turns out that N.F. invites him to his place. It turns out that almost simultaneously Aglaya and N.F. make an appointment for him: the struggle for the way of knowing Myshkin - through thinking (on the part of Aglaya) and through activity, which includes real actions (on the part of N.F.) - unfolds in full strength. This does not mean that each of these beauties wants to receive him as her fiance. In particular, N.F. she definitely does not want this for herself, moreover, as follows from the words of Rogozhin, she would even consider it the best option for Aglaya and Myshkin to get married. After all, then, according to her plan, Myshkin, armed with the correct way of thinking - dialectics, would be able to correctly realize the cognition of being. The struggle for Myshkin is not just part of the narrative canvas, but it is an essential element of the entire philosophy of the novel.
44) Our hero, by his act, for a moment was able to harmonize public morality and pity, and it seemed to him that he was entering a new period of life in which everything was harmoniously and correctly arranged (formally, this was due to his upcoming birthday). However, he carried out this harmonization not in a logical way, but by action. And this despite the fact that the desire for harmony is the desire for a certain corresponding idea. In this context, the arrangement of harmony is the construction of a speculative construction, perfect from an idealistic point of view and allowing proof of its truth on a conceptual, i.e. at the logical level. In this situation, the question arises: is the achievement of the goal through action final from the point of view of the requirement of meaningful consciousness?
Dostoevsky builds the answer to this question from the contrary, through the clarification of the opposite question: is it possible to substantiate reality by thought, or is the ideal a higher form in comparison with reality? In the case of a positive answer to it, the desired question loses its validity.
To this end, the author initiates the duke of the prince - Ippolit - into a lengthy speech, in which an attempt will be made to verify the recent experience of Myshkin by the action of the experience of consciousness.
45) Hippolytus in his famous reading asks the question: “Is it true that my nature is now completely defeated?” (Chapter 5, part III). This question can be understood in two ways.
On the one hand, the hopelessly ill Hippolyte thinks about his inevitable death, thinks that his ability to live and resist has already been almost completely broken, overcome, defeated “completely”. However, then his natural ability to live is overcome by another natural ability - to die, since death is inherent only to the living. Death, like life, is a form of the same laws of nature. Therefore, if in his question Hippolytus focuses on illness, then he falls either into a contradiction (his biological nature cannot be defeated by biological laws in principle), or into a misunderstanding of what he is asking (he asks whether his nature is defeated with with the help of nature, i.e. does nature negate itself with the help of itself in the sense that it translates itself into its complete opposite - a substantial zero, which, again, is logically absurd in its basis).
All this suggests that Dostoevsky, apparently, puts a different meaning into the question of Ippolit and under his nature he understands not a biological hypostasis, not a disease, but something else. Most likely, it means that Ippolit is the inner double of Prince Myshkin.
Of course, this is how it is: the author initiates the inner essence of Myshkin in order to form an answer to the question that has arisen before him about the legality of logical proof in the form of real actions. We observe the result of this initiation as the activity and frankness of Hippolyte, who is the inner (ideal) side of the prince. At the same time, his question can be transformed into another, more understandable and adequate form: “Is it true that my ideal nature has now been completely defeated?” The question here is not that the laws of nature have been overcome, but, quite the opposite, whether his ideal essence has been overcome by the laws of nature. In other words, he wants to find out whether, after the realism of Myshkin during his intercession for N.F., one should finally agree with the primacy of the real (with so-called materialism) and the secondary nature of the ideal, or is there still some move that can save (with his point of view) situation, i.e. save idealism as a worldview. During this search, he, as a true double of Myshkin, as well as his prototype, builds a logical scheme of justification, which we will now analyze.
46) a) Hippolyte recounts how he helped the doctor's family, talks about the old general who helped the convicts, and concludes that good deeds are returning. In essence, here, on the basis of real deeds (his own or others), he deduces an idea regarding such deeds (good), which, as it were, exist without our control and can even return. Things independent of man are real, so Hippolytus talks about the legitimacy of transforming reality into a thought about reality.
B) Further, through Holbein's painting by Rogozhin, Ippolit comes to the question: "how to overcome the laws of nature?", i.e. in fact, on the basis of a real picture, he comes to the idea of ​​the possibility of overcoming reality. This is presented as a scheme: reality passes into the thought of the denial of reality.
C) A dream is recounted in which Rogozhin at first seemed real, then suddenly turned out to be a phantom (unreal), but even after the revelation of this phantomness, he continued to be perceived as real. Here, as in Myshkin, after the fantasies of Gen. Ivolgin, the real and the unreal are completely confused and identified: reality = unreality.
D) After sleep (c), taking into account (b), it turns out that from unreality one can get the thought of denying reality: unreality passes into the thought of denying reality.
E) This prompted Hippolyte to decide on suicide. It became necessary for him in order to test the hypothesis: the thought of denying reality = unreality, since in suicide such an identity is realized in a direct form. Indeed, you come to suicide yourself, giving rise to the thought of leaving life, of denying reality. At the same time, suicide itself is an act of jumping from life, from reality into unreality, so that in suicide both the thought of denying reality and unreality itself meet in identical equality.
E) If the hypothesis (e) is correct, then taking into account (c) it turns out: the thought of denying reality = reality.
G) Taking into account (a, b), it turns out that thoughts about the denial of reality and about reality itself mutually transform into each other and become part of one whole, which is the one within which this conclusion was obtained, i.e. real area of ​​speculation. Consequently, reality becomes part of the ideal world.

In this logical construction, which is not the best and not as beautiful as that of Myshkin (see paragraph 16 of our study), the most vulnerable link is hypothesis (e), suggesting suicide. It must be said that the wormhole in this paragraph lies not only in the fact that some as yet unverified assumption is embedded here, but also in the fact that Hippolytus introduced an action into the logical scheme as an integral element. Thus, all the fuss of Ippolit, generated, ultimately, by the desire of Myshkin (Ippolit is his inner double) to verify the validity of the proof of a speculative scheme with the help of real cases, goes beyond the category of logically closed operations, since here what should be taken as a premise proven. Such evidence is invalid, empty. And in fact, his suicide attempt mediocrely fails and he, disgraced, leaves with nothing.
Myshkin is also left with nothing: although he did not receive proof of the need to return to idealism, he also did not receive proof of the legitimacy of replacing the elements of a logical multi-link structure with practical deeds. And this is understandable: tuned specifically to cognition, and not to doing, i.e. being in his fundamental mistake, he cannot (logically) come to doing through cognition. This requires a special attitude, which he does not have.
47) Myshkin remained in limbo. Formally, of course, this is due to its location in Pavlovsk, which means equidistance from both solipsism and unconditional realism. But the main thing, as a result of which he continues his fluctuations about the border between the real and the ideal, is his conviction in the correctness of the logical scheme that he built in the first part of the novel (see paragraph 16 of our study), and which so far no one has been able to break. Therefore, even having received an impulse of realism, the prince still cannot completely leave the realm of the ideal, since he is bound by the umbilical cord of the beauty of logic. It turns out that his meeting with Aglaya could not fail.
Aglaya offered the prince not love - no, God forbid! - she offered him the role of an assistant with whom she could leave home and go abroad. So, having presented the prince at the beginning of the novel as a semantic center around which all events develop (even playing the role of a boy on parcels, he remained this center), Dostoevsky gradually transfers him to the level of a secondary hero, when the initiative almost completely passed to someone then to another. At first, this other person, to whom the initiative passes, was the prince himself in the guise of his inner essence called “Hippolite”, but now the activity has completely left him, and he turned out to be only material in the hands of others. Thus, the writer sews into the very structure of the work the fallacy of Myshkin's general position.
Aglaia-dialectics decided to rise above the prince-subject and turn into a panlogism, apparently of the Hegelian persuasion, gaining power over everything that is embraced by thought. Logic threatens to become a totality.
48) And this is where Dostoevsky strikes at the invulnerability of Myshkin's logical construction: gene. Ivolgin, this dreamer and liar, who at one time gave the prince an important basis for his conclusion about the possibility of equipping the World in accordance with fictitious ideas, demonstrates his inconsistency with this life. The theft of money from Lebedev, which happened even before the meeting with Aglaya, is now revealed in such a way that the gene comes out as a thief. Ivolgin. His inventions about the sublime are shattered on the sinful earth of reality, the smoke of dreams is dispelled, and Myshkin no longer believes in the stories of this liar. And when the general puffed up about his former closeness to Napoleon (ch. 4, part IV), our hero only weakly agreed, because for him this verbal stream turned into nothing, into an empty nothing. The theft turned the general from a grandiloquent and beauty-oriented (i.e., truth) character into a low and primitive old man, exposed his real essence, which turned out to be not the desire for truth, but the desire for useless deception, and made him all a solid symbol of lies. In other words, from the scheme presented in section 16 of this work, the first equality turned out to be missing, so that conclusion (3) ceased to be unconditionally correct and Myshkin's desire to implement it, i.e. the desire to equip the World according to their fantasy ideas, loses all meaning.
49) Lev Nikolaevich suddenly saw that his logical scheme was not working, and that his project to harmonize life strictly in the form it had been conceived (in Switzerland) could not be implemented.
So, he should give up everything or still try again, in a new manner, to convince society of its ability to be compassionate, the lost identity of the formally logical and the real? After all, if society recognizes this, then it will have to either express this matter, or form an attitude towards pity, worthy of pronunciation, logical formulation. Then it will turn out that society-reality recognizes the existence in itself of such an ideal formula, in accordance with which it actually functions.
In other words, instead of the destroyed scheme-justification of his project, which he once created for himself, Myshkin needed to create a similar scheme for society so that it would accept this scheme and begin to implement it itself, even without his, Myshkin's participation. Here again we recall his adherence to the teachings of Parmenides and Plato about the primacy of being (now we can add about the primacy of existential significance) and the secondary nature of simple existence. The prince believes that society, like the whole world, exists for a reason, on its own, without an internally expressed goal. On the contrary, according to his ideas, society is driven by some initial goal, which can be reached only in overcoming oneself and in coming to oneself-another, when there is a constant, systematic reshaping of one's essence, resulting, ultimately, in expanding one's boundaries, that the relationship between subject and object is expressed in the cognitive process, and the relationship between society and the individual is expressed in the acceptance of such morality, which would assume pity as an obligatory element.
Dostoevsky fully realizes this attitude towards change on Myshkin, forcing him to constantly look for the right moves. Their diversity in the novel does credit to the perseverance of the protagonist, but aims to emphasize not so much his positive qualities as another obvious thing: failed attempts made within a certain paradigm indicate the falsity of this very paradigm the more strongly, the more diverse they were.
Another attempt of the prince was born after the spiritual exposure of the gene. Ivolgin.
50) The novel "The Idiot", despite its size (not a small novel!), Is very concise: there is nothing superfluous in it. So in this case, as soon as new goals arose before the prince, the writer immediately, without delay, creates the necessary situation for him.
Dialectic Aglaya needs a container for her essence, she needs a subject, but her family doubts whether the prince is a suitable candidate for her. Therefore, it was decided to put it on display to various titled persons and get their verdict, i.e. get the opinion of the “light” of society, personifying society itself, regarding the ability of the prince to fulfill the required role (ch. 7, part IV). As a result, Prince Lev Nikolayevich was among the important old men and old women who expected him to have a sober mind and realistic judgments (this is exactly what Aglaya needs both as the personification of dialectics and as a simple person). They expected him to abandon the idea that the world is ruled by some kind of pre-established harmony, and the role of people and society is reduced only to the obedient fulfillment of some supreme prescriptions. Finally, they waited for the recognition of their importance, i.e. the inherent value of society and the reality that harshly reminds of itself every time, one has only to think about its secondary nature. At the same time, Aglaya asked Myshkin in advance not to say "school words", i.e. not to pour in vain worthless, torn off from reality, verbal water, and in general, to be a normal person. In addition, she suggested that if he dispersed and left the state of real consciousness, he could break a large Chinese vase. This assumption here serves as a bell to warn Myshkin in the event of a threat that he is losing control of the situation and is entering too deeply into the ideal.
Myshkin, on the other hand, needed this meeting with the "light" to realize his goal. As already mentioned, it was important for him to convince society of just the opposite of what they wanted to hear from him: he wanted to convince everyone to recognize Platonism, while everyone expected him to abandon these views.
As a result, of course, nothing good came from the meeting between Myshkin and the "light." The prince began to use the already familiar “opening his soul” and deliver a heartfelt speech in which he reveals almost the deepest pieces of his soul; society pulls him up and constantly calls to calm down, but all in vain: the prince goes into a rage, breaks a vase, but this warning does not work (no warnings work on him at all! - stubborn like a Swiss donkey). Moreover, he makes a new move and reminds one gentleman of his good deed. He needs this in order to show the ability of all of them to regret and force them to agree with this, accept it as a voiced and therefore logically conditioned (predicative) fact. The prince, as it were, from plowing open his soul, as if it had not justified hopes, moved on to trying to open the souls of others, but this trick also fails, and society is even more persistent than before (when it concerned only Myshkin), refuses to accept such experiments. As a result, our hero finds himself in a situation of profound wrongness, error, which is emphasized by an epileptic attack.
Thus, the prince wanted society to recognize that it does not exist in itself and has value not in itself, but in something else, to which it should strive. However, he did not succeed: according to Dostoevsky, society, and indeed all reality, exists not for something, but for itself.
51) Prince Lev Nikolaevich wanted to squeeze life into logical schemes, he did not succeed; further, he wanted to prove that society must go towards some predetermined goal (idea), which constitutes its own essence, and thereby realize self-knowledge (self-disclosure) - also failed. Finally, he faced the question: are there any ways of knowing being through logical formulas?
More precisely, of course, Dostoevsky asks these questions and sends Aglaya to N.F. Dialectics itself can do nothing, for its action it needs a subject, so she went for the prince and together they set off to cognize being (ch. 8, part IV).
Aglaya was very determined: the letters received from N.F., in which she admired her, created the impression of the weakness of being and the strength of dialectics. Some incredible greatness of Aglaya followed from these letters (not in a social sense, but in the sense that she is likened to a certain diamond, to which everyone bows and before which everyone walks on tiptoe: “you are perfection for me!”). At the same time, N.F. wrote “I almost do not exist anymore” (ch. 10, IV). Indeed, since the main character did not get a reliable cognition of being (there were only some glimpses of this, no more), then there was a threat of his complete rejection of any cognition, and being without cognition, without paying attention to it, ceases to be itself and becomes what is not.
So, Aglaya decided to hurriedly, so to speak, purely logically carry out the act of cognition and came to her object (N.F.) like a sort of princess, began to command and try in every possible way to belittle the one for which she herself exists. But it was not there: N.F. as a true outer existential center, she showed herself with might and main, did not allow herself to be crushed and discovered in herself an immense strength that grew as the pressure on her increased Aglaya. Being has shown itself: it is defenseless without our attention to it, but the more persistently we try to “bite” it and somehow subdue it, crush it under the structure of our consciousness, under our desires, etc., the more durable and inaccessible for “biting” it turns out.
As a result, the end is known: Aglaya, who demanded cognition through logic, lost (fainted) to Nastasya Filippovna, who assumed that cognition is a direct act of expressing feelings, giving itself away in action. Myshkin quite instinctively rushed to N.F. and cried out: “because ... she is so unhappy!”. Thus, he expressed what she needed, but what was impossible for Aglaya. Myshkin voted for direct cognition, he left the ideal world and plunged into reality. How long?
52) The prince, having gone through a difficult path of doubts and throwing, again came to a direct perception of life as it is. Okay, but what's next? After all, it is not enough to reach this level, it is not enough to understand such a need, it is also important to act accordingly, i.e. simply, almost every second, to prove their involvement in life with their deeds and actions. What does our hero show? He shows his complete weakness.
Indeed, after he unexpectedly chose N.F., preparations began for the wedding. He, according to the logic of events, should have turned into a real bunch of activity, running around, fussing, negotiating with everyone and settling everything. But no, he is strangely naive and entrusts the conduct of business to one, another, third ... At the same time, “if he ordered as soon as possible, transferring troubles to others, it was only in order not to think about it himself and even, perhaps, quickly forget about it” (Chapter 9, Part IV).
Well, tell me, please, who needs a sort of groom? As a result, already in a wedding dress in front of the church, N.F. she prayed to Rogozhin to take her away and not let the impossible happen. After all, it was not Myshkin's inactive contemplation that she needed, but lively activity. And when she saw that her fiancé did not have one, she realized that she had been deceived. All his activity, which seemed to manifest itself periodically, starting from the moment he showed to the whole society, and at the same time to its existential center - N.F. - that he is able to act when he protected Varya Ivolgina from her brother Ganya, all that activity of his, and subsequently sometimes bursting out, turned out to be some kind of fake, unstable, like that mirage that appears due to some deceptive coincidence, and which quite far from the real subject.
In general, N.F. ran away to Rogozhin, and Myshkin was left alone. At first, he refused Aglaya when he chose N.F., and then N.F. herself. left him. This "philosopher" squandered his happiness while hovering in the realm of dreams.
53) What happened to Aglaya and N.F. after they were left without their prince-subject?
Aglaya, while she had a connection with the prince, was connected through him with the existential pole of reality - with N.F. After all the breaks, she lost her existential, living content, but did not disappear, and with a Pole she fled from home abroad: read, living dialectics, after losing touch with real life, turned into formalism, formal logic.
N.F. she came to Rogozhin's house, and she came not to leave, as she had done before, but to stay. Being lost its subject and, next to only one uncontrollable stream of sensations (Rogozhin), it ceased to be the one who is comprehended (after all, Rogozhin, we recall, is not capable of thinking or knowing). As a result, being ceased to differ from being, meaningless sensations annihilated with meaningfulness. Moreover, in metaphysical terms, this happened quite naturally: Parfyon stabbed N.F. almost without blood (which additionally proves the non-material nature of N.F. - after all, being is a reality of non-materiality), after which he himself calmed down, ceased to exist. The being and the being of the being designate themselves only in opposition to each other. In the absence of one of these sides, the other, having lost its antithesis, disappears from our field of vision. And when Myshkin got to Rogozhin’s house and discovered the dead N.F., who had passed into the category of objectivity (“the tip of a bare leg ... seemed to be carved out of marble and was terribly motionless”), he finally realized the complete collapse of his project, which had once, just recently, seemed so wonderful and beautiful. Now this dead beauty of his formula has passed into the beauty of “marble”, devoid of life.
Myshkin without everything: without an existential target center, without the ability to think clearly and dialectically - who is he? Who is he who "managed" after mediocre ignoring the mass of clues (both by Holbein's painting, and by Pushkin's poem, etc.) to enter his life's dead end? Idiot! An idiot not in the sense of mental inferiority, but in the sense of the desire to replace life itself as it is in itself with ideas about it. Such mistakes do not go unnoticed.
54) Well, we have reached the final and now, seeing the whole scheme of constructing the narrative, knowing and understanding the philosophical aspects of certain actions, we will try to analyze the entire work of Fyodor Mikhailovich as a whole. The previous work carried out makes it possible to ensure that the global analysis will not be empty fantasies and snatching of scattered quotations, but will be such a reconstruction of the original idea that is conditioned by the entire structure of the novel. In part, we have already carried out such a reconstruction above, but now we need to bring everything into a single whole.
In general, the following picture emerges. Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin decided to improve the world. Noble thought! But it's all about how he did it. And he began to realize his idea through an absurd thing: through such a movement of the soul, which, being expressed in pity, in fact, means the cognition of this World. A staunch follower of Platonism (or, perhaps, some neoplatonic derivatives), he rested on the belief that knowledge is equivalent to creating the necessary (and perhaps even sufficient) conditions in order to make real improvements. In any case, the implementation of real changes, according to Myshkin, should be carried out according to the plan. Moreover, this plan is created exclusively in one way of thinking and no connection with reality is required. It is only necessary to grasp a certain ideal matrix of being, in which absolutely all the strokes of development are laid. Man is assigned the role of only the correct, accurate following of these supreme prescriptions. We know that Myshkin's project failed. No matter how hard he tried to approach its implementation from one side, and from the other, and from the third, each time changing the method of discursive cognition, nothing worked out for him. And even armed with dialectics, this powerful tool in capable hands, in isolation from rough reality, he could not cognize that which requires cognition - being.
But could the project come true? Yes, of course, he could not, and this is Dostoevsky's important idea: reality is transformed not through empty cognition (for the sake of cognition), and not through the introduction of beautifully dead schemes, but through living doing.
However, even the hero did not succeed in cognition, and not because of the lack of any abilities (he was all right in this respect), but because cognition, according to Dostoevsky, is not so much the calculation of mental schemes as parts of the Platonic matrix how much implantation of oneself into the life flow of events with subsequent awareness of the degree of this implantation. Indeed, as soon as Myshkin had glimpses of doing - either in the form of intercession, or in the form of serving someone (Aglaya and Gana as a messenger) - every time he towered in the eyes of the public. But in exactly the same way, every time his speculations turned against him, they threw him into the void of nothingness (epilepsy attacks). Fedor Mikhailovich, as it were, says: life is to really live it, absorbing all the juices of the World, giving yourself to it for real, without fantasy embellishment (as, for example, Kolya Ivolgin and Vera Lebedeva do). Life denies empty, worthless cleverness, but, on the contrary, involves active participation in all ongoing processes. At the same time, doing is not at all opposed to thinking, which is based on real facts. On the contrary, such an activity of consciousness is absolutely necessary, because the loss of the ability to think deprives a person of the opportunity to consciously relate to himself and to those around him. Without full-fledged, dialectical thinking (within the framework of the novel - without Aglaya), strictly speaking, a person is likened to an ordinary natural element (Rogozhin) and ceases to be the one who can carry out transformations. But you should think carefully, not blindly trusting your mind, systematically checking your ideas with practice.
55) But what about the social aspect of The Idiot? After all, this topic constantly sounds in it from one angle of view, then from another. Let's try to focus our attention on what, in our opinion, everything comes down to and what is the social pathos of the work.
We found out that Dostoevsky opposed the absolutization of abstract thoughts. This means that he opposed the fact that liberal ideas that came from the West (fantasied, untested on our Russian soil) were directly applied in Russia. Let us recall, for example, the speech of Yevgeny Pavlovich Radomsky that liberalism does not reject the Russian order, but rejects Russia itself (Chapter 1, Part III). An idea that has been proven and successfully works in the West (from the point of view of the structure of the novel, it successfully works in the mind) requires special verification in Russia (in reality). By the way, Myshkin supported this idea. Apparently, by doing this, Dostoevsky wanted to strengthen the sounding theme and paint it in various colors. In this case, it is important that, again, it is not liberalism itself (the idea of ​​liberalism, the idea in general) that is rejected, but the way it is being introduced into Russia: without respect and regard for its customs, without connection with life itself, as it is. This expresses the dislike of liberals to Russia. After all, the object of love is respected, appreciated. The lover seeks to bring benefit to the one he loves, and any hint of harm is immediately a signal to prevent the possibility of this harm. If there is no love, then there is no worries about possible failures, and ultimately, there is no responsibility in making decisions. In the eyes of such figures, society turns into an experimental mass, on which it is possible and even necessary to carry out experiments, and any, since the degree of truth of all these experiments is in the plane of the opinions of the experimenters themselves. It turns out - what they think, then they must fulfill the "masses" (this is exactly how Ippolit behaved - this complete liberal, suffering from megalomania and being right).
Speaking rudely, but visibly, Fyodor Mikhailovich opposed the absolutization of knowledge as such and convinced the need to listen to the nature of nature, to the beating of life.
Apparently, this was important to him for the following reason. After the peasant reform of 1861, a layer of people began to actively arise, calling themselves intellectuals, the noticeable rudiments of which we can already see in Turgenev's Bazarov. These intellectuals extolled specific knowledge, were Western-oriented (in the sense that they actively drew their ideas from there for the social reorganization of Russia) and were ready to introduce even the most misanthropic experiments on society (remember, Ippolit in Chapter 7, Part III “proved ”, which seems to have the right to kill), because they considered themselves “wise men”. And it is precisely against such intellectuals - "wise men", apparently, that the whole quintessence of Dostoevsky's aspirations was directed. It was the thought that was thrashing in his subconscious and that he was trying to bring out through the novel The Idiot. This explicated idea resulted in his next program work "Demons", where he already in a completely explicit form categorically opposes the "socialist" nihilists.
Dostoevsky was a prophet, but they don't listen to prophets in their own country. Almost half a century before the Bolshevik coup, he was able to see the impending tragedy, because he saw: in Russian society, a clan of experimenters-Hippolites (and others like them) is maturing, who are striving for power and who will stop at nothing for this. They exalt their ideas to the skies, put themselves in the place of the Absolute, put their experiments above human destinies and take upon themselves the right to destroy all those who disagree at their first wish. The Bolsheviks practically proved that the brilliant writer was not mistaken, they even exceeded all possible expectations and perpetrated such a massacre in the country, in comparison with which all "great" French revolutions seem harmless entertainment.
Of course, the communists saw that Dostoevsky was their serious enemy, the seriousness of which was due to the fact that he raised all their ins and outs for everyone to see, betrayed the true secrets of their souls and the real motives for their actions. But Fyodor Mikhailovich is a genius, the communists could not do anything about this.
By the way, after the communists completely cooled down and decomposed, they were replaced by the so-called. "democrats", who also called themselves intellectuals and therefore, in their deepest foundations, did not differ from the former communists. Their common similarity was in allowing themselves to experiment on society. Only the experiments of some life-deniers took place in one direction, and others in another, but they were all equally far from their people and all their actions were guided only by a passion for power, for the realization of their ambitions at any cost. As a result, the activities of these new democrats-intellectuals brought incalculable suffering to the Russians.
Dostoevsky was right. What Russia needs is not the implementation of ideas that already exist somewhere on the social structure of life. Accordingly, the clan of people who direct their efforts in this direction, in other words, the clan of Russophobes (which, of course, include the communists who systematically destroyed Russian identity) is extremely dangerous for Russia. And only when it is freed from the ideological power of such people, when the desire to “experiment” on people goes into the irretrievable past, only then will it be able to truly take shape as a global world reality.
56) Finally, as a code, I would like to say that, according to my feelings, the novel “The Idiot” by F.M. Dostoevsky is the most significant achievement in romance in the entire history of human civilization. Dostoevsky in romance is I.S. Bach in music: the further time passes, the more significant and weighty their figures become, although during their lifetime they were not very revered. This is what real geniuses differ from pseudo-geniuses, who are exalted during their lifetime, but who are forgotten as Chronos devours everything superfluous and superficial.
2004
BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Okeanskiy V.P. Locus of the Idiot: an introduction to the culture of the plain // Dostoevsky's novel "Idiot": Reflections, problems. Interuniversity Sat. scientific works. Ivanovo, Ivanovo state. un-t. 1999, pp. 179 - 200.
2. A. Manovtsev. Light and temptation // Ibid. pp. 250 - 290.
3. Ermilova G.G. Roman F.M. Dostoevsky "The Idiot" Poetics, context // Abstract of the thesis. dis. doc. philologist. Sciences. Ivanovo, 1999, 49 p.
4. Kasatkina T.A. Cry of a donkey // Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot": Reflections, problems. Interuniversity Sat. scientific works. Ivanovo, Ivanovo state. un-t. 1999, pp. 146 - 157.
5. Young S. Holbein's painting "Christ in the Grave" in the structure of the novel "The Idiot" // Roman F.M. Dostoevsky "Idiot": the current state of the study. Sat. works of the father and zarub. scientists, ed. T.A. Kasatkina - M .: Heritage, 2001. S. 28 - 41.
6. Kaufmann W. Existentialism from Dostojevsky to Sartre. Cleveland-N.Y. 1968.
7. Krinitsyn A.B. On the specifics of the visual world in Dostoevsky and the semantics of "visions" in the novel "The Idiot" // Roman F.M. Dostoevsky "Idiot": the current state of the study. Sat. works of the father and zarub. scientists, ed. T.A. Kasatkina - M .: Heritage, 2001. S. 170 - 205.
8. Chernyakov A.G. Ontology of time. Being and time in the philosophy of Aristotle, Husserl and Heidegger. - St. Petersburg: Higher Religious and Philosophical School, 2001. - 460 p.
9. Laut R. Dostoevsky's philosophy in a systematic presentation / Pod. ed. A.V. Gulygi; per. with him. I.S. Andreeva. - M.: Respublika, 1996. - 447 p.
10. Volkova E.I. "Kind" cruelty of the Idiot: Dostoevsky and Steinbeck in the spiritual tradition // Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot": Reflections, problems. Interuniversity Sat. scientific works. Ivanovo, Ivanovo state. un-t. 1999, pp. 136 - 145.

All the best to you.

Thank you for answering.
Go to MY page. I decided to publish some of my articles HERE. While I TAKE overclocking.
One of them is about Okudzhava. His novel Appointment with Bonaparte. When I wrote it, I did not clearly formulate what began to take shape now - especially after your works on Dostoevsky.
Your article about Bulgakov makes you think. It is initially even SHOCKING: Woland KILLED the Master, brought him out of the state of creativity (I can conceptually “wander” for the time being, the article is not read with a candelabra, I’m still thinking ...)? But then you will realize the validity of your observations. And you think...
I have thought a lot about M. and M. before. The article disappeared at one time.
The mystic has its place.
Is Bortko really only MONEY? I think he succeeds in the social layer. And he does NOT hear the spiritual and mystical. And it is taken ... It's a pity.

The novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "The Idiot" is today one of the most popular and sought-after works of Russian literature. For many years, various interpretations of this great creation have been created and continue to be created: film adaptations, opera and ballet readings, theatrical performances. The novel is popular all over the world.

Work on the novel began in April 1867 and lasted almost a year and a half. The creative impulse for the author was the case of the Umecki family, where parents were accused of child abuse.

1867 is a difficult time for the writer and his family. Dostoevsky was hiding from creditors, which forced him to go abroad. Another sad event was the death of a three-month-old daughter. Fedor Mikhailovich and his wife experienced this tragedy very hard, but the agreement with the Russky Vestnik magazine did not allow the creator to give in to grief. Work on the novel completely absorbed the author. While in Florence, in January 1869, Dostoevsky completed his work, dedicating it to his niece S. A. Ivanova.

Genre, direction

In the second half of the 19th century, writers paid special attention to the genre of the novel. There were various subgenres associated with the direction, style, structure. The Idiot by Dostoyevsky is one of the best examples of a philosophical novel. This type of prose arose as early as the Enlightenment in Western European literature. What distinguishes him is his emphasis on the thoughts of the characters, the development of their ideas and concepts.

Dostoevsky was also interested in the study of the inner world of characters, which gives reason to attribute The Idiot to such a type of novel as a psychological one.

essence

Prince Myshkin comes from Switzerland to Petersburg. With a small bundle of things in his hands, dressed not for the weather, he goes to the Yepanchins' house, where he meets the general's daughters and secretary Ganya. From him, Myshkin sees a portrait of Nastasya Filippovna, and later learns some details of her life.

The young prince stops at the Ivolgins, where he soon meets Nastasya herself. The girl's patron asks her to marry Ganya and gives her a dowry of 70 thousand, which attracts a potential groom. But under Prince Myshkin, a bargaining scene takes place, where Rogozhin, another contender for the hand and heart of the beauty, participates. The final price is one hundred thousand.

Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin is deeply touched by the beauty of Nastasya Filippovna, he comes to her that evening. He meets many guests there: General Yepanchin, Ferdyshchenko, Totsky, Ganya - and closer to the night Rogozhin himself appears with a bundle of newspapers, in which the promised hundred thousand. The heroine throws money into the fire and leaves with her chosen one.

Six months later, the prince decides to visit Rogozhin at his house on Gorokhovaya Street. Parfion and Lev Nikolaevich exchange crosses - now, with the blessing of mother Rogozhin, they are brothers.

Three days after this meeting, the prince goes to Pavlovsk to visit Lebedev at his dacha. There, after one of the evenings, Myshkin and Aglaya Yepanchina agree to meet. After the meeting, the prince realizes that he will fall in love with this girl, and a few days later Lev Nikolayevich is proclaimed her fiancé. Nastasya Filippovna writes a letter to Aglaya, where she convinces her to marry Myshkin. Soon after this, a meeting of rivals takes place, after which the engagement of the prince and Aglaya is terminated. Now society is in anticipation of another wedding: Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna.

On the day of the celebration, the bride runs away with Rogozhin. The next day, the prince goes in search of Nastasya Filippovna, but none of his acquaintances knows anything. Finally Myshkin meets Rogozhin, who brings him to his house. Here, under a white sheet, lies the corpse of Nastasya Filippovna.

As a result, from all the shocks received, the main character goes crazy.

Main characters and their characteristics

1. Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin. In the drafts, the writer calls the protagonist Prince Christ. He is the central character and is opposed to all other heroes of the work. Myshkin interacts with almost all participants in the action. One of its main functions in the novel is to reveal the inner world of the characters. It is not difficult for him to call the interlocutor to a frank conversation, to find out his innermost thoughts. For many, communication with him is like confession.
2. Myshkin's antipodes are Ganya Ivolgin and Parfyon Rogozhin. The first of them is a weak-willed, feminine, seduced by money young man who wants to break into people at any cost, but still feel shame for it. He dreams of status and respect, but is forced to endure only humiliation and failure. The rich merchant Rogozhin is obsessed with only one passion - to own Nastasya Filippovna. He is stubborn and ready to do anything to achieve his goal. No other outcome will suit him, but life is in fear and doubt, and whether she loves him, whether she will run away, is not for Rogozhin. Because their relationship ends in tragedy.
3. Nastasya Filippovna. The fatal beauty, whose true nature was guessed only by Prince Myshkin. She can be considered a victim, she can be a demon, but what attracts her most is what makes her related to Cleopatra herself. And it's not just stunning beauty. There is a case when the Egyptian ruler dissolved a huge pearl. A reminiscence of this act in the novel is the episode where Nastasya Filippovna throws one hundred thousand rubles into the fireplace. The prototype of the heroine is Apollinaria Suslova, Dostoevsky's lover. She feels contempt for money, because they bought her shame. The poor girl was seduced by a rich gentleman, but he became weary of his sin, so he tried to make a decent woman out of a kept woman by buying her a groom - Ganin.
4. The image of Nastasya Barashkova sets off Aglaya Yepanchina, antipode and rival. This girl is different from her sisters and mother. In Myshkin, she sees much more than an eccentric fool, and not all of her relatives can share her views. Aglaya was waiting for a man who could lead her out of her ossified, decaying environment. At first, she represented the prince as such a savior, then a certain Pole-revolutionary.

There are more interesting characters in the book, but we do not want to drag out the article too much, so if you need a character description that is not here, write about it in the comments. And she will appear.

Topics and issues

1. The theme of the novel is very diverse. One of the main issues highlighted in the text is greed. The thirst for prestige, status, wealth makes people commit vile deeds, slander each other, betray themselves. It is impossible to succeed in the society described by Dostoevsky without having patrons, a noble name and money. In tandem with self-interest there is vanity, especially inherent in General Yepanchin, Ghana, Totsky.
2. Since The Idiot is a philosophical novel, it develops a great wealth of themes, an important one being religion. The author refers to the topic of Christianity repeatedly, the main character involved in this topic is Prince Myshkin. His biography includes some biblical allusions to the life of Christ, and he is given the function of "savior" in the novel. Mercy, compassion for one's neighbor, the ability to forgive - this is learned from Myshkin and other heroes: Varya, Aglaya, Elizaveta Prokofievna.
3. Love presented in the text in all its possible manifestations. Christian love, helping one's neighbor, family, friendship, romantic, passionate. In Dostoevsky's later diary entries, the main idea is revealed - to show three varieties of this feeling: Ganya - vain love, Rogozhin - passion, and the prince - Christian love.

Here, as well as with the heroes, it is possible to analyze the themes and problems for a long time. If something specific is still missing for you, please write about it in the comments.

the main idea

The main idea of ​​Dostoevsky is to show the decomposition of Russian society in the layers of the intelligentsia. In these circles, there is spiritual decline, philistinism, adultery, and double life is practically the norm. Dostoevsky sought to create a "beautiful person" who could show that kindness, justice and sincere love are still alive in this world. Prince Myshkin is endowed with such a mission. The tragedy of the novel lies in the fact that a person who seeks to see only love and kindness in the modern world dies in it, being unadapted to life.

The meaning laid down by Dostoevsky is that people still need such righteous people who help them look themselves in the face. In a conversation with Myshkin, the heroes get to know their soul and learn to open it to others. In a world of falsehood and hypocrisy, this is very necessary. Of course, it is very difficult for the righteous themselves to get used to society, but their sacrifice is not in vain. They understand and feel that at least one corrected fate, at least one caring heart, awakened from indifference, is already a great victory.

What does it teach?

The novel "The Idiot" teaches to believe in people, in no case to condemn them. The text contains examples of how society can be instructed without placing oneself above it and without resorting to direct moralizing.

Dostoevsky's novel teaches to love, first of all, for salvation, always to help people. The author warns that about low and rude deeds committed in haste, after which one will have to regret, but repentance may come too late, when nothing can be corrected.

Criticism

Some contemporaries called the novel "The Idiot" fantastic, which caused the writer's indignation, since he considered it the most realistic work. Among researchers over the years, from the moment the book was created to the present day, various definitions of this work have arisen and continue to arise. So, V. I. Ivanov and K. Mochulsky call The Idiot a tragedy novel, Y. Ivask uses the term evangelical realism, and L. Grossman considers this work a novel-poem. Another Russian thinker and critic M. Bakhtin studied the phenomenon of polyphonism in Dostoevsky's work, he also considered The Idiot a polyphonic novel, where several ideas develop in parallel and several voices of heroes sound.

It is noteworthy that Dostoevsky's novel is of interest not only to Russian researchers, but also to foreign ones. The writer's work is especially popular in Japan. For example, critic T. Kinoshita notes the great influence of Dostoevsky's prose on Japanese literature. The writer drew attention to the inner world of a person, and Japanese authors willingly followed his example. For example, the legendary writer Kobo Abe called Fyodor Mikhailovich his favorite writer.

Interesting? Save it on your wall!

End of 1867. Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin arrives in St. Petersburg from Switzerland. He is twenty-six years old, he is the last of a noble noble family, orphaned early, fell ill with a serious nervous illness as a child and was placed by his guardian and benefactor Pavlishchev in a Swiss sanatorium. He lived there for four years and is now returning to Russia with vague but big plans to serve her. On the train, the prince meets Parfyon Rogozhin, the son of a wealthy merchant, who inherited a huge fortune after his death. From him, the prince for the first time hears the name of Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova, the mistress of a certain wealthy aristocrat Totsky, whom Rogozhin is passionately passionate about.

Upon arrival, the prince with his modest bundle goes to the house of General Yepanchin, whose wife, Elizabeth Prokofievna, is a distant relative. There are three daughters in the Yepanchin family - the eldest Alexandra, the middle Adelaide and the youngest, the common favorite and beautiful Aglaya. The prince amazes everyone with his spontaneity, gullibility, frankness and naivete, so extraordinary that at first he is received very wary, but with increasing curiosity and sympathy. It turns out that the prince, who seemed to be a simpleton, and to some people a cunning one, is very intelligent, and in some things he is really deep, for example, when he talks about the death penalty he saw abroad. Here the prince also meets the extremely proud secretary of the general Ganya Ivolgin, in whom he sees a portrait of Nastasya Filippovna. Her face of dazzling beauty, proud, full of contempt and hidden suffering, strikes him to the core.

The prince also learns some details: the seducer of Nastasya Filippovna Totsky, trying to get rid of her and hatching plans to marry one of the daughters of the Yepanchins, woo her to Ganya Ivolgin, giving seventy-five thousand as a dowry. Ganya is beckoned by money. With their help, he dreams of breaking out into the people and in the future significantly increasing his capital, but at the same time he is haunted by the humiliation of the situation. He would prefer marriage to Aglaya Yepanchina, with whom, perhaps, he is even a little in love (although here, too, the possibility of enrichment awaits him). He expects a decisive word from her, making his further actions dependent on this. The prince becomes an involuntary mediator between Aglaya, who unexpectedly makes him her confidant, and Ganya, causing irritation and anger in him.

Meanwhile, the prince is offered to settle not just anywhere, but in the Ivolgins' apartment. The prince does not have time to take the room provided to him and get acquainted with all the inhabitants of the apartment, starting with Ganya’s relatives and ending with his sister’s fiancé, the young usurer Ptitsyn and Ferdyshchenko, the master of incomprehensible occupations, as two unexpected events occur. None other than Nastasya Filippovna suddenly appears in the house, who has come to invite Ganya and his relatives to her for the evening. She amuses herself by listening to the fantasies of General Ivolgin, which only inflame the atmosphere. Soon a noisy company appears with Rogozhin at the head, who lays out eighteen thousand in front of Nastasya Filippovna. Something like bargaining takes place, as if with her mockingly contemptuous participation: is it her, Nastasya Filippovna, for eighteen thousand? Rogozhin is not going to retreat: no, not eighteen - forty. No, not forty - a hundred thousand! ..

For Ganya's sister and mother, what is happening is unbearably insulting: Nastasya Filippovna is a corrupt woman who should not be allowed into a decent house. For Ghani, she is the hope for enrichment. A scandal breaks out: Ganya's indignant sister Varvara Ardalionovna spits in his face, he is going to hit her, but the prince unexpectedly stands up for her and receives a slap from the enraged Ganya. "Oh, how you will be ashamed of your act!" - in this phrase, the whole of Prince Myshkin, all his incomparable meekness. Even at this moment he sympathizes with another, even the offender. His next word, addressed to Nastasya Filippovna: “Are you the way you now seemed to be,” will become the key to the soul of a proud woman, deeply suffering from her shame and falling in love with the prince for recognizing her purity.

Conquered by the beauty of Nastasya Filippovna, the prince comes to her in the evening. A motley society gathered here, starting with General Yepanchin, who was also passionate about the heroine, to the jester Ferdyshchenko. To the sudden question of Nastasya Filippovna, whether she should marry Ganya, he answers in the negative and thereby destroys the plans of Totsky, who is present here. At half past eleven the bell rings and the old company appears, headed by Rogozhin, who lays out a hundred thousand wrapped in newspaper in front of his chosen one.

And again, the prince is in the center, who is painfully hurt by what is happening, he confesses his love for Nastasya Filippovna and expresses his readiness to take her, “honest”, and not “Rogozhin”, as his wife. Immediately, it suddenly turns out that the prince received a rather solid inheritance from the deceased aunt. However, the decision was made - Nastasya Filippovna rides with Rogozhin, and throws the fatal bundle with a hundred thousand into a burning fireplace and invites Ghana to get them out of there. Ganya is holding back with all his strength so as not to rush after the flashed money, he wants to leave, but falls unconscious. Nastasya Filippovna herself snatches out a packet with fireplace tongs and leaves the money to Ghana as a reward for his torment (later they will be proudly returned to them).

Six months pass. The prince, having traveled around Russia, in particular on inheritance matters, and simply out of interest in the country, comes from Moscow to St. Petersburg. During this time, according to rumors, Nastasya Filippovna fled several times, almost from the crown, from Rogozhin to the prince, stayed with him for some time, but then ran away from the prince.

At the station, the prince feels someone's fiery gaze on him, which torments him with a vague foreboding. The prince pays a visit to Rogozhin in his dirty green, gloomy, like a prison, house on Gorokhovaya Street, during their conversation, the prince is haunted by a garden knife lying on the table, he now and then picks it up, until Rogozhin finally, in irritation, takes it away he has it (later Nastasya Filippovna will be killed with this knife). In the house of Rogozhin, the prince sees on the wall a copy of the painting by Hans Holbein, which depicts the Savior, just taken down from the cross. Rogozhin says that he loves to look at her, the prince exclaims in amazement that "... from this picture, another may still lose faith," and Rogozhin unexpectedly confirms this. They exchange crosses, Parfyon leads the prince to his mother for a blessing, since they are now like brothers.

Returning to his hotel, the prince suddenly notices a familiar figure at the gate and rushes after her to the dark narrow stairs. Here he sees the same as at the station, the sparkling eyes of Rogozhin, a knife raised. At the same moment, an epileptic seizure occurs with the prince. Rogozhin runs away.

Three days after the seizure, the prince moves to Lebedev's dacha in Pavlovsk, where the Yepanchin family and, according to rumors, Nastasya Filippovna are also located. On the same evening, a large company of acquaintances gathers with him, including the Yepanchins, who decided to visit the sick prince. Kolya Ivolgin, Ganya's brother, teases Aglaya as a "poor knight", clearly alluding to her sympathy for the prince and arousing the painful interest of Aglaya's mother Elizaveta Prokofievna, so that her daughter is forced to explain that a person is depicted in poetry, capable of having an ideal and, having believed in him, to give his life for this ideal, and then with inspiration he reads Pushkin's poem itself.

A little later, a company of young people appears, led by a certain young man Burdovsky, allegedly "the son of Pavlishchev." They seem to be nihilists, but only, in the words of Lebedev, "they went further, sir, because they are primarily businesslike, sir." A libel is read from a newspaper about the prince, and then they demand from him that he, as a noble and honest man, reward the son of his benefactor. However, Ganya Ivolgin, who was instructed by the prince to deal with this matter, proves that Burdovsky is not Pavlishchev's son at all. The company retreats in embarrassment, only one of them remains in the center of attention - the consumptive Ippolit Terentyev, who, asserting himself, begins to "orate". He wants to be pitied and praised, but he is ashamed of his openness, his inspiration is replaced by rage, especially against the prince. Myshkin, on the other hand, listens attentively to everyone, pities everyone, and feels guilty before everyone.

A few days later, the prince visits the Yepanchins, then the entire Yepanchin family, together with Prince Yevgeny Pavlovich Radomsky, who is caring for Aglaya, and Prince Sh., Adelaide's fiancé, go for a walk. At the station not far from them, another company appears, among which Nastasya Filippovna. She familiarly addresses Radomsky, informing him of the suicide of his uncle, who squandered a large state sum. Everyone is outraged by the provocation. The officer, a friend of Radomsky, indignantly remarks that “you just need a whip here, otherwise you won’t take anything with this creature!” The officer is about to hit Nastasya Filippovna, but Prince Myshkin holds him back.

At the celebration of the birthday of Prince Ippolit Terentyev, he reads “My Necessary Explanation” written by him - a confession of a young man who almost did not live, but changed his mind a lot, doomed by illness to an untimely death. After reading, he attempts suicide, but the primer is missing from the gun. The prince defends Ippolit, who is painfully afraid of seeming ridiculous, from attacks and ridicule.

In the morning, on a date in the park, Aglaya invites the prince to become her friend. The prince feels that he truly loves her. A little later, in the same park, the prince meets Nastasya Filippovna, who kneels before him and asks him if he is happy with Aglaya, and then disappears with Rogozhin. It is known that she writes letters to Aglaya, where she persuades her to marry the prince.

A week later, the prince was formally declared Aglaya's fiancé. High-ranking guests were invited to the Yepanchins for a kind of “bride-in-law” of the prince. Although Aglaya believes that the prince is incomparably higher than all of them, the hero, precisely because of her partiality and intolerance, is afraid to make a wrong gesture, is silent, but then becomes painfully inspired, talks a lot about Catholicism as anti-Christianity, declares his love to everyone, breaks a precious Chinese vase and falls in another fit, making a painful and awkward impression on those present.

Aglaya makes an appointment with Nastasya Filippovna in Pavlovsk, to which she comes with the prince. Apart from them, only Rogozhin is present. The “proud young lady” sternly and hostilely asks what right Nastasya Filippovna has to write letters to her and generally interfere in her and the prince’s personal life. Offended by the tone and attitude of her rival, Nastasya Filippovna, in a fit of revenge, calls on the prince to stay with her and drives Rogozhin away. The prince is torn between two women. He loves Aglaya, but he also loves Nastasya Filippovna - with love and pity. He calls her crazy, but is unable to leave her. The prince's condition is getting worse, he is more and more immersed in mental confusion.

The wedding of the prince and Nastasya Filippovna is planned. This event is overgrown with all sorts of rumors, but Nastasya Filippovna seems to be joyfully preparing for it, writing out outfits and being either in inspiration or in unreasonable sadness. On the day of the wedding, on the way to the church, she suddenly rushes to Rogozhin, who is standing in the crowd, who picks her up in his arms, gets into the carriage and takes her away.

The next morning after her escape, the prince arrives in Petersburg and immediately goes to Rogozhin. Togo is not at home, but it seems to the prince that Rogozhin seems to be looking at him from behind the curtains. The prince walks around Nastasya Filippovna's acquaintances, trying to find out something about her, returns several times to Rogozhin's house, but to no avail: that is not there, no one knows anything. All day the prince wanders around the sultry city, believing that Parfyon will certainly appear. And so it happens: Rogozhin meets him on the street and asks him in a whisper to follow him. In the house, he leads the prince to a room where, in an alcove on a bed under a white sheet, furnished with bottles of Zhdanov's liquid so that the smell of decay is not felt, the dead Nastasya Filippovna lies.

The prince and Rogozhin spend a sleepless night together over the corpse, and when the door is opened the next day in the presence of the police, they find Rogozhin rushing about in delirium and the prince calming him, who no longer understands anything and does not recognize anyone. Events completely destroy Myshkin's psyche and finally turn him into an idiot.

“For a long time I have been tormented by one thought that is too difficult. This idea is to portray a positively beautiful person. In my opinion, nothing can be more difficult than this ...”, Dostoevsky wrote to A. Maikov. The type of such a character was embodied in Prince Myshkin, the protagonist of the novel The Idiot, the greatest work of world literature and - generally recognized - the most mysterious novel by Dostoevsky. Who is he, Prince Myshkin? A man who imagines himself to be Christ, intending to heal the souls of people with his boundless kindness? Or an idiot who does not realize that such a mission is impossible in our world? The entangled relationship of the prince with those around him, the heavy internal bifurcation, the painful and different love for two women close to his heart, intensified by bright passions, painful experiences and the unusually complex characters of both heroines, become the main driving force of the plot and lead it to a fatal tragic finale...

Description added by user:

Artem Olegovich

"Idiot" - plot

Part one

26-year-old Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin returns from a sanatorium in Switzerland, where he spent several years. The prince was not completely cured of his mental illness, but appears before the reader as a sincere and innocent person, although he is well versed in relations between people. He goes to Russia to the only relatives left with him - the Yepanchin family. On the train, he meets a young merchant, Parfyon Rogozhin, and a retired official, Lebedev, to whom he ingenuously tells his story. In response, he learns the details of the life of Rogozhin, who is in love with the former kept woman of the wealthy nobleman Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky, Nastasya Filippovna. In the Epanchins' house, it turns out that Nastasya Filippovna is also known in this house. There is a plan to marry her off to the protégé of General Yepanchin, Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin, an ambitious but mediocre man. Prince Myshkin meets all the main characters of the story in the first part of the novel. These are the daughters of the Yepanchins Alexandra, Adelaide and Aglaya, on whom he makes a favorable impression, remaining the object of their slightly mocking attention. Further, this is General's Lizaveta Prokofievna Yepanchina, who is in constant agitation due to the fact that her husband is in some contact with Nastasya Filippovna, who has a reputation as a fallen one. Then, this is Ganya Ivolgin, who suffers greatly because of the upcoming role of Nastasya Filippovna's husband, and cannot decide to develop his still very weak relationship with Aglaya. Prince Myshkin rather ingenuously tells the general's wife and the Yepanchin sisters that he learned about Nastasya Filippovna from Rogozhin, and also amazes the public with his story about the death penalty he observed abroad. General Yepanchin offers the prince, for lack of a place to stay, to rent a room in Ivolgin's house. There, the prince meets the Gani family, and also for the first time meets Nastasya Filippovna, who unexpectedly arrives at this house. After an ugly scene with Ivolgin's alcoholic father, retired general Ardalion Alexandrovich, whom his son is infinitely ashamed of, Nastasya Filippovna and Rogozhin come to the Ivolgins' house for. He arrives with a noisy company that has gathered around him quite by accident, like around any person who knows how to overspend. As a result of the scandalous explanation, Rogozhin swears to Nastasya Filippovna that he will offer her one hundred thousand rubles in cash in the evening.

That evening, Myshkin, anticipating something bad, really wants to get into the house of Nastasya Filippovna, and at first he hopes for the elder Ivolgin, who promises to take Myshkin to this house, but, in fact, does not know at all where she lives. The desperate prince does not know what to do, but he is unexpectedly helped by Ganya Ivolgin's younger teenage brother, Kolya, who shows him the way to Nastasya Filippovna's house. That evening she has a name day, there are few invited guests. Allegedly, everything should be decided today and Nastasya Filippovna should agree to marry Ganya Ivolgin. The unexpected appearance of the prince surprises everyone. One of the guests, Ferdyshchenko, positively a type of petty scoundrel, offers to play a strange game for entertainment - each tells about his lowest deed. The stories of Ferdyshchenko and Totsky follow. In the form of such a story, Nastasya Filippovna refuses Ghana to marry him. Rogozhin suddenly bursts into the rooms with a company that brought the promised hundred thousand. He trades Nastasya Filippovna, offering her money in exchange for agreeing to become "his".

The prince gives reason for amazement, seriously proposing Nastasya Filippovna to marry him, while she, in desperation, plays with this proposal and almost agrees. It immediately turns out that the prince receives a large inheritance. Nastasya Filippovna offers Ganya Ivolgin to take a hundred thousand and throws them into the fire of the fireplace. “But only without gloves, with bare hands. Pull it out - yours, all a hundred thousand are yours! And I will admire your soul, how you climb into the fire for my money.

Lebedev, Ferdyshchenko and others like them are confused and beg Nastasya Filippovna to let them snatch this wad of money from the fire, but she is adamant and offers Ivolgin to do it. Ivolgin restrains himself and does not rush for money. Loses consciousness. Nastasya Filippovna takes out almost whole money with tongs, puts it on Ivolgin and leaves with Rogozhin. This ends the first part of the novel.

Part two

In the second part, the prince appears before us after six months, and now he does not seem to be a completely naive person at all, while maintaining all his simplicity in communication. All these six months he lives in Moscow. During this time, he managed to receive his inheritance, which is rumored to be almost colossal. It is also rumored that in Moscow the prince enters into close communication with Nastasya Filippovna, but she soon leaves him. At this time, Kolya Ivolgin, who began to be in a relationship with the Yepanchin sisters and even with the general herself, gives Aglaya a note from the prince, in which he asks her in confusing terms to remember him.

Meanwhile, summer is already coming, and the Yepanchins are leaving for their dacha in Pavlovsk. Shortly thereafter, Myshkin arrives in St. Petersburg and pays a visit to Lebedev, from whom, by the way, he learns about Pavlovsk and rents his dacha in the same place. Next, the prince goes to visit Rogozhin, with whom he has a difficult conversation, which ended in fraternization and the exchange of pectoral crosses. At the same time, it becomes obvious that Rogozhin is on the verge of being ready to kill the prince or Nastasya Filippovna, and even bought a knife while thinking about it. Also in Rogozhin's house, Myshkin notices a copy of the painting by Hans Holbein the Younger "Dead Christ", which becomes one of the most important artistic images in the novel, often commemorated even after.

Returning from Rogozhin and being in a darkened consciousness, and anticipating the time of an epileptic seizure, the prince notices that "eyes" are following him - and this, apparently, is Rogozhin. The image of Rogozhin's tracking "eyes" becomes one of the leitmotifs of the story. Myshkin, having reached the hotel where he was staying, runs into Rogozhin, who seems to be already bringing a knife over him, but at that moment an epileptic seizure occurs with the prince and this stops the crime.

Myshkin moves to Pavlovsk, where General Epanchin, having heard that he is unwell, immediately pays him a visit along with his daughters and Prince Shch., Adelaide's fiancé. Lebedev and Ivolgins are also present in the house and participate in the subsequent important scene. Later, General Yepanchin and Yevgeny Pavlovich Radomsky, Aglaya's alleged fiancé, who came up later, join them. At this time, Kolya recalls a certain joke about the "poor knight", and the incomprehensible Lizaveta Prokofievna forces Aglaya to read Pushkin's famous poem, which she does with great feeling, replacing, among other things, the initials written by the knight in the poem with the initials of Nastasya Filippovna.

Myshkin manifests himself in this whole scene as an amazingly kind and gentle person, which causes a somewhat sarcastic assessment from the Yepanchins. At the end of the scene, Hippolyte, who is sick with consumption, grabs all the attention, whose speech, addressed to all those present, is full of unexpected moral paradoxes.

On the same evening, leaving Myshkin, Yepanchina and Yevgeny Pavlovich Radomsky meet Nastasya Filippovna, who is passing in a carriage. On the move, she shouts out to Radomsky about some bills, thereby compromising him in front of the Yepanchins and the future bride.

On the third day, General Yepanchina pays an unexpected visit to the prince, although she has been angry with him all this time. In the course of their conversation, it turns out that Aglaya somehow entered into communication with Nastasya Filippovna through the mediation of Ganya Ivolgin and his sister, who is a member of the Yepanchins. The prince also lets slip that he received a note from Aglaya, in which she asks him not to show herself to her in the future. Surprised Lizaveta Prokofievna, realizing that the feelings that Aglaya has for the prince play a role here, immediately orders him to go with her to visit them "intentionally". This ends the second part of the novel.

Part Three

At the beginning of the third part, the anxieties of Lizaveta Prokofievna Yepanchina are described, who complains (to herself) about the prince that through his fault everything in their life “went upside down!”. He learns that her daughter Aglaya entered into correspondence with Nastasya Filippovna.

At a meeting with the Yepanchins, the prince speaks about himself, about his illness, that "you can't help laughing at me." Aglaya intercedes: “everything is here, everyone is not worth your little finger, neither your mind, nor your heart! You are more honest than everyone, nobler than everyone, better than everyone, kinder than everyone, smarter than everyone! Everyone is shocked. Aglaya continues: “I will never marry you! Know that for nothing and never! Know it!" The prince justifies himself that he did not even think about it: “I never wanted, and I never had it in my mind, I never want to, you yourself will see; rest assured!” he says. In response, Aglaya begins to laugh uncontrollably. Everyone laughs at the end.

Later, Myshkin, Evgeny Pavlovich and the Yepanchin family meet Nastasya Filippovna at the station. She loudly and defiantly informs Yevgeny Pavlovich that his uncle, Kapiton Alekseich Radomsky, shot himself because of the waste of state money. Lieutenant Molovtsov, a great friend of Yevgeny Pavlovich, who was right there, loudly calls her a creature. She hits him in the face with a cane. The officer rushes at her, but Myshkin intervenes. Rogozhin arrived in time to take Nastasya Filippovna away.

Aglaya writes a note to Myshkin, in which she makes an appointment on a park bench. Myshkin is excited. He cannot believe that he can be loved. "The possibility of love for him," for such a person as he ", he would consider a monstrous thing."

Then the prince has a birthday. Here he pronounces his famous phrase "Beauty will save the world!".

Part Four

At the beginning of this part, Dostoevsky writes about ordinary people. Ganya is an example. The news is now known in the Ivolgins' house that Aglaya is marrying the prince, and therefore a good company appears at the Yepanchins in the evening to get acquainted with the prince. Ganya and Varya are talking about the theft of money, which turned out to be their father's fault. About Aglaya, Varya says that she “will turn her back on the first groom, and would gladly run to some student to die of hunger, to the attic.”

Ganya then argues with his father, General Ivolgin, to the point that he shouts "damn this house" and leaves. Disputes continue, but now with Hippolytus, who, in anticipation of his own death, no longer knows any measures. He is called "the gossip and the boy". After that, Ganya and Varvara Ardalionovna receive a letter from Aglaya, in which she asks them both to come to the green bench known to Varya. This step is incomprehensible to the brother and sister, because this is already after the engagement with the prince.

After a heated clarification between Lebedev and the general, the next morning, General Ivolgin visits the prince and announces to him that he wants to "respect himself." When he leaves, Lebedev enters the prince and tells him that no one has stolen his money, which, of course, seems rather suspicious. This matter, although decided, still worries the prince.

The next scene is again the meeting of the prince with the general, in which the latter tells from the time of Napoleon in Moscow that he then served the great leader even as a chamber page. The whole story, of course, is again doubtful. Having left the prince with Kolya, having talked with him about his family and himself, and having read many quotations from Russian literature, he suffers apoplexy.

Then Dostoevsky succumbs to reflections on the entire life situation in Pavlovsk, which it is inappropriate to convey. Only the moment when Aglaya gives the prince a hedgehog as a "sign of her deepest respect" can be important. This expression of hers, however, is also in the conversation about the "poor knight." When he is with the Yepanchins, Aglaya immediately wants to know his opinion about the hedgehog, which is why the prince is somewhat embarrassed. The answer does not satisfy Aglaya, and for no reason at all she asks him: “Are you marrying me or not?” and "Are you asking for my hand or not?" The prince convinces that he asks and that he loves her very much. She also asks him a question about his financial condition, which others consider completely inappropriate. Then she laughs and runs away, sisters and parents after her. In her room, she cries and completely reconciles with her relatives and says that she does not love the prince at all and that she will “die with laughter” when she sees him again.

She asks for his forgiveness and makes him happy, to the point that he does not even listen to her words: “Forgive me for insisting on the absurdity, which, of course, cannot have the slightest consequences ...” The whole evening, the prince was cheerful and a lot and spoke animatedly, although he had a plan not to say too much, for, as he said just now to Prince Sch., “he must restrain himself and be silent, because he has no right to humiliate an idea by expressing it himself.”

In the park, the prince then meets Hippolyte, who, as usual, mocks the prince in a caustic and mocking tone and calls him a "naive child."

Preparing for the evening meeting, for the "high circle", Aglaya warns the prince about some inadequate trick, and the prince notices that all the Yepanchins are afraid for him, although Aglaya herself really wants to hide this, and they think that he, perhaps, " cut off" in society. The prince concludes that it is better if he does not come. But he immediately changes his mind again when Aglaya makes it clear that everything is ordered separately for him. Moreover, she does not allow him to talk about anything, such as that "beauty will save the world." To this, the prince replies that "now he will certainly break the vase." At night, he fantasizes and imagines how a seizure happens to him in just such a society.

Lebedev appears on the stage and admits "in a rush" that he has recently reported to Lizaveta Prokofievna about the content of Aglaya Ivanovna's letters. And now he assures the prince that he is again "all yours."

An evening in high society begins with pleasant conversations and nothing is to be expected. But suddenly the prince flares up too much and begins to speak. Adelaide's expression the next morning best explains the mental state of the prince: "He was choking from a beautiful heart." In everything, the prince exaggerates, curses Catholicism with a non-Christian faith, gets more and more excited and finally breaks the vase, as he himself prophesied. The last fact astonishes him the most, and after everyone forgives him for the accident, he feels great and continues to talk animatedly. Without even noticing it himself, he gets up during a speech and suddenly, as if according to prophecy, he has a seizure.

When the “old woman Belokonskaya” (as Lizaveta Prokofievna calls her) leaves, she expresses herself about the prince like this: “Well, he’s good and bad, but if you want to know my opinion, then he’s more bad. You can see for yourself what a man, a sick man! Aglaya then announces that she "never considered him her fiancé".

The Yepanchins, nevertheless, later inquire about the health of the prince. Through Vera Lebedeva, Aglaya tells the prince not to leave the court, the reason for which the prince, of course, does not understand. He comes to Prince Ippolit and announces to him that he spoke with Aglaya today in order to agree on a meeting with Nastasya Filipovna, which should take place on the same day with Darya Alekseevna. Consequently, the prince will realize, Aglaya wanted him to stay at home so that she could call for him. And so it turns out and the main faces of the novel meet.

Aglaya reveals to Nastasya Filipovna her opinion about her, that she is proud of herself "to the point of madness, which your letters to me also serve as proof of." Moreover, she says that she fell in love with the prince for his noble innocence and boundless credulity. Asking Nastasya Filipovna what right she has to interfere with his feelings for her and every minute declares to both her and the prince herself that she loves him, and receiving an unsatisfactory answer that “neither to him nor to you,” she angrily replies that she thinks that she wanted to do a great feat, persuading her to "follow him", but in fact with the sole purpose of satisfying her pride. And Nastasya Filipovna objects that she only came to this house because she was afraid of her and wanted to make sure who the prince loves more. Offering her to take it, she demands that she step away "this very minute." And suddenly Nastasya Fillipovna, like a madman, orders the prince to decide whether to go with her or with Aglaya. The prince does not understand anything and turns to Aglaya, pointing to Nastasya Filipovna: “Is this possible! After all, she is ... crazy! After that, Aglaya can no longer stand it and runs away, the prince follows her, but on the threshold Nastasya Filipovna wraps her arms around him and faints. He stays with her - this is a fatal decision.

Preparations for the wedding of the prince and Nastasya Filipovna begin. The Epachins leave Pavlovsk and a doctor arrives to examine Ippolit, as well as the prince. Yevgeny Pavlovich complains to the prince with the intention of "analyzing" everything that happened and the prince's motives for other actions and feelings. The result is a subtle and very excellent analysis: he convinces the prince that it was indecent to refuse Aglaya, who behaved much more noblely and more appropriately, although Nastasya Filipovna was worthy of compassion, but there was too much sympathy, because Aglaya needed support. The prince is now fully convinced that he is to blame. Yevgeny Pavlovich also adds that, perhaps, he did not even love any of them, that he only loved as an "abstract spirit."

General Ivolgin dies from a second apoplexy and the prince shows his sympathy. Lebedev begins to intrigue against the prince and admits this on the very day of the wedding. Hippolyte at this time often sends for the prince, which amuses him a lot. He even tells him that Rogozhin will now kill Aglaya because he took Nastasya Filipovna away from him.

The latter once becomes overly worried, imagining that Rogozhin is hiding in the garden and wants to "kill" her. The mood of the bride is constantly changing, now she is happy, now she is desperate.

Just before the wedding, when the prince is waiting in the church, she sees Rogozhin, shouts "Save me!" and leaves with him. Keller considers the prince's reaction to this "an unparalleled philosophy": "... in her condition ... it is completely in the order of things."

The prince leaves Pavlovsk, hires a room in St. Petersburg and is looking for Rogozhin. When he knocks at his own house, the maid tells him that he is not at home. And the janitor, on the contrary, replies that he is at home, but, having listened to the prince’s objection, based on the statement of the maid, he believes that “maybe he went out.” Then, however, they announce to him that the sir, after all, slept at home at night, but left for Pavlovsk. All this seems to the prince more and more improbable and suspicious. Returning to the hotel, Rogozhin suddenly touches his elbow in the crowd and tells him to follow him to his home. Nastasya Filipovna is at his house. Together they quietly go up to the apartment, because the janitor does not know that he has returned.

Nastasya Filipovna lies on the bed and sleeps in a "completely motionless sleep." Rogozhin killed her with a knife and covered her with a sheet. The prince begins to tremble and lies down together with Rogozhin. They talk for a long time about everything, meanwhile, about how Rogozhin planned everything so that no one would know that Nastasya Filipovna was sleeping with him.

Suddenly Rogozhin begins to shout, forgetting that he should speak in a whisper, and suddenly he is silent. The prince looks at him for a long time and even strokes him. When they are searched for, Rogozhin is found "in complete unconsciousness and fever", and the prince does not understand anything anymore and does not recognize anyone - he is an "idiot", as then in Switzerland.

Description

A novel in which the creative principles of Dostoevsky are embodied to the fullest extent, and the amazing mastery of the plot reaches a true flowering. The bright and almost painfully talented story of the unfortunate Prince Myshkin, the frantic Parfyon Rogozhin and the desperate Nastasya Filippovna, filmed and staged many times, still fascinates the reader ...

According to the publication: “Idiot. A novel in four parts by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. St. Petersburg. 1874", with corrections according to the journal "Russian Bulletin" of 1868, while maintaining the spelling of the publication. Edited by B. Tomashevsky and K. Halabaev.

26-year-old Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin (an idiot) returns from a sanatorium in Switzerland, where he spent several years recovering from epilepsy. The prince was not completely cured of his mental illness, but appears before the reader as a sincere and innocent person, although he is well versed in relations between people. He goes to Russia to the only relatives left with him - the Yepanchin family. On the train, he meets a young merchant, Parfyon Rogozhin, and a retired official, Lebedev, to whom he ingenuously tells his story. In response, he learns the details of the life of Rogozhin, who is in love with the former kept woman of the wealthy nobleman Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky, Nastasya Filippovna. In the Epanchins' house, it turns out that Nastasya Filippovna is also known in this house. There is a plan to marry her off to the protégé of General Yepanchin, Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin, an ambitious but mediocre man. Prince Myshkin meets all the main characters of the story in the first part of the novel. These are the daughters of the Yepanchins Alexandra, Adelaide and Aglaya, on whom he makes a favorable impression, remaining the object of their slightly mocking attention. Further, this is General's Lizaveta Prokofievna Yepanchina, who is in constant agitation due to the fact that her husband is in some contact with Nastasya Filippovna, who has a reputation as a fallen one. Then, this is Ganya Ivolgin, who suffers greatly because of the upcoming role of Nastasya Filippovna's husband, although he is ready for anything for the sake of money, and cannot decide to develop his still very weak relationship with Aglaya. Prince Myshkin rather ingenuously tells the general's wife and the Yepanchin sisters that he learned about Nastasya Filippovna from Rogozhin, and also amazes the audience with his narration about the memories and feelings of his acquaintance, who was sentenced to death, but was pardoned at the last moment. General Yepanchin offers the prince, for lack of a place to stay, to rent a room in Ivolgin's house. There, the prince meets the Gani family, and also for the first time meets Nastasya Filippovna, who unexpectedly arrives at this house. After an ugly scene with Ivolgin's alcoholic father, retired general Ardalion Alexandrovich, whom his son is infinitely ashamed of, Nastasya Filippovna and Rogozhin come to the Ivolgins' house for. He arrives with a noisy company that has gathered around him quite by accident, like around any person who knows how to overspend. As a result of a scandalous explanation, Rogozhin swears to Nastasya Filippovna that by the evening he will offer her one hundred thousand rubles in cash ...