Novel-Tragedy"

VICTOR TERRAS DOSTOEVSKlI'S THE IDIOT: A NOTE ON THE "NOVEL-TRAGEDY" The Idiot is, I believe, the least understood of Dostoevskii's novels. The early recognition of its mythic roots and symbolic meaning by Viacheslav Ivanov created a hermeneutic basis,l but raised as many questions as it answered. More recent critics have cast light on some of these questions. With their aid, I will make some observations regarding the structure of The Idiot.2 Mochul'skii developed the point that the sujet of The Idiot un- folds on two planes, the empirical and the metaphysical.3 A Freudian critic may see yet another plane of subconscious ten- sions and conflicts, to be gathered from a more or less submerged subtext.4 Another subtext may be perceived in terms of a pro- jection of the Apocalypse into the world of nineteenth-century Russia. As in other novels by Dostoevskii, the empirical plane is real- ized in terms of nineteenth-century novelistic technique. It is loosely organized, with many digressions. The metaphysical plane is readily reduced to a tragedy of severely logical structure. We have, on the novelistic level, a psychologically motivated ac- count of the passions and intrigues surrounding a beautiful woman desired by many men, whose own irrational and self-de- 1. Vyacheslav Ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life: A Study in D08toevsky (New York: Noonday Press, 1971), pp. 86-94. 2. I am indebted particularly to Elisabeth Dalton, Unconscious Structure in The Idiot: A Study in Literature and Psychoanalysis (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978); J. Michael Holquist, Dostoevsky and the Novel (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1977); Robin Feuer Miller, Dostoevsky and The Idiot: Author, Narrator, and Reader (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 1981); and Dennis Patrick Slattery, The Idiot, Dostoevsky's Fantastic Prince: A Phenomenological Approach (New York, Frankfurt and Berne: Peter Lang, 1983). 3. Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoyevsky: His Life and Work, tr. with an introd. by Michael A. Minihan (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 376-77. 4. Elizabeth Dalton's book, which follows this line, concentrates on Prince Myshkin rather than on Nastas'ia Filippovna, although the latter would seem more interesting from such a point of view. structive reactions are likewise made psychologically plausible. Prince Myshkin is, on the empirical plane, a very unusual type, but Dostoevskii has made an effort to make the presentation of this character conform to the standards of a realistic novel. On the metaphysical plane, The Idiot is a tragic allegory featuring the descent to earth of pure Beauty and pure Goodness, whose in- tersecting paths mark the course of the tragedy, whose third per- sonal is Rogozhin, the personification of earthly passion. It is, I believe, futile to integrate the novelistic elements with the tragic plot, or vice versa. As Julius Meier-Graefe observed as early as in 1926, the novelist's digressions and psychologizing appear banal in the face of an unfolding high tragedy.5 Similarly, the metaphysical symbolism of the tragedy will irritate a reader who judges The Idiot as a psychological novel. The Idiot can be read entirely as a socio-psychological study of emergent urban capitalist society. Many characters and devel- opments in the novel belong exclusively to that sphere and are quite superfluous as far as the tragic allegory is concerned. In fact, the Epanchins, Ivolgins, Ptitsyns, Radomskiis, Kellers, and Burdovskiis of the novel and the many episodes connected with them or their like divert attention from the tragic plot. Signifi- cantly, the tragedy is over with Rogozhin and Myshkin keeping vigil over the body of Nastas'ia Filippovna, while the novel con- tinues in the epilogue. This is significantly true of Aglaia, a ma- jor figure in the novel, but only an episode in the tragedy. The tragic features of The Idiot are at first sight less pronounced than the novelistic. Yet the tragedy is here more classically pure and compelling than in any of Dostoevskii's other works. In an earlier essay6 I have suggested that a basic theme of The Idiot is that of Tiutchev's lines: 5. Julius Meier-Graefe, Dostojewski der Dichter (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1926), p. 265. 6. Viktor Terras, "Dissonans v romane F. M. Dostoevskogo 'Idiot'," Transactions of the Association of Russian-American Scholars in the U.S.A., 19 (1981), 63-64. .

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