If you've been visiting here lately, you may remember that I had started reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot on my ipod. After what seems like weeks I have finally finished it, and what a remarkable book it turned out to be.The "idiot" of the title is Prince Myshkin. Severely epileptic as a child, he has been raised, and more or less cured, in Switzerland, by a wise and humane doctor. The severity of his illness was such that he missed out on most of his early education, though he has made up some of the lack by a great deal of reading. This perhaps accounts for the unusual way in which he views the world. For Myshkin is that strange and exceptional character, a truly good man. To those who meet him for the first time he appears childlike, almost simple-minded, but in fact he is intelligent, thoughtful, honest, loving, and constantly engaged in a struggle to do the right thing in a corrupt and materialistic world. When the novel begins he is just returning to Russia, curious to see again the country of his birth. Although he is initially scorned by many of the people he meets, this soon changes when he is discovered to be the heir to a sizeable inheritance, though of course he becomes a prey to fortune hunters. However those who take the trouble to get to know him quickly come to love him, though some find his naivety sometimes embarrassing or irritating. His final downfall -- because ultimately this book is a tragedy -- is the love of two women. Nastasia Filipovna, who he encounters early in the novel, is a fallen woman. A great beauty, pursued by many men, she develops a powerful attraction towards Myshkin and some kind of short-lived relationship evidently takes place between them, though Myshkin describes his love for her as arising from pity. Later he meets a young girl, Aglaya, and falls in love with her. But Aglaya, though evidently reciprocating his feelings, is awkward, skittish, moody, and constantly testing Myshkin in ways that he, in his innocence, is unable to understand. You will have to read the novel if you want to know how things finally work out, but I can tell you that it is all very sad.
The novel is full of the most wonderful characters, and is a fascinating picture of Russia in the late nineteenth century. But above all it is a deeply serious and thought-provoking examination of the nature of goodness, and the apparent impossibility of sustaining it in a world which misunderstands and often despises it. Wonderful.