The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote The Idiot abroad. He left Russia with his young wife Anna Grigorievna in April 1867, with an advance from The Russian Messenger for a novel he had not yet planned. They went through Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg and Baden-Baden. He made his first notes for the book in Geneva in September 1867, kept writing in Vevey and Milan, and finished it in Florence.[1]

In a letter to his niece Sofia Ivanova of 1 (13) January 1868, Dostoevsky called the novel an old and much-loved idea that he had long been afraid to attempt. Its main idea, he wrote, was to portray a positively beautiful man, and nothing in the world was harder. He listed the writers who had tried. Cervantes had done it best with Don Quixote, Dickens less fully with Mr Pickwick, and Victor Hugo with Jean Valjean in Les Misérables.[1]

The Russian Messenger printed the novel through 1868, finishing in a supplement to the December issue. The last page carries the date the book was finished: 17 January 1869. Dostoevsky dedicated it to Sofia Ivanova. The first book edition had to wait until 1874, when Anna Grigorievna had set up her own small publishing business.[1]

The quotations here come from the English text on Project Gutenberg credited to Eva Martin, which is out of copyright. The Gutenberg catalogue notes that it may be a revision of Frederick Whishaw's translation of 1887. It spells the names in an older way: Muishkin, Rogojin, Nastasia Philipovna.[2]

The book opens on a damp November morning on the train from Warsaw to St Petersburg. Myshkin, poorly dressed and carrying a small bundle, talks with Rogozhin, who has just inherited a fortune from his father. Rogozhin tells him about Nastasya Filippovna. A clerk called Lebedev, who knows everyone's business, joins in.[2]

Myshkin calls on General Epanchin, whose wife is a distant relation. He charms the general's wife and her three daughters with stories from Switzerland, including an execution he saw in Lyons. He also sees a photograph of Nastasya Filippovna and is struck by her face. Her story is soon told. Afanasy Totsky, a rich landowner, took her in as an orphan girl and made her his mistress. Now he wants to marry and is offering 75,000 roubles to whoever will take her off his hands. Gavril Ivolgin, called Ganya, the general's ambitious secretary, is ready to accept.[2]

At Nastasya's birthday party that night, Myshkin tells her he would be honoured to marry her. Rogozhin bursts in with a gang of drunken friends and a packet of 100,000 roubles. Nastasya throws the packet into the fire and tells Ganya he can have it if he pulls it out with his bare hands. Ganya faints rather than do it. She pulls the money out herself, gives it to him, and leaves with Rogozhin.[2]

Six months later Myshkin, who has come into an inheritance of his own, visits Rogozhin's gloomy family house. Over the door hangs a copy of Hans Holbein's picture of the dead Christ in the tomb. The two men exchange crosses and call each other brothers. That evening Rogozhin follows Myshkin to his hotel and lifts a knife against him on the dark stairs. Myshkin has an epileptic fit, and the attack stops.[2]

The summer is spent at Pavlovsk, the resort outside St Petersburg where the Epanchins have a villa. Myshkin and Aglaya fall in love. The dying young man Ippolit reads a long confession aloud and tries to shoot himself, but his pistol fails. Nastasya Filippovna writes letters to Aglaya urging her to marry the prince. At last Aglaya goes to confront her, with Myshkin and Rogozhin there as witnesses.[2]