Tracy’s Comments (group member since Dec 25, 2017)

Tracy’s comments from the The Idiot by Dostoevsky group.

For discussion of chapters 15-16, the last two chapters of book one.

Very interesting, Gosta. So furst was not necessarily a prince, and in fact sounds quite difference that a prince. There were apparently a lot of powerless princes in Russia in the 19th century.

Do you think maybe that was a mistranslation in the Swedish, or a very accurate translation? Certainly a prince wasn't likely to rule any part of a country (was he?) except his own estates. Too bad we don't have a Russian here to clue us into the actual Russian.

Another key word in the Russian that isn't easily translated into English is yorodivy which we translate as "holy fool". Myshkin is apparently often called a yorodivy, and holy fools were quite an important part of the lore of Russian orthodoxy. Here's an article on the subject:
https://incommunion.org/2007/02/02/ho...

The term wouldn't be very meaningful to most people in the western world, but would have special significance in Russia, eastern Europe and people of Greek orthodox persuasion.

Gosta - It's been awhile since I read AK, so I can't easily comment too knowledgeably on your questions (though I remember the story well), but it does seem to me that Tolstoy's characters are more "normal" and that Dostoevsky tends to present characters who deal with intense inner conflicts and live life "on the edge."

I think Dostoevsky had a pronounced split/conflict between spirit and body, and some of his characters are often at war with themselves and live on the verge of madness. I think he was to literature what Freud was to psychology!

I do however perceive some similarities between Pierre in War and Peace and Myshkin in the Idiot. The first few chapters of War and Peace were published just before Dostoevsky started writing the Idiot, and he acknowledged reading it.

So isn't it significant that both books begin with an innocent, naive character who's been living in Europe returning to Russia and acting out of place in the social milieu of society in which he finds himself? That can't be mere coincidence.

Gosta wrote: "As we have seen earlier, Myshkin "sees" who they are and he tells them - what an impact that has on the story. But that may be dangerous - some people want to defend their image to any price."

Well said, Gosta!! Myshkin is perceptive about who people are, more than who they want to be -- and tells the truth of what he sees without full understanding of its possible impact. Doesn't it seem already that he has an odd combination of perceptiveness but also lack of perceptiveness (in regard to social norms, self-image etc.)?

And also being around people with admirable qualities can trigger one's own sense of inadequacy or shame --- so some people may find such people less of an inspiration than a threat.

We certainly see that Ganya has already developed a hostility toward Myshkin and is quick to blame him.

I never quite understood the psychology of rare book collectors. I'd much rather read (and digest and sometimes annotate) books than look at them. But then again, I do buy, trade or borrow books at 3 times the speed by which I can read them, and never get around to reading a lot of them so in a sense I do collect books - BUT with intention to read them. It is satisfying to be able to choose the next book to read from a wide selection.

Thanks for posting that information, Haaze.

Good grief!!!
Where did you find that information, Haaze?
I wonder how many people are willing to put out that kind of money for a contemporary (not antique) book, especially for one of Dostoevsky's less contemporary novels.

What on earth is going on here? The hardback 2004 McDuff translation of The Idiot is selling for between $2700 and $6000. Seriously. One can get the paperback used for $5.22. This makes no sense unless it was a VERY limited edition - fewer than 100 copies. https://www.amazon.com/Idiot-Penguin-...
This is bizarre.

In chapter 10, I am particularly struck by the Prince's moral center of gravity. When Ganya hits his sister, Myshkin appeals to Ganya's conscience - at least clearly so in the Martin and Garnett translation. In the Avsey translation, the appeal to the conscience is implied, but the wording could be taken another way - as if there might be external rather than internal consequences.

AVSEY: "One day you'll really come to regret this."
GARNETT: "Oh, how ashamed you will be of what you've done."
MARTIN and WHISHAW (strangely enough, identical):
"Oh, how ashamed you will be afterwards."

I bought both the Avsey and Pevear version (the others are free online) but spent the last two days looking for the Pevear version - the one I've been reading and annotating - without any luck. And I can only conclude that I left it either at Starbucks or on the bus which has really been upsetting me.

So if any of you lurkers out there have the Pevear version, would you kindly post the translation from near the end of chapter 10?
Or anyone reading the McDuff translation - would you post the translation of the above line and also the one below?

Also, here's a comparison of a passage a few lines afterwards of Myshkin's comment to Nastassia in regard to her behavior:

AVSEY: "And you're not even ashamed."
GARNETT: "Aren't you ashamed?"
MARTIN/WISHAW: "Oh, aren't you ashamed of yourself - aren't you ashamed?"

It seems to me that the earlier translations (Avsey above is the only contemporary one I posted) have more emotional punch. Avsey is much more lukewarm, and more in the head than in the emotions. These different translations do give us a slightly different impression of Mishkin.

Gosta, can you translate your Swedish version for us?

(Come to think of it - how other people project their own feelings and motives onto Myshkin is a key feature of this novel, but here Myshkin may be doing his own projection - expecting others to have the same sensitivity of conscience that he has).

Reflections on chapter 9:

Dostoevsky often creates emotional chaos, even brawls, among groups of people.

In regard to Ivolgin's Lady and the Dog narrative (I'm reminded of Chekhov's Lady and the Dog story which some of us read, but don't think it had the same anecdote in it), it leads us to further distrust Ivolgin's storytelling since clearly he's making up stories in order to impress - and passing them off as fact.

What isn't mentioned in this supposedly clever story is the cruelty to the dog, which is probably killed in being thrown from the train. We animal lovers take offense at that.

Symbolically, it also leads me to reflect again on Dostoevsky's disdain for the "animal self" in humans. He seems to have a very strong split between the animal/physical and the spiritual.

In this chapter, we also become aware of how haughty Nastassia is, and how quick she is to be insulting -- insulting the residence of the Ivolgins. Ganya's family is hostile to Nastassia, so she jokes in a hostile way herself to defend herself. It seems that she uses a cruel form of mockery as a defense.

Clearly, she's been emotionally damaged by her circumstance with Totsky - and maybe even before when she lost both her parents. (Curiously, in this regard both she and Mishkin both experienced early loss of their parents).

She thinks she's seen the Prince before. I wonder if there is some hidden history here that will be revealed to us.

For discussion of book one, chapters 12-14.

Thoughts on chapter 8:
It's surprising to me that the General Ivolgin and Varya are more opposed to Ganya marrying Nastassia than the mother. One would think that the mother would have more objections to Nastassia having been a kept woman.

Frankly, I think it's unfair for a young woman's reputation to be ruined by a circumstance over which she had little control. I guess she could have run away from home rather than be Totsky's mistress, but she was only, what?, 15? And without any resources of her own.

In regard to General Ivolgin, at first I believed his story about knowing the Prince's father. But his recounting and the Prince's knowledge don't coincide and the more we know about him the less we are inclined to trust him. He seems to live in a fictional world in which facts are simply story elements to be distorted or omitted to serve one's purposes. (Sound familiar?)

I hope you'll have more undistracted "special" time for reading and posting on the Idiot, Gosta.

In regard to spelling - I now own two translations of The Idiot and also have access to one on the Net. Even in English, the spelling of names varies between translations. When you use even a different spelling, it's still obvious to whom you're referring! (Of course, we have complications enough with all the different variations of the same name in Russian!)

So happy to have you begin the dialogue, Gosta! "How people react to Myshkin" seems to be a major theme in this book - it is quite fascinating to watch the mixed feelings he stirs up in them, and how they project their own feelings and motives onto him. You are likely to be quite perceptive about this because of your own awareness of interpersonal dynamics.

To those of you who read War and Peace, doesn't Myshkin's entrance into the Epanchin household remind you of Pierre arriving at the party at the beginning of the book? Both are somewhat naive and innocent, have been living in another country for awhile, and are out of touch with the norms of Russian society, and inappropriate.

War and Peace was serialized and the first segment had been published when Dostoevsky started writing The Idiot, and somewhere he indicated that he had read it. He and Tolstoy were considered to be the premier Russian writers at that time, and were literary rivals. But it's difficult to tell whether Dostoevsky was consciously or unconsciously influenced by Tolstoy.

Clearly there are some similarities between the character of Pierre and that of Myshkin (but there are also some similarities between Myshkin and his Alyosha of The Brothers Karamazov).

Ganya's character doesn't come across very clearly in the mini-series but starts to reveal itself well in chapter 7. And he's not exactly admirable.

His letter to Aglaya, begging her to give him hope that she might marry him, so he'd refrain from an engagement to Nastassia reminds me of Darcy's narcissistic proposal to Elizabeth in the middle of Pride and Prejudice. He didn't speak about why he loved her, but rather had the tone of "relieve me of my suffering".

We also witness the degree to which Ganya not only unfairly blames Myshkin, but also projects his own behavior onto Myshkin. Ganya is manipulative, and therefore believes that Myshkin is being manipulative rather than sincere. "The cunning fox has managed to wheedle everything out of me," he says.

If my memory of the mini-series is accurate, reading chapter 7, I perceived a difference between Myshkin in the film. In this chapter, Myshkin tells Ganya that he'd rather not take Ganya's message to Aglaya. He also tells Ganya that he resents being called an idiot. I didn't have the impression that Myshkin was as assertive in the mini-series as he is in the book -or self-protective (in a healthy way).

In both though, he seems to be drawn to suffering, and even to find suffering beautiful. We don't know much about Myshkin's past, but given that he was an orphan (what was his age when his parents died?) he may have suffered a lot as a child. But if he repressed the pain, he would be drawn to suffering in others, which would connect him to himself.

Thoughts on chapter 6 -
Again, we experience Myshkin's preoccupation with death, and apparently also with fallen women - as he tells the story of Marie and how he helped children befriend a bereft dying woman. We also learn, understandably, that children are drawn to him.

At the end of this chapter, he reads the faces of the Epanchin's, though not Aglaya's, at least not yet. I think this is another sign that he isn't what we today we diagnose as a person suffering from Asbergers or autism. He is attentive to others. He just isn't concerned with conforming or acting appropriately. Maybe being in a sanitarium in Switzerland surrounded by disturbed people wouldn't have given him any viable role models of proper behavior anyway.

Having read a little about Dostoevsky's plans for this book in his notebooks, I find it intriguing that he began the book with a Myshkin/Rogozhin meeting on the train (which is missing from the online video of the miniseries at Youtube but not from the film.

His original plan for Myshkin was to portray an "unredeemed" man at the mercy of his passions and lower self, and the process of his redemption into a "truly beautiful man." But finally, in his 8th plan, he completely changed his perception of Myshkin and basically split him into two characters - his lower side being Rogozhin and his higher side by Myshkin. Due to this dualistic split, we're likely to see Myshkin being frequently in the vicinity of Rogozhin - as one carries one's shadow self around with oneself everywhere!

Some impressions of chapter 5:

Watching the mini-series, and then starting to read the book, I find myself very much drawn to Lizaveta, General Epanchin's wife. She seems in some ways to be like Myshkin - kindhearted, childlike and forthright.

When Adelaida asks Myshkin's advice on what to paint, he suggests the last five minutes of a man about to die. Again, here, we seem to hear Dostoevsky's personal experience, and fascination with death, through Myshkin's voice. Yet we keep seeing that Myshkin himself is not only fascinated with death - he keeps bringing up the subject inappropriately.

A friend of mine who just started The Idiot - and some people on an Idiot forum online - wonder if Myshkin's character is that of someone with Asbergers or functional autism. I don't think so because despite his inappropriateness, he does seem self-aware of his behavior and its effect on others (he is concerned that he's preaching, and doesn't want to anger or annoy others) and also he seems to pick up others' nonverbal cues. What do you all think?

Finally in chapter 5, I find myself wondering why Aglaia is so rude to him - or if she's just rude in general.

I hope some of you will start sharing your impressions. It may well be though that setting up this discussion as we set up LitnLife secondary discussions just isn't viable for this particular book, at least at this time. Or it may be that some of you are just starting to read the book!!

In chapter one, we meet Myshkin.

At the beginning of Dostevsky's The Idiot: A Critical Companion, writer/editor Lisa Knapp discusses the significance of the names of Dostoevsky's main characters. I will quote what she wrote about Myshkin because it's fascinating and relevant:

"The case of Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin is especially complex. As a prince, he belongs to an old aristocratic line, but in this case, one that now has little wealth or power. His last name....found in Nikolai Karamzin's History of Russia, lends the aura of historical authority. And yet its Russian root is the same as that for "mouse". Hence it is associated with meekness or lack of power.

"His first name, Lev, means 'lion'. Lev combined with Myshkin makes an oxymoronic menagerie of lion and mouse - suggesting a fable with a moral on the order of Aesop's 'The Lion and the Mouse.' His patronymic Nikolaevich (son of Nicolai, meaning 'victory over the people' in Greek) further suggests that he was born with heroic expectations. But as an orphan, Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin was left on his own to interpret his legacy without the biological parents to whom he owes the names.

"The combination 'Lev Nikolaevich' also belongs to Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, whose War and Peace had already started to be published in serial form....Dostoevsky was forever gauging himself against Tolstoy, and, of course, trying to outdo him."

COMMENT: Given his rivalry with Tolstoy, I wonder exactly why Dostoevsky chose Tolstoy's first two names for Myshkin, whom he portrays both as an "idiot" and a "beautiful man". Thoughts?