The Idiot: Newly Translated and Annotated (Alma Classics Evergreens)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Nastasya Filippovna is the very opposite of Desdemona, who is all feminine sweetness, submission and charm, yearning and desperately eager to quell her dear husband. And Othello will have none of it. Rogozhin is ready to spend all night on his knees, hoping his “queen” would let him kiss the hem of her dress. She makes light even of that, and instead of soothing her man, she provokes him. For her, comedy is tragedy that happens to others. She is in the Carmen mould. She makes Rogozhin dance to her tune, and in between the reels she is happy to make a fool of him, cast him aside and openly fall into his rival’s, Myshkin’s, arms. Not for fun, but in a mixture of fun and desperation. The two wildly contrasting men in her life are her undoing. This is the flip side of humour; its injurious, hurtful, demonic side, which to a man of Rogozhin’s dull, morose disposition, is like a red rag to a bull. It suddenly gets out of hand, overbalances into horribly unpleasant seriousness and comes crashing down about everyone’s ears. La commedia è finita! Ridi, Pagliaccio! But did the sweet-tongued, docile, angelic Desdemona fare any better? There is but one story in the world, told in a thousand different ways!