Idiot analysis of the work. Problems and ideological meaning of the novel by F.M.

Roman F.M. Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" is one of the pinnacles of world literature. And, unfortunately, his idea is misunderstood by many readers - much narrower than it is.
For example, this is how this book is announced in online stores: “A bright and almost painfully talented story of the unfortunate Prince Myshkin, the frantic Parfen Rogozhin and the desperate Nastasya Filippovna.” That's all.

***
Imagine: What would happen if Jesus Christ wanted to visit our land... incognito. Without performing miracles, without demonstrating divine power - and just like that, just a human being. Or rather, a Man in whom the moral law is alive. It's hard to imagine, I understand. And yet - what would happen to him, how would it be ours? modern society treated him?
I daresay he would be considered an idiot. No, not all, of course. Many people, especially those who suffered, would be drawn to him in their souls... but, mainly, for a while.

Dostoevsky created the image of just such a Man in the main character of his novel. Let not Christ himself, but a person in whom the moral gospel law is alive in its entirety. “The main idea...” wrote Dostoevsky about his novel, “to portray a positively beautiful person. There is nothing more difficult in the world than this...”

And he showed how such a person can really live in the world, modern writer. Among other people, with all their shortcomings and merits, joys and misfortunes, meanness, nobility and “nobility”. Nobody! No one can match him, no one can coexist with him. Because it hurts to see his love for himself and compassion, and to feel his imperfection.
An ordinary believer goes to church, confesses, takes communion, and... returns to his place. Just like Christ, all the other characters in the novel are drawn to Dostoevsky’s hero - and return to themselves.

And what about him? How can such a person live according to the laws of the state and society, see those around him in the full depth of their personalities, sympathize with them, love them, be tormented by them in accordance with their craving for him and their rejection of him - and remain sane? I think this is absolutely impossible.

We had the opportunity to see two film adaptations of this novel. The old one, based on the first part, where Prince Myshkin was played by the young Yuri Yakovlev, and the recent one, with Yevgeny Mironov in leading role.
The treatment of the main character in the new series is completely contrary to my perception described in this article. Some kind of fussy person, initially mentally unhealthy. Just unhealthy, in itself, and not at all “because...”. The main quality of Dostoevsky's hero - his moral greatness - is almost invisible behind this fussiness. The plot of the novel is retold, reactions to specific situations are professionally acted out. And - there is no main thing, there is no general idea.
The final glimpse of consciousness in the eyes of the hero, performed by E. Mironov, only confirms my idea about the inconsistency of his role with the idea of ​​Dostoevsky’s novel. A kind of hint of a “happy ending” to console the audience who sympathize with the hero of the film. Here, they say, he will recover and everything will be fine. But this is a lie. It will not be good for him; the novel describes all possible options for the existence of such a Person, all of them inevitably lead to the same result.
Dostoevsky made the final diagnosis. There is no glimmer at the end of his novel, and this is the author’s brilliant truth.
The role of Yuri Yakovlev is a completely different matter. The depth of this personality and her human dignity are brilliantly shown. The second part of the novel was not filmed, and this is understandable - one would have to lie, distort the understanding that came in connection with the “line of the party and government.”

I think that the evil genius of V.I. Lenin also understood Dostoevsky this way. It was not for nothing that he branded the writer, calling him “an extremely bad writer,” and his work “moralizing vomit” and “repentant hysteria.”

SO: The object of the novel, in my opinion, is society, in the aspect of the possibility of its acceptance of Christ. Dostoevsky's conclusion: He will not accept.
The ancients executed Him, but they “knew not what they were doing.” But even after thousands of years of faith in people, His society will still reject Him.

Society is sick with sin, every individual is sick with sin. And first of all, such a society will first consider, and then make a healthy person, from a Christian point of view, sick.
An idiot.

But there is still hope. It is in the attitude of Dostoevsky’s hero himself to society, which can be allegorically correlated with the episode in the final part of the novel, where Prince Myshkin consoles Parfen Rogozhin, who committed a terrible murder:
"Rogozhin occasionally and suddenly sometimes began to mutter, loudly, sharply and incoherently; he began to scream and laugh; the prince then stretched out his trembling hand to him and quietly touched his head, his hair, stroked it and stroked his cheeks... more he He couldn’t do anything! He himself began to tremble again, and again his legs seemed to suddenly give up. Some completely new sensation tormented his heart with endless melancholy; in despair, and pressed his face to Rogozhin’s pale and motionless face; tears flowed from his eyes onto Rogozhin’s cheeks..."
Here is the hope of every single person. Hope for love, for mercy, for forgiveness.

While working on the novel, Dostoevsky set the goal of portraying a “positively beautiful person,” realizing that this was a gigantic task.

In this work, the terrible, pernicious influence of advancing capitalism has gripped everyone characters, only one Prince Myshkin resists the “dark forces” and dies in the fight against them. Here beauty becomes the subject of envy, indecent thoughts and bargaining.

Into the monstrous world of money, where everything is bought and sold, Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin unexpectedly comes - a strange man, selfless, humble, compassionate and pure in heart, who wants to give his soul for his neighbor. All his words and actions are not at all similar to the actions and reasoning of those around him, which sharply sets him apart from the mainstream. All the characters constantly think about money, while Myshkin appears in St. Petersburg with only one small bundle and empty pockets. Absolutely not expecting anything like this, he receives an inheritance, but immediately gives away the money. All the people around him lie, and the prince does not know how to do even this. He personifies the truth that has found itself in a world of lies, the clash and struggle of which is inevitable and predetermined. In the words of General Epanchina: “They don’t believe in God, they don’t believe in Christ!” the author’s cherished idea is expressed: in his opinion, the moral crisis that contemporary humanity is experiencing is a religious crisis. That is why Prince Myshkin reduces all the various reasons for Rogozhin’s crime to only one religious reason. Rogozhin, who has a copy of Holbein’s painting “The Dead Christ” hanging in his house, tells the prince that he loves to look at it. Hearing such words, Myshkin shouts that faith can disappear from such a picture, with which Rogozhin himself unexpectedly agrees, confirming his opinion. He has lost faith, and lack of faith leads him to murder.

The image of Prince Myshkin is to some extent a self-portrait of the writer himself, partly a spiritual and even physical biography of Dostoevsky. Physical in the sense that the author gives his favorite character his own illness - epilepsy. And spiritual biography lies in the coincidence of certain vital important events the main character and his creator, for example, such as dreamy youth, four years spent outside life (this is hard labor and a sanatorium in Switzerland), the so-called rebirth of beliefs, a meeting with Christ, the return of both to St. Petersburg, as well as the story of the prince about the main event in the author’s life - about death penalty on the scaffold. There are some features of Apollinaria Suslova in the image of Nastasya Filippovna and Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya in the image of Aglaya.

Nastasya Filippovna, the conversation about whom begins already on the train, is a woman of indescribable beauty. Myshkin immediately noticed from her portrait that there was a lot of suffering in this face and in nature. Her fate was initially tragic. Her father went bankrupt, she was an orphan and was under guardianship.

This heroine, as if from the author’s first sketches, is doomed to some kind of tragedy in life. Consequently, Nastasya Filippovna is a very complex and controversial image, which symbolizes both the beauty and tragedy of the world. Myshkin must save this beauty, resurrect the person in it.

The denouement of the novel, its finale, is the death of Nastasya Filippovna. Rogozhin's disease is described as “inflammation in the brain.” Two months later he recovered, and an investigation began against him. At the trial, he gave direct and accurate testimony, recalled all the slightest circumstances of the event, after which he was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in Siberia, and his entire fortune passed to his brother Semyon Semenovich.

Prince Myshkin talks so calmly with the criminal because he perfectly understands the tragedy of Parfen Rogozhin, who doomed himself to suffering because, having done evil, Rogozhin punished himself. There is nothing heavier than the punishment of one’s own conscience. A person can purify himself only through suffering. Material from the site

Dostoevsky managed to find a positive, beautiful ideal in the form of a sick person. But at the end of the novel, seeing the mad Rogozhin, readers come to the conclusion that the world around them is mad, calling a positively beautiful person an idiot. Everything turned upside down in reality.

Only Aglaya was able to understand Myshkin. She compares Lev Nikolayevich with Don Quixote, who believed recklessly in his ideal and blindly gave his whole life to it. The prince looks at a world that lies in evil, since he himself has nothing to do with this evil. He sincerely wants to save this world with the help of faith in beauty, without realizing at all that beauty itself needs saving.

Plan

1. Arrival of Prince Myshkin in St. Petersburg.
2. Prince Myshkin in the Epanchin family.
3. Prince Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna.
4. Prince Myshkin and Rogozhin.
5. Death of Nastasya Filippovna.
6. Rogozhin's illness and his trial.

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Following Crime and Punishment, F.M. Dostoevsky writes the novel The Idiot (1868). If in the first work the hero is shown as negative character, then in “The Idiot” the author set himself the opposite task - “to portray a completely wonderful person.” This idea was “ancient and beloved” by Dostoevsky. The author embodied his desire to create a “positive hero” in the image of Prince Myshkin. Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin differs at first glance from all the characters in the novel in that he joyfully perceives the world. He knows how to be happy. He declares this on the very first day of his arrival in St. Petersburg. In a conversation with the Epanchin family, while talking about his life in Switzerland, the prince admits: “However, I was happy almost all the time.” Creating the image of the prince, Dostoevsky in notebooks with plans and sketches for the novel gives the following description: “His view of the world: he forgives everything, sees reasons everywhere, does not see unforgivable sin and excuses everything.”

Dostoevsky deprives Myshkin of all external qualities that might attract others. Ugly, awkward, and sometimes even funny in society, the prince is sick with a serious illness. To most of the people he encounters, at first he comes across as an “idiot.” But then all the heroes of the novel are perfectly aware of the prince’s superiority over themselves, his spiritual beauty. And all this is because the prince is a happy man. “Love is the ability to be happy. A person seeks love because he seeks joy. Happy heart - loving heart. Love in itself is the highest good. And in people, Myshkin reveals this always lively and attractive, but timid and secret stream of love, a thirst to love and be loved.” (A. Skaftymov).

Dostoevsky reveals the reasons that prevent people from loving in the images of the other characters in the novel. Nastasya Filippovna, Rogozhin, Aglaya, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, Ippolit, Ganya Ivolgin and General Ivolgin - all of them, to a greater or lesser extent, are prevented from being happy, from understanding and forgiving by a sense of pride and self-love. They hide all the beautiful principles of human feelings and do not allow them to come out. The desire to assert themselves above everyone turns into a loss of their own face. The great desire to love, to reveal oneself to another person is suppressed in them due to great pride and brings them only pain and suffering.

The man who is opposed to all of them is Prince Myshkin, a man who is completely devoid of pride. Prince - only person who knows how to recognize in people those wonderful spiritual qualities that they so carefully hide from prying eyes. It is not for nothing that the prince finds it easy and good only with children. Children have not yet learned to hide their feelings, deceive, or suppress sincere impulses. And Myshkin himself - “ big child" For Dostoevsky, the feeling of “childhood” in his heroes is always a sign that the “living sources of the heart” have not yet completely disappeared in their souls, they are still alive, they have not been completely drowned out by “the assurances and temptations of a denying mind and pride.”

But it is always difficult for the prince with his open soul and simplicity in the company of “big people”, because a naively open soul for strangers, unloving eyes, callous and envious hearts is ridiculous and does not fit into the framework of a society where all feelings are tightly closed and where their own laws of decency. In such a society, sincerity is even indecent and can only humiliate a person. For those who love the prince more, and appreciate and respect, such behavior causes shame for him, embarrassment and indignation at the prince himself for revealing his soul to unworthy people.

But Prince Myshkin feels the distance between himself and his inner ideal. And he knows how to appreciate the attitude towards himself from the outside. He suffers a lot from the fact that he understands the difference between what he says, how he says, and himself: “I know that I... am offended by nature... in society I am superfluous... I am not out of pride... I know very well that it’s a shame to talk about my feelings to everyone.” The prince feels this not because he is proud, unlike all the other characters in the novel, but because he is afraid that the expression of these thoughts may not be understood by others, that “ main idea"may become distorted and therefore he will suffer even more. And the prince also dreams of a person who would understand him and love him as he is.

He felt this “light” of understanding and acceptance of his soul in Aglaya. Therefore, the novel contains the motif of the prince’s double love. On the one hand, love for Nastasya Filippovna, compassionate love, forgiveness love, love “for her.” On the other hand, there is love for Aglaya, a thirst for forgiveness for oneself, love “for oneself.” The prince always believed that Aglaya would understand him. The prince understands that it is difficult to love him, but he strives for love. In his heart, one love does not supplant the other, they both live in his soul. And if, by the will of the author, the prince would not have been drawn into conflict situation, he would have stayed with Aglaya. But he stayed with Nastasya Filippovna, and this did not happen according to his will, because he knew that he was necessary for her.

"The Idiot" is one of Dostoevsky's most complex works. Saltykov-Shchedrin called the idea of ​​the novel “radiant” and emphasized that Dostoevsky entered that area of ​​“thrusts and premonitions” where “the most distant quests” are directed. The image of Prince Myshkin, conceived as a type of “positively beautiful person,” turned into the image of a sick, weak person with the mark of deep inner suffering.

The prince is not able to resolve a single contradiction in life, he is aware of the tragic, hopeless nature of the phenomena occurring, but he still cannot change this life in any way. Despite the fact that the prince deeply understands life and people, he cannot have any influence on them. He cannot prevent the torment of Nastasya Filippovna, prevent her murder by Rogozhin, help Aglaya find a way out of the impasse, and he himself ends his life with madness. Dostoevsky brings Myshkin closer to Don Quixote and Pushkin’s “poor knight.” On the one hand, he emphasizes the moral height of the prince, and on the other hand, his powerlessness, generated by the discrepancy between his ideals and life. This is the result of a meeting between an ideal hero and people of a soulless, decaying society. “He,” Dostoevsky noted, “only touched their lives. But whatever he could do and undertake, everything died with him... But wherever he touched, everywhere he left an unsearchable line.”

Finished in Florence on January 29, 1869. Initially dedicated to the beloved niece of the writer S.A. Ivanova. Three notebooks with preparatory materials for the novel have survived (first published in 1931). Neither the draft nor the white manuscripts of the novel have reached us.

Plot

Part one

The first part takes place over one day, November 27th. 26-year-old Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin returns from a sanatorium in Switzerland, where he spent several years being treated for epilepsy. The prince appears as a sincere and innocent man, although he has a decent understanding of relationships between people. He goes to Russia to visit his only remaining relatives - the Epanchin family. On the train, he meets the young merchant Parfyon Rogozhin and the retired official Lebedev, to whom he ingenuously tells his story. In response, he learns the details of the life of Rogozhin, who is in love with Nastasya Filippovna, the former kept woman of the wealthy nobleman Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky.

At the Epanchins’ house it turns out that Nastasya Filippovna is well known there. There is a plan to marry her off to General Epanchin’s protégé Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin, an ambitious but mediocre man. Prince Myshkin meets all the main characters in the story. These are the Epanchins' daughters - Alexandra, Adelaide and Aglaya, on whom he makes a favorable impression, remaining the object of their slightly mocking attention. This is General Lizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina, who is in constant agitation due to the fact that her husband communicates with Nastasya Filippovna, who has a reputation for being fallen. This is Ganya Ivolgin, who is suffering greatly because of his upcoming role as Nastasya Filippovna’s husband, although he is ready to do anything for the sake of money, and cannot decide to develop his own weak relations with Aglaya. Prince Myshkin rather innocently tells the general’s wife and the Epanchin sisters about what he learned about Nastasya Filippovna from Rogozhin, and also amazes them with his story about the memories and feelings of his acquaintance, who was sentenced to death, but in last moment was pardoned.

General Epanchin offers the prince, for lack of a place to stay, to rent a room in Ivolgin’s house. There the prince meets Ganya’s family, and also meets Nastasya Filippovna, who unexpectedly arrives, for the first time. After an ugly scene with Ganya’s alcoholic father, retired general Ardalion Aleksandrovich, of whom his son is endlessly ashamed, Nastasya Filippovna and Rogozhin come to the Ivolgins’ house for Nastasya Filippovna. He arrives with a noisy company that has gathered around him completely by chance, as around any person who knows how to waste money. As a result of the scandalous explanation, Rogozhin swears to Nastasya Filippovna that by the evening he will offer her one hundred thousand rubles in cash.

That same evening, Myshkin, sensing something bad, really wants to get into Nastasya Filippovna’s house and initially hopes for the elder Ivolgin, who promises to take Myshkin to this house, but in fact does not know at all where she lives. The desperate prince is unexpectedly helped by Ganya’s younger brother, Kolya, who shows him the way to Nastasya Filippovna’s house. It’s her name day, there are few invited guests. Allegedly, today everything should be decided and Nastasya Filippovna should agree to marry Ganya. The prince's unexpected appearance leaves everyone in amazement. One of the guests, Ferdyshchenko, a type of petty scoundrel, offers to play a strange game for entertainment: everyone talks about their lowest deed. The following are the stories of Ferdyshchenko and Totsky himself. In the form of such a story, Nastasya Filippovna refuses to marry Gana, having first asked Myshkin for advice. Rogozhin and his company suddenly burst into the room, bringing the promised hundred thousand. He trades Nastasya Filippovna, offering her money in exchange for agreeing to become “his.”

The prince gives cause for amazement by seriously inviting Nastasya Filippovna to marry him, while she desperately plays with this proposal and almost agrees. It immediately turns out that the prince receives a large inheritance. Nastasya Filippovna invites Gana to take one hundred thousand and throws it into the fireplace. “But only without gloves, with bare hands. If you pull it out, it’s yours, all one hundred thousand is yours! And I will admire your soul as you climb into the fire for my money.” Lebedev, Ferdyshchenko and others like them, in confusion, beg Nastasya Filippovna to let them snatch a wad of money from the fire, but she is adamant. Ivolgin restrains himself and loses consciousness. Nastasya Filippovna takes out almost all the money with tongs, puts it near Ivolgin and leaves with Rogozhin.

Part two

Six months pass. The prince, who lives in Moscow, no longer seems to be a completely naive person, while maintaining all his simplicity in communication. During this time, he managed to receive an inheritance, which is rumored to be almost colossal. It is also rumored that in Moscow the prince enters into close communication with Nastasya Filippovna, but she soon leaves him. At this time, Kolya Ivolgin, who has become friends with the Epanchin sisters and even with the general’s wife herself, gives Aglaya a note from the prince, in which he asks her in confused terms to remember him.

Summer comes, the Epanchins go to their dacha in Pavlovsk. Soon after this, Myshkin arrives in St. Petersburg and pays a visit to Lebedev, from whom he learns about Pavlovsk and rents his dacha in the same place. Then the prince goes to visit Rogozhin, with whom he has a difficult conversation, ending in fraternization and the exchange of crosses. At the same time, it becomes obvious that Rogozhin is already ready to stab the prince or Nastasya Filippovna and even, thinking about this, bought a knife. In Rogozhin’s house, Myshkin notices a copy of Hans Holbein the Younger’s painting “Dead Christ,” which becomes one of the most important artistic images in the novel, often remembered later.

Returning from Rogozhin, the prince feels that he is close to a seizure, his consciousness is clouded. He notices that “eyes” are watching him - apparently Rogozhin. Having reached the hotel, Myshkin runs into Rogozhin, who has already raised a knife over him, but at that second the prince has a seizure that stops the crime.

Myshkin moves to Pavlovsk, where General Epanchina, having heard that he is unwell, immediately pays him a visit along with her daughters and Prince Shch., Adelaide’s fiancé. Lebedev and the Ivolgins are also present in the house. Later they are joined by General Epanchin and Yevgeny Pavlovich Radomsky, Aglaya's intended fiancé. Kolya reminds her of a certain joke about the “poor knight,” and the misunderstanding Lizaveta Prokofyevna forces Aglaya to read famous poem Pushkin, which she does with great feeling, replacing, among other things, the initials written by the knight in the poem with the initials of Nastasya Filippovna.

On the third day, General Epanchina pays an unexpected visit to the prince, although she was angry with him all this time. During their conversation, it turns out that Aglaya somehow came into contact with Nastasya Filippovna through Ganya and his sister, who is close to the Epanchins. The prince also lets slip that he received a note from Aglaya, in which she asks him not to show himself to her in the future. The surprised Lizaveta Prokofyevna, realizing that the feelings that Aglaya has for the prince play a role here, immediately orders him to visit them “intentionally.”

Part three

Lizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina silently complains to the prince that it is his fault that everything in their life has “gone upside down,” and learns that Aglaya has entered into correspondence with Nastasya Filippovna.

At a meeting with the Epanchins, the prince talks about himself, about his illness, and about the fact that one cannot help but laugh at him. Aglaya interjects: “Everyone here, everyone is not worth your little finger, nor your mind, nor your heart! You are more honest than everyone, nobler than everyone, better than everyone, kinder than everyone, smarter than everyone!” Everyone is shocked. Aglaya continues: “I will never marry you! Know that never, ever! Know this! The prince justifies himself that he never even thought about it. In response, Aglaya begins to laugh uncontrollably. At the end everyone laughs.

Later, Myshkin, Radomsky and the Epanchin family meet Nastasya Filippovna at the station. She loudly and defiantly informs Radomsky that his uncle Kapiton Alekseich shot himself because of embezzlement of government money. Lieutenant Molovtsov, a great friend of Radomsky, loudly calls Nastasya Filippovna a creature, for which she hits him in the face with a cane. The officer rushes at her, but Myshkin intervenes. Rogozhin arrived in time and takes Nastasya Filippovna away.

Aglaya writes a note to Myshkin, in which she arranges a meeting on a park bench. Myshkin is excited: he cannot believe that he can be loved.

It's Prince Myshkin's birthday. On it he pronounces his famous phrase“Beauty will save the world!” To which Ippolit Terentyev declares that he knows why the prince has such thoughts - he is in love. Then Terentyev decides to read “My Necessary Explanation” with the epigraph “After me, even a flood.”

The prince reads Nastasya Filippovna's letters to Aglaya. Having read, he comes to the Epanchins at midnight, thinking that it’s not even ten yet. Alexandra notifies him that everyone is already asleep. Going to his place, the prince meets Nastasya Filippovna, who says that he is seeing her for the last time.

Part four

In the Ivolgins’ house it is now known that Aglaya is marrying the prince and a good company is gathering at the Epanchins’ in the evening to meet him. Ganya and Varya are talking about stealing money from Lebedev, for which it turns out their father is to blame. Ganya argues with General Ivolgin to the point that he shouts “a curse on this house” and leaves. Disputes continue with Hippolytus, who, awaiting death, no longer knows any measures. Ganya and Varya receive a letter from Aglaya, in which she asks them both to come to the green bench known to Varya; The brother and sister do not understand this step, because the engagement to the prince has already taken place. The next morning, after a heated explanation with Lebedev, General Ivolgin visits the prince and announces to him that he wishes to “respect himself”; He leaves the prince along with Kolya and a little later suffers an apoplexy.

Aglaya gives the prince a hedgehog as a “sign of her deepest respect.” At the Epanchins', Aglaya immediately wants to know his opinion about the hedgehog, which makes the prince somewhat embarrassed. The answer does not satisfy Aglaya, and out of the blue she asks: “Are you marrying me or not?” and “Are you asking for my hand or not?” The prince convinces her that he is asking and loves her very much. She asks about his financial status, which others consider completely inappropriate. Then she laughs and runs away, her sisters and parents following her. In her room, Aglaya cries, makes peace with her family and says that she doesn’t love the prince at all and that she will “die laughing” when she sees him again. Aglaya asks the prince for forgiveness; he is so happy that he doesn’t even listen to her words: “Forgive me for insisting on absurdity, which, of course, cannot have the slightest consequences...” The whole evening the prince is cheerful, talks a lot and animatedly, then in the park he meets Hippolytus, who , as usual, sarcastically mocks the prince.

Preparing for the evening meeting, for the “high society circle,” Aglaya warns the prince about some inappropriate prank. The prince concludes that it will be better if he does not come, but immediately changes his mind when Aglaya makes it clear that everything has been arranged separately for him.

An evening in high society begins with pleasant conversations. But suddenly the prince begins to speak: he exaggerates everything, gets more and more excited, and finally breaks the vase, as he himself prophesied. After everyone forgives him for this incident, he feels great and continues to talk animatedly. Without noticing, he gets up while speaking, and suddenly, as if prophesied, he has a seizure. Aglaya then announces that she never considered him her fiancé.

The Epanchins still inquire about the prince’s health. Through Vera Lebedeva, Aglaya orders the prince not to leave the courtyard. Ippolit arrives and announces to the prince that he spoke with Aglaya today in order to agree on a meeting with Nastasya Filippovna, which should take place on the same day. The prince understands: Aglaya wanted him to stay at home so she could come get him. This is what happens, and the main characters of the novel meet.

During the explanation, Nastasya Filippovna, like a madwoman, orders the prince to decide with whom he will go. The prince does not understand anything and turns to Aglaya, pointing at Nastasya Filippovna: “Is this possible! After all, she’s... so unhappy!” After this, Aglaya cannot stand it and runs away, the prince following her, but on the threshold Nastasya Filippovna wraps her arms around him and faints. He stays with her.

Preparations begin for the wedding of the prince and Nastasya Filippovna. The Epanchins leave Pavlovsk, a doctor arrives to examine Ippolit, as well as the prince. Radomsky comes to the prince with the intention of “analyzing” everything that happened and the prince’s motives for other actions and feelings. The prince is completely convinced that he is guilty.

General Ivolgin dies from a second apoplexy. Lebedev begins to intrigue against the prince and admits this on the very day of the wedding. At this time, Hippolyte often sends for the prince, which entertains him a lot. He even tells him that Rogozhin will now kill Aglaya because he took Nastasya Filippovna from him. The latter, however, is overly worried, imagining that Rogozhin is hiding in the garden and wants to “stab her to death.” Just before the wedding, when the prince is waiting in the church, she sees Rogozhin and shouts “Save me!” and leaves with him. Keller considers the prince’s reaction to this (“in her condition... this is completely in the order of things”) to be “an unparalleled philosophy.”

The prince leaves Pavlovsk, rents a room in St. Petersburg and begins the search for Rogozhin. When he comes to Rogozhin’s house, the maid says that he is not at home, and the janitor, on the contrary, replies that he is at home, but, having listened to the prince’s objection, he believes that “maybe he went out.” On the way to the hotel, Rogozhin in the crowd touches the prince on the elbow and tells him to come with him: Nastasya Filippovna is at his house. They quietly go up to the apartment together. Nastasya Filippovna lies on the bed and sleeps in a “completely motionless sleep”: Rogozhin killed her with a knife and covered her with a sheet. The prince begins to tremble and lies down with Rogozhin. They talk for a long time about everything. Suddenly Rogozhin begins to scream, forgetting that he should speak in a whisper, and suddenly falls silent. When they are found, Rogozhin is found “completely unconscious and in a fever,” and the prince no longer understands anything and does not recognize anyone - he is an “idiot,” as he was then in Switzerland.

Characters

• Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin- Russian nobleman who was treated for four years in Switzerland for epilepsy. Blonde with blue eyes, slightly above average height. Pure in soul and thoughts, extremely intelligent by nature, he cannot be called otherwise in society than an Idiot.
• Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova - beautiful woman from a noble family. Keeper of A.I. Totsky. She evokes the compassion and pity of Prince Myshkin, who sacrifices a lot to help her. Loved by Rogozhin.
• Parfen Semyonovich Rogozhin- a gray-eyed, dark-haired twenty-seven-year-old man from a family of merchants. Having fallen passionately in love with Nastasya Filippovna and having received a large inheritance, he goes on a spree with her.

Epanchin family:

• Lizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina- distant relative of Prince Myshkin. Mother of three beautiful Epanchins. Very cantankerous at times, but very vulnerable and sensitive.
• Ivan Fedorovich Epanchin- rich and respected in St. Petersburg society, General Epanchin. Born into the lower class.
• Alexandra Ivanovna Epanchina- Aglaya’s older sister, 25 years old.
• Adelaida Ivanovna Epanchina- the middle of the Epanchin sisters, 23 years old. He is interested in painting. Engaged to Prince Shch.
• Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina- the youngest and most beautiful of the Epanchin girls. Mother's favorite. Sarcastic, spoiled, but an absolute child. She is courted by Evgeniy Pavlovich Radomsky, a protégé of Princess Belokonskaya. Subsequently she married a Polish count “after a short and extraordinary affection.”

Ivolgin family:

• Ardalion Aleksandrovich Ivolgin- retired general, father of the family. A liar and a drunkard.
• Nina Aleksandrovna Ivolgina- wife of General Ivolgin, mother of Ganya, Varya and Kolya.
• Gavrila (Ganya) Ardalionovich Ivolgin- an ambitious middle class official. He is in love with Aglaya Ivanovna, but is still ready to marry Nastasya Filippovna for the promised dowry of 75,000 rubles.
• Kolya Ivolgin- Ghani’s younger brother, 16 years old.
• Varvara Ardalionovna Ptitsyna- sister of Ganya Ivolgina. I am categorically against my brother’s marriage to Nastasya Filippovna. A skilled intriguer, she enters the Epanchins’ house in order to bring Aglaya and Ganya together.
• Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn- moneylender, husband of Varvara Ardalionovna.

Other important persons:

• Ferdyshchenko- rents a room from the Ivolgins. Consciously plays the role of a jester.
• Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky- millionaire. He raised and then supported Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova after the death of her father. He gives her a dowry of 75 thousand. He wants to marry Alexandra Ivanovna Epanchina and marry Nastasya Filippovna to Ganya Ivolgin.
• Hippolytus- consumptive, friend of Kolya. Considers himself a great man. He cannot wait to die, which he has been expecting for two months.
• Keller- boxer, “author of an article familiar to the reader,” “full member of the former Rogozhin company,” retired lieutenant. Best man at Myshkin's failed wedding.
• Lebedev- an official, “a poorly dressed gentleman,” “about forty years old, strongly built, with a red nose and acne-stained face,” the father of a large family, a heavy drinker and servile. Constantly admitting that he is “low, low,” and yet not deviating from his habits.

Film adaptations

• “The Idiot” - film by Peter Chardynin (Russia, 1910)
• “The Idiot” - film by Georges Lampin (France, 1946. Starring Gérard Philippe, his role in German translation voiced by actor Max Eckard)
• "The Idiot" - a film by Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1951)
• “Idiot” - film by Ivan Pyryev (USSR, 1958)
• The Idiot - TV series by Alan Bridges (UK, 1966)
• “The Idiot” - film by Alexandra Remizova (USSR, Vakhtangov Theater, 1979)
• “Crazy Love” - film by Andrzej Zulawski (France, 1985)
• “The Idiot” - television series by Mani Kaul (India, 1991)
• “Nastasya” - film by Andrzej Wajda (Poland, 1994)
• “Return of the Idiot” - film by Sascha Gedeon (Germany, Czech Republic, 1999)
• “Down House” - a parody film by Roman Kachanov (Russia, 2001)
• “Idiot” - television series by Vladimir Bortko (Russia, 2003)
• “The Idiot” - film by Pierre Leon (France, 2008)
• In August 2010, Estonian director Rainer Sarnet began filming the film “The Idiot” based on Dostoevsky’s book of the same name. The premiere took place on October 12

The novel “The Idiot” became the realization of the long-standing creative ideas of F.M. Dostoevsky, his main character- Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, according to the author’s judgment, is a “truly wonderful person”, he is the embodiment of goodness and Christian morality. And it is precisely because of his selflessness, kindness and honesty, his extraordinary love of humanity in the world of money and hypocrisy that those around him call Myshkin an “idiot.” Prince Myshkin spent most of his life in seclusion; when he went out into the world, he did not know what horrors of inhumanity and cruelty he would have to face. Lev Nikolaevich symbolically fulfills the mission of Jesus Christ and, just like him, perishes loving and forgiving humanity. Just like Christ, the prince, tries to help all the people who surround him, he allegedly tries to cure their souls with his kindness and incredible insight.

The image of Prince Myshkin is the center of the composition of the novel; all the plot lines and characters are connected with it: the family of General Epanchin, the merchant Rogozhin, Nastasya Filippovna, Ganya Ivolgin, etc. And also the center of the novel is the bright contrast between the virtue of Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin and the usual way of life of secular society . Dostoevsky was able to show that even for the heroes themselves this contrast looks terrifying; they did not understand this boundless kindness and therefore were afraid of it.

The novel is filled with symbols, here Prince Myshkin symbolizes Christian love, Nastasya Filippovna - beauty. The painting “Dead Christ” has a symbolic character, from the contemplation of which, according to Prince Myshkin, one can lose faith.

Lack of faith and spirituality become the reasons for the tragedy that happened at the end of the novel, the meaning of which is assessed differently. The author focuses on the fact that physical and spiritual beauty will perish in a world that values ​​only self-interest and profit as absolutes.

The writer astutely noticed the growth of individualism and the ideology of “Napoleonism.” Adhering to the ideas of individual freedom, he at the same time believed that unlimited self-will leads to inhumane acts. Dostoevsky viewed crime as the most typical manifestation of individualistic self-affirmation. He saw the revolutionary movement of his time as an anarchist rebellion. In his novel, he created not only an image of impeccable goodness equal to the biblical one, but also showed the development of the characters of all the heroes of the novel who interacted with Myshkin for the better.

Associated with this is a certain convention in describing how the prince’s character was formed. We only know about his severe mental illness, which he overcame in Switzerland, for a long time living outside civilization, far from modern people.

His return to Russia, to St. Petersburg seething with selfish passions, vaguely resembles the “second coming” of Christ to people in their confused, “sinful” life. Prince Myshkin has a special mission in the novel. According to the author, it is called upon to heal the souls of people stricken by selfishness. Just as Christianity took root in the world through the preaching of the twelve apostles, so Myshkin must revive in the world the lost faith in the highest good. By his arrival and active participation in the destinies of people, he must cause a chain reaction of good, demonstrate the healing power of the great Christian idea. The idea of ​​the novel is hiddenly polemical: Dostoevsky wants to prove that the socialist teaching about the powerlessness of individual good, about the impracticability of the idea of ​​“moral self-improvement” is absurdity.

Prince Myshkin is distinguished from all other heroes of the novel by his natural “childishness” and the associated “immediate purity of moral feeling.”

N. Tolstoy and therefore gave his hero the Tolstoyan name and patronymic - Lev Nikolaevich. In communicating with people around him, he does not recognize any class distinctions or other barriers born of civilization. Already in the reception room of General Epanchin, he behaves as an equal with his footman and leads the latter to think that “the prince is just a fool and has no ambition, because a smart prince, even with ambition, would not sit in the hall and talk about his affairs with the footman. ..". And yet, “for some reason he liked the prince,” and “no matter how strong the footman was, it was impossible not to maintain such a courteous and polite conversation.” Myshkin is completely free from false pride, which fetters the free and living movements of the soul in people. In St. Petersburg, everyone “takes care of themselves,” everyone is too concerned about the impression they make on others. Everyone, like Makar Devushkin, is very afraid of being considered funny, of revealing themselves.

The prince is completely devoid of egoism and is left by Dostoevsky with the open sources of his heart and soul. His “childishness” contains the rarest spiritual sensitivity and insight. He deeply feels someone else's "I", someone else's individuality and easily separates the genuine from the superficial, the sincere from the lie in a person. He sees that egoism is only an outer shell, under which hides the pure core of human individuality. With his gullibility, he easily breaks through the bark of vanity in people and releases from captivity the best, innermost qualities of their souls.

Unlike many, Myshkin is not afraid to be funny, he is not afraid of humiliation and offense. Having received a slap in the face from the proud Ganechka Ivolgin, he is very worried, but not for himself, but for Ganechka: “Oh, how ashamed you will be of your action!” He cannot be offended, because he is not occupied with himself, but with the soul of the offending person. He feels that a person who tries to humiliate another humiliates himself first of all.

Pushkin’s pan-humanity, the talent to embody the geniuses of other peoples with all the “hidden depth” of their spirit is manifested in Myshkin in his extraordinary calligraphic abilities, in the ability to convey features through calligraphy different cultures and even different human characters.

The prince easily forgives people for their selfishness, because he knows that any egoist, openly or secretly, deeply suffers from his selfishness and loneliness. Insightful, endowed with the gift of heartfelt understanding of another’s soul, Myshkin has a renewing and healing effect on everyone. With him, everyone becomes cleaner, more smiling, more trusting and more frank. But such impulses of heartfelt communication in people poisoned by the poison of egoism are both beneficial and dangerous nonetheless. Instant, momentary healings in these people are replaced by outbursts of even more frenzied pride. It turns out that with his influence the prince awakens cordiality and aggravates the contradictions of a sick, vain soul modern man. By saving the world, he provokes a disaster. This central, tragic line of the novel is revealed in the story of the prince’s love for Nastasya Filippovna. Meeting her is a kind of exam, a test of the prince’s ability to heal the painfully proud hearts of people. Myshkin's touch to her soul, wounded by life, not only does not soften, but exacerbates the contradictions inherent in it. The novel ends with the death of the heroine.

What's the matter? Why does a prince with a talent for healing people provoke a disaster? What does this catastrophe speak about: the inferiority of the ideal that the prince affirms, or the imperfection of people who are unworthy of his ideal?

Let's try to get to the answer to these difficult questions.

Nastasya Filippovna is a person who, in her youth, was given over to abuse and harbored a grudge against people and the world.

This mental wound constantly hurts Nastasya Filippovna and gives rise to a contradictory set of feelings. On the one hand, there is gullibility and innocence in her, secret shame for an undeserved but accomplished moral fall, and on the other hand, the consciousness of offended pride. This unbearable combination of opposing feelings - wounded pride and hidden gullibility - is noticed by the insightful Myshkin even before his direct acquaintance with the heroine, at one glance at her portrait: “It was as if immense pride and contempt, almost hatred were in this face, and at the same time something trusting, something surprisingly simple-minded."

In front of people, proud feelings of contempt for people rage on the surface of the heroine’s soul, sometimes leading her to cynical actions. But in this cynicism, she is only trying to prove to everyone that she disdains their low opinion of herself. And in the depths of that same soul, a sensitive, warm-hearted being awakens, thirsting for love and forgiveness. In her secret thoughts, Nastasya Filippovna is waiting for a person who will come to her and say: “You are not to blame,” and will understand and forgive...

And now the long-awaited miracle happens, such a person comes and even offers her his hand and heart. But instead of the expected peace, he brings Nastasya Filippovna worsening suffering. The appearance of the prince not only does not calm, but leads to a paradox, to a tragic rupture, the contradictory poles of her soul. Throughout the entire novel, Nastasya Filippovna is both drawn to Myshkin and pushed away from him. The stronger the attraction, the more decisive the repulsion: the fluctuations increase and end in disaster.

Reading the novel carefully, you become convinced that the heroine is attracted to Myshkin and repelled from him for two completely opposite psychological reasons.

Firstly, the prince, in her mind, is surrounded by an aura of holiness. It is so pure and beautiful that it is scary to touch it. Does she dare, after everything that happened to her, to defile him with her touch?

“I am, he says, well known. I was Totsky’s concubine.” Out of love for Myshkin, for his purity, she gives him up to another, more worthy one and steps aside.

Secondly, next to the psychological motives coming from the depths of her heart, other, already familiar to us, proud, proud feelings arise. Giving your hand to the prince means forgetting the insult, forgiving people the abyss of humiliation into which they threw her. Is it easy for a person, in whose soul everything sacred has been trampled for so long, to believe again in pure love, goodness and beauty? And wouldn’t such kindness be offensive for a humiliated person, causing a flash of pride? “In her pride,” says the prince, “she will never forgive me for my love.” Along with reverence before the shrine, anger is born. Nastasya Filippovna accuses the prince of placing himself too highly and that his compassion is humiliating.

Thus, the heroine is drawn to the prince out of a thirst for the ideal, love, forgiveness and at the same time is repelled from him, either for reasons of her own unworthiness, or out of motives of wounded pride, which does not allow her to forget the insult and accept love and forgiveness. “Pacification” does not occur in her soul; on the contrary, a “rebellion” grows, ending with her actually “running” into the knife of the merchant Rogozhin, who jealously loves her. And so tragic ending novel: “When, after many hours, the door opened and people came in, they found the murderer in complete unconsciousness and fever. The prince sat motionless on the mat next to him and quietly, each time at an explosion of screams or delirium of the patient, he hurried to run his trembling hand over his hairs and cheeks, as if caressing and calming him. But he no longer understood anything about what they were asking him, and did not recognize the people who entered and surrounded him.

This ending of the novel gives rise to conflicting interpretations. Many believe that Dostoevsky, willy-nilly, showed the collapse of the great mission of salvation and renewal of the world on the path of Christian improvement of people.

But a different interpretation of the novel seems more reliable. It is not without reason that the idea is expressed that “heaven is a difficult thing.” The prince's Christian goodness and mercy really exacerbate the contradictions in the souls of people captured by selfishness. But the aggravation of contradictions testifies that their souls are not indifferent to such goodness. Before good triumphs, a tense and even tragic struggle with evil in the minds of people is inevitable. And Myshkin’s spiritual death occurs only when he, to the best of his strength and capabilities, gave himself entirely to people, planting the seeds of goodness in their hearts. Only through suffering will humanity obtain the inner light of the Christian ideal. Let us remember Dostoevsky’s favorite words from the Gospel: “Truly, truly, I say to you, even if a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

The question of the system of “The Idiot”—despite its apparent “formality”—requires special ideological forewarning. First of all, because of the originality of the hero, his special position not only within the framework of the novel dedicated to him, but also within the framework of Dostoevsky’s work as a whole.

The author himself felt this extraordinaryness quite acutely. Already at the first stages of work, Dostoevsky knew: “<...>The whole thing comes out in the form of a hero.” After the publication of the book, regretting that much in it remained unexpressed, the writer was nevertheless inclined to consider those readers closest to himself who preferred “The Idiot” to all his creations.

It is not surprising that in the process of scientific analysis the hero has a certain almost personal impact on the researcher. The concepts of the novel are determined largely by the writer’s attitude towards Prince Myshkin. The rejection of the hero as a “positively beautiful person” dictates conclusions that are outwardly heterogeneous, but united in essence - the thesis about the “under-embodiment” of the central character (K. Mochulsky), a re-emphasis of the work, in which its center is not “Prince Christ”, and a rebellious heroine (as in the sadly famous book by V. Ermilov) or an interpretation of the tragedy of the finale in the spirit of the prince’s guilt (the atheistic opponents of Dostoevsky of the 30-60s and today’s orthodox religious interpreters unexpectedly agree on this last thought).

Impression from Dostoevsky's novels, as a rule, arises from two successive, qualitatively polar states. At first you become infected with the atmosphere of thunder and chaos that reigns in the world of his heroes. And only then the harmonious author’s plan, the order by which true art lives, is revealed. In the novel “The Idiot” the harmonic principle plays a special role. It contains not only the source of formal, consolidating unity (the word “harmony” in Homer means “fasteners”, “nails”).

Compositional harmony here is an analogue of the image of a perfect life that Myshkin knows as reality. The face of harmony in this work of Dostoevsky (unlike “Crime and Punishment” or “Demons”) is revealed directly - in the face of the hero. All the main properties of the construction of “The Idiot” are determined by this person, the degree and nature of Myshkin’s influence on the other heroes of the novel. The static section of the composition (in other words, the main principle of the arrangement of characters) is the confrontation between the “Prince Christ” and everyone who surrounds him. The system and meaning of this comparison have been sufficiently clarified by modern literary criticism. Let us clarify only one thing - how the “individuality” of “The Idiot” was expressed against the background of the classic Russian single-center novel. The antithesis - the hero and others - is not justified here by the scale of the individual (Pechorin), the level of intelligence (Rudin), representation on behalf of a social group (Bazarov, Molotov) or the completeness of the typical (Oblomov). Behind the figure of a “positively beautiful person” in Dostoevsky there is something incomparably greater - involvement in the highest truth. It's involvement. The finite human shell is unable to contain the Absolute. Moreover, the Earth - earthly forms of being and consciousness - cannot contain it. “Christ is God, as far as the Earth could reveal God” (24; 244), says the “Notebook of 1876 - 1877.” Dostoevsky does not decipher this statement, almost mysterious in its unorthodoxy. But he speaks somewhat more definitely about man as a generic being: “Man is a being on earth, only developing, and therefore not complete, but transitional.”

Subsequently, this idea will be transferred to Kirillov. In order to withstand the “presence of the highest harmony” for more than five seconds, it is said in “Demons,” “you must change physically...”. Until that time - “foolishness”, “the opposite gesture”, the darkness of epilepsy - the price for the insight of the ideal. Myshkin is not equal to the truth he represents. But in this inequality itself there is a certain artistic magic. The work, despite its rare formal completeness and “roundness” in Dostoevsky, does not close on itself. The infinity that shines through the figure of the hero expands the clear boundaries of the novel’s “construction.”

Let us return, however, to this “building” itself, to its structural foundations. Unlike “Crimes and Punishments”, where the plot is organized by the hero's deed and its consequences, “The Idiot” is a novel of relationships. The action unfolds here as a string of scenes connected by narrative bridges. As a rule, these are scenes of two types: a steam room, where a “close-up” of a separate human destiny, and the conclave is a moment of intersection of many destinies, a clash of everyone with everyone, taking place under conditions of extreme psychological and plot tension. There are also intermediate scenes that unite several persons. They approach pairs if the prince’s opponents act as a psychological unity (the episode of breakfast at the Epanchins), or to a conclave if their aspirations are multidirectional (Nastasya Filippovna’s arrival at the Ivolgins). Myshkin is a participant in all significant episodes, but the nature of his communication with others in the setting of a chamber meeting or a crowded meeting is different. Sometimes this difference is interpreted as a kind of key to understanding the hero's tragedy.

Thus, analyzing the performance of Innokenty Smoktunovsky in the BDT play, N. Ya. Berkovsky noticed something unexpected and repeated: Prince Myshkin “establishes relationships between himself and each individual and, it would seem, achieves complete success every time.” But “as soon as the resurrected souls come into contact with others, also resurrected, everything achieved by Prince Myshkin collapses in an instant.” The paired scenes thus represent a chain of moral victories for the hero; conclaves are his unconditional defeats.

This idea, seductive in its vivid certainty and therefore completely justified as a principle of the play’s structure, is only partially confirmed by the novel. The relationship between the prince and the “others” is generally more complex. The nature of the correlation between paired scenes and conclaves changes at different stages of the novel's action - in the “course of the structure of the thing” (S. Eisenstein’s expression).

This move confronts us with the problem of composition as internal movement works. In its dynamic section, the composition “Idiot” is determined by the counter-movement of two polar forces. The novel opens the coming of the “Prince Christ” to people. His attraction to them is unambiguous and simple. The reciprocal desire of “others” for the prince is complex and varied in quality. It is generated by impulses different levels. The lowest is movement with almost no direction. These fluctuations of endless intrigue are the sphere of activity of Lebedev, Varya Ivolgina, and partly Ippolit. Their secret plans, minor dashes, betrayal “for the sake of business” and “for the sake of art” have little effect on the actions of the main characters. But they create a flickering background of eternal restlessness. This pulsating plasma demonstrates the main property of the “age of vices and railways” - the activity of separation, the struggle of all against all, “anthropophagy”.

Its most striking manifestation, a form that emphasizes the incompatibility of individual interests, is the rivalry simmering around two women. Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaya, by the feeling they arouse in those around them, are the focus of a movement opposite to the harmonizing influence of the prince. However, we seem to have completely forgotten the hero. The world of “anthropophagy” can exist without it. Maybe, but in artistic space the novel does not exist. Everything is superimposed on the inherent and exclusive attraction to “Prince Christ” for everyone. Centripetal movement absorbs civil strife and is colored by it. The dialectic of interaction between polar forces determines the course and meaning of all the twists and turns of the novel’s plot. The development of action passes through two parallel and qualitatively different stages. In the first, which coincides with the first part of the novel, the main conflicts are outlined and specific solutions are preceded, although without “obligation”. The second, expanding the circle of people and events, varies and complicates a given set of problems and forms. The foreseen comes true - with the immutability of the inevitable and the freedom of random life incarnations. The beginning of the plot movement in the novel reveals the prerequisites for the action - it introduces a hero who is opposed to the world and gravitates towards the world.

The course of the construction of the first part is a turning point from the ever-growing expectation of harmony to the triumph of chaos. The role of the prince here is drawn close to the scheme outlined in the work of N. Ya. Berkovsky. The first meeting - a conversation in a carriage - is perceived as a model of relationships that develop at the first stage of the hero's path to people. Having started a road conversation with barbs and hostility, Rogozhin ends it with an unexpected confession: “Prince, I don’t know why I fell in love with you. Maybe because at that moment I met him, but I met him too (he pointed to Lebedev), but I didn’t love him.”. The chain of paired scenes following this episode is a ladder of Myshkin’s brilliant victories. The spectacle of these victories is so fascinating, the hero’s rise is so rapid that attention almost does not capture the rational methodicality (worthy of the author of “Oblomov”) with which Dostoevsky introduces the reader to the character of a “positively wonderful person.”

The exposition, fused with the plot, subordinated to its dynamics, ends quite late - only in the middle of the first part, when the main word is finally said about the hero. The Epanchins, who “examined” the prince, unraveled the mission of the strange guest: he came to teach, prophesy, and save. The episode at the Ivolgins, the first scene close to the conclave, is a direct implementation of this mission. By taking upon himself anger addressed to another, exposing himself to a slap in the face, Prince Myshkin not only pacified the whirlwind of hostile passions, he brought to the surface human souls hidden layers of goodness.

Next to Nastasya Filippovna, who “woke up” at his word, next to the repentant Ganya, the touched Varya, and Kolya, who is in love with him, the hero seems almost omnipotent. A real conclave - a disaster at Nastasya Filippovna's party - reveals the illusory nature of the ideas that have arisen. Prince Myshkin is no longer a winner. But let’s not simplify it: what happened cannot be regarded as a direct defeat. The Conclave has no winners at all.

“Catastrophe,” writes M. M. Bakhtin, is the opposite of triumph and apotheosis. Essentially, it is devoid of elements of catharsis.” Not knowing the winners, the conclave marks the purely vanquished: “scapegoats” are singled out - victims of general desecration. In the “scene by the fireplace” it is, of course, Ganechka. The prince, by Nastasya Filippovna’s treatment of him, is exalted and plunged into immeasurable sorrow. In its tone, the finale of the first part anticipates the general outcome of the novel's action. The second part, in terms of the content and form of the initial episodes, varies the beginning of the first, but varies in such a way that the “amendment” immediately takes into account sad meaning already happened. Again Myshkin comes to St. Petersburg. Again he meets with Lebedev and Rogozhin. The paired scenes here also model the nature of the relationship that will unfold in the future. But this model is different than when it was put into operation. The hero has subtly changed. Full of hopes and plans, he is at the same time captured by the returning illness, immersed in forebodings.

Accordingly, the course of the key couple scene—the meeting with Rogozhin—changed. The episode is oversaturated with dark details (from haunting eyes to Holbein's painting), and is painfully slow. Its result is two contrasting plot peaks: the exchange of crosses and a knife raised over Myshkin. This is how the new character of people’s attitude towards the prince expresses itself in its utmost manifestation - not the former unconditional acceptance, but the destructive rhythm of attraction and repulsion. It is outlined a little earlier - all in the same “scene by the fireplace”, in the breaks in Nastasya Filippovna’s behavior in the face of Myshkin and Rogozhin. Her rush from one to another, her refusal of the one in whom for the first time in her life “as in truly devoted person believed,” can hardly be interpreted as conscious self-sacrifice. The underlying basis is, most likely, an irresistible subconscious impulse.

The already quoted entry by Dostoevsky dated April 16, 1864 helps to understand it: “<...>Man strives on earth for an ideal that is opposite to his nature.”. The heroes of the novel, succumbing to the impulse of a passionate craving for the embodied ideal, then just as passionately take revenge on him and themselves for their inability to stay at his level. The paired scene with Rogozhin transforms what might have seemed exceptional in Nastasya Filippovna’s behavior into an immutable law. This is exactly how Myshkin’s relationship with most of the heroes will now unfold: from Lebedev to Ippolit and Aglaya. Alienation penetrates into the area where the prince initially seemed omnipotent. The process of intensifying human isolation finds a new, specific structural equivalent in the second half of the novel - a multiplicity of “parallel plots”. In the first part, the possibility of these parallels is outlined, but not realized. “Additional” plot material fits there in closed insert short stories. It is precisely because of their completeness that such short stories do not “compete” with the main line and are easily absorbed by the plot flow. Another thing is “plots, that is, stories that continue throughout the entire novel.” Their very presence is an encroachment on the hegemony of the center. The secondary characters of the novel “revolt” against their own unimportance, and do not agree to be interesting to the reader only to the extent of their participation in the affairs of the main persons. The history of work on “The Idiot” reveals an interesting psychological phenomenon: Dostoevsky, having published half of the novel, continues to “invent” plans in which the first roles are given to persons who have essentially already retired from the game (Ghana, for example). And in the white text, Gavrila Ardalionovich, after his mortal shame, is still going to conquer Aglaia. Hippolytus, after the “necessary explanation,” does not die, but becomes intrigued and angry. General Ivolgin takes hours from Myshkin, who is sentenced to disaster, to “memory” about Napoleon. The first part of the novel demonstrated one-centeredness as the predominant principle of the composition of the whole. Starting from the second part, this principle has not been canceled, but has been supplemented by the opposite - the autonomy of side lines. On the second paths there are now even conclaves - the centers of the parts highlighted by the author.

So, the conclave of the second part - the Epanchins and the nihilists visiting Myshkin. The third conclave is the “necessary explanation” of Hippolytus and the tragicomedy of his “unexplained” suicide. The hypertrophy of additional plots in the novel not only multiplies vital material. In stories and thoughts minor characters the ideological subtext of the central events is revealed. The kinship of “distant concepts” is established: Nastasya Filippovna’s revenge and the challenge that Ippolit poses to higher powers, Keller’s naively cunning extortions and Prince Myshkin’s “double thoughts”; interpretations of the Apocalypse and St. Petersburg reality. The splitting of a single plot core brings with it not only fragmentation, but also the accumulation of internal community.

Both Dostoevsky- symptoms of the approaching finale. During the second and third parts they are still barely noticeable. The conclaves of these parts, lying on “parallel plots,” do not undermine the position of the main character. The situation will change the moment when he himself turns out to be the center of universal “examination” and ridicule - namely, the conclave of the last, fourth part of the novel. This is the scene of an evening at the Epanchins' - a gathering of guests, unusual for them in its level, a social "bride" for Aglaya's groom. Everything that happens to the prince during these “shows” - inappropriate animation, a passionate sermon, and a broken vase, and the seizure of epilepsy that overtook him - should come down to a single conclusion: “he is an impossible groom.” But, oddly enough, this conclusion has almost no effect on Myshkin’s everyday situation. Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who had decided to attack him, suddenly challenged herself: “I would drive away all those yesterday,--she declares to Aglaya,--but she left him, that’s the kind of person he is...”

The evening scene touches on something incomparably more important in relation to the prince than the reputation of the groom - the hero’s supra-domestic status changes. For the first time, Myshkin acts as a preacher before the guests of the Epanchins. The meaning of his sermon, as has been noted more than once in Dostoevsky, is close to the ideological complex of Dostoevsky, the author of “The Diary of a Writer.” In this capacity, Myshkin’s speech about Catholicism and Orthodoxy has repeatedly attracted the attention of researchers. So, G. Pomerantz believes that the very fact of her presence in the novel violates the internal harmony of the image of “Prince Christ”. “Myshkin,” writes the researcher, “cannot preach, like Dostoevsky, foaming at the mouth, that Catholicism is atheism.” I do not dispute this psychologically accurate remark. But I think that in compositional terms, the episode of the hero’s frenzied speech in highest degree necessary and justified. As it progresses, the nature of the prince’s relationship with those around him again “breaks”.

In the face of Myshkin, for the first time, the face of Don Quixote is directly visible (until then, the possibility of such a contact was only declared by Aglaya). With a previously unusual deafness, the prince does not feel the reaction of those with whom he speaks; like the hero of Cervantes, he sees what does not exist, takes one thing for another. From the moment of the conclave, the center of which becomes the main character, the reader has a feeling of an approaching catastrophe. One of its most poignant moments is the meeting of the rivals. Myshkin finds himself on it almost involuntarily (just as at one time he almost involuntarily took on the role of the “groom”). It may seem that this “involuntary” releases him from responsibility for what happened. In any case, this is what the author of the work we have already mentioned, A.P. Skaftymov, thinks. “The prince’s double love,” writes the scientist, “becomes a conflict not within himself, but only outside him, in the proud rivalry of those jealous of him. For the prince himself, the question of choice did not exist<...>" The question, indeed, did not exist, but the choice was nevertheless made through Myshkin. By his own will or in spite of it, the prince found himself a participant in a situation where the most humane decision is not free from evil. While saving Nastasya Filippovna, he dealt a terrible blow to Aglaya. And therefore - guilty without guilt. Not in the same way, of course, as Evgeniy Pavlovich, who commented on his behavior, imagines it. The prince is guilty of serving as an unwitting instrument of disunity. However - not for long. The inertia of separation, which hit him with a ricochet, is completely removed by the mystery of mortal brotherhood with Rogozhin - near the dead Nastasya Filippovna: “Meanwhile, it was completely dawn, finally, he lay down on the pillows, as if completely helpless and in despair, and pressed his face to Rogozhin’s pale and motionless face; tears flowed from his eyes onto Rogozhin’s cheeks...”.

The people who came to them “They found the killer completely unconscious and in a fever. The prince sat motionless on the mat next to him and quietly, every time there was an outburst of screams or delirium of the patient, he hurried to run his trembling hand over his hair and cheeks, as if caressing and calming him. But he no longer understood anything of what they were asking him about, and did not recognize the people who entered and surrounded him.” The last gesture of Prince Myshkin is the most touching and majestic of what Dostoevsky gave to his hero. The action ends with a high spectacle of tragic harmony - the embodiment of an ideal, not realized, but not shaken in its moral beauty. The finale carries with it an undeniable exhaustion of the plot and a “rounded” form.

Those force fields that, up to the fourth part of the novel, unfolded in parallel (the centers of Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaya) are coming together. The paths of Rogozhin and Myshkin cross for the last time. The final episodes take on a throwback character. Not endlessly following the trajectory of the ring - the ending of “The Idiot” gives rise to a feeling of almost complete stoppage of movement. Let's verify this by recalling specific plot points. The beginning of the novel offers a sequence of this kind: the declaration of the title - “The Idiot”, Myshkin’s message about treatment in Switzerland, Rogozhin’s story about the first meeting with Nastasya Filippovna. The end varies similar moments: Rogozhin’s story about his last stay with Nastasya Filippovna, Schneider’s supposed phrase about Myshkin: “Idiot,” a message about treatment in Switzerland (now useless).

Compositional closure of this type is a formal analogue of the thought that is hidden in the presence of Hans Holbein’s painting “Christ in the Tomb” in the work. In the picture, described by Dostoevsky with the utmost mercilessness, the death of Christ is not an allegory, but a reality. That reality that obliges a person, which does not allow him, feeling sorry for himself, to turn away from horror. What disturbs the soul has happened, happened, and no matter what follows the past - resurrection into a new life or the cynicism of decay - the earthly loss remains irreplaceable. The inviolability of the ideal does not save us from the pain of losing an ideal being.

Dostoevsky does not seek to confirm “faith” with a “miracle.” The thread of light left in the world by Prince Myshkin is painfully weak. The only unconditional argument in defense of the hero is the moral and aesthetic beauty of his appearance, the charm - non-rational, defeating logic - which is communicated to him by the likeness of the One who is “the great and ultimate ideal of the development of all mankind”.

Dostoevsky's works, first of all, amaze with the extraordinary variety of types and varieties of words, and these types and varieties are given in their most dramatic expression. The multidirectional two-voiced word, moreover, internally dialogized, and the reflected foreign word clearly predominate: hidden polemic, polemically colored confession, hidden dialogue. Dostoevsky hardly has a word without intensely looking back at someone else's word. At the same time, he has almost no objective words, because the speeches of the heroes are given such a setting that deprives them of any objectivity. What is striking, further, is the constant and sharp alternation of the most diverse types of words. Sharp and unexpected transitions from parody to internal polemic, from polemic to hidden dialogue, from hidden dialogue to stylization of calm hagiographic tones, from them again to a parodic story and, finally, to an extremely tense open dialogue - such is the agitated verbal surface of these works. All this is intertwined with a deliberately dull thread of protocol informational word, the ends and beginnings of which are difficult to catch; but even on this very dry protocol word bright reflections or thick shadows of nearby statements fall and give it, too, a peculiar and ambiguous tone.

But the point, of course, is not just the diversity of abrupt changes in verbal types and the predominance among them of two-voiced internally dialogued words. The originality of Dostoevsky lies in the special placement of these verbal types and varieties between the main compositional elements of the work.

How and at what moments of the verbal whole does the author’s final semantic authority realize itself? This question is very easy to answer for a monologue novel. Whatever the types of words introduced by the author-monologist, and whatever their compositional placement, the author's understanding and assessments must dominate all others and must form a compact and unambiguous whole. Any strengthening of other people's intonations in this or that word, in this or that section of the work is only a game that the author allows, so that his own direct or refracted word then sounds more energetically. Any dispute between two voices in one word for its possession, for dominance in it, is predetermined, it is only an apparent dispute; All meaningful author's understandings will sooner or later come together to one speech center and one consciousness, all accents - to one voice.

Dostoevsky's artistic task was completely different. He is not afraid of the most extreme activation of multidirectional accents in a two-voice word; on the contrary, this activation is precisely what he needs for his goals; after all, the plurality of voices should not be removed, but should triumph in his novel.

The stylistic significance of someone else's word in Dostoevsky's works is enormous. It lives a very intense life here. The main stylistic connections for Dostoevsky are not connections between words in the plane of one monologue statement; the main ones are dynamic, intense connections between statements, between independent and full-fledged speech and semantic centers, not subject to the verbal-semantic dictatorship of a monological single style and single tone.

We will consider the word in Dostoevsky, its life in the work and its functions in the implementation of the polyphonic task in connection with those compositional unities in which the word functions: in the unity of the monological self-statement of the hero, in the unity of the story - the story of the narrator or the story from the author - and, finally , in the unity of dialogue between the characters. This will be the order of our consideration.

The confession of Hippolytus introduced into the novel (“My Necessary Explanation”) is a classic example of a confession with a loophole, just as Hippolytus’s most unsuccessful suicide was, by design, a suicide with a loophole. This plan of Ippolit is basically correctly defined by Myshkin. Answering Aglaya, who suggests that Ippolit wanted to shoot himself so that she would later read his confession, Myshkin says: “That is, this is... how can I tell you? It's very difficult to say. Only he probably wanted everyone to surround him and tell him that they loved and respected him very much, and everyone would really beg him to stay alive. It may very well be that he had you all in mind most, because at such a moment he mentioned you... although, perhaps, he himself did not know that he had you in mind” (VI, 484).

This, of course, is not a crude calculation, this is precisely the loophole that Hippolytus’s will leaves and which confuses his attitude towards himself to the same extent as his attitude towards others. Therefore, the voice of Hippolytus is just as internally incomplete, just as unaware of the point, as the voice of the “underground man.” No wonder he the last word(what the confession was supposed to be) and in fact it turned out to be not the last, since the suicide failed.

In contrast to this hidden attitude toward recognition by others, which determines the entire style and tone of the whole, are Hippolytus’ open declarations that determine the content of his confession: independence from someone else’s court, indifference to it and the manifestation of self-will. “I don’t want to leave,” he says, “without leaving a word in response, a free word, not a forced one, not for justification, - oh, no! I have no one to ask for forgiveness and nothing for, but this is because I want it myself” (VI, 468). His entire image is based on this contradiction; it determines his every thought and every word.

Intertwined with this personal word of Hippolytus about himself is the ideological word, which, like that of the “underground man,” is addressed to the universe, addressed with protest; The expression of this protest should also be suicide. His thought about the world develops in the forms of dialogue with some higher power that has offended him.

The mutual orientation of Myshkin’s speech with someone else’s word is also very intense, but is of a slightly different nature. And Myshkin’s inner speech develops dialogically both in relation to himself and in relation to others. He, too, speaks not about himself, not about another, but with himself and with another, and the anxiety of these internal dialogues is great. But he is driven more by fear of his own word (in relation to another) than by fear of someone else’s word. His reservations, inhibitions, etc., are explained in most cases precisely by this fear, ranging from simple delicacy towards another and ending with a deep and fundamental fear of saying the decisive, final word about another. He is afraid of his thoughts about another, his suspicions and assumptions. In this regard, his internal dialogue before Rogozhin’s attempt on his life is very typical.

True, according to Dostoevsky’s plan, Myshkin is already the bearer of a soulful word, that is, a word that is capable of actively and confidently intervening in the internal dialogue of another person, helping him recognize his own voice. At one of the moments of the most dramatic interruption of voices in Nastasya Filippovna, when she is desperately playing the “fallen woman” in Ganichka’s apartment, Myshkin introduces an almost decisive tone into her internal dialogue:

“And you’re not ashamed! Are you who you now seem to be? Yes, can it be! - the prince suddenly cried out with deep heartfelt reproach.

Nastasya Filippovna was surprised, grinned, but, as if hiding something under her smile, somewhat confused, looked at Ganya and left the living room. But, not yet reaching the hallway, she suddenly turned back, quickly walked up to Nina Alexandrovna, took her hand and raised it to her lips.

“I’m really not like that, he guessed right,” she whispered quickly, hotly, all of a sudden flushed and flushed, and, turning, she left this time so quickly that no one had time to figure out why she was returning” (VI , 136).

He knows how to say similar words and with the same effect to Gana, and Rogozhin, and Elizaveta Prokofievna, and others. But this heartfelt word, the call to one of the other’s voices as the true one, according to Dostoevsky’s plan, is never decisive in Myshkin. It is devoid of any final confidence and authority and often simply breaks down. Even he does not know a solid and integral monologue. The internal dialogism of his words is as great and as restless as that of other heroes.

Dostoevsky's hero's self-awareness is entirely dialogic: at every moment it is turned outward, intensely turning to himself, to another, to a third. Outside of this living appeal to oneself and to others, it does not exist for oneself. In this sense, we can say that Dostoevsky’s man is the subject of treatment. You cannot talk about him, you can only address him. Those “depths of the human soul,” the depiction of which Dostoevsky considered the main task of his realism “in the highest sense,” are revealed only in intense treatment. It is impossible to master the inner man, to see and understand him, by making him the object of indifferent neutral analysis, nor by merging with him, feeling into him. No, you can approach him and you can open him up - or rather, force him to open up - only by communicating with him, dialogically. And portray inner man, as Dostoevsky understood him, is possible only by depicting his communication with another. Only in communication, in the interaction of man with man, is the “man in man” revealed, both for others and for himself.

It is quite clear that in the center art world Dostoevsky must have dialogue, and dialogue not as a means, but as an end in itself. Dialogue here is not a prelude to action, but the action itself. It is not a means of revealing, discovering a person’s ready-made character; no, here a person not only manifests himself on the outside, but for the first time becomes what he is, we repeat, not only for others, but also for himself. To be means to communicate dialogically. When the dialogue ends, everything ends. Therefore, the dialogue, in essence, cannot and should not end. In terms of his religious-utopian worldview, Dostoevsky transfers the dialogue to eternity, thinking of it as eternal co-joy, co-admiration, agreement. In terms of the novel, this is given as the incompleteness of the dialogue, and initially as its evil infinity.

Everything in Dostoevsky’s novels converges on dialogue, on dialogic opposition as its center. Everything is a means, dialogue is the goal. One voice ends nothing and resolves nothing. Two voices are the minimum of life, the minimum of being. Dostoevsky novel idiot Myshkin

The potential infinity of the dialogue in Dostoevsky’s plan already in itself solves the question that such a dialogue cannot be a plot dialogue in the strict sense of the word, for a plot dialogue just as necessarily strives for an end as the plot event itself, of which it is, in essence, a moment. , is. Therefore, Dostoevsky’s dialogue, as we have already said, is always extra-plot, that is, internally independent of the plot relationship of the speakers, although, of course, it is prepared by the plot. For example, the dialogue between Myshkin and Rogozhin is a “person to person” dialogue, and not at all a dialogue between two rivals, although it was precisely rivalry that brought them together. The core of the dialogue is always outside the plot, no matter how plot-intensive it is (for example, Aglaya’s dialogue with Nastasya Filippovna). But the shell of the dialogue is always deeply plot-driven.

For correct understanding In Dostoevsky's plan, it is very important to take into account his assessment of the role of another person as an “other,” for his main artistic effects are achieved by passing the same word through different voices opposing each other.

Nastasya Filippovna’s voice, as we have seen, split into a voice recognizing her as guilty, a “fallen woman,” and a voice justifying and accepting her. Her speeches are full of an intermittent combination of these two voices: first one prevails, then the other, but neither can completely defeat the other. The accents of each voice are enhanced or interrupted by the real voices of other people. Judgmental voices cause her to exaggerate the accents of her accusing voice to spite these others. Therefore, her repentance begins to sound like the repentance of Stavrogin or - closer in stylistic expression - like the repentance of a “man from the underground”. When she comes to Ganya’s apartment, where, as she knows, she is being judged, she plays the role of a cocotte out of spite, and only Myshkin’s voice, intersecting with her internal dialogue in the other direction, makes her abruptly change this tone and respectfully kiss Ganya’s mother’s hand, above which she had just mocked. The place of Myshkin and his real voice in the life of Nastasya Filippovna is determined by this connection between him and one of the lines of her internal dialogue. “Didn’t I dream about you myself? You’re right, I’ve been dreaming about it for a long time, back in his village, I lived alone for five years; you think and think, sometimes you dream and dream - and I kept imagining someone like you, kind, honest, good and just as stupid, who would suddenly come and say: “It’s not your fault, Nastasya Filippovna, but I adore you!" Yes, it used to be that you daydream that you’ll go crazy…” (VI. 197). She heard this anticipated remark of another person in the real voice of Myshkin, who almost literally repeats it at the fateful evening at Nastasya Filippovna’s.

Rogozhin’s production is different. From the very beginning, he becomes for Nastasya Filippovna a symbol for embodiment from the second voice. “I’m Rozhinskaya,” she repeats repeatedly. To go out with Rogozhin, to go to Rogozhin, means for her to fully embody and realize her second voice. Rogozhin, who trades and buys her, and his carousings are a viciously exaggerated symbol of her fall. This is unfair to Rogozhin, because he, especially at the beginning, is not at all inclined to condemn her, but he knows how to hate her. Rogozhin has the knife, and she knows it. This is how this group is built. The real voices of Myshkin and Rogozhin intertwine and intersect with the voices of Nastasya Filippovna’s internal dialogue. The interruptions in her voice turn into plot interruptions in her relationship with Myshkin and Rogozhin: repeated flight from the aisle with Myshkin to Rogozhin and from him again to Myshkin, hatred and love for Aglaya.[

Thus, the external compositionally expressed dialogue is inextricably linked with the internal dialogue, that is, with microdialogue, and to a certain extent relies on it. And both of them are also inextricably linked with the large dialogue of the novel that embraces them as a whole. Dostoevsky's novels are entirely dialogical.

Like everyone great artist words, Dostoevsky knew how to hear and bring to artistic and creative consciousness new aspects of the word, new depths in it, very weakly and subduedly used by other artists before him. Dostoevsky is important not only to the usual visual and expressive functions of the word for an artist, and not only to the ability to objectively recreate the social and individual uniqueness of the characters’ speeches; what is most important for him is the dialogic interaction of speeches, whatever their linguistic features. After all, the main subject of his depiction is the word itself, and a full-meaning word at that. Dostoevsky's works are a word about a word, addressed to a word. The depicted word converges with the depicting word on the same level and on equal terms. They penetrate each other, overlap each other from different dialogical angles. As a result of this meeting, new sides and new functions of the word are revealed and come to the fore, which we tried to characterize in this chapter.