Parfen Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna. Parfen Rogozhin

“Can something that has no image appear in an image?”

“Idiot” (8; 340)

Once, after my report on “The Idiot”, read in Staraya Russa, a stranger approached me and introduced himself: “Vladimir Ilyich ... Rogozhin.” To my great regret, I was unable to find out anything about the person (with such a first name, patronymic and such a surname!), who, according to him, was afraid to listen to my report on Rogozhin. Yes, I myself would not want to bear the name of a hero whose image is associated, at least for me, with thoughts about Fate. There is hardly a person who would not at least once in his life think about whether fate exists and what it represents. In everyday life, we constantly hear the words “such is fate,” “that means it’s not fate,” and the like. Ideas about fate are associated with such fundamental oppositions of mythological consciousness as Good and Evil, Life and Death and others. The concept of fate can be considered in the everyday consciousness of a person, in individual worldview systems, in religious systems, in philosophy (in a variety of aspects: “Freedom and Necessity”; “Fate and Chance”; “Death and Fate”; “Love of Fate” ( Amor fati) or “Hatred of Doom” (Odium Fati), etc.). I am interested, first of all, in the content of the concept of fate in Dostoevsky’s artistic work and, in particular, in the novel “The Idiot,” whose heroes are the first among Dostoevsky’s many characters to be remembered when thinking about fate. Both in his works and in his correspondence, Dostoevsky quite often uses the words “fate”, “fate”, “fate”, “providence”. In the “Diary of a Writer” (September 1877) there is the following heading: “Who is knocking at the door? Who will come in? Inevitable Fate” (26; 21). In “The Idiot” the word “fate” is repeatedly mentioned by Dostoevsky in connection with the name of Myshkin. According to Nastasya Filippovna, if she married the prince, she would ruin his “entire destiny.” On the last pages of the novel it turns out that the “further fate of the prince” was arranged partly through the efforts of Kolya, who turned to Radomsky. “Evgeny Pavlovich took the most ardent part in the fate of the unfortunate “idiot,” and as a result of his efforts and care, the prince ended up again abroad in Schneider’s Swiss establishment” (8; 179, 508). However, on a metaphysical level, Myshkin’s fate is determined not by them, but by his rival, who makes a “broad gesture”, speaking of Nastasya Filippovna: “So take her, if it’s fate! Yours! I yield!.. Remember Rogozhin!” (8; 186). The Christian understanding of fate as the result of the unknowable Will of God coexists in the writer with the mythological idea of ​​fate as a completely natural cause of any ugliness, as an “incomprehensible force, the action of which determines both individual events and the whole life of a person,” as impersonal, blind, “dark invisible force” that does not have a distinct anthropomorphic appearance. Dostoevsky, in whose literary works Fate is often personified, managed to depict in the novel something that usually defies description. The author of “The Idiot” does not just talk about Fate, does not just convey an idea of ​​it, but makes it tangible, visible, “material” thanks to the image of Rogozhin he created, which is, in my opinion, the “embodiment” of Myshkin’s fate, and also thanks to the described in the novel Holbein’s painting “The Dead Christ”. So who is Parfen Rogozhin: “only an unhappy man” (as Myshkin said about him) or, in the words of A. Blok, “the most terrible face” of the novel, “the embodiment of chaos and non-existence”? This characterization of the hero, belonging to a poet who had a subtle feeling and deep understanding of Dostoevsky, has its own truth, which, however, does not negate the words about the tragedy of the image of Rogozhin, in which there is much that is purely human. K.V. Mochulsky called him “Raskolnikov’s spiritual brother,” for Rogozhin “is also a tragic hero who fell under the power of fate<...>and fate leads him to murder<...>God and the devil are fighting for his soul.” But this is only one side of the coin. And the other is that the image of Rogozhin, as I will try to show, is also a personification of Rock, Fate. Being Myshkin’s personal demon, which determines his fate, Rogozhin is “burdened by his demonism,” and, therefore, he, like Lermontov’s Demon, is a deeply tragic figure. Romano Guardini astutely noted that in Dostoevsky’s world there is no figure akin to Rogozhin, this “peculiar, terrible and touching man.” “It looks like he was only halfway out of the ground.” “He is entirely at the mercy of earthly forces.” Rogozhin is connected with Myshkin by close ties - “but in the same way that a native of the underworld can be connected with a creature from the kingdom of light. Both of them cannot be denied in scale, but the habitat of one of them is the earth, the other the light.<...>Myshkin stands in a stream of light, but he himself is in the dark.” Rogozhin, of course, is a man, but only half a man. The other half of it makes us remember those chthonic creatures (from the Greek chtonos - “earth”), which include not only monsters, reptiles and animals among them associated with death and the other world, but also dead people living in the afterlife. Rogozhin’s deceased grandfather and father appear to be not so much patron ancestors, who were called “holy grandfathers-parents,” but rather “pledged dead” - “creatures of a demonic nature, close to evil spirits.” Ghosts are closely associated with them. As representatives of the underworld, the world of the dead, the ancestors passed on their chthonic essence to Parfen, thanks to which Rogozhin is able to appear to Hippolytus as a ghost, which is associated with a tarantula - an earthen spider. Being an ordinary person operating in the world of everyday life, he at the same time possesses an almost complete set of chthonic characteristics, which indicates his connection with the afterlife (the same can, however, be said about Murin, Svidrigailov, Stavrogin and other heroes of Dostoevsky). At the very beginning of the novel, Rogozhin is called “black-haired” three times and “dark-faced” 12 times. This alone speaks of his demonism and connection with the underworld, because it is known that among dozens of names of the devil there are the following: black power, black, king of darkness, prince of darkness, king of hell, king of the underworld, demon, undead, evil spirits, evil spirit , Satan, devil, demon, serpent, etc. The connection between Rogozhin’s image and the theme of death is indicated by his “dead pallor” (8; 5), and by the fact that Parfen feels dead until the moment of his conversation with Nastasya Filippovna, after which he “for the first time as a living person breathed” (8; 179). However, this image, for all its demonicness, is quite ambivalent and ambiguous. This is reflected in Myshkin’s words: “Isn’t Rogozhin capable of light?<...>No, Rogozhin is slandering himself; he has a huge heart that can both suffer and be compassionate” (8; 191). This is reflected in the combination of his first and last names. “Parthen (Parthenius) (from the Greek Parthenios: parthenos chaste, virgin) is an epithet of Zeus, Hera, Artemis, Athena in the area of ​​Parthenia on the border of Arcadia and Argivia.” The hero's name connects him with the world of the gods, the higher, heavenly world, while the surname formed by the author, as researchers believe, from the name of the Rogozhsky cemetery, correlates him with the lower world - with the underworld. Referring to the criticism of the 60s, which not without aptness called Rogozhin “the gloomy Don Juan of the schismatic cemetery,” M. S. Altman emphasizes his connection with sectarians. I would italicize the word “cemetery”, because to understand the image of the hero, his connection with the cemetery as such is more important. It’s not for nothing that Ippolit characterizes Rogozhin’s home this way: “His house amazed me; looks like a cemetery, but he seems to like it...” (8; 338). To better understand the essence of the character, it is necessary to take a closer look at his home, which “causes the richest associations with the body and thought (i.e., life) of a person, as has been empirically confirmed by psychoanalysts,” according to whom, the house is a symbol of personality. “A person is always somewhat like his home; at least this is as true as the fact that a person’s house resembles its owner.” But if the house looks like a cemetery, then it turns out that Rogozhin is the personification of the cemetery!? The legitimacy of such a risky (at first glance) assumption is evidenced by one strange entry dated November 2 in the handwritten reactions of “The Idiot”: Umetskaya sees pictures “of how the cemetery walks around the city!” (9; 183). In Rogozhin’s entire appearance and behavior one can discern a mythological character, associated simultaneously with the productive power of the earth and the killing potency of the underworld. With his duality, Rogozhin resembles a dark chthonic deity representing death. He personifies Fate, which was called Moira in antiquity, controlling both the hour of death and the duration of life. Moiras were often associated with demons. In “The Idiot,” Rogozhin is associated with the demon, whose image constantly doubles. He is truly “on the threshold of a kind of double existence”: either before us is “only an unhappy man, whose spiritual mood is gloomy, but very understandable,” or the personification of a demon. Although the prince renounced his demon, there was something so in Rogozhin, “that is, in the whole today’s image of this man<...>, which could justify the prince’s terrible forebodings and the disturbing whispers of his demon” (8; 193). Early Christian ideas about a demon are associated with the image of an evil demonic, demonic force. In ancient Slavic pagan religious and mythological ideas, “demons” are evil spirits (traces of such use of the term are in archaic folklore texts and conspiracies). From pagan terminology, the word came into the Christian tradition, where it was used to translate the word “demons,” which comes from the Greek “knowing, competent,” because demons know the future. D. S. Merezhkovsky once noted that “the presence of fate in events gives Dostoevsky’s story tragic pathos in the ancient sense of the word.” This true thought has the most direct relation to “The Idiot,” in which Dostoevsky uses the Greek “demon” instead of the word “demon.” In this novel, echoes of ancient ideas about fate as a demon are clearly heard, about fate, understood by the writer almost in the same way as at the end of antiquity, when “the order of the world was already perceived as a demonic force.” “The Idiot” is a novel about the inexorability of Fate, a novel about a fate from which you cannot escape, which subjugates a person to its power. Fate in the mythology of various peoples is understood as the predetermination of the life path of a person (collective), gods and the cosmos as a whole. In the mythological model of the world, fate is associated with the opposition between share and misfortune (happiness - misfortune), life and death, good and evil. “Initially, ideas about fate are not separated from ideas about good and evil spirits - companions of a person, born and living with him, going back to totemism and the cult of ancestors.” “However, in the officially recognized belief in angels in Christianity and in jinn in Islam (especially in its everyday interpretation), many researchers tend to see a reflection of earlier ideas about demons, geniuses and other bearers of Fate.” If the ancient Slavs called “the embodiment of happiness, good luck given to people by deity” as Shares (“originally the word god itself meant “share””), then the ancient Greeks and Romans removed the impersonality of fate, embodying ideas about it in the image of various maidens of fate. However, among the personifications of fate, along with Roman parks and veils, geniuses are also called; in Greek mythology, parks correspond to moiras, the daughter of the night, who also gave birth to death and sleep, and geniuses correspond to demons (daimons). “The embodiment of man’s lot is his demon<...>genius, twin spirit.” Thus, the idea that a demon often determines a person’s destiny in life originated in ancient times, and the concept of “demon” is recognized as the original one in relation to the idea of ​​​​the deity of fate. “The demon is equated with fate, all events of human life are under its influence.” There are demons of birth, demons of good and evil. A person's character is his demon. “Every person is given his own demon in life.” In later demonology, a significant place is occupied by genius, “seen as the personification of internal properties,” which gradually became an independent deity, born along with man<...>who directed his actions." Apparently, it is no coincidence that Myshkin and Rogozhin are the same age. “In one of the third-class carriages, at dawn, two passengers found themselves facing each other, right next to the window, - both young people<...>One of them was<...>twenty-seven years old.” The other is “also about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old” (8; 5, 6). Not only are Rogozhin and Myshkin about the same age, they are also brothers, which makes us remember the struggle on the land of Ormuzd and Ahriman. In “The Idiot,” as in other works of Dostoevsky, features of romanticism have long been noticed. But the romantic artistic experience absorbed many folklore and mythological images and motifs. One of them is the motive of the demon (devil, devil, sorcerer, robber or monster) to which the hero ends up. In V. Ya. Propp’s fairy tale, giving a son to the devil or some mysterious creature is called “reselling” (or “selling”). It happens that the hero is taken away by a merchant. In this regard, I will note a clear parallel in the destinies of Rogozhin and Myshkin. They both inherit huge fortunes, that is, from a philistine point of view, both are lucky. In the mythological model of the world, as already mentioned, fate is associated with the opposition of happiness and misfortune. Keller writes in his article about Myshkin: “I must admit that he was lucky<...>still an infant after the death of his father<...>our baron was taken from mercy to be raised by one of the very rich Russian landowners.<...>Suddenly P. dies suddenly. Of course, no will<...>It would seem that happiness has turned its back on our hero. No such luck, sir: fortune<...>pours all his gifts at once on the aristocrat<...>Almost at the very moment he arrived from Switzerland to St. Petersburg, one of his mother’s relatives dies in Moscow<...>merchant, bearded man and schismatic, and leaves several million inheritance<...>(I wish you and I, reader!)” (8; 217-219). It turns out that both heroes are going to St. Petersburg for their inheritance, only the merchant’s son Rogozhin already knows that his father “died a month ago and left two and a half million to the capital” (8; 9), and Myshkin has only yet to find out about his “happiness " The heirs receive money from deceased merchants - a kind of fabulous “afterlife donors”. Myshkin is symbolically “taken” into their networks by both a relative of “his mother (who, of course, was a merchant)” and the merchant’s son Rogozhin. It seems that the point here is not only and not so much in class affiliation, but in the writer’s (voluntary or involuntary) orientation towards the figure of the folklore merchant, often understood as a synonym for the devil, the alien. It is no coincidence that Myshkin, sent by Schneider to Russia, goes not just anywhere, but to St. Petersburg, a “city in a swamp,” where, according to popular belief, devils live. It is also extremely important that the first whom the prince met along the way to St. Petersburg was Rogozhin - “Black Sea” (that is, the devil). According to Slavic beliefs, “the appointed destiny can be revealed, pronounced<...> random people they meet, who in the popular consciousness are perceived as representatives of another, otherworldly world.” The first people they meet (which in the fairy tale include both “mysterious teachers” and demons) cause harm to people they meet on the road. The negative consequences of a meeting, which serves as one of the manifestations of Fate, are often explained by the action of evil spirits. “So, demons are known who harm people they meet on the road.” It is important that “meetings that determine fate” take place, as people believe, at a crossroads. Here “the unclean spirit has power over man,” who in this place was “laid in wait for illness.” Having met a specific person on the train on the way to St. Petersburg, Myshkin, who appears as a wanderer walking from crossroads to crossroads, actually met his fate. Rogozhin is the first person you meet who embodies the sign of fate, and mortal fate at that. After all, “returning home, to one’s homeland or place of birth is a symbol of death.” If the first meeting of the “angel Myshkin” with the “demon Rogozhin” in a third-class carriage is similar to a meeting at a crossroads, then their last, inevitable meeting takes place literally at a crossroads - at a “fatal, “unclean” place belonging to demons” and associated with the underworld. “Fifty steps from the tavern, at the first intersection, in the crowd, someone suddenly touched him on the elbow and said in a low voice right in his ear: “Lev Nikolaevich, go, brother, follow me.” It was Rogozhin” (8; 500). It seems that it is far from accidental that almost every mention in the novel of a crossroads, an escheat place favored by evil spirits, is connected in the novel, oddly enough, with Myshkin. “Approaching the intersection of Gorokhovaya and Sadovaya,” Myshkin recognizes Parfen’s house, which has the physiognomy of the entire Rogozhin family. According to M. M. Bakhtin, “the choice of the road is the choice of the path of life.” These words have nothing to do with the fairy tale, because even if the hero stands at a crossroads in thought, this is not a choice of path, but only the appearance of it. In Dostoevsky’s artistic world (and not only in his) a crossroads, like a threshold, are moments of choosing fate. But not all of Dostoevsky's heroes standing at the crossroads can change their fate. One of the clearest examples is Prince Myshkin, similar to the fairy-tale Tsarevich, whom fate “leads to the throne destined for him,” but “in the light of superhuman glory, death suddenly overtakes and carries him away.” This demon of death, with whom Myshkin enters into communication, has a name - Rogozhin. Just like Ordynov, the hero of “The Mistress,” “the demon<...>whispered in his ear” that Murin would kill him (1; 310), “the demon whispered” to Myshkin in the Summer Garden that Rogozhin would kill him. “...Has it been decided that Rogozhin will kill?! the prince suddenly shuddered” (8; 190). As soon as Myshkin remembered one “extremely strange murder,” something special suddenly happened to him again. An extreme, irresistible desire, almost a temptation, suddenly numbed his entire will. From the house of Filisova, “sharp-eyed and bright-faced” (and these are clear signs of a chthonic being), Myshkin “came out with a different appearance than with which he called” to her. “It happened to him again, and as if in an instant, an extraordinary change<...>His “sudden idea” was suddenly confirmed and justified, and - he again believed his demon!” (8; 192). To understand the meaning of the word “suddenly” in Dostoevsky’s “St. Petersburg” dictionary and which is often found in such genres of folklore as bylichka and fairy tale, the following definition of a demon is very important. “Demon,” in Greek mythology, is a generalized idea of ​​some vague and unformed divine force, evil or (less often) beneficent, often determining a person’s destiny in life. This is an instantly arising and instantly departing terrible fatal force, which cannot be called by name, with which one cannot enter into any communication. Having suddenly surged, it produces some action with lightning speed and immediately disappears without a trace.<...>The demon unexpectedly evokes this or that thought.” According to the terminology of G. Usener, a demon is nothing more than “the god of a given moment.” In “Dialectics of Myth” A.F. Losev talks about time and “the most literal and real” fate. "What is time?<...>Time is the antithesis of meaning. It is by its nature illogical, irrational... The essence of time is in the continuous growth of existence, when it is completely, absolutely unknown what will happen in one second<...>Therefore, no matter what the laws of nature predict, one can never completely guarantee the fulfillment of these predictions. Time is a truly illogical element of existence - in the true sense, fate.” So beloved and often used by Dostoevsky, the adverb “suddenly”, like no other word, contains the concept of irrational time, and, consequently, of fate. “Suddenly something very strange happened to Murin<...…>a fatal circumstance that cannot be explained otherwise than by the hostile influence of angry fate” (1; 286). Netochka Nezvanova says: “...Fate suddenly and unexpectedly turned my life in an extremely strange way.<...…>all at once<...…>suddenly turned to another, completely unexpected activity, and I myself, without noticing it, was completely transported into a new world.” Seeing the portrait of Alexandra Mikhailovna’s husband, Netochka “suddenly shuddered” and began to examine him closely. First of all, she was “struck by the eyes of the portrait,” which, as it “suddenly seemed to her,” “turn away with embarrassment” from her gaze, “striving to avoid it”: “lies and deception in these eyes” (2; 232, 246). Lies and evil are the main attributes of the devil, who can take on any form. He “may not have a face, but disguises; he exists entirely in the realm of mere appearance, and therefore every appearance of him is deceptive or may turn out to be a deception.” “Between the three possible hypostases of the devil - his illusory guise, his presence in the body of a real living being and his supposed true carnal (or quasi-carnal) appearance - it is hardly possible to always confidently draw a line.” That is why it is so difficult for us to understand where in Rogozhin the man ends and where the demon who has taken his form begins. It was believed that all characters of evil spirits, including, of course, the devil, have the ability to take on someone else’s appearance (including the appearance of any person). Like the devil, ghosts appear to people in various guises - characters of Slavic demonology, having an incorporeal nature and appearing in the form of absent people, “scaring a person (sometimes it is believed that the devil is so frightened).” “Ghosts are closely connected with the world of the dead, with the pawned dead.” Not everyone can see a ghost, but only the one to whom it appeared. “A ghost is a bad omen” for the one who sees it. The devil’s ability to be a werewolf (“werewolf”), which is the main feature of the chthonic world and is associated with “borderliness” (the ability to cross the border of two worlds), is evidenced by the ghost that visited the terminally ill Hippolytus and confirmed his thoughts of suicide, for “it is impossible to remain in a life that takes such strange, offending<...>forms." Ippolit, who does not believe “in any ghosts,” recalling this visit, says that he “was not sure whether it was Rogozhin himself or not” (8; 340-341). The word “ghost” appears eight times in his “Confession” and fifteen times the pronoun “you” addressed to Rogozhin. Trembling with fright, but “almost with rage suddenly seizing him,” Terentyev shouted: “You were with me last week, at night.”<...>You!! Admit it, will you?<...>It was you! - he repeated<...>with extreme conviction. - You<...>sat silently on my chair, by the window, for a whole hour” (8; 320-321). Ippolit no longer doubts that Rogozhin, despite the closed doors, was with him. The fact that Rogozhin is on the border between two worlds, this worldly and otherworldly, is continually confirmed by the text of the novel. Under the influence of his “sudden idea” to see Rogozhin’s eyes again, Myshkin leaves the Summer Garden and actually sees “those same eyes.” The archetypal image of “all-seeing” and “luminous” eyes is one of the attributes of mythological characters that are different from people. Speaking about this archetype, one can cite not only a huge number of examples from Dostoevsky’s works of different periods (he often describes the sparkling eyes, burning gazes of his heroes), but also recall many other descriptions of demonic characters in works of various times and peoples, including works of folklore. Rogozhin’s eyes, burning in the middle of the darkness, are strikingly reminiscent of the eyes of the skull illuminating the darkness of the night in the Russian fairy tale “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” which “burned” the stepmother and her daughters. “Under the influence of metaphorical language, human eyes were supposed to acquire a mysterious, supernatural meaning.” Nastasya Filippovna attributes this meaning to Rogozhin’s eyes. In her last letter to Aglaya, she admits: “...I almost no longer exist and I know it; God knows what lives in me instead of me. I read this every day in two terrible eyes that constantly look at me, even when they are not in front of me” (8; 380). The eyes that pursue the heroine “burn” not only her, but also Ippolit and Myshkin. They all foresee trouble, they all talk about a catastrophe, as if predetermined from above.
This predetermination is symbolized by Rogozhin’s house, which he inherited from his grandfather and father. Once in this house, Myshkin immediately starts talking about the eyes that are haunting him. “Just now, leaving the carriage, I saw a pair of eyes exactly the same as the ones you just looked at me from behind. - There you go! Whose eyes were they? - Rogozhin muttered suspiciously. It seemed to the prince that he shuddered” (8; 171). Immediately after the thought of murder pierced him, the prince remembered his “question to Rogozhin directly to his face about his eyes.” Myshkin “laughed hysterically<...>Why is this trembling again, this cold sweat, this darkness and coldness of soul? Was it because he saw those eyes again now?<...>Yes, those were the same eyes<...>the same ones (absolutely the same ones!)<...>And the prince really wanted<...>go up to Rogozhin and tell him “whose eyes those were”!<...>The strange and terrible demon became completely attached to him and no longer wanted to leave him” (8; 192-193). Trembling and cold sweat are the eternal companions of fear that grips a person when meeting with evil spirits. Demonic traits are inherent in many of the characters in the novel “The Idiot”. However, the word “demon” is mentioned six times specifically in connection with Rogozhin’s eyes. The underlined word indicates that the prince had already been pursued by a demon, whose final victory at the lexical level is expressed by using the word “eyes” ten times. Four times Dostoevsky repeats and italics the phrase “those same” (8; 191-195). Three times on that fateful day, Myshkin remembered those same eyes. “In unspeakable anguish he walked on foot to his tavern,” where he remembered them, terribly afraid of something. At the very end of the journey, immediately before the last meeting with Parfen, the prince “suddenly” “remembered Rogozhin himself<...>when he then hid in the corner and waited for him with a knife. His eyes now remembered him, the eyes that looked then in the darkness” (8; 499). “Whose eyes were these?” - we ask after Rogozhin. And we get Dostoevsky’s unequivocal answer: these are the eyes of Rogozhin... And at the same time, these are the eyes of a demon. Myshkin’s haunting eyes produce on the reader (at least on me) exactly the same eerie impression as the terrible eyes of a dead money lender (mentioned more than 35 times in Gogol’s “Portrait”) that haunt the artist. They pierced his soul “and created incomprehensible anxiety in it.” They “looked so demonically crushing that he himself involuntarily shuddered.” And in another picture he “gave almost all the figures the eyes of a moneylender,” who did not die “completely,” but was embodied in the portrait. Many features in the appearance of this most sinister of Gogol's characters are also characteristic of a number of Dostoevsky's demonic characters. This testifies to their hellish nature, their influence on human souls. It should be noted that the human appearance of the devil, as a rule, is “colored in one dominant tone - black or, much less often, red.” “Either the devil’s skin is black (hence the motif of the Negro or the Ethiopian), or his clothes.” “Sometimes the devil is brown or deathly gray - the color of illness and death.” “There’s always something ‘off’ about him, something unnatural: he’s either too black or too pale.” Infernal associations are also palpable in the portrait of Rogozhin, who was dressed in a black sheepskin coat. He was “almost black-haired, with gray small but fiery eyes<...>Particularly noticeable in this face was his deathly pallor, which gave his whole physiognomy<...>haggard appearance, despite a rather strong build” (8; 5). All this is very reminiscent of the appearance of the unclean, the devil. “The mythological parallel can be seen very clearly: in the medieval tradition (Western and Russian), the most common image of Satan is “a tall, emaciated man, with a black or deathly pale face, unusually thin, with burning bulging eyes, with his whole gloomy figure inspiring the terrible impression of a ghost.” ” (cf. a ghost in the guise of Rogozhin, visiting the terminally ill Ippolit). Returning from Switzerland to St. Petersburg, Myshkin ends up in Rogozhin’s house, after which darkness thickens around him. In the climactic Chapter V of Part II of the novel, oversaturated with “chthonic” and “marginal” vocabulary, the themes of eyes, a demon and a thunderstorm approaching along with an epileptic fit are intertwined. Everything here is pulled together into a tight knot. The seizure was provoked by the pursuit of Myshkin through the eyes of Rogozhin, his attempt on the prince's life and... a thunderstorm. Myshkin’s spiritual darkness merges with natural chaos. The summer garden was empty; “Something dark clouded the setting sun for a moment. It was stuffy; it looked like a distant harbinger of a thunderstorm.<...>The storm really seems to be coming<...>. Distant thunder began already. It was getting very stuffy...” (8; 189). Thinking about the increasingly intensified epileptic state with its dullness, spiritual darkness, idiocy, Myshkin felt that “his illness was returning, this is undoubtedly; maybe he will definitely have a seizure today.” “Through the fit and all this darkness, through the fit and the “idea”! Now the darkness has been dispelled, the demon has been driven away<...>there is joy in his heart!” (8; 191)

Composition

Myshkin dreams of Rogozhin as a spiritual brother, sees Rogozhin in his best impulses, a spiritual being. “No, Rogozhin is slandering himself; He has a huge heart that can both suffer and be compassionate. When he finds out the whole truth and when he is convinced of what a pitiful creature this damaged, half-intelligent creature is, won’t he then forgive her for everything that happened before, all his torment? Will he not become her servant, brother, friend, providence? Rogozhin himself will understand and teach compassion. Compassion is the most important and, perhaps, the only law of existence for all humanity.” But the dream that Rogozhin will also be in the grip of compassion in his relationship with the “mad woman” remains the prince’s utopian dream, although it testifies to the prince’s faith in Rogozhin’s ability to live a spiritual life.

Rogozhin seeks victory over the proud and headstrong Nastasya Filippovna and understands that with the same concentrated torment she loves another, namely Prince Myshkin. Rogozhin explains to his rival: “She loves someone else, understand this,” “She fell in love with you then, ever since your name day. Only she thinks that it is impossible to get out, because she will allegedly disgrace you and ruin your entire destiny. “I,” he says, “is known” (8; 179). Rogozhin perfectly understands the moral and psychological state of Nastasya Filippovna, who, suffering from love for the prince, “cries, laughs, beats with a fever,” runs away from the crown with Rogozhin. He explains to Myshkin: “If it weren’t for me, she would have rushed into the water long ago; I'm saying it right. That’s why he doesn’t rush because I may be even worse than water. Out of anger and comes for me. Yes, that’s why he’s coming for me, because there’s probably a knife waiting for me.”

In his “boring and gloomy house” Rogozhin commits murder and thereby frees himself from the terrible torture into which life has become. Having kidnapped Nastasya Filippovna from Myshkin in a wedding dress, he still did not take possession of her soul and did not escape indomitable jealousy, realizing that with her best thoughts she did not belong to him. Parfen Rogozhin inevitably becomes a murderer because he could not overcome himself, forgive and accept the equally painful love of the unfortunate woman for the prince, pity and brotherly share her tragedy. He was unable to turn to the last moral elevation, to join compassion - the main law of human life.

Involved in the cycle of passions, Myshkin is deprived of harmony and clarity, hard-won as a result of long-term treatment in a Swiss village with Schneider. “Sad and thoughtful” Myshkin arrives in St. Petersburg after a six-month absence to save Nastasya Filippovna from the “knife”. The prince says to Rogozhin during their meeting: “With you, she will inevitably die. You, too, will die... maybe even worse than her,” but he doesn’t intend to “upset and disturb.” On the contrary, Myshkin seeks to “calm down” Rogozhin and remove suspicions. At the same time, the Kiyaz’s reaction to Parfen Rogozhin’s words that Nastasya Filippovna loves the prince is very noteworthy. This reaction was noticed by the interlocutor: “Why did you tip over like that? Did you really not know that? You amaze me!

* “It’s all jealousy, Parfen, it’s all a disease, you’ve exaggerated all of it immensely...” muttered the prince in extreme excitement.” The prince's excitement is the result of the fact that, thanks to Rogozhin, he has come closer to understanding his guilt before Nastasya Filippovna.

The mistake that Prince Myshkin made by introducing personal feelings into the sphere of Nastasya Filippovna’s salvation has its fatal consequences. The internal drama of the unfortunate woman, who, due to social and moral insult, suffered from the ambition of a “little” person, but was drawn to “forgiveness,” that is, to fraternal unity with people, only worsened as a result of her meeting with Myshkin. This “unhappy woman” found herself in a completely hopeless situation as a result of the prince’s carelessly manifested love in the first moments of their acquaintance. Love for the prince only exacerbated Nastasya Filippovna’s internal division, her tossing between the exorbitant pride of the insulted and the thirst for love and harmony. It is no coincidence that Myshkin confesses to Rogozhin about his return to St. Petersburg: “I seemed to know,” “as if I had a presentiment,” “I didn’t want to come here,” “I wanted to forget all this here.”

After a meeting with Rogozhin in his “boring house” on Gorokhovaya, the prince surrenders to a sad mood, wanders through the streets of St. Petersburg: “All this needs to be thought about quickly, without fail... But some kind of internal invincible disgust again overpowered: he cannot think about anything, he didn’t think about it; he was thinking about something completely different.”

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After talking with Rogozhin, he felt melancholy, oppressive anxiety and, most importantly, an underlying, deeply hidden feeling of guilt. He rummages through his conscience, surrenders to self-disclosure. Under the influence of Rogozhin, who spoke of Nastasya Filippovna’s love for him, Prince Myshkin found himself in “great thoughtfulness.” “But... has Rogozhin really not noticed the madness in her yet? Hm... Rogozhin sees other reasons in everything, passionate reasons! And what crazy jealousy! What did he want to say with his earlier assumption? “The prince suddenly blushed, and something seemed to tremble in his heart.” He blushed a second time, remembering Nastasya Filippovna’s words about her love for him.

The prince's internal struggle is revealed in his reflections. In the desire to see Nastasya Filippovna one senses an impatient personal beginning, the heart boils with joy at the thought of meeting her, but then Rogozhin and the word given to him are remembered, conscience demands consistency in behavior, and self-justification immediately appears: “And I haven’t seen you for so long.” her, he needs to see her, and... yes, he would like to meet Rogozhin now, he would take him by the hand, and they would go together... His heart is pure: is he really a rival to Rogozhin? However, the prince’s meeting with Rogozhin at Nastasya Filippovna’s house tells a different story. Rogozhin stood on the other side of the street, “deliberately wanted to be visible” as “an accuser and as a judge...”. Myshkin “turned away from him, as if not noticing anything...”, although “their eyes met and they looked at each other.”

Prince Myshkin and Rogozhin became involuntary opponents because of Nastasya Filippovna. At the corpse, their fraternization takes place; through some movements, Rogozhin enters into enthusiastic communication with the prince; “He took the prince by the hand, he bent him towards the table, sat down opposite him, pulled up the chair so that his knees almost touched the prince.” He wants to spend this last night of freedom with him. Behind the curtain lies Nastasya Filippovna. Rogozhin led the prince to the bed, looked at her for a long time, then they silently sat down in the same chairs, “again, one against the other.” Rogozhin is filled with tenderness, approaching Myshkin, who is trembling all over, “tenderly and enthusiastically took him by the hand, lifted him and led him to the bed,” and laid him “on the best left pillow.” They spent this terrible night side by side, in delirium and touching caresses, one preparing to face the cruel judgment of people, the other to his final madness.

Near the body of Nastasya Filippovna, Myshkin and Rogozhin are reconciled brothers. Myshkin's behavior here is that of a moral accomplice in murder. “Nowhere was the connection between the prince and Rogozhin so artistically obvious as in the last, final scene at the body of Nastasya Filippovna,” says I. Ya. Berkovsky. “It was clear here that they had become closer for the last time and finally as comrades.” Explaining the reason for the prince’s culpability, the researcher writes: “The prince understood suffering in her and did not understand rebellion, and rebellion was the essence of her, she was an earthly human personality and put her own personality into the rebellion.”

From our point of view, Myshkin is a co-culprit because he aroused in her that feeling for himself, which in its intense anxiety was poison for the dog, and not salvation. Nastasya Filippovna's love for Myshkin is a great and sacrificial feeling, humanized by a deep understanding of the moral significance of his personality and preaching. But at the same time, this love does not contribute to liberation from the captivity of pride and separation from people; on the contrary, it extremely aggravates personal pain, offended by self-pity. Myshkin’s tragic guilt lies in the fact that he brought personal interest into the pure sphere of salvation and revival of another suffering person and therefore became an accomplice of Rogozhin. In this case, he consigned to oblivion his Swiss experience of organizing people around the moral truths of selfless and, therefore, selfless service to others. The fatal mistake that he made in free action suggests that he is a participant in the universal human tragedy, the tragedy of “finite” beings, endowed, however, with the highest, absolute spirituality, which, according to the writer’s thought, manifests itself only in moral precepts. The ideal of complete spiritual fusion with each other remains only a call, a moral guide, only the ultimate goal of earthly existence.

This universal tragedy of humanity was reflected in the personality of the prince with particular force precisely because he most fully expresses the free spirituality of people.

According to the writer, ideal aspirations contribute to the movement of humanity towards the “ultimate goal”, towards the embodiment of the covenant of love and compassion for people. For him, the image of Myshkin is far from being that of a utopian, but rather of a realist, a practitioner. The prince is capable of the practical implementation of moral truths. He believes in the possibility of a slow but sure internal moral transformation of people with their earthly interests and selfish motives now.

Other works on this work

“This house was large, gloomy, three floors, without any architecture, dirty green in color. Some very
however, few houses of this kind, built at the end of the last century, survived in these streets
St. Petersburg (in which everything changes so quickly) is almost unchanged.”
F.M. Dostoevsky. "Idiot"

“Architectural combinations of lines have, of course, their own secret. Almost exclusively people live in these houses
trading Approaching the gate and looking at the inscription, the prince read: “House of the hereditary citizen Rogozhin.”
F.M. Dostoevsky. "Idiot"

“With extraordinary curiosity he approached to check his guess; he felt that for some reason it would be especially unpleasant for him if he guessed right. This house was large, gloomy, three floors, without any architecture, dirty green in color. Some, however, very few houses of this kind, built at the end of the last century, survived precisely in these streets of St. Petersburg (in which everything changes so quickly) almost without change. They are built solidly, with thick walls and extremely rare windows; on the lower floor the windows are sometimes with bars. Mostly there is a money changer downstairs. The eunuch sitting in the shop hires at the top. Both outside and inside are somehow inhospitable and dry, everything seems to be hidden and hidden, and why it seems so from the face of the house alone would be difficult to explain.”

Nastasya Filippovna about the Rogozhin house:

“His house is gloomy, boring, and there is a secret in it. I am sure that he has a razor wrapped in silk hidden in his drawer, just like that Moscow murderer; he also lived with his mother in the same house and also tied a razor with silk to cut one throat. All the time when I was in their house, it seemed to me that somewhere, under the floorboard, his father might have hidden a dead one and covered it with oilcloth, like the one in Moscow, and was also surrounded by glass bottles with Zhdanov’s liquid, I would even show you the corner"

St. Petersburg 2016. Rogozhin's house. Pea 41. Sigma SD1 Sigma SA AF 17-50mm f/2.8 EX DC OS HSM

PS All quotes from the novel F.M. Dostoevsky's "Idiot"

On the first pages of the novel, in a carriage of the St. Petersburg-Warsaw Railway, Rogozhin’s story about himself and about his meeting with Nastasya Filippovna is an exposition of everything that will happen in the novel.

This is an inflamed confession to strangers - about the death of his father, about how at his father’s funeral “from the brocade cover on the coffin of his parent, at night, his brother cut off the golden tassels,” about a million-dollar inheritance that burns his hands, and, finally, about the woman he foresaw. He bought ten thousand “pendants”, for which he was beaten by his father. Confession threatens disaster. Passion settled in Rogozhin’s soul, and between him and the object of passion there was an abyss. In painful attempts to cross this abyss - a tragic movement of character. Dostoevsky in “The Idiot” collides and intertwines a variety of social elements - from high society to the lowest, basest.

Thanks to his capital, Rogozhin is, as it were, in the middle, he enters rich houses. But the Rozhin company, his constant retinue, are semi-criminal types, like flies to honey, sticking to other people's money. Dostoevsky's interest in criminal chronicles is well known. Perhaps none of the Russian writers has studied the psychology of the criminal as deeply and comprehensively as Dostoevsky. The theme of crime, Siberia, and hard labor appears every now and then on the pages of the novel. But with all this, it is impossible to say that Rogozhin is a type of criminal. A feeling incomprehensible to another person settled in him - first of all, for Prince Myshkin.

“I don’t know why I fell in love with you,” it was said at the first meeting, and then it turns into love-hate, exhausting the soul. It is no coincidence that Rogozhin’s face constantly appears in the prince’s mind. At the station, in the street crowd, in the church, at the cutler's shop - everywhere he sees this pale face and burning eyes. He sees it, immediately forgets, then remembers and asks Rogozhin if it was him. He doesn’t hide: he. At Parfen's request, they fraternized and exchanged crosses - Rogozhin seemed to take away the terrible thought and asked his mother to bless his adopted brother. Myshkin, wandering around the city, convinces himself that Parfyon is “slandering himself; he has a huge heart that can both suffer and be compassionate. When he finds out the whole truth and when he is convinced of what a pitiful creature this crazy, damaged woman is, won’t he forgive her for everything that happened before, all his torment? Will he not become her servant, brother, friend, providence? Compassion will comprehend and teach Rogozhin himself...” This is Myshkin’s logic, and in it is the light of his soul. And at this time Rogozhin is already raising a knife over the prince. “Parfyon, I don’t believe it!” - Myshkin managed to shout and fell into epilepsy. The seizure saved his life.

Rogozhin has a dark, bestial soul. Having looked at the portrait of his father, Nastasya Filippovna noticed that Rogozhin, if he had loved money, “he would have saved not two million, but perhaps even ten, and would have died of hunger on his sacks.” But a “misfortune” happened, one passion replaced another, and Parfen’s whole life changed. In terrible torment, not knowing what to do to stop this torment, his own and that of others, he commits murder. The final scene is terrible: near the body of the dead Nastasya Filippovna they spend the night in an embrace, like two brothers.

In the “conclusion,” Dostoevsky says that during the trial Rogozhin was silent, did not confirm in any way the opinion of his lawyer about brain inflammation, on the contrary, he clearly and accurately recalled all the smallest circumstances of the event, and listened to the strict verdict sternly and “thoughtfully.” After this, the author briefly mentions that many other, ordinary, heroes of his novel “live as before, have changed little, and we have almost nothing to convey about them.” So the character and fate of Rogozhin, Nastasya Filippovna, Myshkin are clearly removed from the ordinary.

The famous novel by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky “The Idiot” offers many heroes, whose images are important for revealing the concept of the work.

So, for example, this applies to Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin himself, Nastasya Filippovna and, of course, Parfen Rogozhin, about whom we will talk in more detail today.

This character is tragic. On the pages of the novel, he goes through a whole journey: from a poor and homely merchant, beaten by his own father, to a millionaire, indifferent to his wealth, and then, in the finale, to a murderer.

Already from the first lines, which send the reader into the train carriage, we hear Parfen’s story about himself and his meeting with Nastasya Filippovna and understand that this is nothing more than an exposition of the work, this is exactly what will happen in the future.

This is a real confession, which the hero lays out to complete strangers. Rogozhin experienced passion, but a whole abyss lay between him and the object of his desire. Showing painful attempts to overcome this barrier, Dostoevsky depicts the tragic movement of the character of the character.

Fyodor Mikhailovich is a master of the collision of different social strata, and not just different, but diametrically opposed.

Rogozhin, thanks to his acquired fortune, is somewhere in the middle between high society and the low strata. He is invited to rich houses. And yet he is always accompanied by people who look like criminals. Such people will not simply pass by someone else's wealth. The theme of crime is heard very often on the pages of the novel. Although it cannot be said that Rogozhin is a clear and pronounced type of criminal.

He experiences some strange feelings for Prince Myshkin. At first, in that very train carriage, it is love, caused by something unknown, and then real hatred, eating away at the soul. Parfen exchanged crosses with the prince and called him brother.

He believes that Rogozhin has a huge heart, and he is simply slandering himself. He, of course, knows how to worry and sympathize. The prince thinks so. But how wrong he is. While he indulges in these thoughts, Rogozhin is already raising a knife over him. And only an epileptic fit saves Lev Nikolaevich from inevitable death.

Parfen Rogozhin's nature is darker than night, there is something bestial in it. considers him a miser and says that if he had saved even more money, he would have died of hunger with it. But chance failed him: another passion settled in his soul. And Parfen’s whole life changed dramatically. He does not know what to do, tormented and suffering, he chooses the only path for himself - murder.

The ending is terrible: Rogozhin and Myshkin, hugging like brothers, are sitting over the body of Nastasya Filippovna.

But Dostoevsky does not end his work with this. He also gives a conclusion: at the trial, Rogozhin was thoughtful and silent, did not try to pretend to be insane, but recalled all the details of the crime he committed, and listened to the verdict sternly and strictly. Then the author gives a short excursion into the life of other ordinary heroes, and we understand that these three, Myshkin, Rogozhin, Nastasya Filippovna, are not such.