Dostoevsky and <i>The Idiot</i>: Author, Narrator, and Reader [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674182530, 9780674182523

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Dostoevsky and The Idiot

Dostoevsky and The Idiot Author, Narrator, and Reader

Robin Feuer Miller

Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England 1981

Copyright © 1981 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Andrew W . Mellon Foundation Library of Congress

Cataloging

in Publication

Data

Miller, Robin Feuer, 1947Dostoevsky and The Idiot. Includes index. 1. Dostoevskii, Fedor Mikhallovich, 1821-1881. Idiot. I. Title. PG3325.I33M54 891.733 80-29496 ISBN 0-674-21490-0

For Abigail and Alexa Rose

Preface

ostoevsky's genius has set each generation of readers and critics musing, looking for answers to his riddles. New vocabularies, new definitions of subject matter, approach, or ideological propriety keep offering fruitful new approximations but leave new generations of critics, ultimately, gratefully perplexed. What critic of Dostoevsky is not aware that he has not penetrated the center of whatever work he has chosen for scrutiny? The Idiot embodies Dostoevsky's first sustained attempt at creating a narrator-chronicler who alternately practiced deception and truth-telling. Dostoevsky composed this novel out of words which, even when they lied, were vehicles for truth. But whether through arachnid instinct or calculated technique — or, as is most likely, a combination of the two — all of Dostoevsky's narrative webs remain inviolable in their intricacy, their interconnecting strands too numberless for any critic to unweave and reweave. His texts cannot be demystified. And that is why he will continue, even as they unravel his texts, to entangle his readers.

D

I am immensely grateful to the Russian Institute of Columbia University and to the Russian Research Center of Harvard University. Without the initial and continuing encouragement of the Russian Institute, which approved this book —even before it was completed — for its Institute Series, I would not have undertaken the task of preparing the book for publication so eagerly. I especially thank Lynn Solotaroff. The Harvard Russian Research Center has offered me support over the last three years; it has supplied that elusive mix of friendly involvement

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Preface

and courteous disengagement which combine to produce the best context in which to write. I thank Mary Towle, Mary Christopher, Rose DiBenedetto, and Christine Balm for skillful typing and much patience. Anne Kearney's affectionate care of my daughters has given me many quiet hours for writing. I am also indebted to the support offered by a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies. I thank the friends and colleagues who read portions of the manuscript, discussed its limitations as candidly as its points of interest, and made suggestions about matters of form and content: Diana Bürgin, Ellen Chances, Karen Dacey, Paula Foresman, Sima Godfrey, John Malmstad, Ruth Murray Mathewson, Robert Louis Jackson, the late Lionel Trilling, and Michael Wood. I am grateful to Katherine O'Connor, for expert advice in her capacity as a translator, and to Donald Fanger, for cheerful counsel along the way on matters trivial or weighty. Robert Belknap inspired, encouraged, and helped me at every stage in the writing of this book. My involvement in Dostoevsky's works is inextricably linked to being his student, reader, and friend. Not only has he frequently pointed the straight way out of a muddled thought, but many of my most cherished ideas about Dostoevsky belong, in their original form, to him. Joseph Frank took time from his own writing to read my manuscript three times; each time he was an ideal reader and critic, offering advice on where to expand, where to be more concise, and where to excise. The good will of such a reader must be a source of pleasure and pride to any writer. But my greatest debt of gratitude belongs to Rufus Mathewson, and it is a debt that will never be repaid. His untimely death left a generation of students at Columbia University bereft. I was fortunate to have studied with him, to have written my dissertation — an early version of the present work —in large part under the influence of his discerning, always searching mind, and to have become his friend. It was he who first encouraged me to write this book, and the memory of him will accompany me in every scholarly endeavor throughout my life. I thank Lewis and Kathryn Feuer for their excellent advice as writers and their loving, uncritical support as parents. And

Preface

ix

finally I thank my husband, Chris, who wishes, wisely, to be spared a list of reasons. It would be too long. After all these acknowledgments and thanks it only remains for me to say that I alone am, of course, responsible for any errors of translation, fact, or judgment contained herein. Because I have dealt in such detail with the genesis of The Idiot in the notebooks, and because the flow of characters from the notebooks into the novel may not always be clear to my readers, I have included a brief appendix which identifies the characters and family constellations. I have translated passages from The Idiot from the ongoing Soviet edition of Dostoevsky's complete works. References to the novel in the text are to that edition, but for the benefit of the reader who does not read Russian I also provide a second page number directing him to a good recent English translation of the novel by Henry and Olga Carlisle (New York, New American Library, 1969). Parts of the text have appeared in different form in The Slavic and East European Journal 23 (1979): 190-202, The Ulbandus Review 1 (Fall 1977): 15-28, and in Western Philosophical Systems in Russian Literature, ed. Anthony M. Mlikotin (Los Angeles, University of Southern California Press, 1979) pp. 89-103, and are reproduced by permission of the publishers.

Contents

Introduction

1

1

The Narrative Imperative

11

2

The Notebooks

46

3

Shaping the Reader's Expectations: The Narrative, Parts I and II

4 5 6

for The Idiot

90

The Breakdown of the Reader's Trust in the Narrator: The Narrative, Parts III and IV

126

The Clash of Truth and Falsehood: The Inserted Narrative, Parts I and II

165

The Search for a Binding Idea: The Inserted Narrative, Parts III and IV

200

Conclusion

223

Appendix A. The Novel and the Critics Appendix B. The Phenomenology of Reading Appendix C. Characters and Family Constellations Note on Citations Notes Index

232 238 252 256 257 287

Tell all the truth, but tell it slant Success in circuit lies. Emily

Dickinson

Note on

Transliteration

Russian names in the text are spelled either in the form most familiar to readers who know no Russian or in such a way as to facilitate pronunciation. For all other Russian words I have followed the Library of Congress transliteration system.

Introduction W e are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others. — Michel de M o n t a i g n e , "Of the Inconsistency of O u r Actions"

n The Idiot Dostoevsky undertook the difficult task of portraying a "wholly beautiful man" and the effect he had on the worldly society of nineteenth-century St. Petersburg. He never ceased to worry about whether he had achieved his aim and was the first to call attention to the weaknesses of his novel. Upon finishing the book in 1869 Dostoevsky wrote from Europe to his niece Sonya Ivanova that it had not expressed "even a tenth" of what he had intended. Nevertheless, he always maintained a special fondness for this novel and, by extension, for those readers who valued it. As late as 1877 Dostoevsky wrote of The Idiot that "all who have spoken to me about it as the best of my works have something special in their cast of mind which is always very striking to me and which I like very much" (Ρ, III, 377). Yet any reader, even one whose cast of mind permits him to love and understand the meaning of the novel, must be led to grasp that meaning — or rather, made to come to it himself. For although Dostoevsky manipulated his readers unsparingly, he left them, at the end of his novels, free to make their own decisions about the import of what had occurred. Before the end is reached, however, both author and reader are made to suffer various metamorphoses along the way. This study of The Idiot explores the ways in which Dostoevsky used the figure of the narrator-chronicler to make the reader confront moral and ethical problems, and seeks to make explicit the implicit system of narration in the novel. This undertaking has seemed espe-

I

2

Dostoevskx/ and The Idiot

daily appropriate because The Idiot itself treats problems of communication or speaking more metaphysically, the possibility of communion. Its vehicle for that communication, the narrative, formally embodies a basic idea of this novel — that words can never fully express a thought. With this hypothesis, the novelist Dostoevsky proceeds to write his novel; the narrator narrates; the characters seek to exchange ideas; and the reader begins his task of discriminating, weighing, and sifting words and sentences. The focus of the present work, then, is a double one: the narrative of The Idiot — in its various forms —may be understood in the light of its impact upon the reader, who may himself, in the course of reading, also assume various forms. Dostoevsky's narrative methods in his six novels vary widely. In The Insulted and Injured and The Raw Youth, a central character narrates the story. A usually omniscient thirdperson narrator relates the events of Crime and Punishment. The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov are written from the point of view of a more elusive persona —the narratorchronicler — which Dostoevsky began to develop in earnest in The Idiot. (Much earlier, in 1859, he had experimented with a similar narrative voice in his story "Uncle's Dream.") The two first-person novels have found the least praise among his readers. But his first-person short stories have proved extremely successful; "White Nights," "Notes from Underground," "A Gentle Creature," and "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" may be counted among his greatest short works. Despite the instinctive preference Dostoevsky seems to have had for the first-person confessional mode, and despite his ability in using it in the short story, he could not manipulate this method as effectively in the novel. In The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky combined the techniques of first- and third-person narrative; the figure of the narrator-chronicler offers the advantages of both forms. He lives in the town where the action occurs, has access to minute details of that action, but does not participate in it. He does not shrink, however, from judging or interpreting the people and events around him. In spite of the narratorchronicler's general reliability, his point of view often differs from Dostoevsky's. The Idiot, which has usually been read as a third-person narrative, contains the rudiments and, I believe,

Introduction

3

the first elaboration of the figure of the narrator-chronicler that was subsequently perfected in The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov. Mikhail Bakhtin, in considering both Pushkin's Belkin and "the narrator-chronicler in Dostoevsky," maintained that "for the author, not only the narrator's individual and typical manner of thinking, experiencing, and speaking is important, but above all his manner of seeing and depicting, therein lies his immediate purpose as narrator, as surrogate for the author . . . The author does not show us the narrator's word (as the objectivized word of a hero), but makes use of it from within for his own purposes, causing us to clearly feel the distance between him and this word which is foreign to him." 1 Bakhtin is indeed correct to emphasize that the author makes use of the narrator's word for his own purposes. What makes Dostoevsky's narratorchronicler such a fascinating, often perplexing figure, however, is precisely the fact that we do not always "clearly feel the distance" between him and the author. My concept of the roles assigned in the course of The Idiot to the reader was frequently influenced by Wayne C. Booth's book The Rhetoric of Fiction. In the course of examining in specific literary works the complicated relationships among authors, narrators, readers, and the text, Booth wrote about the difference between the real-life author and the implied author of a work. "Implied author" provides a way of speaking about the self an author becomes as he writes, and in Booth's scheme every novel has an implied author: "Even the novel in which no narrator is dramatized creates an implicit picture of an author who stands behind the scenes whether as stage manager, as puppeteer, or as indifferent God, silently paring his fingernails. The implied author is always distinct from the 'real man' — whatever we may take him to be —who creates a superior version of himself, a 'second self,' as he creates his work." 2 Similarly, the implied reader, the self one becomes in the course of reading, differs from the real-life reader. These created literary entities must be able to agree with each other; such agreement becomes possible because both the implied author and the implied reader are capable of making more disinterested judgments in fiction than in life. Booth writes, "But the implied author of each novel is someone with whose beliefs on all sub-

4

Dostoevski

and The Idiot

jects I must largely agree if I am to enjoy his work. Of course the same distinction must be made between myself as reader and the often very different self who goes about paying bills, repairing leaky faucets, and failing in generosity and wisdom. It is only as I read that I become the self whose beliefs must coincide with the author's." These two created selves, the implied author and the implied reader, are often in collusion behind the back of the narrator or of anyone else "in the story or out of it" who fails to get the point. 3 In The Idiot the collusion between the implied author and the implied reader does not operate smoothly throughout. Though the implied author and the narrator in The Idiot do not coincide, the difference between them is not always apparent to the reader. They share certain ideas but toward the end of the novel they disagree sharply. The narrator rejects Myshkin, while the implied author stands staunchly behind his hero. The implied reader, though partly a creation of the implied author, also retains his own identity throughout his reading. Thus the process of reading demands a delicate balancing of real and assumed identities. In the course of reading, Booth asserts, the reader's beliefs coincide with those of the author. "Regardless of my real beliefs and practices, I must subordinate my mind and heart to the book if I am to enjoy it to the full."4 Yet he quickly adds, "We may exhort ourselves to read tolerantly, we may quote Coleridge on the willing suspension of disbelief until we think ourselves totally suspended in a relativistic universe, and still we will find many books which postulate readers we refuse to become, books that depend on 'beliefs' or 'attitudes'. . . which we cannot adopt even hypothetically as our own." 5 Booth tends to concentrate on the implied reader who responds to the implied author's lofty machinations. In the second half of The Idiot, however, the balance between the necessary subordination of one's mind while reading and the maintenance of certain basic attitudes falters; the reader gradually finds that he is being asked to assume a role he may not wish to play. The figures of the real author, the implied author, the real reader, the implied reader, and the narrator no longer consistently offer a useful way of discussing the narrative structure of the novel. It becomes necessary, at times, to add yet another reader to Booth's model, a reader who is far less serious

Introduction

5

and less concerned with questions of belief than Booth's implied reader. He is the narrator's reader. There are then three readers in The Idiot. The real reader of the novel corresponds to the real author of the work; he is a nonideal, everyday self. He contains within him the implied reader. But the narrator of the novel addresses another figure —the narrator's reader. On certain occasions this reader lacks serious moral concern; he merely reads for plot and for enjoyment. Then one must carefully distinguish between the response this narrator's reader is asked to have and the response expected of the implied author's reader. The real reader of the novel subsumes the implied reader and the narrator's reader, but he does not combine them. They continue to exist separately, at times in diametric opposition within the real-life reader, who experiences the responses of both simultaneously.6 The implied reader responds to the implied author's indirect manipulation of him, while the narrator's reader, uncritical and curious, does not suspend belief in the narrator's rendition of the story. The real reader, if he is learning to see and feel as the authorDostoevsky intends him to, must know in precisely what ways the other two readers within him diverge. I have traced the growth and shape of this divergence in chapters 3 and 4. An investigation of the narrative of The Idiot — or indeed, of any of his works —would not have surprised Dostoevsky. Throughout his career, Dostoevsky grew more and more aware that the success of a given work depended on its narrative strategy. The notebooks for the novels reveal his observations on these strategies as well as his manipulation of them. Dostoevsky hoped that his work would at all times interest the reader and that it would make him see reality in a new way. Maintaining a high level of interest outweighed any demands of a predetermined form or aesthetic principle. In fact his concern for holding the reader's interest largely determined Dostoevsky's narrative manner. But Dostoevsky sought to maintain his reader's interest not solely in order to entertain him. The securing of his reader's interest set in motion a mechanism by which Dostoevsky could begin to implicate his reader in moral and religious questions, questions supposedly safely contained within the fictional

6

Dostoevsky

and The Idio.t

boundaries of the novel. Of course most novelists seek, to some extent, to involve their readers in the moral and religious questions their novels pose. But Dostoevsky sought to move his reader beyond mere engagement: he attempted to make him actually share responsibility with the characters in the novel for the moral and ethical judgments with which the characters, often tragically, affected each other's lives. My discussion of the narrative in The Idiot attempts to trace the precise workings of this mechanism of implication. In his efforts to hold the reader's interest, Dostoevsky borrowed freely from other masters of sheer entertainment, but his borrowed rhetorical equipment seduced his readers into acknowledging their own membership in a universe fraught with moral and metaphysical complexities. Of course no one disputes the prosaic and commercial reasons for Dostoevsky's preoccupation with his audience. But far more interesting is the construct of the reader that emerges directly from the works themselves. In all his works, Dostoevsky viewed his audience as a group upon whom he should exercise the most wily strategies. His narration always embodied a conscious method of persuasion. These two subjects — the reader to be persuaded and the narrative—converge, for they are simply points at either end of the same line: an artist's notion of his audience must determine, to some extent, his modes of narration; at the same time, artists like Dostoevsky also hope to remake their readers through the impact of their narrative. Dostoevsky, however, sought always to conceal his own narrative voice. As early as 1846, having finished Poor Folk, he wrote that his audience, "accustomed to seeing the ugly mug of the author in everything," had not "even guessed that Devushkin is speaking and not I" (Ρ, I, 86). This concealment of the author's voice continued as a principle of Dostoevsky's narrative technique for the next thirty-five years. Whereas earlier writers such as Pushkin and Lermontov had complained of their public's inability to separate a narrator's voice from an author's, Dostoevsky (like Gogol) capitalized upon it to serve his own literary ends. The question of the audience's response also remained a central concern. Toward the end of his life, Dostoevsky wrote that he had always been tormented by the question of how his work would be received and whether it would turn out that he had

Introduction

7

done more harm than good by publishing his "sacred convictions" (Ρ, IV, 194). (In The Idiot Myshkin shares this deep ambivalence about direct expression of ideas.) But although Dostoevsky's novels did contain his sacred convictions, these were carefully shielded by layers of narrative fabric, by the constant filtering of his own ideas through a narrator's point of view. 7 An author's preliminary notes for a novel do not necessarily offer a key for deciphering the final text. The notebooks for The Idiot grip the reader in another way: they demonstrate a creative mind at work —exploring, expanding, rejecting, and accepting his own ideas. In reading Dostoevsky's notes we spy upon the novelist's mind stripped of its coverings of paragraphs, chapters, plots, and images. We see the range of possibilities that lure him in contradictory directions. The mystery remains in the splendid creative gap between the notes and the actual novel; fortunately no critic can ever pry that far into a novelist's mind. Nevertheless the notes for The Idiot, like the notebooks for Dostoevsky's other novels, especially The Possessed and The Raw Youth, do show the narrative strategist at work. In this respect the plans Dostoevsky rejected have proved as telling as those he subsequently carried into the novel. In particular, the notebooks for The Idiot offer important clues to Dostoevsky's often baffling narrative manner. They contain evidence supporting the hypothesis that Dostoevsky's disturbing and abrupt distancing in Part IV of the book of his narrator from his hero was deliberate, and indeed essential to the structure of the novel. My reading of The Idiot has followed the chronology of the novel, for Dostoevsky constructed his narrative out of definite expositions, variations, and recapitulations of voices that demand a chronological reading to be perceived. He also intended the reader's responses to these voices to become more complex and ambivalent as the novel unfolded. I have tried to locate certain moments in the novel when the web connecting the author, narrator, and reader grows most intricate, but the reader's entanglement must be traced sequentially. In considering the usefulness of the concept of the reader, Donald Fanger has voiced the suspicion that "the reader as tool more often than not may resemble those absorbable surgical

8

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

sutures that lose their identity as they do their job; i.e., that in many cases the concept is resolvable into more conventional categories, so that its utility, though real, is less than unique. When traditional criticism speaks of tone, pathos, absurdity, laughter, the grotesque, structure, or meaning, it always has in view (albeit implicitly) 'the actualization of a text in the reader,' and it is not clear how much is to be gained by dwelling explicitly on that fact." 8 Although Fanger's metaphor for the concept of the reader as absorbable suture is extremely apt, I have found this suture, at certan points in the novel, invaluable for seaming together the disparate elements of manipulation, complicity, implication, and aesthetic-moral awareness that Dostoevsky infused into his work. Once these elements are joined together, however, the presence of the binding stitch may become insignificant. There are at least four separate modes of narration coexisting within the novel: a comic voice that relates a kind of novel of manners (or ill-manners), a Gothic voice that employs techniques of arbitrary disclosure and heightened terror, the voice of a sympathetic and omniscient narrator, and a voice that is ironically detached from the action and easily swayed by the current local rumors. Thus the reader must constantly readjust his attitude toward the narrative texture as well as toward the characters it portrays. Dostoevsky's deliberate mixing of completely diverse forms, such as the philosophical confession, the criminal adventure, the religious drama, and the boulevard tale, creates what Leonid Grossman called the "whirlwind" effect. 9 I have tried to discover the order in this whirlwind and to understand why the author endows the narrator with a particular voice at a particular time. Other attempts to recover order in Dostoevsky's narration have noted that all these various forms emanate from the single "idea" of the novel. My search for order remains at the narrative level. Bakhtin has offered the most comprehensive examination of Dostoevsky's narrative technique. By exploring Dostoevsky's methods for establishing the tensions between the voices of the different characters in his novels, he developed the now commonplace notion of Dostoevsky's "polyphonic novel" (with roots in the Socratic Dialogue and the Menippean Satire), where

Introduction

9

the voices of all the characters have equal, contrapuntal value. 10 I extend this hypothesis to include the multiple voices of the narrator within that novel; the narrative of The Idiot is in different keys that often collide with each other in wrenching counterpoint. The narrator's numerous voices serve as forcefully as do the characters and the sensational maneuvering of the plot in sustaining the reader's interest. Bakhtin has argued convincingly that Dostoevsky's fiction is profoundly dialogical — indeed this view has become almost an axiom among Dostoevsky's critics. One of my purposes is to restore the author Dostoevsky to the role of a "monologist," but one who makes brilliant use of the strategies of dialogue —whether among characters or within them. 11 Though the voices in a polyphonic composition may be heard separately, they are organically connected. They are composed and carefully orchestrated by a single consciousness that is carrying out a highly structured plan. Determining the success or failure of Dostoevsky's rhetorical manipulation of his assigned reader throughout the novel, especially in Part IV, offers a way of judging the success or failure of the novel as a whole. In keeping with Dostoevsky's desire that his readers see reality in a new way, the constantly changing narrative modes force the reader to begin to see the events and characters as separate from the voices portraying and judging them. Having made this separation, the reader formulates his own understanding of the novel, an understanding often dissociated from the narrator's interpretations. In all of Dostoevsky's novels, inserted texts or titles (articles or diaries written by the characters, poems, newspaper articles, accounts of trials, and so on) figure as essential aspects of the overall narrative plan. In The Idiot each inserted narrative provides a footnote in some way to the narrative of the novel as a whole; each presents a variation on some aspect of narration. But taken as a whole they give the reader a parallel text that in many respects duplicates the structure of the novel. I have tried to analyze (in chapters 5 and 6) the particular and the general significance of each of the inserted narratives in the novel. Even the sequence in which other texts are mentioned can suggest correspondences with the narrative structure of the novel. For example, the image of Don Quixote overshadows the first parts of the novel, but it is the image of Madame Bovary, a kind of

10

Dostoevsky

and The Idiot

negative, diminished version of Don Quixote, that hovers over its final pages.12 In The Idiot all the characters and the narrator share a concern with the inherent inability of words to express a thought. They all hope that somehow, in spite of their own misrepresentations, their thought will emerge. Nevertheless, except for Myshkin's own parabolic anecdotes, each of the interpolated passages in The Idiot is in some sense a false narrative. General Ivolgin's anecdote about the lap dog may actually have occurred but it did not happen to him; Pushkin's poem about the poor knight contains a vital alteration; the newspaper article about Myshkin mixes truth with slander; Ippolit's confession preludes an unperformed act. Even the confessional stories told at Nastasia Filippovna's nameday party, while true in fact, are false in intent. "Instead of your nastiest deed, Your Excellency," said Ferdyshchenko, "you have told one of the good deeds of your life; you have cheated Ferdyshchenko" (VIII, 127; 171).* The characters and the reader cannot simply believe any of these narrations, for they contain a mixture of truth and deception. By analogy —and paralleling or doubling was a favorite structural principle of Dostoevsky — the reader cannot unblinkingly accept with equal value the diverse voices and tones of the narrative in the novel. "Throughout the text, the volume number and first page reference are to the ongoing Soviet edition of Dostoevsky's complete works, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii ν tridsati tomakh. All the translations from this edition (which includes The Idiot) are my own. For the benefit of readers who wish to refer to an English text of the novel, I provide a second page number referring them to the Henry and Olga Carlisle translation of The Idiot (New York: New American Library, 1969),

The Narrative

Imperative

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling—this is the activity of art. - Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?

Instruction without entertainment (were I capable of giving the best) would have but few readers. Instruction, Madam, is the pill; amusement is the gilding. - Samuel Richardson, letter to Lady Elchin, 22 September 1755

t is a truth universally acknowledged that Dostoevsky was a novelist of ideas. But his own keen awareness of how essential the choice of a particular narrative method was for the portrayal of a particular idea has not generally occupied his critics. Dostoevsky expressed concern for narrative methods throughout his career, in his letters, notebooks, articles, and in his fiction. In a study such as this, which limits itself to the scrutiny of a single work of fiction, the general and the particular are in a state of competing balance. Hence the analysis of the narrative techniques Dostoevsky employed in The Idiot must gain in interest if it can become, to some degree, a case study, a description of some of Dostoevsky's fundamental artistic concerns. But before turning to The Idiot, it is useful to examine Dostoevsky's attitudes toward his readers and his own assessments of his narrative skill as he expressed them in his early journalism and in his letters. My aim has not been simply to catalogue Dostoevsky's pronouncements about his audience and ability to write, although

I

12

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

such a catalogue would not be without interest, but rather to combine Dostoevsky's scattered, often fragmentary observations to produce a larger statement about his audience and his narrative methods. 1 Most important, Dostoevsky understood narration as a strategy, as a subtle means of persuasion rather than as a simple vehicle for direct expression of his thoughts. In fact, Dostoevsky believed that in fiction he must always avoid direct expression of his thoughts. Such a conception of narration assumes the importance of the audience as a group to be persuaded, taught, and manipulated. In July 1876, in a letter to Vsevolod Solov'ev, during the writing of The Diary of a Writer, Dostoevsky commented on the ill effect that a direct, nonstrategic mode of narration had upon his general readers. He thanked Solov'ev for not being one of these general readers. "And so the June issue of the diary pleased you. I am very glad of that, and I have a special reason for it. I have never yet allowed myself, in my writings, to follow some of my convictions to the end [dovesti . . . ubezhdeniia do kontsa]; to say the very last word. One intelligent correspondent from the provinces even reproached me for opening discussion in the diary on many things, touching on much, but never taking these things to the end, and he urged me not to be timid" (Ρ, III, 227). Dostoevsky then described how newspapers and journals, even the ones usually friendly to him, criticized or simply ignored him when he did pursue an idea "to its end," that is, when he expressed an idea fully and directly: Here is what it means to take an idea [mysl] to its end! Set up any paradox that you like, but do not take it to its end, and you will be considered witty, subtle, and comme il faut; but take some risky word to the end, suddenly say, for example: "And here is the Messiah" — directly, and not by hinting, and no one will believe you precisely because of your naivete, precisely because you took things to the end and said your very last word. However, on the other hand, if many of the most famous wits, like Voltaire, for example, instead of mockeries, allusions, hints and reservations, had suddenly decided to express all that they believed, had showed their whole secret [podkladka], their essence, all at once, — then, believe me, they would not have obtained even a tenth of their former effect. Worse than that, they would only have been laughed at. Indeed, on the whole, man somehow in no way likes the last word of a "spoken" thought, [and]

The Narrative Imperative

13

says that, "The thought spoken is a lie" ["Mysl' izrechennaia est' lozh' "]. 2

The writer, then, must try to communicate indirectly with the reader. After expressing his joy that Solov'ev had not been such a reader, Dostoevsky added, "And if such good judges as you, even a few of them, are found among the public then I have attained my goal, and I am satisfied; that means that the expressed word has not been wasted. But here they cry out with joy: 'Paradoxes! Paradoxes!' and this is said precisely by those who have never had a single thought of their own in their heads" (Ρ, III, 228). Here Dostoevsky is talking about the readers of his journalism, but his words could apply to the readers of his fiction as well, though there the strategy of persuasion becomes more complex. Dostoevsky wanted his readers to go beyond their hungry craving for "fashionable paradoxes." Still, he presented such paradoxes in order to force his readers themselves to go beyond them. In this way he left "the last word" to the reader. Fifteen years earlier, in 1861, Dostoevsky ruefully expressed the same belief about the impossibility of simply expressing the truth. He noted, with self-mocking irony: Indeed, the moment you wish to tell the truth according to your convictions, you are at once accused of uttering copybook maxims. How extraordinary! Why are so many modern truths uttered in a tone that is just a little pompous at once characterized as copybook maxims? Why is it that if in our age we feel the need to tell the truth we have more and more to resort to humor or satire or irony in order to sweeten truth as if it were a bitter pill, or to present one's convictions to the public while pretending to be a shade haughtily indifferent to them or even with a certain shade of disrespect for them —in short, with some mean little concession? 3

Dostoevsky's narrative methods resulted from a conflict between a strong desire to tell the truth and a practical need to escape "copybook maxims." His narrators commonly pretend indifference or a "certain shade of disrespect." Yet perhaps these "mean little concession[s]" turn into the stuff of the great novelist's craft.

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Dostoevsky

and The Idiot

Dostoevsky frequently felt that both the critics and the public misunderstood him, yet he could not help being influenced by their evaluations. At the beginning of his career, he discovered that he could not expect the critics to follow his own inclinations. In February 1846 he boasted to his brother Mikhail of the hero of The Double: "Golyadkin is ten times better than Poor People . . . You will like it even better than Dead Souls, I'm sure of it" (Ρ, I, 87). In April of the same year Dostoevsky complained to Mikhail, "But this is what is sickening and tormenting: Our friends, Belinsky, and many others are not satisfied with Golyadkin" (Ρ, I, 88). Their judgment that the story was drawn out and boring made Dostoevsky feel disgusted with his Golyadkin. He revised his own estimation of the work: "Next to brilliant pages there is foul stuff, rubbish; it makes me sick, and I don't want to read it" (Ρ, I, 89). Dostoevsky's early letters rarely praised the public as readers, but he often agreed with their opinion of his work in spite of himself. Yet even though he had a dim view at first of the public's ability to understand the real meaning of a story, he had from the beginning settled upon a narrative style that expressed his own ideas indirectly: In our public, as in any crowd, there is instinct, but there is no education. They do not understand how one can write with such a style [as mine]. They are accustomed to seeing the ugly mug of the author in everything; I have not shown mine. And they haven't even guessed that Devushkin is speaking and not I, and that Devushkin cannot speak in any other way. They find the novel to be overlong, but there is not a superfluous word in it. They find in me a new, original spring (Belinsky and others) consisting in the fact that I write with Analysis and not with Synthesis, that is, I go into the depths and by examining the atoms I search for the whole, while Gogol takes the whole directly, and is thus not so deep as I. 4

Dostoevsky came increasingly to value that instinct in the public which he here dismissed so lightly. In fact, his narrative manner of indirect persuasion sought to appeal to the instinct rather than to the reason of his readers. Significantly, he maintained that his own voice was absent in Poor People; the absence of the author's voice remained a basic principle of Dostoevsky's narrative technique throughout the rest of his

The Narrative Imperative

15

career. Much of the public was never to guess "that Devushkin [or Raskolnikov, Stavrogin, Ivan] is speaking and not I." This misunderstanding has endured persistently. Indeed, as late as 1876 Dostoevsky was still complaining about the tendency of his readers to confuse the narrator's voice with that of the author. "I wrote my Letters from a Dead House fifteen years ago under the name of a fictitious person, a criminal who supposedly had murdered his wife. In passing, I may add, by way of detail, that since that time many people have been under the impression, and are even now asserting, that I was exiled for the murder of my wife."5 But Dostoevsky valued the critics' early view of him in 1846 as a "new, original spring"; this insistence on and pride in his originality continued to be vital to Dostoevsky's vision of himself as an artist. (It is no surprise that he both exalted and parodied the notion of originality in his fiction.) Ten years later, in January 1856, Dostoevsky reworked his theory of artistic creativity and emphasized the synthetic rather than the analytic process in literary composition. One can assume that his years of enforced literary inactivity in prison helped to reformulate his ideas about writing. In a letter from Semipalatinsk to his friend Apollon Maikov, Dostoevsky praised the young writer Alexei Pisemsky and then added: It is necessary to h a v e m o r e pride, m o r e respect for one's o w n talent and for art. Ideas [idei] in y o u t h p o u r in so fast; o n e should not c a t c h each o n e in flight, immediately express it, and h u r r y to express one's opinion a b o u t it. It is better t o wait longer for the synthesis, — to think longer, to wait, until the m a n y small things that express a single idea gather themselves into a single larger whole, into a single large image in relief, and then to express it. Colossal c h a r a c t e r s created b y colossal writers h a v e often been created and expressed through long, insistent labor.

But

sketches!

one

should

not

express

all

fleeting

attempts

and

(Ρ, I, 1 6 7 )

The synthesis should be in the writer's mind before he begins to write. For Dostoevsky it was synonymous with the poetic idea of a work, and should therefore be treasured and not wasted. Dostoevsky's reluctance to part prematurely with his ideas never deserted him. The years in prision may also have changed and softened Dostoevsky's judgment of the ability of the public to compre-

16

Dostoevsky

and The Idiot

hend the meaning of a literary work. In another letter to Maikov, he placed a heavier burden on the writer to express his idea well: 'You write that it is as if our society has awakened from apathy. But you know that, in general, in our society there are not demonstrations. But who ever concludes from this that it is without energy? Elucidate a thought well, and call upon society, and society will understand you" (Ρ, I, 163). At the same time, Dostoevsky had become more eager to win the public's approval. In 1859, after finishing The Village of Stepanchikovo, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother that if the public received his novel coldly, he would fall into despair. His desperate need to regain recognition after prison and exile had determined much of Dostoevsky's dependence on the public's reaction, but artistic considerations also played a role. He felt he had portrayed in the novel two typical Russian characters that had never been well drawn before in Russian literature (Ρ, I, 249). Despite his greater respect for the public, Dostoevsky continued to insist on his own originality, as he had done since the days of Poor Folk and The Double, and was not daunted by his own awareness that one of these characters — Foma Fomich Opiskin —was a mixture of Pecksniff and Tartuffe. Dostoevsky's view of his readers, his perceptions about the craft of fiction, and his desire to portray original, new material developed together and were interdependent; the need for both writer and reader to work hard remained constant. Moreover, when Dostoevsky wrote about his audience, he usually found himself writing about his craft as well. Although he was eager to win the approval of the public, he still privately regarded it as a relatively hostile group. In his letters Dostoevsky frequently contrasted the public's reaction to that of some ideal reader like Maikov, Nikolai Strakhov, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, or a particularly perceptive though unfamiliar, correspondent. At other times, usually when he was writing about his struggles in composing a novel, Dostoevsky referred not to the public but to the reader. This reader assumed a personal rather than a collective shape; he was someone with whom the author was forging an intimate relationship. He was not a member of the hounding, herdlike public that had "instinct" but no education, although he too could easily

The Narrative

Imperative

17

misunderstand the meaning revealed by the narrative. Despite this possibility, the relationship between Dostoevsky and this reader was one of good faith. Dostoevsky's famous letter to his niece Sonya Ivanova (extensively quoted in chapter 2), in which he disclosed his intention to write about a positively beautiful man, illustrates the reader's central role in the essence of the idea itself. The point is not simply that the image of a positively beautiful man occupied Dostoevsky's imagination while he was writing The Idiot: what is important both for the author and for his readers is that Dostoevsky undertook the task of portraying such a man (izobrazit' polozhitel'no prekrasnogo cheloveka. The word prekrasnyi means beautiful or fine and can carry with it the additional meaning of goodness). Dostoevsky felt that there was no artistic task more difficult than this portrayal of a good man. He consciously stressed the assigned role of the reader as a basic part of this central idea, for he categorized other novelists' attempts to portray such a character by the response they had invoked in their readers. Past prototypes of the good man, such as Don Quixote and Pickwick, he wrote, had been humorous. "Compassion appears for the beautiful man who is mocked and who doesn't know his own value, consequently sympathy appears in the reader. This awakening of compassion is the secret of humor." Jean Valjean, another good man, affected the reader's sense of tragedy. "Jean Valjean is also a powerful attempt, but he awakens sympathy by his terrible unhappiness and by the injustice of society towards him." But Dostoevsky wrote of his own novel, "I have nothing similar, decidedly nothing, and therefore I am terribly afraid that it will be a positive failure."6 That is, at this point in the composition of the novel Dostoevsky was using neither the traditional devices of comedy nor of tragedy as a way of engaging his reader; he had not yet found his particular narrative mechanism for awakening the reader's sympathy. "My only wish is that it [Part I] will awaken some degree of curiosity in the reader, so that he will go on to the second part" (Ρ, II, 72). He then tells Sonya that he likes the finale of the still unwritten second part of the novel, the scene of Nastasia Filippovna's nameday party (actually the end of Part I in the finished version), but wonders "what will the reader say? . . . I only hope

18

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

that the reader will read it through without feeling great boredom" (Ρ, II, 78). While writing The Idiot Dostoevsky thought continually of its effect on the reader. In December 1868, he assured Maikov, "The end of The Idiot will be effective" (Ρ, II, 151). Two weeks later, he complained to Sonya Ivanova, "It has not expressed even a tenth of what I wanted to express, although I do not disclaim it, and I still love my unsuccessful idea. But in any case, the fact is that it is not effective for the public" (Ρ, II, 160). He then expressed his hopes for his next projected work, Atheism, in terms of its effect on the reader. "Now I have in my head an idea for a big novel, which, in any case . . . must have an effect, if only by virtue of its theme . . . It must entice the reader against his will" (Ρ, II, 161). Dostoevsky admitted to Strakhov that, in comparison with Crime and Punishment, the effect of The Idiot on the public had been slight; he added, "I want to produce something effective again" (Ρ, II, 171). Dostoevsky's disappointment over the relative failure of The Idiot made him become like one of his own readers; he almost agreed with the public's appraisal of the novel, just as he had when the critics had found fault with The Double. In March 1869 he wrote, "And as to the shortcomings [in the novel] I am completely in agreement with everyone; but, mainly, I am so angry at myself for those shortcomings, that I myself want to write criticism" (Ρ, II, 175). Nevertheless, as he had with The Double, Dostoevsky continued to defend the idea of his novel. Dostoevsky's private attitude towards his readers remained ambivalent; it varied with their response to him. The young Dostoevsky's overflowing praise for Vissarion Belinsky's and Nikolai Nekrasov's literary judgment when they admired Poor Folk in 1845 touchingly bears witness to his changeable attitude. Dostoevsky's entrance upon the literary scene occurred after a dramatic meeting in which Nekrasov and Dmitri Grigorovich stayed up all night reading aloud to each other the manuscript of Poor Folk. Then Nekrasov brought the manuscript to Belinsky with the famous words, "A new Gogol has appeared." Dostoevsky later recalled his first meeting with Belinsky — who lectured to him about the mystery of art and about Dostoevsky's own great, though perhaps unconscious, artistic gifts —as a "solemn moment" of "timid ecstasy," and as "the most

The Narrative Imperative

19

delightful minute in my whole life." 7 Soon afterwards, Dostoevsky's relations with Nekrasov and Belinsky became strained. But almost thirty years later, Nekrasov's publication and praise of A Raw Youth made Dostoevsky forget their former coldness. (At this time Dostoevsky felt himself to be in competition with Tolstoy: Anna Karenina was appearing in Dostoevsky's favorite journal, Russkii Vestnik [ The Russian Messenger] at the same time as A Raw Youth was coming out in

Otechestvennye

Zapiski [The Fatherland Notes].) The euphoric

scene of twenty-nine years before underwent a muted repetition. On 9 February 1875, Dostoevsky recounted Nekrasov's words in a letter to his wife, Anna Grigor'evna: "I was so carried away that I sat up all night reading, and at my age, and with my health, I should not permit myself to do this. And what freshness you have, my dear man . . . Such freshness in our times is already lacking, and not a single writer has it. In Leo Tolstoy's latest novel there is only a repetition of those things which I read in him earlier, only before it was better" (Ρ, III, 152). Dostoevsky then agreed with Nekrasov's criticism of the eighth chapter of Part I; he noted that when he reread the proofs he found much of it to be weak. The old enemy's praise had given him a right to criticize and had turned him into a friend. But old friends could easily become foes; only three days later Dostoevsky complained "And when Maikov began to make inquiries about Nekrasov, and when I told about Nekrasov's compliments to me; he made a glum face, and Strakhov became quite cold. No Anya, he [Strakhov] is a nasty seminarian and nothing more; he has already abandoned me once in my life, at the failure of Epoch, and he ran back only after the success of Crime and Punishment." Dostoevsky then went on to spare Maikov, "He is nevertheless a good fellow and not a seminarian" (Ρ, III, 155). But it was the "seminarian" Strakhov's views on narration that had haunted Dostoevsky in his notes for A Raw Youth much more than Nekrasov's later praise ever could. For example, on 26 and 27 August 1874, when Dostoevsky was debating about what kind of narrative he should choose for A Raw Youth, he typically sought to gauge the effect of his choice upon his imagined reader: "Think over the possibility of a first-person narrative. Many advantages . . . Nicer . . . If I write the novel in the first-person, this will un-

20

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

doubtedly give it more unity, and less of that which Strakhov has been criticizing me for, i.e. too large a number of characters and subjects. But what about the style and tone of the Youth ['s narrative]? This style and tone m a y help the reader in anticipating the denouement." 8 In his later years, Dostoevsky increasingly found ideal readers in the conservative Pobedonostsev and in Vladimir Solov'ev. In a rare m o o d of solid pride (rather than a moment of euphoria sparked by a particular compliment) he wrote to Pobedonostsev late in the summer of 1879, of his amazement and delight in his success among the reading public: My literary position (I have never spoken to you about this) I consider to be almost phenomenal; how can it be that a man who is writing tirelessly against European principles, who has compromised himself forever by The Possessed, i.e., by his retrogression and obscurantism—how can this man, despite all the Europeanizers, their journals, newspapers, and critics, — nevertheless have been accepted by our youth, by this very unstable youth of nihilists and others? They have already declared this to me, from many places in individual declarations or in whole groups. They have already announced that from me alone they expect a sincere and sympathetic word and that they consider me, alone, to be the writer who will lead them. These declarations of the young people are known to our literary critics, those brigands of the pen and swindlers of the press, otherwise they would not let me write freely! (Ρ, IV, 108-109) O n c e he attained a firm belief in the readers' affection for him, Dostoevsky's optimism about the responses of the general public to his work did not desert him. T h e letters he received from the readers of The Diary of a Writer helped to bring about this change in his attitude. A n n a Grigor'evna commented that the m a n y letters Dostoevsky received while working on The Diary had a "very good effect" on him. "They demonstrated to him that there were people who shared his views and that society valued his objective voice and trusted him." She goes on to quote a letter written b y Dostoevsky in 1877 to his friend Stepan Yanovsky, "You simply would not believe the degree to which I have enjoyed the acceptance of the Russian people during these two years of publishing. Letters . . . have come to me in the hundreds . . . from all classes of

The Narrative Imperative

21

society . . . Only modesty prevents me from telling you how much fellow feeling all express. And if you could only know how much I myself have learned from these two years of publication, from these hundreds of letters from the Russian people!" 9 Before he began to write The Diary his correspondence had been much smaller; hence the readers had remained for him a distant, slightly menacing public whom he could only hope to "entice against their will" or to provide "effective" novels for them to read. The numerous letters he received in the late 1870s made Dostoevsky trust the public's response in fact instead of merely in theory. Conversely, the reactions of the critics became less important to him, although, as he wrote to Pobedonostev in August 1880, he desperately wanted the support of the people he personally respected: Everytime I write something and put it into print, it is as though I am in a fever. It is not that I don't believe in what I myself have written, but I am always tormented by the question: how will this be received—whether people will want to understand the essence of the matter or whether it will turn out that I shall have done more harm than good by publishing my sacred convictions. All the more so because I am always obliged to express some ideas only as basic thoughts, which always are much in need of more development and proof. And that is why the opinion of people such as you is decidedly a support for me. It means that I have not been mistaken in everything; it means that I have been understood by those whom I value because of their intelligence and impartial judgment, and, consequently, my labor has not been in vain. I will tell you openly: I am now finishing the Karamazovs. This last part, I myself see and feel it, is so original and so unlike what others are writing, that I decidely am not expecting approval from our critics. The public —the readers —are another matter: they have always supported me. (Ρ, IV, 194-195) Dostoevsky's private comments on his readers —the public and the critics —do not correspond to the more complex and intimate relationship in his fiction between the author-Dostoevsky and the implied reader of a particular work. That is a private relationship upon which Dostoevsky touched only in passing in his letters and journals when he wrote about seeking to

22

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

"attract the reader against his will" or when he lamented the need for methods of indirect persuasion and "mean little concessions." But these letters suggest the basis from which the authorDostoevsky created his implied reader. The hope of gaining a better understanding of this second, more elusive relationship between the author Dostoevsky and his implied reader underlies much of the analysis of The Idiot which is to follow. Although Dostoevsky's correspondence expressed certain reservations about the reading public, these reservations did not appear in his journalism. On the contrary, in his journalistic writings he defended the unerring taste of the public, whether it be that of high society or of the peasant; "it seems to us that this universally human response [to art] is even stronger in the Russian people than in all other nations and is its highest and best characteristic." 10 Dostoevsky even maintained that the Russian reading public knew more of English and German literature than did the French reading public. 11 Even the illiterate peasants had excellent potential as readers: "You claim that Pushkin is not appreciated by the common people. Yes, but that is because the common people have made no progress in their development, and they have made no progress because they could not do so. They are illiterate. But the moment education makes any headway among the common people, Pushkin will acquire his national significance for the masses also." 12 The public shaped the definition of good art as much as the writer did. "And if poetry, the word, literature, is also a medicine, there is at least some measuring rod to determine what is good in poetry and what is inappropriate for it. The measuring rod is simple: the more sympathy a poet arouses in the masses, the more he justifies his appearance as a poet." 13 Dostoevsky allowed the public this determining power over the writer's fate, while still acknowledging the weaknesses of that public: "the masses may not know at a given moment what they want, what they ought to love or sympathize with. But these deviations soon pass away by themselves and society can always find the right way by itself."14 Dostoevsky's monumental trust in the public, whose instincts are always right, is striking for he has not idealized it. In the end it is the same public to whom the writer must make "mean

The Narrative Imperative

23

little concessions" and use all his energies to interest and entertain. Dostoevsky could not afford to chastise the public too severely in his journalism; his politics would not permit it. Moreover, he frequently became caught up in his arguments and would then push them beyond his actual beliefs. But despite the power of political considerations and artistic gusto to deflect him from making measured, careful statements, his public view of the Russian readership did not contradict his private view. Publicly as well as privately Dostoevsky had acknowledged that the most valuable asset of the Russian reading public was instinct rather than educated taste; he had emphasized, in his early journalism as well as in his correspondence, the writer's obligation to awaken his reader's sympathy. In his letters and journalism Dostoevsky frequently stressed the importance of interesting and entertaining the public. Capturing and holding the reader's interest took precedence over any predetermined aesthetic requirements. Dostoevsky was more confident of his ability to entertain than of his skill at narrative technique and style. On 18 January 1856, in his first letter to Maikov after his release from prison, Dostoevsky disclosed his plan to write Notes from the House of the Dead. The Notes were to achieve a striking effect on the reader without being strictly autobiographical: "In the hours when there is nothing for me to do, I am noting down from my recollections of my stay in prison what was most curious. However, there is little that is purely personal" (Ρ, I, 164). Three years later, in a letter to his brother, Dostoevsky still described his Notes in the same terms: he emphasized the odd nature of their content and the removal of all directly autobiographical material. "My personality has disappeared. These are the notes of an unknown man; but I can vouch for their interest. The interest is the most important thing. The tone will be serious, gloomy, humorous, touching, and there will be peasant speech with the special prison coloring . . . the portrayal of personalities never before heard of in literature, and, finally, the main thing,—my name . . . I am certain that the public will read it avidly" (Ρ, II, 9 October 1859, p. 605). Another typically Dostoevskyan concern is evident here as well: the assertion that the work is original because it contains new, but real character!-

24

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

zations. Throughout his career Dostoevsky continued to vouch for the presence of these three attributes in his fiction: a high level of interest, the disappearance of his own personality in the narration, and the originality of the work. As early as 1863 Dostoevsky was already planning The Gambler (1886). (It is even possible that he had a first draft written by the time he hired Anna Grigor'evna to take dictation from him in 1866). He linked this future novel to Notes from the House of the Dead·, both portrayed hitherto undescribed aspects of Russian life; both, he felt certain, would prove extremely interesting to the reader: If The House of the Dead called itself to the public's attention as a portrayal of prisoners whom no one had portrayed graphically until The House of the Dead, then this tale, without fail, will call attention to itself as graphic and most detailed portrayal of the game of roulette. Moreover, similar articles are read by us with extreme curiosity, — gambling at the watering places, particularly relating to Russians abroad, has a certain (maybe not unimportant) significance . . . The story may be very good. My "Dead House" was really most interesting. And here there shall again be the picture of hell, of the same kind as that "Turkish bath in the prison." (Ρ, II, 333) The first-person narrators of both works recount extreme experiences that Dostoevsky had had. They would seem to be the most obviously autobiographical of his novels. Yet in both works Dostoevsky carefully separated himself from his narrator's point of view; autobiographical material must pass through the filter of a fictional character's personality. (The same rule later applied to the autobiographical sections in The Idiot.) Two years later, in 1865, Dostoevsky wrote to Mikhail Katkov on the theme of Crime and Punishment, "I vouch for its interest. Of its artistic execution [khudozhestvennost'] — \ do not take it upon myself to judge" (Ρ, I, 420). Citing this same letter, F. I. Evnin noted that although efforts to make the novel interesting played an outstanding role in Dostoevsky's creative plans, "interest in Dostoevsky's eyes never became an aim in itself, something important or definitive; in the just quoted utterance, 'interest' is even separated from 'artistic execution' as from something much more essential." 15 This is not the case at all.

The Narrative

Imperative

25

Though Evnin is right in observing that Dostoevsky separated interest from artistic execution, Dostoevsky did not place the minimal value on interest that his critic did. At times he even valued interest more than artistic execution. In his letter to Sonya Ivanova, written in October 1870 after sending off the beginning of The Possessed to Russkii Vestnik, he remarked that despite his dissatisfaction with the first part, he had hopes for the novel's continuation and its ending and added, "at least it will turn out entertainingly [zanimatel'no], (and entertainment, which I have attained so far, I place higher than artistic merit, [khudozhestvennost]). As to its artistic merit I don't know, though it seems that it must be successful. The thought is an audacious and big one; the thing is that I always choose themes beyond my power. The poet in me pulls the artist back and forth, and this is bad" (Ρ, II, 296-297). Again, as in his 1865 letter to Katkov, Dostoevsky characteristically has separated interest from artistic execution. Here, however, he has made a further compartmentalization in the artist's creative process: he has separated the poet from the artist, the creative thinker from the artificer. A. S. Dolinin, in his notes for this letter, has pointed out that Dostoevsky quite often juxtaposed the poet and the artist in his letters. Dolinin has regarded this separation of the poet and the artist in Dostoevsky's terminology as equivalent to the more generally made distinction between inspiration and the strict, careful execution of it —the ability to express each detail. 16 Taken together, Dostoevsky's separate emphasis on the poet, the artist, and the quality of interest in a work can offer a model of the process whereby an author communicates the central idea of his work to the reader. In fact, Dostoevsky has suggested the terms which could be used to produce a theory about the phenomenology of reading, although he does not himself take this final step. Nevertheless, one can visualize these separations functioning as a dynamic equilibrium, whereby interposed between the author who created a text, and the reader who reads it, are three aspects of the author —the poet, the artist, and the entertainer. The poet's idea is given form by the artist. But this artistic shape must have some easily accessible quality of interest that will quickly attract and hold the reader's attention. That is, the reader first responds to the efforts of the enter-

26

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

tainer. Only later, as he becomes immersed in the work, does the reader start to uncover the poet's idea. Dostoevsky's repeated emphasis on the separation of these aspects of the creative process cannot prevent them from remaining, most essentially, aspects of the same thing. Certainly in his notebooks and in his fiction Dostoevsky's poet, artist, and entertainer merge. A striking instance of the necessity for having all three work together occurs when Dostoevsky tried to do without one member of this creative trio. In the early stages of the composition of The Possessed, he attempted to express his idea in an interesting way, without the factor of artistry —of artistic execution. In March 1870 he explained to Strakhov: "I have great hopes in the thing which I am now writing for The Russian Messenger, but not from its artistic side, rather, from its tendentious side; I want to express certain thoughts even if my artistry [khudozhestvennost'] will be ruined because of it. That which has gathered itself together in my mind and in my heart attracts me; let it turn out to be only a political tract [pamflet]; I will express myself" (Ρ, II, 257). Four months later he wrote to Sonya Ivanova that the book had had to be radically altered. He struck out all that he had written so far and began again (Ρ, II, 282-283). Georgy Chulkov has seen this as a dramatic example of the inexpendability of "artistic execution." "And so, fifteen sheets of the tendentious tale were destroyed. The political tract had failed, and the sacrifice of 'artistic execution' proved useless."17 Dostoevsky separated the notion of interest from the other realms of the creative process. His two closest literary friends, Maikov and Strakhov, regarded the bald manipulation of the reader's interest as something rather vulgar and outside the realm of the creative process. In September 1868 Maikov wrote to Dostoevsky of the reaction to the ongoing serial publication of The Idiot: What are you so worried about with regard to your novel? One thing is already clear — the fact that it is very interesting forces the public to read it. The thought which I begin to see is a great one. Since it is not yet finished, I cannot give it a final verdict. There are various opinions; the main reproach is in the fantasticality of the characters; one fellow even says that "there are no such summer cottages in Pavlovsk"

The Narrative Imperative

27

. . . But, nevertheless, the main thing is that people are reading it, so that on this score especially there is nothing to worry about. (Ρ, II, 426) Maikov valued the fact of the novel's interest merely as a useful starting point: it made people read the book. Dolinin has noted that these words probably gave Dostoevsky little comfort. "He understood, of course, that Maikov didn't like the novel, that in essence Maikov fully shared that 'fellow's' opinion" (Ρ, II, 426). Similarly, Strakhov's article in praise of War and Peace affected Dostoevsky as an indirect reproach for his own unabashed attempts to hold the reader's interest. Strakhov wrote that: the success of War and Peace is an extremely simple and distinct phenomenon, not containing in itself any complexity or confusion . . . Tolstoy did not try to attract the reader either by any sort of confusing and mysterious happenings, or by a description of dirty and terrible scenes, or by the portrayal of terrible spiritual torment, . . . in a word, not by any of those means by which the thought or the imagination of the reader is teased, painfully irritating his curiosity by pictures of a life which he has neither tried nor experienced. (Ρ, II, 446) Dostoevsky reacted to this thinly veiled reproach of his techniques by asserting his version of a fantastic reality, a reality which could best be portrayed by the use of the very devices Strakhov had denigrated (Ρ, II, 426). But he did not directly defend his methods. Later, in a letter to Dostoevsky in which he commented on The Possessed, Strakhov softened his reproach: It is evident, in terms of the content, by the abundance and diversity of ideas, that you are the first among us, and Tolstoy himself in comparison with you is monotonous . . . But it is also evident that you write, for the most part, for a select public, and you overload your works; you overcomplicate them. If the fabric of your tales were simpler, they would act more powerfully . . . This shortcoming, perhaps, is found in connection with your merits . . . And the whole secret, it seems to me, consists in the fact that you need to loosen your creative work, to reduce the subtlety; instead of twenty figures and one hundred scenes, stop at one figure and ten scenes . . . It seems to me that until now you have not been controlling your talent; you have not been adapting it for the greatest effect on the public. (Ρ, II, 509)

28

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

Strakhov here revised his criticism of Dostoevsky. Instead of deploring the use of flagrant devices to entrap the reader, Strakhov phrased his critique in terms of how best to preserve the reader's interest. Perhaps knowing Dostoevsky's unshakeable devotion to keeping his readers entertained (or interested), his friend was merely trying to couch his objections in strategic, effective language. Dostoevsky agreed with Strakhov here; Strakhov's words continued to haunt him during the writing of A Raw Youth. More modern critics such as Grossman, Bakhtin, and Chulkov have rejected the notion that entertainment is separate from artistic execution; instead they have recognized that keeping a high level of interest is a basic aspect of Dostoevsky's narrative technique. Grossman has contended that for Dostoevsky, after a period in his youth when he valued perfection in form above all other considerations, the demands incurred by the maintenance of interest largely determined the entire shape of a work: "He [Dostoevsky] considers it possible now to sacrifice all the canons of form and classical prescriptions of the academy in the name of the realization of his main problem —to startle, to intrigue, or to stun the reader from the very first line, so that subsequently, until the end, he will not let him [the reader] out from under the power of his tale." 18 Dostoevsky's narrators personified this aim: "The narrator above all must be fascinating — here is Dostoevsky's new axiom, which has crowded out the precepts of his early theories. T o compose with talent means to compose in an entertaining manner' —he [Dostoevsky] afterward formulates the basic law of literary art, 'because the very best book, whatever it is and whatever it treats, is entertaining.' " 1 9 The choice of a particular narrator became inherent to making the work interesting. "How to impart to his statement the ability to fascinate the most apathetic reader —here is the main theoretical question, to which, in his latest period, was directed, almost wholly, his creative doctrine." 20 Dostoevsky's own separation (in his letters) of the notion of interest or entertainment from that of artistic execution was a false division. Perhaps harsh circumstances determined this unnecessary separation in his mind; throughout most of his career Dostoevsky needed to maintain and increase his readership in order to eat. The notion of interest easily assumed its own pro-

The Narrative Imperative

29

portions as something vital to each of his works despite any artistic shortcomings a particular work may have had. Critics have cited this overzealous desire to interest the public as a sad fact of Dostoevsky's life, as a failing that prevented him from realizing his complete potential as an artist. Dostoevsky's early journalism, however, belies a biographical explanation of his emphasis on interest. Moreover, his journalism does not separate interest and artistic execution as decisively as his letters do. Interest did not conflict with the demands of good art; it was part of it. Certainly to be entertaining was a practical demand of the novelist's craft, but this practicality was outwardly, not inwardly, directed. The quality of entertainment could ultimately serve genuine larger needs of the audience; the arousal of a reader's interest was not merely an author's ploy to make himself be read. Dostoevsky's two articles in Time in 1861 on "Pedantry and Literacy," for example, urged again and again that the best way to get the peasants reading was to make their reading matter entertaining. The manipulation of interest has a serious purpose: to get the common people to read. The educated must teach the uneducated. It is their duty, isn't it? But what is rather strange and even bad is that they do not seem able to approach the common people without laughing at them, "without satire" and above all, without wishing to teach them . . . No doubt we are most anxious to confer benefits by our satires and mockeries . . . We merely wanted to observe humbly that before thinking of any immediate benefits conferred by the popular books, before indulging in satiric mockeries, moral admonitions and eradications, it would not be a bad idea to concentrate simply on the spread of reading among the common people, on trying to arouse in them a desire for reading entertaining books even without any satirical contents . . . 21

But Dostoevsky's strategy was far more complex than that of the well-meaning compilers of a useful Reader for the peasant. Dostoevsky described his own version of such a Reader, "and though in the first 'Readers, . . . no one can prevent me from choosing articles that would be of the greatest usefulness for them, I would all the same put the entertainment value of these books above everything else, for it is necessary first of all to achieve one thing — the spread of a desire for reading among the

30

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

peasants".22 If the peasant reader could not distinguish Dostoevsky's proposed volume from the popular peasant favorite The Beautiful Muslim Girl, so much the better, "Let them even wonder which to give preference to. For it must mean that they like it if they are comparing it with one of their favorite books. It is quite impossible to ask them for precise criticism immediately."23 But, Dostoevsky predicted, they would then buy his next book, because the first had been so entertaining; soon they would even prefer his book to The Beautiful Muslim Girl, "for it is the nature of good literature to purify taste and reason, and that is why I pin my hopes on it." 24 In short, Dostoevsky's prescriptions on the nature of peasant reading matter differed in degree, but not in kind, from his endeavors among his more sophisticated readership. Clearly in this article the need for interest served the writer's higher motives of teaching or persuading his readers; as such, interest was essential to the artistic execution of the idea. But the writer's motive, said Dostoevsky, must be carefully concealed, even subordinated to the entertainment value of the work. Again, this polemical, often sarcastic article reiterates Dostoevsky's concerns within his own fiction. The reader must never suspect that he is being manipulated; "if there is anything that disturbs us [in the project of a peasant Reader proposed by Dostoevsky's ideological oponents], it is this unnecessary painstakingness; the fact that it is too clever, quite unnecessarily prefigured and calculated; that is to say, what we don't like about it is that it is much too good: an absurd impression, no doubt, but not unknown in nature." 25 Of course Dostoevsky is really saying the opposite: the work is not too good at all; it puts the reader on guard; he senses that he is being manipulated. Instead, as in Dostoevsky's proposed peasant Reader, the intent should be perfectly concealed, "it should be very difficult (and not easy, as Mr. Shcherbin claims) to perceive the essential qualities of the logic and the practical and psychological motives' which the publisher puts at the basis of his book." 26 Dostoevsky, while seeming in these two articles to call for a relaxation of effort and to ask only that a work be interesting, has called for a redoubled effort to achieve a rhetorical manipulation of the reader that is adeptly hidden from him, so that he

The Narrative Imperative

31

reads on for sheer entertainment. The maintenance of interest has become, in practice, a narrative strategy inseparable from the artistic qualities of the work. It is not a separate, less artistic concern as it appeared to be in Dostoevsky's letters. In these two minor essays Dostoevsky has provided important clues to his o\vn narrative strategies: the author must manipulate and entertain his reader with painstaking care, and he must perfectly conceal his own intent, that is, his own voice. Dostoevsky's preoccupation with the question of interest never developed into a complete articulation of the interdependence between content and form and the role of interest as part of both. Nevertheless, his notebooks and letters illustrate his constant experimentations with various forms to express a single idea. Remarkably, Dostoevsky's emphasis on the quality of interest finally closely resembles the formulations of Henry James. James's only absolute requirement for a work of fiction was that "it be interesting."27 Dostoevsky, who shared this view, equally stressed the need for the author's masking of his own voice. Such a concealment carried with it the assumption that a reader must work hard at uncovering the author's meaning. James expressed a similar point of view, and also linked the notion of indirect manipulation of the reader with the quality of interest. "When he [the writer] makes him [the reader] ill, that is, makes him indifferent, he does no work; the writer does ill. When he makes him well, that is, makes him interested, then the reader does quite half the labor." 28 Literary interest, according to Booth, may be divided into three types: intellectual or cognitive interest, qualitative interest, and practical interest. A reader's intellectual interest in a work centers around his curiosity about "the facts of the case," the reader's qualitative interest in a work draws upon his aesthetic sensibility, his "strong desire to see any pattern or form completed." Finally, a reader's practical interest encompasses his moral and "human" curiosity. "We have, or can be made to have, a strong desire for the success or failure of those we love or hate." 29 When Dostoevsky wrote about interest he was describing, in terms of these categories, a combination of the reader's intellectual and practical interests. Dostoevsky's term "artistic execution" corresponds most closely to the category of "qualitative interest," although Booth's concern here is the van-

32

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

tage point of the reader while Dostoevsky has described the efforts of the novelist. But in the end, their articulation of the types of literary interest closely coincides, for each places the greatest emphasis on the "practical" interest of a work of fiction, which arouses the reader's moral and human curiosity. 30 Considerations about holding the reader's interest occupied Dostoevsky throughout his career and forced him to use a peculiar, but extremely illuminating, critical vocabulary. But his theories often collided with his artistic practice. In describing his proposed novel Notes from The House of the Dead Dostoevsky had located the interest of the novel in two things: the wideranging narrative tones of the work, and the portrayal of original but typical characters. Later, during the writing of the early drafts of The Possessed, the attempt to leave out "artistic execution" had caused the ultimate rejection of those drafts, most certainly because the sacrifice of artistry led to the loss of the interest of the novel as well. Here Dostoevsky's attempted separation of interest from artistic execution had proved too severe; they were instead different aspects of the same process. Yet however he related the matter of interest to the rest of the creative process, Dostoevsky always considered interest to be part of any narrative strategy. The power of a work to entertain could effectively mask the fact of the author's manipulation of the reader. This principle of concealment of purpose under layers of entertaining narrative remained a cornerstone of Dostoevsky's own art throughout his life. To capture and maintain the reader's interest meant inventing and developing particular narrative strategies. Dostoevsky's letters do not give a complete or systematic view of his opinions on narrative strategy, but certain concerns about narrative methods emerge as particularly important. Most of his comments about narrative method refer to novels, written and unwritten, rather than to his shorter works. (Of course, the notebooks to the novels provide the best clues to his strategy.) Before beginning the business of writing, Dostoevsky agonized over how best to express (that is, by which narrative method) the idea of a work. He feared that the act of writing — the artistic execution — would spoil the idea. The attempts to express the poetic idea resulted in an abundance of plans for each novel.

The Narrative Imperative

33

(There are fewer plans, however, for Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov than there are for The Idiot, The Possessed, and A Raw Youth.) Thus it comes as no surprise that upon his release from prison Dostoevsky revealed that he was postponing work on certain favorite ideas because he did not want to spoil them. He wrote to Katkov from Semipalatinsk in January 1858, "I have not wanted to profane my best ideas and my best plans for tales and novels by working hurriedly and for a deadline. I have loved them so much; I have so wished to create them without haste and with love, that it seems to me I would rather die than decide to deal with my best ideas dishonorably" (Ρ, IV, 262). When Dostoevsky wrote that he could vouch for the interest or the truth of a particular idea, but not for its artistic execution, he was voicing the fear that he had spoiled the idea or brought it forth too quickly. Yet his notebooks reveal the strenuous, careful, and unhurried working out of ideas, despite the terrible time pressures under which he labored. Nevertheless Dostoevsky always claimed that he had had to bring forth ideas prematurely. Dostoevsky worried about The Idiot, fearing that he had failed in the struggle to express a most beloved idea, the idea of portraying a perfectly beautiful man in nineteenth-century Russia—perhaps because of narrative weaknesses. Dostoevsky experienced similar doubts as he worked at shaping other ideas into novels. While working on The Possessed, he told Maikov, "But again, I repeat: I am as afraid as a frightened mouse. The idea tempted me, and I loved it terribly, but whether I will compose it or whether I will spoil the entire novel, — that's the trouble!" (Ρ, II, 323-333). Dostoevsky never ceased his lamentations over having to labor under severe serial publication deadlines, and many of his critics, following his lead, have linked his continual fears about spoiling the idea of a work to the fact of these time pressures. But although he complained about time pressures generally, or before a work was finished, he did not usually blame the lack of time for specific failures. In fact, Dostoevsky resisted the pressure to turn a treasured idea prematurely into a work of fiction even when his needs were greatest. In November 1857 he wrote to his brother, Mikhail, that he had left a novel unwritten rather than write it too soon:

34

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

As to my novel, something unpleasant happened both to me and to it, and here is why: I had supposed and vowed that I would not publish anything not well-considered, not yet ripened, or anything written for a deadline (as before) for money; I supposed that one must not trifle with an artistic production, that one must work honestly, and that if I should write badly, as probably I have many times, it would be because I had no talent, and not because of carelessness and frivolity. That is why, seeing that my novel was taking on a huge size, that it was falling into shape excellently, but that it would be necessary, absolutely necessary, (for money) to finish it quickly —I reconsidered it. There is nothing sadder than this indecision while you are working. Eagerness, will, energy —all are extinguished. I saw myself forced to spoil the idea [isportit' mys/'] which I have been thinking about for three years, for which I had gathered an endless amount of material . . . and which I had already partly carried out, having noted down an endless number of separate scenes and chapters. (Ρ, II, 585) He informed his brother that he had put the w o r k away in a drawer. Certainly time pressures posed a severe problem to him. But he would abandon a work rather than allow it to fail through having to rush it. Dostoevsky's fear of spoiling an idea stemmed as much from mistrust of his own skill at "artistic execution" as from any constraints imposed b y financial considerations and deadlines. Some ideas, most notably the one embodied first in the pro-

jected novel Atheism and then in The Life of a Great Sinner,

were so dear to him that he never risked spoiling them; the nov-

els remained unwritten. The Possessed,

A Raw Youth, and The

Brothers Karamazov contain the essential ideas of these two unwritten novels. But one could argue that Dostoevsky's hesitancy in writing The Life of a Great Sinner sprang from his lifelong reluctance to part with a favorite idea prematurely and subject it to artistic realization. He almost approached the point of writing it: he wrote to Strakhov from Dresden in the spring of 1870, "The idea of the novel has already been in me for three years, but before I was afraid to sit down to it abroad; I wanted to be in Russia for [the writing of] it. But in three years much has ripened — the whole plan of the novel — and I think that for its first part . . . I can even write here, for the action begins m a n y years ago" (Ρ, II, 258). Dostoevsky then informed Strakhov that the novel would be like a T o l s t o y novel in size, that the five ma-

The Narrative

Imperative

35

jor parts of it would be like separate works, and that the title of the whole was to be The Life of a Great Sinner. Several years later Dostoevsky rejoiced that he had not rushed into writing another unwritten novel, Fathers and Children. "When, a year and a half ago, Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov invited me to write a novel for Notes of the Fatherland, I almost began at that time my Fathers and Children, but I held myself back, and I thank God for it; I wasn't ready. And so far I have written only A Raw Youth — the first attempt at expressing my thought." 31 This unwritten novel and The Life of a Great Sinner partly coalesced in The Brothers Karamazov. Instead of the vision of an author pressured by time into writing rapidly and spoiling his ideas, we see in Dostoevsky a man who could wait for years, even indefinitely, before he would seek to transform an idea into a novel. This fear of spoiling the idea also resulted, often, in an intense struggle to express that idea. Each of Dostoevsky's major novels, except The Brothers Karamozov, represents the result of numerous drafts and variations. The notebooks for The Idiot exhibit this struggle in the extreme; they are largely notes for a nonexistent novel. Even of Crime and Punishment, which he composed with relatively more ease than his next three novels, Dostoevsky wrote, in February 1866, to his old friend A. E. Vrangel, "At the end of November much had been written and was ready; I burnt it all; now I can confess to this. I didn't like it. A new form, a new plan attracted me and I began again . . . A novel is a poetic affair [delo poeticheskoe], for its fulfillment it demands peace of mind and imagination. But creditors are tormenting me" (Ρ, I, 430). The major change in the notes was in the realm of narrative method; a third-person narrator replaced Raskolnikov's first-person narration. The writing of The Possessed involved similar, more extreme rejections of previous plans and drafts. Dostoevsky described his labors to Sonya Ivanova in August 1870: The novel that I was writing was big, very original, but the idea was in a somewhat new category for me; much presumption was needed to manage it. But I didn't manage it, and I became exhausted. My work was going listlessly; I felt that there was a major insufficiency in the whole thing, but what exactly, I couldn't guess . . . And now, two

36

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

weeks ago, sitting down again to my work, suddenly I saw all at once what was lacking, and where my mistake lay. Then, in an inspiration, a new plan of the novel in full harmony presented itself to me. Everything had to be radically altered. Without thinking about it at all, I crossed out everything I had written (approximately 15 sheets) and began again from the first page. The work of an entire year had been destroyed. (Ρ, II, 282-293) He complained that if he were Tolstoy, Goncharov, or Turgenev he would not have had to hurry with his novel. Nevertheless, Dostoevsky admitted, "The idea is so good, so significant in many ways, that I myself must bow down before it" (Ρ, II, 283). But, he said, he would have to write the novel in eight or nine months and thus spoil it. Characteristically, Dostoevsky complained about time pressure, about the fact that wealthier writers did not have to struggle as he did. But in fact he had not hesitated to throw out a whole year's work. The force of a new idea —not a new idea about the subject of the novel, but a drastic revision in the narrative method of the novel — drove him to rewrite the whole thing. Dostoevsky's The Diary of a Writer, though not a novel, resembled his novels in being a major undertaking that extended over a long period of time. Dostoevsky deliberated over its final form as well; various ideas vied with each other in his mind, with a familiar outcome. In April 1876 he wrote: "I have still not succeeded in clarifying for myself the form of 'the Diary,' and I don't know whether I will ever get it right; so that 'the Diary' may even continue for two years, say, and still be an unsuccessful thing. For example, when I sit down to write, I have 10-15 themes (not less). But the themes which I like best, I unwillingly set aside for later; they will occupy much space, they will take much energy . . . and so I write not of what I had wanted to. On the other hand, I thought, too naively, that this would be a real 'diary.' A real 'diary' is almost impossible, but it is only for show, for the public." (Ρ, III, 206-207). Four years later he complained to Ivan Aksakov that though he had been issuing his Diary himself for two years, he was still plagued by doubts over what to say about certain matters, what tone to adopt, and on what matters to remain silent. 32 In The Diary, the pressure of time may genuinely, from

The Narrative Imperative

37

Dostoevsky's own account, have been victorious. In the novels Dostoevsky did seek final forms and did grapple with those themes that demanded "space" and "energy." Common to Dostoevsky's perception of both The Diary and the novels, though, was his sense of having reluctantly put away favorite themes for a more auspicious time; common to readers of The Diary and the novels is the feeling that Dostoevsky has successfully developed and expressed those very themes. The composition of A Raw Youth followed the pattern of the earlier novels. Moreover, while writing it Dostoevsky was haunted by Strakhov's criticisms of his style, although the notebooks show that he could not change his narrative methods to suit Strakhov and perhaps did not even want to. The letters of this period carry more references to Tolstoy than do the earlier letters. He compared the size of The Life of A Great Sinner to the size of a Tolstoy novel; he wrote, in the letter quoted above, that he had come to the conviction that the artist must study everything, current and historical, that related to the reality he was trying to show. He saw Tolstoy as the only Russian writer who succeeded at this as well as Victor Hugo had in France. He felt a sharp sense of competition with Tolstoy during the simultaneous appearances of Anna Karenina and A Raw Youth and was jealously aware of Strakhov's extreme admiration for Tolstoy. In a letter to his wife during the writing of A Raw Youth, in July 1874, Dostoevsky revealed that composing the plan for the novel was the most difficult aspect of his literary endeavor; after that, the writing of the novel itself could flow more smoothly. "Anya, my work progresses sluggishly, and I am tormented over the plan. An abundance of plans —that's the main deficiency. When I look at it as a whole, then I see that 4 novels are joined in it. Strakhov always sees my shortcoming in this. But there is still time. Perhaps I shall correct it. The main thing is the plan, and the work itself is easier" (Ρ, III, 114). (From May to August of 1874, for example, Dostoevsky made only 47 pages of notes for the novel, whereas from August to September, when the novel was better under way, he made 140 pages of notes [Ρ, II, 327].) Later in the month Dostoevsky repeated the same hopes to her, "At home I am working hard at the plan . . . But if a successful plan emerges, then the work will flow

38

Dostoevski/ and The Idiot

like oil. If only I could find a successful plan!" (Ρ, III, 131). Dolinin has described the special nature of these plans for Dostoevsky: . . . in the course of Dostoevsky's creative work, the plan always occupied an exclusive place. For him, the making of a good plan was already half the work. One must, however, make this stipulation: Dostoevsky's understanding of a "plan" is an original one, peculiar to him; it is not only the order of the distribution of plot [siuzhetnye] and ideological elements, not only the foundations of an architectonic nature, it is notes, at times extremely detailed, which characterize one or another personage or which define the basic centers of the plot [uziy siuzheta] and which are very often ideological (as for example, the

plans for The Idiot).

(Ρ, III, 330)

Clearly, Dostoevsky's plans all attempted the same thing: the effective portrayal of an idea already decided upon. The plans, however "ideological" they may be, in fact comprise various sets of narrative strategies. Once Dostoevsky had settled on the idea, it remained constant; the rhetoric of persuasion varied. The Brothers Karamazov, which had been ripening in Dostoevsky's consciousness for years, still demanded extensive rewriting despite Dostoevsky's certainty about the idea of the novel. He wrote to Ivan Aksakov: I am just now finishing the Karamazovs, consequently I am summing up the work, which I, at least, value, for there is much in it of me and of mine. I am in general working nervously, with torment and anxiety . . . And now I have to sum up all that I have pondered, gathered, and set down in the last three years. I must do it well, that is, as well as I can . . . But the time has come, nevertheless, to finish and finish without delay. Will you believe, notwithstanding, tht I have been making notes for 3 years already, — I set down some chapter, and then I reject it; I write it again, and I write it again. Only inspired passages come at one sitting, in one gulp, but the rest is all very hard work. (Ρ, IV, 198-199)

Thus, before Dostoevsky began to write a novel, he deliberated over his idea and whether he should use it. If he did decide to use it, a long process of planning and rewriting began. The final product was merely the visible part of a monstrous iceberg; its beholder may see it sharply outlined against the water and

The Narrative

Imperative

39

the sky, but his fear and awe spring from his knowledge of what is below. Dostoevsky hoped that his readers would sense the underlying idea of his work. "The high artistic quality [khudozhestvennost") of . . . a novelist is his ability to express the idea of his novel in the characters and images of the novel so that after reading it the reader understands the writer's idea as well as the writer had understood it himself when creating his work." 33 But the writer must first find the right form, the right narrative strategy in which to cast his idea, "How does one recognize the high artistic quality of a work of art? By the fact that we see the fullest possible harmony between the artistic idea and the form in which it is embodied?"34 Dostoevsky's numerous plans and drafts exhibit his search for the right form. Although he hoped that the reader would understand his idea as "well as the writer has understood it himself," and although he sought "the fullest possible harmony between the artistic idea and the form," nevertheless Dostoevsky believed that the reader must elaborate the meaning of the novel for himself. The writer must be a strategist, a rhetorician who could never speak his thoughts and say "the last word," because of the withering effect such directness would have on his art. The tendentious author manipulates his reader unsparingly, but he must preserve the reader's illusory sense of freedom. Dostoevsky warned the critics, "Divine, wish for, prove, ask people to follow you, by all means —it is all permissible; but to prescribe is not permisible, to be a despot is not permissible,"35 and the same exhortation applied to the artist. Perhaps the most prescriptive of Dostoevsky's novels is The Brothers Karamazov; the most prescriptive part of the novel lies at its core, in the juxtaposition of Ivan's creation, "The Grand Inquisitor," and of Alyosha's real chronicle, "Notes of the Life of the Deceased Priest and Monk, the Elder Zosima." Dostoevsky's narrative methods culminate in this novel, especially in the apposition of the two inner narratives. But the novel escapes despotism. In fact readers have been swayed by the challenge of the Grand Inquisitor rather than by the answer contained in Alyosha's "Biographical Notes." Dostoevsky, though he sought to avoid despotism, hardly hoped for such an outcome. Yet while writing the novel he consciously tried to veil the refutation of the Grand Inquisitor by presenting it indirectly

40

Dostoevsky

and The Idiot

and b y leaving (or seeming to leave) the conclusion to the reader. Despite the ideological importance Dostoevsky attached to the refutation, he would not resort to a direct negation of the Grand Inquisitor's argument. He wrote to Pobedonostsev late in the summer of 1879: You pose the most pressing problem: that I have not yet given the answer to all those aesthetic propositions, and that it must be done. Exactly so, and in this all my care and anxiety now reside. For the sixth book — The Russian Monk — which will appear on August 31st is intended to answer all that negative side. And so I tremble for it in this sense: will it be a sufficient answer? Especially as the answer is not in fact direct, not an answer point by point to the theses previously expressed (in the Grand Inquisitor and earlier), but [is an answer] only by implication. Here I have presented something exactly the opposite of the world-outlook expressed earlier —but again it is not presented point by point, but as an artistic picture, so to speak. This is what disturbs me, i.e., will it be understood, and shall I achieve even a part of my aim? (Ρ, IV, 109) However much Dostoevsky wanted the reader to share his idea, his point of view, he would not have recourse to simple, and therefore self-defeating measures to achieve that support. Above all, he remained a strategist who, while refining the artistic execution of his idea into a persuasive form, left the final burden of comprehension up to the reader. Once the plan for a new novel was ready, the writing of the beginning of a novel was also extremely difficult for Dostoevsky. 3 6 To begin a novel meant to establish its tone, its narrative mode, and although he knew that the final form of the novel must be linked to its themes and should even be engendered by those themes, Dostoevsky found the search for that tone and narrative manner a strenuous one. During the writing of The Possessed he wrote in October 1870 to Strakhov, "It is true, much of the novel was written from the middle and much has been rejected (to be sure, not the whole of it). But, none the less, I'm still sitting at the beginning. A bad sign, and, moreover, I want to do something better. They say that the tone and manner of a story must be engendered by themselves in the artist. This is true, but sometimes you go astray and you must seek them [the tone and manner]" (Ρ, II, 294). Four years later Dos-

The Narrative

Imperative

41

toevsky wrote to his wife about A Raw Youth, "If only I could begin successfully" (Ρ, III, 133). Beginnings represented a formidable leap from the realm of poetic inspiration to its concretion in narration, plot, and characterization. Endings, however, did not pose such a threat to Dostoevsky. True, he deliberated over the outcome of a plot; for example, he debated throughout the writing of Crime and Punishment over whether Raskolnikov should commit suicide. He often feared that his works were too long: he frequently described his short stories as overextended; he pushed himself to end The Brothers Karamazov "without delay." But he had confidence, finally, in his ability actually to write a good ending. As he struggled with the writing of The Idiot, Dostoevsky realized early on, in October 1868, that the ending would be critical to the overall success of the novel, "finally, and (the main thing for me) is the fact that this 4th part and its ending are the most important in my novel; that is, practically the whole novel was written and conceived for its denouement" (Ρ, II, 138). Unlike the rest of the novel, writing the ending of The Idiot came easily to him; he was unabashedly proud of it. Two months later he wrote to Maikov, "I am noting things down more or less in rough draft, and I know every word by heart. If The Idiot has readers, then perhaps they will be somewhat surprised by the unexpectedness of the ending; but, thinking it over, they will of course agree that it had to end this way. In general this ending is of the best, that is, strictly as an ending; I'm not speaking about the merit of the novel proper" (Ρ, II, 148-149). In the same letter to Maikov Dostoevsky disclosed his plan for a novel to be called Atheism. Yet even in the flush of a new, compelling idea he could not squelch his enthusiasm for the recently discovered ending of The Idiot, "The ending of The Idiot will be effective (I don't know whether it's good) . . . I have no understanding about the success or lack of success of the novel. However, the ending will decide everything" (Ρ, II, 151). Predictably, Dostoevsky vouched for the interest of his ending but expressed hesitancy over its artistic value. Yet this is one of the few letters from the period of the writing of The Idiot in which Dostoevsky expressed any optimism about his novel. When Dostoevsky began The Possessed he voiced, in an-

42

Dostoevsky and The Idiot

other letter to Maikov, a similar confidence, amidst numerous worries, about the proposed ending for Stepan Trofimovich. "I am simply in despair . . . S. T. — ich is a secondary character; the novel will not be about him, but his story is closely connected with the other happenings (the main ones) of the novel, and so I took him as a kind of cornerstone for the whole thing. But, nevertheless, Step. Trof.'s benefit performance will be in the 4th part; here there will be a most original conclusion of his fate. For all the rest — I can't answer, but for this place I can answer in advance" (Ρ, II, 333). One can conjecture that the beginning of a novel was difficult for Dostoevsky because it involved decisions about tone and narrative method. Endings were easier; they represented the culmination of the inspirational idea. By then the tone and narrative method would have jelled; the reader's interest merely had to be maintained, and this was easier for him to do. When writing The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky had revealed that he wrote only his "inspired passages" at one sitting. These are the passages where he himself had been consumed by interest; in such rare moments the author is at once writer and reader. The ending of The Idiot and the fate chosen for Stepan Trofimovich fascinated Dostoevsky in the same way. Of course, when Dostoevsky wrote of "endings," he was not always describing the final pages of a novel, but rather the last big scene in a novel. One could argue, furthermore, that these sensational final scenes often obscured the more difficult questions raised in the novel and offered the novelist an escape hatch through a tour de force. Certainly the final climactic scene of The Idiot, with Rogozhin and Myshkin keeping watch over Nastasia Filippovna's body, could be described as a way of avoiding a resolution to the problems created throughout the novel by the effects of the good man, Myshkin, upon others. Dostoevsky himself would probably argue the reverse: he would find the predicament at the end of the novel to be the most extreme, most painful, but most fitting outcome of the dramatic situation. Ε. M. Forster has written of the delicate manipulations an author must bring off in order to achieve a balanced ending. The plot and the characters vie with each other, with the result that almost all "novels are feeble at the end . . . The writer,

The Narrative Imperative

43

poor fellow, must be allowed to finish up somehow, he has his living to get like anyone else, so no wonder that nothing is heard but hammering and screwing."37 He concludes that a novelist must seek to find endings which expand rather than complete. "Expansion. That is the idea a novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off but opening out."38 Dostoevsky's novels end in such gestures of expansion. But it seems that Dostoevsky does not fully share Försters sense of the philosophical and aesthetic problems inherent in ending a novel. Although Dostoevsky often had difficulty in deciding how a novel should end, once he had decided, he gave himself up, with relish, to the preparation of a powerful scene. A reader of Dostoevsky hears no hammers at the end of the novel. Dostoevsky knew, however, that a writer must be his own ruthless critic as well as his own eager reader; he must be able to separate the false from the truly inspired passages; he must know when to reject his work. In December 1864 Dostoevsky advised the writer Anna Korvin-Krukovskaia on the need for merciless revision, "From this shortening the tale will become more terse, more concise, and less obscure. Everything will be clear. With this, let me add, that the most valuable skill of a writer is to know how to cross out. He who can do this —and who has the strength to cross out his own work — will go far. All great writers are extremely concise. But the main thing is not to repeat what you've already said or what is understood by everyone anyway" (Ρ, I, 381-382). Dostoevsky's own conciseness and terseness are hardly of the usual kind. We know he rewrote and revised his novels, that he struck out large portions of them; his novels, bare of detailed scenery and protracted physical descriptions, convey a pareddown, yet heightened world. At the same time, Dostoevsky and his critics frequently felt that he overwrote and overextended his works. 39 Dostoevsky agreed with Strakhov's criticism of The Possessed. In April 1871, he wrote: You have pointed out the main deficiency terribly aptly. Yes, I have suffered and am suffering from this: I haven't known at all, up to now, how to get control of my means. I have squeezed together a great number of separate novels and tales into one novel, so that there is neither measure nor harmony. You have said all this with amazing ac-

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curacy; I have already suffered because of this [deficiency] for many years . . . But there is something even worse: I, not asking myself to be responsible for my means, and being carried away by a poetic impulse, undertake to express an artistic idea [khudozhestvennaia ideia] beyond my power. (N.B. Just as the power of the poetic impulse is always, for example, in V. Hugo more powerful than the means of fulfillment. One can discern the traces of this duality in Pushkin.) And this will be my undoing.40 Dostoevsky the critic found fault with his own writing; at the same time, in doing so he put himself in the company of Hugo and Pushkin. Dostoevsky continued to take seriously Strakhov's criticisms of his work; four years later, when Strakhov did not like the first parts of A Raw Youth, Dostoevsky, though angry with him, hoped to prove in the later parts of the novel that his judgment had been mistaken (Ρ, III, 151). But despite his sensitivity to Strakhov's criticism, Dostoevsky never actually changed his narrative methods. The combination of several novels in one, or giving one hundred examples instead of ten comprised an essential part of his narrative strategy. The multiplicity of narrative voices in The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov heightens the interest of the novels and masks the "ugly mug" of the author. "It goes without saying that many of the lessons of my elder Zosima (or, better to say, the mode of their expression) belong to his character. I fully agree with the thoughts he expresses, but if I expressed them personally from myself then I would express them in a different form and with a different kind of language. He, though, can not express himself in a different language nor in a different spirit from that which I have given him. One could not create a character in any other way" (Ρ, IV, 7/19 August 1877, p. 91). In the last decade of his life Dostoevsky returned to his youthful preoccupation with form. His early letters reveal a wildly appreciative reader of great writers and an admirer of beautiful form in general. Later, toward the end of his life, he believed that certain ideas inherently engendered certain forms. While working on The Possessed and A Raw Youth he had had to seek the right tone and narrative manner, although he still remained convinced that the idea itself should engender them. His

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45

plans for these novels demonstrate a search for the particular narrative manner that an idea demanded: "There is a kind of secret of art according to which an epic form never finds itself in accordance with a dramatic form. I even believe, that for various forms of art there exist series of poetic ideas that correspond to them, so that one idea can never be expressed in another form that does not correspond to it" (Ρ, III, 20). Form has become inseparable from idea; it is, or should be, its concrete manifestation. We have returned full circle to the acknowledgment of Dostoevsky as a "novelist of ideas"; that phrase should now have a different meaning. Dostoevsky was a novelist of ideas, not a novelist of ideas. He faithfully adhered to the belief that the author should mask his own point of view, that the narration should be the only link between his inspirational idea and the reader's eventual perception of it. The narrative should interest the reader; it should persuade and manipulate him without his knowing it; it should not be overtly despotic or prescriptive, or infringe on the reader's illusion of freedom. But the narrative also had an aesthetic obligation to be the best possible mode for the expression of the author's intent — to be, ultimately, the only way in which a particular idea could find expression.

The Notebooks for The Idiot

The whole secret of fiction and the drama — in the constructional part — lies in the adjustment of things unusual to things eternal and universal. The writer who knows exactly how exceptional, and how non-exceptional, his events should be made, possesses the key to the art. — Thomas Hardy, Notebook entry, 23 February 1893

I carried off his papers and spent a whole day looking through them . . . . among them was one rather thick volume of finely written manuscript, unfinished, perhaps thrown aside and forgotten by the writer . . . . some strange and terrible reminiscences jotted down irregularly, spasmodically, as though by some overpowering impulse. I read these fragments over several times, and was almost convinced they were written in a state of insanity. — "Dostoevsky" describing Goryanchikov's manuscript, The House of the Dead

n The Idiot, unlike his other novels, Dostoevsky did not finally settle the basic problems of characterization until he actually began to write the final draft for publication. Of the three notebooks for The Idiot, the first two thus reflect his preliminary struggles to establish the personality of the Idiot and his general position in the midst of the other characters and to fix upon a definite narrative strategy for his novel. These two notebooks are a testing ground for various ideas and plans that bear no direct, step-by-step relation to the final version. The third notebook is qualitatively different. Dostoevsky worked on it only after Part I (chapters 1-16) had already been published. This notebook reflects a different stage of creativity: rather than embodying the search for an idea, it illustrates the

I

The Notebooks

for The Idiot

47

struggle to find the best w a y to express themes already decided upon and to plan the further stages of a work whose beginning had already been published. The first notebooks seek to establish a form; the last notebook has less freedom for change. Certain rules have already been established, and the author must maneuver within these self-imposed confines. Ironically, neither the first two notebooks nor the third one gives us a typical creative notebook in which the novelist settles upon basic attributes in his novel and begins to work them out. Between the writing of the first two notebooks and the writing of Part I of the novel there is a crucial gap. In that interval Dostoevsky destroyed what he had written so far, largely reversed his ideas, and began again. He wrote to Maikov on 31 December/12 January 1868, "All summer and autumn I was putting together various ideas [ m y s l i ] (some were most ingenious), but some experience always let me foresee either the falseness or the difficulty or the weakness of a particular idea. Finally, I stopped at one and began to work. I had written a lot, but on the 4th of December, foreign style, I threw it all to the devil . . . Then . . . I began to torment myself over the invention of a new novel" (Ρ, II, 59-60). In the creative process extending from the initial idea to the true beginning of a work, we have only the extreme boundaries on either side with which to work; the initial conception does not resemble the final product and is, in fact, often opposite to it. Despite the amount of destroyed material, the gap between the initial conception and the final product is bridged somewhat by Dostoevskys correspondence of the period. Moreover, a critic gifted with his well-developed faculty of hindsight can pluck out significant strands from the early notebooks and show how they are rewoven into the fabric of the novel. He can also identify certain broad movements that begin in the notebooks and carry on through the novel. The reversals, most significantly those in the character of the Idiot, do not take place entirely unheralded. The notes themselves contain intimations of the surprising switch from a hypocritical, proud, and vengeful Idiot to the Myshkin of the novel. (The actual manuscript of the novel, as dictated to Anna Grigor'evna, does not exist. It was probably destroyed before the Dostoevskys' return to Russia.) 1

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Throughout these notes, Dostoevsky's comments about style and structure, though infrequent, have implications for any study of the novel itself. It is equally important, however, to trace the movement of the notebooks as a whole, to follow the sequence of Dostoevsky's own sets of priorities. Where does the consideration of narrative fit into Dostoevsky's general scheme? When does it become a serious concern? When does it lack importance? Dostoevsky himself had asserted the old truth of the inseparability of form and content, but a discussion of narrative method in its emergent stages must be placed in a larger context. We have already seen that Dostoevsky found especially agonizing the earliest stages of planning a novel. Anna Grigor'evna said of his labors during the fall of 1867 when he was planning The Idiot, "Fyodor Mikhailovich was faced with the most important part of the work which was especially difficult for him, namely the consideration, the creation [tvorenie], the making [sozdanie] of the plan of the novel. The writing of the novel itself came to him comparatively easily, but the making of a plan presented great difficulties for him. The whole trouble was in the richness of the fantasy and in the dissatisfaction of the author with that form in which he wanted to express the idea which was placed at the basis of the novel." 2 Dostoevsky sought the form which would best embody his idea, but, as these notebooks show, that search for form led to changes in the idea as well. Although Dostoevsky typically separated the poet who has an "idea" from the artist who gives creative shape to that idea, he consistently emphasized the overlapping of functions between these two aspects of the author. Moreover, he assigned to the artist (as differentiated from the poet) a task far greater than that of technical experimentation. In the early notes for A Raw Youth he writes, "In order to write a novel, one must acquire, first of all, one or several strong impressions actually experienced by the author's heart. This is the poet's job. From this impression there are developed a theme, a plan, a harmonious whole. This is already the artist's job, although artist and poet help each other in one thing as well as the other, in both instances." 3 That is, it is the artist who endows the poet's idea with wholeness and harmony. The artist's technical experimentation, by forming the

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49

poet's idea, gives it its first existence. A n d indeed, from his earliest w o r k s , such as Poor Folk or The Double, it is c o m m o n place to discover that Dostoevsky's technique (or style, or f o r m ) is inseparable f r o m the idea of the w o r k . O n l y in one letter to M a i k o v , on 1 5 / 2 7 M a y 1869, does D o s t o e v s k y seriously minimize the function of the artist as opposed to the poet: I will make an important digression: a poem, in my opinion, is like a natural precious stone, a diamond, in the soul of the poet, quite ready [complete], in all its essences; and here is the first task of the poet, as a maker and creator, the first part of his creation. If you wish — he is not the creator; life is —the powerful essence of life, the living and essential God, putting his strength in many distinct creations at various places, and most of all in the great heart and in the strong poet, so that if the poet himself is not a creator, — (and one must agree with this . . . because certainly a creative work comes suddenly, as a complete whole, finished and ready, out of the soul of a poet) —if he himself is not a creator, then at least his soul is that very mine which gives birth to the diamond and without which it would not be found anywhere. Then follows the second task of the poet, no longer so deep and mysterious, but only that of the artist: that is, having received the diamond, to finish [obdelat'] and mount [opravit') it. Here the poet is almost like a jeweler. (Ρ, II, 190) In this passage D o s t o e v s k y seems to h a v e been carried a w a y b y the neatness of his o w n m e t a p h o r . In practice, he assigned the artist a far greater role than that of a mere jeweler; the borders between the poet and the artist were never so sharply defined. M o r e o v e r , in this letter, w h o s e s o m e w h a t "romantic extravagance" has been aptly pointed out b y Robert J a c k s o n , 4 D o s t o e v s k y has partially e m b r a c e d the n o t i o n of the poet as a mere vessel for divine inspiration. Edward W a s i o l e k has maintained that for D o s t o e v s k y The Idiot was the result of "arduous and painful and exasperating technical experimentation." He has warned that we "cannot go to The Idiot with theories of the organic fitness of every part, of the necessity of every positioning . . . Structure, I hazard, is never as exquisite as our current theories would h a v e it, at least not in this novel . . . the notes show convincingly not only that D o s t o e v s k y w a s trying out m a n y routes, but that m o r e than

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one route could have taken him to the same destination." 5 To agree with Wasiolek wholeheartedly in his sensible and prudent statement would mean an end of this study of The Idiot. But, even while granting the lack of an "organic fitness" of every part and the absence of "exquisite" structure, one can still make a forceful case that had Dostoevsky followed a different route, he would have arrived at a different destination. A comparative study of Myshkin in The Idiot and Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov bears witness to this. 6 The central idea behind each of these characters is the same: they are both positively (that is, completely) beautiful men seeking to do good in the world. But they follow exceedingly different courses of action and arrive at opposite destinations. Thus questions of structure and the interrelation of the parts of a novel reenter through the back door. For example, Myshkin's resurrection of poor Marie through the children's love occurs at the beginning of this novel; in the ensuing tangle of events its significance gradually becomes blurred. Alyosha's momentary resurrection of Illusha ends that novel, and the reader joins the children in a moment of thrilling optimisim. The first two notebooks for The Idiot (nos. 3 and 11 by Sakulin's count, and nos. 3 and 4 in the 1974 edition) extend from 14 September 1867 to 30 November 1867. There is no break between these two notebooks; Dostoevsky simply made notes first in one book, then in the next. The first notebook already contained some notes written while he was working on Crime and Punishment; the second notebook is interlaced in the middle with notes for The Eternal Husband and part of The Possessed. Fortunately Dostoevsky's entries are dated, so that a consecutive reading of the notes remains possible, and editors of each of the versions of these notes have arranged the material by dates, with some minor variations in the positioning of certain paragraphs. The third notebook (no. 10 in Sakulin, no. 5 in the 1974 edition) is interspersed with notes for "About Kartuzov" (a preliminary sketch for Captain Lebyadkin in The Possessed) and ideas for new works. This third notebook extends from 7 March 1868, to 11 November 1868, and contains notes for the rest of the novel. Dostoevsky wrote The Idiot while abroad with his new wife. He began the notes for the novel on 14 September 1867 in Geneva, where he stayed until

The Notebooks

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51

the end of May 1868; continued them in Vevey from June until the beginning of September 1868; in Milan until the middle of November; and he finished the novel in Florence, where he stayed through January 1869 (IX, 338). The first two notebooks are largely notes for an unwritten novel, for the image of Myshkin as a completely or positively beautiful man, which dominates The Idiot, does not ever fully appear and is only hinted at towards the end of these notes. The remarkable development in these pages of the early version of the vengeful Idiot into the meek and good Myshkin demonstrates a quintessentially Dostoevskian development: the projected, though unrealized, plans for the transformation of the Idiot's personality reflect Dostoevsky's own conviction that true goodness arises out of the abyss of human evil and suffering. In the novel, however, no character undergoes such a far-reaching development. Most of the outlined plans for action in the first two notebooks are linear ones — where development and permanent changes in the characters occur — whereas the overall shape of the novel itself, in contrast to the notes, is a zigzag or a circle, the lines of which are constantly being retraced. One development is usually cancelled out in the next scene by a reverse oscillation; heroes and heroines do not really change —they vacillate. At the center of the web of relationships and events stands the Idiot. Thus the novel's final structure, a sequence of oscillations, grew instead out of an opposite structure, a developmental one, planned for it in its early notebooks. The change in idea had led to a corresponding change in form. The portrayal of an Idiot who was evil but who finally repented would have given the novel a linear shape; on the other hand, a constant character, in this case a good man, creates waves around himself which intersect to make a circular pattern. This Idiot's constancy caused those around him to fluctuate within themselves and to clash with each other. (Even though the notebooks contain projected plans for the development of characters, the actual structure of the first two notebooks themselves is as circular as that of the final novel. Here too one plan for development cancels out the next; the final effect of the notebooks as a whole resembles the oscillations of Nastasia Filippovna in the novel.)

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In the first two notebooks Dostoevsky sought to establish the broadest structural contours of his novel. From entry to entry he juggled repeatedly with the composition of the members of the families, trying to decide upon their intra- and interrelationships. Establishing the composition and the number of important families constituted a major task in the early notebooks. Most important, he experimented with the Idiot's position within the family as an illegitimate or legitimate son, nephew, and so on, and put him now in one family, now in another. At the same time Dostoevsky also sought to find the Idiot's role in that family; he tried to outline the shape of the Idiot's personality. Bel'chikov and Sakulin as well as Wasiolek have divided their editions of these first two notebooks into a series of plans. Their rule for division has mainly been dictated by the changes in the familial structures throughout the notes. This division into plans is useful insofar as it quickly and correctly emphasizes the extreme importance Dostoevsky himself placed on the establishment of the structure of family relationships and interrelationships in the novel. We can see that Dostoevsky's novel began as a family novel, that the family was at the heart of its initial conception. In the long run, however, the division into plans, though initially helpful, is finally misleading, for it imposes an arbitrary order on the notes. The 1974 Soviet edition of the notes is more informative than the other two in that it does not follow this division into plans but sets the notes out as they were written, entry by entry. 7 Throughout the many conceptual changes, certain constants remain from the earliest plans until the final version of the novel. The Heroine, the model for Nastasia Filippovna, is present from the beginning, as are, to a lesser degree, the related and mutually dependent themes of the ordinary versus the "original" man and of the power of money. Other plot fragments reappear repeatedly throughout: the burned finger, the arrival of the Idiot and the meeting with his brother (who later becomes Rogozhin) in a railway coach, an evening party at the General's house, the Idiot's handwriting, the lost wallet, and a preoccupation with severed heads. These fragments give no genuine clues to understanding how Dostoevsky built his novel. But because they provide the elemental stuff out of which Dostoevsky is able

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53

to spin some of his most powerful and scandalous scenes, they are able to show that the germs of certain heightened moments were present in the author's mind even before a particular scene had a reason for being as a function of an already existing plot and its characters. Most of the plot material in the first two notebooks never recurs in the novel. For example, Dostoevsky was eagerly following the course of the case of Olga Umetsky during the fall of 1867. 8 Olga Umetsky, a girl beaten and maltreated by her parents, had several times attempted arson on her family's estate but had always then warned them of the fire. Nevertheless she was charged with having set the fires, and her parents were charged with having abused their child. Although Dostoevsky had originally intended this case to be a cornerstone in the plot, The Idiot contains only a shadowy reference to it in the fact that Nastasia Filippovna's parental estate had burned down many years before the story actually begins.9 Dostoevsky's interest in this case as one of the first to be tried under the new jury system in Russia carries over into the novel, which contains numerous references to other trials by jury. Despite the fact that the actual details of the plot in the notebooks differ from the final version, certain broad structural outlines remain throughout. Dostoevsky's preoccupation with the composition of and interrelationships among families provides the most fruitful thread to follow through the backtrackings and jottings which comprise the maze of the early notebooks. The changing patterns of family relationships reflect the alterations in the Idiot's character as well. In the first entry, dated 14 September 1867, there are three families: a family of impoverished gentry, the Uncle's family, and the fiance's family. The family of gentry is the initial conception of the Ivolgin family in the novel and contains a father, a mother, two sons —the elder, "the handsome son," and the younger, "the Idiot" — a daughter Masha, and a foster daughter Mignon, who partly anticipates Nastasia Filippovna. Nastasia is also foreshadowed, however, by the Heroine who is also called "the beauty" and Hero who is a cousin in Masha's fiance's family. 10 Dostoevsky's earliest plans were for an intense family drama; three prototypes of main characters in the novel, the Idiot, Ganya, and Nastasia crowd together within the confines

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of a single family unit. All relationships among characters are doublebonded by familial ties. The theme of incest exists from the beginning; the father of the first family tries to rape his foster daughter, Mignon. This family structure holds through the second entry on 4/16 October. In both entries Dostoevsky emphasizes the tense relationship between the Idiot and his mother. In the first entry his mother detests him; in the second, he scornfully pushes her away. Toward the middle of the second entry Dosteovsky introduces a second general's family (IX, 154). This family's high opinion of itself vaguely foreshadows the Epanchin family. Dostoevsky's addition of yet another family with a willful mother provides a hazy prefiguring of General Epanchin's wife. By the next entry, dated 17 October, this structure has broken down. A pattern of vacillation begins and continues throughout these notes. Dostoevsky tentatively distances the Idiot by suggesting that he may be a stepson or a natural (illegitimate) son, not of the improverished general but of the Uncle (IX, 155). The Heroine enters the general's family as a ward or governess. By 18 October the Uncle has acquired yet another son: the Idiot is his natural son, the second son is legitimate. Deciding upon the Idiot's familial ties becomes necessary for the expression of the main idea about him. In a later entry the same day the Idiot is simply the son of the Uncle (IX, 160). On 22 October Dostoevsky notes that he must work out the relations between the two brothers (IX, 162). They are to meet for the first time on a railway car: "The Natural Son. He was traveling with the Son. They have become acquainted. The Natural Son knows that this is the Son. The Son has heard that there is a Natural Son . . . The Son: 'Yes, but he doesn't seem stupid to me. It's true, he's strange. He's quite a yurodivyi [fool, in the sense of God's fool, that is an idiot believed to possess the gift of prophesy]'" (IX, 163). Although he later at times wandered away from it in the notes, by this ninth entry Dostoevsky had found a formulation that was to resurface as the beginning of his novel, where Myshkin and Rogozhin meet on the train. In these earliest notes, then, the Idiot has moved out of the central family into the Uncle's family. He has become successively a stepson and a natural son. Dostoevsky further distances him by having him arrive on the

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scene and by having him meet his brother for the first time. Family ties have slackened rapidly in Dostoevsky's structural scheme. The son's labeling of the Idiot as a yurodivyi counterbalances the frequent assumption of critics that the early drafts of the novel show an Idiot completely unlike the Myshkin of the novel. Although this characterization does not occur again until the last entries of the first two notebooks, its early presence suggests that Dostoevsky's final notion of the Idiot did not spring full-blown in December 1867, but was a possibility in his mind all along. Indeed, as we shall see, other intimations of the final meek Idiot appear amidst the early notes which depict him, for the most part, as a predominantly vengeful and proud character. In the tenth entry, 27 October, Dostoevsky transplants the Idiot back into the General's family, where the Heroine has remained as a ward. Olga Umetsky is still part of the family as well (IX, 165). At the head of this entry Dostoevsky has written "Ganya" in calligraphic lettering.11 The Idiot has reentered the tight structure of the family, so that the son's and the Idiot's shared passion for the Heroine carries a shade of incest. Throughout all these early entries, however, the Uncle, who is also a suitor of the Heroine, plays a central role; at times he overshadows the Idiot. In the tenth entry Dostoevsky assigns them equal significance: "Memento. The main point of the novel: the Uncle and the Idiot, two characters." 12 On 29 October Dostoevsky again slightly distanced the Idiot from the family; he becomes a natural son of the General. Everyone is terribly kind and affectionate to him but unjust at the same time. This arouses hatred in the Idiot (IX, 169). Later on the page, Dostoevsky reemphasizes the Idiot's abrupt, bewildering arrival on the scene. "From whence has the Idiot come? (They all make him understand that he has fallen on their shoulders) . . . The heirs of his godmother sent him from somewhere or other with a letter" (IX, 169). In entry twelve, 30 October, the Idiot becomes the child from a prior marriage of the general; Ganya's mother hates the Idiot, while Ganya himself resembles the Idiot of the final version. "Pure, beautiful, virtuous, strict, very nervous, and a deeply Christian, compassionate lovingness . . . He lives by

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feeling. He lives powerfully and passionately. In a word, a Christian nature" (IX, 170). He forgives the spiteful and sneering Idiot. Dostoevsky's idea of portraying a beautiful, Christian character has found its first fleeting expression in this plan for Ganya. (Ironically, in the third notebook Ganya often becomes like the Idiot of the first two notebooks. Their symbiotic relationship, so powerful in the notebooks, disappears in the novel. There Ganya never fully develops as a character.) Dostoevsky commences another entry later the same day: "The novel begins with family difficulties and with the arrival of the Idiot" (IX, 172). The notion that the Idiot, though still part of the General's family, must arrive as a newcomer seems to have taken firm hold. Two days later, on 1 November, Dostoevsky begins his entry by shifting the Idiot to the Uncle's family: No good. The main thought about the Idiot does not emerge. It is necessary: that the Idiot —is the son of the Uncle. THE IDIOT IS THE SON OF THE UNCLE.

(IX,

174)

Dostoevsky's mounting frustration in his struggle to settle upon characters and a plot for the novel thus became focused on the problem of deciding upon the Idiot's kinship relationship with everyone else. Dostoevsky repeatedly tries to solve his difficulties with expressing "the main thought about the Idiot" by reshuffling family groupings. Here the solution is to remove the Idiot from the General's family and to place him once again in the family of the Uncle. Yet even here Dostoevsky has the Idiot exert power in much the same way as Myshkin subsequently does in the novel — through his simple, childlike honesty. "The Idiot captivates everyone with his childlike naivete" (IX, 174). Nevertheless the Uncle continues to vie for the central role in the novel; on 2 November Dostoevsky writes, "N.B. The figure of the Uncle over everything. This is the main thing" (IX, 175). Interestingly, the Uncle, who plays a major role throughout the first two notebooks, disappears in the novel, although some vestiges of him reappear in General Epanchin and Totsky. But plans for the Uncle's central role do not solve any of Dostoevsky's problems with the figure of the Idiot; still fussing about the family structure, Dostoevsky asks himself,

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"Why not arrange it so that the Mother of the Idiot is alive?" (IX, 176). He plans to have the Idiot seek her out and find her living in squalor in St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky's intensifying struggles obsessively repeat themselves in juggling the Idiot's position. Once again the Idiot becomes legitimate, "The Idiot —a legitimate son of the Uncle and the blood brother to the Son, but he has been an outcast since childhood and has never seen the Son" (IX, 177). Later the same day, Dostoevsky begins his next entry with the now familiar emphasis on family structure as the root of the problem: 2 November. Hurry. He is a legitimate, but unacknowledged son of the Uncle. An Idiot. (IX, 177) Now the Idiot has been married off into the Umetsky family and sent to Switzerland. Amidst a maze of plot intrigues the sentence "He is α legitimate son" appears again (IX, 178). It is as though Dostoevsky felt that the repetition of this phrase would somehow anchor his work and hold its fragments together. In this same entry relationships are then suddenly reshuffled: "The Heroine is a princess . . . but he is simply a Ptitsyn. (Is he a Ptitsyn?) . . . Umetskaia is not his sister" (IX, 179). Then, several pages later, "Either a Ptitsyn or a legitimate son? (a final decision)" (IX, 182). The oscillations grow more pronounced, "MAYBE IT WOULD BE MUCH BETTER TO MAKE HIM A LEGITIMATE SON"

(IX, 184). We are witnessing one half of an intense internal argument taking place within Dostoevsky. All the heavy, argumentative assertions of the Idiot's legitimacy are in firm reply to some unexpressed alternative solution. Dostoevsky is fighting against an intuition that he should remove the Idiot farther away from any family by making him illegitimate. It is difficult for a reader of the notebooks to understand why, out of all the thousands of potential problems tormenting Dostoevsky in his attempts to set the foundations for this novel, the question of the Idiot's position in the family should assume such terrific proportions. The next entry for 3 November provides a clue: "THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION: In which way will the figure of the Idiot express the idea more interestingly, more

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romantically, and more graphically? By legitimacy or illegitimacy?" (IX, 187). Dostoevsky then sets up a plan for each alternative. Legitimacy would give the Idiot more pride; he could demonstrate that even without wealth or the help of other people, he could still triumph. If he were illegitimate, he could at first harbor dreams of the Heroine, of a career, and of high society, and then suddenly encounter the vivid possibility of attaining them all. Dostoevsky weighs the interest value of pride and domination against that of dreams and the sudden accessibility of those dreams. It is significant that Dostoevsky sees both possibilities as alternative ways of expressing the same idea {mysi'). Thus, the problem of the Idiot's legitimacy or illegitimacy boils down to a strategic consideration for the achievement of an aim that we have already seen is crucial for Dostoevsky: which way would be more interesting? Neither alternative has yet outweighed the merits of the other. The vacillations continue: BETTER THAT HE IS LEGITIMATE (WITHOUT A MOTHER) . . .

Illegitimate is better: everything will be explained . . . Illegitimate: a terribly proud and tragic character. N.B. But why not thus: legitimate, but rejected, he has rejected himself. A majestic role. (IX, 188-189) Dostoevsky hammers persistently at the possibilities for each alternative. This 3 November entry reads like an ugly fugue between two monotonous voices, neither of which achieves any resolution. Part of this debate over questions of the Idiot's legitimacy and the role of the Uncle is simply the exorcism or suppression of the complex of ideas that emerges later, in A Raw Youth. There the Uncle figure develops into Versilov and the natural son becomes the Raw Youth. Some parts of the early notes for A Raw Youth could belong in the notebooks for The Idiot: "Stepson and stepfather. An artistic nature . . . Better if he is his natural Father . . . BUT WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT, retain throughout the entire narrative a tone of his unchallenged superiority over the Youth and everybody else . . . let the reader feel all along that, at the end of the novel, he is tormented by a idea." 13 Dostoevsky, for all his seemingly profuse out-

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pourings of ideas for entire novels and fragments of plot and character detail, was extremely economical: he rarely let a good thought go to waste. Dostoevsky's preoccupation with the legitimacy or illegitimacy of his hero may reveal a partial influence of Tolstoy's War and Peace, where Pierre Bezukhov, just returned from Switzerland, is established as an illegitimate son. Myshkin, like Pierre, has just returned from Switzerland. Both men receive an inheritance which suddenly changes their expectations. Each has an overriding sense of his mission in the world. They share minor personality traits as well. Myshkin, in Part I of the novel, enters General Epanchin's office through the wrong door, yet he still quickly wins over both the General and the General's wife by his candid, cheerful modesty. At the beginning of War and Peace the narrator describes Pierre at Anna Pavlovna's soiree: "All his absentmindedness and inability to enter a room and converse in it was, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple and modest expression. Anna Pavlovna turned to him and, with a Christian mildness that expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: Ί hope to see you again.' " 14 There are other hints of Tolstoy's influence on The Idiot. The Idiot is Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin. The name and patronymic are Tolstoy's own, and Myshkin, or "mousekin," is a kind of antonym to Lev (lion) and even to Tolstoy (stout, heavy). Later, in the third notebook, Dostoevsky writes, "the chain and hope. To do a little" (IX, 241), and later, "The chain, he speaks of the chain. Make the shackles clank. To do a little" (IX, 269-270). The editors of the 1974 edition of the notes cite Tolstoy's influence here. (This is especially interesting because the notion of the chain becomes so crucial to The Brothers Karamazov.) They write that the chain as a symbol of the immortality of good deeds most probably derives from War and Peace: "In trying to convince Andrei Bolkonsky to become a mason, so that he might serve goodness, Pierre Bezukhov says '. . . enter our brotherhood . . . and you will at once feel yourself to be . . . part of that vast, invisible chain, whose source is hidden in the heavens . . . Don't I feel. . . that I form one link, one step, between the lower and higher beings . . . I feel that I cannot disappear, because nothing in the world disappears, but that I shall always exist and that I have always existed'" (IX, 465). 1 5

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The editors then cite Dostoevsky's letter to A. N. Maikov of 18 February/1 March, 1868, in which he says that he has read the first half of Tolstoy's novel. 16 In the first two notebooks for The Idiot, the tangle of frustrations about family structure and the position of the Idiot within a family has unraveled into the question of the Idiot's legitimacy. Dostoevsky's debate over this matter, which to the reader seems like an unproductive and endless repetition of alternatives without any hint of progress, bears fruit: the resolution of the question of legitimacy bears as much upon the Idiot's personality as it does upon his place in the family structure. The issue of the Idiot's legitimacy becomes at once a private and a public question which shapes both his personality and the ultimate structure of the family; his place in the family has gradually condensed into a more inherently interesting problem — the determination of his character. By following this particular thread, we have seen the unerring but unconscious path of Dostoevsky's mind throughout these entries. Elizabeth Dalton, who has found that these notebooks resemble "primary process thinking," has asserted that "the author is simply recording rapidly whatever comes into his mind without much attempt at order or coherence." 17 Although her observation may well reflect the actual creative process in Dostoevsky's mind as he jotted down ideas and outlines, the end result —the notes themselves — exhibits, if only in its regularity of oscillation, a discernible structural coherence. Some instinct compelled him to cover the same ground over and over again while seeming merely to repeat himself. When in the following entries Dostoevsky seems to have simply abandoned the question of the Idiot's legitimacy, he has not done so at all. He has found a more essential way of asking the question he has really been asking all along: What is the Idiot's place? Where does he fit? Who is he? That has been the real issue since the beginning. The search for the novel's structure forces Dostoevsky to state his ideas in their most elemental form. On 4 November he no longer asks himself whether the Idiot is legitimate or illegitimate. "An enigma. Who is he? A terrible villain or a mysterious ideal?" (IX, 195). The Idiot's position in the family no longer defines him; Dostoevsky has moved into a more metaphysical

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realm. Nevertheless, he still halfheartedly experiments with family relations until he finally arrives at his solution, "There are no relatives" (IX, 204). The most important concern has become the crystallization of the Idiot's personality. On 21 November Dostoevsky notes: "NECESSARY: to set forth the character of the Idiot in a masterful way" (IX, 208). Throughout this entry the Idiot reveals his character indirectly, through the stories he tells. Dostoevsky again reminds himself, "The character of the Idiot" (IX, 208). On 6 November, while planning the Idiot's arrival upon the scene in a railway car, Dostoevsky writes: The Idiot. Everything is based on vengeance. A humiliated being . . . He is a Prince. A Prince. Yurodivyi. (He is with the children)?! (IX, 200)

This formulation, so crucial for the entire novel, predictably appears as a fragment amidst mounds of unrelated material. Nor does the characterization even hold. Within the same entry the Idiot returns to his former role of the envious, proud seducer. But the crucial passages discussing the Idiot's place in the family appeared in the same fragmented way — amidst pages of material that were never brought into the novel. The critic's hindsight does not give him any power to discern a rule that determines which material will be picked up again and which will be finally rejected, but it can enable him to gaze upon an intricate, mazelike tableau which presents a convincing picture of the fact that, for the artist, there is a path through that maze, after some barriers are pushed aside to disclose it. The appellation yurodivyi holds; throughout the next page Dostoevsky repeatedly calls the Idiot yurodivyi (IX, 201). From here the determination of the character of the Idiot takes precedence over the efforts to place him in a family situation. (Dostoevsky's deadline for sending in Part I was rapidly approaching.) "THE CHARACTER OF THE IDIOT. There are oddities. Quiet. Sometimes, he says nothing" (IX, 201). He reads to the children about future bliss. Dostoevsky emphasizes the Idiot's relations with the children, "THE MAIN THING. The character of his relations towards children. Very weak health" (IX, 202).

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The final entry for the early notebooks, dated 11/30 November, bears even less resemblance to the novel than do most of the preceding notes. The material is mostly about the children and the Umetsky family. The Idiot does not occupy much of Dostoevsky's attention here, although his conception of the Idiot has consciously and irrevocably changed. Dostoevsky reveals that he himself now thinks of the Idiot as having changed from one kind of character to another when he writes, "N.B. The nephew, the character of the former Idiot. A tirade about the King of the Jews" (IX, 212). Still preoccupied with shaping the Idiot's new personality, he notes, "About the Idiot there are only stories" (IX, 213). (This idea becomes increasingly important in the third notebook.) "The Idiot's character" (IX, 214). "N.B. Until the slap itself, everyone laughed at the Idiot and he was in terrible disregard. He is always silent" (IX, 215). This final entry closes with the vow, "Make a detailed arrangement of the plan and begin in the evening" (IX, 215). Dostoevsky's painstaking arrangements and rearrangements of the family structures in the early notes led him inexorably, though in a pattern of seeming oscillation, to distance his central character from any family role. As the Idiot withdrew from the family, Dostoevsky, in the last several entries, instead emphasized the Idiot's illness as well as the fact that he was "with the children." In the final version of the novel, Dostoevsky gives his hero only the vaguest of biographies. In fact in the novel Myshkin knows little about his past; a man whom he encounters at General Epanchin's evening party seems to know as much about Myshkin's life history as he does himself. (This stranger, it turns out, had met Myshkin briefly when he was a child.) Thus, the Idiot is isolated; the reader and the other characters know only stories about his past, stories he and others tell. His own memory is often hazy. He becomes, as it were, part of each family in the novel, while really belonging to none. This, rather than having him be in any one family, best expresses the "idea" behind the Idiot. Dostoevsky's instinct had led him to the solution. Bakhtin has pointed out that the internal monologues of many of Dostoevsky's characters, most notably those of Golyadkin, Raskolnikov, and the underground man, can be read as dialogues between doubles. 18 Dostoevsky's notebooks reveal

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that this mode of thought was far more than a literary device employed to create a polyphonic effect. The entire fabric of the notebooks can be unraveled into such dialogues in much the same way that a paragraph from The Double, Crime and Punishment, or Notes from Underground can be. Yet there is an important distinction to be made: in his notebooks Dostoevsky often explored variant ways of expressing a single idea; in the end, however, he always decided firmly upon a single way. His characters' internal monologues, on the other hand, usually remained unfinalized. Other, perhaps more interesting questions for the reader, such as why the Idiot is called an idiot or what his childhood was like, do not receive the same insistent treatment, although Dostoevsky does touch upon them sporadically and tantalizingly. Throughout, the question of the Idiot's idiocy is mildly problematic. In the earlier drafts he has merely been dubbed an idiot by his mother who hates him. The other characters do not understand why he has been called that. In the ninth entry on 22 October, the Idiot is merely pretending to be an idiot; then at the General's he shows triumphantly that he is not one at all. The son says of the Idiot, "Either he is very proud, so that he disdains everything, or he is very stupid, that is, sincere" (IX, 164). The son adds later, "He is simply not an Idiot" (IX, 164). On 29 October Dostoevsky writes, "The Idiot was always considered an Idiot" (IX, 169). But three days later, on 1 November, the Idiot's mother is again declaring that the Idiot is merely pretending, dissembling (IX, 173). Then Dostoevsky writes, 'The Idiot is an idiot," though the Uncle later doubts that he is an idiot (IX, 174). The debate continues from time to time throughout the notes. For a reader of the novel, the problem of Myshkin's idiocy and what it means looms large. Is his idiocy to be understood strictly as a link to the tradition of the Russian kenotic saint and yurodivyil Is Myshkin the Idiot because he has fits, because he is childlike? Each reader must work out some understanding of what Myshkin's idiocy signifies to him. Clearly, this was Dostoevsky's intention in the novel. Yet he never refers to this problem in the notebooks. He himself vacillates over the depiction of the hero's idiocy; he notes the perplexity of the other characters, but he provides no substantial clue or formulation of what Myshkin's idiocy means. 19

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The word "idiot" in both Russian and English comes from the Greek idiotes — private person, a common man, an ignorant uninformed person. Idios means private, own, peculiar. 20 So idiot need not mean merely imbecile and fool, but it can also signify a man who is private and somehow set apart. It can also carry the meaning of a private versus a public man. All these meanings reverberate throughout The Idiot at various times. At scattered intervals throughout the early notes Dostoevsky posits a psychological explanation for why the Idiot is so proud and so full of hatred. He depicts the Idiot as having suffered a terrible spiritual wound in childhood. We have already seen that his mother hates him. In the first entry, Dostoevsky had noted: "N.B. In childhood he wept upon being scolded, but then he became stronger and he scoffs at others. There was an incident with a headmaster" (IX, 157). On 29 October, Dostoevsky wrote again of his hero's difficult childhood, "He needed from childhood more beauty, more beautiful sensations, more encompassing love, more bringing up. But now: a thirst for beauty and at the same time a 40% lack of faith in it, or faith, but no love for the ideal. The devils also believe, and tremble.'" (IX, 167).21 On 2 November, another jotting seeks to link the Idiot's childhood to his character. "In his development and in his surrounding milieu he assimilated all these poisons and principles, which entered into his blood. A totally outraged heart has unlimited magnanimity and a need for love. He did not have them, and therefore he revenged himself and acted evilly towards those whom he wanted to love endlessly and for whom he wanted to shed his blood" (IX, 180). Dostoevsky's note to himself is difficult to follow, but the main point seems to be that the Idiot's acute suffering in childhood, though it had not destroyed his desire to love, had destroyed his ability to do so. Harder to explain is the peculiar assertion that the Idiot's childhood had been terrible, but not terrible enough for him to attain an unlimited magnanimity and need for love. Here the novelist has not explicated his idea for any reader; this abbreviated note remains, for the most part, undecipherable. Dostoevsky's explanations of the Idiot's character in terms of his childhood resemble the attempts to fix him within a tight family structure; a typical hero in a nineteenth-century novel

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comes complete with memories of his childhood and family ties. Dostoevsky's movement away from the typical biographical explanations parallels his decision not to present the Idiot as a son in a family: in both aspects the writer has moved toward the creation of a more isolated, more enigmatic character. Of course one must also remember that these are sketches for the notebook Idiot who often differs greatly from his namesake in the novel. All of the psychologising about the Idiot disappears in the novel, where Dostoevsky sticks to the narrative formula he had found towards the end of these notes, "About the Idiot there are only stories." As early as 22 October 1867, Dostoevsky had already characterized the Idiot as a yurodivyi, so that side by side with the proud, dissembling Idiot who would eventually be regenerated through love, there already existed glimpses of a character who resembled the final version of the Idiot. The term yurodivyi provides a bridge between the character of the Idiot in the early notebooks and the almost opposite character of the Idiot in the novel: on the one hand a yurodivyi could be a shrewd, calculating, aggressive, and objectionable figure; on the other hand, because he had renounced the flesh "for Christ's sake," he was believed to have the gift of prophecy. James Billington has observed that this figure of the Holy Fool "reinforced the already marked tendency of Slavic Orthodoxy toward passion and prophecy rather than reason and discipline." 22 The notebook Idiot embodies the less attractive traits of that figure, while the novel Idiot displays more of the positive traits, but any Russian reader would be aware of the entire spectrum of associations invoked by the word, yurodivyi. In the novel Myshkin mimics the yurodivyi's effect on others more than he wishes to. The yurodivyi often feigned madness and immorality to cause a public scandal which served, in a roundabout way, to convert sinners; he also wished to provoke vilification against himself in order to struggle against his own pride, the worst fear of the ascetic. 23 The yurodivyi fought his own propensity for corruption this way, but he also had a public duty or quest. George Fedotov has described this quest as consisting of "service to the world in a special mission, not by word or beneficient action but through the power of the Spirit which works through the disguise of madness but is manifested

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in clairvoyance and prophecy." 24 Myshkin carries with him an aura of these qualities: he provokes extreme anger in men; he causes scandal; and he has a definite sense of being on a mission of service in the world. He has a fondness for making parabolic and prophetic statements. Fedotov describes the life of a Holy Fool as a "perpetual oscillation between moral acts of saving men and immoral acts of insulting them." 25 This could also serve as an epigram for Myshkin, for although Myshkin never sought consciously to insult the other characters he unwittingly does so repeatedly throughout the novel. The yurodivyi made an ethical attempt to deride the world of common sense by laying bare the gap between the order of the world and God's order. 26 Myshkin too sought to bring the other characters back to the simpler moral and religious precepts of God's world; he advocated a return to a more primitive form of Christianity. Moreover, many Holy Fools were supposedly of foreign origin, 27 and Myshkin, though his Russian ties become increasingly important, seems like a foreigner at the beginning of the novel. Myshkin particularly resembles one such holy man, Michael of Klopsko. Like Myshkin, he had obscure origins, but in social rank he was almost a prince; this heightened the effect of his humility. 28 The same may be said of Prince Myshkin. When Michael first appeared at Klopsko, the Abbot asked him, "Who are you, my son, a man or a Devil?" Michael replied, "Are you a man or a Devil?" 29 When Myshkin arrives on the Petersburg scene people react to him with the same ambivalence, and he too immediately starts questioning and involving himself in the lives of others. In the novel Myshkin also shares a kinship with the Russian kenotic saints, such as Theodosius, Sergius, and Tikhon. The Russian kenotic saints, who sought to make their lives an active example of Christ's humility, love, and service, were not, generally, proselytizing teachers. St. Theodosius (d. 1074) of Kiev was the first representative of kenoticism; many of his beliefs were modeled on those of St. Theodore the Studite (d. 826). In his ideal of community life and service to the world, he humbled himself not before the powerful but before the lowly. 30 Myshkin follows the same general lines of action. St. Sergius (d. 1392) was remarkable for his gentleness, for

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his "neighborly," simple, humble, and grave character. 31 These are, of course, all qualities of Myshkin as well. Like Sergius, Myshkin enters upon his mission of service to the world after a period of isolation in the symbolic desert — in Myshkin's case, a Swiss hospital. Kenotic humility cannot be equated with obedience; all the Russian kenotic saints lived by their own ascetic law. Myshkin's humility is not synonymous with obedience either. Unlike these saints, however, Myshkin is a wealthy prince who does not renounce his property. In this respect he rather resembles the yurodivyi, who were sometimes even quite greedy. While the kenotic saint shunned earthly possessions, Myshkin is simply indifferent to them. St. Tikhon (d. 1783) who lived in the eighteenth century and was known as a westernizing kenotic, suffered from a combination of nervous illness and melancholy which resembles that of Myshkin. Moreover, Myshkin echoes him in the two foci of his spiritual life: the thought of death and the vision of the celestial world. Myshkin, like Tikhon, is preoccupied with the idea of the "double eternity" 32 , that is, the eternity of death and the eternity of the other world. Tikhon, who is regarded as unRussian in his continual concentration on the suffering of the crucified Savior, "had always before his eyes the icons, or rather pictures — portraying the various moments in the tragedy of Golgotha". 33 Myshkin too is obsessed with pictures of Christ's suffering and with the moments before and after death. Myshkin's sensations during the moment before an epileptic fit resemble the spiritual state experienced in prayer described by another holy man of the fifteenth century, Nilus of Sorsk (d. 1508). "Of a sudden, the soul is infused with joys, and this incomparable feast paralyzes the tongue. The heart overflows with sweetness and while his delight endures, a man is drawn unwittingly from all sensible things . . . One who has discovered this joy in God, not only knows no stirring passion but is forgetful of his very life since the love of God is sweeter than life".34 For Myshkin the "incomparable feast" which overwhelms him is the "feast of life," but, like Nilus he experiences moments when his "soul is infused with joys" and he undergoes an acute perception of something beyond life. The most typical characterizations of the Idiot in the early notes find their final fruition in the novel in the figures of

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Ganya, Rogozhin, and to some extent Ippolit. For example, on 29 October 1867, Dostoevsky writes of the Idiot: The finale of a great soul. Love —in three phases: revenge and self-love, passion, a loftier love. Man becomes purified. (IX, 168)

Then, in the later notes for Part II of the novel (after Part I had already been published), Dostoevsky writes on 12 March 1868: IN THE NOVEL THERE ARE THREE KINDS OF LOVE:

1) Passionate-spontaneous love —Rogozhin. 2) Love out of vanity —Ganya. 3) Christian l o v e - t h e Prince. (IX, 220)

Dostoevsky has parceled out the stages of development planned for the Idiot in the first notebooks to these other characters, none of whom undergoes any significant change or development in the course of the novel. 35 On 18 October 1867, Dostoevsky conceived a plan for the Idiot's character which he called Plan for Iago. FOR THE CHARACTER OF THE IDIOT —Iago. But he ends divinely. He renounces, and so on. N.B. He has slandered everyone; he has intrigued before everyone; he has attained everything; he has taken money and even a fiancee, and yet he renounces. (IX, 161)

Iago's primary role in Othello is to incite action, to ensnare other characters in their own webs. The Idiot becomes an inciter, a catalyst for action in the notes. Even when the Idiot acts as a peacemaker — as, for example, between the Uncle and the son— he still incites one against the other. In the novel the Idiot's boundless, though quiet, energy also often causes situations to become extreme. Myshkin seeks sincerely to spread peace and goodwill among the other characters. Yet the result is often better than his Iago counterpart could have hoped. His interference in the family fight at the Ivolgins' in Part I of the novel, for example, serves to intensify all the existing tensions. Later in the Plan for Iago entry, Dostoevsky described the Idiot's depression and weariness, his sense that he is separated

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from life and that events resemble a vaudeville. In the novel, Myshkin, at his weariest moments on the park bench in Pavlovsk, also perceives everyday life as something from which he alone has been excluded, a festival in which he cannot take part. In entry twelve, 30 October, the Idiot arrives from somewhere, enters into the family as a nonentity, and gains ascendency over all of its members (IX, 170). Prince Myshkin of the novel, unwittingly and in good faith, achieves the same power over most of the other characters — such as the Ivolgins, the Epanchins, the Lebedevs. "The Idiot," writes Dostoevsky in the notes, "does not justify himself. His magnanimous deeds (they were, invent) are done by him without publicity, but he is nevertheless dissatisfied with himself; he judges and torments himself, because his pride is not pure but vain" (IX, 192). Nor does Myshkin seek to justify himself; at most, he is at times vaguely aware of his own "double thoughts." Thus, however different the early and the final versions of the Idiot may be, Myshkin bears more than slight resemblance to his energetic, demonic predecessor in the early notes. They share the qualities of the yurodivyi and of a catalytic, unsoliloquizing Iago figure. Dostoevsky's frenzied attempts in these first two notebooks to establish the most general structural outline and to shape his characters did not leave him much time to worry about narrative manner. A few brief references and remarks, however, show in a kind of shorthand how he conceived the narrative method of his novel; these comments prove interesting later in the light of the third notebook. Twice in the first entry of the early notes Dostoevsky tells himself to "Invent some terrible episodes." Later, having made a plan for the spiteful Idiot's eventual regeneration, Dostoevsky adds to himself: "(N.B. Trace the thread of his character — that will be entertaining.)" (IX, 156). In the novel the characters do not change very much and Dostoevsky does not give any extended biographical details about his hero. Thus the final narrative is not usually explanatory. But here, in the early notes, Dostoevsky planned to follow the Idiot through successive and varied stages of development. Such a content demanded a different sort of narrative, as Dostoevsky tells himself: "but do it this way: . . .

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Show what kind of man has been oppressed" (IX, 156). Throughout these chaotic notes the attainment of some degree of clarity in the narrative becomes at times a primary stylistic goal —along with, of course, the constant desire to be entertaining. On 30 October Dostoevsky writes, "(Explain and delineate more precisely and more clearly)" (IX, 172). Not surprisingly, one assertion can lead to its opposite. On the same page, Dostoevsky, while planning a series of violent events ("a fire, a finger [burned], a rape") which would show what the Idiot is capable of, chooses an opposite narrative manner, "N.B. Without explanation" (IX, 172). But the basic aim still seems to be "to explain," for on 2 November 1867 he reiterates the need for an explanatory narrative style, "Explanatory conversations for the whole novel and scenes with the brother and the Uncles —as before" (IX, 178). The explaining is to be done through "showing" rather than by "telling": "From this it follows that it is necessary to explain this passion and this burning love in the course of the novel by means of episodes" (IX, 183). Curiously, even at the time of writing these early notes, while the novel hulked before him as a shapeless, unwritten thing, Dostoevsky foresaw the defense he would later make for his work, "For the epilogue: I have written a fantastic novel, but never more real characters" (IX, 199). Towards the end of the first two notebooks, in the last entries, Dostoevsky's primary narrative concern is that "I must be concise" (IX, 106). On 11/30 November he begins his final entry for the early notes, "Part One. The Idiot and Umetskaia, the business has begun, a concise story" (IX, 209). But conciseness for Dostoevsky does not necessarily mean clarity or explanation. ("About the Idiot there are only stories.") It would be rash to attribute undue significance to the few unsystematic notations about narrative manner that Dostoevsky has made in the early notebooks. It is striking, however, that the early versions of the Idiot as a developing character loosely paralleled the author's search for an explanatory narrative. By the last entries, when Dostoevsky had already decided upon the prince-yurodivyi plan for the Idiot, the desire for an explanatory style gave way to a more generalized goal of conciseness. Conciseness refers to a narrative manner rather than content: to be concise does not necessarily include explana-

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tions; one can be enigmatic and still be concise. Dostoevsky's new emphasis on conciseness carried over into Part I of the novel, where the events take place in a single day. There too we have "only stories" about the Idiot; he has arrived as a stranger. Although much of the material in these notes never resurfaces in his published fiction, the first two notebooks contain intimations of elements that reappear in Dostoevsky's last three novels— The Possessed, A Raw Youth, and The Brothers Karamazov. Many of the notes are taken up with the Idiot's secret marriage to a humble girl in the Umetsky family, who is at times described as a yurodivaia. The Idiot courts the Heroine despite his secret marriage; she offers herself to him. The marriage is suddenly revealed, and in some of the notes the Idiot kills his wife. Perhaps, too, he married her while he was drunk. These themes cluster around Stavrogin in The Possessed. The Idiot's "Byronic despair" describes Stavrogin (IX, 190). The Heroine's letter to the Idiot resembles in imagery and tone Pyotr Verkhovensky's letter to Stavrogin. The Heroine writes: "Why you? Because you were there like some kind of sun; at that time everyone sought you out; everyone adored you, but I hated them all . . . And you are the sun, you ridiculed me from our first meeting" (IX, 190). Pyotr says to Stavrogin, "Stavrogin, you are beautiful. Do you know that you are beautiful! . . . You are my idol! You injure no one, and everyone hates you. You treat everyone as an equal, and yet everyone is afraid of you — that's good . . . You are the leader, you are the sun, and I am your worm" (X [1974], 323). The Heroine's letter immediately follows a plan for the death of the Idiot's secret wife; Pyotr's mad speech occurs on the eve of the murder of Maria Timofeevna, Stavrogin's secret wife. The "Rothschild" theme, of a poor man slowly and deliberately amassing a fortune, reverberates through the notes for The Idiot and finds fruition in A Raw Youth; another theme in the notes, of the hero's suffering and blighted childhood, also finds it fullest expression in A Raw Youth. The editors of the 1974 edition of the notebooks for The Idiot stress the similarity of the relationship between the Idiot and the Uncle with that of Arkady and Versilov. A Raw Youth also continues the theme of illegitimacy explored in the early notes for The Idiot (IX, 345). Finally, the theme of a father's and son's rivalry for the same

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woman recurs in A Raw Youth and in The Brothers Karamazov. The Idiot of the early notebooks fragments into Dostoevsky's next four major heroes: Myshkin, Stavrogin, Arkady, and Alyosha. The last entry of the second notebook is dated 11/30 November. Presumably the next few days were spent in intense writing. Then, on 4 December Dostoevsky announced that he had "thrown it all to the Devil"; he began to rework his plans for the novel and started to write again on 18 December. 36 Unfortunately these crucial notes no longer exist. Twenty-three days later Dostoevsky sent off Part I of the novel to the Russkii Vestnik. (He had sent off the first five chapters of Part I by 5 January). 37 Between the last notebook entry and the first page of the novel, then, there is a large gap. It may be bridged at various points by minimizing rather than by accentuating the differences between the early notes and the final version, thereby allowing us to see that the novel did in fact grow, in however mutant a form, out of the notes. Such a dramatic gap certainly lends itself also to psychological interpretation, and Dalton, who finds that the overall creative process in the notebooks resembles the formation of a dream, discovers an essential act of regression in the gap between the notes and the novel: "the notes record not only the movement toward expression of ideas . . . but also, paradoxically, the struggle to repress those ideas. Between the last plan and the beginning of the novel itself, an act of creative repression has taken place. The novel is a compromise formation." 38 But it would be wrong to underestimate the importance of the vision which came to Dostoevsky during these days in December and about which he had written so movingly to his friend, Maikov, and to his niece Sonya Ivanova. The months of unsuccessful attempts to portray an idea resulted in a drastic recasting of that idea. On 31 December 1867/12 January 1868, Dostoevsky wrote to Maikov, after a long silence, about his novel: And with me it's been this way: 1 have been working and tormenting myself. Do you know what it means to compose? . . . Having taken so much money from Russkii Vestnik (alas! 4500 rubles) I, you see, had fully hoped at the beginning of the year that poetry wouldn't

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desert me, that the poetic idea would flash and develop artistically towards the end of the year, and that I would manage to satisfy everyone. It seemed all the more probable to me because always both in my head and in my soul many pregnant artistic ideas flash and are felt. But they only flash, and a full embodiment is necessary, and such an embodiment always proceeds accidentally and suddenly. But one cannot predict exactly when it will arise; and only after that, having received in your heart a full image, can you set about the artistic embodiment of the image . . . Well then, all summer and autumn I have been putting together various thoughts (some were most ingenious), but some experience always let me foresee either the falseness or the difficulty or the weakness of a particular idea. Finally, I stopped at one idea and began to work. I had written a lot, but on the 4th of December, foreign style, I threw it all to the Devil. I assure you that the novel could have been satisfactory; but it became incredibly repulsive to me precisely because it was satisfactory and not positively [polozhitel'no] good. I didn't need that. But what was I to do? It was already the 4th of December! . . . I thought from the 4th till the 18th of December new style . . . M y head was turning into a windmill. W h y I didn't go mad, I don't know. Finally, on the 18th of December I sat down to write a new novel; on the 5th of January (new style) I sent off to the editorship 5 chapters of the first part (nearly 5 sheets) with the assurance that on the 10th of January (new style) I would send the remaining two chapters of the first part. Yesterday on the 11th I sent these 2 chapters, and so I have sent off the whole first part —β or 6V2 printed sheets . . . Now about the novel . . . In essence I absolutely do not myself know what I have sent off . . . For a long time already a certain thought has tormented me, but I was afraid to make a novel out of it, because the thought was too difficult and I was not ready for it, although the thought was completely tempting and I loved it. This idea is —to portray a wholly beautiful man \izobrazit' vpolne prekrasnogo cheloveka]. There can be, in my opinion, nothing more difficult than this, especially in our time . . . This idea formerly has appeared for a moment in some artistic form [ o b r a z ] , but indeed, only in part, and the whole is necessary. Only my despairing situation compelled me to take up this premature thought. I gambled as one does at roulette, "maybe it will develop under my pen.'' This is unforgivable. In general, the plan has taken shape. Furthermore, there flash by me details which are very seductive to me and which inspire fervor in me. But the whole? The hero? . . . I am obliged to construct an image. Will it develop under my pen? . . . Of the 4 heroes . . . the

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fourth, that is the main one, the first hero, is extremely weak. Maybe he does not sit weakly in my heart, but he is terribly difficult. (Ρ, II, 59-61) A day later, in his letter to Sonya Ivanova, elaborated on his new plan:

Dostoevsky

I have destroyed much of what was written . . . At that time, 3 weeks ago I applied myself to another novel and began to work day and night. The idea of the novel —my old and beloved, but nevertheless difficult, idea —is one which, for a long time, I dared not tackle, and if I have tackled it now, it was decidedly because I was in a desperate situation. The main thought of the novel is to portray a positively beautiful person \izobrazit' polozhitel'no prekrasnogo cheloveka]. There is nothing more difficult than this in the world, and especially at this time. All writers, not only ours, but even all Europeans, who but undertook this depiction of the positively beautiful man — always had to pass it up. Because this problem is immeasurable. The beautiful is an ideal, but an ideal which neither we nor civilized Europe has in the least perfected. On earth there is only one positively beautiful person—Christ, so that the appearance of this immeasurably, infinitely beautiful person is, of course, an infinite miracle in itself . . . But I have gone on too long, I will mention only, that of the beautiful characters in Christian literature Don Quixote is the most finished. But he is beautiful only because at the same time he is also comic. Pickwick of Dickens (an infinitely weaker idea than Don Quixote, but nevertheless great) is also comic, and by that alone affects us. Compassion appears toward the beauty that is mocked and doesn't know its own worth —and consequently sympathy appears even in the reader. This awakening of compassion is the secret of humor. Jean Valjean is also a powerful attempt, but he excites sympathy by his terrible misfortune and by society's injustice toward him. I have nothing similar, nothing, decidedly, and therefore I am terribly afraid that it will be a positive failure. Some details perhaps aren't bad. I am afraid that it will be boring. It's a long novel. It wrote the first part entirely in 23 days . . . It will decidedly not be effective . . . My only wish is that it will awaken even a little curiosity in the reader, so that he will go on to the second part . . . The novel is called The Idiot (Ρ, II, 71-72) The ideas expressed in these often quoted letters provided the cornerstone for the novel. The early notes were a preparation for that vision; in them one can discover the seeds of Dostoev-

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sky's decision to portray a positively beautiful man. Throughout these two letters Dostoevsky treated his problem as a narrative one —that of portrayal {izobrazit) — rather than as a philosophical or ideological one. The idea "to portray a wholly beautiful man" was "old and cherished" but "difficult." The difficulty revolved around turning that idea into words, making others accept and love it. The third notebook, written after the first sixteen chapters of the novel had already been published in the January and February (1868) issues of Russkii Vestnik, also gives evidence of authorial indecision and contains brief, unfinished plans. But whereas the indecision of the first two notebooks revolved around the conception of the Idiot's character and the search for the idea of the novel, the problems in the third notebook often derive from the very stability of the Idiot's character and the subsequent need to focus events around him — that is, the problem of the artistic execution of the idea (what Dostoevsky called khudozhestvennost). This last notebook touches more often upon questions of narrative strategy than do the first two, although there is still no systematic discussion of the problem. For Dostoevsky the writing of Part II of the novel (which he thought of as Part III, Part I being the first six chapters and Part II being chapters 7 to 16) proved excruciatingly difficult; it did not pour forth in a whole as had Part I. The notes for Part II in the third notebook reflect Dostoevsky's loss of momentum. Although the first part of the novel foreshadowed the course of the narrative, the perspective of the work still remained unclear to Dostoevsky. 39 Part II was due to appear in Russkii Vestnik in April 1868, but only the first two chapters of Part II were published in April. The following three chapters appeared in May. Dostoevsky suffered over this piecemeal form of writing. In a letter to Maikov, he called it "shameful" (Ρ, II, 122). On 3 June he sent off the next four chapters (6-9) of Part II, but only chapters six through eight were published then. Chapter 9 evidently arrived too late. In July Dostoevsky finally completed Part II, through chapter twelve. The notes from March through July 1868, while Dostoevsky was trying to write Part II, reflect his uncertainty over the direction of the novel. In seeking to formulate the plot for Part II,

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Dostoevsky also continually outlined plans for the rest of the novel. Part I had ended noncommittally, with most of the major characters setting off to Moscow; upon their return anything could happen. In writing Part I Dostoevsky needed to settle upon a definite characterization of the Idiot, but he had not yet had to commit himself to a certain plot. The notes for Part II of the novel portray this search. Predictably, in the third notebook Dostoevsky addresses himself often to the question of the manner in which the novel should be written. But when Dostoevsky writes about the structural organization and the narrative strategy of his novel, he does not formulate abstract or ideal statements about the craft of writing novels. Instead, he makes precise, practical prescriptions for getting this particular and troublesome novel under way and written. Thus notes about composition and narrative are often expressed as notes about the plot —how long is the Idiot in Moscow? — whom does he marry? — and about the roles of other more peripheral characters, like Ganya, Evgeny Pavlovich, and the children. We have already seen that proposed elaborate character development in the first two notebooks did not carry over into the novel and that stages of development in the Idiot's personality were fragmented into separate characters in the novel. In the transformation of the third notebook into the novel further reductions occur: Ganya's role diminishes; the Idiot of the novel becomes less introspective than the Idiot of the third notebook, and the children's club, of which the prince is head, disappears. In the opening pages of these notes Dostoevsky is clearly at loose ends. "The Prince was away three weeks in Moscow" (IX, 216). (In the novel, he is away for six months.) Dostoevsky plans that the prince will marry Nastasia Filippovna, "N. F. Is he married to her in secret or not, that's the question?" (IX, 216). "The Prince is married to N. F." (IX, 216). "Invent a role in the intrigues for Ganya, Ippolit, and others. For Vera" (IX, 218). Moreover, in these first pages of the third notebook, the Idiot, like his earlier version, experiences and expresses more turmoil and doubt than he exhibits in the novel. "N.B. At every moment (inwardly) he asks himself: Am I right or are they right?" (IX, 218). Ganya's role also resembles that of the earlier Idiot; he must make himself indispensable to everyone (IX, 219).

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Dostoevsky is frantically seeking a beginning for Part II, and by implication, an ending for the novel. "Project: Shouldn't I begin then with Ganya? Intrigues of Ganya, Varya, Ptitsyn, Rogozhin, and company. Lebedev and the others. . . PROJECTS. N.B. Shouldn't I end the novel with a confession, published publicly?" (IX, 220). After postulating a beginning for Part II and an end for the novel (neither of which he finally used),Dostoevsky, on 11 March, turns to a plan for his narrative strategy: N.B. The relations with the children, do it this way: at first, when the subject matter is about Aglaya, about Ganya, about N. F., about the intrigues, and so on, why not mention casually and almost enigmatically [zagadochno] about the relations of the Prince with the children, with Kolya, for example, and so on. Don't mention about the club, but why not present it suddenly, having introduced it with vague rumors, and present the Prince in its midst like a tsar, in the 5th or 6th part of the novel? N.B. Why not present the character of the Prince enigmatically throughout the entire novel, from time to time defining by means of details (more fantastically and more questioningly, arousing curiosity) and suddenly to elucidate his character at the end and, on the other hand, N.B. With all the other characters from the very beginning more defined and elucidated to the reader? (as, for example, Ganya?) (IX, 220) The children's club and the final elucidation of Myshkin have disappeared, but the narrative manner proposed here carries over into the novel. Much of the narrative of the novel is at once casual and enigmatic, often maddeningly so. Vague rumors about the prince abound; by an arbitrary presentation of details about the prince, the narrator makes him more unreal and curious to his reader. On the other hand, other, minor characters, like Totsky, General Epanchin, Pavlishchev's nephew, the General's wife, Kolya, and General Ivolgin are clearly drawn throughout. Dostoevsky's strategy of balancing enigma with explanation has taken root. On 12 March he writes: Detailed plan of 3rd part. 3 months later.

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Morning. Ganya, Ptitsyn. The sister is in the other apartment . . . They are expecting something and someone. An enigmatic conversation. (An explanatory chapter. The scene at the garden.) OR

1st chapter explanatory; scene at station. But the only main character — Ganya. 2nd chapter . . . Enigmatic conversation. (IX, 224-225) Later in this entry, Dostoevsky continues to conceive his plan in terms of how it will affect his readers; he deliberates over whether or not he will maintain the reader's interest through arousing his curiosity or through revealing what has been hidden. . . . the character of Rogozhin in the 3rd part is mysterious . . . (IX, 226) 2) Meanwhile, actually there are only rumors about the Prince's exploits, good deeds, about the children (so that in the end everything comes to light). But however; 3) Something flashes by fits and starts even before the end. (N.B. Or else to develop things not so quickly??) . . . The course of events? N.B. N.B. N.B.7 The course of events. (IX, 227) For Dostoevsky the creation of the texture and tones of the narrative was inseparable from elaborating the plot itself; thus, the need to create a balance between enigma and explanation partially shapes the course of events. Once Dostoevsky had conceived of the character of the Idiot and the most general idea of his novel, the business of setting the pace of the narrative was as crucial to the expression of the idea of the novel as was the development of the plot and was often indistinguishable from it. Although most writers, to some degree, seek to balance an enigmatic with an explanatory narrative, to witness in the notes the way in which Dostoevsky makes choices that create this balance shows us that his novels, at their most heightened, passionate moments, often grew out of a deliberate, prearranged choice of narrative tone. Dostoevsky's decision to present the prince "enigmatically, throughout the entire novel," means that the reader is to learn about him through stories and rumors, but shall also be permitted flashes of understanding. Another writer

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might have elaborated Myshkin as fully as possible. By reading an author's notes and thereby crossing into the realm of intentional fallacy, one can attain a glimpse of the rudiments of that author's style and of his own perception of how he forms that style. Imperceptibly Dostoevsky's goal of balancing enigma with explanation turns into the attempt to weld these two seemingly opposite narrative styles into a single narration. He creates a kind of narrative oxymoron — a mode of "enigmatic explanation." He strives for a style that is both precise and mysterious, that seems to explain without really explaining. "My task: to write more briefly. So that it should be more catchy [shchegol'ski], sympathetic, (briefly and always to the point) and entertaining. N.B. the mysterious relations of N. F. with Rogozhin in the 3rd and 4th parts" (IX, 231). Brevity and absence of digression masquerade as explanation, while an air of mystery really prevails. "N.B. Indispensable: They crowd around him and pester him from all sides as if to get money. The result: Only dark rumors about the adroitness of the Prince" (IX, 231). One must bear in mind that these notes reflect Dostoevsky's hopes for his novel; writing it was another matter. The first two chapters of Part II, which Dostoevsky was working on at the same time he wrote these notes, continue the pattern by disguising the narrator's longwindedness and digressions as accurate reportage; there is a minimum of explanation. The opening pages of chapter 1 of Part II quickly set the tone: It w a s said at the time that there might be other reasons for his hasty departure,

but a b o u t

this,

and a b o u t

the prince's adventures

in

M o s c o w and generally a b o u t the entire period of his absence f r o m Petersburg, w e c a n p r o v i d e only s c a n t y i n f o r m a t i o n . T h e prince w a s a w a y e x a c t l y six m o n t h s and even those w h o had a reason to be interested in his fate could find out v e r y little a b o u t him during that time. T r u e , certain r u m o r s did reach them at times, although v e r y rarely; and they were for the most part strange ones and almost a l w a y s mutually c o n t r a d i c t o r y . . . Little b y little the r u m o r s which h a d spread t h r o u g h the t o w n b e c a m e enshrouded in uncertainty . . . This news turned out to be completely a c c u r a t e as it w a s later s h o w n .

(VIII, 1 4 9 - 1 5 1 ; 1 9 9 - 2 0 1 )

Throughout the middle of March Dostoevsky continues with this precarious narrative manner which hovers between con-

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cealment and disclosure. "Indispensable — as much as possible to characterize the personality of the prince (by his facial expression and his idiosyncrasies) in the 3rd part — especially on the occasion of his change of situation because of the inheritance and because of his three-month stay in Russia . . . (Does he love Aglaya?)" (IX, 233). Showing becomes a way to avoid telling, but later, in the novel itself, this frequently arbitrary and strictly dramatic presentation of the prince by a talkative narrator, who can also at will be privy to the thoughts of his character, creates problems for the reader. What is significant about these passages from the notebooks is that they show Dostoevsky deliberately undertaking such a narrative. One cannot argue therefore that the shifting perspectives and narrative distances in the novel arose through carelessness on the part of the author or by chance. Indeed, in the third notebook Dostoevsky, perpetually concerned about the effect of his narrative on the reader, defines the narrative texture he hopes to create: Write more briefly: only the facts, without reasoning and without a description of feelings? . . . Write using only the facts. Say simply, that Ganya brought the Prince the 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 . From that time there was a friendship (between them), so they say . . . Write in the sense of: people say . . . N.B. Recount the facts lightly, without special reasoning. (IX, 235-236)

Dostoevsky gauged the effect of a light, seemingly casual recounting of the facts upon his readers. The facts must prove to be entertaining as well as mysterious: N.B. The general's wife, getting angry, says the sentence, "And I will tell you frankly: you yourself are in love with him." (N.B. that is why you are attacking him.) She speaks in such a way so that her meaning, even for the reader, must be quite unexpected, that is, even the reader must not be prepared for the fact that Aglaya is in love with the Prince. (IX, 238)

Yet at the same time Dostoevsky acknowledges that a light, seemingly factual narrative is not enough. At times a discursive, descriptive voice proves necessary:

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Indispensable Note (1) the effect of Russia on the Prince. H o w much and in what w a y he has changed. In the description. (IX, 237)

Oddly, this grouping of narrative methods has the effect of placing facts on the side of rumor and mystery rather than on the side of description and explanation. T h e final irony of the narrative in the novel is that the narrator's description and explanation prove to have been misleading in the end; the sparsely scattered facts and abundant mysteries are the stuff out of which the reader must form his understanding of the meaning. At this point Dostoevsky seems to have settled provisionally upon the overall narrative manner for the novel. In the notes of late March he returns to the problem of portraying the Idiot in a way that will be convincing to the reader, "THE SYNTHESIS OF THE N O V E L . THE SOLUTION OF THE D I F F I C U L T Y . H o w

tO

m a k e the personality of the hero more sympathetic to the reader?" (IX, 239). Several months earlier, in the two letters quoted above, Dostoevsky had defined in narrative terms "the main idea" that had been his cherished intention in this novel: to portray a positively beautiful man in Russia. T h e problem of how best to portray such a beautiful character still loomed large. T h e difficulty was how to establish an effective mechanism of communication between the novelist and the reader and how to make to make the hero's goodness interesting: "If D o n Quixote and Pickwick, as virtuous characters are sympathetic to the reader and succeed, it is because they are comic. If —the hero of the novel, the Prince, is not comic, he possesses another sympathetic feature: he is! Innocent!" (IX, 239). Dostoevsky here consciously rejected the comic mode as a means of depicting his hero. But a straightforward presentation of a virtuous character could be extremely boring. As an avid reader in his youth of Gothic and adventure novels, Dostoevsky knew how entertaining an air of mystery was. His many directives to himself to recount only the facts without explanation and to make use of rumor and enigma reflect his awareness that he had to counteract the potential dullness of a perfectly good man. T h e Idiot is to be portrayed indirectly, by his facial expressions and idiosyncrasies. His innocence provides, as Dostoev-

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sky noted, "another sympathetic feature." As opposed to the merely virtuous hero, an innocent man, like a comic one, has a great capacity for arousing interest, and Dostoevsky immediately begins to exploit these possibilities. He writes, "all the questions, both those of a personal nature for the Prince (in which the children play a passionate role) and general questions are decided by him, and in this there is much that is touching and naive, for in his most extremely tragic and personal moments the Prince is occupied with the solving of general problems. N.B. Prepare many incidents and stories" (IX, 240). The prince becomes interesting or sympathetic through his naivete, through his often tragic confusion of the personal with the general. Increasingly, Dostoevsky in these plans turned away from an exploration of the prince's psychology to a demonstration of how he affected the lives of others: "But wherever he only even touched [the lives of others]— everywhere he left a permanent trace. And thus, the infinity of the story in the novel (the wretched of all classes) along with the flow of the main theme. (N.B. N.B. N.B.! that main theme is the one to be polished and created.) He teaches the children through stories" (IX, 242). During March Dostoevsky had emphasized the prince's selfdoubt (IX, 218-219). By April, however, Dostoevsky no longer has the prince asking himself whether he is right or they are right. Instead, "And why not present the prince as a perpetual Sphinx? Some mistakes and comical traits of the Prince" (IX, 242). Dostoevsky had finally acknowledged to himself that his hero permanently perplexed him. Since February he had published nothing; the decision to portray the prince as a "perpetual Sphinx" thus reflected Dostoevsky's own difficulties with the prince's character, but it also provided a way to get on with the work at hand. If the prince were a perpetual Sphinx, the author (or the narratorchronicler), Dostoevsky realized, did not ever need to explain him. In a retreat from his previous intention, Dostoevsky here also plans to resort to comedy himself, as Cervantes and Dickens had done, by showing comical traits in the prince. The decisions to present the prince as a perpetual Sphinx and to show his "comical traits" illustrate both the frustration Dostoevsky was experiencing in characterizing the prince and the ways

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in which he hoped to overcome it: he planned to solve his difficulty through the use of mystery and comedy, that is, through the medium of narration. (These choices of narrative tone eventually, of course, contribute to shaping the plot of the novel as well. But it is interesting that Dostoevsky resolved these matters before he had decided firmly upon most of the details of the plot.) Frustration mounts. After composing a crowded outline of events for Part II (he calls it Part III), in which, in a jumbled foreshadowing of subsequent scenes that instead span the entire novel, there occurs yet another party at Nastasia Filippovna's, a children's journal, a forthcoming meeting between Nastasia and A g l a y a , and episodes involving Ferdyshchenko and Pavlishchev, Dostoevsky writes: N.B. from me: this is too much for the third part. Secrets, mysteries, and subsequent plots. N.B. The problem of presenting N.F. N.B. The Prince as a Sphinx. As a Sphinx. He reveals himself without explanation by the author, except perhaps in the first chapter. If Ganya from the first has recounted what he knew about N.F. (to Aglaya) . . . and then the report of Lebedev (earlier in the morning) to the Prince, then the reader is sufficiently enlightened so that the role of a sphinx can be maintained . . . (N.B. And Ganya too is a sphinx.) (IX, 248-249) Dostoevsky has returned to balancing enigma and enlightenment for his readers; here enlightenment serves merely to maintain an enigma, to make the prince's role of a sphinx believable to the reader, who must be enlightened only enough to be further confused about the hero. Even Ganya has become sphinxlike. Dostoevsky has asked earlier, "And Ganya? His role? . . . the role of Ganya: incessant betrayals and vacillations" (IX, 245-246). Like the prince, Ganya has driven Dostoevsky to try to dismiss him as a sphinx. Dostoevsky's repeated use of the word "sphinx" in the entries for 9 and 10 April reflected a mounting impatience with his inability to get on with his work, while at the same time it suggested a solution to the problem. A week before the sphinx image first appeared in the notes, Dostoevsky, in despair, ad-

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mitted that for a month he "had not written a single line!" (Ρ, II, 97). At this moment of keen frustration a new formulation abruptly appears. It relates to nothing else, yet it provides the impetus for movement. On 9 and 10 April Dostoevsky twice jots down the epithet "Prince Christ," (IX, 246, 294). Just as in the earlier notebooks the notation, "He is a Prince. A Prince. A Yurodivyi (He is with the children)" (IX, 200), appeared suddenly and seemed to give the notes new life, here the words "Prince Christ" appear in isolation and later take firm root. 4 0 Later the same day Dostoevsky returned to the problem of narrating, of portraying: N.B. Write more sympathetically, and it will be good. The main problem: the character of the Idiot. Develop him. That is the idea [mysl] of the novel. How he reflects Russia. Everything that would have been worked out in the Prince is extinguished in the grave. And that is why gradually showing the Prince in action will be sufficient. But! For this is needed the plot of the novel [fabula romana). In order to set forth the character of the Idiot [more sympathetically] it is necessary to think up for him a field of action. (IX, 252) Dostoevsky has come to a major realization: if the narratorchronicler portrays the Idiot as a sphinx, he need not fill the pages with his hero's thoughts, dreams, hopes. Instead, the prince's character will be set forth through the action of the plot. The characterization of the Idiot as a "Prince Christ," far from contradicting the notion of the prince as a sphinx, complements and deepens that conception of him. The figure of Christ and the style of the Gospels, which portray Him through parables and stories rather than through authorial explanations, provide Dostoevsky with models for characterization and narration. The characterization of the Idiot as Prince Christ has evoked a narrative solution as well. (In a sense the narrative portrayals of Christ in the Gospels and Iago in Othello are similar: each figure remains a sphinx; their deeds cannot be absolutely interpreted because we are forbidden insight into their mental workings and see them only in action. Dostoevsky's passage from an image of Iago in the second notebook to one of Prince Christ in the third notebook therefore carries with it an underlying narrative logic.) Dostoevsky then turns back to the task of structuring his

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narrative. He plans to insert some narratives to complement both the main story line and each other: ( 1 ) in general, HISTORIES and stories, that is, histories continuing throughout the whole novel must be harmoniously conceived and executed in a way parallel to the whole novel, and therefore (2) think them over and the essential story with the Aide-de-camp [becomes Radomsky], but the main thing, as far as possible, parallel stories. (IX, 252)

He then lists parallel stories involving Ferdyshchenko, Ivolgin, and Ippolit and ends with the words "Pr Christ" (IX, 253). T h e governing concern remains the creation of the prince's field of action and the elucidation of his character through parables and stories. Five days later, on 15 April, Dostoevsky found an outline for a field of action that would carry him through the first chapters of Part II. T h e prince returns in a confused state to St. Petersburg after an absence of six months; he has sent a letter to Aglaya via Kolya; the general's wife pays the prince a visit. "They need him at the Epanchins . . . G a n y a needs him. Kolya —Rogozhin needs him . . . A n d the main thing, N. F., even Lebedev . . . needs him, and the Prince's heart glowed ('Here, it must be, is my occupation.')" (IX, 256). T h e plot has taken shape through the need that all the characters have for the prince. Dostoevsky himself realizes this, "THE MAIN THING IS THAT THEY ALL NEED HIM" ( I X ,

257).

From here on the character of the notes written during the composition of Part II changes: since Dostoevsky has discovered his basic narrative method, more of the material from the notes subsequently reappears in the novel. Even the end of the novel has begun to take shape. Throughout all the notes, plans for Rogozhin's eventual murder of Nastasia have existed. In the third n o t e b o o k there have been plans for a meeting between Aglaya and Nastasia. But on 15 and 16 April Dostoevsky sketches in concrete details: in the scene between Aglaya and Nastasia, Aglaya is to act uncontrollably, and the prince agrees to marry Nastasia (IX, 257). At the last moment Nastasia will run off with Rogozhin. Getting even closer to the final text, Dostoevsky plans that during the engagement with Nastasia the prince shall be

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thought, by general rumor, to be mad. "Everyone has deserted him, except for a few people" (IX, 258). On 16 April Dostoevsky writes: " I N THE 5TH PART THE SCANDAL ABOUT THE PRINCE MUST BE TOO GREAT, THE PUBLIC INSULT . . . the explanation of the Prince, the Aide-de-camp, almost a duel . . . in the 7th and 8th parts the picture of the ill and wandering Prince . . . They take the Idiot abroad" (IX, 260). Here Dostoevsky has foreshadowed the shape and outcome of the eventual meeting between the two rivals, the public scandal in the park at Pavlovsk where Myshkin intercedes for Nastasia and almost becomes involved in a duel, and Nastasia's final departure with Rogozhin. Most important for the narrative structure of the novel, we see that Dostoevsky during the writing of Part II of the novel had already planned the course of Myshkin's growing isolation from those around him. He is to be deserted b y his friends and b y the narrator as he grows more and more ill and lost. This note offers a vital tool for assessing the narrative in the novel; it shows that Dostoevsky had intended the narrator and the other characters to become impatient with the hero, ("THE SCANDAL ABOUT THE PRINCE MUST BE TOO GREAT.") Thus in chapter 9 of Part IV in the novel, when the narrator himself seems to desert Myshkin and to agree with such critics of the prince as Evgeny Pavlovich, Dostoevsky has not lost control over his material. He has not abdicated responsibility for a hero who has become too difficult to portray; he is having his narrator act according to plan. 4 1 The last pages of notes for Part II contain the working out of the scene in which Aglaya reads Pushkin's poem "The Poor Knight" to the group assembled at the prince's rented cottage in Pavlovsk. The novelist has found his way at last and is willing to defend his narrative and defy his would-be critics. In an earlier entry for 6 November 1867 Dostoevsky had written, "For the epilogue: I have written a fantastic novel, but never more real characters" (IX, 199). O n 11 June 1868, he confirms the feeling of Tightness: N.B. The main thing After the scene between the two rivals: We admit, that we will be describing strange happenings. Because it is difficult to explain them, we will limit ourselves to the facts.

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We agree that nothing could have happened differently with the Idiot. So let us bring to an end the story of a character, who perhaps was not worth so much of the reader's attention —we agree with that. Reality above all else. It is true, perhaps, that we have another view of reality, 1000 souls, prophecies —a fantastic reality. Maybe in the Idiot is a man who is more real. However, we agree that they may say to us: "that's all so, you are right, but you have not been able to present the affair, to justify the facts, you are a bad artist." But here already, of course, there is nothing to be done. (IX, 276) In this entry Dostoevsky has further outlined how he intends the narrator-chronicler to express himself near the end of the novel. He has previewed the narrator's distancing of himself from his hero at the very moment when the reader most desires an explanation. Part of this passage recurs in the novel as a cynical apology to the reader on the part of the narratorchronicler (VIII, 475-479, 589-594). The narrator-chronicler lays bare his device: because it was difficult to explain, I confined myself to recounting the facts. He shrugs off the criticism that in not explaining, that is, in not justifying the facts, he has showed himself to be a bad artist. Thus, the narrator's unexpected and disturbing abdication of responsibility toward the hero and the events of the story (in chapter 9, Part IV), which proves so surprising to a reader of the novel, has been, as these notes of 11 June indicate, the novelist's intent all along. If the reader finds the narrative to be enigmatic and baffling, he has merely experienced what the author intended. The remaining notes are few — some ten pages of notes exist for the rest of the novel, Parts III and IV. Dostoevsky worked on Part III from August through part of October 1868 and finished Part IV by the first part of January 1869 (IX, 378). Despite uncertainties as to exactly how the plot would develop (in October, Dostoevsky still toys with the idea of the prince marrying Aglaya), he has the novel securely underway. Dostoevsky wrote the third and fourth parts in half the time of the first two parts. By 4 October, while writing the end of Part III, Dostoevsky had decided upon all the basic events of Part IV, including the most climactic scene of the novel — the tour de force of Rogozhin's and Myshkin's vigil beside Nastasia's corpse:

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2nd Half of the 4th Part N.F. — the fiancee of the Prince. Eccentricity. A scene in the temple alone. To Rogozhin in despair (he murders her). He summons the Prince. Rogozhin and the Prince beside the corpse. Finale. Not bad. (IX, 283)

This is the only moment in the notebooks where Dostoevsky allows himself a burst of pride and self-congratulation. From here on the notes are brief, except for the 7 November entry which further outlines the final scene by Nastasia's corpse (IX, 285-286). Dostoevsky was terribly proud of this final scene; on the same day he wrote to Maikov, "Now, when I see everything as if in a mirror — I am completely convinced that never in my literary life have I had a single poetic idea that was better and richer than the one which has been elucidated in Part IV, in the detailed plan" (Ρ, II, 141). On the same day he also wrote to Sonya: "Finally, and the main thing for me is that the fourth part and its finale are the main part of my novel, that is, almost the whole novel was thought out and written for the sake of the denouement" (Ρ, II, 138). In the entry for 15 October Dostoevsky outlines a scene between Nastasia and the prince on their wedding morning and a scene between Aglaya and the prince (IX, 284-285). In both the word "Othello" appears in parenthesis. This is perhaps an unconscious, but powerful symbol for the transformation of the Idiot that has taken place throughout these three notebooks. Iago has become Othello. The inciter of action and instigator of mistrust has become a man infinitely vulnerable to the acts of others, trustful, and uneasily roused to jealously. Othello's dying words (Othello, V, ii, 341-344) aptly describe Myshkin's own tragedy: When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely, but too well.

The editors of the 1974 edition of the notebooks note that Dostoevsky probably read P. I. Veinberg's 1864 translation of

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Othello. They show similarities of phrasing between this entry and the Russian translation of the play, especially in the passage in which Othello says of Desdemona that she loved him for his sufferings, and that he loved her for her compassion for them. Myshkin assures Nastasia that he loves her not only with compassion but with love (IX, 382). Like Desdemona's love for Othello, Aglaya's love for the prince grew from the stories he told of his past experiences. The notes for Parts III and IV contain no more narrative directives. Dostoevsky had discovered his narrative method while working on Part II on the novel. Yet in his own assessment of the novel upon its completion, Dostoevsky was more ready to find fault with his portrayal of the Idiot, with his narrative in general, than with the idea behind it. In February 1869 he wrote to Sonya Ivanova, "Now it is finished at last! I have written the last chapters day and night, with terrible anguish . . . but I am not happy with the novel: it does not express even a tenth of what I wished to express. Although, nevertheless, I will not disclaim it, and I still love my idea even though it has not succeeded. But in any case the fact is that it is not effective for the public" (Ρ, II, 159-160). Several weeks later, in a letter to Strakhov, he wrote, "There is much in the novel that was written rapidly, much that is drawn out, much that didn't come off, but something did come off. I don't stand behind my novel, but I do stand behind the idea" (Ρ, II, 170). Nevertheless, his choices of narrative method had been deliberate and the techniques he developed here reappear, with greater success, in The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazou. 4 2 Each is a virtuouso performance of the balancing and welding together of enigma and explanation. Ultimately, the narrator-chronicler provides the perfect device for realizing this aim, for his explanations serve to create even larger mysteries. Dostoevsky, in these notes, had designed a narrative style and a plot that would allow the reader, often through the very act of disagreeing with the narrator's assessment of events, to participate in the moral action of the novel.

Shaping the Reader's Expectations: The Narrative, Parts I and II

The bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others . . . — Michel de Montaigne, "Of the Education of Children"

I have already betrayed . . . my preference for dealing with my subject-matter, for "seeing my story," through the opportunity and the sensibility of some more or less detached, some not strictly involved, though thoroughly interested and intelligent witness or reporter, some person who contributes to the case mainly a certain amount of criticism and interpretation of it. — Henry James, Preface to The Golden

Bowl

ecause Dostoevsky considered form to be inseparable from idea, the search for the proper narrative mode mattered almost as much to him as finding the idea itself: "for various forms of art there exist series of poetic ideas which correspond to them, so that one idea can never be expressed in another form that doesn't correspond to it" (Ρ, III, 20). The form of The Idiot subsumes within it several simultaneously coexisting modes of narration: the voice of a sympathetic and omniscient narrator; a voice — ironically detached from the action — which passes along the current local rumors, a comic voice of limited intelligence which relates a kind of novel of ill manners; and a Gothic voice which employs techniques of arbitrary disclosure and heightened terror. At times the narrative style becomes completely dramatic. 1 A reader of The Idiot rapidly becomes accustomed to the variety of narrative tones that emerge in the first two parts of the novel.

B

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They are all different voices of a single narrator, who ventures at times to introduce his own opinions and interpretation of events, and must not be confused with the voice of the author, or in Booth's terminology, the voice of the implied author. We know that in his fiction Dostoevsky always sought to conceal his own voice as a matter of policy. The entire novel, except for the purely dramatic scenes, is written through the voices of the narrator. Narration generally implies communication of the details of a story. Those who judge this novel to be a failure tend to do so on the grounds that the reader has lost touch with the author and that the narrative medium —in this case the narrator's voices —has muddied rather than clarified the channels of communication between the novelist and the reader. In short, the author has failed to express his idea in a convincing way. 2 In Parts I and II of The Idiot, however, the narrator does establish a definite modal pattern; the reader is invited to expect the use of a particular voice to describe a particular character or group of characters. After identifying the main voices of the narrator and the patterns that allow the reader's prediction of their occurrence, one can begin to assess the balance of these voices in the novel and their possible effect on the reader. 3 Does he become too bewildered, or, conversely, is he burdened with a too heavyhanded narrative irony? The novel opens with a straightforward, factual account by a narrator-observer. The narrator's sense that he is telling a story predominates from the outset; he tries to restrict himself to a tempered, measured disclosure of the identities of the two young men on the railroad car, yet he cannot resist, in the second paragraph, forewarning the reader that this is a remarkable meeting. "Since dawn, in one of the third-class cars, facing each other by the window, sat two passengers — both young people, both with practically no luggage, both unfashionably dressed, both with rather remarkable physiognomies, and both wishing, finally, to enter into conversation with the other. If they had both known about one another, why they were especially remarkable at that moment, then of course they would have marveled that chance had so strangely seated them opposite one another in a third class car of the Petersburg-Warsaw train"

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(VIII, 5; 25). The reader immediately connects the two passengers with each other; they are linked by the narrator's insistent repetition of "both." The narrator has also managed to assert twice that they are each remarkable and that their presence on the third-class coach is somehow odd. These compartments are usually crowded with "ordinary people"; his is to be a story of extraordinary men. The narrator confines himself to being an observer throughout the first chapter. He does not enter the minds of Myshkin or Rogozhin and describes them in a seemingly objective way, but his own interpretations creep in. "The readiness of the blond young man . . . to answer all the questions of his swarthy neighbor was surprising" (VIII, 6; 26). The narrator emphasizes Myshkin's lack of suspicion and his peculiar eagerness to admit "at once with unusual haste" that his bundle contained all his earthly possessions (VIII, 7; 27). Seeking to entice the reader's interest with the catchwords "surprising," "unusual haste," "remarkable," "strange," the narrator at the same time maintains the tone of a reliable reporter. The first glimpse of the narrator's capacity for sarcasm, of an ironic mode, occurs in the first chapter as well, in a oneparagraph digression in which he characterizes a type, "the allknowing gentleman." This "all-knowing gentleman" bears an unc a n n y resemblance to the sort of nineteenth-century feuilletonist whose purposes Dostoevsky often parodied in his own journalism. 4 Dostoevsky undertakes a similar parody here as he has the narrator offer his first "sociological vignette": These all-knowing gentlemen are met sometimes, even quite often, in a certain level of society. They know everything; all the restless inquisitiveness of their minds and capabilities aspires irrepressibly in one direction, no doubt because of an absence of more important more vital interests and opinions, as a modern thinker would say. By the words "they know everything" must be understood, however, a rather limited area . . . however, many of them [the all-knowing gentlemen] take positive consolation from this knowledge, which is tantamount to a complete science, and they attain self-respect and even a high spiritual satisfaction. It certainly is a seductive science. I have known scholars, writers, poets, and politicians who have found and do find in this very science their deepest satisfaction, their goals; and who have even actually made their careers out of it. (VIII, 8; 28)

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The narrator's diction and logic have rapidly changed. He has shifted his point of view from impersonal to personalized observation. In this preliminary introduction of the still unnamed Lebedev, the narrator abruptly abandons his hitherto measured pacing and freely expresses his own sociological opinions, offering a brief psychological description of the "all-knowing" types who suffer from "an absence of more important, more vital interests"; he sarcastically labels their intellectual pretensions a "complete science." He also throws in a bit of personalized social satire as he cites the number of scholars, writers, poets, and politicians who suffer from the same disease. The shift in tone evident in the narrator's disgression does not distract the reader because it is strictly confined to the description of the "functionary," "the pimply gentleman" Lebedev. Indeed, the narrator's analysis is confirmed several pages later by Lebedev's self-laudatory exclamation: "He knows everything! Lebedev knows everything" (VIII, 11; 32). The narrator's asides and the details he emphasizes in this chapter reveal a generally dim, cynical view of mankind. As Rogozhin stares with curiosity at the shivering, inappropriately dressed Myshkin, the narrator easily reads Rogozhin's expression, "The darkhaired neighbor . . . took all this in, partly from having nothing to do, and finally, with that indelicate smile in which, so unceremoniously and carelessly is sometimes expressed human pleasure at the misfortunes of another, he asked, 'Chilly?'" (VIII, 6; 26). Lebedev is "something like a functionary embedded in the lower ranks . . . with a red nose and a pimpled face" (VIII, 7; 27). But after his digression on the all-knowing gentlemen, the narrator returns to his role of impersonal observer and maintains a stance of limited omniscience for the rest of the chapter. 5 Chapter 1 has displayed two different narrative textures, yet both fit within the sphere of a narrator-observer. The narrator portrays his two young heroes directly, more or less sympathetically, and with a minimum of intrusive devices such as sarcasm or psychological theorizing. He allows himself freer reign with a second-rank character like Lebedev. In subsequent chapters of the first two parts, the narrator reinforces and expands this pattern: he usually portrays the central characters dramatically, while the few descriptive passages concerning

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them are sympathetic rather than sarcastic. He does not theorize about their personalities or cast them into molds. Second-rank characters, like Ganya, Totsky, General Epanchin, and Lizaveta Prokof'evna, induce the narrator to try his wit and test his theories. These modulations of narrative tone occur in each chapter, often shifting from paragraph to paragraph. The opening pages of chapter 2, for example, abandon the straightforward measured mode of the narrator-observer of the first chapter. The narrator presents his next character, General Epanchin, in a lengthy expository passage. The reader's acquaintance with Myshkin and Rogozhin had grown gradually; it paralleled the discussion between the two heroes, whom the narrator did not even name for several pages. Lebedev crept in parenthetically as a kind of humorous afterthought. But for General Epanchin, a man of substance and social standing, the narrator adopts a corresponding tone. The narrator's syntax becomes more complicated, resulting in a heavier prose; fittingly, he portrays the man of society through the public's eye: It was well known to everyone that General Epanchin had participated in government monopolies in the past. At present he participated and had a decisive voice in certain substantial stock companies. He was known as a man of big money, big operations, big connections. In certain circles he knew how to make himself completely indispensable, as he did, for example, in his own branch of the administration. At the same time it was also known that Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin was a man without education and had started life as the son of a soldier; the latter facts, without a doubt, could only reflect honor upon him, but the general, although he was an intelligent man, was also not without little, very excusable weaknesses and didn't enjoy certain hints. But he was, unquestionably, an intelligent and adroit man. He, for example, had a method of not thrusting himself forward; where necessary, he would efface himself; and many people valued him precisely for this simplicity, precisely because he always knew his place. Yet if only these judges could know what transpired sometimes in the heart and mind of Ivan Fyodorovich who knew his place so well! (VIII, 14; 36)

The narrator goes on to describe the general's family through the same filter of the public's view of them. Of the daughters he observes:

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It was known that they loved one another remarkably . . . There was even mention made of . . . sacrifices . . . for the sake of the general household idol —the youngest. Not only didn't they like to put themselves forward in society, but they were even too modest . . . No one could reproach them for haughtiness or arrogance, but it was known than they were proud and understood their own value . . . In a word, many extremely flattering things were said about them. But there were also ill-wishers. It was remarked upon with horror about the number of books they had read. They were in no hurry to marry; although they valued a known circle of society, they did not overvalue it. This was all the more remarkable, because everyone knew the inclination, character, aims, and wishes of their father. (VIII, 16; 38)

The voice is that of a narrator-chronicler, an inhabitant of the town in which the characters live. He even resembles the "allknowing" type of gentleman he had sneered at in the previous chapter. At the same time he shrewdly directs his irony both toward General Epanchin and toward the public's assessments of him. In a manner reminiscent of Gogol, two layers of irony operate here: the narrator's irony toward the general and society, and to a lesser degree, the reader's slightly ironical view of the narrator who is so addicted to reporting all the gossip known about the general. The reader and the narrator find themselves in a pleasant, soothing state of collusion both against the general and against the society that finds the Epanchin girls "too modest." The reader's confidence in the narrator's perceptions solidifies. So does the reader's confidence in himself; after all, he has easily detected the presence of this ironic voice. At the same time, the narrator's excessive reliance upon society's view of the Epanchin family has a curious effect. He has told us that General Epanchin is a self-made man who will cater to public whim, while his daughters display that independence and capability for sincere affection typical of most novel heroines. They read; they do not especially care about the public's opinion of them; they are not eager to marry. The narrator has in fact presented a typical family for a novel situation, but he has introduced them to us through a smoke screen of public knowledge, prejudice, and rumor. In separating the family from what "was known" about it, the reader finds himself endowing the Epanchins with attributes of freshness and originality

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they might not otherwise have had for him, had the narrator merely presented them straightforwardly as a father and mother with three beautiful marriageable young daughters. The narrator has contrived to make a stock literary situation appear new and seemingly original. The narrator's tone does not merely express sarcasm. Upon closer examination the logic between the sentences of his expository passages becomes slightly suspect. Often, while maintaining his humorous attitude, he becomes affected by General Epanchin, half taking on his values while mocking them at the same time. "The general was possessed of a flourishing family. It is true, not all was roses here, but there was much on which . . . the most important hopes . . . of his excellency had been seriously and earnestly concentrated. Yes, and what goals in life are more important and sacred than paternal goals? To what should one devote oneself, if not to the family?" (VIII, 15; 37). The narrator's tone veers between sarcasm and sentimental sincerity. Most often, however, one sentence or clause undercuts or overqualifies the one preceding it. The general's parentage could only reflect honor upon him, "but the general, although he was an intelligent man, was also not without little, very excusable weaknesses . . . But he was, unquestionably, an intelligent . . . man." Adjectives tend to negate rather than qualify nouns: the general has weaknesses, but they are excusable. The logic, in a highly Gogolian style, becomes muddy here, for the point of the sentence is that the general, despite his intelligence, has weaknesses. But the introduction of "excusable" dissipates the original point of the statement. Why qualify the general's intelligence with the fact of his weaknesses, if in the first place, you are going to assert that these weaknesses are excusable, and therefore not weaknesses at all? In his overeagerness to to assert the general's intelligence the narrator undermines the reader's ability to believe his statements. Later, when the narrator writes of the daughters that "many . . . flattering things were said about them," but that there "were also ill-wishers," his drive for completeness — his attempt to describe fully— results in a topheavy, wobbly edifice. "Although they valued a known circle of society; they did not overvalue it." The seemingly solid, lengthy descriptive paragraphs contain a degree of inflation that is outside the narrator's

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conscious ironic intent. The reader glimpses a possible failing of the narrator while at the same time he still basically accepts the narrator's judgments. The reader is thus drawn into collusion with both the narrator and the implied author (although the narrator has, in turn, through his choice of mode, manipulated the reader into finding the Epanchin girls more original and exciting than he might otherwise have found them). The narrator immediately shifts to the dramatic mode when he describes Prince Myshkin's entry into the general's house. But when he observes the porter's reactions to this unlikely caller, the narrator enters the porter's mind to reveal his changing view of Myshkin. In contrast, the narrator remains strictly outside the thoughts of his hero; the reader's curiosity about the prince matches that of all those in the novel who are meeting him for the first time. The narrator does not consistently use an ironic voice heavily committed to citing all the local rumors to portray the Epanchin family. More often he describes them in a tone reminiscent of, though varying grotesquely from that of the novel of manners. The presence of this voice is especially noteworthy because critics have not included such a mode within the canon of Dostoevsky's admittedly huge repertoire of narrative voices. Bakhtin for example, quotes Β. M. Engelgardt, "One cannot find in Dostoevsky a so-called objective description of the external world; strictly speaking there are in his novels neither manners and customs (byt), nor city or country life, nor nature." 6 Later, in his examination of Crime and Punishment, Bakhtin expressed a similar opinion: D o s t o e v s k y "leaps over" all that is h o m e y and settled and stable and far f r o m the threshold, the inner space of houses, a p a r t m e n t s and r o o m s , b e c a u s e the life which he depicts is not played out in that kind of space. D o s t o e v s k y w a s least of all an e s t a t e - d o m e s t i c - r o o m - a p a r t m e n t - f a m i l y writer. In h o m e y interior space, far f r o m the threshold, people live a biographical life in biographical time: they are born, they experience childhood a n d y o u t h , enter into m a r r i a g e , give birth to children, g r o w old, and die. A n d D o s t o e v s k y "leaps o v e r " that kind of biographical time t o o . . . In essence, the interiors . . . of drawing rooms,

dining

rooms,

halls,

studies

and

bedrooms

in

which

biographical life unfolds and in which events take place in the novels of T u r g e n e v , T o l s t o y , G o n c h a r o v and others, do not exist at all. 7

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The Idiot proves a significant exception to this rule. It is a novel of families —principally the Epanchins, but also the Ivolgins, the Lebedevs, and even the Rogozhins. The narrator describes each of their houses. The reader has some sense of biographical time and daily routine for each of these families, despite the fact that the time of the novel focuses around crucial heightened moments that push everyday life into the background. The voice the narrator chooses for the portrayal of the Epanchins' family life relates a peculiar novel of manners. One might tentatively define the novel of manners as an outwardly unambitious account of middle-class domesticity which, often through comedy, expresses serious moral concerns. The characters undergo a typical confusion between appearance and reality that is often expressed as an attempt to superimpose the forms of literature onto life. Jane Austen represents the novel of manners par excellence.8 Hers is the world of the drawing room; family relationships, daily routine, engagements, and marriages make up the stuff of her novels. 9 The narrator's voice at the beginning of chapter 4 addresses similar concerns, but the balance gradually goes askew; another, unmanageable world seeks to intrude both upon the tones of the narration and upon the domestic routine of the Epanchin family. (This is the only chapter in Part I composed entirely of narrative description; thus it provides an instance for scrutinizing the narrator's voice. He is not digressing from his plot, however, for his task within this chapter is not one of direct reportage.) All three Epanchin girls were healthy, flourishing, tall young ladies, with amazing shoulders, with powerful bosoms, with strong almost masculine arms, and of course, as a result of their strength and health, they sometimes loved to eat well, a fact which they did not at all try to hide. Their m a m m a , the general's wife, Lizaveta Prokof'evna, sometimes looked askance at the honesty of their appetites, but as certain of her opinions, despite the total outward respect they were shown by her daughters, in essence, had already long ago lost their former and unquestioned authority among them, and to such a degree, that the firmly established entente of the three young girls had begun to prevail quite often, so that even the general's wife, conscious of her own dignity, had found it more convenient not to argue and to give in . . . The general's wife, moreover, had herself not lost her appetite and,

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usually, at twelve-thirty took part in an abundant lunch, which was almost a dinner, together with her daughters. Earlier, a cup of coffee had already been taken by the young ladies, at exactly ten o'clock. They were so fond of this that they had established it as a regular custom. At twelve-thirty a table was set in the small dining room, near their mother's rooms, and the general himself sometimes appeared at these intimate family luncheons. Besides tea, coffee, cheese, honey, butter, the special fritters adored by the general's wife, cutlets and so forth, a strong hot broth was even served. On that particular morning, in which our story began, the whole family had gathered in the dining room in expectation of the general, who had promised to appear at twelve-thirty. If he had been late by even a minute, they would have sent for him; but he appeared on time. Approaching his wife to greet her and to kiss her hand he noticed this time an unusual expression on her face. And although he had already foreseen the night before that precisely this would happen today because of a certain "incident" [anekdot] (as he himself had the habit of expressing it) . . . nevertheless, he now became afraid again. (VIII, 32-33; 57-58) T h e humor of this passage, and, indeed, of much of the narrator's description of the Epanchins' family life, depends upon the reader's acquaintance with the form of the novel of manners or the domestic novel. From the start the narrator plays with conventions and, as it were, bursts the seams that prettily enclose this form. His physical portrait of the three daughters starts out typically enough, but it rapidly goes astray. However independent and strong a typical novel heroine proves herself to be, she rarely first appears to the reader with such attributes as amazing shoulders, a powerful b o s o m , strong, almost masculine arms and a gigantic appetite. Yet the Epanchin girls remain as heroines; the narrator's tone does not ultimately undercut them; instead it teases the reader's expectations of what they, as three marriageable maidens of good family, should be like. Moreover, the system of domesticity has broken down: the parent has lost authority over her children. T h e narrator describes this loss of authority in a long sentence whose meandering structure parallels this gradual loss. T h e sentence begins with a statement of the mother's disapproval; the daughters show respect for her opinions, but only an outward respect. In fact her authority has vanished long ago. Not only has her authority dissipated, but a new force has replaced it: the unified

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will of the girls prevails. The general's wife gives in to them to save her own dignity. The sentence itself loses control of its numerous phrases and clauses, but ends, in a face-saving attempt, with all its main verbs. If all the intervening lines were omitted, the sentence would simply read, "Their mamma found it more convenient not to argue and to give in." Instead it embodies the process of her loss of control and her final attempt to preserve some semblance of dignity. When the narrator adds, with amusement, that the mother shared the healthy appetite of her daughters, the whole belabored thrust of what went on before becomes insignificant. He then goes on to describe their meal, giving the reader a general notion of the Epanchin family's daily routine and of the structure of their family relationships. The narrator's domestic portrait continues uninterrupted for several more paragraphs. He introduces, as he himself calls it, a direct explanation of the relationships and circumstances of the family. As might be expected in a novel of manners, everything in the family revolves around the questions of betrothal and marriage. In his first description of the Epanchins, the narrator's outwardly directed irony was at times undermined by his own shaky logic; one sentence frequently negated or overqualified its predecessor. This pattern is evident here too, but it no longer serves to diminish the reader's appraisal of the narrator's capabilities; instead, it prefigures the Epanchin family's imminent loss of control over events. The general and his wife do not worry too much about the reluctance of their daughters to marry; the general had devised a "system" for not hurrying his daughters into marriage. As the narrator marshals various facts attesting to the daughters' freedom, the reader discovers that the real aim of the "system" is actually to get the daughters married: "finally, the mere fact, that with each year, for example, their fortune and social significance grew in geometrical progression meant that the more time that passed the more the daughters gained, even as prospective brides. But among all these irresistible facts there appeared still one more fact: the eldest daughter, Alexandra, suddenly and almost quite unexpectedly (as it always happens), reached the age of twenty-five" (VIII, 33; 59). It is this tiny fact that contradicts the others and sets the plot in motion, bringing in Totsky as a suitor for Alexandra. (The nar-

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rator describes him as a "man of about fifty-five, of exquisite character and extraordinarily refined tastes" [VIII, 33; 59.]) His contemplated marriage makes it necessary to hatch the scheme to marry off his ward, Nastasia Filippovna, to Ganya Ivolgin and brings the Epanchin family sphere into collision with Nastasia Filippovna and her world. The narrator only gradually allows the impact of these events to strike the reader and the members of the Epanchin family. He writes euphemistically, "an evident transformation occurred in the quiet and attractive course of General Epanchin's family life . . . There was one circumstance which hindered everything, one difficult and troublesome event, which could ruin the whole affair irrevocably" (VIII, 34; 60). Throughout the rest of this chapter, in which he describes the relationship between Nastasia Filippovna and Totsky, the narrator scrupulously adheres to the same tone of quiet amusement. But meanwhile an unmanageable world has intruded. Because the narrator doesn't change his tone, the balance between the form and the content of his narration begins to waver. The Epanchins' domestic world stretched the limits of a conventional household, but a narrator could still describe it as belonging within some kind of societal norm. But the switch in content transforms the effect of the narrator's tone. What had earlier seemed to the reader to be a tone of detached amusement, now expresses either a far more serious irony or a shocking lack of taste. The chapter that began as a description of familial bonds has collapsed into its opposite, a description of a world where these bonds are mocked and broken. Though Nastasia Filippovna enters the Epanchins' world almost parenthetically as a "difficult and troublesome event", her history crowds them out of what was presumably their own chapter. The narrator suddenly takes the reader back eighteen years to the painful details of her childhood. But his tone does not change; he relates Nastasia's history from the distorted, uncompassionate point of view of the seducer Totsky; he appropriates Totsky's self-justifications. By the end of the chapter the narrator has quietly confronted the reader with a grotesque domestic situation in which the worthy General Epanchin would like to seduce the former mistress of his daughter's proposed fiance. Having practically offered his own daughter up

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for sale, the general even pleads with Nastasia Filippovna to help make the proposed marriage go smoothly. "Then General Epanchin began to speak, in his role as a father, and he spoke reasonably; he avoided sentimentality; he only acknowledged that he fully recognized her right to decide Afanasy Ivanovich's [Totsky's] fate; he adroitly showed off his own humility by presenting it in such a way, that the fate of his eldest daughter, and perhaps his two other daughters, now depended on her decision" (VIII, 40; 66-67). Thus Nastasia Filippovna's intrusion into a description of domesticity points up the similarities between the two poles as much as their differences. The girl protected in the bosom of the family is no safer than the outraged orphan. Later, when Aglaya tells Myshkin to write in her album, in Ganya's presence, "I won't be part of any auction," she reveals her own consciousness of this similarity (VIII, 71; 104). The sameness of the narrator's tone throughout the chapter ceases to be strange when the reader realizes that the intruding, unmanageable world of Nastasia Filippovna merely embodies the potentials of the confined world of domesticity in starker relief. The novel of manners traditionally sought to portray, by implication, serious moral questions within the secluded, microcosmic world of the drawing room. Here the real world can no longer be represented through implication or microcosmic images; it literally pushes its way into the drawing room, just as Rogozhin and his crowd with their muddy feet push their way into the Ivolgins' house, and Lebedev enters the Epanchin house through the back door. The narrator has taken the conventions of the form of the novel of manners and stretched them to their most excruciating and ridiculous limits. The narrator's choice of a detached voice, his presentation of Nastasia Filippovna's wretched history from Totsky's point of view, and his description of the Epanchin daughters' predicament through the eyes of their father, have all served to render comic the situation at the beginning of the novel. The reader's emotions have been kept successfully at bay through the narrator's assumption of a detached, amused tone. The reader starts this novel, then, cerebrally engaged; he has been lured by the narrator's tone into accepting as comic certain situations in fiction that would not make him smile in life. He has given in, if you will, to a willing suspension of conscience.

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Subsequent voices of the narrator will engage the reader's emotions and make him feel these same situations to be tragic. Myshkin's appearance in the dining room once again brings the narrator back to the dramatic mode, as it did in chapter 2 when he entered the general's waiting room. The general's wife is initially wary of receiving the "poor idiot" and "beggar" during a family luncheon. 10 But she quickly perceives his fine sensibility, first comically, "Perhaps the napkin is unnecessary. Prince, do you have a napkin tied around your neck when you eat?" (VIII, 47; 74) and then more seriously, "Don't make fun, my dears, for he, maybe, is more shrewd than the three of you together. YouH see" (VIII, 66; 97). The narrator does not automatically use the same voice to describe every family's domestic life. His description of the Ivolgin family at the beginning of chapter 8 contrasts sharply with the detached, slightly ironic voice that portrayed the Epanchins; it does not demand textual analysis for the tone is straightforward and serious. The reader will not seek domestic comedy here. The Ivolgin family's misfortunes exempt them from the narrator's barbs. Nastasia Filippovna deserves the same exemption, but in chapter 4 she was presented indirectly and impersonally to the reader as a "difficult and troublesome event" that hindered the actions of the general and Totsky. It would be fair to expect that when Nastasia Filippovna appears directly the narrator will not use a comic voice to characterize her, and that is just what happens. So far the narrator has remained strictly outside of his hero's mind except as Myshkin himself chose to reveal it through conversations and anecdotes. At most the narrator observes that the prince "seemed confused" or "became moved as he spoke." The narrator's range of vision extends more freely into less important characters like the general, his hall porter, Ganya, Lizaveta Prokof'evna, and Totsky. He deliberately keeps the central characters a mystery to the reader for as long as possible. (In this respect, Dostoevsky is carrying out the precepts of the notebooks [II, 220]). The narrator's first brief glimpse into Myshkin's mind sets a pattern that recurs during the course of the novel. Entering the hero's mind merely to report on the confusion reigning there, he satisfies the reader's impatience to know what his hero is think-

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ing without really telling him anything. T h e Epanchin women send Myshkin off to fetch Nastasia Filippovna's portrait: " 'Of course, it was wrong of me to have gone on so [progovorilsia] about the p o r t r a i t / the prince thought to himself; as he passed into the study he felt some pangs of guilt. 'But . . . maybe I did well to have gone on about it.' " As soon as the narrator has entered Myshkin's mind, however, he quickly withdraws again to a more speculative vantage point. "A strange, though still not quite clear idea was beginning to flash in his mind" (VIII, 67; 98). T h e narrator does not reveal the idea, but merely takes up this theme several pages later as Myshkin is on his way b a c k through the passageways to M a d a m Epanchin's quarters: The prince walked while deep in thought; his errand struck him unpleasantly, and the thought of a note from Ganya to Aglaya struck him unpleasantly too. But he suddenly stopped two rooms from the drawing room, as if he had remembered something; he looked around, went over to the window — nearer to the light, and began to look at the portrait of Nastasia Filippovna. It was as if he wanted to guess the meaning of something hidden in that face which had struck him earlier. This earlier impression had hardly left him, and now it was as if he hurried to verify it again. This face, unusual for its beauty and for something else as well, now struck him even more forcefully. It was as if an immense pride and contempt, almost hatred, were in this face, and at the same time something trusting, something surprisingly ingenuous; upon looking at these features, it was as if these two contrasting elements awakened a kind of compassion. This blinding beauty was even unbearable, the beauty of the pale face with its slightly sunken cheeks and burning eyes; it was a strange beauty! The prince gazed at it for a minute, then he suddenly remembered where he was, glanced around, hurriedly brought the portrait to his lips and kissed it. When, a minute later he entered the drawing room, his face was completely peaceful. (VIII, 68; 100) T h e tentative quality of this passage is particularly striking. T h e narrator qualifies his entry into Myshkin's mind with repeated use of the phrase "it was as if," and Myshkin himself thinks in this hesitant fashion: "it was as if an immense pride and contempt . . . were in this face . . . it was as if these two contrasting elements awakened compassion." Neither narrator nor hero will commit himself to an unqualified statement of fact; nothing

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is even really named. The narrator's frequent use of the word "something" functions to limit disclosure to the reader and to entice the reader's interest through an air of mystery, but it also reflects the imprecision of Myshkin's own perceptions. The narrator does not express his thought fully; Myshkin cannot. The reader cannot tell if the narrator is withholding information, if he himself is puzzled, or if he is making his own language match Myshkin's. 1 1 This excerpt differs from the previously quoted passages in its use of word repetitions. In addition to "as if" and "something" the narrator repeatedly describes the prince as being "struck" by ideas; the words "face" and "beauty" recur often as well. The effect of the repetitions is to emphasize the main units of meaning in the passage. At the same time, these particular words express the prince's extreme vulnerability to any stimuli around him. Before the reverie on the way to the Epanchins' drawing room, the prince had told, in rapid succession, several anecdotes depicting the colossal effects upon him of an execution, the braying of a donkey, a waterfall, the story of a man who thought he was enduring his last moments upon the scaffold, a painting he had seen in Basel, and his acquaintance with the peasant Marie. N o w the narrator shows him in the very act of being seized by an impression, of which the word repetitions point up the essential ingredients. The overall tentativeness of the passage fits form to content: an impressionistic, unqualifying diction describes the moment of perception before any analysis of it has occurred. As the prince reenters the drawing room, having composed his features, the reader finds himself in league with him; they share a secret. The narrator has not hitherto linked us with any character; here, we know that Myshkin has assumed a mask. Others may misread his facial expression, but we shall not. 1 2 Ironically, Myshkin, whose candor has so far overwhelmed the reader and the other characters, becomes the first character to prevent his face from mirroring his emotions. Only the infuriated Ganya immediately attributes to Myshkin the ability to assume a mask (VIII, 75; 109). Later Adelaida refuses to draw a portrait of the "poor knight" because his face is hidden behind a visor (VIII, 205-206; 267). Her words describe both Myshkin and Pushkin's poor knight.

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The narrator's next major entry into the prince's mind continues his technique of reportage without disclosure. As Myshkin mounts the stairs to Nastasia Filippovna's, the narrator observes that the prince himelf could find no reassuring answer to why he was going to her house and what he intended to do there. "Still another insoluble question presented itself to him, one of such capital importance, that the prince was even afraid to think about it; he could not; he dared not even admit it; he didn't know how to formulate it; be blushed and trembled at the mere thought of it" (VIII, 114; 155-156). The narrator assumes the same tones as before in describing Myshkin's thoughts; he uses indefinite pronouns instead of nouns; he mystifies instead of enlightening the reader. But a definite pattern of narrative modes has now emerged. The reader expects the narrator to enter Myshkin's mind with seeming directness, but he does not really expect to learn much. The next paragraph strengthens the reader's expectations about the narrator's descriptive habits. Having shifted his gaze from Myshkin to Nastasia Filippovna, the narrator again resorts to describing her through the refracted image of Totsky's viewpoint, and the narrative mode is predictably distanced and ironic. He chats about the failure of Nastasia Filippovna's "education." "In fact, to give an example, if Nastasia Filippovna would have suddenly displayed some kind of sweet and graceful ignorance of the fact, for example, that peasant women could not wear fine cambric underwear as she did, then Afanasy Ivanovich, it seems, would have been extremely pleased by this. Originally the entire education of Nastasia Filippovna had been geared to the attainment of these results according to a program of Totsky, who was a very discriminating man in this domain; but alas! The results turned out strangely" (VIII, 115; 156). The syntax has reverted to the complex patterns of earlier ironic passages. The narrator's own sarcasm has been infected by Totsky's point of view, resulting in a mixture of Totsky's thoughts and the narrator's partial undercutting of them. At the same time, the implied author is seducing us, the readers, if only for a moment, into smiling inappropriately, and he thereby implicates us in Totsky's crime. The main plot lines develop outside the passages in which the narrator assumes his various voices; much of the plot un-

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folds in the strictly dramatic scenes. There the narrator tones d o w n his o w n repertoire of voices and becomes a reporter of dialogue and action who limits himself, for the most part, to brief descriptive sentences. Curiously, despite the central role the prince has played in telling stories, intercepting Ganya's intended slap of Varya, and otherwise allowing himself, a newcomer, to c o m m e n t upon and judge the actions of the other characters, he does not formally enter the plot until chapter 14, during Nastasia's nameday p a r t y . Until then all his acts had been ethical, springing from inner spiritual and moral convictions rather than from a genuine, involuntary involvement that would link his life with others. The crucial moment of change, the moment when the prince enters the fray despite his repeated avowals that he is outside the circle and that he cannot m a r r y anyone, occurs unheralded and almost in passing. Ferdyshchenko is the unlikely messenger of this change: "Ferdyshchenko, perhaps, will not take you, Nastasia Filippovna, I am a candid man . . . but on the other hand the prince will take you! Here you sit and complain, but have a look at the prince! I've been observing him for a long time now . . ." Nastasia Filippovna turned to the prince with curiosity. "Is it true?" she asked. "It is true," whispered the prince. (VIII, 138: 184) Event follows event; the prince reveals the fact of his large inheritance. Quickly, unobtrusively, some of the reader's fundamental impressions of the hero topple when the prince enters the action as a rich suitor. T h e narrator, while supplying an abundance of histories and explanations, has saved the most exciting facts for revelation through a purely dramatic m o d e . Thus by the end of Part I a definite pattern of narration has emerged; the reader has become acquainted with the narrator's voices and has acquired grounds for expecting when a particular voice will appear. The narrator will describe Totsky and the general in an ironic mode, relying heavily upon public opinions and rumors. He will use a similar voice for the rest of the Epanchin family, but there, in addition, he has an eye for the details of domestic life and manners. Though entering the prince's mind

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rarely, when he does so, the narrator bewilders the reader; he refrains from an ironic, distanced presentation of the hero. All this seems fitting and proper, and the reader's trust in the narrator's judgment, taste, and tact has been established. The narrator's slight lapses of logic and taste have caused no serious offence. At the same time the reader knows the narrator is manipulating him and sometimes withholding information. However, the dramatic scenes counterbalance the effect of the narrator's mystifications. The narrator has successfully maintained the reader's bewilderment and curiosity about the plot and the characters, yet he has also endowed the reader with a sense of his own acuity by sharing ironies and witticisms with him. In Part II these narrative patterns become even more pronounced. Here the narrator also reveals a new voice, a mode reminiscent of the Gothic novel. Although it was Leonid Grossman who first pointed out Dostoevsky's debt to the Gothic novel, he and others have rather stressed Dostoevsky's artistic debt to writers such as Sue, Soulie, Hugo, Dumas, George Sand, Poe, Hoffman, Balzac, Scott, and Dickens. 13 But these writers themselves drew on the tradition of the Gothic novel as it developed in the works of Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and Charles Maturin, and so did Dostoevsky; the themes and techniques explored by the Gothic novelists find a direct echo in his work. 14 But Dostoevsky raises the themes and techniques of the Gothic novelists to new heights, for he forges a metaphysical system out of a language which, in the hands of lesser novelists, remains merely a style, an effective fictional point of view. The language of the Gothic novel and its themes offered Dostoevsky a powerful rhetoric for describing modern man's predicament. As a child and young reader Dostoevsky himself delighted in the "tales of terror." In 1863, on the first page of his Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, Dostoevsky recalled his early love for the fiction of Ann Radcliffe, "when, during the long winter evenings, before I could read, I would listen, agape and rooted to the spot with delight and terror, as my parents read, at bedtime, the novels of Radcliffe; I would then rave deliriously about them in my sleep" (V, 46). 15 Dostoevsky had expressed his earliest response to the Gothic novel in terms of the

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sublime —a mixture of terror and delight. Nevertheless, Dostoevski's explicit references to Radcliffe in his fiction are slight and always ironic. (Ill [1972], 134; XV [1976], 158). But even though Dostoevsky had no real use for debauched monks, mysterious castles, and the rest of the paraphernalia of the Gothic novel, he learned much from the "fantastic romanticism" of this genre. By linking some of Dostoevsky's techniques and themes directly back to this older genre of the Gothic novel rather than to the intervening traditions of the roman-feuilleton, the historical romance, and the novels of romantic realism, we can gain a more thorough understanding of Dostoevsky's narrative technique. In "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful" (1757) Edmund Burke wrote, "Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime." Burke rigorously separated the beautiful from the sublime. One fills us with pleasure, the other with delight; the beautiful induces "in us a sense of affection and tenderness," but the sublime "is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling." 16 The Gothic novelists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, though profoundly influenced by Burke's understanding of the terrible as a necessary part of the sublime, were not interested in reproducing Burke's entire aesthetic system: they did not attempt to separate the beautiful from the sublime. 17 Instead, they described a world in which the beautiful and the sublime were tightly entangled. 'The discovery of Horror as a source of delight reacted in men's actual conception of Beauty itself: the Horrid, from being a category of the Beautiful became eventually one of its essential elements, and the "beautifully horrid' passed by insensible degrees into the Tiorribly beautiful.' " 1S In his fiction Dostoevsky partakes of the "new sensibility" inherent in this Gothic tradition: his themes, plots, and characters all embody the heady mixture of the awful and the beautiful. As one might expect, in the Gothic novel descriptions of beauty and horror often coalesce in the same image: "By the side of three putrid half-corrupted bodies lay the sleeping beauty . . . She seemed to smile at the images of death around her." 19

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Or "so he lay . . . in a kind of corpse-like beauty . . . A St. Bartholomew flayed, with his skin hanging about him in a graceful drapery — a St. Laurence, broiled on a gridiron, and exhibiting his finely formed anatomy on its bars . . . even these were inferior to the form half-veiled half-disclosed by the moonlight as it lay." 20 The final description of Nastasia Filippovna at the end of The Idiot invokes, though to a lesser degree, the same responses from the reader. The sight of Nastasia's white foot protruding from the cover, the buzzing fly, and the moonlight emphasize both her deadness and her loveliness; they merge into one image. As Dostoevsky may have learned from the Gothic novelists, the death of a beautiful woman offered a powerful way of holding the reader's attention: the "death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably," as Poe observed, "the most poetic topic in the world." 21 The Gothic novelists portrayed beauty surrounded by and merged with horror, while Dostoevsky has taken these same ingredients and given them a moral cast: he creates a "mysterious" religious sublimity out of the mixture of good and evil, the beautiful and the ugly. Like Burke, Dostoevsky goes beyond the familiar notion of beauty as harmony to acknowledge the existence of another kind of beauty composed out of inherently contradictory elements. Indeed, in The Brothers Karamazov, Mitya's vocabulary for describing beauty precisely matches Burke's words for describing the sublime: "terrible," "awful," "indefinable," "mysterious" (XIV, 100). Like the Gothic novelists he makes almost a routine use of passionate highly-colored language abounding in such phrases and words as "I can't bear it," "heart may be on fire," "secret," "the devil is fighting." Yet he has taken Burke's aesthetic observation and the vocabulary of the Gothic novelists one step further: the result is an extreme Manichean vision of man in whom acute, contradictory perceptions of the beautiful and the terrible battle with each other. If the mixture of good and evil, of ugliness and beauty is an axiom in the geometry of the Gothic novel, then Dostoevsky expressed the baffling riddle of such a mixture but has also offered a moral and religious solution to it. 22 Throughout his work Dostoevsky raised to a metaphysical level the Gothic tendency to mix the beautiful with the terrible. For the Gothic novelists it was sufficient to portray the paradox

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of this mixture, but Dostoevsky sought a resolution of the paradox. In The Idiot, for example, Myshkin's doctrine of "double thoughts," a central theme of the novel, expresses man's capacity for simultaneous impulses of good and evil, for strivings toward beauty and toward corruption. Though he is plagued by his own "double thoughts," Myshkin urges acceptance of them in himself and in others; he urges that goodness be recognized even when it is surrounded by evil. 23 The rise of the Gothic novel or tale of terror also paralled the new value placed on sensibility —the capacity for refined emotion, the readiness to feel compassion for suffering and to be moved by the pathetic in literature, art, and life. The heroines of these novels, who often grew up in solitude, had an unhealthy predilection for things supernatural and sublime. 24 Prince Myshkin shares this usually feminine tradition. 2 5 He too, like many Gothic heroines, grows up in isolation, and his personality has been shaped by his sensibility, by his immense capacity to respond to art and to life. Dostoevsky planned a similar childhood for the hero of his unfinished novel, The Life of a Great Sinner (Ρ, II, 244-245, 258). Gothic heroes and heroines frequently reacted violently to portraits; this response was more than a stock device, for it could shape vast sections of the plot. Portraits could even come to life, erasing the boundaries between art and the real world. In The Castle of Otranto (1765) a portrait quits its panel to proclaim a dreadful prophecy. In Melmoth the Wanderer, Melmoth's portrait rivets John's attention: "There was nothing remarkable in the costume, or in the countenance, but the eyes . . . Had he been acquainted with the poetry of Southey, he might often have claimed in his after-life, O n l y the eyes had life,—They gleamed with demon light.'" John gazes upon it with 'stupid horror" and finally" . . . as he turned away, he thought he saw the eyes of the portrait . . . move . . ."26 Veiled portraits and miniatures move along the plot of The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Ambrosio's fall from goodness in The Monk is precipitated by his response to a portrait of the Madonna that fills him with lust. Myshkin's reactions to the photograph of Nastasia Filippovna and to the Holbein painting of Christ after death help shape the plot structure of The Idiot. All Gothic novels contain, as a main theme, the depiction of

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a hopeless anxiety with no possibility of escape. 27 This anxiety is expressed by a breaking down of categories. Movement tends toward a union of opposites probably distantly related to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century love of the oxymoron. The pages of these novels are filled with hero-villains, corrupted beauties, the intertwining of the natural and the supernatural, the tragic and the comic, and the breaking of taboos —incest, cannibalism, unnatural marriages. The attempt to force unsuitable unions between characters results in much of the action. The Gothic novels, which often railed against the practices of the Catholic church during the Inquisition and against the Jesuits in general, called for a return to a more primitive, natural Christianity. Notions of an ideal education also figure in most of these novels, either through the portrayal of a character whose education misled him or through the development of one whose natural sensibility ultimately saved him. 28 Dostoevsky makes use of all these themes in his fiction. For example, Valkovsky, Svidrigaylov, Rogozhin, and Stravrogin are hero-villains; Nastasia Filippovna and Grushenka are corrupted beauties. The intertwining of the natural and the supernatural occurs in such works as "The Landlady," "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man," "Bobok," and The Brothers Karamazov. The mixture of tragedy and comedy, so prevalent in the Gothic novel, pervades all of Dostoevsky's fiction; attempts to force unnatural marriages and the breaking of taboos through relationships tinged with overtones of incest both occur frequently in Dostoevsky's works —witness the relationships between Netochka Nezvanova and her stepfather (in Netochka Nezvanova), Varvara and Bykov (in Poor Folk), Dunya and Svidrigaylov (in Crime and Punishment), Nastasia and Totsky (in The Idiot), Maria Lebyadkin and Stavrogin (in The Possessed), or Grushenka and Samsonov or Fyodor Karamazov (in The Brothers Karamazov), to name only a few. The Gothic novelists consciously rejected the neoclassical literature of the eighteenth century und turned back to Shakespeare; they admired the mixture of tragedy and comedy found in the Elizabethan drama in which events appeared differently to princes and to common people. An essential structural principle of Dostoevsky's novels also involves contrasts of the ways in which different kinds of characters respond to the same

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event. Many of his famous "scandal scenes" consist largely of a catalogue of the reactions of various characters to a recent event. The Gothic novel could have been a model for such scenes, although of course Dostoevsky used Shakespeare and numerous other sources directly. Lewis's The Monk and Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer also contain remarkable contrasts of tragedy and comedy, of a style of heightened terror combined with extreme, even vulgar comic realism. The stereotype of the Gothic novel as only a repository of underground labyrinths and craggy castles is undermined for anyone who actually reads either Lewis or Maturin. 29 Instead, the reader finds in these works a description of a world in which the real and the supernatural exist together in a state of precarious balance. One would not readily identify the following passages as coming from a Gothic novel, yet they are typical of this form after the early experiments by Walpole and Ann Radcliffe. "For my part, I never saw her [Elvira] do amiss, except on the Friday before her death. To be sure, I was then much scandalized by seeing her eat the wing of a chicken." 30 "His conscience, like a state coach horse, had hitherto only been brought out on solemn and pompous occasions, and then paced heavily along a smooth and well-prepared course, under the gorgeous trappings of ceremony;—now it resembled the same animal suddenly bestrid by a fierce and vigorous rider, and urged by a lash and spur along a new and rugged road." 31 Earthy comedy and wit often occur side by side with mysterious horrors. Dostoevsky's borrowings from the Gothic novel partook of this comic and realistic aspect as well as of its supernatural and terrifying side. Indeed it is precisely the mixture of the two that is significant, and that is what Dostoevsky transferred intact to the world of his novels. The ironic mode of the narrator in Part I of The Idiot, such as the voice that describes General Epanchin and Totsky, shares the tones — slightly garrulous, slightly ironic —often found in the Gothic novel. Of course the works of other writers, such as Gogol or Dickens, could have provided Dostoevsky with a similar model for this mixture of comedy and realism with the supernatural and the terrifying, but the influence of Gothic novel must be considered along with these other, more thoroughly examined sources. 32 The Gothic novels also consciously hark back to Milton as

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much as to Shakespeare. The "sublime" Satan of Paradise Lost becomes the prototype of the hero-villains Montoni, Melmoth, Ambrosio, and even of the Frankenstein monster. The dying Melmoth likens himself to Satan, "Mine was the great angelic sin —pride and intellectual glorying! It was the first mortal sin —a boundless aspiration after forbidden knowledge." The Frankenstein monster exclaims, "Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy and I shall again be virtuous".33 These Satanic (Faustian) images find an echo in many of Dostoevsky's hero-villains, such as Ivan or Stavrogin. Ironically, even Myshkin stems partly from this tradition. He too, like Satan or the Frankenstein monster, feels an overwhelming sense of exclusion from the beauty of the universe. But his feelings about this exclusion are decidedly ambivalent; like Satan he would like to participate in the beautiful festival of the universe; like Christ in the garden at Gethsemane he would withdraw if possible from its painful chaos (VIII, 256; 326). Mario Praz links the Miltonic hero-villain with another type found in the Gothic novel, the fatal hero. "What Manfred said of Astarte (Ί loved her and destroy'd her') . . . was to become the motto of the 'fatal' heroes of Romantic literature."34 This could be Rogozhin's (or Valkovsky's, or Stavrogin's) motto as well. Melmoth, who qualifies as both hero-villain and fatal hero (types that usually coalesce), remotely foreshadows Rogozhin: interrupting a wedding feast, the terrible effect of his stare ultimately causes the death of the bride and the insanity of the groom. This complex of ideas reverberates through The Idiot: Rogozhin's stare persistently haunts Myshkin and his presence on the wedding day of Myshkin and Nastasia Filippovna results in the "bride's" death and the "groom's" madness. Persecuted maidens and fatal women also inhabit the Gothic novel; Praz links Nastasia Filippovna directly to the fatal type, "It is a type . . . which . . . ends by modelling itself on the women of Dostoevsky, among whom Nastasia Filippovna is the most characteristic example,"35 In fact several female Gothic types converge in Nastasia Filippovna, who is at once the fatal woman and the persecuted maiden as well as a representative image of beauty mixed with horror, or of corrupted beauty. (Myshkin seeks to save her from becoming permanently embodied in any one of these categories.) Finally she has what Praz calls the fascination

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of a beautiful woman already dead. He associates this fascination with the influence of the vampire legend, a theme occasionally present in the Gothic novel. 36 The recurring intimations in The Idiot of the possibility that Rogozhin will slit Nastasia's throat join him remotely to the vampire legend. Nastasia's beautiful, pale corpse, disfigured only by a small wound, stretched out on a bed amidst her discarded finery, suggests the body of the maiden ravished by the vampire. 37 Accompanying the Gothic themes of the Myshkin-Rogozhin-Nastasia Filippovna plot, the narrator's voice too at times takes on the tones of a Gothic novel. The narrator announces the Gothic mode, which will be a constant leitmotif throughout the novel, especially for portraying or heralding Rogozhin, in an almost musical way. Part II had opened with the narator's familiar ironic, detached voice, a voice that repeatedly reminded the reader that he was reading a story. Predictably, the narrative centered around the Epanchin family. The second chapter of Part II begins in a tone of straightforwardly descriptive narration: the subject — again predictably— is the prince. He has arrived on the Petersburg scene once again, this time from the opposite direction—from the heart of Russia. Suddenly a new narrative mode, the Gothic voice, wafts in and then quickly subsides for several chapters. "No one met him at the station; but as he left the carriage suddenly it seemed to the prince that he felt a strange, burning glance from a pair of eyes in the crowd, which had gathered to meet the train. He looked around more attentively, but he already could not make out anything more. Of course, it had only seemed that way; but an unpleasant impression remained. And even without that the prince was melancholy and pensive and seemed worried about something" (VIII, 158; 210). The narrative ingredients are reassuringly familiar to the reader, who finds that the narrator has entered Myshkin without really explaining his thoughts and observes that the prince, as before, is susceptible to "impressions." But a new, slightly fantastic element has crept into the narrator's tone. He does not undercut Myshkin's sense of premonition and foreboding, nor does he relieve us with an explanation of what Myshkin is really sensing. This tone (almost a melodic prefiguring of a fragment to be later expanded) quickly dissipates, however, and the narrator reverts to his former voices.

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The most extended passage in the Gothic mode that offers no moments of comic realism occurs in chapter 5 of Part II. The narrative resembles the stereotyped half of the Gothic tradition, for the whole chapter, save the last two paragraphs, is like the tale of terror in its heightened mood and in the extreme use of the technique of arbitrary disclosure by the narrator. Fears merely intimated provoke a greater effect than ones that are fully described. Here Myshkin, having left Rogozhin's house, wanders in a state of feverish reverie through St. Petersburg. "Solitude soon became unbearable to him; a new impulse seized his heart feverishly, and for a moment the darkness, in which his soul was languishing, was lit up by a bright light. He took a ticket for Pavlovsk . . . but, now something was pursuing him, and it was something real, and not a fantasy, as, perhaps, he was inclined to think . . . Some time later . . . it was as if he suddenly remembered something, as if he had seized hold of something very strange, something that had already troubled him a long time . . . Then he would forget it . . . then suddenly again he would look around" (VIII, 186-187; 243-244). He finds the shop window with the sixty-kopek article in the window (Rogozhin's knife—not named here) and remembers the sensation of Rogozhin's eyes being fixed upon him. In what is now a familiar pattern, he tries to force this thought out of his mind; he thinks of the moment before an epiletic fit. "He thought of this, sitting on a bench, under a tree, in the Summer Garden . . . It was stifling, as if the weather were presaging thunderstorms . . . There was a certain appeal for him in his present contemplative state . . . he wanted at all costs to forget something, something real and pressing, but from his first glance around him he again immediately recognized his gloomy thought, the thought, from which he so wanted to escape . . . he gazed at the sky . . . Perhaps his epiletic condition was becoming more and more acute. The thunderstorm . . . was really advancing, although slowly. Distant thunder had begun already. It had become very stifling" (VIII, 189; 246-247). Having called at Nastasia Filippovna's in vain, he continues his reverie under the spell of Rogozhin's eyes: "A strange and terrible demon had finally attached itself to him and would no longer let him go. This demon had whispered to him in the Summer Garden" (VIII, 193; 251). At last, he sees Rogozhin on

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the other side of the street standing before him like an accuser and a judge. It appears that Rogozhin had hardly bothered to conceal himself. That simple disclosure of reality by the narrator, after having been for so long in Myshkin's mind, produces a more nightmarish effect than did the hero's shadowy inklings and forebodings. As Myshkin enters the gate of the hotel the storm finally breaks and he again catches sight of Rogozhin: " TMow everything will be decided!' he thought to himself with a strange conviction . . . Those two eyes, those very ones, suddenly met his stare" (VIII, 194-195; 253-254). A typical narrator in a Gothic novel seeks to interest the reader by any means whatsoever, whether by making things look mysterious or by describing events in ghastly detail. In this chapter the narrator seeks to create an air of overbearing, allencompassing mystery in order to heighten Myshkin's premonitions while clouding his rational faculties. The language is deliberately mysterious. The narrator has stretched his usual mode of describing Myshkin to its extreme. Previously he used the word "something" to describe Myshkin's imprecise thoughts; now he adds an aura of external mystery to his use of indefinite nouns. "Something" pursues Myshkin; a "demon" has attached itself to him. Myshkin's forebodings, in Gothic fashion, inexorably come to pass, for the scene climaxes with Rogozhin's attempted murder and with Myshkin's epileptic fit. The narrator vacillates between fantasy and reality, although, like Ann Radcliffe's narrator, at the end he offers a rational explanation for events. The reader finds himself in a world far removed from the easy ironies of the Epanchin household. Another cliche of the Gothic novel is to link a character's mood to the current state of the natural world. Myshkin's sense of foreboding and his oncoming fit parallel the approach and breaking of a thunderstorm. Both the stifling weather and his own troubled, overwrought mental condition have a strange appeal to the prince. In The Mysteries of Udolpho, Emily's reveries are enhanced by the weather: "Her melancholy was assisted by the hollow sighings of the wind along the corridor and round the castle. [The gloomy skies] assisted the musings of her mind." Ambrosio, in The Monk, finds that "The disorder of his imagination was increased by the wildness of the surrounding scenery." (Later in The Idiot Myshkin remembers the effect

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upon him of a similarly Gothic landscape in the Swiss Alps.) The narrator of Frankenstein muses, "These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation I was capable of receiving. They elevated me from all littleness of feeling, and although they did not remove my grief, they subdued and tranquillized it." The narrator of Melmoth heralds the approach of his demonic hero, "Nature, with every voice she could inspire from earth, or air, or water announced danger to her children. That was the moment the stranger chose to approach Immalee." 38 All these passages share a concern with nature in its sublime, grandiose and most compelling manifestations — mountains, storms, winds, raging waterfalls. In the passage cited from The Idiot a similar, though urban, landscape prevails. The corridors of the hotel become like the gloomy passages in a Gothic castle. 39 A primary concern of any narrator is to balance his technique of bewildering the reader with his use of dramatic irony. The reader's bewilderment spurs his interest in what he's reading, but if it becomes excessive the reader will lose interest altogether. Similarly, dramatic irony contributes to the appeal of a narrative because the reader finds pleasure in sharing a knowledge with the author or narrator which the character does not have. 40 "As in most novels," writes Booth, "whatever steps are taken to mystify inevitably decrease the dramatic irony, and, whenever dramatic irony is increased by telling the reader secrets the characters have not yet suspected, mystery is inevitably destroyed . . . The author must, then, choose whether to purchase mystery at the expense of irony." 41 In 1800, the Marquis de Sade had already perceived this problem in almost the same way. Moreover, he related it to the narrative mode of the Gothic novel in particular. Although he does not specifically formulate a notion of dramatic irony, he writes of the "inconveniences" caused by the style of writing used by Radcliffe and Lewis, "it was necessary to call upon hell for aid in order to arouse interest . . . But this way of writing presented so many inconveniences! The author of The Monk failed to avoid them no less than did Mrs. Radcliffe; either of these two alternatives was unavoidable; either to explain away all the magic elements, and from then on to be interesting no longer, or never to raise the curtain, and there you are in the most horrible unreality." 42

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A narrator's assumption of a mysterious voice and an arbitrary logic to govern what he will reveal and what he will keep secret produce the intended effect upon the reader's interest only if they are used with moderation. The narrator of The Idiot ends the scene of the attempted murder and the epileptic fit with a sudden return to the real world when a hotel employee identifies Myshkin as a recently arrived guest, and "the confusion was finally ended very happily, thanks to a fortunate circumstance" (VIII, 196; 255). The narrator draws the reader out of the fantastic world he has just been inhabiting by concentrating on Myshkin's epileptic fit rather than upon the fact that Rogozhin has just attempted murder. He dismisses Rogozhin with the conjecture that he had run off, overcome by horror at the awful sight of the convulsed, screaming Myshkin. The shadowy corridor is brought back to the real world as the narrator gives it concrete form: Myshkin had fallen down fifteen steps; five minutes later a crowd had gathered; Kolya emerges from the hotel restaurant where he had been drinking tea and listening to the organ; a doctor arrives; and the Gothic mood has vanished. 43 It is commonplace for critics of the Gothic novel to make a distinction between the novel of "terror," as practiced by Radcliffe, and the novel of "horror," as practiced by Lewis and Maturin. Radcliffe herself initiated this classification scheme when she wrote, "Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and wakens the faculties to a high degree of life, the other freezes, and nearly annihilates them . . . neither Shakespeare nor Milton by their fictions, nor Mr. Burke by his reasoning, anywhere looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime, though they all agree that terror is a very high one." 4 4 Nevertheless, Burke too had been careful to point out that the danger or pain present in the emotion of the sublime must be a safe distance. "When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight . . . but at certain distances, and with certain modifications . . . they are delightful." 45 However much Dostoevsky assimilated elements of the horror novels of Lewis and Maturin, he seemed, throughout his career, to share Radcliffe's sense that the most sublime, the most moving effect is that which "expands the soul"; this attitude accounts, I think, for the sudden deflation that occurs at the end of some of his most terrifying scenes.

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In the Gothic novel the narrator's habit of capricious disclosure often mirrors the notion of an unjust fate. The reader of a Gothic novel is at the mercy of the narrator's whims just as the character is at the mercy of fate. At moments of terror or excitement the narrative often breaks off at crucial junctures; relations between characters frequently are not clarified until the end. Though these devices serve stylistically to interest or mystify the reader, they also have a thematic function: they reflect an overall concept of the universe in which man must function on faith without having any real answers. Neither we, nor the characters in The Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk, or Melmoth the Wanderer, or for that matter in The Idiot and in all of Dostoevsky's work, ever learn why the innocent must suffer for the deeds of the guilty. In the Gothic novels this mystery was ultimately cause for despair, whereas Dostoevsky transformed it into the bedrock of faith. I have commented at length upon the Gothic novel and its influence upon Dostoevsky and his narrative methods because an assessment of this influence has been largely neglected by those who have undertaken lengthy studies of the literary influences on Dostoevsky, except for Leonid Grossman and George Steiner. 46 Grossman has properly emphasized that the Gothic genre, following the example of Cervantes, brought numerous untraditional modes of narration into the novel. An abundance of episodes was basic to the Gothic novel and to the novelistic genres it helped shape —the roman feuilleton, the historical novel, the adventure novel, and the novel of romantic realism. 47 The Gothic novels also made heavy use of interpolated tales. Dostoevsky's debt to all these ways of broadening the narrative scope of the novel is obvious. In Russia the books of Radcliffe and Maturin enjoyed astonishing popularity from the early nineteenth century on. Radcliffe's popularity caused the Russian translation of The Monk to be attributed to her. Sopikov, a dedicated librarian of the period, noted: "It is well-known that Lewis is the author of this book, but to make it sell better the Russian publisher printed it under the name Radcliffe."48 For the same reason De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater came out under Maturin's name. 49 Dostoevsky read all these novels, and he knew the works

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works of de Sade as well. 50 Grossman stresses the special influence of Ann Radcliffe and Maturin upon Dostoevsky, who read their novels as a child, "and no matter how he related to these primitive depictions of horror subsequently, Ann Radcliffe and Maturin played their role in the development of his artistic taste." 51 He finds that Dostoevsky borrowed from the Gothic novel both typical characters and plots, laden with catastrophes, coincidences, and overheard conversations, "It would seem that there is not a single feature of the old adventure novel which Dostoevsky did not use." 52 Steiner discovers a special link between the Gothic novel and The Idiot: "Dostoevskyan realism — to use a phrase which he used himself in the drafts for the The Idiot — was 'tragicofantastic.' It sought to give a total and true picture by concentrating the nascent elements of the Russian crisis into moments of drama and extreme revelation. The techniques through which Dostoevsky achieved this concentration were translated, in significant measure, from a rather shopworn and hysterical literary tradition [the Gothic novel]." 53 Unfortunately both Grossman and Steiner have felt the need to apologize for Dostoevsky's reliance on the structures, ideas, and techniques of the Gothic novel. Steiner does admit that perhaps we and not Dostoevsky are the ones lacking in sensibility. "We have altogether lost the feel for a criterion of values by which Balzac, seeking to distinguish with high praise an episode in The Charterhouse of Parma compared Stendhal's achievement to that of 'Monk' Lewis and to the last volumes of Ann Radcliffe." 54 But Steiner s admission seems to have been made with more pride than regret. Grossman rather ruefully asks, "How did it happen that the lowest genre of literary art turned out to be the most convenient expression for the creative ideas of an artistic philosopher who was a genius?"55 Similarly, Steiner excuses Dostoevsky by commenting that he was working in the mainstream of contemporary practice and by making the analogy that "There was a 'King Leir' before Shakespeare." 56 But the Gothic novel should not be dismissed as an amusing, if embarrassing parenthesis in the history of literature. It contains as many germs of the great nineteenth-century novel as do the unequivocally accepted works of Richardson, Fielding, Defoe, Smollett, and Sterne.

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Grossman emphasizes the "romantic principle of free novelistic form" in Dostoevsky's novels. In his view concern for maintaining the reader's interest was the prime cause for Dostoevsky's repudiating his earlier theory of prose in which form had been the most important attribute. 57 He finds "the idea" to be at the center of all Dostoevsky's novels: "Having set up this philosophical core, Dostoevsky unleashed a whole whirlwind of events around the abstract concept which interested him, not disdaining any of the devices of the cheap novel to maintain interest."58 But this formulation of Dostoevsky's free use of devices ignores the rigorous attention to form we have seen so far in the narrative voices of The Idiot. True, a variety of voices narrates the novel, but instead of a whirlwind a definite order prevails. The narrator uses certain voices for certain subjects; the purely Gothic mode is merely a form that mirrors a content. Dostoevsky has sharpened rather than destroyed his youthfully exuberant formal considerations. The Gothic novelists, whether they were depicting the quest for the numinous, the presence of all-pervading evil, an atmosphere fraught with appalling tension, or a virtuous maiden in distress, never lost sight of the specific response they were trying to provoke in their readers. The Gothic novel may be the "leaf mould" in which "more exquisite and stronger plants were rooted," or it may have provided "Romanticism with its first full set of swaddling clothes," but its authors were undisputed masters at holding their readers' attention. 59 Coleridge wrote in his review of The Mysteries of Udolpho that "curiosity is a kind of appetite, and hurries headlong on, impatient for its complete gratification." Scott observed, in his review of the same novel, that "it is not until the last page is read . . . that we feel ourselves disposed to censure that which has so keenly interested us." 60 Dostoevsky first enjoyed these literary devices as an avid reader; he later transferred the "electric" power they could generate into his own fiction. Having finished the first two parts of The Idiot, the reader has acquired a basic trust in the narrator's tact and in his ability to report the action of the novel. The varied modes of the narrator have matched the depiction of appropriate subjects. At the same time, the reader senses that the narrator's voice does not

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coincide completely with that of the implied author; the narrator's powers of reasoning sometimes seem deficient. The clouds of rumors out of which he occasionally generates his narrative do not always create the impression of an ironic, detached narrator, but rather at times reduce him to the status of a town gossip. His tendency to beg off providing information is often annoying because it is so obviously arbitrary. For example, when Aglaya discovers that she has put Myshkin's note into Don Quixote, she bursts out laughing "for reasons unknown. Nor is it known whether she showed her acquisition to either of her sisters. But as she read over the letter she had a thought" (VIII, 157-158; 209). The narrator does not report this thought. When the narration was purely dramatic or intentionally Gothic, such mystification was acceptable, but here it seems out of place. The instantaneous changes in point of view may have become slightly irritating to the reader by now; the narrator may not be unreliable, but he is blatantly, shamelessly manipulative. Sometimes in his role of observer the narrator finds it difficult even to see properly: "Aglaya was finished, and it was difficult to tell by looking at her whether she was serious or laughing" (VIII, 207; 269). He will simply not report some things the reader wants to know: when the Epanchins first visit the convalescing prince at Pavlovsk, the narrator, seemingly ready to relate all the particulars of this dramatic scene, fails to tell us how Myshkin and Aglaya met each other again after their sixmonth separation and the prince's note to her. This coyness, so typical of Gogol's narrators and perfectly acceptable when the narrator had deliberately chosen to be witty or ironic, undercuts the voice of supposedly reliable reportage. But the reader can forgive these failings because he has, at the same time, a growing sense of the narrator himself as a character in the novel. He is a chronicler who does not participate in the action, but who, nevertheless, has his own opinions. These opinions surface most clearly in the narrator's digressions, which give the reader a moment's glimpse of the narrator as another character in the novel. In the first chapter the digression about the "all-knowing gentlemen" showed that the narrator liked to typify what he saw, to put things in their place by giving them a name. After

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Myshkin's fit the narrator allowed himself another brief digression for the same purpose: fitting the raw data of experience into a mold created a reassuring, if illusory, sense of order. At least the terrible event we have just witnessed has conformed to a norm, even if a frightful one. "It is well known that epilepsy, especially the fits themselves, come on instantaneously. At this moment the face becomes incredibly distored . . . A terrible, incredible scream, unlike anything imaginable, breaks forth from one's chest; and with this cry all resemblance to a human being seems suddenly to disappear . . . It is actually as if someone else was screaming inside the person. At least this is how many people have described their impression" (VIII, 195; 254). The vocabulary here resembles the mode of Gothic heightened terror — "incredibly distorted," "terrible, incredible scream," "all resemblance to a human being seems suddenly to disappear." But because the narrator means to be clinical, the effect on the reader is completely the opposite. It returns him to everyday reality; descriptions of things terrible and unhuman serve to comfort and reassure. This digression serves as a transition passage from one mode to another: the language of the Gothic mode is transformed by the familiar tone of the chatty narrator. Moreover, the digression has revealed some aspects of the narrator's personality: he is a collector of the responses of other people, as an amateur sociologist or psychologist. He finds safety in what "is well known" and in numbers; the terror inspired by Myshkin's fit disappears when it becomes a phenomenon many others have described. Nor does he hesitate to allow his political feelings to show through the narrative. In his digression about the "all-knowing gentlemen" he had mocked politicians and journalists who made a career out of gossip, but his scorn for the "nihilist" crowd that enters the prince's veranda in Pavlovsk contains no trace of humor. In fact his dislike of them is partly caused by their own lack of self-irony, as he says in describing Burdovsky. "Not a trace of irony or introspection showed in his face; on the contrary, it expressed an absolutely blank enchantment with what he took for his rights, and at the same time some sort of craving to feel constantly insulted . . . the others acted stiffly as they entered, and seemed almost embarrassed; they looked as important as they could, however, and were plainly in fear of losing

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their dignity somehow, a concern quite at odds with their reputation for denying useless social observances, prejudices, and almost everything in the world except their own interests" (VIII, 215; 278). The reader, in this case, agrees with narrator's assessment of the group, although later on he will feel a measure of sympathy for some of its members. The narrator with his various voices vacillates between two roles, both of which emphasize his own dissociation from the action. Often he resembles a journalist or reporter concerned with citing all possible facts and circumstances; he favors words like "accurate" and "detail." At other times, he assumes the role of novelist; he frequently makes reference to "our story," "our hero," and "the reader." This "novelist" is terribly concerned about pacing his narrative; he often apologizes for "running ahead of events" and carefully reports the time periodically through each day. Most of his dramatic scenes observe the Aristotelian unities of time and place; yet ultimately his imposed order escapes him and the final effect is a jumble of events. The careful reader can go back and outline the number of months, days, and hours that have passed, but these demarcations blur under the competing intensity of heightened dramatic moments following one after another in exhaustingly rapid succession. Thus the reader has a sense of a narrator, whether in the role of journalist or novelist —and the bourndaries between these roles are not fixed — struggling to organize something inherently uncontrollable. The real world of the narrator competes with the more fantastic world of the implied author. But so far this competition has been healthy; it has not produced any open conflict between the narrator and the author. The reader draws on the sensations he derives from experiencing both these worlds.

The Breakdown of the Reader's Trust in the Narrator: The Narrative, Parts III and IV

I am realistic. My friend Wilkie Collins is generally supposed to be sensational. The readers who prefer the one are supposed to take delight in the elucidation of character. They who hold by the other are charmed by the construction and gradual development of a plot. All this is, I think, a mistake,—which mistake arises from the inability of the imperfect artist to be at the same time realistic and sensational. A good novel should be both, and both in the highest degree. If a novel fail in either, there is a failure in Art. — Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography

(1883)

Alas! how deceitful and inadequate we feel the language of man . . . What a difference between words without meaning, and that meaning without words. — Charles Maturin, "The Tale of the Indians," in Melmoth

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he reader's confidence in the narrator begins to weaken as he becomes confused by the abrupt, unpatterned changes in the narrator's voice. T o speak merely of "the reader's response" is no longer adequate, for in its unfolding the narrative grows more complicated and fragmented, causing the reader's role to change drastically. How do the complex relations among the implied author, the narrator, and the reader arise out of the basically straightforward relationship that existed among them in Parts I and II of the novel? What is the purpose of this change? In Part III the easy rapport between the narrator and the reader, in all its forms, begins to undergo a strain. Although within this part of the novel the narrator enters most fully into his hero's being, his judgment becomes more suspect and he

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begins to forfeit the implied reader's trust. As he turns less reliable, it becomes important to distinguish the narrator's point of view from that of the implied author who stands behind him. It becomes equally necessary, by analogy, to distinguish the responses of the narrator's reader (who reads for pleasure, in a chronological and unreflective fashion) from those of the implied reader (who reads more carefully, attempting to discover the implied author's message). The overall structure of events in Part III invites a comparison with Part I. In both, the following sequence occurs in the same order: Myshkin pays a visit to the Epanchin family; later, in a larger crowd scene, he intercepts a violent gesture that a man, in a rage, has intended for a woman; he attends a nameday party at which there are numerous uninvited guests. One of them is Ferdyshchenko, who disappeared after Nastasia Filippovna's party and reappears "from nowhere" only to attend Myshkin's birthday party. "Remember Ferdyshchenko?" he asks. Myshkin arrives late for each party. Nastasia views her nameday as a demarcation point after which her life will change. Myshkin invites Rogozhin to celebrate with him: "I don't want greet my new life without you, because my new life has begun today, hasn't it?" (VIII, 304; 387). But neither life really changes. At each party some of the characters, but not the main ones, make confessions which the crowd receives with hostility. Each party climaxes with a scandal. Finally, both parts of the novel end with Rogozhin taking Nastasia Filippovna away to an unknown destination. In both parts Myshkin studies the living faces of Aglaya and Nastasia Filippovna as though they were portraits. These correspondences between Parts I and III of the novel serve ultimately to point up how things have changed. Part III opens with the first full-blown digression by the narrator who is reporting a frequent complaint that despite the many politicians, generals, and directors, "we don't have any practical people" (VIII, 268; 345). In the course of the digression the reader begins to wonder whether the narrator is being sarcastic or an ironic author made him just a little stupid. The narrator's Gogolian use of the qualifier "even" sounds odd as he clinches his point about the lack of practical people: "It is even

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said that there are no decent crews on some of the railroads" (VIII, 268; 345). He then gives a description of railway bridges collapsing and of trains spending five days in the snow while an inspector somewhere punches a merchant's agent in the nose. He diminishes the power of his argument by moving from the general to the particular in such a way that the triviality of the particular point receives unwarranted emphasis and eclipses the validity of the generalization it is supposed to illustrate. He becomes obsessed with describing all sorts of unnecessary details of the railroad; the reader feels that the narrator is rambling without purpose and has unintentionally undermined the seriousness of his generalization. Yet the implied author stands behind the narrator; he has already set up a resonance about railroads in the novel. Thus Lebedev, in his interpretations of the Apocalypse, has found in the railroads a symbol for the deterioration of man's faith. (With his typical relish for grotesque hyperbole, he has even compared them to the star Wormwood.) Doktorenko, the young nihilist, seeks a job on the railroads; General Epanchin, Evgeny Pavlovich, and Prince S h c h — have had business involvements in the railroads; Prince Myshkin and Rogozhin and Lebedev first met on a train at the start of the novel. (Other meetings have occurred on trains between Myshkin and General Epanchin, between Myshkin and Zalezhnikov, between Myshkin and Prince Shch — . ) Thus, while the narrator rambles on about railroads and his reader follows after, relaxed by the digressive tone, the ideal, implied reader (to use Wayne Booth's term) is busy trying to remember how railroads have functioned so far throughout the novel. They are a symbol of economic and actual change; crucial meetings occur on them; they are a no-man's land where unlikely people can enter into conversations that may subsequently alter the course of their lives. 1 In the course of this far-flung disgression, the narrator addresses his reader directly for the first time. He addresses him with the familiar form (VIII, 262; 345), although throughout this passage he has spoken of himself in a "we" voice: "However, we have begun to talk about civil servants in vain; we wanted to talk, specifically, about practical people" (VIII, 269; 346). The narrator thus places himself in a condescending relationship with his reader; he emphasizes his own superiority and ability to

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generalize by pompously calling himself "we" while at the same time addressing the reader with the familiar form of you. Had he merely addressed the reader familiarly without applying the royal "we" to himself, the effect would have been the opposite: the narrator would have seemed to be seeking a genuine closeness with the reader. This digression is really an essay that the narrator is writing, full of platitudes that he expects his reader to agree with. Like the underground man he finds that the world has always deemed a lack of originality to be the best recommendation for the practical man of affairs; ninety-nine percent of men have thought this while only one percent have looked at the matter differently. He goes on to say that mothers and nurses wish their children to live in comfort without originality; he asks: "Having passed his examinations and having served for thirtyfive years, — who in our country can fail to become a general at last? . . . This is how a Russian achieves . . . the reputation of being a practical man" (VIII, 270; 346). Anyone who passes his examinations and remains in service for thirty-five years can become a general, and by definition, a practical man. The narrator concludes his "essay." "In essence, not to become a general in our country is possible only for an original man, in other words, a restless man. Perhaps there is some misunderstanding here; but, speaking generally, it seems to be true, and our society was completely right, in defining its ideal of the practical man. Nonetheless, we, all the same, have said too much that is superfluous; we wanted, in particular, to say a few explanatory words about the family already known to us, the Epanchins" (VIII, 270; 346-347). His conclusion muddies everything that went before, so that the reader may indeed suspect that there has been some misunderstanding. T h e narrator has already noted sarcastically that it is impossible for an unoriginal man not to become a general. But then he asserts that society's definition of the practical man has been correct. T h e structure of the narrator's logic is distinctly odd: he had begun by reporting society's complaints about the lack of practical men and ends by claiming that it is easy to be defined by society as a practical man and that society has defined this ideal correctly. T h e narrator has contradicted himself: suddenly it seems that, far from bemoaning its lack of practical

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men, society is hailing its own version of the practical man. In short, there is no logic. What precisely is the narrator advocating — a need for practical men or for original men? He has concluded by defining a general as a "practical man," (that is, as an unoriginal, placid type), but this is the very notion he had been trying to refute at the beginning. He has concluded, moreover, that society has correctly defined its ideal of the practical man, yet the original impetus for the digression had been the assertion that despite the many politicians and generals, society needed practical men. His conclusion has cancelled out his original hypothesis. By having his narrator's powers of reasoning fail, the implied author has warned the implied reader to beware of the narrator. The implied author and his reader can share an ironic view of the preceding mass of statements. But the narrator's reader, simply responding to the temporal flow of the sentences, reads on without experiencing any particular confusion. Each sentence by itself makes perfect sense. The slightly ironic voice that portrayed Genera] Epanchin and Totsky in Parts I and II of the novel has degenerated into a voice which seems completely unaware of the muddle his sociological observations have created. After formally ending his digression, the narrator proceeds with another lengthy description of the Epanchin family. The implied author's reader is left on his own to make a connection between the digression about practical men and this subsequent descriptive passage. According to the narrator, the Epanchins suffer from a trait in exact opposition to the "virtues we have been discussing above . . . everyone else travels along the tracks, they [the Epanchins] constantly jump the rails" (VIII, 271; 347). None of the narrator's laboriously wrought generalizations from his just completed essay on practical men can apply to the Epanchins: the reader's expectations have been foiled. When, in the next paragraph, the narrator returns to the voice for describing the Epanchins that is reminiscent of the domestic novel, his tone now carries a new note of sharpness absent from Parts I and II, for he punctures his humorous sketch of General Epanchin with the caustic observation: "But a certain dullness of mind, it seems, is almost a necessary quality if not for every public man, at least for any serious moneymaker" (VIII, 271; 348).

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In his recent digression the narrator had clinched his general point about the lack of practical men with an unremarkable, trivial example, in a manner reminiscent of Gogol. Here, he again borrows another method from Gogol —the baffling, ridiculous, and eventually self-contradictory analogy. To illustrate the groundlessness of Lizaveta Prokof'evna's fears about the family he makes the following comparison: "but if someone has a wart on the forehead or the nose, of course it seems that everyone has only one thing in the world to do, — to look at your wart, to laugh at it and condemn you for it, although you might have discovered America" (VIII, 271; 348). The illustration does more than say that Lizaveta shouldn't worry. It both deflates the seriousness of her concern and gives the narrative an open-ended quality: the indecorous comparison of her worry to a wart lets in that very world of vulgar reality against which Lizaveta is trying to defend her family in her efforts to be proper and respected. (Here the narrator has used the formal "you" in a homely passage where, on the contrary, one would expect him to use the familiar form of the verb.) Thus both the narrator's ironic mode which relied heavily on reporting rumors and the mode which resembled the novel of manners have grown more bitter in tone than they were in Parts I and II. The narrator is at once more biting and more cynical and, at times, more illogical than previously. His range of language has broadened, and, consequently, the spectrum of his voices has widened. What are the effects on the reader of these changes in narrative tone? Has this widening also begun to produce a gap between the narrator and the implied reader? Must the implied reader now be constantly on guard? To describe the impact of the narrative, it becomes useful, occasionally, to separate the implied reader's responses from those of the narrator's posited reader, especially when they are in conflict with one another and when their opposite responses reflect themes important to the novel. The moments of pure narrative digression are the moments when the author-Dostoevsky is farthest removed from his real or actual reader. The narrator's reader responds to these digressions as though they had come from the author; the implied reader presumably recognizes the presence of a narrative mask and tries to look behind it in order to maintain his sense of col-

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lusion with the implied author. Incorporating within him the responses of the other two readers, the real reader, sifting and sorting, reads eagerly on. Throughout the novel it is the purely dramatic scenes which are the unmediated province of the implied author, although he is also, of course, always present behind the narrator he has created. In the dramatic scenes, however, the narrator's role shrinks to one of strict reportage, for what the characters say is determined by the implied author. In the authorial structure of this first chapter of Part III the narrator's voice fades gradually into Lizaveta's consciousness and from her, we proceed to a dramatic presentation not ordered by any central consciousness, except that of the implied author. The dramatic segment of this chapter —the conversation between the prince and Evgeny Pavlovich about the nature of Russian liberalism and about crime and recent criminal court defenses — really expresses a larger problem: the inevitable perversion or distortion of ideas (VIII, 276-280; 354-359). Later on in chapter 2 the implied author transfers this theme of the inevitable distortion of ideas out of the realm of a drawing-room discussion and into the depths of Myshkin's own soul, when, in an impassioned outburst he confesses to Lizaveta Prokof'evna, "in society I am superfluous . . . There are certain ideas, there are lofty ideas, about which I must not begin to talk, because I should certainly make everyone laugh . . . My gestures are not appropriate; I have no sense of measure; my words do not correspond with my thoughts, but only degrade them. And therefore I don't have the right" (VIII, 283; 362). Underlying thematic correspondences such as these between chapters give evidence of the structure of the novel as designed by the implied author. A complete analysis of this structure would be impossible; it would exceed the novel in length. But the implied reader is frequently invited by the implied author to respond to such correspondences as he reads. He follows the underlying theme of the inevitable distortion of ideas through its numerous manifestations. For example, when Myshkin says, "I don't have the right," the implied author's reader remembers that this sentence is the negative of the often repeated refrain of the nihilist Burdovsky and his crew: "I have the right," Burdovsky says throughout. (The implied reader

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may also link Myshkin's outburst back to the digression in the previous chapter and conclude that a man who is "superfluous in society" must therefore have initiative and originality.) Aglaya's response to Myshkin's outburst parallels that of the ideal, implied reader. (She carries this role through much of the novel.) She proclaims Myshkin's superiority and says that none of those assembled are worthy of his words. But she too, in addressing herself to the problem of the distortion of ideas, distorts her own idea and ends by accusing him. "Why do you humble yourself . . . Why have you twisted everything inside you? W h y have you no pride?" (VIII, 283; 362). Her romantic ideal of him embodies its own distortions. The narrator, however, distances himself both from Myshkin's confession and from Aglaya's response. He interjects between them the sentence: "Everyone stood in painful bewilderment at this unexpected, morbid, and in any case, quite unmotivated outburst. But the outburst did give rise to a strange episode" (VIII, 283; 362). The implied author has begun to endow the problem of the distortion or inability to express ideas with a metaphysical significance that will intensify throughout the novel. Meanwhile, the implied reader repeatedly forms new syntheses of the material as he reads. The narrator has by now begun to entwine all the modes we have seen previously. He does not break the pattern of expectation that the reader has developed; each of the narrator's voices still portrays its appropriate subject, but the tempo of the changes has increased. Bakhtin has written of the polyphonic effect created by the voices of the different characters in Dostoevsky's novel. Equally effective in maintaining the real reader's interest, however, are the varied narrative modes. Here, and increasingly throughout the novel, the narrator's different voices rapidly interrupt and intersect each other to give the chapter as a whole a polyphonic texture. Just as any listener of music tries to respond simultaneously to the separate themes and to the general flow of a musical composition, here the implied reader recognizes the complex intertwining of the separate narrative voices in chapter 2 while the narrator's reader merely responds to the overall effect of the narration. For example, the narrator begins in the dramatic mode with the prince's outburst about his lack of measure and

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his unsettling non-proposal of marriage to Aglaya ("Not for anything will I marry you!" "I haven't asked you, Aglaya Ivanovna"); the party then sets off for the park. Within three pages the mood shifts from dramatic intensity to a bleakly comic portrayal of family relations: after the perplexing "proposal" scene between Aglaya and Myshkin in which Myshkin has assured her that he will never "want" to ask her, the general laughter seems forced and peculiar, especially because Myshkin himself joins in it wholeheartedly. Throughout the novel characters laugh inopportunely; this becomes an increasing problem for the reader. Suddenly the narrator begins to foreshadow events in a way he has not previously done: while arbitrarily holding back some information, he begins to hint of what is to come. As the Epanchin party walks to the park he observes, "She [Aglaya], it seemed, was in a state of distraction, she answered inappropriately and sometimes not at all. But the riddles of Aglaya Ivanovna had still not finished for that evening. The last one was reserved for the prince alone" (VIII, 285; 365). In the first sentence the narrator has distanced himself; he is merely an observer. By the next sentence he has become a storyteller, seeking to entice his reader by intimations of further mysteries. Then the narrator offers in his ironic "public" voice a brief digression about the Pavlovsk park and those who frequent it. He begins with , "As everyone knows, or at least, as everyone agrees," but by the next paragraph he has assumed the tones of the slightly ironic novelist of manners in order to describe how the Epanchin ladies take note of and remark upon the dress of the other women seated around the park bandstand. When in the following paragraph the narrator enters Myshkin's mind, the pattern is once more familiar, for, as usual, the prince sits on a bench in a reverie and the narrator adopts an omniscient and sympathetic stance. Myshkin dreams of a Gothic landscape, of a spot in the mountains from which he can look down at a waterfall and an old deserted castle. It would have been better "if they had not known him at all and this entire vision had only been a dream. Yes, and wasn't it all the same, whether a dream or reality?" (VIII, 287; 367). Fantasy and reality merge as he sits amidst the chatting group in the park. He gazes at Aglaya's face for a full five minutes as if it were a portrait. (The implied reader

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remembers the last time Myshkin thought about the border between dreams and reality; it was just before his epileptic fit and Rogozhin's attempted murder. Throughout that entire chapter the narrator had used the Gothic mode.) In harmony with Myshkin's thoughts, the narrator's tone grows gradually more nightmarish and fantastical. There is laughter all around; the narrator reports that the dreaming prince, "seeing, that she, and everyone else, was laughing, suddenly stretched apart his mouth and began to laugh. The laughter all around grew louder" (VIII, 287; 367). The prince hears Aglaya mutter to herself, "Idiot." The scene reads like a bad dream in which a normal situation has imperceptibly grown grotesque and unreal. Into the m o o d of mounting tension the narrator abruptly introduces the Gothic mode of heightened terror that heralds and reflects Rogozhin. The pale, dark stranger appears and disappears like a hallucination, "a certain face flashed for a moment, a pale face . . . it flashed and disappeared . . . from the whole apparition there only remained the impression of a crooked smile, the eyes, and a bright-green necktie . . . But a minute later, he suddenly quickly and restlessly began to look around him; this first apparition might be the herald and presage of a second apparition. It certainly must be so" (VIII, 287-288; 367-368). 2 Later, when Rogozhin actually meets Myshkin again, he materializes suddenly out of the darkness. Typically, his appearance follows Myshkin's own musings about him. It is almost as if Myshkin's thoughts or moods could conjure up Rogozhin. In the midst of this fantastic Gothic narrative the narrator abruptly introduces his own everyday voice. He breaks the spell while promising worse to come, "the most careful man cannot defend himself at each moment from a brick falling from a neighboring house. This brick was now ready to fall on the respectable public who had gathered to hear the music" (VIII, 288; 368-369). After this brief ironic interlude, the narrator renders a dramatic account of the scandalous moment when the officer attempts to return Nastasia's blow. He then rapidly closes and deflates this scandalous scene in much the same w a y as he had ended the scene of Rogozhin's attempted murder: he withdraws from facing the magnitude of what has just occurred by describing instead the generalized reaction of the onlookers

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and by adding his own generalizing comment, "In a word the business ended in the usual manner" (VIII, 290; 372). The narrator's rapid shifts in voice in this chapter have a disturbing effect. Not only does the reader experience a growing sense that events will soon reach some awful climax to which these varied scandals are only a prelude, but a deeper unrest and tension are also being produced within him that are unrelated to the specific events of the novel. The feeling of tension is in large part caused by the general world of the novel, a world which is, as Dostoevsky meant it to be, fantastic but real. 3 The narrator's constantly altering voices have created this world. Polyphony has modulated into cacophony. The narrative shifts continue unrelentingly, as the narrator, carrying out the implied author's intent, crams his account of climactic events even more closely together. For example, the reader might logically expect to hear more about Ippolit's condition on the morning after his bungled suicide attempt, but instead, after a short exchange about Ippolit between Aglaya and Myshkin, the narrator diverts the reader's interest to the relationship between Aglaya and the prince (Part III, chapter 8). Aglaya reveals that Nastasia Filippovna has been writing to her. In this jumble of climactic disclosures, the narrator's reader finds himself forgetting about Ippolit's confession and becoming immersed in the new situation. The narrator veers rapidly from subplot to subplot at crucial moments; these narrative "bounces" (to use Försters phrase) do not offer a respite in the form of comic relief, as they do, for example, in the novels of Dickens, but create an air of unrelieved tension. The implied reader, who unlike the narrator's reader does not simply read along, finds himself in a world where there is no escape from extreme, difficult situations. Perhaps, like Myshkin, the implied reader longs for escape; and yet, like Myshkin, he must delve further. The infrequent moments of relief when Myshkin is alone with his thoughts give the implied reader a chance to think about the foregoing events and to gauge Myshkin's changing condition. Yet it is for the narrator to verify that the prince is in love, perhaps passionately, with Aglaya; Myshkin has not yet admitted this to himself (III, 3). After Ippolit's confession, when Myshkin sits in the park

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awaiting his early morning rendezvous with Aglaya, the narrator enters Myshkin's mind more totally than he has done before. He begins with his usual mystifications: "for some reason" the empty bandstand seemed hideous to the prince; the prince "suddenly laughs aloud" and is "suddenly annoyed with himself"; "he longed to go away somewhere." But these preliminary distancings from Myshkin's mind give way as the narrator casts off his distance, his irony, his manipulative techniques of disclosure and lovingly enters the soul of his hero. Myshkin remembers the "fly" about which Ippolit had written. (This same fly, a symbol for life and the unconscious natural world, reappears powerfully yet grotesquely at the end of the novel: a fly buzzes around Nastasia's corpse.) The fly "knows its own place and is a participant in the general chorus . . . [while] he alone [Myshkin] is a miscarriage [vykidysh]" (VIII, 351; 442). This thought triggers a memory from Switzerland, where a brightly beautiful panorama had made him weep. "The thing that tormented him was that he was a complete stranger to all this. What was this feast, what was this great eternal festival, to which there was no end and to which he had long, always, since childhood, been drawn, and in which he could never partake?" (VIII, 351; 442). 4 Predictably, a few minutes later Myshkin falls asleep; he dreams of Nastasia Filippovna and awakens to Aglaya's touch. We have already seen how the implied author linked disparate plot elements through the theme of the "distortion" of an idea. In one chapter, Myshkin and Evgeny Pavlovich discussed this notion theoretically as it related to Russian liberalism and to criminal court defense tactics; in the next chapter, Myshkin declared that because he could not find words and gestures with which to express his own most beloved ideas, he felt that he should give up and go away altogether. A similar thematic structure, whereby an idea is expressed and then dramatized in an unrelated context, is evident here. In chapter 7 Myshkin remembers a thought he had had long ago in Switzerland of "the feast of life" in which he could never take part. In chapter 8 the implied author dramatizes this idea through the prince's relationship with Aglaya. She is a physical embodiment of everything which has been hitherto inaccessible to the prince. His attraction to her represents an attempt to par-

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take of the feast from which he had always been an outcast. When Aglaya tells him he must sacrifice himself and go away with Nastasia Filippovna, he answers: "I cannot sacrifice myself thus, although I wanted to once and perhaps I still do" (VIII, 363; 455). He wishes to avoid lofty renunciations and yearns merely to partake in the general chorus, to give himself up to his feelings of love for Aglaya — the feelings of a man for a woman. Nastasia Filippovna is darkness; Aglaya represents to him the vision of a "new dawn." The increasing frequency of such passages in which Myshkin is alone and the narrator bares his hero's thoughts to the reader points up the crisis growing within him. But at the same time, the narrator's new closeness to his hero dissipates the image of Myshkin that the reader had had in the first two parts of the novel. As we see him falling in love, the prince now seems less mysterious. Thus, while on the one hand the narrator creates tension in the reader by his rapid changes in voice throughout Part III, on the other hand he is drawing closer to the hero. In the middle of the confusion of events and narrative voices, the reader at least trusts that the narrator will periodically reveal the state of the hero's psyche; this provides the one stable point of reference from which the reader can chart the effect of the action on the prince. In the last chapter of Part III, when the narrator portrays Myshkin's thoughts upon reading Nastasia Filippovna's letters to Aglaya, the borders between dreaming and waking, between fantasy and reality break down and the narrator is closer to being one with Myshkin than he has been at any point in the novel. The way he talks about dreams is different from the other digressive paragraphs that have appeared so far: this digression does not distance the narrator and his reader from the action but rather draws them both closer to it. The narrator carefully avoids injecting irony or sarcasm into his voice. His thoughts are in fact indistinguishable from Myshkin's and could read as Myshkin's own interior monologue: These letters also resembled a dream. Sometimes one dreams strange dreams, impossible and unnatural ones; upon awakening, you [uy] remember them clearly and are surprised by a strange fact: you remember . . . that your reason did not leave you . . . you even remember that you acted cunningly and logically thoughout all that

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long, long time when m u r d e r e r s s u r r o u n d e d y o u , when they w e r e dissembling with y o u ,

hiding their intentions . . . y o u

remember,

h o w cunningly y o u finally deceived them, hiding f r o m them; then y o u realize that

they

knew

your

whole

deception b y

heart . . . y o u

r e m e m b e r all this clearly . . . A n d w h y t o o , u p o n a w a k i n g f r o m y o u r d r e a m . . . d o y o u feel, . . . that y o u h a v e left behind, together with y o u r d r e a m , something insoluble for y o u ? Y o u laugh at the absurdity of y o u r d r e a m , and y o u feel, at the s a m e time, that in the interlacing of these absurdities is c o n t a i n e d s o m e thought, but a thought already real, something that belongs to y o u r real life, something that exists and has a l w a y s existed in y o u r heart . . . Y o u r impression is p o w e r ful; it is joyful o r tormenting, but of w h a t it consists and w h a t w a s said to y o u —all that y o u c a n neither understand n o r

remember."

(VIII, 3 7 7 - 3 7 8 ; 4 7 1 )

The narrator uses the same language he has always used for describing Myshkin — "something," " d r e a m , " "strange," "surprise," "impression," "absurdity." But he uses these words to clarify and explain rather than to mystify the reader. At the beginning of Part III the narrator had used the familiar and the polite forms of the second person verb form with the effect of distancing himself from the reader and from the action he was describing. (The familiar form was coupled with a condescending royal we; later, he had used the polite form in a homely passage where one would expect the familiar form to be used.) Here the entire passage is written in the second person plural. The form fits the content; the narrator's voice, serious and straightforward, brings the reader into the action and close to himself and to Myshkin by assuming that the reader understands, that he too has experienced such dreams. At this moment, the narrator's reader and the implied author's reader share an identical response, while the narrator and the hero seem almost to have merged. This abrupt change in distance may surprise the implied author's reader who has learned to expect a more ironic tone in the narrative digressions. One could explain this paragraph by asserting that here is a rare instance of the implied author himself speaking. But why should the implied author speak directly for one paragraph in the novel? The voice is recognizably that of the narrator; the passage as a whole resembles other sections of the novel in which the narrator has entered Myshkin's mind. Moreover, the

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narrator ends his digression with a typical qualification that deliberately reestablishes his old manner of narration: "It was almost thus after he had read these letters." That is, the narrator has still kept the reader from receiving an exact account; he engages in some degree of mystification even at his most candid moment. By the end of Part III reality has become completely fantastical for Myshkin. The very fact of the existence of these letters "resembles a nightmare", a product of Nastasia's "mad dream." "But this dream had already come true" (VIII, 378; 472). The last chapter of Part III closes with a dream actually becoming reality. The prince, after midnight, walks the road around the park from the Epanchins' house to his own, "Everything around him seemed like a dream. And suddeny, just as before, when he had both times awakened at the same apparition, this very apparition again appeared to him . . . 'No, it isn't a vision' " (VIII, 381; 475). Nastasia Filippovna kneels before Myshkin in the street. His twice-dreamt dream has become reality. The narrator's distance from his novel, throughout Part III, has undergone strenuous shifts: at the beginning, in his digressions, he was immersed in the trivia of everyday life; by the end he seems to have revealed a sincere affinity with his hero and to have cast off his various narrative masks. The implied reader, not lulled by the temporal flow of the novel and looking back on the spectrum of voices that have appeared throughout this part, may be disconcerted to see that the narrator who began Part III is the same one who has concluded it. Nevertheless the narrator has expected his reader to share his views throughout. The overall movement, orchestrated, of course, by the implied author, has been from a vision of everyday reality to one of fantastic reality. In Part IV the narrator repeatedly discloses a new concern with the business of narration, of getting the story told. This has the effect of distracting his readers's attention from the events and forcing him to remember that he is only reading a novel. The sheer dramatic power of the climactic scenes in Part IV counterbalances the effects of this distancing. But the implied reader realizes that the narrator's new obsession with expressing the difficulties inherent in story-telling echoes a dominant the-

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matic concern of the implied author and of Myshkin: the theme of the inevitable distortion of the important idea. The narrator begins Part IV with a discussion of how difficult it is to typify the "ordinary." In the opening digression of Part III he had created a comic polarity between the practical, unoriginal man and the restless genius, finding that society nurtured the former type while rejecting the latter. He now treats this same polarity between the original and the ordinary man from the point of view of the novelist. "There are people about w h o m it is difficult to say anything that would represent them immediately and fully, in their most typical and characteristic aspect; these are the people who are usually called 'ordinary' people, 'the majority' and who, in reality, make up the great majority of any society. Writers in their novels and tales try for the most part to take types from society and to present them vividly and artistically, — types, that are extremely rarely met in reality and who are, nevertheless, almost more real that reality itself" (VIII, 383; 479). T h e narrator goes on to cite Gogol's Podkolyosin (and Moliere's George Dandin) as an example of the typical ordinary man. As in the digression at the beginning of Part III, the narrator gets carried away with the elucidation of his specific example. But while the narrator is busy describing the panic of the prospective bridegroom Podkolyosin, the implied reader begins to think that a wedding in the novel may be imminent. Dwelling on the difficulties of depicting the ordinary man signals a change of pace. In his role as a novelist the narrator so far has not had problems connected with the portrayal of ordinary men. T h e narration of Part III was full of extraordinary events and extraordinary people and ended with a merging of the fantastic and the real world. N o w the narrator manifests an interest in the ordinary man and in the everyday world: Nevertheless, for all that, the question remains before us: w h a t does the novelist d o with o r d i n a r y people: and h o w c a n he present them to the reader in o r d e r to m a k e them at all interesting? T o leave them out completely in the story is impossible, because o r d i n a r y people are at e v e r y m o m e n t , b y and large, the necesary link in the chain of worldly events; leaving them out, therefore, d e s t r o y s verisimilitude. T o fill a novel only with types or, simply, for the sake of interest, with strange and u n h e a r d of people would be improbable, yes, and perhaps, unin-

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teresting. In our opinion, the writer must try to find interesting and instructive nuances even among ordinary people. (VIII, 388-389; 480) Is the narrator making a comment about his own narrative up to this point? Does he feel that he has made the extraordinary seem commonplace and boring by presenting a world unrelievedly full of such original characters? The reader's bewilderment increases. It is tempting here to assume again that the author-Dostoevsky (or the implied author) is speaking, especially since Dostoevsky himself made similar statements about the need for interesting the reader. But this is still unmistakably the voice of the narrator, although he does undoubtedly, at this moment, share the author's point of view. The language is flatter, simpler than Dostoevsky's language would be. He uses phrases like "the great writer" for Gogol. He has shown his characteristic tendency to overburden his main point with lengthy examples; his ironic tones later in this passage are consistent with the voice we have heard throughout the novel: "It is enough for some of our young women to cut their hair, to put on blue-tinted glasses and call themselves nihilists, for them to be immediately convinced, that, having put on glasses, they have forthwith acquired their very own convictions'" (VIII, 384; 481). In this digression the narrator describes a class of ordinary people who delude themselves into thinking that they possess an idea. They do not even perceive the real paradox: that the expression of the idea is its most difficult aspect. Here the narrator has begun to examine the problem of being a novelist and throughout Part IV he will consider the problem of trying to convey what has happened; he becomes increasingly concerned with the role of the reader. By expressing all these concerns the narrator echoes Myshkin's own frustrated preoccupation with the expression of important ideas. The narrator's remarks about the difficulty of narration probably reflect the trouble that Dostoevsky himself was having with his novel at this point. But this coincidence is, in the end, unimportant, for the narrator's voice, however much it echoes Dostoevsky's, is self-consistent. Moreover, as Dostoevsky's notebooks for the novel have shown, he planned that the narrator should step aside from and comment upon the action towards the end of the novel.

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The narrator makes his first apology to the reader by confessing that he has not sufficiently explained the "ordinary" people, like Varya, Ganya, and Ptitsyn. The reader does not know what to expect next, because the narrator's sudden desire to portray ordinary men runs contrary to what his inclinations have been throughout the rest of the novel. Clearly, the narrator has grown nervous: he has begun to talk about the problems inherent in writing novels and about his readers; he has apologized. The narrator remembers Pirogov in Gogol's Nevsky Prospect, "The great writer was forced, finally, to thrash him for the sake of satisfying the offended moral feelings of the reader, but, seeing that the great man only shook himself off after the ordeal and consumed a small layered pastry to fortify himself, he threw up his hands in amazement and thus left his readers" (VIII, 385; 481). That is, the events of the work escaped the "great" novelist's control. By citing the respectable precedent of Gogol's story, the narrator is preparing the reader for his own abdication of responsibility. The implied reader should pick up this warning, while the narrator's reader, unconcerned, follows the flow of the narrator's humorous literary criticism: "I have always regretted that Gogol gave the great Pirogov such a humble rank" (VIII, 385; 481). In the course of his digression the narrator ultimately contradicts himself, as he had done at the beginning of Part III. Having just said how difficult it is to typify the ordinary character, he then proceeds to do precisely that. He begins his long sketch of Ganya, "One character in our story, Gavril Ardalionovich Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of 'much cleverer' [but still ordinary] people; although, from head to toe, he was infected with a desire for originality" (VIII, 385; 482). The entire description continues in terms of Ganya's typicality within this second category of "more clever" unoriginal men. But in the next few chapters the narrator does carry out his intention to describe ordinary characters. Ippolit and Ganya devour each other, each accusing the other of mediocrity, and Myshkin, Aglaya, Rogozhin, and Nastasia Filippovna, the "original" characters, are only referred to indirectly. Only after some twenty pages does the reader finally encounter the prince in an interview with General Ivolgin. But even then, the narrator has not picked up the dangling threads

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left by the climactic events at the end of Part III and by the hints in the opening of Part IV. Has Myshkin really proposed to Aglaya? If so, how did this come about? Why is the prince suddenly reported to be happy when he was so miserable at the end of Part III? Throughout the earlier parts of the novel the narrator did not thrust his presence forward overmuch, except for the few inserted passages where he psychologized or gave his own opinions and except for the various voices which he used in a predictable manner. In Parts I, II, and III the reader could expect, at the beginning of each section, to hear the narrator's voice directly; then, as the dramatic intensity of events augmented, his voice, as a rule, quickly dropped out. But in Part IV this pattern breaks down; the narrator obsessively expresses his difficulties with the business of narration and does not let the reader forget his presence. He becomes didactic at times. "Let us not forget, that the reasons for human actions are usually infinitely more complicated and varied than we always subsequently explain them to be, and they can rarely be outlined definitely. Sometimes it is best for the narrator to limit himself to a simple exposition of events. And this is what we will do in our subsequent explanation of the present catastrophe with the general [Ivolgin]; for, whatever we do, we have been placed under the decided obligation to devote even to this secondary character of the story somewhat more attention and space than we had originally supposed" (VIII, 402; 501-502). The material of the novel has escaped the narrator's control. He tries to rectify this situation by confining himself to simple explanations, although he has just asserted that the reasons for human actions are more complicated than the subsequent explanations of them. On the one hand the narrator is paving the way for freeing himself from any obligations to his reader. On the other hand, we are witnessing another typical example of his tendency for self-contradiction, for in the next few pages he tries to do what he has just said should not be done —to outline the course of events and to explain the reasons for them. He does not limit himself to a simple exposition of the action but instead continues his old manipulative ploys for enticing the reader's interest through broad authorial hints: "Even at this very moment he [Lebedev], perhaps, had he wished to sincerely, could have

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told the prince a certain piece of news of the highest interest to the prince, but he gloomily remained silent and did not tell it" (VIII, 406; 507). The narrator also seems impatient simply to finish the story; there is a prevailing sense of narration after the fact, of wrapping things up. Overwhelmed by the bulk of his material he resorts to hasty summary: "But we have already seen that the general caused some kind of trouble at Lizaveta Prokof'evna's too. Here we cannot go into the details, but let us observe briefly that the essence of the meeting consisted in the fact that the general had frightened Lizaveta Prokof'evna" (VIII, 418; 521). Yet the narrator has deliberately misled the reader. After some forty pages of reporting rumors and hints about the prince's engagement to Aglaya, and after having had Varya say to G a n y a that the prince was formally engaged to Aglaya (IV, 1), the narrator begins chapter 5 with an offhand denial of those rumors: "In truth, Varvara Ardalionovna had in her conversation with her brother somewhat exaggerated the exactness of her news about the engagement of the prince to Aglaya Epanchina" (VIII, 420; 524). He has masked his own bewilderment and loss of control with chatty digressions, speculations, and apologies. In chapter 5, as the narrator still cites rumors about the possibility of the prince's engagement to Aglaya even though he has already denied their validity, the reader finds himself without any facts. The narrator asserts that everyone at the Epanchins was suddenly struck by the thought that Aglaya's fate was being decided, but, he adds, as to how this came about, "this is very difficult to set forth in order" (VIII, 420; 524). He further distances the reader from the action by telling him through description and by using phrases like "one might wonder why," "let us note in parentheses," rather than through dialogue. Much later, in the climatic scene when Myshkin breaks the Chinese vase, the narrator continues to maintain a distance from the action. Previously he had rendered all the other scandalous scenes of the novel dramatically, although he had allowed himself to comment upon them afterwards. Here the entire dreaded event is muffled in a blanket of narrative asides; Myshkin is merely an "orator," "a young man." The narrator has moved far away from him: "But here suddenly occurred a certain event, the speech of the orator was interrupted in the most unex-

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pected manner. All this feverish tirade, all this outpouring of passionate and restless words and exalted ideas . . . all this foretold something dangerous, something particular in the m o o d of the young man w h o had so suddenly flared up for no apparent reason . . . However, all this and 'the whole scandal' could have been resolved in the most usual and natural way, perhaps, even after a single minute . . . But the affair turned out another way" (VIII, 453; 563-564). It is hard to believe that this is the same narrator w h o had recently entered his hero's mind with compassionate intensity. As the vase finally crashes to the floor the narrator demurs, "oh, it is difficult and perhaps almost even unnecessary to describe what the prince felt then! But we must not fail to mention one strange sensation which came over him at that very moment" (VIII, 455; 565). The narrator has separated himself from his novel in Part IV by his preoccupation with the matter of narration. He further asserts his lack of involvement by tampering, for the first time, with the chronology of his novel. The first two chapters proceeded forward in time until a Lear-like General Ivolgin placed his curse on Ptitsyn's house and rushed out into the street. In the next three chapters the narrator provides the background and summary leading up to this event. He interweaves the recent past and the present. But the event he is really leading up to is the evening party at the Epanchins; the narrative fully reenters the present only when a messenger f r o m Kolya finally informs the prince of General Ivolgin's stroke, and Myshkin arrives at the Epanchins' party (IV, 6). Until this point the implied reader must himself separate the past from the present, for they are entwined. The implied reader notes that this entanglement underlines the truth of what the narrator has been asserting all along —that it is difficult to portray what has happened, that narration, telling, can never be complete. The narrator's sudden abandonment, after some five hundred pages, of strict chronology jolts the reader as much as does the narrator's relentless presence throughout Part IV. The narrator further exasperates the implied reader's expectations by manifesting a growing impatience with his hero. In Part III he had surprised the reader by drawing much closer to Myshkin than he had in the first two parts of the novel. Now, in an unsympathetic manner, he begins to portray some of Mysh-

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kin's failings. This growth of the narrator's impatience coincides with the onset of Myshkin's own loss of his grip on reality. After his proposal to Aglaya, she begs his forgiveness for persisting in this nonsense "which, of course, cannot have the slightest consequence." The narrator comments: "but the prince, it seems, did not understand these words and was experiencing the highest degree of happiness . . . Who knows, perhaps he even noticed the meaning of the words, [Aglaya's] but, being a strange man, perhaps, he was even pleased by those words" (VIII, 429; 535). The narrator dissociates himself from the action with phrases like "who knows," "perhaps." Myshkin is dismissed with the epithet "strange man." Later on during the evening of Myshkin's actual proposal, Aglaya flares up and exclaims that she has no intention "just yet, of replacing anyone's mistress." Again the prince responds in a peculiar, distanced manner. "But the prince, for all that, was not confused by anything, and he continued to be in a state of perfect bliss" (VIII, 431; 537). The narrator's tone contributes to the sense that we are witnessing an eerie scene from afar, "it is difficult to describe the degree to which the prince grew animated and cheerful on that evening." Myshkin begins to talk continuously, just as he had six months before during his first meeting with the Epanchins. The implied reader perceives his talkativeness as a danger signal showing that Myshkin is clearly out of touch with reality. In the first part of the novel the narrator was eager enough to report Myshkin's parabolic anecdotes, but here, without bothering to transcribe what Myshkin has said, he merely observes that Myshkin talked the whole evening. "All of these were such serious, even, at times, abstruse thoughts. The prince even presented some of his own views . . . so that it all could have been ridiculous if it had not been so 'well put,' as all who heard him agreed afterward" (VIII, 429; 535). The narrator describes Myshkin's appearance but gives the reader no access to his hero's thoughts. Even at the critical moment after Myshkin's proposal, when Aglaya and her family have left the room, the narrator gives no indication of the prince's feelings. He has begun to withdraw from his hero. In Part I, where events were yet to happen, the implied author had the narrator transcribe Myshkin's anecdotes because they were to provide a paradigm for understanding subsequent occurren-

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ces in the novel. Here we know only that among other things, the prince told several "amusing anecdotes." The implied reader has a sense that whatever Myshkin actually says is no longer important, because, regardless of his words or deeds, some inevitable climax is drawing near. Yet Aglaya, Desdemona-like, continues to hang upon his every word. In the next chapter (chapter 6) the implied author further heralds the widening gap between Myshkin and the world as Myshkin increasingly annoys Aglaya (and the reader) by his inappropriate use of language; his inability to express his thoughts spreads even to the realm of everyday conversation. When Aglaya warns him that, at the party the next night, he must be silent and avoid breaking the Chinese vase, Myshkin keeps answering her with schoolboy expressions, "it seems to me that you are afraid that tomorrow Π1 flub the test" [ne srezalsia] (VIII, 435; 542). His schoolboy expression infuriates her: "How can you use such words . . . that is a lousy word, a vulgar word." "That is a — schoolboy's word." [shkol'noe sZouo] "Yes, a schoolboy's word! A lousy word! You intend, it seems, to speak tomorrow with such words." (VIII, 435; 543)

Later he inadvertently uses the same schoolboy's word again (VIII, 436; 543). At last he concludes: "You know what: better that I don't come at all tomorrow! I will report sick, [otraportuius' bol'nym] and there's an end to it!" "Youll do beautifully. You just said, '111 report sick,' from where in fact do you get such expressions? Why do you talk to me with such words? Are you teasing me, or what?" "I'm sorry; that is also a schoolboy's word; I won't use it again." (VIII, 436; 544)

Myshkin's irresistible attraction to words that will upset Aglaya foreshadows his inevitable "flubbing the test" the next evening. His inability to find the right words almost antagonizes Aglaya, who, throughout the novel, usually provides the implied reader with a model for his own responses. But she controls her anger and says instead that she hopes he will not reproach her later for her rudeness. The prince's dreaded arrival at the party takes place in the

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middle of a long paragraph where the narrator is describing the concern and fuss over the dying General Ivolgin (VIII, 442; 550). During the course of the party the prince grows more unfamiliar to the reader. Throughout the novel, whatever his other failings, Myshkin's impressions had been keenly accurate and his judgments astute, but the narrator now presents the prince as deluded and seduced by the trappings of society. Myshkin's untimely release from his habitual feelings of fear and doubt induces fear and doubt in the reader. The first alarm sounds as Myshkin rejects his familiar fantastic view of reality; he notes that the people "did not resemble either the apparitions with which Aglaya had frightened him yesterday, or the nightmare figures he had dreamed of at night" (VIII, 442; 551). The narrator maintains his new-found distance from his hero, even increasing Myshkin's isolation from the reader and the other characters. The reader watches the scene unfold through the wrong end of a telescope. The narrator returns to his cynical mode for depicting society, but this time, significantly, he does not exempt Myshkin from being described by this harsher voice. The narrator observes that Myshkin is anxious to penetrate this "charmed circle of people," a circle which, from the first, seemed to him "fascinating." It even seems to Myshkin that he is rejoining these people after a short separation rather than meeting them for the first time. The narrator observes, sarcastically, "He could not have arrived at the thought, that all this forthrightness and nobility, wit and high personal dignity were, perhaps, only a magnificent artistic veneer" (VIII, 442; 551). The prince is "under a spell"; "The charm of the elegant manners, the simplicity, the seeming candor were almost magical" (VIII, 442; 551). 5 The prince takes the counterfeit society "for the most pure coin, for the purest gold." When he hears an old hackneyed story, he responds to it as to something fresh and original. Throughout the novel he had heard numerous narratives and confessions and responded to each by seeking its core, trying to understand the idea each narrative sought, however clumsily, to express. N o w he responds to a false narrative that has no genuine impetus from an idea as to something brilliant and wonderful. The narrator's reader can admire the eloquence with which the narrator portrayed both society and Myshkin's false reading

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of it. But the implied reader nervously wonders where the hero's delusion will lead; under the "magnificent artistic veneer" of the narration he senses the tragic crumbling of the hero taking place. The scene ends with a four-and-one-half page paragraph. The only other paragraph that is comparable in length is in chapter 6 of Part I, where the entire chapter consisted of a single paragraph. In both cases the action occurs at the Epanchins, but in Part I Myshkin himself narrated the entire chapter, thus imposing his vision on the novel. Here (IV, 6) the focus has changed radically. Myshkin is subsumed by his surroundings and is observed, from a safe distance, by the narrator; he no longer acts but is acted upon. Descriptive narrative replaces a dramatic unfolding of events. 6 At last the awful climaxes come in close succession: Myshkin's passionate outburst in which, by trying to express his ideas directly, he only succeeds in making them seem ridiculous; his breaking of the Chinese vase; and finally, his second epileptic fit. (IV, 7). During the entire party scene the reader is experiencing contradictory responses. The narrator's reader dismisses Myshkin's ideas about atheism, Roman Catholicism, Russia, and the great mission of the aristocracy as mad ramblings; he waits impatiently for the inevitable smashing of the Chinese vase. But the implied reader sees in the prince's monologue the logical climax of Myshkin's stated beliefs. 7 He realizes that he is witnessing Myshkin's attempt to express an idea directly (to state, in Dostoevsky's words, a "sacred conviction") and that, although this attempt is doomed to failure, he must at least seek to understand it and to offer Myshkin the same understanding that Myshkin himself has extended to other characters who sought and failed to express their own ideas. Like Aglaya, the implied reader might have wanted to warn Myshkin not to talk, but when he does talk, the reader must respond. He must accept the full impact of Myshkin's meaning. Myshkin's lack of gesture and measure, his inability to impose coherence on his thinking, are literalized in the breaking of the Chinese vase. In this respect, the breaking of the vase embodies a Shakespearean rather than a classical notion of tragic fate: it is a physical extension of Myshkin's personality rather than a revelation of some outside notion of fate. Although the implied reader understands this, the narrator's reader is invited to feel

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that an external prophecy has come true. The degree of Myshkin's own delusion at this point is reflected in his own belief that "the prophecy had come true!" Yet Myshkin continues to talk, and, deeply moved by what seems to him to be the extraordinarily generous forgiveness of his clumsy act, he goes on trying to express his ideas. Ignoring the requests that he calm himself and talk about all this "another time," Myshkin, although admitting that his words and gestures are inadequate, decides to go ahead with uttering his most cherished beliefs, relying on the power of his own sincerity to see him through: "Yesterday Aglaya Ivanovna forbade me to talk and even named the topics about which I mustn't talk; she knows that I'm absurd when I do! I'm twenty-seven years old, and yet I know that I am like a child. I don't have the right to express my ideas . . . I am always afraid that my ridiculous manner will compromise my thought and the main idea. I have no sense of gesture. My gestures are always exactly wrong; and this makes for laughter and degrades the idea. I also have no sense of measure, and this is the main thing; it is even the most important thing . . . I know, that it is better for me to sit and be silent . . . I gave Aglaya Ivanovna my word that I would be silent all evening."

"VraimentT smiled the old man.

"But sometimes I think that I'm wrong in thinking that: sincerity is always worth more than gestures, isn't it? Isn't it?" "Sometimes." (VIII, 457-458; 568-569)

The tragedy for both Myshkin and the implied reader is that Myshkin is wrong. Moreover, he has confessed to the wrong audience. The old man's trite "VraimentT mercilessly points up Myshkin's error. Myshkin's faith in the power of sincerity is undercut before he has had time to express it. His lack of gesture and measure have undone him. When, earlier in the novel, he spoke indirectly in Christ-like parables and anecdotes, he could convey his message powerfully. When he tried to make the shape of his life a model he could also succeed. But the direct expression of his idea leads to failure. Ideas must be embodied in their proper form or they cannot be expressed at all. The implied reader finds the key to the narrator's own devious multiple voices here; were the implied author simply to express his own idea directly as Myshkin has done, it too would

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fail. The implied author needs a mask; he needs the narrator to shoulder the burden of seemingly direct expression for him. Myshkin's tragedy is that even though he knows the world is one in which ideas cannot be directly expressed, he cannot restrain himself from attempting to do so. Myshkin continues to reject the truths he knows. He says, "Listen! I know that it is not good to talk: it is better simply to set an example, better simply to begin" (VIII, 459; 570), yet he goes on trying to explain his idea about why all men should be happy. General relief for Myshkin, the reader, and the other characters comes in the drastic conclusion of an epileptic fit. The narrator quickly reverts to his familiar voice "wrapping things up." The implied author most wants his implied reader to accept the hero precisely during the moments of Myshkin's greatest isolation and oddity. At these moments the implied author invites his reader to reject the narrator's ironic point of view and to understand the truth Myshkin is expressing by his awkward example. That is, Myshkin's tormented attempt to state an idea directly reveals the universal truth of the impossibility of such expression. Unlike Don Quixote, Myshkin has no guise of madness to act as his protective shield, as his excuse. He has only vague hints of idiocy and illness that no one can really define. He is the good man unadorned and doomed to failure. The narrator returns to his former, more sympathetic and dramatic voice to portray Myshkin on the morning after his fit and during the hysterical evening meeting between Aglaya and Nastasia Filippovna in the presence of Rogozhin and the prince (IV, 8). He continues, nevertheless, to interject forebodings and foreshadowings of an imminent conclusion to the events of the novel. But he begins chapter 9 in a new tone of voice. Two weeks have elapsed: this is the first significant passage of time that occurs in the chapter-to-chapter movement of the novel. All other real breaks in time have neatly occurred between parts of the novel. For the second time in Part IV the narrator has varied his time scheme in a major way. His summarizing at the beginning of this part had, by its confusing compression of events, disoriented the reader; now, by allowing two weeks to pass after the momentous scene between the two female rivals, the narrator has distanced the reader still further.

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Chapter 9 begins almost as if it were a new part and, indeed it heralds the narrator's most crucial change in attitude toward his hero. T h e narrator returns to the theme of the difficulties of narration and to the problem of satisfying his posited reader, but this time his focus is on the main characters of the story: The situation of the characters of our story had changed so much, that it is extremely difficult for us to enter upon a continuation without special explanations. And yet, we feel, that we must limit ourselves to a simple statement of the facts as much as possible without special explanations, for a very simple reason; because we ourselves, in many cases, find it difficult to explain what happened. Such a forewarning on our part must seem very strange and unclear to the reader: how can one narrate events about which you [ty] have neither a clear understanding, nor a personal opinion? In order not to place ourselves in an even more false position, let us try to explain ourselves by an example, and, perhaps, the kindly inclined reader will understand in what precisely lies the difficulty, all the more as this example will not be a disgression, but, on the contrary, a direct and immediate continuation of the story. (VIII, 475-476; 589) Earlier the narrator had apologized for neglecting to portray ordinary men; he had speculated on ways to make the narration interesting to the reader; he had complained about the difficulty of ordering events and describing the emotions of his central characters. But here, the narrator seems to be abdicating responsibility for his story as a whole, saying that he has no clear understanding or personal opinion about the events of his novel. He admits that his position before the reader has become false and beseeches the reader to understand his predicament. 8 This passage takes some of the traits observed earlier in the narrator to their extremes, especially his vagueness and tendency to contradict himself. He begins by saying that before he will continue, he must give special explanations. However, he wants, as much as possible, to avoid special explanations because he cannot explain what happened. He decides to illustrate his problem with an example, but then he adds that this example will be a continuation of the story. In other words, he will be entering upon a continuation without special explanations (digressions). Yet he had originally asserted that such a continuation would be extremely difficult. But this continuation turns

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out to be the reportage of a tangle of rumors. The implied reader begins to distrust the narrator as his logic becomes more perfectly circular. The narrator knows no more than the others about events or even about Myshkin. "And here, if were asked for an explanation . . . of the degree to which the proposed marriage satisfied the real wishes of the prince, of what precisely the prince's wishes were at that moment, of how precisely to define the condition of the soul of our hero at the present moment, etc., etc., and things of this sort — then we, we confess, would be hard put to reply" (VIII, 477; 591). He gives a few facts about the planned wedding, and then he adds, "But beyond these, extremely precise circumstances, some other facts are also known to us which decidedly throw us off, precisely because they contradict the foregoing ones" (VIII, 477; 591). Even the facts ultimately become useless to the narrator; "There are many strange facts before us, but they not only do not explain, they, in our opinion, even obscure an interpretation of the affair, no matter how many are brought forth, but, let us give yet another example" (VIII, 478; 592). By disclaiming knowledge of the hero and of the events and facts of the novel, the narrator certainly makes a convincing point in his theme of the difficulty of narration, but he also places the reader in a peculiar position. It was easy for the reader to gloss over an occasional complaint about the difficulty of telling the story, but here the narrator has abruptly called the whole basis of narration into question. As the narrator's reader reads on, sympathizing with the narrator's predicament amidst the jumble of events, the implied reader begins to question the meaning of the very act of reading. What is he reading if the hitherto basically reliable narrator has disavowed both a personal opinion and a knowledge of the facts? Is he reading a collection of misrepresentations and lies? The narrator, the implied author's vehicle for the expression of his central idea, seems at this point to have proved unreliable and to be incapable of getting the whole story properly told. But the implied reader senses that the narrator's sudden unreliability is a fictional construct, a ploy of the implied author to force his reader to work and to uncover the implied author's intent independently. The implied author has made the narrator echo,

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through the formal medium of narration, Myshkin's tragic inability to express his idea. Finally, the narrator openly turns away from his hero and joins in the general indignation at the mess Myshkin has made: "In presenting all these facts and refusing to explain them, we do not wish at all to justify our hero in the eyes of our readers. More than that, we are fully prepared to share in the indignation which he had awakened even among his friends . . . But of all this we shall speak later. In general, we fully and to the highest degree sympathize with some quite forceful and indeed psychologically profound words of Evgeny Pavlovich, which he expressed directly and unceremoniously to the prince in friendly conversation" (VIII, 479; 594). 9 Joseph Frank also placed special emphasis on this passage and found the narrator's moral sensibilities to be seriously lacking. "How is one to interpret this disconcerting volte face of the narrator? Certainly not as a renunciation of his hero by Dostoyevsky, but rather as a logical result of the shift in narrative stance from one of omniscience to that of ignorance and incomprehension . . . The moral profundities of the Prince's conflict are thus distorted and reduced to the level of spiteful tittle-tattle and current cliches over female emancipation; and the narrator's declared agreement with Radomsky only adds to the melancholy irony of the Prince's total isolation."10 It is at this moment in the novel that the role of the reader becomes essential; he is now drawn into the circle of events and compelled to make some evaluation of them. He is indirectly asked by the implied author to relinquish the typically safe role of a passive observer and to make, alone, a difficult moral judgment about the hero and about goodness and evil in general. Here the notion of the three readers (the narrator's reader, the implied reader, and the real or actual reader) becomes most useful for analyzing the narrative structure of the novel. The narrator's reader shares the narrator's bafflement and annoyance with Myshkin and agrees with Evgeny Pavlovich's subsequent criticisms of the prince's behavior. Myshkin has created a web of unhappiness; he has failed Aglaya, the woman he loves; he has been, as Evgeny Pavlovich notes, too susceptible to impressions. The maze of indecisive intrigues has hovered in the balance for too long.

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How may we describe the reactions of the implied reader at this difficult moment? The responses of Evgeny Pavlovich provide the key. Evgeny Pavlovich eloquently expresses his own frustrations, allowing the implied reader to share them and then himself go on to judge the prince more generously. Evgeny sees in Myshkin a virtuous knight, a tragic Don Quixote, who had read too many superb books about Russia: "The point is, dear prince, was this [your feeling for Nastasia Filippovna] the truth, was your feeling sincere, was it natural or was it only an intellectual enthusiasm?" (VIII, 482; 597). But Evgeny Pavlovich's generous, compassionate criticisms of Myshkin remain in the end a condemnation of him. 11 Should the implied reader stop at this judgment, however tactfully it has been formulated? No, for the implied reader is expected to continue to respond to the implied author's manipulation of him behind the narrator and his posited reader. This more discerning reader refuses to give in to the general indignation and feels instead the extreme pathos and isolation of Myshkin's position. Thus the implied reader has learned to see in a new way, independently of the narrator and his reader. The implied author, then, has exploited our partial rejection of the narrator. The crucial point, however, is that the actual or real reader of the novel is concurrently both readers — the narrator's reader and the implied reader. He recognizes the simultaneous responses of both within him at this moment of their clear divergence: that is, one reader condemns and the other forgives Myshkin. Through the mechanism of reading the real reader undergoes an experience parallel to that of the characters. Throughout, Myshkin has described modern man's inevitable propensity for double thoughts. The real reader realizes, at this crucial juncture of the novel, when the judgment of the hero hangs in the balance, that he too inevitably experiences these double thoughts. The method of narration in the novel has taken this notion out of the safe realm of fiction and put it into the reader himself. A collision has occurred between the narration — the words of the novel —and the reader; this collision produces the meaning of the novel when it arises within the reader as he responds to the impact of the narrative fabric.

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Throughout the last chapters the narrator never regains his former closeness to Myshkin, although he does sympathize with him. He reports that the prince seemed to look upon the wedding as a formality, "he valued his own fate too cheaply" (VIII, 490; 607). There is a prevailing sense that he is telling things after the fact, in phrases like "these last days" and "people declared afterward." Even the story of the wedding day is told in the form of what he has distilled from the accounts of other people, as though he himself had not been present: "the whole following anecdote about this wedding has been told by people who were present, and, it seems, it is correct" (VIII, 492; 609). The last chapter before the conclusion is a narrative tour de force in its own right; it is a tersely dramatic rendition of the final meeting between Rogozhin and Myshkin and an account of their vigil beside Nastasia Filippovna's corpse. 12 As Dostoevsky's notebooks and letters have shown, he had planned this scene long before, while working on Part II of the novel. He knew all along that it would be effective. In fact, nearly a decade after he wrote the ending of the novel, Dostoevsky wrote in one of his notebooks, "It is the public and not the critics who have always supported me. Who among the critics knows the ending of The Idiot —a scene of such power, which has never been repeated in literature? Well, but the public knows it" (IX, 419-420). In this last chapter in which Myshkin searches for Nastasia Filippovna and at last joins Rogozhin by her dead body, the narrator returns briefly to his sympathetic and straightforward voice for portraying his hero. Myshkin's discovery of an open copy of Madame Bovary in Nastasia Filippovna's empty apartment may suggest to the implied reader the tragic direction in which the novel has moved. The idealistic vision of Don Quixote (as Dostoevsky understood it) has been replaced by the more narrow world of Madame Bovary. Curiously, although Dostoevsky never discussed Flaubert in his works or letters, he was probably reading Madame Bovary while he worked on The Idiot.13 The scene around Nastasia Filippovna's corpse does recall, in some superficial ways, the scene around Madame Bovary's dead body. In different ways both women are symbols of corrupted beauty. Charles, like Rogozhin, does not want to

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part from the dead body. And as the priest and the pharmacist, Homais, doze opposite each other in their vigil, "united after so much dissension, in the same human weakness," the image they create grotesquely prefigures Myshkin and Rogozhin as they lie motionless, face to face, until daylight. The narrator presents this final scene in his role of omniscient narrator-observer. Only at the very end does he interject his own voice to draw the reader out of the action and into the more manageable realms of a concluding chapter. He remarks that if Schneider himself had come from Switzerland he would certainly find his former patient to be "an idiot!" In the conclusion the narrator carefully distances both himself and the reader from the novel. All the characters diminish in stature; the narrator observes, either ominously or ironically, that Kolya may turn out to be a man gifted for "practical" affairs. Aglaya, now a pathetic Desdemona, has married a fake Polish emigre count who had fascinated her by the nobility and anguish of his soul. Evgeny Pavlovich and Vera Lebedev have entered upon a romance. They and Lizaveta Prokof'evna resemble the exhausted, unremarkable, but good people left to carry on at the end of Shakespeare's tragedies. Criticism about The Idiot supports the notion (which may at first glance seem to be tautological) that the act of reading The Idiot is crucial to uncovering the meaning of the novel; that is, the meaning does not exist in the work itself but can only be fashioned by a reader with his own personality. Though this generalization holds for any serious novel, it is especially apparent here. Most critics of The Idiot can be divided roughly into two categories: those who respond more spontaneously to the narrator's rendition of events and those who incline toward the implied author's point of view (see Appendix A). To support my own scheme of the three simultaneous readers I shall, like the narrator of The Idiot, give an example which, I hope, will not be a digression but a continuation of this chapter. 14 In Dostoevsky's notebooks for the novel we witnessed his search for a balance between a concise, factual narrative and an enigmatic one relying either on rumor or mystification. The result in the novel has been a multiplicity of narrative voices. In commenting upon Dostoevsky's "highly unnatural mixture of

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omniscience and limitation," Booth adds that his work bears up well on subsequent readings because it gains instead of loses in dramatic irony. 15 This mixture of omniscience and limitation has helped account for the widely varying readings of the novel. 16 Both Robert Lord and Joseph Frank, for example, stressed the importance of narrative style in shaping their response to a work by Dostoevsky, yet they have each responded very differently to The Idiot. Lord has noted: "There is not a single thought, idea, view, or sentiment in Dostoevsky which is not embedded in and intimately bound up in discourse . . . The same thought in two different harmonic settings becomes two different thoughts. It is not the thought which ultimately counts, but its mode of expression." 17 Frank also emphasizes the importance of narration and describes the harmony existing in the novel between form and content. "The Idiot possesses a kind of wayward charm and narrative spontaneity that is not artistically inharmonious with its thematic emphasis on the moral importance of impulsive sympathy and emotive frankness." 18 Both critics call for careful readings of the novel. Lord writes, "As for the novel itself, a careful and objective reading is called for." 19 Frank entitles his essay "A Reading of The Idiot." But their careful readings draw them to opposite conclusions. For Lord, Myshkin's charm is fraught with cunning and ambiguity; he considers the novel to be divided into three ill-fitting sections which, in turn, contain three Myshkins. 20 In his scheme the Myshkin of section I retains many of the sinister characteristics evident in the drafts of the novel; by section II, "Myshkin has shed much of his charm and simple candor. Overnight he has been transformed into an open sore, a paranoiac introvert." 21 In section III (that is, part IV of the novel), which is an "altogether patched up affair," Dostoevsky has taken "extravagant measures to emphasize and exploit the more redeeming aspects of his hero." Lord discovers "cant" and "artificiality" jostling with each other, and all this is "superimposed on an entirely unconvincing narrative." 22 Lord's responses parallel, albeit roughly, the reactions of the narrator's reader; he has judged Myshkin rather harshly. Frank takes Myshkin more seriously, as a man who is "torn apart by the conflict between the contradictory imperatives of his apocalyptic aspirations and his earthly limitations." 23 He

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manifests a "discontinuity that springs from a total surrender of self in each human encounter, and an irresolution that becomes sublime in its aspiration towards a universality of love." 24 Although Frank recognizes that there are significant differences in narrative texture between the parts of the novel, he does not artificially condense the novel into three sections the way Lord does, but follows, instead, the novel's own divisions. Where Lord found that the Myshkin of Part I retained many sinister characteristics of the notebook Idiot, Frank, on the contrary, has found Part I to be written under the avowed inspiration to create a "perfectly beautiful man." For him Myshkin embodies a total lack of vanity or egoism, 25 and the "first part of The Idiot was conceived and written as a self-contained unity, which may perhaps be read as an independent novella." 26 In Part II, after the first five chapters, Frank notes a change in the narrative perspective. Myshkin is seen in a new way for which there has been no foreshadowing. Both Lord and Frank find the most dramatic change in the narrative in Part IV. But while Lord dismissed this fourth part as a "patched up affair," Frank found the shift in narrative stance to be of pivotal significance for the novel. "Up until these [last three] chapters, the omniscient narrator had usually been able to describe and explain what the prince was thinking and feeling. Now, however, the narrator confesses that he is unable to understand Myshkin's behaviour and must confine himself to a 'bare statement of the facts.' " 27 Frank's response to the narrative shift in point of view in chapter 9 of Part IV corresponds to what I have described as the reaction of the implied reader. (Unlike Frank, however, I have not found the narrator's aboutface to be quite so disconcerting; the narrator has been gradually preparing for it through Parts III and IV of the novel.) Frank believes that Dostoevsky has used the guise of a baffled narrator to express Myshkin's own loss of the ability to distinguish between his vision of universal love and the limiting choices of life. Thus for Frank the change in the narrator does not signify a renunciation of his hero by Dostoevsky, but results logically from a change in Myshkin's situation. Frank has separated the implied author from the narrator and hence he does not view the shift in narrative stance as an indication of the failure of the

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novel. In other words, the narrator's new coldness in portraying Myshkin reflects Myshkin's growing isolation. When reading The Idiot, as I see it, one experiences both Lord's impatience with and Frank's acceptance of the narrative's vagaries and its hero's oddities. The resulting conflict among one's reading selves may well have been Dostoevsky's precise aim in creating his narrator-chronicler. Ia. O . Zundelovich provides the most extensive, specific treatment of the narration in The Idiot.28 He too finds that the key to this novel lies at the narrative level. He posits three narrators in the novel: 1. the voice of the pure author, 2. the voice of the narrator, 3. a voice that combines both the author and narrator—the author-narrator. 2 9 The author narrates the objectivized narrative; he is omniscient and cannot become annoyed. The narrator is limited in vision: because he only knows what he witnesses, he makes superficial evaluations. Dostoevsky created him because he had doubts about Myshkin's effectiveness and even about his beauty. "These doubts forced Dostoevsky to put on the mask of a man who observed from the side and who could not penetrate to deep meanings." 30 The voice of the authornarrator is the voice we hear most often throughout the novel. It is "the voice of the authentic artist, for this voice has within itself both spontaneity of narration from the narrator and depth and penetration of narration from the author, yet it is free from the narrowness and empiricism of the pure narrator and from the direct tendentiousness of the pure author —it is a voice, rich with lively intonation, a voice which gives the novel life."31 Zundelovich attributes the digression at the beginning of Part IV (about the writing of novels and about ordinary men) to the voice of the pure author Dostoevsky. He hears in this digression the voice of Dostoevsky the ideologist and thinker. "Here Dostoevsky directly and clearly expresses his own relation to ordinariness." 32 I disagree with Zundelovich on this point; the voice that narrates this section has shared, as we have seen, the outlook and habits of speech which the reader has consistently identified with the narrator throughout the novel. The fact that, at moments, the narrator's opinions coincide with Dostoevsky's own ideas is irrelevant. But the particulars of Zundelovich's formulation are not as important as his central notion that the voices of the three nar-

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rators conflict with each other; for him, it is only through understanding this conflict that the reader derives the meaning of the novel. To describe the discord among the narrators is a complex task, because at times the narrators are in agreement — all three for example are joined in their hatred of the ordinary man —but on more crucial matters they may disagree, for the author asserts and the narrator can deny the prince's beauty. 33 The figure of the author-narrator, for Zundelovich, provides the key to Dostoevsky's style and to The Idiot. This figure is an expression of Dostoevsky's sense of the problematic relationship between his idea and its artistic fulfillment.34 Zundelovich finds that the various methods of narration in The Idiot, all these mixtures of voice, are explained by the wish of the pure author to portray Myshkin convincingly to the reader. 35 Zundelovich separates Dostoevsky the artist from Dostoevsky the thinker. In the case of The Idiot Dostoevsky the artist strove to embody the good (Myshkin) in a defined place and time. Dostoevsky the thinker had an idea of a timeless Christlike figure, an idea without real roots in the earth, which he tried to transplant into a realistic novel. 36 There is a struggle between what the thinker posits and what the artist can actually portray. In The Idiot as in all Dostoevsky's novels the result is a complexity of narrative manner, as the author wishes to express himself clearly and to prove his supposition but is thwarted by the demands of the artist, who knows that he must portray the real world. 37 Zundelovich's notion of the author-narrator describes the synthesis Dostoevsky made from these contradictory intentions. Zundelovich gauges the effect of this kind of narrative upon the reader and arrives at the conclusion that Dostoevsky intended to make his readers work while he manipulated them. "The author sometimes gives the view that he has no such firm point of view; sometimes he really doesn't have it. He makes as if to let the reader decide what is true and not true, and therefore 'gives' definite appearances and estimations all at once (simultaneously) in various aspects; he forces the reader, for the sake of his peace of mind, to choose one or another variant of a perception of what has been portrayed." 38 At the end of the novel, in the case of Rogozhin, the reader has the "difficult duty" of understanding what Rogozhin has done. Zundelovich finds

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that Dostoevsky has brought the reader to the realization that in the terrible world of ordinary men there is no place for either great men or great sinners —that both are miscarriages (vykidyshi) . 39 Myshkin and the author-narrator do not decide the question of Rogozhin's guilt; the reader is forced to decide this issue and to perceive Myshkin as an idiot. Finally, Zundelovich observes that the pure author, who would make such a judgment, must unwillingly yield to the author-narrator who refrains from such judgments. 40 Zundelovich's scheme differs from my own considerably. I find his hypothesis of three narrators intriguing but inaccurate, because the voice he identifies as Dostoevsky's embodies the same prejudices and weaknesses in logic as the narrator's voice, which the implied author seems to hold up to ridicule. His conception of an author-narrator becomes hazy when actually applied to the text of the novel and seems to be a catch-all for those parts of the novel that cannot be attributed, in his system, to the author or the narrator. For me Zundelovich's author and narrator are in fact the same figure: the narrator. His authornarrator, like Booth's implied author, never speaks directly, but he is ever-present, manipulating the narrator, the characters, and the shape of the plot with equal ruthlessness. Zundelovich and I do agree that the business of understanding the narrative is the key aspect of reading The Idiot, and, significantly, he does not attribute all these layers of narrative to the result of chance and blunder on Dostoevsky's part. He sees a struggle among the different narrative voices and posits a reader who must perceive that struggle and choose his own stance. Thus, these three varied readings of The Idiot — Lord's, Frank's, and Zundelovich's —have all found solutions to the riddles posed in the novel by examining its narrative structure and by assessing the effects of that structure upon the reader. The narrator's voices in The Idiot shape the reader's response to the novel as much as do the voices of any of the characters or any of the events in which they are entangled. The narrator's changing relationship with the reader, his predictability which gradually grows into unreliability, his ultimate abandonment of his hero at the moment when the hero most needs his sympathy — all these elements contribute to the mean-

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ing of the novel at its most essential level. But that meaning can only take final shape in the collision between the novelist and the reader, for the novel (indeed, any novel) is the bridge linking the novelist's idea and the reader's readiness to uncover the existence of that same idea within himself. By positing the cohabitation of a narrator's reader and an implied reader within the real reader, I have been able more easily to describe the possible effects and implications of the varied narrative tones in the novel. When the implied author and his reader reject the narrator and his reader's perception of the events of the novel, they have left the words of the novel and its fictional world behind; they have found a means of communication beyond words. Yet only with the inevitable distortion of the idea by the narrator through his inadequate words and only with the real reader's partial acceptance of those words, in his role as narrator's reader, can the eventual communion between the implied author and reader take place. The form of the novel has perfectly represented its basic idea: the wholly beautiful character has been portrayed and apprehended even amidst the sordid facts of everyday life. The inadequate vehicle for such a portrayal — words — in the end prove adequate. Myshkin's failures among the characters turn out to be irrelevant for he has succeeded in a more important sphere: he has made the real reader of the novel face, however briefly, his own responsibility as forgiver and judge. The reader, through enacting his simultaneous roles of narrator's reader and implied reader, has transplanted the ideas of the novel into his own being.

The Clash of Truth and Falsehood: The Inserted Narrative, Parts I and II

I have no doubt that a great part of Fielding's reason for the introduced story, and Smollett's also, was, that it is sometimes really impossible to present, in a full book, the idea which it contains (which yet it may be on all counts desirable to present), without supposing the reader to be possessed of almost as much romantic allowance as would put him on a level with the writer. — Charles Dickens, letter to John Förster (1856)

There should be no episodes in a novel. Every sentence, every word, through all those pages, should tend to the telling of the story. Such episodes distract the attention of the reader, and always do so disagreeably. — Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography

(1883)

n The Idiot, as in all Dostoevsky's fictional works, inserted narratives help shape the overall narrative. These fictitious articles, diaries, poems, tales, and anecdotes are products of a structural and tonal irony that differs from the irony often present in the voices of the narrator. While the narrator-chronicler can control his portrayal of a particular character, he cannot alter what that character actually says. The ironic portrayal of the characters is the province of the narrator, but the narratives related by the characters are the province of the implied author. It is he, and not the narrator, who determines their content. The narrator-chronicler is limited to reporting the content of these interpolated passages and to describing the manner of their delivery. The irony in these narrated passages is less explicit than the irony discernible in some of the narrator's voices, but it is equally fundamental,

I

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for it operates by duplicating or varying the thematic as well as the structural bases of the novel. Inserted narratives have formed a part of the novel since Cervantes' Don Quixote.1 Since the eighteenth century, too, their presence has provoked debate. In 1795 Richard Cumberland described a lengthy interpolated tale in Tom Jones as an "excrescence that offends against the grace and symmetry of the plot: whatever makes a pause in the main business, and keeps the chief characters too long out of sight, must be a defect."2 Forseeing the possibility of just such reproaches, Fielding, in his role as narrator of Tom Jones, derided any 'little reptile of a critic" who presumed "to find fault with any of the parts of the novel without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected."3 Dostoevsky was an inveterate user of the inserted narrative. His use of that device lies squarely within the tradition of the western novel, although predictably Dostoevsky adjusts it to serve his own ends. His characters relate confessional and biographical narratives, and these tales directly shape the reader's perception of the present action. Unlike Cervantes and Fielding, who most often employed this device to create contrasts to the main action, Dostoevsky usually had these passages function as analogues to the main action. The inserted narrative becomes a means of bypassing the voice of the narrator-chronicler and of allowing the implied author ("Dostoevsky") a more direct communication with the implied reader. Both Leonid Grossman and Mikhail Bakhtin discussed Dostoevsky's use of interpolated narratives. Grossman has frequently pointed out the whirlwind quality of Dostoevsky's style — a whirlwind that revolves around a philosophical core or idea —and he described, in particular, Dostoevsky's effort to subordinate the polar elements of the narrative to a unified philosophical intention. "To combine in one artistic creation philosophical confessions with criminal adventures, to include a religious drama in the plot of a boulevard tale, to bring through all the peripeteias of the adventure narrative to the revelation of a new mystery — these are the kinds of artistic tasks which appeared before Dostoevsky and stimulated him to his complex creative work."4 In discussing the ties Dostoevsky's works have with the

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Socratic dialogue and the Menippean satire, Bakhtin noted that Dostoevsky's interpolated passages in particular contain vestiges of the latter form. 5 Bakhtin stressed the role that other forms of rhetoric and discourse play in shaping the menippea. "The menippea characteristically makes wide use of other genres: novellas,letters, oratory, symposia, etc.; the mixture of prose and verse diction is also characteristic. The inserted genres are presented at various distances from the author's ultimate position; i.e., with various degrees of parody and objectivization. The verse parts are almost always to a certain degree parodical." 6 Dostoevsky regarded his "menippean" tendencies with more ambivalence than does his critic Bakhtin. He never abandoned them or tried seriously to change his style. One can even argue convincingly that these "tendencies" form an essential part of his version of the novelistic form. Nevertheless, in 1871 he wrote to Strakhov, "You have pointed out the main deficiency terribly aptly. Yes, I have suffered and am suffering from this; I haven't known at all, up to now, how to get control of my means. I have squeezed together a great number of separate novels and tales into one novel, so that there is neither measure nor harmony" (Ρ, II, 358). Dostoevsky has himself foreshadowed Henry James's famous accusation that "Tolstoi and Dostoevsky are fluid puddings, though not tasteless." "But there all sorts of things to be said of them [Tolstoy and Dostoevsky]," James wrote, "and in particular that we see how great a vice is their lack of composition, their defiance of economy and architecture, directly they are emulated and imitated; then as subjects of emulation, models, they quite give themselves away. There is nothing so deplorable as a work of art with a leak in its interest; and there is no such leak of interest as through commonness of form. Its opposite, the found (because the sought-for) form is the absolute citadel and tabernacle of interest."7 This criticism would have been especially bitter to Dostoevsky because he shared James's unshakeable preoccupation with holding the reader's interest. Despite their obvious differences as novelists, Dostoevsky and James used similar strategies to secure that interest. Both wrote about the importance of presenting events dramatically; both often placed, although in different ways, an intelligent but somewhat bewildered consciousness at the center of a

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novel. James explicitly stated the effectiveness of this device; Dostoevsky's deliberate choice of the figure of the narratorchronicler demonstrates an implicit understanding of the effectiveness of the intelligent but not wholly omniscient narrator. Although Dostoevsky undoubtedly expressed himself sincerely to Strakhov, it is easy for his readers to find that the "great number of separate novels and tales" do in fact contribute to "the measure and harmony" of his novels. In The Idiot the inserted narratives and the anecdotes that the characters themselves choose to relate develop further the implied author's obsession with the effects of narration in this novel. The characters manifest a concern with the problem of narration, of h o w an event can be portrayed, if at all. The characters, like the narrator, assume varied voices in trying to express themselves; they all share a belief in the power of narrative while at the same time they perceive that, to some extent, to narrate is to lie. Part I of The Idiot contains parables, anecdotes, and confessions. Myshkin's parabolic anecdotes herald the main themes of the novel and provide the most concise, unproblematic statement of them. From the moment that Myshkin arrives at the Epanchin household he begins to speak in parabolic language. Dostoevsky's notebook formulation, "Prince Christ," has found its logical narrative extension. While waiting to meet General Epanchin, Myshkin tells the general's valet about the execution of a prisoner he witnessed a month before in Lyons. The prisoner, Legros, wept from fright. Myshkin, like Christ, challenges the severity of the law: "It is said: 'Thou shalt not kill'; so that, because he has killed shall he in turn be killed? No, this must not be." (VIII, 20; 43). For Myshkin, the most terrible aspect of the execution is the certainty of death which the condemned man must face. "And there is no suffering on earth greater than this . . . W h o says that human nature is in a condition to bear this without slipping into madness? W h y this ugly, unnecessary, useless outrage?" (VIII, 21; 44). Myshkin's anecdote foreshadows Ippolit's confession of his agony; it reveals that he shares Ippolit's perception of the horror of certain death. 8 Myskhin's narrative also first reveals his obsession with time — with the moment before death — which plays so crucial a role throughout the novel.

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When M a d a m e Epanchin first meets Myshkin she asks him to sit down by the fire: "I want to know how you'll narrate something. I want to be completely convinced . . . Well, then, tell something" (VIII, 47; 75). Her assessment of Myshkin shall hinge upon his abilities as a narrator. Myshkin obliges her with an account of his first impression of Switzerland: a donkey braying in the Basel marketplace had cheered him and helped clarify his muddled thoughts. "Through this donkey suddenly all Switzerland became pleasing to me, so that m y former melancholy passed away completely" (VIII, 48; 76). Later Adelaida jokingly asks the prince to teach them to see and to be happy. She remarks that he is a philosopher. Myshkin responds with another narrative: the story of a man sentenced to death who received a sudden reprieve at the scaffold. 9 As in the story he had just told to the general's valet, Myshkin strains to perceive the impact of certainty upon the flow of time. "He [the prisoner] said, that those five minutes seemed to him to be an endless period of time, a tremendous richness; it seemed to him that in these five minutes he would live so many lifetimes that there was still no reason even to think about the final moment." But the condemned man's conviction that if life were given back to him he would turn each moment into a century, tortures him more than the knowledge of his approaching death. (Again Myshkin's narrative has prefigured Ippolit's statement.) Myshkin abruptly ends his anecdote, "He said that this thought finally enraged him so that he wanted them to shoot him as quickly as possible" (VIII, 52; 80). He apologizes to the Epanchin women for preaching to them and for talking so strangely, but nevertheless admits that he believes he can live more intelligently than everyone else. We see Myshkin as an apologetic but didactic narrator consciously seeking to teach others by means of his tale. Aglaya reacts to his narrative as might a troubled (or implied) reader. "And don't worry, please, that you are preaching at us. From your point of view there is no reason for exultation. With your quietism one could live a hundred years in happiness. Show you an execution and show you a little finger, you will draw the same praiseworthy thought from the one as from the other, and, what is more, you will remain contented" (VIII, 53; 82). Her healthy cynicism towards his narrative allows the

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real reader of the novel a more sympathetic response, for her skepticism minimizes the reader's need to express his own doubts about Myshkin. A few moments later Myshkin paints an excruciatingly vivid verbal picture of the face of a condemned man a moment before the blade of the guillotine falls. The condemned man's brain is throbbingly alive; it races 'like a machine at full speed" (VIII, 56; 85). (Later Ippolit uses a similar vocabulary.) At the end of this passionate narrative the Epanchin girls do not respond to what Myshkin has told them but to how he has told it. They judge Myshkin as a narrator rather than allowing themselves to be carried away by what he has said. Adelaida remarks that the moment he starts telling something he stops being a philosopher. That is, for her, his didactic, programmatic intent subordinates itself to his power as an artist —his power to interest his audience through sheer narrative skill. Rather than focusing on Myshkin's narrative prowess, Aglaya concentrates on the moment when he suspends his narration: the moment in fiction when the implied author becomes an ordinary man again and the bond between implied author and implied reader is severed. "As soon as you finish narrating anything you immediately become ashamed of what you've been narrating . . . why is that?" (VIII, 57; 86). The prince gives her no answer; he merely begins another story, his longest, about the Swiss children and the peasant Marie. His tale of the peasant Marie has obvious analogues to the Gospels and to the subsequent events in the novel and also provides a bridge between them. Although this narrative is not part of the plot, it serves to introduce the hero in a field of action which the reader can easily compare to the activities of Christ. Marie resembles a vilified Mary Magdalene redeemed by the Christ-like Myshkin. The story also foreshadows the NastasiaTotsky-Rogozhin-Myshkin plot in which Myshkin will seek to redeem another woman who had been wronged. Myshkin's sojourn in Switzerland gave him the experience and narrative material for his time in Petersburg. By means of this narrative, Myshkin presents himself to the Epanchins and to the reader as a "positively good man," as a Christ come to Russia. More interesting, however, than the obvious thematic links between Mary Magdalene-Marie-Nastasia and Christ-Myshkin

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is the attitude towards narration and towards the audience that emerges from Myshkin's rendering of personal experience. Just as the subject matter of the tale of Marie provides a model for subsequent events, so does Myshkin's belief in the sheer power of telling introduce a dominant preoccupation which the implied author continues to develop. Myshkin wins the hearts of the Swiss children through his ability as a narrator, through his storytelling. Of course, as Myshkin tells the Epanchin girls of his previous conquestthrough-language he is also, at that moment, winning over both Aglaya and the reader of the novel. His account of the power of tale-telling exerts a new force as it is being told. This is one of the many examples throughout Dostoevsky's canon of the fruitful mechanism by which good travels through the world: Myshkin's good deed in Switzerland becomes the seed for awakening compassion in a new set of people. The irony is that Myshkin himself tells his own good deed. His double role as doer of good and as narrator of that same good becomes problematic. Consequently, characters in the novel mistrust him when he is absent; they cannot define his role. Like Othello, Myshkin values his strength as a narrator. He tells the Epanchin daughters that the children in his Swiss village always asked him to tell them stories: "It seems to me I narrated well, because they very much loved to listen to me. Consequently I would study and read just so that I could then tell them things, and for three years I told them about everything" (Vlli, 61; 91). The adults in the village scolded him for his narrative honesty to the children. But for Myshkin it was essential that the truth be told to his audience, the children. "One can tell everything to a child," he exclaims (VIII, 58; 87). He converts the children's contempt for Marie into love by the strength of his words, "Little by little we began to talk to each other; I hid nothing from them; I told them everything. They listened with curiosity and soon began to pity Marie" (VIII, 60; 91). Myshkin's story functions as a parable for the Epanchin sisters: he presents them with a model of how to live. Earlier they had asked him if he had come to teach them, and he had acknowledged that perhaps he had. But the implied author injects a structural irony into the anecdote: if Myshkin's story functions parabolically, that is, in some sense indirectly, the en-

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tire thrust of its content is in the opposite direction — one must be direct and tell everything explicitly. The content of the tale is explicit, yet its intention or function is implicit. Later, near the end of the novel at the Epanchins' soiree, Myshkin again tries to "tell everything" and fails miserably. He converts no one and succeeds only in making himself ridiculous. In the tale of Marie, Myshkin has set up a standard that no one — not even he — can realize. In fact, a hidden deception lies at the core of this narrative despite its sincere concern with the appropriateness of telling the truth. Myshkin admits that he did tell the children one small lie: "It seems to me that my love for Marie was an excruciating pleasure for them, and so in this aspect alone of my life did I deceive them. I did not undermine their belief that I loved Marie, that is, I was not in love with her at all, but only greatly pitied her" (VIII, 61; 92). Yet this small lie distorts the crux of the matter. Myshkin has allowed the children to believe a fantasy. The mechanism of their compassion for Marie was inspired by their belief that "Leon" loved her. Although Myshkin's small lie served the cause of a more encompassing goodness or truth, the fact remains that the truth may, then, contain an area of silence or even of deception. Myshkin pretends love for Marie in order to awaken the children's pity for her. Were he merely to ask for their pity, he would call forth only their indifference. For the children the pleasure lay in the romance of the affair —in clothing her, in standing guard at the "lovers' trysts," in caring for her as she lay dying. Myshkin's parabolic anecdotes, especially this tale of the peasant Marie, establish him as a good man and a sincere one; yet even he, as a narrator, cannot always speak the absolute truth. Though his stories are not "false narratives" — in the tale of Marie he readily admitted his own falsehood — they reflect the perplexity of the constantly shifting boundaries between truth and lies. Myshkin's narratives seem to flow from him with great readiness and unusual spontaneity. But, in fact, as a narrator he displays a constant concern for order, for strategy. He starts to tell the Epanchins a story of a man who spent twelve years in prison; he interrupts himself and observes that he had better tell them of a different encounter. Moments later, he alludes to a

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painting he had seen in Basel and says that someday he will tell Adelaida about it. His directness and abruptness contribute to a notion of him as a spontaneous narrator, but actually his anecdotes are highly structured and deliberate. Before he begins his story about Marie, he tells Lizaveta Prokof'evna that he knows her daughters' faces as well as she does. When asked what he knows, he replies that he will tell them afterwards. As he is concluding his narrative about Marie with a description of the children's farewell to him, the end of the story suddenly opens out into the present. "And I also looked [back at them] . . . Listen, when I came here earlier and looked at your sweet faces —I now observe faces very carefully — and heard your first words, I felt easy in my heart for the first time since then" (VIII, 65; 95-96). The themes of his narrative extend into the world of the novel through his linking of the Epanchin girls to the Swiss children. Myshkin has carried out his promise to describe their faces, although his deliberate intention seems to have arisen by chance out of his romantic narrative. Yet even Myshkin is at pains to deny the notion of his spontaneity: "And don't think that I have said all this so openly now to you about your faces out of simplemindedness; oh no, not at all! Maybe I have something in mind" (VIII, 65; 96). Like the narrator, Myshkin tantalizes his audience by trying to mystify them. He too is a shameless manipulator. Aglaya, the critical member of the audience, again ignores the content of what the prince has related and speculates instead about its intention or function. While Lizaveta Prokof'evna praises Myshkin's words, Aglaya points out that the prince himself has acknowledged a secret purpose and was not speaking openly. Adelaida and Alexandra, voicing the responses of narrator's readers, find the prince to be "a bit too simple"; Aglaya, corresponding to an implied reader, disagrees. As a narrator, Myshkin can even use the truth deceptively. Later that same morning he deliberately recasts the content of his narratives in order to avoid and mislead Ganya. Myshkin shows himself to be a wily narrator who turns on and off the effects of his words at will. While they walk home together, Ganya asks what Myshkin had talked about with the Epanchins that had made them like him so quickly:

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"At the very beginning . . . we began to talk about Switzerland." "Well, the hell with Switzerland!" "Then about capital punishment." "About capital punishment?" "Yes, apropos of . . . then I told them how I lived there for three years, and a story about a poor country girl." "Well, the hell with the poor country girl." (VIII, 74; 107) The misrepresentation lies in Myshkin's condensation of particular truths into uninteresting, generalized forms. The braying donkey which had comically recalled Myshkin to his senses has become "Switzerland." The man facing the blade of the guillotine has become "capital punishment." The violated child has become "a poor country girl." In the process of summarizing the content of his narration, the truth becomes a deception. The final irony for the reader occurs when Ganya adds, "and he doesn't know how to narrate anything!" (VIII, 75; 108). The opposite movement occurs in the two brief narratives related by General Ivolgin in the next two chapters. In both cases, his blatant, free-flowing lies contain a significant amount of truth and goodness. Myshkin, who receives his first unequivocal welcome from the general, is not "put through an examination" as he was by the Epanchin women. Instead, the general goes so far as to provide Myshkin with a fictive biography: he does not even hesitate to contradict Myshkin on the few facts about his past of which Myshkin himself is certain. For example, the general insists that Myshkin's mother died not from a chill but from grief for her husband, the prince. The general describes his own participation in a preposterous nearduel with Myshkin's father: "the prince cried out: she's yours. I cried out: she's yours! In a word . . . in a word . . . you have come to live . . . with us?" (VIII, 81; 116). Having invested Myshkin with a colorful biography, he welcomes the prince into the bosom of his family. "But we are always glad to have you. However, there is tragedy in my house!" (VIII, 81; 116). The notes of truth ring out through the blur of lies. Ivolgin's biography of Myshkin further underlines for the reader the queer fact that Myshkin is singularly, even eerily without a past. (All the anecdotes he has related have been only from his recent past). So far, the reader has been presented with short biographies of the other main characters —Rogozhin, Nas-

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tasia, and Aglaya. Ivolgin's ramblings do elicit the few facts of Myshkin's biography that the reader ever learns. These facts are provocative: Myshkin's father died awaiting trial, but for what? Myshkin doesn't know. Later, General Ivolgin tells Nastasia Filippovna an anecdote about tossing a lady's lapdog from a train window. He has plagiarized the whole adventure from a popular Brussels newspaper L'Independance Beige, but succeeds, nevertheless, in telling much about himself that is true. He has revealed his despair at the loss of his dignity. The telling of the story works in two contradictory ways; it is both an attempt to recapture that dignity through assuming the character of the not-to-be insulted traveler and an attempt to fling it more irrevocably away. O n a more prosaic level his narrative reveals that Ivolgin laments his rupture from the Epanchin family. Both his narrations, the fictive biography and the anecdote about the lapdog, seek to establish the teller's sense of honor — in the first by a failed romantic duel and in the second by an actual comic one between the pale-blue lady and the cigarsmoking traveler. Nastasia Filippovna exposes his anecdote as a fiction. Ivolgin's purity of intention, to welcome the new lodger and to assert his own dignity, is counterbalanced by the inappropriateness of his tales; his idea is true, but its mode of manifestation is false. Nastasia Filippovna, a critical and more ruthless listener than Aglaya, insists that a fiction must be presented as such. A tale in a magazine is acceptable, but not when it is appropriated as autobiographical truth by a sad old man. At Nastasia Filippovna's nameday party, the reader encounters a third variation in the mixture of truth and falsehood embodied in the inserted narratives: the truth functions in the service of a lie. Ferdyshchenko, who serves as a herald of disorder and of brutally-arrived-at truths, presides over the uneasy group of guests as a master of ceremonies. 10 He is accepted as a court jester or fool with special privileges to blurt out the truth. "It was understood that Ferdyshchenko was allowed to play the role of jester" (VIII, 117; 159). Ironically, he presents himself as a jester without any redeeming wit: "everyone has wit; but I have none. In compensation I have obtained permission to speak the truth, for, as everyone knows, only those who have

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no wit speak the truth" (VIII, 117; 159). Ferdyshchenko's words have an impressive, symbolic ring; they sound like a confession, but they are false. "Everyone" does not have wit, nor does "everyone" know that truth is spoken only by those who have no wit: in fact quite the opposite is true. Ferdyshchenko then proposes "the petit-jeu in which each person must confess his worst action." It is no surprise that under Ferdyshchenko's aegis the confessional form will be heartily misused. When Ganya notes that everyone will be certain to lie, Ferdyshchenko answers, "yes, and the entertaining thing is just how a man will lie" (VIII, 121; 164). The confession becomes a mode of titillation for bored guests who want "cheering up." Their desire for originality has decayed into a hunger for anything provocative. Even Nastasia Filippovna has been infected; when the uninvited Myshkin arrives, she insists that he must not apologize for his intrusion, for that would spoil all the "quaintness" and "originality." Later, when Ferdyshchenko proposes the confessional parlor game, she agrees, merely on the ground that it's "terribly original." Thus the confessions of Ferdyshchenko, General Epanchin, and Totsky begin in an atmosphere of cynicism and hunger for the sensational. As Totsky notes, "Truth is possible here [in this game] only by accident, through a certain kind of boasting of the worst kind, which is unthinkable and completely indecent here [at the party]" (VIII, 122; 164). In his earlier works Dostoevsky had already treated the confession as a problematic, double-edged form. In Dostoevsky's work the truth will out in various ways, but it rarely finds unadorned release through the mode inherently concerned with the utterance of truth, the confession, defined as a statement or written document of some length which is narrated to someone else and usually reveals a dark secret or crime. As such, we may expect to see the confession functioning simultaneously as an expression of pride and an experiment in humility. Indeed, the terms become interchangeable. Pride masquerades as humility and vice versa. Confessions may seek to provoke, titillate, or lie; the narrator may expose, disguise, justify, or lacerate himself. But rarely does the confession consist of a simple, repentant declaration of wrong-doing or moral weakness. Dostoevsky's scrutiny and critique of the literary confession fre-

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quently assumed the form of a veiled polemic with Rousseau and with his Confessions.11 At times Dostoevsky even allowed the veil to drop, and, through his characters, named his adversary. Dostoevsky singled out two episodes from the Confessions—one in which Rousseau wanders the streets at night and the other in which he falsely accuses a defenseless girl of the theft of a ribbon —as offering particularly rich opportunities for parodic variation in his own fiction. 1 2 The confessions told at Nastasia Filippovna's nameday party contain a bracing mix of vanity, self-justifications, and lies. In his narrative Ferdyshchenko confesses to having pocketed a three-rouble note left on his hostess' work table. He then showed much kindness to the maid who was falsely accused of the deed and tried to persuade her to admit to the theft, assuring her that she could count on the leniency of her mistress. "I felt an extraordinary pleasure, particularly from the fact that I was preaching while the note lay in my pocket" (VIII, 124; 167). He spent the money that evening on a bottle of wine. When the audience responds with disgust, Ferdyshchenko again shows his understanding of what is typically most appreciated in a narrative, "Bah! You want to hear the worst act of a man and you demand that there be something shining in it. The worst acts are always filthy" (VIII, 124; 167). As a narrator he refuses to give the audience what they want, although he involuntarily seeks their approval. His contempt for the confessional genre does not exempt him from wishing that its effects would be pleasant all the same. The narrator takes wry note of Ferdyshchenko's enraged loss of composure when he observes his audience's disgust, "Strange as it may be, it is very likely that he expected a completely different success for his story" (VIII, 124; 168). Ferdyshchenko has cynically toyed with his audience's expectations, but he cannot divorce himself from his need to be accepted. Earlier Ganya and Totsky had insisted that confessions of one's worst acts would prove to be either expressions of vanity or mere lies. Ferdyshchenko understands that those who listen to a confession often expect to find something ennobling in the admission of guilt. The implied author has expressed his own mistrust of the confessional genre through the voices of these second and third rank characters.

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With this anecdote Dostoevsky has engaged in one of his most direct polemics with Rousseau. Although Ferdyshchenko does not openly refer to The Confessions (as, for example, the underground man does), his anecdote recalls one of its principal episodes in which Rousseau himself discusses the nature of the confession. (Dostoevsky also probably used his own previous work as a source here. Ferdyshchenko's pleasure at his successful framing of the servant girl and his delight, at the same time, in pretending to preach to her with dignity and kindness, resemble Luzhin's failed attempt to frame Sonya in Crime and Punishment.) In this early episode Rousseau describes a crime which has tormented him for forty years. He once stole a pink and silver ribbon and when it was discovered on him, he falsely accused the young cook of the household, Marion, saying she had given it to him. Ferdyshchenko's similar false accusation of the maid left him singularly free from remorse (indeed it gave him "extraordinary pleasure"), whereas it was remorse that prompted Rousseau to write his confessions. Nevertheless Ferdyshchenko follows Rousseau in regarding this as the worst action of his life and the subject of his confession. Rousseau writes, "The burden, therefore, has rested till this day on my conscience without any relief; and I can affirm that the desire to some extent to rid myself of it has greatly contributed to my resolution of writing these Confessions."13 (The underground man, for all his alleged rejection of Rousseau, admitted the same motive for his confession.) But Rousseau's analysis of his deed reveals a certain selfsatisfaction and unnerving self-confidence. He does not admit the possibility of a lie: "I have been absolutely frank in the account I have just given, and no one will accuse me, I am certain, of palliating the heinousness of my offence. But I should not fulfill the aim of this book if I did not at the same time reveal my inner feelings and hesitated to put up such excuses for myself as I honestly could. Never was deliberate wickedness further from my intention at that cruel moment." 14 In fact, by the end of his account he seems to be positively proud of his crime. "So the memory tortures me less on account of the crime itself than because of its possible evil consequences. But I have derived some benefit from the terrible impression left with me by the sole

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offence I have committed. For it has secured me for the rest of my life against any act that might prove criminal in its results. I think also that my loathing of untruth derives to a large extent from my having told that one wicked lie . . . I have little fear of carrying the sin on my conscience at death." 15 Here is a brand of vanity not even dreamed of by such masters of confession as Valkovsky in The Insulted and Injured, or the underground man, or even Ferdyshchenko. Rousseau exonerates himself with unshakeable impunity. His Confessions provided the model for this genre throughout the nineteenth century. The resemblance of Ferdyshchenko's anecdote to this seminal episode in the Confessions alerts the reader to the presence of a serious parody and critique of the confessional form. Everyone, from the implied author and reader to the characters themselves, has been duly warned that the confession is a morally bankrupt form. 1 6 General Epanchin, the next participant in the petit-jeu, relates an incident that occurred thirty-five years earlier when he was a poor second lieutenant. Late one afternoon he cursed an old woman, his former landlady, for appropriating his soup bowl as payment for a broken pot. She sat facing him with no response. Later, he learned that she had been dying at the very time he had been swearing at her. To assuage his guilt, fifteen years ago he had provided for two ill old women; he is even considering the establishment of a permanent endowment at the public hospital. When Ferdyshchenko, now no longer a narrator but a member of the audience, responds, "And instead of your nastiest deed, your Excellency, you have told one of the good deeds of your life; you have cheated Ferdyshchenko!" (VIII, 127; 171), the reader may at first agree with him. Certainly the general's intention (whether successful or not) in this confession of a "worst deed" has secretly been to narrate a "best deed." Yet the general, contrary to his intent, has perhaps unknowingly narrated his worst deed after all —a personal evil deed which he sought to erase by an act of impersonal good in the form of "a permanent endowment by providing a capital fund." Throughout the novel the implied author explores the ways in which goodness travels through the world; he establishes a consistent opposition between effective acts of goodness and the ineffective, even harm-

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ful results of institutionalized beneficence — philanthropy (chelovekoliubie). (Compare Lebedev's later image of the disparity between real and spiritual bread.) General Epanchin's confession also resembles the episode from Rousseau's Confessions of which Ferdyshchenko made use. But where Ferdyshchenko's anecdote reflected the content of Rousseau's tale about the stolen ribbon while detaching itself from Rousseau's emotional stance, the general mimics Rousseau's attitude toward the deed, that is, his stance of guilty but lofty sincerity. The general notes that though the action occurred long ago (thirty-five years, as compared to Rousseau's forty), he cannot recall it without experiencing a pang, "In a word, the more time goes by, the more I think of it . . . Without doubt, I am guilty, and, although I have already regarded my deed for a long time with the passing of years and with the change in my nature as being the deed of a stranger, I nevertheless feel sorry" (VIII, 126-127; 170). Rousseau expressed a similar sentiment, "I took away lasting memories of a crime and the unbearable weight of a remorse which, even after forty years, still burdens my conscience. In fact, the bitter memory of it, far from fading, grows more painful with the years." 17 Of course the general's easy "after-dinner" attitude towards his crime does not have the ring of sincerity that Rousseau's lament does: instead, his words both re-create and ridicule the structure of Rousseau's confession. Moreover, both Rousseau and General Epanchin end by being the ones to bestow forgiveness upon themselves. Rousseau assures himself that "really my crime amounted to no more than weakness."18 General Epanchin takes these selfassurances even further. "So that, I repeat, it seems strange to me, all the more that if I am guilty, I am not completely guilty" (VIII, 127; 170). He manages finally to blame the old woman for letting herself die at that unfortunate moment. Furthermore, each confidently proclaims that the evil deed has yielded a measure of good. We have already encountered Rousseau's insistence that his "sole offense" had "secured him for the rest of his life against any act that might prove criminal in its results . . . Poor Marion finds so many avengers in this world, that, however great my offense against her may have been, I have little fear of carrying the sin on my conscience at death." 19 In like

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spirit General Epanchin describes his subsequent acts of philanthropy. Totsky's account of his worst action arouses interest in the reader and the other characters because they all already know one of his worst deeds. Indeed, the results of his violation of Nastasia Filippovna have generated the plot of most of the novel so far. So Totsky's choice of an anecdote must provide a commentary on what is already known about him. He narrates an incident that occurred twenty years earlier in the country. He presented a bouquet of red camellias to the young wife of the Marshal of the Nobility, delighting the couple greatly. But he got the flowers by means of lies and deceit, for the wife's wouldbe lover had confided to Totsky where he had planned to get the camellias for the ball that evening, and Totsky rushed out to acquire them himself. 20 The despairing lover, in true Lermontovian fashion, volunteered for action in the Caucasus and was killed. Totsky himself admits that "it came out decidedly like a novel." For Totsky there can be no worst deed because immorality does not exist for him. He cares only for beauty, taste, and originality; it is impossible for him to make a genuine confession. Ferdyshchenko again cries that he has been cheated. In fact, the narrator remarks as Totsky begins his narrative, that this is another of his "sweet [milyi] stories." Totsky freely admits that he has committed a motiveless act. Although Dostoevsky rarely mentioned Rousseau in his writings, his involvement with the Confessions was particularly intense. 21 For Dostoevsky, a character's use of the confessional mode was always problematic. A confession could register and convey the condition of the inner man but, like a giant thermometer measuring the temperature of a single drop of water, the fact of the confession — the measurement of this condition — falsified or changed the substance being measured. When Dostoevsky's characters —for example, the Mysterious Stranger in The Brothers Karamazov — do manage to confess the truth, often no one believes them. Ironically, both Belinsky and Strakhov, two ideologically opposed critics, compared Dostoevsky to Rousseau, although Dostoevsky himself so often took issue with him. Belinsky wrote in 1846: "I am now reading The Confessions — in all my

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life, few books have acted on me as powerfully as this one," but in a later letter he remarked, "I have a great loathing for this man. He so resembles Dostoevsky." 22 Strakhov, in denouncing his own biography of Dostoevsky at the time of its publication, wrote to Tolstoy, "I cannot consider Dostoevsky either a good or happy man (which, in essence, is the same thing). He was spiteful, envious, dissolute, and spent all his life in a state of agitation that made him appear pitiful and would have made him appear ridiculous if he had not at the same time been so spiteful and so intelligent. Like Rousseau, however, he considered himself the best and the happiest of men." 23 Strakhov's comments would have especially embittered Dostoevsky, for it was precisely Rousseau's habit of selfjustification through confession that Dostoevsky held up to scrutiny time and time again. One cannot imagine Dostoevsky saying as Rousseau does: "So let the numberless legion of my fellow men gather round me, and hear my confessions. Let them groan at my depravities, and blush for my misdeeds. But let each one of them reveal his heart at the foot of Thy Throne with equal sincerity, and may any man who dares, say, Ί was a better man than he.'" 24 Without some kind of irony or qualification, Rousseau's faith in his own sincerity is unnerving.25 Dostoevsky, whom one may tentatively, gingerly equate with Myshkin in this respect — although it is, of course, always dangerous to make such equations between authors and characters—always acknowledged his "double thoughts"; he never claimed such "pre-eminence in sincerity." In Part I of The Idiot the narratives related by the characters covered many points along the spectrum from true to false. The reader has confronted genuine and parodic exempla. The exemplum, traditionally told by a medieval preacher, sought to illustrate a general truth through a particular instance or story, which was usually considered to be true. Myshkin's several tales functioned as genuine exempla; he constructed models for how one should live. Because each of his anecdotes exhibited a concern with time or a moment in time, they also foreshadowed the narrative structure of the novel which itself focuses on important moments. 26 Moreover, his parables expounded the ideals and spiritual foci of the novel. The confessions at the end of Part I are false exempla, both

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in theme and in intent. Thematically, their text —to describe one's worst act — turns the norms of the exemplum upside down. No moral is pointed out; instead, something immoral is elaborated. The impact of their immorality is compounded by the fact that two of these worst actions prove to be lies, for they do not in fact depict the character's worst deed. The audience knows it has been deceived and mocked. General Ivolgin's biographical narratives also lied. But his unreliable narrations had a purity of intention, while these confessions, though biographically accurate, served hypocritical ends. All these inserted narratives have shared a preoccupation with the truth and with time —with revealing or concealing the truth, and with apprehending and comprehending time, either through eternalizing a moment or by remembering and reinventing the past. In Part II of the novel the inserted narratives continue to manifest a concern with time and with the re-creation of the past. Lebedev's anecdote about the Countess du Barry crying out "just one moment!" as she's dragged to the guillotine parodies Myshkin's first parable about the execution of Legros. Both Myshkin and Lebedev (and later Ippolit) perceive the absolute certainty of death as the greatest misery man must endure. Lebedev remarks, "Do you know what the word misere means? Well, that's exactly what misere is. When I read about the countess' cry for just one moment, I felt as if my heart h a d been seized in a vise" (VIII, 164; 217). Lebedev seriously and piously concludes that he prays for the Countess du Barry and for all other sinners; in the next breath he deceitfully misnames himself to Myshkin, who has absentmindedly forgotten Lebedev's first name and patronymic. Lebedev will reveal himself in his narrative, but in the business of daily living he lies continually. His nephew accuses him of being well-read (a vice Lebedev shares with the Epanchin sisters and with Nastasia and which thus alerts the reader to the probability of Lebedev's importance later in the novel). Lebedev's brief story about the countess signals to the reader that the preoccupation with death and the moment before death of Part I will continue in Part II. The reader also sees, through Lebedev's choice of narrative subject, that however much of a buffoon he is, he shares to an uncanny degree Myshkin's visions of life and death.

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As in Part I the action of Part II begins with Myshkin arriving by railroad into Petersburg, paying calls, and delivering parabolic, autobiographical anecdotes. He visits Rogozhin's house for the first time. While on his way out, Myshkin sees the copy of the Holbein painting of Christ being taken down from the cross. Rogozhin suddenly asks Myshkin if he believes in God. Myshkin evades answering; then, about to depart, he blurts out, "as for faith I, last week, in two days, had four different encounters" (VIII, 182; 239). He begins a parabolic narrative composed of four distinct parts. First Myshkin tells of meeting a well-known atheist on a train and finding that this man, like other atheists whose works he had read, never really discussed his disbelief in God. Myshkin intimates that such a discussion is impossible. "He doesn't believe in God. Except one thing struck me: he didn't seem to be talking about that at all . . . even formerly, however much I have met atheists . . . it has always seemed to me that they speak and write about something else though on the surface it seems to be about that" (VIII, 182; 239). No disbeliever can explicate atheism, because he relies upon reason and logic, which in turn depend solely on the use of language, to talk about something ineffable. (Later, Ippolit's confession takes up the question of the role of reason and logic in making a protest against God's world.) It is not surprising, then, that Myshkin's narrative begins with a rejection of language. To understand the next three episodes he relates, the reader (and Rogozhin), must engage other, irrational faculties of perception. The implied author wields his novelistic theme about the inability of language to convey an idea accurately: even as Myshkin talks about the inadequacies of rational discourse and the atheists' overreliance upon it, the implied author does not exempt Myshkin from the same overreliance upon such discourse. Myshkin tries to meet the atheist on his own terms by arguing with him. The result, predictably, is that Myshkin's words also fail to convince, "I expressed this to him at the time, but, perhaps, unclearly, or else I did not know h o w to express it, because he understood nothing" (VIII, 182-183; 239). But Myshkin goes on to use language in a nonrational, parabolic w a y . In fact, this opening anecdote about the atheist represents his own rejection of rational discourse; he has taken a personal experience of his own in which he had at-

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tempted to use such discourse and has incorporated it into a plea for another means of communication. 2 7 Continuing his narrative, Myshkin tells how he spent that night in a hotel where, the night before, a peasant had murdered his friend for his silver watch. The peasant had prayed, as he raised his knife, "God, forgive me for Christ's sake" (VIII, 183; 239). The next morning Myshkin meets a drunken soldier who urges him to buy a "silver" cross which they both know is tin. An hour later he comes across a peasant woman with a baby and witnesses the baby's first smile at his mother. These three episodes illustrate the essence of Myshkin's religious feeling. At the Epanchins he had already revealed himself to be a deliberate, strategic narrator, despite his seeming spontaneity. Here again he lays bare the painstaking structure of his parable as he concludes, "Listen, Parfyon: you asked me earlier; here is my answer: the essence of religious feelings doesn't depend on any reasoning, nor upon any wrongdoings or crimes, nor upon any kind of atheism. There something is not right and will be eternally not right. There is something else there and there will be forever; there is something which the atheists will forever glide over, and they will forever be talking not about that" (VIII, 184; 240-241). As a narrator of an exemplum or parable knows, the raw data of experience have more impact than does a simple statement of the truth the story seeks to illustrate. Myshkin's philosophical conclusion has gathered power and escaped boring didacticism because of the compelling stories that preceded it. Throughout his tale a double irony operates: one must successfully use words to express an idea that cannot be expressed by words. As Myshkin finished his account of these four events, he had returned to a description of his encounter with the atheist. The last three sentences of Myshkin's indirect answer to Rogozhin's question —"do you believe in God, or not?" —reflect h o w he, while using words, tries to escape from their descriptive and therefore limiting power. I quote them again, this time from the Russian, to show this effect more clearly: "tut chto-to ne to, i vechno budet ne to; tut chto-to takoe, obo chto vechno budut skol'zit' ateizmy i vechno ne pro to govorit'!" O n e must instantly recognize the essence of religious feeling. The implied author here may have indulged in a parodic echo of the Russian representative of reason, Chernyshevsky. He has Myshkin ex-

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claim to Rogozhin, "Est' chto delat', Parfen! Est' chto delat' na nashem russkom svete, ver' mne!" (VIII, 184; 241). ("There is much to be done Parfyon! There is much to be done in our Russian world, believe me!") The anecdotes Myshkin related to the Epanchin family in Part I dealt with the quality of time in the real world and with the terror inspired by the approach of death. The eternal qualities of time and death illustrated the transience of this world. In the four anecdotes which he has just narrated, Myshkin speculates about the nature of the next world. Aspects of everyday life provide analogues for understanding eternity and time. As in Part I, his stories depict incidents from daily life, but here Myshkin makes his experiences serve as fables for elucidating the mysteries of God and faith. Myshkin telescopes into one story the four different encounters which occurred consecutively throughout two days. While his parables in Part I were separate incidents, here several discrete events form a whole. The rational atheism of the wellknown man is countered wryly, ironically, by the peasant's bitter prayer for forgiveness as he slits his friend's throat. His prayer is uttered automatically (that is, without reason or logic), but it may prove to be the spark that will ultimately ignite his genuine repentance. The drunken soldier who exultantly sells Myshkin the tin cross may be, as Myshkin speculates, the husband of the peasant woman with the baby. She eloquently and simply imparts her comprehension of God to Myshkin, the eager student and missionary of Russian faith. The mother's joy at her baby's first smile and her inspired comparison of her joy to that of God upon viewing the sincere prayer of a sinner encompass and make forgivable all those who went before —the atheist, the murderer of a friend, the drunken soldier. Myshkin does not answer Rogozhin's question about his belief in God directly. Instead he connects these events to show Rogozhin that his faith exists, even thrives, amidst the grim realities of Russian life. Myshkin's faith consists of his acceptance of the whole range of human activity; the baby's smile does not undo the murder or the swindle, but it exists and manages to exert its force of joy in spite of them. Myshkin's faith manifests itself, both in the stories he tells and in his relations with the other characters, as a sad acceptance of the coexistence of evil

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with good and of the inevitability of double thoughts. For him, one genuine spark of goodness can illuminate the whole and render it precious. Nevertheless Myshkin remains, as in Part I, a crafty narrator. The order of these four events is crucial to his argument. The atheist cannot talk about God because his atheism is caused by his rational response to evil and to injustice, while faith exists as an instinctual response to life. The two spheres do not intersect; the outrage and indignation of the atheist, for Myshkin, cannot penetrate to the realm where faith functions. Thus, the atheist cannot effectively challenge the believer who may, who must, share that very outrage with him. Typically, Dostoevsky as a polemicist eagerly conceded as much as possible to his opponent's argument and then, having given much, deftly appropriated all. 28 Here the implied author has endowed Myshkin with skills at the same technique: the murderer and the swindler become evidence for the existence of God and for the miracle of faith. The murderer's prayer genuinely, though inexplicably, atones for his deed even as he commits it, while the drunken soldier cheats his customer but inadvertently becomes a "peddler of Christ" (VIII, 183; 240). The mother and baby provide the final illuminating analogy. For Myshkin all experience serves to illustrate the existence of God; thus in his view the atheist cannot draw his arguments out of life. Yet how fortunate for Myshkin, here the narrator and proselytizer, that those four encounters happened in the order they did. Had they occurred in reverse order, for example, the baby's smile would have been buried under the weight of blood and dishonesty. It would not gleam through the dark with its sudden revelatory power, but would instead seem to be evidence for the atheist's conviction. The atheist's inability to talk about his subject would end the tale, with the audience sympathizing with him and feeling that somehow he must be right. Most important, these anecdotes show the reader how Myshkin perceives his own experience. He constantly consolidates the events of his life into an object (or form) which he can then give as a gift, a gift of insight; he changes his own life into art. All the stories he has told have derived from his own experiences, yet he has transmuted them into symbolic myths. He manages even to give the events of the previous week an an-

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tique coating. 'You see, at that time, I was always asking questions" (VIII, 183; 240). Time in its everyday sense has no meaning for Myshkin, for whom a moment can be eternity and the events of a week before can seem to have occurred long ago. Myshkin has imparted an allegorical, metaphysical flavor to these four events. One wonders what his diary would be like; he would, no doubt, endeavor to endow each moment with equal, timeless significance. Myshkin's narratives in Part I chronicled, in part, man's inevitable failure at living in the world —at making no more than a few moments of his life into eternal moments. This second set of incidents complements the first as Myshkin moves from minute analysis of important moments to a brief, unelaborated acceptance of mystery. Myshkin's anecdote contains a mix of plot elements that quickly reappear in the novel. Myshkin and Rogozhin trade crosses and Rogozhin attempts to murder Myshkin with a knife in a hotel. Overarching all the events of the novel are elements from the beginning and end of his tale that haunt Myshkin unceasingly: the inevitable failure of words to convey an important idea and his repeated attempts to recognize the essence of religious feeling in the Russian heart. Despite the stories he tells and despite his thorough involvement with the other characters, Myshkin remains a mystery to both the reader and the characters. By the middle of Part II the reader may have grown impatient to know his hero better. Myshkin's mysteriousness in Part I was well and good, but by Part II the reader and the characters want to be able to fix him in some way. The two longest inserted narratives in Part II —the Pushkin poem recited by Aglaya and the newspaper article read by Kolya — have little in common in form or point of view with each other, but they share an urgent concern with describing Myshkin and offer the reader respectively a spiritual and a temporal biography of him. Aglaya introduces the theme of Myshkin as the "poor knight," who believes in an "image of pure beauty." She paraphrases lines from two poems by Pushkin, " K * * * " (1825) and "There lived in the world a poor knight" (1829) ("Zhil na svete rytsar' bednyi"). Aglaya recites the later, shorter version of this second poem, which appeared in 1835 as part of "Scenes from the times of Chivalry" ("Stseny iz rytsarskikh vremen"). Dos-

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toevsky took the text of the poem from volume seven of Annenkov's edition of Pushkin which came out between 1855 and 1857. 2 9 The longer 1829 version of the poem was not published because the censors had objected to Pushkin's direct naming of the subject of the knight's ideal: "The Holy Virgin /the mother of the Lord" ("Sviataia deva/Mater' gospoda"), and because the word "demon" (bes) appeared. (The demon, upon the knight's death, announced that the knight's soul belonged to hell, because he had pursued the mother of Christ in an improper way.) Surprisingly, not only during Pushkin's life, but even until recently, the full text of this poem was not published. 30 Aglaya creates an image of Myshkin that merges the figures of Cervantes' Don Quixote and Pushkin's poor knight. Dostoevsky has given her the expression of his own precious, revelatory formulation of his hero that he had earlier shared with Maikov and his niece Sonya Ivanova. He has Aglaya say, "The 'poor knight' is the same Don Quixote, but only serious and not comic" (VIII, 207; 269). 3 1 She describes the poor knight with his vision of pure beauty who wears a rosary instead of a scarf, with the initials A.N.B, on his shield. Aglaya's substitution of the letters A.N.B, for those that really occur in the poem, A.M.D. (Ave, Mater Dei), embarrasses the prince (A.N.B. = Ave, Nastasia Barashkova). When Aglaya actually recites the poem, she substitutes instead the initials N.F.B. (Nastasia Filippovna Barashkova) and presents the prince with a painfully obvious riddle. Later, Myshkin sees Aglaya's recitation as a clear-cut example of "man's propensity for double thoughts." He thinks, "how could such sincere, beautiful feeling be joined with such unmistakable, and malicious mockery?" (VIII, 209; 272). All of Myshkin's activity in the novel centers around trying to make characters accept the inevitability of precisely this mix of sincerity with mockery, of beauty with malice within themselves; he tries to make others acknowledge that sincerity and beauty do exist despite their proximity to evil. Nevertheless, when he discovers this blend in Aglaya's narrative, he cannot explain the reason for it. That was a "question he found it impossible to answer" (VIII, 209; 272).

Aglaya's rendition of the poem exemplifies a clash between form and content. The beautiful, sincere content and formal

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structure of the actual poem are oddly framed by its outer form: the double-edged manner of Aglaya's recitation. But, and this is what seems crucial to me, the poem exerts a transforming influence over its narrator. "All the initial affectation and pomposity with which she had begun to recite she concealed with such seriousness and with such penetration into the spirit and meaning of the poetic work, she pronounced each word of the verse with such meaning, she uttered each word with such high simplicity, that at the end of the reading she not only held the general attention, but, by rendering the lofty spirit of the ballad it was as if she had even partly justified that exaggerated, affected importance with which she had so solemnly stepped to the center of the veranda" (VIII, 208; 270). That is, Aglaya has deviously concealed her affectation behind a serious tone. But her layers of deception eventually cancel each other; her irony becomes indistinguishable from sincerity; in spite of herself she renders the poem perfectly. Her narration, then, embodies both the clash between sincerity and malice and displays the mysterious victory of goodness which Myshkin yearns to make others recognize. Aglaya's role throughout the novel constantly changes. Not only does she often become a mouthpiece for the implied author, but also at times indicates the proper response for the implied reader, as for example when she criticizes the prince for presuming to judge those around him. At times, acting hysterically and abandoning her critical faculties, she disappears into the thick of the plot. The narrator carefully avoids committing himself to a definite characterization of her motives. After she has described the poor knight, the narrator observes, "it was difficult to tell by looking at her whether she was serious or laughing" (VIII, 207; 269). (Nevertheless, both she and Nastasia, the two bookish heroines, had instantly perceived Myshkin to be a heroic figure with a mission.) Aglaya had partly explained the meaning of Pushkin's poem before she recited it, but her explanation had merely baffled Lizaveta Prokof'evna. Throughout Aglaya's narration Lizaveta and the reader find themselves excluded from a secret shared by the others. All of them, even the prince, already seem to know about the poor knight. (The reader does know that Aglaya had placed the prince's note in her copy of Don Quixote and had

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later burst out laughing for "reasons unknown.") By having Aglaya explicate the poem before its delivery, the implied author can immediately after her recitation pass on to the dramatic response the poem provokes. The narrator underlines the importance of the poem to the whole story by commenting that afterwards the prince was troubled by it for a long time and that he was to recall details of its recitation later. Amidst the flurry of reactions to Aglaya's delivery and the subsequent conversations, the implied author succeeds in avoiding what the reader perhaps most desires: a discussion of the meaning of that recitation for Aglaya herself and for the prince. The implied author maintains the mystery as long as possible; only when the reader has forgotten about it and is preoccupied with new mysteries does he suddenly offer a solution. (This takes place some one hundred and fifty pages later when Aglaya tells Myshkin, rather unclimactically, that she had recited the poem in order to show him that she understood him.) After the reading of the poem, the conversation moves on to smaller matters: the buying of an edition of Pushkin's works and the significance of Evgeny Pavlovich's appearance in civilian dress. When Lizaveta asks about the poor knight, Prince Shch — explains that there is a strange Russian poem about such a character, "a fragment with neither a beginning nor an end" (VIII, 206; 267). The editors of the recent Soviet edition of Dostoevsky's works noted that Prince Shch — 's labeling of the poem as a fragment proves that Dostoevsky knew that the version of the poem appearing in the Annenkov edition was not complete. They assert that in 1866 one unpublished stanza of the ballad, the third, did become known to Dostoevsky. 3 2 This verse described the exact vision of the poor knight, who actually saw the Virgin Mary at the foot of a cross while he was traveling on the road to Geneva. 3 3 In the version of the poem transcribed in the novel, however, the nature of the knight's vision remains shadowy. Even in the shorter, published version of the poem to which Dostoevsky had access, the knight's holy vision renders him mysterious and untypical; he dies, faithful to his vision, but silent, melancholy, and insane (beζ prichast'ia).34 The poem proves painfully prophetic; Myshkin returns to his remote Swiss refuge, silent, sad, and an idiot. 35

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The Pushkin poem prefigured an uncanny spiritual biography of the mysterious hero, Myshkin. Later in the same scene Kolya reads aloud a newspaper article written by Keller, which presents a physical biography of Myshkin. The effect of Pushkin's timeless ballad disappears amidst the confusion generated by the satiric and slanderous portrait of Myshkin painted in the article. Nevertheless both narratives share a single aim: to offer an image of the prince to the prince himself. In both cases his role is that of subject and of unwilling, embarrassed, and captive audience. In moving from a narrative in ballad form to a newspaper article the reader might expect to find a corresponding and fitting shift in biographical content, but in both narratives a disharmony remains between the subject matter and the means of its narration. While Pushkin's lyric ballad was recited by an initially mocking Aglaya, the ponderously satiric article is read by the devoted and sincere Kolya. He becomes the unwilling vehicle for the transmission of abuse. Aglaya's mocking attitude clashed with the spirit of the poem she was reciting and the poem proved victorious. Here too the matter being read eclipses its narrator, Kolya. The force of his good will is outweighed by the malice of the article. In both cases the power of art, which can determine its own rhetoric (whether true or false), supersedes the surrounding reality; it is the most dangerous of weapons, for, as we have seen through Myshkin's use of art as well (in his carefully structured narratives), it is a powerful tool of persuasion. The newspaper article weaves an intricate web of truth and slander for Myshkin's biography; it also parodies some of the most serious ideas in the novel. By the time Aglaya had finally recited Pushkin's poem, nearly everyone seemed already familiar with the poor knight, and the poem itself was explicated before it was read. A similarly curious inversion of reading and response accompanies the reading of Keller's newspaper article. Everyone except the prince seems to have had some premonition of the existence of the article beforehand; only Myshkin is baffled. Moments before Ippolit, Burdovsky, Doktorenko, and Keller burst in, Aglaya announces cryptically, "You must acquit yourself triumphantly — and I'm terribly glad for you beforehand" (VIII, 213; 276). In both narratives the reader is deliber-

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ately left out of things; despite his long, careful reading suddenly there seems to be an abundance of fully formed subplots and events about which he knows nothing. Furthermore, the article is preceded by false foreshadowing. Lebedev depicts the young men about to enter as having gone further than the "nihilists." He compares them to businessmen and adds, "they don't express themselves in some sort of little newspaper article, but, directly, in action" (VIII, 213; 277). The motley group that arrives are anything but businessmen; their sole and excruciatingly inept means of expression has been a 'little newspaper article" which they themselves subsequently repudiate. They are incapable of any direct action; they cannot even force themselves to exit in a forceful, appropriate manner. As before, when Lizaveta had demanded that Aglaya recite the poem, now she insists that Kolya (though her first choice was the prince) read the article aloud. The article, which appeared in one of the weekly humor newspapers, 36 further underlines the extent to which Dostoevsky endowed Myshkin with details from his own biography. Here, for instance, Dostoevsky carried into the novel his five year old journalistic polemic with Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Sovremennik over the nihilists. A cruel epigram about Myshkin appears in the article. The editors point out that it parodies a satiric epigram from "Childhood Tales and Poems" called "Self-sufficient Fedya" ("Samonadeiannyi Fedia"), which appeared in 1863 in Svistok. The epigram, written by Saltykov-Shchedrin even before their polemic over the nihilists began, read as follows: Fedya did not pray to God, All right, he thought, just so! He grew lazier and lazier . . . And he made a fool of himself! Once he toyed carelessly With Gogol's "Overcoat," — And he filled Time [pun on Dostoevsky's journal With his usual drawn-out proceedings. Fedia bogu ne molilsia, "Ladno, mnil i tak!"

Time]

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Vse lenilsia da lenilsia . . . I popal vprosak! Raz bespechno on "Shinel'iu" Gogolia igral, — I obychnoi kanitel'iu Vremia napolnial . . . (IX, 443-444) The similarity to the epigram in the novel is painfully obvious. Little Lyova toyed for five years With the overcoat of Schneider And he filled time With his usual drawn-out proceedings. Returning in his tight gaiters, He inherited a million, He prays to God in Russian, And he has robbed students. Leva Shneidera shinel'iu Piatiletie igral I obychnoi kanitel'iu Vremia napolnial. Vozvratias' ν shtibletakh uzkikh, Million nasledstva vzial, Bogu molitsia po-russki, A studentov obokral. (VIII, 221; 285) It is intriguing that Dostoevsky chose to share a humiliating epigram with his character. While readers might admire his autobiographical account of a near-execution, 3 7 he could not have brought back an already forgotten, cruel epigram for the same effect. In endowing Myshkin with a past, the article caters to the general curiosity about Myshkin's biography. M o r e important, however, the article seeks to turn the mysterious hero into a type. The vague details of his biography become fodder for spurious generalizations: A strange incident has happened involving one of the scions of our defunct landed gentry (de profundisl), one of those scions, however,

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whose grandfathers completely ruined themselves at roulette, whose fathers were forced to serve as subalterns in the army, and, who, as usual, died while on trial for some innocent error in a fiscal sum, and whose children, like the hero of our story, either grow up as idiots or become involved even in criminal cases, in which, however, they are acquitted by the jury on the pretext that they have been edified and bettered in the process; or else, at last, they end up by creating one of those incidents which astound the public and disgrace our already sufficiently disgraceful times. (VIII, 217; 281) The reader has already learned from Myshkin himself that his father, a second lieutenant, had died in an army hospital while awaiting trial, which is all that Myshkin knows of the circumstances of his father's death. The article utilizes these same fragments of information and distorts them. Moreover, it seems that the "revolutionary nihilists" w h o supposedly are behind the article, are really prudes who hate any public scene; their supposed scorn for convention is nonexistent. In the most conventional way, they themselves mock the notion of idiocy, calling it an "interesting illness" and wonder, "can there be any treatment for idiocy? Just think of such a thing!" (VIII, 217; 281). They even deride the leniency of the new jury system. Despite its ridiculous treatment of them, the article does raise many of the central concerns of the novel: the theme of how best to carry out a good deed, the theme of universal dignity despite man's fallibility, the theme of the effect of the industrial revolution upon the spiritual nature of Russia, and even the theme of idiocy — of the impossibility of defining what it is and what it is not. Most important, the article parodies the idea that genuine consciousness of having committed a crime and genuine justice exist outside the laws, outside the jurisdiction of the courts. Thus Keller and his crew put forth the preposterous thesis that Burdovsky is the bastard son of Pavlishchev, Myshkin's deceased guardian, and urge Myshkin to share his inheritance with "the injured Burdovsky." They demand Burdovsky's rights, but not in the name of charity or justice through "legal obligation." Doktorenko insists that they are appealing in the name of "natural human rights, the right of common sense and the voice of the conscience" (VIII, 223; 287). Their call for Myshkin to respond with "good conscience" burlesques Myshkin's own endeavors throughout the novel.

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Like the narrator of the novel, the narrator of the article labels Myshkin "the hero of our tale"; that is, he emphasizes the fictive nature of his discourse. (The creation of a deceptively fictional atmosphere was also a convention of the feuilletonist.) But of course both narrators have used this technique of creating a false distance from their subject in order to convey the opposite idea in the end —the reality, the veracity, of their narrative. The article goes on welding truth to falsehood. It gives a faithful account of Myshkin's return to Russia six months earlier in inappropriate dress for the Russian autumn, but lies in recounting that Myshkin concealed from his doctor the death of Pavlishchev, his benefactor. But the article is not interesting for its innumerable outlandish lies; it is the large amount of truth in it that gives it power. The article exemplifies the effect of form upon content: the derisive tone, the waves of facile social and political commentary inevitably recast Myshkin's image and present a weirdly alternative view of him. Thus, taken as a separate narrative, the article gives a parallel text for the events of the novel so far. The implied reader's reaction against this atrocious, paltry narrative and against its distortion of the events is to reaffirm his perhaps wavering loyalty to Myshkin at this point in the novel. The reader's impatience with Myshkin's lack of biography and with his generally troublesome opaqueness is perhaps overruled by his rising indignation at the injustice of the article. The implied reader's loyalty to Myshkin is thus won, partly by default, and he may even be ready to forgive Myshkin his subsequent illjudged handling of the affair. (Myshkin insults and humiliates Burdovsky by publicly offering him help despite the proved unsuitability of his claim.) This article, then, is a false narrative from every point of view (except Keller's). It lies about the prince (and about Burdovsky); it is narrated unwillingly and with shame by Kolya; it does not even represent the interests of the "nihilists" who supposedly bear the responsibility for its publication. Amidst the general embarrassment following the reading the narrator observes, "Strangest of all, Ippolit and 'Pavlishchev's son' also appeared to be rather surprised at something; Lebedev's nephew was also evidently displeased. Only the boxer [that is, Keller]

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sat completely serenely" (VIII, 221; 286). Ippolit asserts he had not even known of the article and Doktorenko insists that he would not have advised its publication. Doktorenko goes on to defend their cause in the name of human rights. In his reply Myshkin returns to his own preoccupation with the inability of words to express the truth, or rather, to separate truth from falsehood; the two persist in existing side by side. He concedes that Doktorenko is more than half right, "and I would be completely in agreement with you if you had not left something out of your speech. Exactly what you've left out here, I haven't the strength and I'm not in a condition to express to you exactly, but something is surely lacking in your words for them to be perfectly true" (VIII, 224; 289). The implied author elaborates the theme of the inseparability of truth from falsehood in as many ways as possible, having Ippolit take up the theme next. In criticizing the style of Keller's article he too allows Keller to be "half in the right," but his "right half" differs f r o m Myshkin's. However, Ippolit agrees with Keller in supporting Burdovsky's right to make public his claim. Absurdly, they both lose track of the fact that the substance of Burdovsky's appeal is untrue. The mockery of the serious themes of the novel by Keller's article continues as its author, in defense of his piece, unconsciously parodies Myshkin's own belief that good intentions count for much and can help atone for evil. Myshkin's complicated and compassionate notion that man's "double thoughts" must be accepted and forgiven finds a monstrous echo in Keller's justification of his false narrative. Keller declaims, "As far as certain inaccuracies are concerned, little hyperboles, so to speak, you must agree that first and foremost initiative is the important thing, first and foremost is the goal, the intention; the beneficial example is important; afterward one can investigate the individual cases. A n d finally, there's the question of style here, the question of, so to speak, humorous effect, and finally — everyone writes like that,—you must agree yourself. Ha! Ha!" (VIII, 225; 290). 38 Myshkin, too, has celebrated the importance of good motives and intentions, that is, the idea behind the presentation of it. His anecdotes have all been parabolic, even Christ-like attempts to present the truly "beneficial example." He knows too

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that the question of style can determine all and repeatedly laments his own lack of gesture, his inability to find words to express his idea. But just as the article twisted and mangled the details of Myshkin's biography, Keller's "theoretical" defense of his work distorts Myshkin's own cherished belief. Keller practices a dangerous form of a grotesque parable —one that aims for effect, but is really exemplifying not a truth but a lie. He claims to serve "the public good" through humor and beneficent example; he pleads for the right of author's license —all in the service of a cause based on a petty lie. He takes the serious concerns of art and renders them insane. Ippolit has another position on the ambiguity of truth and falsehood. Despite his fantasy of being able to spread the truth from his window through words, he fears the terrible power of persuasive words (rhetoric, art) when they are used in the service of a lie. "Yes, nature is ironical. . . why does she create her very best beings only to laugh at them later? She takes, then, the only being recognized on earth as perfect —she does this, and having shown him to mankind, she predestines him to say that which has caused so much blood to flow that had it flowed all at once, then mankind would have certainly choked! Oh, it's good I'm dying! I too might have uttered some kind of terrible lie; nature would have had it happen" (VIII, 247; 315). Ironically, soon after he says this Ippolit sits down to compose his own narrative, his "essential explanation." Part II closes with the prince still shrouded in mystery. The two inserted narratives which sought to define him rendered him more elusive than ever, though these narratives touched upon, both sincerely and satirically, the ideas most important to Myshkin. They each described ways of doing good, of devotion to a cause. Both narratives were delivered for their effect on an audience; both conveyed a portion of the truth in spite of conscious efforts at mockery and blatant lies. Together, they present an impressionistic, though partially accurate, portrait of the prince. The overall effect may be likened to that of a single figure being reflected in a series of distorting circus mirrors. Each framed distortion carries with it its own particular emphasis of some initially true characteristic of the subject. Words are lies, but somehow they are also, in spite of themselves, true. Lebedev, who associates truth with action and lies with

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words, expresses a problematic connection that runs through the novel. It is problematic because, taken together, the whole— composed of lies and truth —forms a truth of its own. "Well, here, to you, and only to you, will I tell the truth . . . both words and action and lies and truth —all are in me together, and all perfectly sincerely. Truth and action are my genuine repentance . . . but words and lies are in the infernal (and always present) thought, as if to catch people up, as if to win an advantage even through my tears of repentance" (VIII, 259; 330). Thus in Part II the question of the sincerity and falsity of narratives, of words, torments nearly all the main characters; their narratives are at once embarrassingly transparent and troublingly opaque. Even though he found it an unwieldy form for the novel, Dostoevsky's own preference for the first-person form of narration is well known. Narratives like Myshkin's parables, or the confessions related at Nastasia Filippovna's party, offered a way for the novelist to employ, however indirectly, that preferred narrative mode. But such inserted or interpolated first-person narratives necessarily assumed a dimension which they did not possess when Dostoevsky used them in the short story, for they are themselves reported by the narrator-chronicler of the novel, a being who is midway between a simple vehicle of omniscience and a character subject to the vagaries of his own limited vision. Moreover, the inserted narratives within the novels always serve a definite purpose, for they are each related at a certain time to a particular audience. However personal and private they may be, they always seek, in part, to use biographical experience, an anecdote, or another work of art to affect and influence others. Thus, each secondary narrator shares, finally, the tendentious concerns of the narrator, the implied author, and the novelist himself.

The Search for a Binding Idea: The Inserted Narrative, Parts III and IV

It is for words to serve and follow, and let Gascon get there if French cannot. I want the substance to stand out, and so to fill the imagination of the listener that he will have no m e m o r y of the words. — Michel de M o n t a i g n e , "Of the Education of Children"

A novel is a living thing, all one and continuous, like every other organism, and in proportion as it lives, it will be found, 1 think, that in each of the parts there is something of each of the other parts. — H e n r y James, "The A r t of Fiction"

I

n the second half of The Idiot the inserted narratives continue their preoccupation with the inability of words to express an idea. The situation has become more irrevocably confused as the main characters face problems that seem to have no appropriate solutions. Correspondingly, the inserted narratives are concerned with determining whether an idea that binds men together can exist in contemporary society. But given the problems inherent in expressing ideas directly, statements about the existence of this binding idea are almost impossible to make. As the effects of Myshkin's goodness become more problematic, he loses his skill as a manipulative, strategic narrator. Of the others, Lebedev, the interpreter of the Apocalypse, tries, grotesquely, to use the tools of reason to express his intuitions. But it is Ippolit, Myshkin's ideological opponent, who makes the most profound "statement" of many of Myshkin's own beliefs. All of the inserted narratives continue to suggest to the implied reader that each inserted narrative contains a different mixture of truth and lies, of sincerity and deception.

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In Parts I and II of the novel Myshkin's own narratives exerted a significant influence over the other characters; they provided a set of models for action. The other inserted narratives were often about him. Thus throughout the first parts of the novel Myshkin occupied the dominant position: narratives were usually either by or about him. (The confessions told at Nastasia Filippovna's nameday party offered the main exception to this pattern, but they did present an illustration of Myshkin's doctrine of "double thoughts." In confessing their worst deeds, the characters, in varying degrees, sought to exonerate themselves.) In the second half of the novel this unifying pattern breaks down. The incipient unease of the narrator starts to grow pronounced in Part III. The flow of the inserted narratives reflects both the narrator's altered stance and the pervasive, unrelieved mood of urgency and tension. Myshkin no longer provides narrative models nor himself functions as a subject of inserted narratives, and he can no longer offer a unified vision to the other characters. His good intentions are eclipsed by their problematic results; his innocence is overwhelmed by the rapid flow of events. Toward the end of the novel, the narratives of Lebedev and General Ivolgin abandon all pretense of verisimilitude. An apocalyptic vision reminiscent of Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" (where "the centre cannot hold" and "the ceremony of innocence is drowned") influences the structure of the inserted narratives. Myshkin himself has lost confidence in his ability as a narrator: 'You must take what I say even now as coming from a sick man . . . There are certain ideas, there are certain lofty ideas, about which I must not begin to talk, because I should certainly make everyone laugh . . . M y gestures are not appropriate; I have no sense of measure; my words don't correspond with my thoughts, but only degrade them" (VIII, 283-284; 362). Even as he says this, Myshkin painfully illustrates his own point, for Aglaya cries out at the very inappropriateness of his confession to such an audience: "Why do you say this here? . . W h y do you say that to theml T o them?" (VIII, 283; 362). With the reappearance of Ferdyshchenko, absent since Nastasia Filippovna's nameday party, at the prince's birthday party, the implied reader can expect to witness more confessional nar-

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ratives. Ippolit's "My Essential Explanation" follows in due course. His narrative is preceded, however, by Lebedev's strange "tale of long ago" in which he interprets the present in the light of his knowledge of the Apocalypse and his notions of medieval history. Lebedev narrates his tale, a kind of parody of an exemplum, to illustrate his point of view in an argument with Ganya and Ptitsyn. Evgeny Pavlovich and Lebedev dispute with the others over the meaning of the phrase derived from the Apocalypse, "the source [or fount] of life" (istochnik zhizni).1 Ganya and Ptitsyn argue that the "source of life" can be found in the universal necessity of living, in the law of self-preservation; Evgeny Pavlovich and Lebedev, on the other hand, call for a definition of the phrase "the source of life" that emphasizes its moral basis. (This is, of course, the essential Dostoevskyan argument.) For Evgeny Pavlovich and Lebedev the law of self-preservation is negated by the existence of its antithesis which is equally strong: the law of self-destruction. Lebedev adds, "there's already been Malthus, a friend of humanity. But a friend of humanity with shaky moral principles is a devourer of humanity" (VIII, 312; 396). Whereupon Lebedev abruptly begins his narrative: "The point lies in the following anecdote from past times, for I must tell an anecdote from past times" (VIII, 312; 396). Lebedev tells his anecdote in the style of a lawyer presenting evidence to the jury for his defendant, a twelfth-century Russian driven to cannibalism (antropofagiia) during the successive famines occurring throughout his life. The old man freely announced that "in the course of his long and miserable life he had killed and personally eaten, in the deepest secrecy, sixty monks and some children of the laity — about six, but not more, that is, unusually few compared with the number of clergy consumed by him. Adult laymen, it appeared, he never laid a hand on for that purpose" (VIII, 312; 396-397). Lebedev tells the tale of a real cannibal to underline the worse horror existing in a spiritual cannibal (Malthus). (The spectre of Malthus pervades Ippolit's confession as well, though in a different way.) Lebedev's attempts to be precise render his narrative absurd: the man had "personally" killed others, including children, "about six, but not more." His reasoning is also absurd, for he aims to construct his logical argument from facts that have no bearing on the case: his

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main concern is to contrast the consumption of clergy with the consumption of children and adult laymen. Lebedev places his criminal in a historical context. "A most magnificent and a most true thought! For he didn't even touch laymen, not a single layman in sixty clergy, and this is a terrible thought, an historical thought, a statistical thought, finally; and, from such facts history is reconstructed by those who know how; for it proves with arithmetical exactitude that the clergy lived at least sixty times more happily and more freely (privol'nee) than all the rest of humanity at that time. And, perhaps, they were at least sixty times plumper than the rest of humanity" (VIII, 314; 398). An absurd hodgepodge of gastronomy, nutrition, psychology, and morality is brought to bear in defense of the "client." Lebedev seeks to prove that the cannibal was a religious man of conscience who thought to reduce his sin by switching his diet from the clergy to the laity. Lebedev proves his client's motives were morally based, "for had it been only for gastronomic variety, the figure six would be too insignificant; why only six and not thirty? (I'm taking half, thirty of each.) [polovinu na polovinu]" (VIII, 314; 399). Moreover, nutritionally, the cannibal would be forced to eat more lay babies to equal the caloric value of one clergyman so that "while the sin, if it were lessened on one hand would, in the end, be increased, on the other hand, not by quality so much as by quantity" (VIII, 314-315; 399). As in the previous narratives (except for Myshkin's), Lebedev's manner of narration belies the content of his tale. He uses all the trappings of logic, arithmetic, rationality, and scientific terminology, albeit in a ridiculous way, to convey the opposite — the miraculous, spontaneous force of a binding idea, the idea that drove the cannibal to make his free confession. At the same time the implied reader suspects that Lebedev is mimicking the defense at the Zhemarin trial, in which a young man had been accused of murdering six people. The young man's lawyer also used psychological and environmental arguments to defend his client. (This trial had already been mentioned several times by other characters, such as Myshkin, Doktorenko, Evgeny Pavlovich.) In his own story Lebedev has used a rational, environmental argument to serve the opposite purpose — to illustrate his own assumption that confession and consciousness of sin spring freely from men even when their horri-

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fying environment would seemingly justify their crimes. Evgeny Pavlovich reacts to Lebedev as a stylist; while describing Lebedev as a madman he acknowledges, "I expect a glorious parody" (VIII, 314; 398). Lebedev's mad argument leads directly back to the definition of the "sources of life." In this respect the structure of his narrative resembles Myshkin's earlier anecdotes — all are exempla discussing general questions which suddenly, surprisingly, return to the original question existing outside the narrative and in the present world of the novel. Both Myshkin and Lebedev seek to restore man's consciousness of and belief in a general unifying idea through the medium of parabolic narrative. Lebedev, of course, simultaneously revels in the dualities of his own nature and exuberantly denies the existence of a binding idea ( s v i a z u i u shchaia mysl) in modern times. For Lebedev, the cannibal's free confession of his sin reflected the spirit of his time —a time, unlike the present age, in which a binding idea did function as the universal "source of life:" "Here is the solution! . . . There must be, there must have been an idea ( m y s l ' ) stronger than all the calamities, the crop failures, the tortures, plague, leprosy, and stronger than all that hell, which mankind could not have endured without that idea binding and guiding their hearts and making fruitful the sources of life!" (VIII, 315; 399). Ultimately Lebedev pleads a case for the medieval cannibal's century versus the nineteenth century. Although the argument refutes, however crazily, the idea that the plea of a terrible environment can be used as evidence to justify a crime, ironically the concluding message is the celebration of an environment — the environment of the Middle Ages — where a binding idea could survive. Lebedev insists that his peculiar historical anecdote is the "unvarnished truth"; he asserts the fantastic quality of reality, "let me observe that almost any reality, though it may have its own immutable laws, is almost always improbable and implausible. In fact, sometimes, the more real it is the more improbable" (VIII, 313; 397). (Dostoevsky, of course, is well known to have shared this belief [IX, 449].) Only the prince takes Lebedev's words completely seriously, though later in the novel Aglaya shows that she too has the same awareness of the often striking improbability of reality. She attempts to use her understanding of the bizarreness of real-

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ity to make her own lies seem more plausible — to make a false narrative seem true. "Do you know why I lied just now? . . . Because when you are lying, if you skillfully put in something not quite ordinary, something eccentric, well, you know, something that very rarely or never happens, then the lie becomes much more probable. I have noticed this. Only in my case it came out foolishly, because I didn't know how to" (VIII, 360; 451). Preposterous lies masquerade as truth to make a less flamboyant lie seem more plausible. The initial theme of the impossibility of expressing an idea directly in words continues to fragment into endless variations throughout the second half of the novel, and the characters comment repeatedly on the inevitable distortions of ideas and on the air of fantasy that prevails over all. Lebedev's anecdote and the subsequent inserted narratives add to the atmosphere of fantasy and distortion that culminates in the final climax and in the collapse of all the major characters. Myshkin, meanwhile, disappears as a narrator and becomes, more often, a member of the audience. Like Pushkin's poor knight, he grows more silent. Near the end of the novel, at the Epanchins' soiree, when he does try to resume his narrative role and state directly his ideas about what should bind men together, he fails miserably. Ippolit's confession follows Lebedev's anecdote as the next entertainment at Myshkin's birthday party. Like the narratives at Nastasia Filippovna's party, this one consciously attempts to be literary; it draws upon numerous other works for inspiration. But like Lebedev's medieval tale, it expresses a searing, apocalyptic consciousness of a terrible void in the life of nineteenth-century Russia. Lebedev and Ippolit, opposites in so many respects, share a vision of despair at the lack of a "binding idea" in contemporary Russia. Lebedev interprets the present through his knowledge of the Apocalypse and Ippolit through his knowledge of the principles of reason, but both share an obsession with trying to tell the truth. Lebedev concluded that, "everything has grown soft; everything has rotted and everyone has rotted" (VIII, 315; 400). 2 Ippolit is overwhelmed by his perception of corruption. He decides to kill himself from "repulsion." "It is impossible to go on living, to remain in a life which assumes forms so strange and

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offensive to me . . . I haven't the strength to submit to the dark force which assumes the form of a tarantula" (VIII, 341; 430). Though they choose different paths, both Lebedev and Ippolit wish to assert man's freedom. Lebedev's cannibal confesses his sin freely despite the possible rationalizations he could have made for it and despite his certainty of not being caught. Ippolit chooses suicide as a way of asserting his freedom from the laws of nature, though he ignores Lebedev's and Evgeny Pavlovich's equation of the laws of self-preservation and of self-destruction. Ippolit's confession is the third document to be read in The Idiot and the first to be presented by its own author. Harmony prevails among its form, content, and manner of delivery. The spontaneous form of Ippolit's statement, in which he allows himself a free reign of association, reflects his overall intention of describing how he came to have his "last conviction" that he must commit suicide. Ippolit's manner of delivery, an agitated reading where his moods range from unveiled anguish to cynicism to cool self-observation, is appropriate to the content and form of his statement. The essential falsity of this narrative then, unlike the previous inserted narratives, does not lie in some clash among its elements. Instead, Ippolit's confession is a prelude to an unperformed act, to a failed suicide. The statement must ultimately stand as a false document because it attests to a deed uncommitted. Despite its deviation from the pattern, the content of Ippolit's statement encapsulates and presents variations on the central themes of the novel. Ippolit shares Myshkin's preoccupation with assessing the quality of time, with weighing the value of hallucinatory experience, with understanding how good can be enacted in the world, with the question of charity, with the pain of insoluble banishment from "the feast of life," with the image of corrupted beauty in the world, with truth, and with the expression of truth. Ippolit frames his confession with bitter observations on time. He feels himself to be under a "death sentence"; thus the passage of time takes on, for him, an insistent horror. He borrows lines from the Apocalypse; he uses time imagery both to portray his self-predestined fate and to produce a theatrical effect. He wakes up after Lebedev has finished his anecdote and asks, "What time is it? But, never mind, it's not necessary; I

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k n o w what time it is. T h e hour has arrived. Now the hour is at hand [teper' samoe vremia]" (VIII, 318; 403). When the prince suggests that Ippolit read his article tomorrow, he answers by paraphrasing the Apocalypse, " T o m o r r o w 'there will be no more time' . . . However, don't worry IH read it through in forty minutes, well —in an hour" (VIII, 318; 404). 3 He veers from eternal time to everyday time, from wondering about the hour of the day to knowing, metaphorically (though erroneously), that his "hour is at hand." Ippolit has made it the time, in every sense of the word, to read his confession; he has adorned his confession with all the trappings of high drama. Ippolit entitles his confession " M y Necessary Explanation" ("Moe

neobkhodimoe

obiasnenie")

a n d g i v e s it t h e

epigraph,

"Apres moi le deluge!" His choice signals to the reader that Ippolit will attempt to cut himself off from responsibility to his fellow man. With his epigraph he halfheartedly attempts to deny the significance of time after his death. The theme of time runs through Ippolit's entire statement. Ippolit portrays himself as a man who has only two weeks to live, and because of the short time remaining to him, decides to tell the truth. "However, I wrote in vain the words 'the final and solemn truth'; even without that it's not worth telling lies for two weeks, because it's not worth living for two weeks; that is the very best proof that I will write only the truth" (VIII, 322; 408). Yet in the subsequent paragraphs, in a pattern which continues throughout his statement, Ippolit questions his own proposition and even begins to wonder if two weeks is all the time he has left. 4

When Ippolit calls himself a man condemned to death, the implied reader remembers Myshkin's parable about such a man. Both Ippolit and the prisoner in Myshkin's story feel that those who are alive waste life's riches wantonly. But Ippolit does not share the other condemned man's sense that the time remaining to him, however short, is composed of separate, long, enduring moments to be savored one by one. Instead Ippolit is racked by bitterness; for him, the two weeks (or month) remaining to him are an insult, a time in which he can accomplish nothing. 5 In Pavlovsk, when he and his crew had confronted the prince, Ippolit became convinced that the short period of time left to him made life worthless. Ironically, at the same moment when he experienced this "final conviction" Ippolit had the idea of

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making an effort to live. His ambivalence thus contained two separate, mutually exclusive conceptions of time: that time was worthless and that time was valuable. His double attitude toward time made him both indifferent to and curious about the world. He repeats the phrase "now it is all the same [teper' vse ravno ]" (VIII, 326-327; 412-413): the lack of time left to live absolves him from all responsibility, yet he "became so interested in any rumors, that, it seems, I became a gossip" (VIII, 326; 412). Later in the confession (although earlier in the actual chronology of events related by Ippolit), he remarks cynically to Bakhmutov that in choosing a good deed to do, he would, for lack of time, be forced to choose one within his means. "You do agree that this is an amusing idea (mx/sO?" (VIII, 336; 425) The desperation evoked by the short amount of time remaining him drives Ippolit into an even deeper cynicism; he realizes that he could commit any crime and the courts would have no way of punishing him (VIII, 342; 431). Ippolit ridicules the theme sounded by Myshkin, Lebedev, and Evgeny Pavlovich that, for one reason or another, the courts cannot adequately punish a criminal. Like Lebedev, he uses courtroom terminology; he recognizes that he shall be judged when he is a "deaf and dumb defendant" (VIII, 342; 431-432). Ippolit presents his c a s e - h i s justification of his right to commit suicide —in terms of time, "Here, first of all is a strange idea: who, in the name of what right, in the name of what motive, would take it into his head to question my right to these two or three weeks of my term? . . . Can it be in fact that anyone will be offended that I don't want to wait for two weeks?" (VIII, 342-344; 432-433). Ippolit does admit the existence of an afterlife but feels that both earthly law and divine law should permit his suicide. Although he claims a belief in Providence, his quarrel is that man can understand neither Providence nor its laws. He is not an atheist, but like Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov, he demands to be given answers and reasons. He believes but has no faith. When Myshkin related his anecdote about the atheist who was not really talking about atheism, he was perhaps trying to portray a character not unlike Ippolit. By failing to acknowledge that man's law must be perceived as a reflection of God's law in

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order to exert any force, Ippolit forces the reader to link his selfdefense with the argument of the lawyer defending the Zhemarin murderer. Both discuss murder only in terms of temporal law. Ippolit protests against the short time remaining him by attempting to make that time still shorter. He concludes his statement b y announcing that suicide is the only act he has time to complete with his own free will. Yet even as he grandly renounces worldly time, he is, touchingly, still its slave: he has carefully timed his statement so that it should end with the rising of the sun. (He alludes to Lebedev's apocalyptic interpretations about the source or fount of life by calling the sun the source of power and of life.) Ippolit's narrative has disclosed that he and Myshkin share the same preoccupation with time. But for Ippolit certain m o ments cannot be worth "all of life"; he desires only to experience the flow of time in its everyday sense, in terms of days, months, and weeks; he cares nothing for Myshkin's heightened moments. He presents an eloquent challenge to Myshkin's notions of time and his words, because they are spoken by a dying man, carry weight. Perhaps in the end Myshkin's apotheosis of the moment remains the luxurious, titillating notion of a man w h o need not yet face the fact of death. T h e content of Ippolit's narrative inverts other important ideas and concerns of Myshkin. Both Myshkin and Ippolit juxtapose the laws and the overpowering force of nature to faith and beauty. Ippolit, overcome by repulsion at the ugliness and ever-present mortality in nature abandons even reason in formulating his resolution to die. Myshkin too battles with apparitions, like Ippolit's tarantula, both metaphoric and real. (The hallucinations of the two men are inspired by the demonic Rogozhin.) But he makes the opposite choice; he struggles to disseminate his visions of faith and beauty even in the face of encroaching idiocy, which is a spiritual death in life. Both men feel excluded from "the feast of life", from participating in what beauty and joy the world of nature does have to offer. Ippolit and Myshkin are the two characters seriously concerned with the question of how good deeds can be enacted in the world. Ironically, except for Myshkin's tale of the peasant Marie, Ippolit's narrative about the doctor and his family provides the only instance in the novel of a good deed carried out

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from start to finish. (While already suffering from acute consumption, Ippolit had returned a lost wallet to a man who was in obvious financial distress. Upon learning the details of the man's case, he proceeded to help him and in the end effectively saved the doctor and his family from certain ruin.) Both deeds occurred before the events of the novel began and appear in the novel as inserted narratives. Ippolit praises individual charity but tries to reduce it to a "law of nature." "There will always be individual good because it is a need of personality, — a living need for the direct influence by one personality on another" (VIII, 325; 423). It is to Ippolit, the sympathetic "enemy," that Dostoevsky gives his precious formulation of the miraculous means by which the seeds of good acts spread through the world: H o w do you know, Bakhmutov, what significance this communion of one's personality with another will have in the latter's fate? Here, indeed, is a whole life with an infinity of ramifications which are hidden from us . . . In sowing your seed, in sowing your "charity," your good deed in whatever form, you give away part of your personality and you receive into yourself part of another; you are mutually communing with one another; . . . and you will be rewarded with knowledge, with unexpected discoveries. Without fail you will come at last to look on your activity as on a science; this science will take hold of your whole life and can fill your whole life. On the other hand, all your ideas, all the seeds sown by you and maybe already forgotten by you, will take root and grow; the one who received from you will give to another. And how will you know what part you will have in the future resolution of the fate of humanity? If this knowledge and a whole life of this work raises you at last so that you are in a condition to sow a colossal seed, to bequeath the world a colossal idea, then . . . And so on. I talked a lot at that time. (VIII, 336; 424) 6

Here, the despairing Ippolit unconsciously offers an optimistic answer to Lebedev's anecdote. For him the "source of life" has not been completely polluted; there does remain a binding idea —a possibility of mutual communion — since people, in spite of themselves, pass on the joy and radiance emanating from good deeds. Ippolit has expressed in words the idea of which Myshkin has tried to make his life an example. But in his formulation Ippolit hopes to adorn his idea with all the para-

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phernalia of rationality. He tries, as it were, to make a "law of seed sowing." He calls this activity a "science." And as he goes on, he gradually corrupts the purity and beauty of his own idea: the seed of charity, of a good deed, swells into a "colossal seed" (gromadnoe semia), and a "colossal idea" ( g r o m a d n a i a my si). Ippolit becomes like the unoriginal men described by the narrator; he possesses the typical yearning to bequeath the world a great and new idea. He has passed, imperceptibly, from duplicating Myshkin's heroic intention to echoing the laments of Ganya and to reflecting the truths of the narrator's own digressions about the anguish of unoriginal men. Nevertheless, if the reader strips these layers of banality from Ippolit's pronouncements, he rediscovers the seed of the "binding idea" in all its irrational glory. Ippolit's narrative has directly, although inadvertently, described the means by which Myshkin hopes to enact good. In this passage the implied author has expressed his own idea about how good deeds can be enacted in the world. A husk of narrators' voices protects the kernel of the implied author's voice: 7 the narrator has transcribed Ippolit's narration; Ippolit retells and disparages an old idea of his own which he had once narrated to Bakhmutov. This is not Dostoevsky the polemicist strategically placing good arguments in the mouth of his straw man; this is Dostoevsky the novelist witnessing, in spite of himself, in his own fiction, the very miracle about which he is trying to write. The idea has exerted its own narrative force and found its own natural form. The indestructible, eternal seed of goodness can be found anywhere, even in the heart of the man who most seeks to deny or to separate himself from it. And so it is. Tragically, in the novel the sowing of good does not work, except perhaps for the reader. For the seeds that Myshkin so lovingly tries to sow do not take root in Aglaya, Nastasia Filippovna, or Rogozhin. He manages only to precipitate or to hasten the ruin of those he loves best. Even within Ippolit's narrative we see that the seed imagery can serve as a metaphor for the working out of evil as well as of good. On the very night that he talks so rapturously to Bakhmutov about the sowing of seeds of charity and goodness, Ippolit acknowledges that, "on that night were sown the seeds of my last conviction'" (VIII, 337; 425).

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The good done to the doctor is counterbalanced by the pain Ippolit causes his neighbor Surikov, whose child has died of cold and hunger. In seeking to spread his own despair, Ippolit says that Surikov "has only himself to blame." Ippolit tries to remind other characters of their own guilt, but in spite of his malicious intent, or perhaps because of it, he infuses others — even Surikov —with a sense of their own dignity. Myshkin, on the other hand, in trying to preach forgiveness often makes the other characters feel guiltier than ever. (Rogozhin and Nastasia, especially, cannot accept the burden of Myshkin's forgiveness.) Ippolit's narrative reveals a further bond with Myshkin in his response to Rogozhin's copy of the Holbein painting that displays the dead Christ with graphic detail. Ippolit's response to the painting brings together the themes of time, of the laws of nature versus faith, and of the mechanism whereby good and evil are spread through the world. The ravages of physical death on Christ's body — the result of six hours of agony on the cross —negate for Ippolit the possibility of Christ's eternal resurrection. The laws of nature have gained domination over beauty and over Christ's divinity itself. Ippolit describes the inevitable response to this sight: "Here unwillingly comes the understanding that if death is so terrible and the laws of nature are so powerful, then how can one overcome them? How can one overcome them when even He did not vanquish them?" (VIII, 339; 428). For Ippolit, nature has defeated beauty and faith: "Upon looking at that picture, nature appears in the form of some kind of huge, implacable and dumb animal, or, to be more accurate, much more accurate, although it is strange — in the form of some colossal machine of the newest design which unconsciously has seized, crushed, and swallowed up, deafly and unfeelingly, a great and priceless being — a being who is alone worth all of nature and all its laws, all the earth — an earth perhaps created solely for the appearance of that being!" (VIII, 339; 428). Myshkin and Ippolit, though ideological opponents, have both conceived similar images of a nature which has been bereft of beauty; they have shared a vision of a reality that can crush faith. Myshkin can maintain his faith, his belief in the possible resurrection of beauty even in the face of such a painting, but Ippolit cannot. The Holbein painting of the dead Christ sows an

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evil seed in him, "with this picture it is as if this understanding of a dark, insolent and mindlessly eternal force, to which everything is subject, is expressed exactly, and it conveys this to you involuntarily [nevol'no]" (VIII, 339; 428). Ippolit believes the evil idea imparted by the painting is so strong that Christ might perhaps have refused to mount the cross if he had seen it. "This question also involuntarily comes to mind when you look at the painting" (VIII, 339; 428). Ippolit gives the reader a complete and devastating metaphor for the portrayal of the corruption of beauty and for the lack of spiritual strength, because all these thoughts have come to him precisely while gazing on the representation of Christ's face, the supposed source of that beauty and strength. The dumb being of nature appears on the very countenance of Christ. Although the prince and Ippolit value beauty equally, the prince is able to perceive it while Ippolit is harassed by its absence, and the perception of this absence or ugliness of form is what drives him toward death. Ippolit, like the prince, is governed by powerful impressions that may occur in a single moment. Myshkin, however, experiences moments of harmony, while Ippolit experiences terrible moments of wrenching disharmony. The painting, then, is an example of a dangerous art, which is unlike the other paintings and portraits in the novel. These, while conveying suffering, always also contained some grains of spiritual beauty. One must ask whether the tableau at the end of the novel in which the reader is presented with the eerie composition of the idiot Myshkin and the mad Rogozhin beside the dead Nastasia Filippovna is another example of this kind of dangerous art in which the laws of nature have defeated the good and the beautiful. The tableau asks pictorially the question that the implied author cannot express in words. The form of Ippolit's narrative embodies his intention of telling the truth: it is an uncorrected manuscript written the day and night before its actual presentation. As Ippolit presents his narration, he is also rereading it for the first time. His one formal rule of composition has been not to correct a single line, even when he notices that he contradicts himself repeatedly (VIII, 322; 408). Ippolit states outright what the other inserted narratives have expressed indirectly through their various inadequacies; "But, however, I add, that in any brilliant or new

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human thought, or simply even in any serious human thought, born in anyone's head, there is something which always remains, which it is impossible in any way to communicate to other people, even though you were to write whole tomes and explain your thought for thirty-five years; always something will remain, which will not be coaxed out of your skull for anything and which will remain with you forever; you will even die with it, not having communicated to anyone, perhaps, the most essential part of your idea" (VIII, 328; 414). Thus Ippolit s narrative contains the fullest verbal expression of two of Myshkin's most essential beliefs: the belief in the effectiveness of good deeds (the seed imagery passage) and the belief that words, in the end, fail to express the idea behind them. Ippolit never loses sight of his audience; he punctuates his frequent addresses to them with pauses of self-criticism, which in turn modulate into anger at his listeners, "Oh, do you suppose that I don't know how I have humiliated myself . . . with my 'Explanation?' . . . But let them laugh and say that these are all fairy tales!" (VIII, 327; 413). Even before he begins to read Ippolit displays a shrewdness about how to manipulate his audience which rivals the skill of the narrator. He taunts his rowdy listeners with his mysterious looking document and acknowledges that if he hadn't sealed the envelope there would be no effect: "Ha, ha! That's what it means —a mystery. To break the seal or not, gentlemen?" (VIII, 318; 404). The narrator and Ippolit often seem to share a common consciousness — not just of how best to narrate and to intrigue their audience. Here the narrator says of Ippolit, "that he could not have turned paler than if a death sentence had been read to him" (VIII, 319; 405): later Ippolit repeatedly describes himself as a man under sentence of death. Or, at the end of Ippolit's statement, the narrator disgresses on the hysterical reactions of a nervous man, "He throws himself on people, having at the same time an unclear but firm goal of flinging himself down from a belfry a minute later and by this to resolve all the bewilderments, if such there turn out to be" (VIII, 345; 434). Several pages later Ippolit asks the prince if he had ever jumped off a belfry. These correspondences and shared perceptions between the narrator and Ippolit are noteworthy because it is Ippolit who echoes the narrator's turns of phrase and not vice versa. It

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is standard practice for any narrator to appropriate key phrases of his character in subsequent descriptions of that character. But it is unusual (except perhaps, in the work of Gogol) for a character to echo, almost verbatim, the sentiments expressed b y a narrator of w h o m the character is supposedly unaware. Ippolit's narrative addresses several audiences —first and most important, Ippolit himself as both critic and reader. Ippolit the author first addresses Ippolit the reader, "I must hurry and finish all this 'Explanation' without fail before tomorrow. T h a t means I will not have time to reread and to correct; I will reread it tomorrow when I shall read to the prince and to two or three witnesses w h o m I expect to find at his house. Since there will not be a single word of falsehood here, but only the truth, the final and solemn truth, then I am curious beforehand to k n o w what impression it will produce on me at that hour and at that very moment when I begin to reread it" (VIII, 322; 407-408). T h e effect of his reading on the other members of his audience rebounds back upon him. T h e author communicates his thoughts to the listeners, but in this case their reaction to the narrative conveys an equally important message back to the author: "I have been told positively that consumptives in the last stage sometimes go mad for a time. Check this tomorrow at the reading by the effect on the listeners. Solve this question without fail with the fullest accuracy; otherwise it will be impossible to undertake anything" (VIII, 322; 408). Their response will determine for him the question of his own sanity. Yet a few moments later Ippolit is embarrassed by his own narrative; he breaks off his reading and apologizes for writing too much that is personal. Ippolit the reader (in the sense of the performer) and critic is as indecisive as Ippolit the author; he is also equally belligerent. "I'm not forcing anyone to listen" (VIII, 325; 411). 8 Before Ippolit begins to read, he disparages the "stupid epigraph" appended to the title. He warns the others that everything that follows may be stupid nonsense. A moment earlier he had lured his audience with the device of the portentous seal. N o w he assures everyone that his manuscript contains nothing mysterious or forbidden. Ippolit the author veered from one idea to its opposite during the course of his confession. Here Ippolit the critic does the same. As the narrative continues, Ippolit's conception of his au-

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dience changes. He addresses his statement less to himself or to the immediate circle and more to a general audience to be reached through a single man. He bequeaths a message to all his readers via this single reader who will supposedly pass on his manuscript, "Let him into whose hands my 'Explanation' falls and who has the patience to read it through, let him take me for a madman or even for a gymnasium student, but most certainly for a man condemned to death to whom, naturally, it has seemed that all people, except for him, have not valued life enough . . . And what then? I announce that my reader is mistaken and that my conviction is completely independent from my death sentence" (VIII, 327; 414). The implied reader realizes that Ippolit has here bequeathed a false message to his audience; the bulk of Ippolit's "Explanation" demonstrates that his last conviction has arisen solely because of his "death sentence." Most of all he want his audience to remember him as an original man: "I suspect that everything that I'm saying now so resembles the most general phrases that they will certainly take me for a pupil of the lowest form, presenting his composition on 'The Sunrise'; or they will say, perhaps, that I want to express something, but with all my wishing to I was not able to . . . 'develop my idea' " (VIII, 327; 414). Ippolit attempts a general statement about man's condition; he may delude himself as his own reader. But he cannot delude the rest of his audience upon whom the urgency of encroaching death exerts less force. Like Myshkin he is forced to admit the impossibility of directly expressing his "idea." Ippolit obsessively refuses to give his audience a single thread to hold on to. He tells his audience to interpret his words one way, and in the next sentence, insists that they not do so: "To me, of course, everything will be all the same [vse ravno], but now (and perhaps only in this moment) I wish that those who will judge my deed will see clearly out of what a logical chain of deductions my 'last conviction' has emerged. Now I have just written above that the final decision . . . was produced in me not from logical deduction, but from some kind of strange shock, from a certain strange circumstance, perhaps quite unconnected with the course of the affair" (VIII, 337; 425). Ippolit is the proponent of reason who rejects God and his world because they will not provide him with reasons. He demands that

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his listeners use their own faculties of reason but also abandon them and submit to his whim. He creates, through narrative, a replica of his own perception of Providence. Despite his belief in reason, he must admit that responses are always illogical and irrational. His analysis of Rogozhin's painting also illustrates Ippolit's unusual notion about who is the most significant member of the audience for a work of art. Just as Ippolit is the most important member of the audience at his own reading, for him Christ's own response to the painting of Him would have been the crucial one. Ippolit, more than any character in the novel, submits totally to the vicarious experience engendered by a work of art. In this sense he is the reader par excellence. Ippolit postulates other audiences for his narrative: the police, people interested in psychology, and anyone else who cares to read his manuscript. Typically, in the next breath he seeks to narrow the wide audience he has just allowed, "I would not wish, however, that this manuscript be given to the public. I request the prince to keep a copy for himself and to give another copy to Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchin. Such is my will" (VIII, 342; 431). Then, two paragraphs later he reconstitutes his audience to consist of the world at large; he plans to leave his manuscript that it may speak to all those who would judge him after he has died. Ippolit's statement represents the ony serious attempt at confession that occurs in this novel, yet he is most careful to disassociate himself from any confessional motivations. He asserts that his statement is a free reply that contains within it no motive of self-justification (VIII, 342; 432). Like Lebedev's cannibal, he confesses freely. Ippolit, who may be the most acute reader in the novel, seeks also to be its shrewdest narrator. He tries to make himself invulnerable to the charges that he has used his confession to inspire sentimental feelings and to make himself seem better in the eyes of his audience, even if that has been his intent. When Ippolit finishes his "Explanation" both he and his audience are in a state of extreme indignation. W e too have been members of the audience; the implied reader may find himself resenting Myshkin's later response to the narrative, even though Myshkin, b y declaring to Aglaya that Ippolit wanted to meet

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with people one last time to win their respect and love, has described the underlying purpose of Ippolit's narrative precisely. Once again Aglaya's response may mirror that of the implied reader; she accuses the prince of judging Ippolit with truth but without tenderness (VIII, 354; 445). Ippolit himself, in typical fashion, apologizes to his audience and withdraws that apology in the same sentence, "I understand, gentlemen . . . that I may merit your personal resentment, and I'm sorry that I have tormented you with this delirium [he pointed to the manuscript], or rather, I'm sorry that I haven't completely tormented . . . [he smiled stupidly], tormented . . . Evgeny Pavlovich . . . were you tormented or not?" (VIII, 345; 435) As the others taunt Ippolit, who begins to regret having read his statement, Evgeny Pavlovich offers him a solution. Just as he had earlier expected a "glorious parody" from Lebedev, he now advises Ippolit to, as it were, transform his sincere confession into a parody: to refrain from shooting himself in order to spite his audience. The audience waits avidly for the climax of the open-ended statement. Unlike the other inserted narratives, Ippolit's explanation is not an anecdote about some past occurrence but extends directly into the world of the novel. By attempting suicide and failing, Ippolit undermines the intent of his article; the final syllable of Ippolit's narrative should have been spoken by the pistol. But if he had followed Evgeny Pavlovich's suggestion, Ippolit would have altered the form of his entire confession and thus changed the content as well. Ippolit, like the other characters, fails in the end to express his idea completely. Nevertheless, as in the other inserted narratives, the idea emerges in spite of itself. Ippolit has sown his seed; his failure to commit suicide functions as a tragic footnote to the theme sounded in his statement about the impossibility of achieving complete self-expression. Ippolit's bungled suicide complements the other failed acts in this novel: the failed abduction of Nastasia Filippovna, the failed murder of Myshkin, Myshkin's failed gestures of charity and forgiveness, the failed engagements of Alexandra, Aglaya, and Nastasia, and their failed marriages. All these incomplete events have more impact on the world of the novel and on the reader than they would have had had they been successful.

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Myshkin's failed gestures prove his goodness nevertheless; Rogozhin's failed murder still conveys the full range of his passion; the failed marriages between Aglaya and Myshkin or between Nastasia and Myshkin underscore more powerfully the love existing there. Even the narrator's own failures, his tendency to desert his hero and to disclaim knowledge about events, perhaps serve in the end to affect the reader more powerfully than a uniformly sympathetic and consistent narrator could have done. After Ippolit's confession the sheer weight of the climaxes in the plot and the narrator's increasing loquaciousness take over most of the space of the novel; there are few inserted narratives. Nastasia Filippovna's letters to Aglaya do appear in fragmented form; the implied reader watches Myshkin himself become a reader. In the course of reading them Myshkin discovers that he had already known, in a nightmarish way, that these letters existed. His reading brings him nearly to delirium, "it even seemed to him that he had already read all this a long, long time ago" (VIII, 378; 472). Like all narration in this novel, except perhaps Myshkin's narratives, Nastasia's letters blend truth and lies. Her search for a binding idea takes the form of a tortured search for a model, for someone perfect before whom she can abase herself. She writes to Aglaya, "you are for me —perfection! . . . though I don't judge you; I haven't arrived at the notion that you are perfection through reason; I have come to believe it. But there is in me even a sin before you: I love you. One must not love perfection . . . Although love equalizes people, don't worry, I have not made myself your equal, even in my most secret thoughts" (VIII, 379; 472). Nastasia's declaration of love is also a declaration of hatred both of herself and of Aglaya. Rene Girard's formulation of triangular desire provides a way of analyzing Nastasia's letters. In his scheme a character desires an object, but in this desire the character is motivated by an even greater desire: to imitate his mediator or model. The mediator determines the objects desired by the character. (Don Quixote's mediator is Amadis of Gaul, a nearly perfect knighterrant; his object is to live a chivalric existence. Madame Bovary's mediators are the romantic heroines about whom she read in pulp fiction.) In Dostoevsky's novels the model or

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mediator comes into the world of the novel; for most of the characters in The Idiot, Myshkin is the mediator. The tragic conflicts arise because he is simultaneously a concrete object of desire, a figure to be imitated (that is, a mediator or model), a figure himself subject to desire, and a figure with his own mediator —fortunately out of the immediate environment of the novel —Christ. In Nastasia's letters several triangles of desire operate. Aglaya is both Nastasia's mediator and her rival in real life. As Girard observes, "true jealousy . . . always contains an element of fascination with the insolent rival." 9 At the same time Myshkin is another mediator for Nastasia; she wishes to be like him. Myshkin, the mediator for both women, is also the object of their desire. That is, both women, inspired by his presence, seek to imitate his goodness; both women also desire to have sole possession of him. 10 Nastasia's letters give the reader his only chance to hear her voice directly for any length of time. For the most part, throughout the novel the reader must construct his own image of Nastasia from bits of conversation by and about her, from rumors, and from his observation of the passion she has invoked in others. Her letters give the reader more clues to her personality. More important, they reveal Nastasia's own consciousness of the intricate triangles of desire which torment the main characters. Inserted narratives play a minor role in the last part of The Idiot. General Ivolgin's preposterous tale of having been a page of Napoleon represents his last desperate attempt to recover fame and dignity. Though the general's fantasies have reached a wild pitch, his narrative resembles in kind his earlier anecdotes. Ivolgin's false narratives have all embodied a painful truth: the general seeks to present himself as a dignified and honorable man, but his only method for doing so involves him in an absurd web of self-incriminating lies. Yet, as he himself observes to Myshkin while accusing Lebedev of lying about having had his leg blown off by a French soldier, "An innocent lie for the sake of a cheerful laugh, even though crude, does not offend the human heart. Some people will even lie, if you will, merely out of friendship in order to give satisfaction to the listener" (VIII, 411; 513). Such are Ivolgin's lies, lies of friendship and of a

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desire to please. He takes the notion that ideas must be expressed indirectly to the extreme: he uses lies to make a beneficial point. (Lebedev's gigantic lies to Ivolgin, on the other hand, sought to convey disrespect and mockery.) Ivolgin's lies parody the implied author's serious notion of fantastic reality. Ivolgin describes his fictitious role as Napoleon's page as one of those instances where, "Truth often seems impossible . . . if a novelist got to work on this affair, he would weave fables and improbabilities" (VIII, 412; 515). (The prince agrees, citing for support the example of the Zhemarin murder: if an author had invented it, Myshkin asserts, critics would have insisted on its improbability, but because it appeared in the newspaper everyone easily accepts this strange story as real.) Ivolgin's observation is true, but he applies it to his own mad lies; he uses his understanding of the fantastic nature of reality to concoct a narrative of transparent lies. Of special note, however, is the final biography of Myshkin narrated to him by Ivan Petrovich, the elderly Anglophile at the Epanchins' soiree. In a sense the wheel has come full circle here; in Part I Myshkin responded with almost ingenuous warmth to Lebedev and Ivolgin when they sought to supply him with a past. Here the prince once again responds overeagerly; he listens with "delight and emotion" and replies with an "extraordinary warmth"; his response leads him directly into his tragic tirade against Roman Catholicism, atheism, and the mission of the Russian aristocracy. The result, of course, is the scandalous scene in which Myshkin breaks the Chinese vase and has his second epileptic fit. The terrible irony of Myshkin's tirade is that he confesses, clumsily and with inappropriate words and gestures, his most cherished beliefs to a false audience, an audience whose value he has misread in his over-ready desire to see goodness and beauty. Myshkin's error in judgment completes the downward spiral of the inserted narratives throughout the novel. His hopeful parables, which gave the other characters models for possible actions, and his profound exempla which reflected on various human problems, reaped no fruit in the subsequent action of the novel. No other character was able to duplicate, either in action or narrative, Myshkin's sincerity. Toward the end of the novel Myshkin, still a good hero but exhausted and drained, has lost

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his ability to persuade through highly organized, strategic narrative. By the very end he has completely lost the faculty of speech. All that remains to him are sincerity and good will, but for a narrator .hese virtures are not enough.

Conclusion

Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity . . . With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; . . . Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heartbeats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognisable deed. — George Eliot, Prelude to

Middlemarch

W e shall never be again as we were. — Kate Croy in The Wings of the Dove.

Henry James

ostoevsky, the shameless manipulator of his readers, the relentless meddler in disclosure and effect, in the end left the last word to his readers. 1 His machinations stop short of final pronouncements; he allows the reader the dignity of making his own decision about what has occurred. Dostoevsky attributed as strong a role to the reading public as he did to the writer in shaping a definition of good art; he described the sympathy that a poet aroused in his audience as the "measuring rod" for determining what is good in art and what is inappropriate to it. But Dostoevsky's tacit trust in his reader's judgment did not prevent him from assuming a didactic role: he continually tested his readers, forcing them to realize their own moral and spiritual inadequacies. The close reading of The Idiot which has filled

D

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Idiot

these pages has sought to describe the unrelenting and varied paces through which Dostoevsky put his reader. To capture the reader and make him his own Dostoevsky used a device of having two readers coexist within the real one. This penchant for creating "divided selves" was hardly limited to the characters and readers he created, for Dostoevsky even fragmented the author himself into three parts: the poet who had the "idea" for a work, the artist who executed that idea, and the entertainer who insured that the idea and its artistic execution would immediately tantalize the audience. Of course Dostoevsky's delineation of these three created selves within the author implies a notion about the phenomenology of reading. First, the reader's curiosity is engaged. Once his attention has been caught, his aesthetic faculties come into play —he admires the work for its formal beauty. Gradually, through the reader's apprehension of the formal properties of the work, he begins to proceed to its meaning. It is the implied reader who responds at last to the poet's idea; the narrator's reader, through his curiosity, has been the vehicle for achieving this desired response. The border between these two readers becomes fuzzy in the middle realm of artistic execution, where the poet and the entertainer must also collide. Or rather, Dostoevsky's own separation of interest from artistic execution was a false division, for the first is merely a category of the second. Although Dostoevsky believed theoretically that ideas had forms that organically corresponded to them, he nevertheless found the search for that proper form excruciatingly difficult. He struggled with the plans and the beginnings of his novels, that is, with the fixing of the proper narrative strategy for expressing a particular idea. Endings came much easier; by then the question of narrative stance had already been solved. Dostoevsky realized that real authors could not simply speak directly to real readers and be understood. He stressed in his letters that one could not say "the very last word"; he quoted Tyutchev's aphorism, "The thought spoken is a lie." But at the same time he believed that the ultimate goal of art was to create a perfect channel of communication from the author to the reader. Somehow, the writer does speak the last word; he and the reader must finally achieve a state of complete under-

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standing with each other so that "the reader understands the writer's idea as well as the writer has understood it himself when creating his work." This formulation is very close to Wayne Booth's thesis. Although Booth emphasizes the role of the reader in this relationship, he also stresses the necessity of final agreement (or, as he writes, "complete agreement") between the writer and the reader in order for a work to succeed. Because Booth seems to share Dostoevsky's point of view about the nature and the purpose of the novel form, I have not hesitated to apply his critical method to Dostoevsky's work. Although Booth's belief that a novelist has a moral obligation to his readers as well as an aesthetic one may make him unfashionable among some of his peers, it makes him a perfect critic for Dostoevsky's work, for they both weld moral and aesthetic questions into facets of the same problem. "The moral question is really whether an author has an obligation to write well in the sense of making his moral orderings clear, and if so, clear to whom;" 2 it is not enough, then, merely to have honorable intentions. Dostoevsky believed, moreover, that pure literary confession for oneself alone was impossible; in spite of himself an author always writes for an audience. Booth has likewise dismissed the possibility of the existence of fiction without an implied audience as a "convenient but ultimately ridiculous" notion, for every writer at least writes for a more "public" version of himself, a self who is "subject to the limitations that other men are subject to when they come to his books." 3 For Dostoevsky and for Booth literature is finally a public not a private form; interesting literary questions must be those that involve rhetoric and moral persuasion. Despite the distance between Dostoevsky's three notebooks for The Idiot and the actual novel, these notes provided an intriguing case in point for Dostoevsky's general ideas about narrative and audience. The first two notebooks, containing notes mostly for an unwritten version of The Idiot, reflected Dostoevsky's search for an idea and his decision, at last, to let go of an old and cherished idea —to portray a completely beautiful man —and try to put it into words. Though the first two notebooks to the novel were primarily notes for another of Dostoevsky's great unwritten novels —like Atheism and The Life of a Great Sinner — they still offered definite clues to

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Dostoevsky's creation of The Idiot. As Dostoevsky searched for his idea he increasingly stripped away his hero's particular biography to create a more mysterious, allegorical, even mythical hero. He rejected his previous psychological explanations for the Idiot's personality and chose instead to make his narrative deliberately mystifying to the reader. In the process of discarding biographical and psychological explanations for the portrayal of his hero, Dostoevsky deliberately turned to a narrative style that emphasized enigma. But all his attempts forced him to reject the initial idea, which was to portray a vengeful, Iago-like Idiot. Because he could not find the proper form for the expression of that conception, he made a "sacrifice" by deciding to use his precious idea of portraying a positively beautiful man. But both the Iago-like and the Christlike Idiots shared a quality of enigma: they were both to be presented to the reader as sphinxes for whom no rational, psychological explanation of their acts could exist. The first two notebooks, then, showed Dostoevsky's search for an idea; the actual discovery, or, as Dostoevsky put it, the decision to use an old, already discovered idea, does not exist within the pages of notes. The notes were, nevertheless, a necessary prelude to that discovery. The fully embodied idea, once found, exerted its own power, "I wrote the first part entirely in twenty-three days" (Ρ, II, 72). In the third notebook, written after Part I of the novel had been published, Dostoevsky struggled with the problems of narration and plot. He consciously developed a narrative strategy that would juggle the effects of enigma and of explanation upon the reader. Though all novelists attempt such a balance, Dostoevsky's notes showed, surprisingly, how many of the most heightened, passionate scenes in the novel grew out of a deliberate balancing of the techniques of baffling the reader and explaining things to him. He sought to join enigma to explanation. Ultimately the narrator-chronicler provided the perfect device for realizing this aim: explanations served to create even larger mysteries; the narrator-chronicler pretended accurate reportage while presenting a tangle of rumors. Dostoevsky himself realized that the greatest difficulty in his idea of portraying a positively beautiful man lay in the realm of narrative — how to make such a character "sympathetic" to the

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reader. Dostoevsky wrote about the portrayal of this idea, that there was "nothing more difficult than this in the world, and especially in our time" (Ρ, II, 71). Dostoevsky's solution —to portray a "Prince Christ" —is, in fact, as much a narrative as a thematic solution: Christ revealed himself only indirectly through example and parable. He too was a "sphinx." Dostoevsky thus found both his idea and the proper mode for its expression in the example of Christ as he appeared to readers of the Gospels through parable and example. The Idiot has often been regarded as Dostoevsky's "great failed novel" because of the way in which the events of the novel seem to escape the control of both the author and the narrator. But the contents of the third notebook reveal that Dostoevsky had long intended the narrator to change his stance abruptly and that he had planned for the prince to be isolated and rejected near the end. While he was writing Part II, Dostoevsky was already working out the rejection of Myshkin by the other characters and sketching the outline of the narrator's subsequent denial of responsibility. Though the narrator abdicated responsibility for his novel and its hero, Dostoevsky did not. Rather, he planned a plot and a narrative strategy that would force the reader to examine his own notions of responsibility to his fellow man. In the first two parts of The Idiot, the narrator shaped the reader's expectations; the reader could anticipate the use of a particular voice to describe a particular character or group of characters. While slight failures of judgment and tact on the part of the narrator were noticeable (he was often pompous or blatantly manipulative), at the same time the reader still was asked basically to trust the narrator. At the beginning of the novel the reader found himself in a pleasant state of collusion with both the narrator and the implied author. Throughout these first parts, then, the reader's expectations about the narrative tone were satisfied. The narrator presented the general and Totsky reflected through the public's view of them; he relied upon opinion and rumor. He described the details of the Epanchins' family life in a cozy domestic voice, which rapidly became inappropriate when it branched into a description of the Nastasia-Totsky relationship. However, the reader quickly discovered that his collusion with the narrator

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was not merely soothing; his jovial response to the narrator's witty portrayal of Nastasia Filippovna's tragic history made his collusion with the narrator less innocent. The reader's entanglement in the moral questions of the novel had begun. In the second part of the novel Dostoevsky gave his narrator a voice usually associated with the Gothic mode of narration, to portray the triangular relationship between Rogozhin, Nastasia, and Myshkin and to give form to some of Myshkin's reveries. These reveries actually revealed little about the hero; Dostoevsky held fast to the decision he had made in the notebooks to abandon psychological and biographical explanations of his hero. But the narrator cleverly presented passages that seemed on the surface to be journeys into the hero's soul. By the end of the first half of the novel, then, the reader found himself at the mercy of a manipulative narrator, who was for the most part reliable. The narrator's rapid changes in point of view, while irritating did not constitute any serious offense. Rather they functioned as a sprightly means of further insuring the reader's entertainment. Indeed, the very manipulativeness of the narrator increasingly forced the reader to conceive of him as a sub-character in the novel, as a chronicler who did not participate in the action but who still was subject to rapid changes of opinion. Here in The Idiot Dostoevsky had begun seriously to develop his narrator-chronicler; a similar figure would later narrate The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov. This narrator, omniscient and vague, garrulous and concise, ironic and sentimental, comic and tragic, proved the best vehicle for the narration of Dostoevsky's big works. In the second half of the novel all the unities between the narrator's voices and the reader's expectations break down. The effect on the reader of this breakdown is to bring out various aspects of himself and temporarily elevate them into full-fledged reading selves. Thus the real-life reader of the novel becomes a figure who combines within him the narrator's reader and the implied author's reader. This fragmentation of one's reading self could lead, if successful, to the kind of reading of The Idiot that Dostoevsky intended: in the course of the novel, the act of reading develops from an activity fueled by interest and entertainment into a highly charged re-creation of moral experiences in which the reader finds himself inextricably involved.

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In Part III of the novel, the reader witnessed the narrator's simultaneous movement in contrary directions. On the one hand, the narrator's ironic voices became more caustic and illogical, so that the implied reader began to mistrust the narrator's judgments in a fundamental way. Though the implied reader grew suspicious, the narrator's reader continued to be cheerfully amused by the narrator's humor. But on the other hand, in the passages where the narrator described Myshkin, he seemed, for the first time, to share Myshkin's consciousness; his observations became indistinguishable from Myshkin's own interior monologue. At these moments, the narrator's reader and the implied reader responded as one. Beginning in Part IV, when the narrator finally revealed his obsession with the business of narration, he dramatized the implied author's hypothesis that one inevitably distorts important ideas by trying to express them. Dostoevsky's letters have shown that he believed this paradox all his life. In The Idiot he created a narrator who, by shouldering the burden of direct expression for him, could take responsibility for distortions and inadequacies of communication. The implied author "Dostoevsky" could safely engineer the indirect expression of his ideas through the large relationships between chapters and parts of the novel, through the ordering of events, through his balancing of dramatic with decriptive passages, and through his use of interpolated or secondary narratives. The fact that one of his most important ideas was a notion about the impossibility of expressing thoughts forges a fine, though ironic, harmony between the content (the idea of inevitable distortion) and its form (the layers of reliable and unreliable narrative). The implied reader's response to the text echoed the thoughtful character's response to his universe: each must accept the whole on faith and find for himself the seeds of goodness or beauty existing amidst the deceptions and moral corruptions. The moment when the novel seems irrevocably to escape the narrator's control is exactly the moment when the implied author is most deliberately exercising his own authority and forcing the real reader to feel the contradictory responses of the implied reader and the narrator's reader. Precisely when the implied reader is sensing Myshkin's tragic failure to express his ideas about goodness and beauty in the real world, the nar-

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rator's reader is giving himself up to righteous indignation at the confusion and unhappiness Myshkin has precipitated. The inserted narratives, although they have been reported by the narrator-chronicler, offer the implied author a way to restate, vary, and develop the major themes of the novel without filtering them through the consciousness of the narrator. As such, these narratives act as a kind of counterpoint to the voices of the narrator-chronicler. Moreover, these interpolated narratives, each in its own way, point up the complex relationship between truth and falsehood, sincerity and mockery. Dostoevsky fervently believed that "the spoken word is a lie." But each of the inserted narratives in the novel, no matter how much it sought to lie, revealed a truth. In all these secondary narratives distorting words finally expressed the idea of the speaker. Hence, as the interpolated narratives show in their relation to the events of the novel as a whole —and the reader must make these discriminations and analogies — Dostoevsky also believed that "the spoken word is a truth." The knife, as always, cut both ways. By examining the secondary narratives and their relationship to the characters and events in the novel, one may, through a relatively minor device of Dostoevsky's fiction—the interpolated narrative — discern a belief that each of his works, his whole career, asserted. The word may lie, but, for Dostoevsky, it is also man's greatest tool for disseminating, exploring, and expressing an idea. The narrator's voices in The Idiot shape the reader's response to the novel as much as do the voices of any of the characters. The kaleidoscopic mode of narration in The Idiot forces the reader to work. He must separate the narrator's overview of events from the events themselves and proceed to meaning in the novel by a delicate process of accepting some of the narrator's renderings while rejecting others. In all his works Dostoevsky compels his characters to accept responsibility for the consequences of their acts, acts they have freely chosen to commit. By the device of his reliable, yet unreliable narrator he has forced the real reader into a similar situation: when the real reader recognizes the coexistence of the implied reader and the narrator's reader within him, he also acknowledges the presence within himself of a heady mixture of those two Dostoevskyan catchwords, guilt and responsibility. Usually the real reader's

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guilt consisted of no more than the tendency to slip into an easy irony and an attitude of condescension. But at times his participation as a narrator's reader brought him to the brink of judging and condemning a suffering, good man. It involved him in the same web as the characters of the novel. T h e complex and at times admittedly cumbersome division of the reader into three separate, unequal selves, provided a w a y of talking about the meaning of the novel. T h e implied reader —who responds properly to the implied author's serious manipulation of him, who learns Myshkin's lessons and thus refrains from judging, but who forgives and pities instead —cannot shape the real reader's entire vision of the novel. Instead, the real reader pulls back from his collision with the narrative, from his reading, both humbled and inspired. He has recognized, through reading, the simultaneous existence of good and evil within him and, for a moment, his world and Dostoevsky's "fantastic" world have become one.

Appendix A The Novel and the Critics

early every critic of The Idiot has shared Dostoevsky's complicated, often ambiguous evaluation of it. In 1871, for example, the radical novelist and critic Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, with whom Dostoevsky had long been embroiled in bitter polemic —even within the pages of The Idiot — expressed guarded admiration for the novel. In Dostoevsky's attempt to create a "wholly beautiful man," Saltykov-Shchedrin saw a task "before which all the possible questions about female labor [zhenskii trud], about the distribution of wealth, about freedom of thought, etc., grow pale." Predictably, Saltykov-Shchedrin takes Dostoevsky to task for his mockery of the so-called nihilists. But his most serious reservation about the novel is aesthetic rather than political. He writes that Dostoevsky himself undermines his work by presenting, in an unfavorable light, those characters whose ideas most closely coincide with the author's. 1 What SaltykovShchedrin regarded as a serious defect in the novel, however, may instead be one of its greatest strengths.

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The Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev, who valued Dostoevsky to an astonishing degree, closes his book about him (1923) with this grand assertion: "So great is the worth of Dostoevsky that to have produced him is by itself sufficient justification for the existence of the Russian people in the world; and he will bear witness for his countrymen at the last judgment of the nations." 2 Nevertheless, Berdyaev dismisses The Idiot because Myshkin "is an unearthly figure without its full complement of human attributes and cannot be considered as explaining any aspect of the human tragedy at all." 3

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The first serious study of The Idiot was completed by A. P. Skaftymov in 1924. Skaftymov was also the first critic to attribute to Dostoevsky a harmony between intention and result. For Skaftymov "the teleological principle" in an artist's work contributes to the formation of each aspect of his novel. The critic's job, then, is to surrender completely to the artist. 4 Skaftymov discovers in each major character in The Idiot a struggle between pride and an ideal of love or moral sensitivity, between egoism and the desire to overcome it. Myshkin alone understands that vanity stifles compassion. His double love for Aglaya and Nastasia Filippovna creates terrible conflict not within him but in the rivals themselves. It is this immovable bedrock of pride which, in Skaftymov's scheme, generates both the inner drama of the characters and their relations with each other. 5 Vyacheslav Ivanov, like Berdyaev and unlike Skaftymov, used Dostoevsky as a touchstone for explicating his own philosophy, but his book on Dostoevsky ranks, nevertheless, among the best. Ivanov emphasized how Myshkin and The Idiot grew logically out of Raskolnikov and the ending of Crime and Punishment, in which the author had meditated on portraying the goodness of one who was meek and Christian. 6 Ivanov scrutinizes Myshkin's "literary genealogy" and finds him to be descended from Don Quixote, from the "pure fool" of medieval legend, from Ivan-the-Tsarevich, and, above all, from "the type of a spirituality that descends, that seeks the Earth . . . Myshkin is in love with Earth, and sees in her something that he has beheld in the celestial regions." 7 Despite his admiration for The Idiot, however, Ivanov shares the view of Saltykov-Shchedrin and Berdyaev that the novel is great but seriously flawed. "Dostoevsky has in this work dropped anchor in such depths that he cannot completely raise it again. To clear his vessel, he had to cut more than one cable." But for Ivanov, the magnitude of what Dostoevsky nevertheless achieved in this novel is "incomparable in its power and inspiration." 8 Two of the greatest students of Dostoevsky's work, Leonid Grossman and Konstantin Mochulsky, have both stressed the fact of Dostoevsky's own dissatisfaction with his novel. Grossman expresses his tacit agreement with Dostoevsky by praising aspects of the novel while remaining silent about the

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success of the whole. "The novel's principal scenes are forceful and dramatic . . . " "fragments" of the whole "reveal Dostoevsky's mastery as a great realistic portrayer of the human heart, as a profound psychologist and inimitable lyricist."9 Mochulsky sees the reasons for Dostoevsky's difficulty with the novel in aesthetic terms. He calls the depiction of a "positively beautiful individual" "a prodigious task," but finds that "Art can approach it, but not solve it, for the beautiful individual is a saint. Sanctity is not a literary theme . . . Sanctity is a miracle; the writer cannot be a miracle-worker. Christ only is holy, but a novel about Christ is impossible. Dostoevsky was facing the problem of religious art which tormented poor Gogol to death." 10 Nevertheless, Mochulsky's analysis of the The Idiot reveals his profound involvement with its ideas. He comes to a vision of the novel as a tragedy depicting the fate of beauty in the world. "Thus, according to the author's design, the idea of beauty is embodied in the two images of his heroines. The prince believes that beauty will save the world. Tragic experience shows him the reverse. In a world of evil, it is necessary to save beauty."11 R. P. Blackmur has also viewed this novel as a kind of tragedy, but a tragedy of goodness rather than of beauty. Mochulsky located the failure of The Idiot in an aesthetic paradox—that an artist cannot portray saintly beauty. Blackmur discovers a similar insolvable paradox in the novel, but the difficulty for him emanates from Dostoevsky's particular conception of goodness, "his conception of goodness was lodged, actually, like his conception of evil, in the image of its own double: which is to say, its own ruin. He was mistaken in thinking that the idea of pure goodness could be dramatized so as to dominate the kind of good and evil men and women he could create; but his imagination went beyond the mistake of his intellect and overwhelmed it." 12 Mochulsky has found that at the core of Dostoevsky's art "ideas are embodied in people and dialectic is transformed into tragic conflict." Thus, in The Idiot, for example, Objections are raised against the prince's 'thesis' by his friends-enemies — Ippolit and Rogozhin." 13 Blackmur names precisely this tendency to portray ideas as the key reason for the failure of The Idiot. He writes of "the intrusion of Dostoevsky's ideas upon his story . . .

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There could be no clearer example than this of a great sensibility violated by an idea, no sharper case of a theme being surrendered by the author to a mere thesis, and, then wrenched back by violence to safety." 14 Murray Krieger shares Blackmur's emphasis on The Idiot as a tragedy about goodness; both critics have described at length the devastating effect of the hero's goodness upon the other characters. Blackmur characterizes Myshkin as "a positive hero," "a complete image," an "idol or ikon, before whom others, as they are drawn to him, must in the end abase and humiliate themselves."15 Krieger's interpretation of the effects of Myshkin's goodness and humility is nearly identical: "through his Christian humility . . . Myshkin has refused to give his beloved humanity the human privilege of sinning, of being offensive and arousing moral indignation . . . By assuming himself worse than others, he gives them a greater mora! burden than in their human weakness they can carry. They break under it and become worse than without Myshkin they would be." 16 Both Blackmur and Krieger also assess the effects upon the reader of this "rage of goodness," this "curse of saintliness." Blackmur, in describing the "confused and even bewildering treatment" of certain themes in the novel and the author's "false economy," elaborates the role of the reader. "You have to think back, to feel back, later, to see what the scene ought to have meant at the time of its delivery."17 Krieger decides that Myshkin's conversation, near the close of the novel, with Evgeny Pavlovich Radomsky "furnished us with crucial commentary . . . It is significant that Dostoevsky seeks to make certain that we take Yevgeny seriously, in part at least as his spokesman . . . But there seems to be no irony in the credentials our author gives Yevgeny . . . Of course it is possible that our author is posing as a worldly, sensible narrator who cannot but sympathize with Yevgeny — although Dostoevsky is hardly the sort of novelist who plays tricks with 'point of view.' "1S Blackmur has lamented the need for the reader, in his confusion, "to think back," "to feel back," yet it is my belief that here precisely lies Dostoevsky's intent with respect to his readers — he wants them "to think back," "to feel back." Krieger turns to the crucial conversation between Evgeny and the prince and decides that Dostoevsky would not "play tricks with 'point of view.' "

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Yet the meaning of the novel hinges on just such a trick of point of view, and more than any other scene in the novel, this is the scene to which the reader must repeatedly "think back" and "feel back" in order to shape his own stance towards the difficult problem of Myshkin's goodness and its effect in the world. Edward Wasiolek has also responded to The Idiot as to a work of failed greatness. He describes Prince Myshkin as "Dostoevsky's great love," as his "attempt to conquer that seemingly impossible task of creating a good man who is dramatically interesting and believable." Although Wasiolek concludes that Myshkin fails to become "the dramatic center of interest," he concedes Myshkin to be "one of the great limited successes of literature." 19 Wasiolek's reaction to the novel is complicated; he seems to double back upon his doubts and ultimately to defend the novel and its hero. "When critics charge him [Myshkin] with being a failure, they seek what is dramatically unbelievable and morally impossible. The Prince cannot change the universe, but a universe of Myshkins might." 20 Perhaps we are witnessing in Wasiolek's reaction a clear instance of the conflict within one reader between his aesthetic and moral response to the novel. And The Idiot itself is, like most of Dostoevsky's novels, largely about questions of aesthetics and morality and their interrelationship. Vladimir Etov has understood Myshkin as the embodiment of two opposing "hypostases": Myshkin's tendency towards spontaneous compassion, towards contemplation and universal love conflicts with his desire to be a teacher of life, a proponent of the ideas of the men of the soil (pochvennicheskie) and of Christian ideas, an opponent of Catholicism and Western influences. For Etov, as for so many other critics, Myshkin too often becomes a mouthpiece for the author's ideas and thus ceases to be a convincing character. 21 Nevertheless, Etov carefully distinguishes between Dostoevsky the artist and Dostoevsky the thinker. His distinction becomes crucial in his analysis of the climactic scene near the end of the novel in which Myshkin holds forth at the Epanchins' soiree, "Dostoevsky, together with the Slavophils believed in the significance of the nobility, in its role of moral leadership . . . Such is the hidden subtext of Myshkin's speech. At the same time, in this scene the reader at first observes Myshkin-the-ideologue in all his magnitude and under-

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stands that his appeals are fruitless. It is not the reader's job to make the fine calculations of the author; he sees only one thing —the failure of the hero. And this is perceived as striking evidence of the triumph of the writer-realist over the limited moralist." 22 Another Soviet critic, Mikhail Gus, follows Mochulsky's lead in comparing Dostoevsky's ideals in this novel to those of the later Gogol (as in his Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends). Gus observes that Dostoevsky wanted to realize a Gogolian ideal in a Pushkin-like ("the poor knight") manner (po-pushkinski realizovat'gogolevskii ideal).23 Gus's assessment of the novel ultimately resembles those of Blackmur and Krieger: for him the novel is a tragedy in which goodness brings about evil. "But the real significance of The Idiot, lies precisely in the fact that not only has Myshkin not conquered evil by his methods, not only has he not brought happiness to people, but he has ruined both those people and himself." 24 As one can see from this selection of responses to The Idiot, most criticism of the novel has focused on its thematic and ideological aspects. Such an approach typifies much of the writing about Dostoevsky's work, although important exceptions exist in the writings of Leonid Grossman, Mikhail Bakhtin, Viktor Shklovsky, A. S. Dolinin, Robert Belknap, Joseph Frank, la. O. Zundelovich, and in the current writings of Julius Kirai, Arpad Kovacs and others. Some of these critics, most notably Bakhtin, Belknap, and Frank, have offered more direct confirmation of my own reading of The Idiot and inspiration to the main body of this text.

Appendix Β The Phenomenology

of Reading

tudies of readers and readerships are fashionable today, and some of them have proved relevant to my understanding of The Idiot. Although nearly every school of criticism has touched upon the assigned role of the reader in a work, recently the reader has received special emphasis; he has even become at times the sole object of critical attention, to the exclusion of the work itself. The constructs for describing reading rival in intricacy those that critics have been making for years to analyze authors, narrators, characters, plot and imagery. The current attention to the reader is hardly surprising in view of the passionate emphasis on communication in the last two decades. The media are the message and novels are means of communication. For some critics, the author and the reader are engaged in a dialogue; no longer does the novelist impart something to the reader. The reader too brings his whole personality, locked in his time and place, to his reading of a work. The meaning in the novel lies in the collision between these two equally important entities: the "author" and the "reader."1 In the measure that reading has become democratized, the reader's position has skyrocketed in dignity. In fact, the novel and its meaning could not even exist without him. This new "ideology of criticism," in which the author can come dangerously close to being secondary to the critic, has both helped and hindered my effort to understand the narrative structure of The Idiot. At its best, criticism that focuses on the role of the reader emphasizes the work of art itself as the arena in which the author and the reader may engage in dialogue. (But

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there are, of course, many aspects of both the writer and the reader, and those critics who do not differentiate among them often generate more confusion than they dissipate. Among the readers, for example, there may be the implied reader, the reader posited by the narrator, and the actual person who sits down to read; there is the self he becomes as he reads; and, finally, there is the historical notion of a readership, a figure to be carefully defind by time and place.) At its worst, when criticism based on the phenomenology of reading allows itself to bypass the author and even the work in order to present its own particular response as the only object of significance, it becomes a sub-art form that ranks as neither criticism nor philosophy. It is appropriate here to offer the reader of this book a limited discussion of the "new" interest in reading as well as some of the theoretical implications of such an approach. My ambivalence about the final value of concentrating upon the figure of the reader should become clear. I have resorted to my own terminology for describing authors, narrators, and readers with trepidation, often sensing the admonishing presence over my shoulder of H. W. Fowler and his words about novelty hunting: "there being nothing new in what I have to say, I must make up for its staleness by something new in the way I say it. And if that were all, if each novelty-hunter struck out a line for himself, we could be content to register novelty-hunting as a useful outward sign of inward dullness, and leave such writers carefully alone. Unluckily they hunt in packs, and when one of them has a find they are all in full cry after it, till it becomes a VOGUE WORD, to the great detriment of the language." 2 It is difficult to determine whether or not the words "reader" and "reading" have yet qualified as vogue words. Some critics who see the reader as a new discovery — both in his role as a literary creation of the author and as a real presence—have sought to separate themselves from all but a few worthy critics of the past. Wallace Martin, for example, turns against the previous generation of "hermeneutic critics" and writes, "Until critics can be talked out of the hermeneutic circle that they have somehow been talked into, further discussion of interpretative theory is pointless." 3 Walter Slatoff begins his book: O n e feels a little foolish having to begin by insisting that works of literature exist, in part, at least, in order to be read . . .

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Yet certainly if one were to judge from the dominant modes of literary study and literary theory and from much of the teaching of literature, it would seem as though readers and the act or experience of reading were peripheral if not entirely irrelevant considerations." 4 He cites the guilty parties as "the new critics" and modern criticism in general. Stanley Fish, Slatoff's opponent in many respects, shares with him the role of the champion of the reader: "curiously enough when it comes time to make an analytical statement about the end product of reading (meaning or understanding), the reader is usually forgotten or ignored. Indeed in recent literary history he has been excluded by legislation." 5 Fish finds W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley most guilty of such legislation: they have created what Fish calls "the Affective Fallacy Fallacy." He quotes their book, The Verbal Icon: "The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does)." 6 The critic, they feel, should concentrate only on the poem. For Fish the opposite is true: the sentence or poem is an event; it "happens to" the reader and is not an object in itself. Wolfgang Iser, less insistent than the others that he is addressing a totally new concern, does feel a need to emphasize that the reader must participate in forging the meaning of a novel, which cannot exist without the reader. He clarifies his explanation with a delightful quotation from Northrop Frye, "It has been said of Boehme that his books are like a picnic to which the author brings the words and the reader the meaning. The remark may have been intended as a sneer at Boehme but it is an exact description of all works of literary art without exception." 7 Jorge Luis Borges has argued that "a book is more than a verbal structure . . . a book is the dialogue with the reader." 8 More recently, Walter J. Ong has seen critical concern with the role of the reader, as opposed to authorial concern with the reader's role, as something new; he finds that the problem of the audience has not been fully examined. "The standard locus in Western intellectual tradition for the study of audience responses has been rhetoric." 9 According to Ong, the question of the reader, as separate from that of the generalized audience, has received even less treatment. However much critics may be engaged in rediscovering and

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redescribing the reader, authors have never lost sight of him. Aristotle, Cervantes, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy —most serious philosophers, poets, and novelists have considered, both as writers and as critics, the importance of the reader's responses. The rediscovery of the reader is an illusory event, for no one will admit to ever having lost sight of him. Roger Fowler makes a hesitant attempt to discover a shared belief about "readers" among Michael Riffaterre, Roland Barthes and Stanley Fish. He ventures "a collective generalization" that they share a "growing dissatisfaction with the readerexcluding premises of classic formalist criticism in both the Anglo-American and Russian/Prague/French traditions." 10 But a contributor to Fowler's collection of essays, Jonathan Culler, finds one advocate for the role of the reader among the formalist critics: Viktor Shklovsky. Certainly Shklovsky's notion that the artist's goal is to achieve the effect of "ostranenie" (a "making strange," or a "defamiliarization") expresses a view of literature in which the manipulation of the reader's expectations lies at the center of the author's creative endeavor, and Culler does describe Shklovsky as "one of the few to have realized that investigation of the construction of the novel and the short story is an attempt to explicate the structural intuitions of readers by studying their formal expectations." 11 The critic's task is stated in terms of his duties to the reader rather than in terms of his obligations to the text itself. "The analyst's task is not simply to develop a metalanguage for the description of plots but to bring to the surface and make explicit the 'metalanguage within the reader himself.' " 1 2 The harder one searches for the villains who have undervalued or excluded the reader, the more one happens upon his friends. The "new" emphasis on the reader and on the phenomenology of reading often resembles a nineteenth-century brand of highly personalized, subjective criticism which has been refurbished with the trappings of jargon and technical terminology. More important, this emphasis on the reader carries with it a rejection of the premise that criticism should confine itself strictly to a perusal of the inner boundaries of a work. 1 3 But if he stresses the role of the reader and his responses, the critic must then deal with the difficult matter of different readings, with the inevitability of varied responses.

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Not all the critics who write about the role of the reader have felt that he was previously ignored or excluded. John Preston, Iser, and Ong, for example, acknowledge the attention that writers have always paid to their readers. But they suggest that there is a need for a historical study of the assigned role of the reader. Preston's book The Created Self focuses precisely on the role of the reader in eighteenth-century fiction. 14 Iser presents a detailed elaboration of the posited reader for several novelists from the eighteenth century to the present. Both Preston and Iser rely heavily upon Booth's hypotheses about the existence of the implied author and his implied reader. Ong carries out a similar survey in his article; in addition, he specifically calls for a history of audience response.15 But Preston, Iser, and Ong are each more concerned with understanding the reader's role in terms of a particular text or moment in history than in establishing an overall model for the phenomenology of reading. Although they make statements about readers and reading in general, their conclusions derive from a close historical analysis of the changing roles of readers and of writers' notions about readers. For example, Iser finds distinct changes in the assigned role of the reader in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels. Though the reader of an eighteenth-century novel was cast by the author into a specific role, "so that he could be guided —directly or indirectly, through affirmation or through negation — toward a conception of nature and reality, in the nineteenth century he had to discover the fact that society had imposed a part on him, the object being for him eventually to take up a critical attitude toward this imposition."16 But the reader of the modern novel is even more isolated, "he is expected to strive for himself to unravel the mysteries of a sometimes strikingly obscure composition. This development reflects the transformation of the very idea of literature, which seems to have ceased to be a means of relaxation and even luxury, making demands now on the capacity of understanding because the world presented seems to have no bearing on what the reader is familiar with. This change did not happen suddenly."17 The most convincing descriptions of the reader's responses lead back to broader questions of morality and ethics. Every reader is to learn something about the world through his read-

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ing; he does not merely respond to a structure and stop there. He extracts meaning, a specific meaning, from the work; he may even seek to uncover the author's intent and modify the commandment of the previous generation of critics to avoid the "intentional fallacy." Frye has given a concise definition of the intentional fallacy: "The failure to make, in practice, the most elementary of all distinctions in literature, the distinction between fiction and fact, hypothesis and assertion, imaginative and discursive writing, produces what in criticism has been called the 'intentional fallacy,' the notion that the poet has a primary intention of conveying meaning to a reader, and that the first duty of a critic is to recapture that intention." 18 Iser, for example, has described literary criticism as an attempt to discover what is concealed in the text, "When we have been particularly impressed b y a book, we feel the need to talk about it; we do not want to get away from it by talking about it—we simply want to understand more clearly what it is in which we have been entangled . . . Perhaps this is the prime usefulness of literary criticism —it helps to make conscious those aspects of the text which would otherwise remain concealed in the subconscious." 19 Although Booth does not advocate the revocation of the intentional fallacy, he rephrases and resolves the problem by linking aesthetic to moral questions. "The 'well-made phrase' in fiction must be much more than "beautiful'; it must serve larger ends, and the artist has a moral obligation, contained as an essential part of his aesthetic obligation to write well,' to do all that is possible in any given instance to realize his world as he intends it." 20 Some structuralist critics have also concerned themselves with defining the role of the reader. Their reader, unlike the readers of Booth, Ong, Iser, and others, does not direct his primary efforts towards deriving a notion of the meaning of the work. Semantic considerations remain secondary. In Tzvetan Todorov's formulation, the reader himself chooses to emphasize the aspects of a work that seem crucial as a matter of personal judgment separate from the intent of the author. There is no single "right" reading for any complex literary work; instead readings are more or less rich. 21 Likewise Roland Barthes separates the reader's task from the discovery of meaning: "Literature is a system of signs; its being lies not in the message, but in

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the system. This being so, the critic is not called upon to reconstitute the message of the work, but only its system." 22 Robert Scholes has pointed out that in recent years Barthes and Todorov have paid more attention to the question of the reader and that structuralist criticism in general has been forced to justify itself by asserting its applicability to individual texts. 23 In fact, Barthe's book The Pleasure of the Text, in its idiosyncratic and personal exposition of the phenomenology of reading, implicitly presents a portrait of the reader. The text, which engages the reader's attention and gives him pleasure, also ideally reengages the reader with the outside world. "To be with the one I love and to think of something else: this is how I have my best ideas, how I best invent what is necessary to my work. Likewise for the text: it produces, in me, the best pleasure if it manages to make itself heard indirectly; if, reading it, I am led to look up often, to listen to something else."24 Another structuralist, Michael Riffaterre, has developed the notion of a superreader of whom Scholes writes, "Riffaterre's superreader is not (like that of Stanley Fish) simply a modest extension of himself. No, it is an attempt at quantification of responses in order to move from those responses really stimulated by the poem back to the verbal structures responsible for them." 25 Georges Poulet abandons himself to the text while reading it; he emphasizes the power of the text over the reader rather than stressing the idea of a reader who tries to reconstitute a preexisting structure. "As soon as I replace my direct perception of reality by the words of a book, I deliver myself, bound hand and foot to the omnipotence of fiction." 26 However, he steers clear of stating that literature imparts knowledge; rather, it engages the reader who, through a process of recognition, transmutes his everyday self as he reads. "It [reading] might rather be called a phenomenon by which mental objects rise up from the depths of consciousness into the light of recognition . . . Reading, then, is the act in which the subjective principle which I call I, is modified in such a way that I no longer have the right, strictly speaking, to consider it as my I . . . This I who thinks in me when I read a book, is the 1 of the one who writes the book." 27 This formulation bears a remarkable resemblance to Booth's ideal, implied reader who, in reading, becomes a modified version of his everyday self and resembles instead the ideal,

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implied author of the work. (Booth had remarked that the author creates his implied reader and that "the most successful reading is one in which the created selves, author and reader, can find complete agreement.") 28 Nonstructuralist critics have likewise emphasized the reader's role both in discovering for himself the meaning of the text and in responding to the author's intentional manipulation of him. Slatoff, Fish, Preston, Iser, and Ong, following Booth's model, have suggested generalized definitions for the figure of the reader. Slatoff postulates an ideal reader who is engaged but disengaged. 29 This reader leans towards his own responses and never becomes a creation of the author. For Slatoff, all works, however firmly designed, leave the reader a great deal of freedom. He feels that Booth overestimates the extent to which a reader must become an implied self corresponding to the author's implied self. 30 Thus his ideal reader, unlike Poulet's, does not deliver himself bound hand and foot to the world of the work, nor does he follow to the extreme limit Coleridge's dictum to suspend disbelief. He always retains a degree of control. Unfortunately, Slatoff overargues his case: "virtually no critic even admits —in print, at any rate —that his reading of a work may in any way be affected by his own nature, experience, training, temperament, values, biases, or motive for reading." 31 Far more dynamic than this pallid figure of the reader are the formulations of the reader and of the phenomenology of reading made by Fish, Preston, Iser, Wolf Schmid, and Ong. For Fish, the reader is the "informed reader," a hybrid who combines competency in the spheres of language, literary understanding, and semantic knowledge. 3 2 Fish avoids the difficult question of dealing with the inevitable different readings of "informed readers" by claiming that the problem doesn't exist: "This, it seems to me is a pseudo-problem. Most literary quarrels are not disagreements about response, but about response to a response . . . It is only when readers become literary critics and the passing of judgment takes precedence over the reading experience that opinions begin to diverge." 33 In short, for Fish, the sheer experience of reading is identical among all "informed readers." Preston derives a model for the reader and the reader's in-

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volvement with his reading from Laurence Sterne. "Sterne . . . offers the completest and most revealing portrait of the reader. He shows how, like an actor, the reader is simultaneously both involved and detached, intimately engaged in creating the fictions, but coolly critical at the same time, taken out of himself, yet in the end in a position to find himself."34 Preston argues that though the reader may be in a "pseudo-situation," he is in a "real relationship." "He really does make contact with another mind, he does enter into a dialogue. He is not passive, at least at his best he is not: he brings his own experience and expectations to the work." For Preston, the literary text functions to "enlarge the reader's experience."35 Iser's ideal reader is an "entangled reader" who labors to formulate the meaning of each work he reads. The entangled reader of a novel experiences ambivalent reactions. While discussing the role of the reader in Fielding's Joseph Andrews, Iser creates a model for most serious fictional works from Fielding on, "And so the meaning of the novel is no longer an independent, objective reality; it is something that has to be formulated by the reader."36 This reader's activity does not resemble that of the structuralist readers of Todorov and Barthes, despite their similar belief that there is no one objective, inflexible reality that the reader must find. The structuralist reader seeks to uncover a system and is not troubled by the question, "Is this the right reading?" Iser's reader seeks to uncover meaning; for him, there is a right reading, one intended by the author, even though the author leaves the actual formulation of the meaning up to the reader. Writer and reader have a mutual responsibility to each other. Iser quotes "Fielding," the narrator of Tom Jones: "If the writer has strictly observed the rules above-mentioned, he hath discharged his part; and is then entitled to some faith from his reader, who is indeed guilty of critical infidelity if he disbelieves him."37 Iser finds the author-reader relationship to be a constant feature of narrative prose, giving the reader the impression that he and the author "are partners in discovering the reality of human experience."38 Even in the modern novel, where the novelist supposedly no longer tries to project his own unambiguous view of the world onto his reader, the relationship between writer and reader as partners in discovery still holds. The writer tries to diversify the

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reader's vision, "in order to compel the reader to view things for himself and discover his own reality." 3 9 This diversified vision is shared b y both author and reader. For Iser, as for Preston, the act of reading embodies in miniature the process of life: "As the literary text involves the reader in the formation of illusion and the simultaneous formation of the means whereby the illusion is punctured, reading reflects the process by which we gain experience." 4 0 W o l f Schmid shares Iser's theoretical concern with how a prose work functions as a communicative symbol within the collective consciousness of a particular readership at a particular time. 4 1 He has worked out a diagram which takes into account different historical times and readers within those times to show the interrelationships between a given individual reader and his historical situation. This combination of elements appears to the author as his reader-public. For understanding to occur between this "concrete author" and his "concrete reader," the author must address his audience in a known code (that is, shared speech norms, social values, world views, and aesthetic canons). 4 2 But in the course of history the public and its codes change, whereas, of course, the concrete author is a single, historical person who cannot change. Thus, though the work remains as a symbol that moves through history, interpretations of it necessarily change. Schmid also postulates an "abstract author" and an "abstract reader." These two figures are primarily ideal personifications of the collective structure of the w o r k . 4 3 This author and his reader correspond to Booth's implied author and implied reader, and indeed Schmid cites Booth in this passage. (Later, he equates Booth's epithet "implied author" with the Russian term obraz avtora [the image of the author].) 4 4 Schmid, like Booth, differentiates the abstract author and reader from the narrator (and, by extension, his fictive reader). 4 5 He observes that a work possessing a narrator has a double-layered structure: the world portrayed b y the author embraces both the narrator and the narrated world, which is the product of the narrator. 4 6 In turn, the narrator can himself advance secondary, tertiary (and so forth) layers of narration, as for example, in the reportage of another character's direct speech. These secondary narrators invoke a world that exists in meaningful opposition to the world evoked

248

Appendix Β

by the narrator, just as the various levels of narration stand in opposition to each other. 4 7 In his b o o k Schmid undertakes to show h o w in Dostoevsky's work the reader is summoned out of his passive attitude and called upon to decode the represented world. Such a decoding becomes quite complex because the perspective of moral values does not always correspond directly to the aesthetic organization of the w o r k . 4 8 In this respect Schmid's thesis closely resembles m y own, although I believe that the crucial step for the reader is not merely an act of "decoding." Dostoevsky's genius as an author lies one step beyond that: he forces his readers into episodes of moral (and aesthetic) recognition which, though generated by the fictional world, are finally felt by the reader in his real world. Put in another way, Dostoevsky implicates his reader in the occurrences of his fictional world in a w a y that inevitably affects the reader's judgments in real life. O f course, all great fiction has this effect. In Dostoevsky's work, however, this result is often achieved by a fine and devious narrative sleight of hand, so that notions of readers and narrators prove to be especially useful. Ong, following the pattern set b y Booth, Preston, and Iser, emphasizes that the author creates his reader. T h e process of creating a posited reader is inextricably linked to the course of literary history. Readers change, but only because authors change them. O n l y the great author, however, can effect such an alteration: "If the writer succeeds in writing, it is generally because he can fictionalize in his imagination an audience he has learned to k n o w not from daily life but from earlier writers who were fictionalizing in their imagination audiences they had learned to k n o w in still earlier writers, and so on b a c k to the dawn of written narrative. If and when he becomes truly adept, an 'original writer,' he can do more than project the earlier audience, he can alter it." 4 9 O n the one hand, the audience or the reader determines the author's ultimate success or failure, for if an author does not imagine his audience successfully he cannot hope to have readers. For Ong, the question of determining his audience is the most basic literary task before the author. 5 0 O n the other hand, despite the all-powerful position of the audience as the determining factor in a work of fiction, Ong's reader is less free than the other ideal readers discussed here; he is always

The Phenomenology

of Reading

249

a creation of the author. He must accept the role in which the writer has cast him, even though it "seldom coincides with his role in the rest of actual life." 51 Thus the range of ideal readers extends from a reader free to impose his own reading on a work and who brings with him and never relinquishes his own preconceptions and experiences (Todorov, Slatoff to some extent) to a reader who is created by the author and who, while reading, is totally immersed in the work at hand (Ong, Poulet). Interestingly, this spectrum does not parallel membership in a particular critical school: for example, the formulation of Poulet, a structuralist, resembles that of Ong, who emphasizes the significance of history and tradition in the author's determination of his audience. In the middle range, the formulations of Fish, Preston, and Iser seem the most useful. For them the reading of a work occurs on a common meeting ground between author and reader; the reader brings his experience with him but enters into a genuine partnership with the author for the duration of the reading. T h e i r collision — and collusion—produces the meaning of the work. Hermeneutic critics, such as Leo Spitzer and Emil Staiger, envision the reader's response to a work in spatial terms. That is, having read a piece of narrative prose, the reader responds to it as to a whole entity. For Spitzer, the critic or reader is "to work from the surface to the 'inward life-center' of the work of art" and back again. "The scholar will surely be able to state, after three or four of these 'fro voyages,' whether he has found the life-giving center." 5 2 T o understand the whole the reader seeks to elucidate an observed detail, the choice of which, of course, presupposes an understanding of the whole. Staiger describes his response as a reader or critic to a work in similar terms: the process of interpretation — of moving back and forth between presentiment and text — results at last in a precise understanding of the work. 'This feeling, a vague presentiment still obscure even to myself, I clarify and bring toward exact conception. If my feeling was false, the object [that is, the work —a thoroughly spatial description of it] itself will raise an objection . . . If, however, my feeling was right, I experience that precious happiness that can befall the interpreter: each observation, everything that I acquire in knowledge about the text corroborates my first dim presentiment." 5 3

250

Appendix Β

Slatoff, throughout his book, also tends to talk about reading spatially; that is, reading is a response to the work as a whole. Here Fish disagrees with Slatoff's notion of the reader: "In his analyses, response is something that occurs either before or after the activity of reading. What concerns him is really not response, in the sense of the interaction between the flow of words on the page and an active mediating consciousness, but a response to that response."54 As might be expected, Fish stresses above all the temporal quality of reading. He understands the sentence as "an event, something that happens to, and with the participation of, the reader . . . this event, this happening . . . is . . . the meaning of the sentence."55 This model can be extrapolated on up in larger units to the paragraph, page, and work. The reader's responses develop in relation to words as they succeed one another in time. Fish directly combats the idea of literature as a spatial form. "Literature is a kinetic art, but the physical form it assumes prevents us from seeing its essential nature, even though we so experience it." 56 To view a work as an object, as critics like Spitzer and Slatoff have done, is, for Fish, to misinterpret a temporal experience as a spatial one. 57 Iser describes this same flow that occurs in reading at the level of the sentence. But he creates a synthesis between the temporal and spatial views of reading: "the activity of reading can be characterized as a sort of kaleidoscope of perspectives, preintentions, recollections. Every sentence contains a preview of the next and forms a kind of viewfinder for what is to come; and this in turn changes the 'preview' and so becomes a viewfinder for what has been read."58 Donald Fanger, in a discussion of Gogol's story "The Overcoat," has also compared the activity of reading to looking through a kaleidoscope. His eloquent account of being Gogol's reader suggests a way to describe the reading of any complex, rich text. "Reading the story is thus like looking through a kaleidoscope: the constituent elements of the changing patterns are limited in number; one can recognize them, wonder at the variety, while noting how the recurrence of certain patterns appears more than fortuitous, but less than primary. In this kaleidoscope's successive patterns we see images that prompt reflection; these are related, we may come to realize, to other, less ar-

The Phenomenology

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resting images. Each turn contributes to a growing familiarity with the separately enigmatic shapes, and so intensifies the search for that perpetually elusive yet constantly potential pattern which might fix them all in positions of analyzable beauty." 59 Iser emphasizes that the motion of this "kaleidoscope of perspectives" is not always smooth; an interruption in the flow occurs when one sentence has no clear relationship to its predecessor. This gap produces surprise or indignation in the reader which he must in some way overcome in order to continue his reading. Reading thus combines temporal and spatial attributes: it is an "active interweaving of anticipation and retrospection." 60 The anticipation and retrospection extend forward and backward in time, but the reader's act of interweaving creates an object out of what he has read. True, this object constantly changes as he reads; objects are constantly discarded, but they are made. The temporal qualities of reading still outweigh the spatial for Iser: he defines the act of reading by using a string of verbs. "As we read, we oscillate to a greater or lesser degree between the building and the breaking of illusions. We look forward, we look back, we decide, we change our decisions, we form expectations, we are shocked by their nonfulfillment, we question, we muse, we accept, we reject; this is the dynamic process of recreation." 61 But the final metaphor for this activity is spatial: the reader achieves a re-creation of experience. He can only achieve this re-creation, however, through the temporal collection of responses. In the second half of The Idiot the implied author entangles his reader in a complicated maze of events which the reader must perceive, through his reading, both temporally and spatially. The reader finds himself partaking of all the roles assigned to him by these various students of the phenomenology of reading. At times he is carefully manipulated by the implied author and allowed little freedom of response; at other times he is left shockingly alone; he is sometimes informed, sometimes misinformed; he must struggle to achieve his "partnership" with the author, a partnership which the author, nevertheless, wants him to accept.

Appendix C Characters and Family

Constellations

A fter a long stay in Switzerland where he has been x V u n d e r g o i n g medical treatment for a mysterious nervous condition at times resembling idiocy, the saintly, childlike, and epileptic Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin returns to Russia. On the train he meets Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin, a strange and passionate man who is obsessed with a beautiful and hysterically unpredictable woman, Nastasia Filippovna Barashkov. Within a day of his arrival Myshkin has become deeply involved with Rogozhin and Nastasia Filippovna, with the second heroine, Aglaya Epanchin, and with two families —the Ivolgins and the Epanchins. In the course of the novel Myshkin becomes both suitor and confidant to each heroine. He also becomes both rival and spiritual brother to Rogozhin, who even attempts, early on, to murder Myshkin. Although Myshkin's actions and intentions are good, they create conflicting expectations and passions in the other characters and help generate scandals and tensions that end in disaster. At the end of the novel, when confronted by Rogozhin and by the body of Nastasia Filippovna, whom Rogozhin has just murdered, Myshkin, after an all-night vigil with Rogozhin by her corpse, lapses into a state of idiocy and is sent back to the clinic in Switzerland. The three main characters are without family affiliations. Two of them, Myshkin and Nastasia Filippovna, grew up as orphans; the third, Rogozhin, has a senile mother and a brother, who does not appear as a character in the novel. The rest of the

Characters

and Family Constellations

253

characters are for the most part members of three families or in some way connected to them. General Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin and his wife Lizaveta Prokof'evna have three daughters, Alexandra, Adelaida, and Aglaya. Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky (Nastasia Filippovna's guardian and seducer) seeks to marry Alexandra. Adelaida's suitor is Prince Shch — , and Evgeny Pavlovich Radomsky expresses interest in Aglaya. Myshkin himself is distantly related to the general's wife. The Epanchins are the most prosperous of the families in the novel. General Ardalion Ivanovich Ivolgin and his wife Nina Alexandrovna have three children: Ganya, Varya, and Kolya. Ganya, General Epanchin's secretary, is in love with his employer's youngest daughter, Aglaya, but General Epanchin and Totsky plan to marry him to Nastasia Filippovna. Varya (who eventually marries Ivan Petrovich Ptitsyn) does not play a significant role in the plot except as the bearer of news. Kolya, the younger son, becomes deeply attached to Myshkin. His other close friend is Ippolit Terentiev, the son of General Ivolgin's mistress. Ferdyshchenko is a boarder in the Ivolgins' apartment. A recent widower, Lukian Timofeevich Lebedev has four children, the youngest an infant and the oldest a daughter, Vera. (At the end of the novel the narrator hints that she and Evgeny Pavlovich have fallen in love.) Lebedev's nephew is Vladimir Doktorenko. He and his acquaintances Keller (the retired boxer) and Antip Burdovsky ("Pavlishchev's son") cause the prince much distress.

Note on Citations Notes Index

Note on Citations

Of the many complete and partial collections of Dostoevsky's writings I have used principally: Pis'ma, ed. A. S. Dolinin, 4 vols. (Moscow: 1928-1959), abbreviated when cited in the text and notes as P, followed by volume and page numbers. Polnoe sobranie khudozhestvennykh proizvedenni, ed. Β. V. Tomashevsky and Κ. I. Khalabaev, 13 vols, (Moscow: GIXL, 1926-1930), abbreviated in the notes as Sobranie, followed by volume and page numbers. I frequently cite vols. XI and XII of this collection, which include Dnevnik pisatelia, and the English translation of this work by Boris Brasol, The Diary of a Writer, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949). I also refer to vol. XIII of Sobranie, parts of which appeared in English as Dostoevsky's Occasional Writings, trans. David Magarshack (New York: Random House, 1963). The ongoing Soviet edition of Dostoevsky's complete works, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii ν tridsati tomakh, 30 vols. (Leningrad). I often refer to vol. VIII, Idiot (1973), and to vol. IX (1974) containing notes and plans for The Idiot, edited and prepared by T. P. Golovanova, G. M. Fridlender, I. V. Serman, I. A. Bitiugova, Ν. N. Solomina, and V. V. Dudkin, who are collectively referred to as "the editors" in the text and the notes. References to Polnoe sobranie in the text are to volume and page number. All the translations from this work are my own. When the reference is to The Idiot, I also provide a second page number directing the reader to a good recent English text of The Idiot, trans. Henry and Olga Carlisle (New York: New American Library, 1969).

Notes

Introduction 1. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. R. W . Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1973), p. 158. 2. Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 151. For a general discussion of the implied author and the implied reader see ibid., pp. 1 3 7 - 1 4 4 . The idea of the author's second self is not new: Wolfgang Iser has cited Kathleen Tillotson's work, The Tale and the Teller, in which she points out that E. Dowden, in 1877, had already made a similar separation between the real author and that self who writes the novel; Dowden found the narrator of George Eliot's novel to be "that second self who writes her books." See Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Com-

munication

in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: The Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 103. 3. Booth, Rhetoric, pp. 1 3 7 - 1 3 8 , 304. 4. Booth noted how a narrator may act as a foil for the failures of an author: "the author who attributes the style of his work to a narrator who is to some degree unreliable can get away with murder in this regard, providing himself with a pat excuse if we find weaknesses: T h e y are characteristic of my narrator, not of me' " ( R h e t o r i c , p. 147). Whatever weaknesses one ultimately finds in The Idiot, Dostoevsky has not blamed his narrator for them. As the notebooks for the novel clearly show, he carefully planned the narrator's tone as an intricate part in the overall strategy of the novel. 5. Booth, Rhetoric, pp. 147, 119-149, 138. 6. This conception of a reader of Dostoevsky's novel derives from and shares Booth's belief that a reader must contemplate the moral aspect of any narrator's point of view, for that is always, to some degree, a matter of moral definition. It is only fair to note, however, that this stance has been criticized, and well, by Norman Friedman; see his Form and Meaning in Fiction (Athens, G a . : University of Georgia Press, 1975), pp. 1 4 2 - 1 4 3 . Friedman criticizes Booth for his dislike of moral ambiguity in fiction: "Booth confuses . . . art and life rather badly: as a man, I must make up my mind about such matters . . . but as a writer and reader, I must be constantly experimenting" (p. 164). But Friedman's avowedly "relativist," "pluralist" outlook, despite its usefulness

258

Notes to Pages 5-12

as a critical tool, prevents him from experiencing the shock of moral recognition and understanding that great fiction so often engenders in us. 7. Numerous critics proposed schemes for characterizing all the possible points of view or angles of vision from which an author can choose to narrate his work. See, for example, Booth, Rhetoric, pp. 149-169; Friedman, Form and Meaning in Fiction, pp. 134-167; Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 240-282; Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1956), pp. 212-226. 8. Donald Fanger, "Gogol and His Reader," in Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, 1800-1914, ed. William Mills Todd III (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978), p. 94. 9. For Leonid Grossman, unity in Dostoevsky's novels stems from the author's philosophical intentions. A concise statement on Dostoevsky's use of diverse narrative forms to express his philosophical ideas may be found in "Iskusstvo romana u Dostoevskogo" in Poetika Dostoevskogo (Moscow, 1925), pp. 174-175. 10. Bakhtin, Problems, pp. 89-93, 108-113, and passim. 11. Bakhtin proposed that the author (Dostoevsky) and the hero are engaged in a dialectic: "The new artistic position of the author vis-a-vis the hero in Dostoevsky's polyphonic novel is a consequent and fully realized dialogical position . . . For the author the hero is not lie' and not Ί;' but a full-fledged 'thou', that is, another full-fledged Τ (Thou art')" (Problems, p. 51). Bakhtin, however, does not address himself to the narrator's own polyphony of voices except in his discussion of "The Double" (Problems, pp. 174-185), and here the narrator's voice is directly related to that of Golyadkin's double. It is not a separate consciousness with its own inherent contradictions as is the case with the narrator-chroniclers of Dostoevsky's later novels. 12. Lionel Trilling labeled "all prose fiction" a "variation on the theme of Don Quixote"; see "Manners, Morals, and the Novel," in The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950), p. 209. But he did specifically call Madame Bovary "the sister, at threecenturies' remove, of Don Quixote" (ibid., p. 211). Ian Watt has described Madame Bovary as the "classic equivalent" of Don Quixote "as regards the effects of the novel"; The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 205. Harry Levin has presented his discussion of Madame Bovary under the subtitle "The Female Quixote," in The Gates of Horn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 246. Although acknowledgment of the kinship between Don Quixote and Madame Bovary is a commonplace of modern criticism, it is exciting to find Dostoevsky making artistic use of this relationship to underscore the tragic ending of his own novel. 1. The Narrative

Imperative

1. I have not attempted a general statement about Dostoevsky's aesthetics or his philosophy of art. Readers interested in these questions should con-

Notes to Pages 12-17

259

suit Robert Louis Jackson, Dostoevski's Quest for Form: Α Study of His Philosophy of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). 2. Ρ, III, 227-228. The specific work to which Dostoevsky is referring in this passage is his 1876 article on Russia's mission; see "Vostochnyi vopros," in Dnevnik pisatelia, in Sobranie, XI, or 'The Eastern Question," in The Diary of a Writer, I, 358-360. 'The thought spoken is a lie" comes from Tyutchev's famous poem "Silentium." 3. F. Μ. Dostoevsky, "Riad statei ο russkoi literature: I. Vvedenie," Sobranie, XIII, 44; or "Five Articles from Time: I. Introduction," in Dostoevsky's Occasional Writings, pp. 58-59. 4. Ρ, I, 1 February 1846, p. 86. Dostoevsky did not compare himself only to Gogol. The emerging writer propelled himself, in his fancies, into the company of other established writers. "I am finishing a novel the size of Eugenie Grandet; the novel is quite original" (Ρ, I, 30 September 1844, p. 73). He consoled himself over having to rework Poor People: "I don't know if Chateaubriand's Atala was his first book, but he, I remember, rewrote it 17 times. Pushkin made the same kind of revisions even with his short verse. Gogol polished his marvelous creations for two years at a time, and, if you read Voyage sentimental of Sterne —a little book — youH remember what Walter Scott said in his notice about Sterne . . . [i.e., that Sterne's servant claimed Sterne had made extensive revisions and condensations of the book]" (Ρ, I, 4 May 1845, p. 77). For a discussion of the relationships of Lermontov and Gogol with their respective, equally unsophisticated, reading publics, see Donald Fanger, "Gogol and His Reader," in Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, 1800-1914, ed. William Mills Todd III (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978), p. 65. Fanger quotes Lermontov's preface to A Hero of Our Time, "Our public is like a provincial who, overhearing the conversation of two diplomats belonging to hostile courts, remains convinced that each of them is deceiving his own government in favor of a mutual and most tender friendship." Fanger also calls attention to the authorial asides of Dead Souls in which Gogol "confronts the unreadiness of the Russian reader of his time to recognize the conventions of fiction; the implicit contract between writer and reader simply could not be taken for granted." 5. F. M. Dostoevsky, Sobranie, XI, 188. 6. Ρ, II, 1/13 January 1868, p. 71. Dostoevsky's observations on how Don Quixote and Pickwick affect the reader closely resemble Ivan Turgenev's ideas in "Gamlet i Don Kikhot" in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem ν dvadtsati vos'mi tomakh, Sochineniia, VIII (Moscow, 1964) 171-192. This essay, written in 1860, had assumed the importance of a manifesto by the time Dostoevsky was writing The Idiot. Rufus Mathewson has written about Turgenev's assessment of the effect of the Don Quixote character type on the reader, "The ultimate purpose of the 'comic envelope' is to release a 'reconciling cleansing force' through laughter. And Turgenev adds: Whom you laugh at you forgive and are ready to love.' Turgenev has mediated between the image and the reader, and has brought this encounter to a typically literary resolution." Rufus W. Mathewson, Jr., The Positive Hero in Russian Literature, 2nd

260

Notes to Pages 17-31

ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), p. 107. Although he feared for the successful outcome of his experiment, Dostoevsky consciously tried to transcend Turgenev's categories of comedy and tragedy as defined in "Hamlet and Don Quixote." 7. For Dostoevsky's account of this scene, see Dnevnik pisatelia, Sobranie, XII, 29-33, or The Diary of a Writer, II, 584-588. 8. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for A Raw Youth, ed. Edward Wasiolek, trans. Victor Terras (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 128-129. 9. Anna Dostoevsky, Reminiscences, trans, and ed. Beatrice Stillman (New York: Liveright, 1975), p. 296. Anna Dostoevsky has quoted Dostoevsky's letter to S. D. Yanovsky in Ρ, III, 17 December 1877, pp. 284-285. 10. Dostoevsky, "G-n — b o v i vopros ob iskusstve," in Sobranie, XII, 91; or "Mr. — b o v and the Question of Art," in Dostoevsky's Occasional Writings, p. 131. 11. Dostoevsky, "Knizhnost' i gramotnost'. Stat'ia pervaia," in Sobranie, XIII, 107-108; or "Pedantry and Literacy. First Article," in Dostoevsky's Occasional Writings, p. 155. 12. Ibid, p. 106; pp. 152-153. 13. Dostoevsky, "G-n — b o v , " p. 93; "Mr.—bov," p. 134. 14. Ibid. 15. F. I. Evnin, "Plot Structure and Raskolnikov's Oscillations," trans. Natalie Bienstock, in F. M. Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, ed. George Gibian, trans. Jesse Coulson (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964) p. 676. This article was translated from Evnin's book, Tvorchestvo Dostoevskogo (Moscow, 1948), pp. 165-172. 16. Ρ, II, 491. Dolinin cites three other letters of Dostoevsky which make a similar juxtaposition between the poet and the artist; Ρ, II, 15/27 May 1869, pp. 189-197; 24 March 1870, pp. 257-260; 2/14 December 1870, pp. 297-300. 17. Georgy Chulkov, Kak rabotal Dostoevskii (Moscow, 1939), p. 207. 18. Leonid Grossman, "Kompozitsiia ν romane Dostoevskogo," in Sobranie sochinenii ν piati tomakh, II (Moscow, 1928), 13. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., p. 14. See also Chulkov, Kak rabotal, p. 223. 21. Dostoevsky, "Knizhnost' i gramotnost'. Stat'ia vtoraia," in Sobranie, XIII, 113; or "Pedantry and Literacy. Second Article," in Dostoevsky's Occasional Writings, p. 165. 22. "Knizhnost'," p. 133; "Pedantry," p. 194. 23. "Knizhnost'," p. 134; "Pedantry," p. 195. 24. Ibid. 25. "Knizhnost'," p. 125; "Pedantry," p. 182. 26. "Knizhnost'," p. 140; "Pedantry," p. 205. 27. Henry James, "The Art of Fiction" (1888) in Henry James: Selected Fiction, ed. Leon Edel (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1953), p. 591. 28. Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), pp. 49-50. Booth here quotes Henry James, 'The Novels of George Eliot," Atlantic Monthly, October 1866, p. 485.

Notes to Pages 31-45

261

29. Booth, Rhetoric, p. 125. 30. Ibid., pp. 131-133. Ε. Μ. Forster makes a similar, abbreviated comment about the interest of a work, although he finds the notion of interest to be a less serious consideration than do Dostoevsky, James, and Booth. He does not examine it as a separate aspect of the novel. "Our easiest approach to a definition of any aspect of fiction is always by considering the sort of demand it makes on the reader. Curiosity for the story, human feelings and a sense of value for the characters, intelligence and memory for the plot." Aspects of the Novel (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1927), pp. 108-109. 31. Dostoevsky, Dnevnik pisatelia, in Sobranie, XI, 147-148; or, The Diary of a Writer, I, 160. Dolinin has cited this passage in his notes for Ρ, III, 358. 32. Ρ, IV, 28 August 1880, p. 198. At this time Dostoevsky was considering whether to start issuing The Diary again. 33. Dostoevsky, "G-n — b o v i vopros ob iskusstve," p. 72; or, "Mr. — bov and the Question of Art," p. 101. Magarshack has here translated khudozhestvennost' as "high artistic quality," whereas throughout this chapter I have most often translated it as "artistic execution." We are, I hope, both right. In the quotations which I have translated, Dostoevsky was emphasizing aspects in the process of creativity; in the passages translated by Magarshack, Dostoevsky is speaking about a finished product and how it is perceived by a reader. The Oxford Russian-English Dictionary has translated khudozhestvennost' as both "artistry" (process), and "artistic merit" (product). 34. Dostoevsky, "G-n — b o v , " p. 72; or, " M r . — b o v , " pp. 100-101. 35. Dostoevsky, "G-n — b o v , " p. 95; or, " M r . — b o v , " p. 136. 36. Dolinin, in noting the emphasis Dostoevsky placed upon finding a successful beginning for a novel, has cited the letters in which Dostoevsky touches upon this subject. Ρ, III, 331. 37. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, pp. 94-95. 38. Ibid., p. 169. 39. The following observation by Tolstoy typifies the kind of criticism to which Dostoevsky was often subject. "I always write in the morning. I was pleased to hear lately that Rousseau too, after he got up in the morning, went for a short walk and sat down to work. In the morning one's head is particularly fresh. The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking, while still in bed or during the walk. Many writers work at night. Dostoevsky always wrote at night. In a writer there must always be two people —the writer and the critic. And, if one works at night, with a cigarette in one's mouth, although the work of creation goes on briskly, the critic is for the most part in abeyance, and this is very dangerous." Talks with Tolstoy, ed. A. B. Goldenveizer (1922), trans. S. S. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf (1923), quoted in Miriam Allott, Novelists on the Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 150. 40. Ρ, II, 358. Dostoevsky's self-accusation about his writing sounds remarkably like Myshkin's more basic criticisms of his own lack of measure and harmony.

262

Notes to Pages 47-53

2. The Notebooks for The Idiot 1. See Polnoe sobranie, IX, 339. Dostoevsky feared a search at the Russian border when they returned from their sojourn abroad. Anna Dostoevsky has written of the fate of this manuscript, "Sad as I was to part with the manuscripts, still I had to yield to Fyodor Mikhailovich's insistent arguments. We lit a fire in the fireplace and burned the papers. Thus perished the drafts of The Idiot and The Eternal Husband." See Anna Dostoevsky, Reminiscences, trans, and ed. Beatrice Stillman (New York: Liveright, 1975), p. 167. 2. P. N. Sakulin and N. F. Bel'chikov, eds., Iz arkhiva F. M. Dostoevskogo: Idiot, neizdannye material)/ (Moscow, 1931), p. 3; and Polnoe sobranie, IX, 339. See also the English edition of these notebooks, The Notebooks for The Idiot, ed. Edward Wasiolek, trans. Katherine Strelsky (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 9. 3. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for A Raw Youth, ed. Edward Wasiolek, trans. Victor Terras (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 31. 4. Robert Louis Jackson, Dostoevsky's Quest for Form: A Study of His Philosophy of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 166. 5. Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for The Idiot, p. 9. 6. For example, see Robin Feuer Miller, "Myshkin and Alyosha: The Genesis, Premature Birth, and Fruition of the Positively Beautiful Man," (Master's thesis, Columbia University, 1974), pp. 72-107. 7. As the 1974 editors explained, 'This division [into plans] does not concur with the more fragmented and impulsive authorial articulation of the material; it insufficiently sets off important changes of an ideological and artistic order"; they find that Bel'chikov's and Sakulin's divisions provide only a provisional orientation to the material (IX, 340). 8. Anna Grigor'evna wrote thaf Dostoevsky was preoccupied with the Umetsky case in the autumn of 1867 and that he wished he were in Russia so that he might follow it more closely. See Sakulin and Bel'chikov, Iz arkhiva, p. 204. Dostoevsky read about the Umetsky case in the fall issues of Golos (The Voice) and Moskva (Moscow). He had already begun work on The Idiot before he heard of the case, but then quickly incorporated it inio the notes. Mignon, another early version of Nastasia Filippovna, became Olga Umetsky, the would-be arsonist whose parents had beaten her and their other children mercilessly yet were not severely punished. Olga was acquitted but the Russian public feared for her future after her parents' release from prison, and faith in Russia's newly established jury system was undermined (ibid., pp. 205-208; IX, 340). 9. Elizabeth Dalton finds that though the "painful and dangerous Umetsky material is emphatically repressed" in the novel, "the themes of the violated child and the sadistic father are nevertheless present." Dalton compares the effect of the Umetsky case in the genesis of the novel to the way in which "the day's residue works in the creation of a dream . . . Before it could enter the novel it had to be buried and transformed: barred from direct expression . . . it undergoes that 'proliferation in the dark' of which Freud writes, helping

Notes to Pages 53-66

263

to create the web of organic connections that make up the emotional texture of the novel." Unconscious Structure in The Idiot: A Study in Literature and Psychoanalysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 200. Yet Dostoevsky's preoccupation with the Umetsky case may derive partly from the fact that this case reflected and affirmed themes already present in his earlier published fiction. 10. The 1974 editors also suggest her kinship with Hero in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (IX, 352). 11. Wasiolek notes that Ganya and Ptitsyn are the only proper names retained in the published text that appear in the early notes (Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for The Idiot, p. 78). In fact toward the end of the second notebook in the entry for 11/30 November Kolya's name also appears. 12. Polnoe sobranie, IX, 167; Sakulin and Bel'chikov, Iz arkhiva, p. 39. Unfortunately the English version of the notes mistranslates the "Memento"; "the chief point of the novel is the Uncle and the son, these two characters" (Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for The Idiot, p. 81). 13. Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for A Raw Youth, pp. 73-74. 14. L. N. Tolstoy, Sobranie sochinenii υ dvadtsati tomakh, IV (Moscow, 1961), p. 33. 15. Of course as Arthur O. Lovejoy has pointed out, the image of the great chain of being, in which everything had its place and every deed reverberated through the world, has long occupied a dominant position in men's conceptions of their universe. See The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934). Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were both drawing upon an idea that was "in the air." 16. Ρ, II, 18 February/1 March 1868, p. 79. In this letter Dostoevsky praises War and Peace, but he also criticizes it for having too many petty psychological details. But Tolstsy had already begun to publish War and Peace in Russkii Vestnik in 1865 (Book I, Parts I and II) under the title "1805." Dostoevsky had certainly read these early parts as they came out. 17. Dalton, Unconscious Structure in The Idiot, p. 187. 18. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1973), pp. 150-228. 19. The 1974 editors stress in particular the sense of the word "idiot" as used in the Middle Ages; an idiot was thought to possess a deep spirituality; his wisdom stemmed from this rather than from any bookish knowledge (IX, 394). 20. The editors also emphasize this meaning of the word "idiot" (IX, 394). 21. Dostoevsky has quoted The General Epistle of James, 2, 19. 22. James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 60. 23. George P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), II, 318-319. 24. Ibid., p. 320. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., p. 322. 27. Ibid., p. 327.

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Notes to Pages 66-89

28. Ibid., p. 336. 29. Serge A. Zenkovsky, ed. and trans., Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1963), p. 249. 30. George P. Fedotov, A Treasury of Russian Spirituality (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1948), p. 13, and Donald Attwater, The Penguin Dictionary of Saints (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 306. 31. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind, p. 202. 32. Ibid., p. 184. 33. Ibid. 34. Helen Iswolsky, Christ in Russia (London: Morrison and Gibb, 1962), p. 142. 35. Dalton has likened the rejections, transformations, and remoldings of these roles to a process "very like the repression, condensation, displacement, and secondary vision that go on in the formation of a dream. Moreover, by that law of conservation that operates in the unconscious, virtually none of the ideas in the notebooks is lost. The violent, sexual, incoherent material Dostoevsky consciously rejects turns up later in the novel, disguised and buried, but animating The Idiot with the power of repressed idea and impulse." Dalton, Unconscious Structure in The Idiot, p. 186. 36. Sakulin and Bel'chikov, Iz arkhiva, p. 203. 37. In the last entry of the second notebook for 11/30 November the 11 refers to December 11 new style (not to 11 November), so this one entry did occur, according to Sakulin, during the crucial period of rewriting and rethinking {ibid., p. 244). However, the entry provides no substantial clues to the formation of the novel; it is primarily a rehash of old material in which the Umetsky family plays the dominant role. 38. Dalton, Unconscious Structure in The Idiot, p. 173. 39. Sakulin and Bel'chkov, Iz arkhiva, p. 198. 40. The 1974 editors also stress the importance of the phrase "Prince Christ." They find this idea to be an old one of Dostoevsky's. In April 1864 just after the death of his first wife Dostoevsky revealed his understanding of the commandment to love your fellow man as yourself. "He wrote, 'the highest usage which a man can make out of his own personality, out of the completeness of his own I is to destroy that 1, to give it back as a whole to all men and to each man separately and wholeheartedly.' In these words the writer formulated his highest moral ideal, the fullest incarnation of which was attained, from his point of view, only by Christ" (IX, 365). 41. On 16 May 1868, Dostoevsky's first-born daughter Sonya died. The second entry after Sonya's death, on 24 May, reflects Dostoevsky's desire to be done with the novel. Here he has outlined an ending in which a rehabilitated Nastasia has married the prince, whose house is turned into a school. Everything generally comes out well. But this outline reflects a poignant desire to be finished with the tormenting work rather than a possible solution to the problems raised in the novel. Dostoevsky quickly rejected the entire plan (IX, 268-270). 42. The 1974 editors, in a comparison of The Idiot with Crime and Punishment, draw a similar conclusion and find that "all these features of the po-

Notes to Pages 89-91

etic style of The Idiot receive further development in The Possessed, Youth, and The Brothers Karamazov" (IX, 410). 3.

Shaping

the Reader's

265

A Raw

Expectations

1. Mixing of modes is not peculiar to Dostoevsky; it prevails in the works of most great novelists. In disagreeing with Percy Lubbock's emphasis on the point of view in a novel, Ε. M. Forster finds that for him this question resolves itself into "the power of the writer to bounce the reader into accepting what he says —a power which Mr. Lubbock admits and admires, but locates at the edge of the problem instead of at the centre. I should put it at the centre." See his Aspects of the Novel, (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1927), pp. 78-79. His example is Bleak House: "Logically, Bleak House is all to pieces, but Dickens bounces us, so that we do not mind the shiftings of the viewpoint" (ibid., p. 79). The lack of a single consistent point of view enriches rather than diminishes the novel; the multiplicity of narrative modes in a work serves to make a novel more real. "Indeed this power to expand and contract perception (of which the shifting view-point is a symptom), this right to intermittent knowledge: — I find it one of the great advantages of the novel-form, and it has a parallel in our perception of life. We are stupider at some times than others; we can enter into people's minds occasionally but not always, because our own minds get tired; and this intermittence lends in the long run variety and colour to the experiences we receive" (ibid., p. 81). Dostoevsky takes this method of shifting viewpoint to its extreme limits, so that the reader is often rudely jolted rather than bounced. 2. The reactions of the reader I know best, myself, did not correspond to the enriching, interlacing layers of response that repeated readings of great novels usually produce, but were, instead, opposite, mutually exclusive reactions. At a first reading I felt Dostoevsky had failed in his creation of Myshkin as a "positively beautiful man." I located this failure in the fact that vestiges of the vengeful Idiot of the notebook remained in the novel. A second reading convinced me of Myshkin's authentic goodness. A comparison of Robert Lord's with Joseph Frank's readings of the novel yields the same extreme variance but for both, it is precisely the experience of being a reader of The Idiot that becomes the most crucial aspect of this novel. See Robert Lord, "An Epileptic Mode of Being," in his Dostoevsky: Essays and Perspectives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), pp. 81-102, and Joseph Frank, "A Reading of The Idiot," Southern Review, 5 (April 1969), 303-332. 3. Leo Spitzer has characterized criticism as a "to and fro voyage from certain outward details to the inner center and back again to other series of details." See his Linguistics and Literary History: Essays in Stylistics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), pp. 19-20. Criticism can claim for itself no scientific methodology; to understand the whole you must seek a detail or a part which will illuminate the whole. But the critic's happy choice of a productive part to examine presupposes some understanding of the whole, and Spitzer aptly quotes Pascal's God, "Tu ne me chercherais pas si tu ne m'avais pas deja trouve" (ibid., p. 24). My own study of the narrative manner in The Idiot

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Notes to Pages 91-103

and its effect upon the reader has assumed the qualities of a "to and fro voyage" and should not be construed as an effort occurring under the banner of any particular critical ideology. 4. Joseph Frank, "Dostoevsky as Journalist: 1847", Boston University Journal, 2 (1975), 13. Frank cited Belinsky's "shrewd comment" on the nature of the feuilletonist. He "is a chatterer, apparently good-natured and sincere, but in truth often malicious and evil-tongued, someone who knows everything, keeps quiet about a very great deal but definitely manages to express everything, stings with epigrams and insinuations and amuses with a lively and clever word and a childish joke." Belinsky has offered here a prophetic description of the tone often adopted by Dostoevsky's narrators in his novels. 5. Booth has asserted that an implied author typically does not allow his narrator complete omniscience, "very few 'omniscient' narrators are allowed to know or show as much as their authors know." See Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 160. He uses the example of Henry James's notebooks and essays to assert that the novelist "discovers his narrative technique as he tries to achieve for his readers the potentialities of his developing idea" (ibid., p. 165). Most often, Booth finds, the novelist discovers that what is at stake is the establishment of the degree to which the narrator shall lack omniscience. 'The hard question is: Just how inconscient shall he be?" (ibid.). 6. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1973), p. 19. 7. Ibid., pp. 142-143. 8. Lionel Trilling has best defined the relationship of manners to what we usually consider our more "serious" concerns. "What I understand by manners . . . is a culture's hum and buzz of implication — I mean the whole evanescent context in which its explicit statements are made. It is that part of a culture which is made up of half-uttered or unuttered or unutterable expressions of value." See Trilling, "Manners, Morals, and the Novel," in his The Liberal Imagination (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950), p. 206. 9. Although Dostoevsky most certainly did not have Jane Austen in mind when he created the narrative voice that describes the Epanchin household, his portrayal plays with these conventions and renders them grotesque. The reader abruptly finds himself in a decidedly "unDostoevskyan" environment of a middle-class family with three daughters who read novels and try to find literature in life. The narrator's tone is one of ironical amusement even when he describes the villainous Totsky. The implied author's preoccupation remains, as always, intensely moral, and the reader is constantly aware of the amusing discrepancy between the facts and their appearance to many of the actors. 10. Walter Allen characterizes Jane Austen's novels as a feminization of Fielding's: "The world they show has undergone an enormous contraction . . . the world of the parlour, the world of ladies to which Tom Jones is not admitted or, if admitted, so much on his best behaviour as to be unrecognizable." See his The English Novel: A Short Critical History (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1954), p. 110. Myshkin's appearance in the world of these ladies represents an even greater breach of form.

Notes to Pages 105-109

267

11. As the novel progresses, the theme of the nonexpression of an idea, either intentionally or through an inability to do so, ceases to be a mere narrative device and assumes a metaphysical significance. Later in the novel Myshkin condemns himself for this constant habit of not completing or admitting his thoughts: "Conviction of what? . . . 'Say it if you dare, conviction of what?' he kept sayiing to himself, in challenge, in accusation. 'Put it into words, dare express your full thought clearly, precisely, without hesitation! Oh, I am dishonorable!' " (VIII, 194; 252). Myshkin's wording is interesting in the light of Dostoevsky's own reservations about expressing his ideas fully and directly. 12. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 of Part I contain many face readings. Myshkin suggests to Adelaide that she draw the face of a condemned man a moment before the guillotine blade falls, and he reads the physiognomies of Adelaida ("you have a happy face") and Alexandra ('There is something special about your face that reminds me of the Holbein Madonna in Dresden.") Interestingly, Dostoevsky himself had recently seen a copy of this picture for the first time and did not like it. See Rene Fülöp-Miller and Dr. Fr. Eckstein, eds., Madge Pemberton, trans., The Diary of Dostoevsky's Wife (New York: Macmillan, 1928), pp 11-12. Myshkin also reads Lizaveta Prokof'evna's face and concludes mysteriously, "And don't think I have spoken all this so openly about your faces from simplicity! oh no, not at all! It could be that I have my own idea" (VIII, 65; 96). He says of Aglaya that she is "almost" as beautiful as Nastasia Filippovna, "although her face is quite different" (VIII, 66; 98). The action of the chapter revolves around an embodiment of Nastasia's face — her photograph. 13. Leonid Grossman, "Kompozitsiia ν romane Dostoevskogo," in Sobranie sochinenii, II, 9-59; Bakhtin, "Characteristics of Genre and Plot Composition in Dostoevsky's Works," in his Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, pp. 83-150; Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, trans. Michael Minihan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); Donald Fanger, Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism: A Study of Dostoevsky in Relation to Balzac, Dickens, and Gogol (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). 14. See Robin Feuer Miller, "Dostoevsky and the Tale of Terror," in The Russian Novel, ed. John G. Girrard (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming). 15. See also Dostoevsky's letter of 1861 to Yakov Polonsky (Ρ, I, 302). Moreover, as a student in engineering school, Dostoevsky had read to his friends from the works of Maturin (See Leonid Grossman, Sobranie sochinenii, II, 73). See also Vsevolod Setchkarev, "Ch. R. Maturins Roman "Melmoth, the Wanderer' und Dostojevskij," Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie, 30 (1951), 99-106. 16. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. James T. Boulton (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1958), pp. 39, 51, 39. Burke was not the first to associate the sublime with greatness of dimension or to analyze the psychological effects of experiencing the sublime. He was, however, the first to attempt a "physiological explanation" of the sublime and the first to convert the link be-

268

Notes to Pages 109-111

tween sublimity and terror into a system. See Boulton, "Introductory Essay," p. lvi, in Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry. 17. The impact of Burke's essay was almost immediate — the phrase "the sublime and the beautiful" quickly entered everyday speech (ibid., pp. xcvixcvii, xcii), and "it became commonplace among both writers and readers to consider the emotions of terror and awe as sources of 'the Sublime' — a ready conduit to ideas of Divinity, Omnipotence, and all Final Things." See Joel Porte, "In the Hands of an Angry God: Religious Terror in Gothic Ficition," in The Gothic Imagination: Essays in Dark Romanticism, ed. G. R. Thompson (Pullman, Wash.: Washington State University Press, 1974), p. 43. In Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground the underground man does battle with countless writers, thinkers, and catch-all phrases — among them "the sublime and the beautiful." Although this phrase has often been linked to Schiller as well, the editors of the ongoing Soviet edition of Dostoevsky's works have turned back to Burke and Kant (V [1973], 102; 383). 18. Mario Praz, "Introductory Essay," in Three Gothic Novels: The Castle of Otranto, Vathek, Frankenstein, ed. Peter Fairclough (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 10. Burke himself had briefly suggested that the qualities of the sublime and the beautiful could be "sometimes found united" both in nature and in art, despite the fact that one is "founded on pain, the other on pleasure." Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, p. 124. 19. Matthew G. Lewis, The Monk (New York: Grove Press, 1952), pp. 363-364. 20. Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer: A Tale (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), p. 322. 21. Edgar Allan Poe, Philosophy of Composition, quoted by Mario Praz in his The Romantic Agony, trans. Angus Davidson, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 27. Throughout the chapter 'The Beauty of the Medusa" (pp. 23-53) Praz gives other examples of the mingling of Beauty and Horror, and he later cites Mitya's famous speech in The Brothers Karamazov that begins, "Beauty is a terrible and awful thing!" (ibid., p. 350). He does not link this passage directly back to the Gothic novel, however, but forward to the language of Baudelaire. 22. Indeed, The Brothers Karamazov is largely about the miraculous power of single acts of good, single beauties, single seeds, amidst a world stocked with evil, ugliness, and seeming death. 23. In The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky again had merged images of beauty and horror to make a similar philosphical statement. Although Dmitri lamented the presence of the "mysterious" and the "terrible" in beauty, Alyosha learned to accept this dichotomy in beauty and to find, by virtue of this acceptance, a higher kind of harmony. When the elder Zosima died, everyone had expected "something extraordinary" to happen; least of all had they expected an odor to arise from his holy corpse. Alyosha's eventual acceptance of the fact that Zosima's body had decomposed expressed his realization that God's ways are unpredictable and that nature itself is sinless so that man should not read his own moral notions into its processes. Alyosha's full acceptance and perception of nature led him to a miraculous experience of sublimity, a sublimity which was, paradoxically, devoid of the terrible.

Notes to Pages 111-113

269

24. See Comte Donatien Alphonse Fran?ois de Sade, Justine (1791), in The Marquis de Sade: The Complete Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings, trans, and ed. Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 459; Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 5; Lewis, The Monk, p. 39; Maturin, Melmoth, p. 215. 25. The new value placed on sensibility in the Gothic novels also reflected the growth of a female reading audience. See Ian Watt, 'The Reading Public and the Rise of the Novel," in The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (Berkeley; University of California Press, 1957), pp. 35-60, and Mario Praz, "Introductory Essay," in Fairclough, Three Gothic Novels, p. 9. Jane Austen's narrator, presumably a woman, in Northanger Abbey (1818)—which is itself a parody of the Gothic novel — describes the reading habits of the heroine, Catherine Morland. "But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine: she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventual lives." But the emphasis so many critics place on the female reader should not eclipse the fact that men read these novels too. I hope we do not share Catherine's amazement at the sensible hero, Henry, when he praises The Mysteries of Udolpho: "But I really thought before young men despised novels amazingly." "It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do — for they read nearly as many as women. I, myself, have read hundreds and hundreds" Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1972), p.122. 26. Maturin, Melmoth, pp. 13-14; p. 14. The clearest influence of this passage can be seen in Gogol's story, The Portrait. The young artist Chartkov purchases a similarly demonic portrait of an old man in which the eyes are alive. Setchkarev finds a "suspicious" parallel here; he claims that Gogol knew Maturin's novel. See Vsevolod Setchkarev, Gogol: His Life and Works, trans. Robert Kramer (New York: New York University Press, 1965), p. 127. 27. Praz, "Introductory Essay," in Three Gothic Novels, p. 20. 28. Of course many novelists —from Cervantes to Jane Austen to Dickens —have depicted characters who had to unlearn their educations in order to discover their true moral sensibilities, but the Gothic novelists allow their characters to suffer unspeakable misfortunes along the way. 29. A typical definition of the Gothic novel is given by Wolfgang Iser: "a form of the novel that had arisen specifically out of reactions against the morally oriented novels of the eighteenth century. The Gothic novel restored to the genre the element of the mysterious and the uncanny which the moral novels of the eighteenth century had tried to eliminate." He cites Fielding's dislike of the form of the Gothic novel and of the unnatural Gothic novelist himself ("their brains the chaos where all their materials are selected"). Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 81. 30. Lewis, The Monk, p. 314. 31. Maturin, Melmoth, p. 334.

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Notes to Pages 111-118

32. In recent years there has been a small but serious revival of interest in the Gothic novel and in the study of its direct influence upon such writers as Dickens, Melville, Hardy, Conrad, Kafka, and Faulkner. See, for example, Virginia Hyde, "Kafka and Gothic Iconography," in The Gothic Imagination, pp. 128-150; James Keech, "The Survival of the Gothic Response," Studies in the Novel (Summer 1974), pp. 130-144; Robert D. Hume, "Gothic Versus Romantic," PMLA, 84 (March 1969), 282-290; Robert L. Platzner, " 'Gothic Versus Romantic': A Rejoinder," PMLA, 86 (March 1971), 266-274; Norman N. Holland and Leona F. Sherman, "Gothic Possibilities," New Literary History, 8 (Winter 1977), 279-293. These articles vary in their definitions of the Gothic novel, but they all tend to view the Gothic primarily as an emotion, first expressed in the author's "Gothic" impulse and then reflected in the reader's response. These modern critics have followed the lead of the earliest contemporary commentators on the Gothic novel such as Scott and Coleridge, who from the outset viewed the Gothic as a "response," and therefore saw it as an occasion for a scrupulous analysis of the role of the reader. Curiously, however, none of these critics, past or present, has commented upon the comedic response produced in these novels by the mixture of comedy and tragedy, of the vulgar with the supernatural. 33. Maturin, Melmoth, p. 380; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, quoted in Three Gothic Novels, p. 364. 34. Praz, The Romantic Agony, p. 76. 35. Ibid., p. 209. Cleopatra represents the personification of this algolagnic type; Gautier, Dumas, and Pushkin incarnated her as the type of the Fatal Woman (ibid., pp. 211-215). "In accordance with this conception of the Fatal Woman, the lover is usually a youth, and maintains a passive attitude; he is obscure, and inferior either in condition or in physical exuberance to the woman, who stands in the same relation to him as do the female spider, the praying mantis, etc., to their respective males" (ibid., p. 215). The relationship between Nastasia Filippovna and Myshkin reflects some of these stereotypes: his physical condition is weaker than hers; he accedes to her wishes; and, most important, his compassion for her is heavily counterbalanced by his fear of her. Dostoevsky consciously links her to the Cleopatra type; as Nastasia Filippovna emerges onto the porch in her wedding finery, an anonymous voice in the crowd outside quotes a line from Pushkin's Egyptian Nights, "A princess! For a princess like that I'd sell my soul," some clerk cried out, and he sang, 'For one night of love I'd give up my life' " (VIII, 492; 610). 36. Praz, The Romantic Agony, p. 219. 37. In his next novel, The Possessed, Dostoevsky links, albeit ironically, Stavrogin to the vampire legend (X, [1974], 401). Even the narrator-chronicler's first full physical description of Stavrogin suggests the qualities of a vampire: his hair, "a little too black" (chto-to uzh); his complexion, "a little too white," the redness of his cheeks, which was "too bright," his "coral lips," and the fact that there was "something repellent" about his beauty (X, 37). 38. Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, p. 240; Lewis, The Monk, p. 417; Shelley, Frankenstein, p. 360; Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer, p. 241.

Notes to Pages 118-120

271

39. Another striking instance of the coincidence between the weather and the plot occurs near the end of The Possessed. At dawn after their night together Liza observes to Stavrogin, "It ought to have been light an hour ago by the calendar, and still it's almost like night" (X, 398). As Liza walks toward the fire in the town and toward the mob that will soon murder her the narrator brings all of nature to bear in the depiction of his climactic scene. "A light rain penetrated the whole country, swallowing up every reflection, every nuance of colour, and transforming everything into one smoky, leaden, indistinguishable mass. It had long been day, yet it seemed as though dawn had not yet broken" (X, 411). At this moment Stepan Trofimovich appears and the Gothic mood is abruptly deflated by tragicomedy. 40. Booth, Rhetoric of Fiction, p. 175. 41. Ibid., p. 255. 42. Comte Donatien Alphonse F r a ^ o i s de Sade, Idee sur les romans (Bordeaux: Ducros, 1970), p. 53. 43. Similarly, in The Possessed in the scene where Liza is murdered, the narrator dissipates the mood of terror at the very moment of most heightened drama: as she is being beaten by the mob, the narrator is already deflating the scene. In The Monk, Melmoth the Wanderer, and The Wandering Jew (Eugene Sue) such scenes of murder by a mob occur, and while they are terrible, they at least conform to some notion of "rough justice" —to use Sholokhov's chilling phrase. But Dostoevsky used this Gothic scenario to illustrate the tragic complexity of all that has transpired. The narrator suddenly becomes an observer; he acts as a kind of ballast to the macabre scene (X, 413). He later testifies about what he has witnessed in a deliberately low-keyed manner. His perhaps too rapid return to the rational world resembles the voice of the narrator in The Idiot after Rogozhin's attempted murder of Myshkin and again at the close of the novel. 44. Posthumous article by Radcliffe in New Monthly Magazine, 7 (1826); quoted by Hume, "Gothic versus Romantic," pp. 284-285. 45. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, p. 40. 46. Grossman, "Kompozitsiia ν romane Dostoevskogo," in Sobranie sochinenii, II, 9-59; George Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism (New York: Random House, 1959), pp. 192-214 and passim. See also Setchkarev, "Ch. R. Maturins Roman "Melmoth, the Wanderer' und Dostojevskij" pp. 99-106. 47. Grossman, "Kompozitsiia", pp. 21-22. 48. Ibid., p. 24. 49. Ibid., p. 32. Similarly, the Gothic novel in England invited bogus "translations from the German." See Devendra P. Varma, The Gothic Flame (London: Arthur Baker, 1957), pp. 31-32. In France, the situation was much the same. See Maurice Levy, "English Gothic and the French Imagination: A Calendar of Translations, 1767-1828," in The Gothic Imagination, p. 151. Gothic novels had taken Europe by storm —Levy describes them as having been "read to pieces." Walter Scott wrote of the rage for The Mysteries of Udolpho in similar terms, "The volumes flew and were sometimes torn from hand to hand" (quoted by Varma, p. 94).

272

Notes to Pages 121-136

50. Polnoe sobranie, XV (1976), 546. 51. Grossman, "Kompozitsiia," p. 22. 52. Ibid., pp. 51-52. Grossman puts the Gothic novel in the category of adventure novel; the Gothic novel is a later manifestation of this type of literature, but is not separate from it. "But Dostoevsky's immediate teachers in composition were not so much Cervantes and Le Sage as a whole pleiad of later representatives of 'adventure' literature" (ibid., p. 22). He goes on to name Radcliffe, Lewis, and Maturin. 53. Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, p. 210. 54. Ibid., p. 194. Balzac's admiration for Maturin is also well-known. 55. Grossman, "Kompozitsiia," p. 58. 56. Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, pp. 204, 207. 57. Grossman, "Kompozitsiia," pp. 17, 16. 58. Ibid., p. 19. 59. Varma, The Gothic Flame, p. 3; Barton Levi St. Armand, "The "Mysteries' of Edgar Poe: The Quest for a Monomyth in Gothic Literature," in The Gothic Imagination, p. 65. 60. Varma has quoted Coleridge and Scott, in The Gothic Flame, p. 104. 4. The Breakdown

of the Reader's Trust in the

Narrator

1. In 1874 Dostoevsky wrote a vignette about railroad travel reminiscent of the narrator's digression at the beginning of Part III. Here he also touches upon the lack of "talented people among us"; he portrays a character, a type not unlike Lebedev, who "knows all." Lebedev too had first been described while on a train. See Dostoevsky, "Malenlcie kartinki. (V doroge)," in Sobranie, XIII, 457-473, or "Small Sketches during a Journey," in Dostoevsky's Occasional Writings, pp. 255-283. Robert Hollander has called attention to three letters Dostoevsky wrote to Maikov between August and October 1867 expressing hope in the future of the Russian railways. He notes that Dostoevsky's attitude toward the railroads later changed: they came to symbolize an outlook of "get rich quick, and you may do as you please." Robert Hollander, "The Apocalyptic Framework of Dostoevsky's The Idiot," Mosaic, 7 (1974), 131. He finds the railroads in The Idiot to be associated with mercantilism and a general spirit of political corruption: as Lebedev calls them, "the artistic pictorial expression" of the emptiness of mercantilism (ibid., p. 133). 2. Nastasia Filippovna's letter to Aglaya uses the same Gothic mode for describing Rogozhin. She describes his "two terrible eyes, which constantly look at me, even when they are not present before me. These eyes are silent now (they are always silent), but I know their secret. His house is dark and dreary, and there is a secret in it. I am certain, that in a cabinet he has a razor hidden, wrapped in silk, like that murderer in Moscow . . . I would kill him from fear . . . But he will kill me first" (VIII, 380; 474). 3. N. Zhinkin has written about Dostoevsky's narrative technique (in Crime and Punishment) of inducing and maintaining a constant state of tension in his readers. He notes that the reader's sense of oppressiveness is never

Notes to Pages 136-155

273

allowed to relax; he points out that Dostoevsky purposefully leaves gaps in his narrative. For example, Dostoevsky doesn't explain how Raskolnikov arrives at certain ideas, because he w a n t s the reader to be tormented b y riddles and to be forced to w o r k out his o w n solutions. N . Zhinkin, "Dostoevskii i chitatel'," Slavia (Prague), 15, no. 4 (1938), 526-538. Zhinkin points out that it is much easier to be a reader of Pere Goriot, a novel which addresses itself to similar problems, than of Crime and Punishment (ibid., p. 541). 4. This is Myshkin's most direct expression of longing for normal sexual experience and for participation in everyday h u m a n existence. The editors note that the source of the phrase about the "feast of life" is f r o m Malthus' essay, On the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, and that Aleksandr Herzen also used the phrase "the feast of life" in From the Other Shore (IX, 452). 5. The narrator continues to develop this atmosphere of magic. After Myshkin breaks the case, "he stood as if he were a person apart, . . . like an invisible man in a fairy tale" (VIII, 454; 565). 6. In this chapter the narrator's barbs against society resemble Dostoevsky's o w n tone in much of his journalism. 7. The editors cite various letters in which Dostoevsky himself expressed identical views (IX, 457). Here, however, the important thing is not the substance of the arguments, but the inappropriate time and place in which they are expressed. 8. Joseph Frank, in his brilliant article, "A Reading of the Idiot," discovers a similar pivotal change in the n a r r a t o r at this point in the novel. He finds here "a significant shift in narrative point of view" which is "closely correlated with the unprecedented predicament arising f r o m Myshkin's remarkable character." Joseph Frank, "A Reading of The Idiot," Southern Review 5 (April 1969), 328. V. A. T u n i m a n o v has also described the narrator's increasing distance f r o m the hero; he notes the growth of uncertainty in the voice of "the authornarrator." V. A. T u n i m a n o v , "Rasskazchik ν 'Besakh' Dostoevskogo," in Issledovaniia po poetike i stilistike, ed. V. V. Vinogradov (Leningrad, 1972), p . 107. T u n i m a n o v remarks h o w the narrator sinks into a swamp of improbable rumors and leaves "the reader to discover the true verdict for himself" (ibid., p. 107). Although Tunimanov's article is for the most part a study of the narrator in The Possessed, he offers an excellent analysis of the effect on the reader of the narrator's style in The Idiot (ibid., pp. 106-112). 9. Curiously, the narrator-chronicler of The Brothers Karamazov uses nearly identical language at an equally critical moment in his narrative. After Alyosha rushes out of the dead Zosima's cell in despair, the narrator observes, "I would only beg the reader not to be in too great a hurry to laugh at my y o u n g hero's p u r e heart. I am far f r o m intending to apologize for him or to justify his innocent faith on the grounds of his youth . . . Don't y o u see, though I declared above, and perhaps too hastily, that I would not explain, apologize for, or justify my hero, I see that some explanation is necessary for the undertaking of the rest of my story." But here, the narrator's assertion that he need not justify or apologize for his hero serves as an explicit defense of Alyosha rather than as an a b a n d o n m e n t of him. Indeed, the narrator em-

274

Notes to Pages 155-159

phasizes that "on the contrary . . . I have a genuine respect for the qualities of his heart" (XIV, 305-306; or The Brothers Karamazov, ed. Ralph E. Matlaw, trans. Constance Garnett [New York: W. W. Norton, 1976], p. 317). It is typical of Dostoevsky's economy and genius as an artist that the narratorchroniclers of The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov could use such similar language for such different purposes. But, fittingly, Dostoevsky has entitled the chapter of the novel in which this passage occurs "A Critical Moment" ("Takaia minutka"). The points of congruence and contrast among the narrator-chroniclers of The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov might some day be "the subject of a new tale." 10. Frank, "A Reading of The Idiot, p. 329. 11. Tunimanov finds that Evgeny Pavlovich has reached the highest "worldly" interpretation of the events (Tunimanov, "Rasskazchik," p. 109). 12. The narrator had ended the scene between Aglaya and Nastasia (Part IV, chapter 8) with a tableau of Myshkin and Nastasia Filippovna that foreshadowed the final view of Myshkin at the end of chapter 11. He sat next to her, "he looked at her and stroked her on the head and face with both hands, as if she were a little child. He laughed at her laughter and was ready to cry at her tears. He said nothing . . . he began to stroke her head" (VIII, 475; 589). At the end, Myshkin sits with Rogozhin. 'The prince sat motionless next to him . . . and every time, at the cries or ravings of the sick man, he hurried to pass a trembling hand over his hair and cheeks, as if he were caressing and soothing him" (VIII, 507; 628). He is frozen within this final role as comforter, for by now he had become an "idiot." The implied author has created a visual image almost as chilling as Holbein's painting of the dead Christ. 13. In Baden, during the summer of 1867, a few days after Dostoevsky's famous but obscure argument with Turgenev, Anna Dostoevsky writes how they came to purchase Madame Bovary despite their acute lack of funds. See Rene Fülöp Miller and Dr. Fr. Eckstein, eds., The Diary of Dostoevsky's Wife (New York: Macmillan, 1928), p. 255. Later she comments that she finds the novel "extraordinarily interesting" (ibid., p. 256); she may even have attempted a translation of the novel, for two weeks after the purchase of Madame Bovary she started, "for sheer lack of occupation . . . translating a French book" (ibid., p. 301). The extreme poverty of the Dostoevskys during this trip abroad is well known. According to Anna Grigor'evna they bought almost no books during this trip, so the purchase of Madame Bovary is significant. 14. In his remarkable essay on the final scene of the novel, Allen Tate made a passing comment about the structure and the narration of The Idiot which I hope all readers of this study will wholeheartedly reject: "Of the three great novels of Dostoevsky, The Idiot has perhaps the simplest structure . . . there is very little summary or commentary by the author; here and there a brief lapse of time is explained, or there is a 'constatation,' a pause in the action in which the author assumes the omniscient view and reminds us of the position and plight of the other characters, who complicate the problem of the hero." See Allen Tate, "The Hovering Fly," in Collected Essays (Denver: Allen Swallow, 1959), p. 146. 15. Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 285.

Notes to Pages 159-163

275

16. Critics from Grossman to Fanger have stressed that Dostoevsky used many different narrative devices to make his works interesting to the reader. M. G. Davidovich even listed and discussed ten narrative devices Dostoevsky employed to maintain the reader's interest. See his "Problema zanimatel'nosti ν romanakh Dostoevskogo," in Tvorcheskii Put' Dostoevskogo, ed. Nikolai Brodskii (Leningrad, 1924), pp. 104-131. But this abundance of of devices has increased the narrative complexity of Dostoevsky's novels as well as their interest, and the way a reader is invited to respond to the resulting complexity should also be taken into account. 17. Robert Lord, Dostoevsky: Essays and Perspectives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), pp. 227-228. 18. Frank, "A Reading of The Idiot," p. 312. 19. Lord, "An Epileptic Mode of Being," in Dostoevsky: Essays, p. 81. 20. Ibid., p. 86. For Lord, section 1 = Part I; section 2 = Parts II, III, and the end of Part IV; section 3 = Part IV. 21. Ibid., p. 88. 22. Ibid., p. 90. At the same time, Lord has given some scrutiny to the texture of the narrative itself. He realizes the precarious and crucial role of the reader and does admit that "when all is said and done, the total impression of Myshkin, despite the way the presentation of his character is fragmented, is a profound one" (ibid., p. 91). But for Lord, Myshkin's profundity lies ultimately in his resemblance to Dostoevsky himself. Myshkin provides clues to his creator's biography; he is profound not as a literary creation, but as an echo of a real man. "It is my contention that his novel is primarily an exploration of the epileptic mode of being, which was also Dostoevsky's own" (ibid., p. 101). 23. Frank, "A Reading of The Idiot," p. 304. 24. Ibid., p. 305. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., p. 313. 27. Ibid., p. 328. 28. Ia. O. Zundelovich, "Svoeobrazie povestvovaniia ν romane 'Idiot'," in Romany Dostoevskogo: Stat'i (Tashkent, 1963), pp. 62-105. 29. Ibid., p. 62. 30. Ibid., p. 65. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., p. 64. 33. Ibid., pp. 66-67. 34. Ibid., pp. 70-71. 35. Ibid., p. 77. 36. Ibid., p. 78. 37. Ibid., p. 82. Zundelovich's analysis closely parallels Dostoevsky's own view of his artistic endeavors. In chapter 1 we have already witnessed Dostoevsky's sense of the conflict within him between the artist, who portrays, and the poet, who has the idea. Zundelovich substituted the term "thinker" for "poet," but otherwise the relationship between these two aspects of the writer is the same. 38. Ibid., p. 89. 39. Ibid., pp. 100-101.

276

Notes to Pages 163-169 40. Ibid., p. 101.

5. The Clash of Truth and

Falsehood

1. This is not to say that the inserted or interpolated narrative is a device that every novelist has employed. Such "pure" writers as Jane Austen and Flaubert have not made particular use of it. Rene Wellek and Austin Warren dismiss this narrative mode as either "the attempt to fill out the size of a work" or "as the search for variety"; Theory of Literature (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1956), pp. 221-222. But the inserted narrative, in one form or another, was basic to the narrative technique of such novelists as Cervantes, Fielding, Sterne, Dickens, and Dostoevsky. 2. Richard Cumberland, Henry (1795), Vli, quoted by Miriam Allott, Novelists on the Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 228. 3. Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling (1749), Xi. The tale of 'The Man of the Hill" in Tom Jones became the signpost for a debate about the ideal structure of the novel in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See Allott, Novelists on the Novel, pp. 164-173; 227-241 and Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 50. Walter Scott focused on the same interpolated tale to express his dislike of this technique. He found 'The Man of the Hill" to be an "episode which, in compliance with a custom introduced by Cervantes and followed by Le Sage, Fielding has thrust into the middle of his narrative, as he had formerly introduced the History of Leonora, equally unnecessarily and artificially, into that of Joseph Andrews." See "Henry Fielding," in Walter Scott, Lives of the Novelists (1827), quoted by Allott, Novelists, p. 231. 4. Grossman, "Iskusstvo romana u Dostoevskogo," in Poetika Dostoevskogo, (Moscow, 1925), p. 174. See also his essay "Kompozitsiia ν romane Dostoevskogo," in Sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1928), II, 20. 5. For a discussion of the attributes of this particular fantastic genre, see Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1973), pp. 92-100. "Menippean Satire" and "Menippea" are both Bakhtin's epithets for a form derived by Menippus, a Cynic philosopher of the third century B.C., whose satires were celebrated and imitated by his admirers, most notably Lucian. 6. Ibid., p. 97. 7. Henry James, letter to Hugh Walpole (19 May 1872), from Selected Letters, quoted by Allott, Novelists on the Novel, p. 235. 8. Of course we know from the notebooks that Dostoevsky had not even planned the existence of Ippolit at the time that he wrote Part I of the novel. But that does not mean that we cannot talk about unities of construction in this novel. As readers, after having read a work, we inevitably gauge its impact upon us as a whole. Prophecies and fulfillments exist within a work; one cannot deny them simply because the writer at the beginning of his undertaking did not himself know the exact shape that his work would assume. 9. The obvious autobiographical import of this anecdote has already

Notes to Pages 169-179

277

been thoroughly treated in many other critical and biographical works about Dostoevsky. 10. Bakhtin wrote of the carnival-like worlds of "Bobok" and of The Idiot·. "People appear for a moment outside the normal situations of life, as on the carnival square or in the nether world, and a different — more genuine — sense of themselves and of their relationships one to another is revealed. Such, for example, is the famous scene of Nastasya Filippovna's nameday party (The Idiot) . . . Ferdyshchenko (a petty mystery-play devil) proposes a petit-joue |sic] . . . [which] helps to create the carnival-square atmosphere." Problems of Dostoevski's Poetics, p. 120. 11. Yury Lotman described Dostoevsky's reaction of simultaneous attraction and repulsion to Rousseau and has compared Dostoevsky's lifelong argument with Rousseau to his relationship with Belinsky. See "Russo: russkaia kul'tura XVIII-nachala XIX veka," in his Zhan-Zhak Russo. Traktaty (Leningrad, 1969), pp. 603-604. Dostoevsky condemned Rousseau's philanthropy (chelovekoliubie) as well as his habit of confession. In the notes for A Raw Youth he wrote, "He hates Genevan ideas (that is, philanthropy; that is, virtue without Christ)"; Literatumoe nasledstvo, (Moscow) 77 (1965), 80. Joseph Frank has explained the significance of the term chelovekoliubie in the 1840s as signifying "the application of Christian moral-social ideals to worldly existence." It had no specific theological content, and this is how Dostoevsky continues to use it; Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 193. 12. See Robin Feuer Miller, "Rousseau and Dostoevsky: The Morality of Confession Reconsidered," in Western Philosophical Systems in Russian Literature, ed. Anthony M. Mlikotin (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1979), pp. 89-101, which traces, beginning with The Insulted and Injured, Dostoevsky's interest in these two episodes from Rousseau's Confessions. 13. Rousseau, The Confessions, trans. J. M. Cohen (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1954), p. 88. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., p. 89. 16. Nevertheless Dostoevsky felt a continual attraction to the confessional mode. Grossman notes that in addition to Rousseau's Confessions Dostoevsky read the confessions of St. Augustine, Soulies Confession generale, Musset's Confession d'un enfant du siecle, De Quincey's The Confession of an Opium Eater, and George Sand's Confession dune jeune fille (Grossman, "Stilistika Stavrogina," in Sobranie sochinenii, II, 143). Dostoevsky always had a "decided inclination" for this literary genre. "The abundance of workings-out of themes in the first person, the unquestionable predilection of Dostoevsky for the type of the 'Ich-Erzälung' —from Poor People, Netochka Nezvanova, and A Christmas Tree and A Wedding to The Gambler, The Devils, and A Raw Youth, — all this shows his attraction to that form" (ibid., p. 144). Grossman finds that part of Dostoevsky's attraction to the confessional form derives from the fact that at the center of a confession there usually lies a tale of a secret crime.

278

Notes to Pages 180-189

17. Rousseau, The Confessions, p. 86. 18. Ibid., p. 89. 19. Ibid. Stavrogin's confession in The Possessed contains further echoes of Rousseau's false accusation of the servant Marion. This time Dostoevsky explores the moral implications of false accusation (albeit a passively enacted accusation) relentlessly; the gentler modes of parody and ridicule have been abandoned. Rousseau's maltreatment of Marion spurred him on to write his Confessions and to seek the good. Stavrogin's encounter with Matryosha also "inspired" his confession, but his relations with her end only after he precipitated and witnessed her suicide. The degree to which Dostoevsky polemicized with and parodied the Rousseau of The Confessions in "At Tikhon's" cannot be overestimated; Miller, "Rousseau and Dostoevsky," pp. 96-98. 20. The implied author uses this anecdote to introduce the title of the novel La dame aux camelias by Dumas fils into the text. Nastasia Filippovna somewhat resembles its heroine. 21. For another discussion of the role of Rousseau in Dostoevsky's works, see Dolinin's notes, in Ρ, II, 510-511. 22. Grossman, "Stilistika Stavrogina," p. 142. 23. A. G. Dostoevskaia, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1971), p. 396. This letter of 26 November 1883 was not published until 1913. 24. Rousseau, The Confessions, p. 17. 25. Lionel Trilling described Rousseau's claim to "pre-eminence in sincerity." He further quotes Rousseau: "I who believe and always have believed, that I am on the whole the best of men, felt that there is no human breast, however pure, that does not conceal some vice"; see Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. 58-59. 26. Michael Holquist aptly described the importance of the idea of the moment for The Idiot: "The structure of a single moment's promise broken under the onslaught of a series of other such moments following upon it, constitutes the novel's central pattern." See his Dostoevsky and the Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 122. 27. But Myshkin himself cannot fully escape the habit of rational discourse and of thinking in terms of inexorable laws. He thinks later, "Compassion is the chief and perhaps the only law of human existence" (VIII, 192; 250). He uses the language of rational discourse to express a religious doctrine. 28. Robert L. Belknap, "Dostoevsky's Nationalist Ideology," Review of National Literatures, 3 (Spring 1972), passim. 29. A. S. Pushkin, Sochineniia, III, ed. P. V. Annenkov (St. Petersburg, 1855), 17. As the 1974 editors noted, this set was in Dostoevsky's library (IX, 402). 30. D. D. Blagoi, "Dostoevskii i Pushkin," in Dostoevskii, khudozhnik i myslitel', ed. Κ. N. Lomunov (Moscow, 1972), p. 402. 31. For the text of Dostoevsky's letter to Sonya Ivanova, see chapter 2. Dostoevsky's idea of a Don Quixote who was serious and not comic continued to develop. As late as 1877 he gave his image of Don Quixote a political cast: he placed Don Quixote in opposition to Metternich, to the spirit of capitalism,

Notes to Pages 189-191

279

and to the doctrine that the morality of the state need not coincide with the morality of one man (a doctrine rationalized under the phrase: "the interests of civilization.") According to Dostoevsky, these Don Quixotes had arisen in Russia and had begun to frighten Europe. Don Quixote figures as the champion of eternal morality, a morality which applies equally to states and to men. See Dnevrtik pisatelia in Sobranie, XI, 50-51, or The Diary of a Writer, trans. Boris Brasol, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949), II, 608. Myshkin too has the interests of all Russia at heart; he believes that his knowledge of good and evil will ultimately help him to fortify goodness and to redeem beauty; he too clutches at his sincerity as his most valuable weapon. The image Dostoevsky used in The Idiot to convey a model for personal action becomes, in The Diary, a model for political action. In The Idiot Myshkin's ideological opponent, Ippolit, appropriates for himself the motto, "Apres moi le deluge." Curiously, in the same passage from The Diary about the political image of Don Quixote Dostoevsky asserts that if the truths advocated by his Don Quixote are not preserved, then the banner bearing the inscription "Apres nous le deluge" will be hoisted. 32. The stanza appeared in an anonymous article in Sovremennik, actually written by M. L. Mikhailov, entitled "Respect for Women." Mikhailov was writing about the effect that the cult of Mary in the Middle Ages had had upon the ideal of service to women (IX, 403). The article appeared in Sovremennik, 1, no. 1, 275-319, and 3, no. 1, 92-129 (1866). 33. The editors observe that the existence of this isolated strophe encouraged Dostoevsky to believe that this was not the only unpublished part of the poem. Structurally, the version recited in The Idiot is incomplete, because the final verse in which the poor knight dies alone and insane in his castle contradicts the traditional Christian representation of the eternal "responsiveness" of the Mother of God to prayers addressed to her (IX, 404). And indeed, the complete unpublished version of the poem does end with the Virgin Mary's intercession on behalf of her poor knight; she takes him from hell up to heaven. 34. In another stanza, the seventh, which also did not appear in the shorter, published version of Pushkin's poem, the poet describes the knight's utter devotion to the Virgin Mary. He spent whole nights before her icon, staring at her with his "sorrowful eyes." The earliest draft for the stanza contains the phrase "passionate eyes" (strastny ochi) which Pushkin later changed to "sorrowful eyes" (skorbny ochi); A. S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, III (Moscow, 1963), p. 463. This earliest draft underlines the voluptuous, even sinful zeal with which the poor knight worshipped the Virgin Mary. Such a motif of excessive, sensuous devotion was common to the Gothic novel; for example, in The Monk the virtuous Ambrosio falls passionately in love with a painting of the Virgin; this unholy passion precipitates his downfall. 35. As D. D. Blagoi points out in his article on Pushkin and Dostoevsky, much later (17 August 1880) Dostoevsky inserted this third unpublished verse into his notebook, but he transformed it in a characteristic way; "Podezhaia pod Zhenevu / U podnozhiia kresta / Vstretil on Sviatuiu Devu / Mater' Gospoda Khrista." ("While approaching Geneva, he met the Holy Virgin, the Mother of the Lord Christ, at the foot of a cross.") Blagoi notes that Dostoev-

280

Notes to Pages

191-207

sky probably intended to have Ivan Karamazov's devil recite this verse in its altered form. See "Dostoevskii i Pushkin," p. 403; see also Literaturnoe Nasledstvo: Neizdannyi Dostoevskii (Moscow), 83 (1971), 770. 36. Dostoevsky here alludes, the editors point out, to Iskra, published in Petersburg from 1859-1873 (IX, 445). 37. Myshkin's account is also heavily influenced by Victor Hugo's novel Le dernier jour d'un condamne, 1829. 38. For Keller, questions of form and style in a narrative always take precedence over content. At the prince's birthday party in Part III, he reveals his passion for reading about the English Parliament in the newspapers. "I love terribly to read in the papers about the English Parliaments, that is, not in the sense of what they are discussing . . . but how they talk among themselves and carry on, so to speak, like politicians, 'the noble viscount, seated opposite,' 'the noble count who shares my idea,"my noble opponent, who has astounded Europe with his proposal,' that is, all those fine little phrases, all this parliamentary procedure of a free people — that's what is alluring to me; . . . I've always been an artist in the depths of my soul" (VIII, 309-310; 393). 6. The Search for a Binding

Idea

1. Compare the relevant passage from Revelations, which does not actually appear in the text of The Idiot. "And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life [ot istochnika vody zhivoi] freely," Revelations, 21.6; see also 22.1, 22.5. 2. Earlier, when the prince arrived at his own party Lebedev announced that they had been discussing Hamlet and the question ' T o be or not to be." (Lebedev's metaphor of rottenness also recalls Hamlet.) In the notebooks Dostoevsky has Ippolit rephrase Hamlet's question; it becomes ' T o die or not to die? . . . To live or not to live?" (IX, 277). Moreover, Hamlet is concerned with the power of art; Hamlet plots, "the play's the thing / Wherein 111 catch the conscience of the King" (II. ii). Characters in The Idiot (like Myshkin, Keller) share a similar consciousness of the tremendous power of rhetoric. Hamlet's 'To be or not to be" soliloquy provides a link between the narratives of Lebedev and Ippolit. Lebedev's medieval cannibal confessed because his conscience drove him to it, because he was subject to the influence of a binding idea. Hamlet, in describing his fear of suicide touches upon the power of "the dread of something after death . . . Thus conscience does make cowards of us all" (III, i). For Lebedev that dread and that force of conscience reflect man's involuntary participation in the binding idea. Ippolit draws inspiration from the first half of Hamlet's soliloquy, though he ultimately, in choosing suicide, makes the opposite choice. 3. See also Revelations 10:1-7, especially 10:6, "that there shall be time no longer." 4. This dictum has been attributed to Louis XV (1710-1744), although it is not known whether he really said it. Dostoevsky had already used it in 1863, in Summer Notes on Winter Impressions (IX, 449).

Notes to Pages 207-233

281

5. The editors cite the influence of Hugo's Le dernier jour dun condamne upon Ippolit's confession, especially chapter 24 in which the condemned man describes the malice and fury that raged within him in the face of death (IX, 449). 6. This formulation of seeds of goodness being sown and taking root throughout the world comes to fruition in The Brothers Karamazov; Robert Belknap, The Structure of The Brothers Karamazov, Slavistic Printings and Reprintings, vol. 72 (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), pp. 48-50, 74-76. 7. This hypothesis about absolute ideas being veiled behind successive layers of narrative belongs to Robert L. Belknap, The Structure of The Brothers Karamazov, p. 105. 8. One could continue to draw parallels between aspects of The Idiot and Rousseau's Confessions. Ippolit's reading of his statement echoes Rousseau's reading aloud from his Confessions to a select audience. 9. Rene Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), p. 12. 10. The triangles among these three characters alone overlap each other in so many ways that the situation becomes impossibly complex. If one were to add the triangles engendered by the conflicting desires and mediators of Rogozhin, Ganya, and Ippolit, the enumeration of all the possible triangles would become grotesque. In these relations the added ingredient of ressentiment comes into play; Rogozhin, Ganya and Ippolit hate Myshkin for the desires he has filled them with; they hate, in short their mediator or model. Conclusion 1. Ρ, III, 16/28 July 1876, 227-228. 2. Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 386. 3. Ibid., p. 396. Appendix

A.

The Novel and the

Critics

1. M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Sobranie sochinenii ν dvadtsati tomakh, IX (Moscow, 1970), 411-413, quoted in Polnoe sobranie, IX, 416. For a more complete survey of Russian reactions to the novel than it would be useful to present here, see IX, 410-420. 2. Nicholas Berdyaev, Dostoievsky, trans. Donald Attwater (New York: New American Library, 1974), p. 227. 3. Ibid., p. 120. 4. A. P. Skaftymov, "Tematicheskaia kompozitsiia romana 'Idiot'," in Tvorcheskii put' Dostoevskogo, ed. Nikolai I. Brodsky (Leningrad, 1924), 131-136. In this respect Skaftymov's ideas bear a striking resemblance to those expressed by such modern students of the phenomenology of reading as Georges Poulet. 5. Skaftymov, 'Tematicheskaia Kompozitsiia," pp. 174, 176.

282

Notes to Pages 233-237

6. Vyacheslav Ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life: A Study in Dostoevski, ed. S. Konovalov, trans. Norman Cameron (New York: Noonday Press, 1968), p. 72. Ivanov goes on to explicate his own complicated, symbolicmythic overview of Dostoevsky. Andre Gide has also remarked upon the organic connection between the last pages of Crime and Punishment and The Idiot; see Gide, Dostoevsky (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions Books, 1961), p. 113. But, he adds, "The transition from The Idiot to The Eternal Husband is more interesting still" (ibid., p. 114). 7. Ivanov, Freedom and the Tragic Life, p. 90. 8. Ibid., p. 101. Ivanov muses about the reasons for Dostoevsky's failure, and, carried away, he speculates about what would have happened had the novel succeeded: "But so otherworldly was his conception that he could not extract its entire content, or completely express it within the limits of artistic awareness. Had he been able to do so, all men would have cried out, in the words of that Barbarian King who had enquired of his guest concerning the destiny of the human soul: 'Has not the seer taught our hearts again to know whence the swallow flew which appeared in the firelight of this bright-lit company, and what it was that drove her back into her native darkness?' Because Dostoevsky had not been able to do this, The Idiot. . . must be regarded . . . as incomplete" (ibid., pp. 101-102). 9. Leonid Grossman, Dostoevsky: A Biography, trans. Mary Mackler (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), p. 438. 10. Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work, trans. Michael A. Minihan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 346. Like Ivanov and Gide, Mochulsky remarks on the connection between Crime and Punishment and The Idiot (pp. 351-352). 11. Ibid., p. 380. 12. R. P. Blackmur, "The Idiot: A Rage of Goodness," in his Eleven Essays in the European Novel (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), p. 142. 13. Mochulsky, Dostoevsky, pp. 375-376. 14. Blackmur, "A Rage of Goodness," p. 156. 15. Ibid., p. 141. 16. Murray Krieger, "Dostoevsky's 'Idiot': The Curse of Saintliness," in Dostoevsky: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Rene Wellek (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 48. 17. Blackmur, "A Rage of Goodness," p. 156. 18. Krieger, 'The Curse of Saintliness," pp. 49-50. 19. Edward Wasiolek, Dostoevsky: The Major Fiction (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1964), p. 103. 20. Ibid., p. 109. 21. V. I. Etov, Dostoevskii: Ocherk tvorchestva (Moscow, 1968), pp. 295-296. 22. Ibid., p. 307. 23. M. Gus, Idei i obrazy F. M. Dostoevskogo (Moscow, 1971), p. 367. 24. Ibid., p. 386.

Notes to Pages 238-240 Appendix B. The Phenomenology

283

of Reading

1. V. N. Voloshinov (about whom there is speculation that he is really Bakhtin) articulated his idea as early as 1930 when he wrote, "there is no reason for saying that meaning belongs to a word as such. In essence, meaning belongs to a word in its position between speakers; that is, meaning is realized only in the process of active, responsive understanding." V. N. Voloshinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (New York: Seminar Press, 1973), p. 102. It is, of course, a small step from speaker and listener to author and reader, and in fact, Voloshinov chooses to illustrate this very point with a quotation from Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer. 2. H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd ed. rev. Sir Ernest Gowers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 400. 3. Wallace Martin, 'The Hermeneutic Circle and the Art of Interpretation," Comparative Literature, 24 (Spring 1972), 99. 4. Walter J. Slatoff, With Respect to Readers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), p. 3. 5. Stanley E. Fish, "Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics," New Literary History, 2 (Autumn 1970), 123. The late Roland Barthes took a similar polemical stance when he wrote that "the image of literature to be found in contemporary culture is tryannically centered on the author, his person, his history, his tastes, his passions." Roland Barthes, 'The Death of the Author," in Sallie Sears and Georgianna W. Lord, eds., The Discontinuous Universe: Selected Writings in Contemporary Consciousness (New York: Basic Books, 1972), pp. 7-8. 6. Fish, "Literature in the Reader," p. 123. Fish quotes W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Monroe Beardsley, The Verbal Icon (Lexington, Ky: University of Kentucky Press, 1954), p. 21. 7. Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 30. He has quoted Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 427. This quotation, however, does not describe Frye's own conception of the reader. Frye, like Iser, Fish, and Slatoff, has felt the need to set himself against a critical tradition. But he emphasizes the separation between the processes of criticism and of reading, "However disciplined by taste and skill, the experience of literature is, like literature itself, unable to speak . . . The reading of literature should, like prayer in the Gospels, step out of the talking world of criticism into the private and secret presence of literature." Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 27. 8. Jorge Luis Borges, "For Bernard Shaw," in his Other Inquisitions, 1937-1952 (New York, 1968); quoted by Donald Fanger in "Gogol and His Reader," in Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, 1800-1914, ed. William Mills Todd III (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978) p. 63. 9. Walter J. Ong. S.J., 'The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction," PMLA, 90 (January 1975), 9.

284

Notes to Pages 241-245

10. Roger Fowler, "Language and the Reader,' in Style and Structure in Literature: Essays in the New Stylistics , ed. Roger Fowler (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 89. 11. Jonathan Culler, "Defining Narrative Units," in Fowler, Style and Structure, p. 140. 12. Ibid. 13. Robert Scholes, while often critical of the structuralist critics, seeks to absolve structuralism in particular from the charge that it isolates the work from the world outside it, although he recognizes that the structuralists do often ignore larger questions of meaning: "Another danger for structuralism has been . . . the 'formalistic fallacy' . . . a reproach usually leveled against formalism and which the Russian formalists, especially in their earliest enthusiasm, sometimes deserved. The formalistic fallacy is a lack of concern for the 'meaning' or 'content' of literary works, and it is a charge frequently brought against that criticism which refuses to acknowledge the presence of a cultural world beyond the literary work and a cultural system beyond the literary system . . Structuralism, properly understood, far from being cut off from the world in a formal prison, approaches it directly at several different levels of investigation." Robert Scholes, Structuralism in Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 11. 14. John Preston, The Created Self (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1970), passim. 15. Ong, "The Writer's Audience," p. 12. 16. Iser, The Implied Reader, p. xiii. 17. Ibid., p. 102. 18. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 86. 19. Iser, The Implied Reader, pp. 288-290. 20. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 388. 21. This evaluation of Todorov has been provided by Scholes, Structuralism in Literature, pp. 144-145. 22. Wallace Martin, 'The Hermeneutic Circle and the Art of Interpretation," p. 110. Martin has quoted Roland Barthes, "Language as Criticism, TLS, September 27, 1963. 23. Scholes, Structuralism in Literature, 148-149. 24. Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1975), p. 24. 25. Scholes, Structuralism in Literature, p. 37. Scholes also calls this superreader a "monster." 26. Georges Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading," New Literary History, 1 (October 1969), 55. 27. Ibid., pp. 57-58. 28. Booth, Rhetoric of Fiction, 138. 29. Slatoff, With Respect to Readers, p. 39. 30. Ibid., pp. 60-69. 31. Ibid., p. 35. 32. Fish, "Literature in the Reader," p. 145.

Notes to Pages 245-248

285

34. Preston, The Created Self, p. 5. Sterne has drawn a compelling portrait of the reader as actor. C. S. Lewis has made use of a theatre motif as well, but for him the reader plays a more traditional role as spectator: "It is not a question of knowing . . . It is connaitre not savoir; it is erleben; we become those other selves . . . in order to occupy, for a while, their seat in the great theatre." C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 138-139; quoted by Preston, p. 208. 35. Preston, ibid., pp. 5-6. 36. Iser, The Implied Reader, p. 46. 37. Ibid., p. 56. (See Tom Jones, VIII, i.) 38. Ibid., p. 102. 39. Ibid., p. 120. 40. Ibid., p. 290. Preston and Iser have both compared the activity of reading to the acquisition of experience. Norman Holland, on the other hand, discovers a metaphor for experience in the act of reading. 'The individual (considered as the continuing creator of variations on an identity theme) relates to the world as he does to a poem or a story: he uses its physical reality as grist with which to re-create himself, that is, to make yet another variation in his single, enduring identity. In short . . . experience." Norman N. Holland, Five Readers Reading (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), pp. 128-129. 41. Wolf Schmid, Der Textaufbau in den Erzählungen Dostoevskijs (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1973), pp. 18-19. 42. Ibid., p. 21. 43. Ibid., p. 23. 44. Ibid., p. 34. 45. Ibid., p. 28. Here Schmid asserts that we are dealing with a fictive reader if the narrator addresses the reader in the second person, or with such phrases as "gentle reader," "dear friend," or if the narrator, in seeking to influence the reader, allows himself to be recognized in a personal, particular way. The fictive reader cannot exist independently of the narrator; instead, he is created as a projection of the narrator and functions as another fictive form of the world represented in the work. Thus, the fictive reader possesses no characteristics that are not assigned to him, directly or indirectly, by the narrator. 46. Ibid., p. 26. 47. Ibid., p. 27. Schmid here cites his source for this idea as existing in Robert L. Belknap's The Structure of the Brothers Karamazov, Slavistic Printings and Reprintings, vol. 72 (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), p. 77. 48. Schmid, Der Textaufbau, p. 38. In fact, Schmid asserts that Dostoevsky was the first Russian writer to have depicted his represented world to the reader as a riddle or solveable problem. Schmid's assertion, it seems to me, could apply equally well to other Russian writers, especially Gogol. 49. Ong, "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction," p. 11. 50. Ibid. As an example, he cites the student's typical problem in writing the inevitable "How I spent my summer vacation" essay. He points out that the difficulty of writing the essay lies not in its subject but in the matter of the audience. For whom is the student writing? Who wants to know? His grandmother? His classmates? His teacher? Ong is really asking a question about

286

Notes to Pages

248-251

narrative method here: questions of readers and narrators cannot be separated from each other. 51. Ibid., p. 12. 52. Leo Spitzer, Linguistics and Literary History: Essays in Stylistics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), p. 19. 53. Martin, "The Hermeneutic Circle and the Art of Interpretation," pp. 102-103. He has quoted Emil Staiger, Grundbergriffe de Poetik (Zurich, 1951). 54. Fish, "Literature in the Reader," p. 162. 55. Ibid., p. 125. 56. Ibid., p. 140. 57. Riffaterre, Poulet, and Todorov also give importance to the temporal quality of reading. Scholes describes Riffaterre's concentration on the message/receiver relationship in poetry. (Scholes, Structuralism in Literature, p. 35.) Poulet emphasizes what happens to him in the course of his reading; he is "persuaded," "freed," "modified," and "astonished." Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading," pp. 55-60. Todorov, Scholes points out, has separated reading from two other critical stances, description and interpretation. Reading is unlike description, which "tends to reduce poetic structures to spatial form." Scholes, Structuralism in Literature, p. 145. 58. Iser, The Implied Reader, p. 279. 59. Fanger, "Gogol and His Reader," p. 86. Although Fanger is writing about Gogol and his reader, his article presents an overview of the Russian reading public in the first half of the nineteenth century and suggests how to proceed to an interpretative study of the reader in Russia through existing histories, memoirs, and pronouncements of the "ubiquitous censor." He observes that this approach had been called for in Russia as early as 1922 by Aleksandr Beletsky, in an article O n One of the Immediate Tasks of Historical-Literary Scholarship: The Study of the History of the Reader" (ibid., p. 64). For a more historical approach to this problem, and one spanning a slightly later period, see also Jeffrey Brooks, "Readers and Reading at the End of the Tsarist Era," in Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, 2800-1914, pp. 97-150. 60. Iser, The Implied Reader, p. 282. 61. Ibid., p. 288.

Index

"About Kartuzov," 50 Adventure novel, related to Gothic, 120, 272n52 Aglaya, see Epanchin, Aglaya Aksakov, Ivan, 36; letters to, 38 Allen, Walter, 266nl0 Alyosha (Brothers Karamazov): contrasted with Myshkin, 50; material from notebooks, 72 Amadis of Gaul, 219 Ambrosio, Abbot ( T h e Monk), 114, 117; and the Virgin Mary, 279n34 Anna Karenina, 19, 37 Annenkov, P. V., 189, 191 Apocalypse: Lebedev as interpreter of, 200, 202-205, visions of, in Part III, 201; Ippolit on, 202, 206-207 Aristotle, 241 Arkady ( T h e Raw Youth), material from notebooks on, 72 Art, "dangerous," as in the dead Christ, 212-213 Artist; vs. poet and entertainer, 25-28, 49, 224; and the writing of The Idiot, 46 Atheism, 18, 34, 41, 225 Atheists, Myshkin on, 184-185 Audience: effect of on narration, 6-7; Dostoevsky on, 12, 14-15; reader vs. public, 16-17; Ippolit's, 215-217 Austen, Jane, 98, 266n9 and nlO, 269n25 Author: real-life vs. implied, 3; absence of voice of, 14-15, 131; divisions of, 224; see also Artist; Entertainer; Narrator; Narrator-Chronicler; Poet Autobiography, seen through fictional characters, 24 Bakhmutov ( T h e Idiot), 211 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 237, 276n5; on narrator-chronicler, 3; on polyphonic

novel, 8-9; on interest v s : artistry, 28; on Dostoevsky's characters, 62-63; on narrative voices, 67, 133; on inserted narratives, 166-167 Balzac, Honore de, 108, 121 Barashkov, Nastasia Filippovna ( T h e Idiot), 42, 76, 83, 252, 267nl2; oscillations of, 51; as Heroine, 52, 53, 85-86; enigma of, 79; ward of Totsky, 101, 102, 227-228; indirect description of, 106; as corrupted beauty, 112, 114-115; and Myshkin, 138; letter to Aglaya, 138, 219-220; vigil beside corpse of, 157; failed abduction of, 218-219 Barthes, Roland, 241, 243-244, 246 Baudelaire, Charles, 268n21 Beardsley, Monroe, 240 Beauty: and the sublime, 109; and horror in the Gothic novel, 109-112 Beautiful Muslim Girl, The, 30 Beginnings of novels, 40-41 Bel'chikov, N. F., on family structure, 52 Belinsky, Vissarion, 14, 18; Dostoevsky's relations with, 18-19, 2 7 7 n l l ; on Rousseau, 181-182; on feuilletonist, 266n4 Belknap, Robert, 237, 281n6 and n7, 278n28, 285n47 Berdyaev, Nicholas, 232 Bezukhov, Pierre (War and Peace), 59 Billington, James, 65 Binding idea: possibility of, questioned, 200; force of, 203; source of life, 209, 210-211; in Ippolit's statement, 211 Blackmur, R. P., 234-235 Blagoi, D. D., 279n35 Bleak House (Dickens), 265nl "Bobok," 112, 277nl0 Booth, Wayne C., 243; on real and

288

Index

implied authors, 3-4, 91; on literary interest, 31; on mystery and irony, 118, 159; on the implied reader, 128, 242, 244-245; on roles of writer and reader, 225, 247 Borges, Jorge Luis, 240 Bovary, Madame, see Madame Bovary Brothers Karamazov, The, 21, 33, 34, 280n35, 208; narrative method in, 2, 89, 228; as expression of idea, 35, 38; inner narratives in, 39-40; ending of, 41; multiplicity of voices in, 44; notion of the chain in, 59; material from notebooks in, 71; use of supernatural in, 112; confession in, 181; beauty and horror in, 268n21, n22, n23; attitude of narrator in, 273n9 Burdovsky, Antip (The Idiot), 124, 132, 192, 253; claim on Myshkin, 195-197 Burke, Edmund, on terror and the sublime, 109, 119, 267nl6, 268nl7 and nl8

70-71 Confessions, 176; Dostoevsky on, 176177, 277nl6; at the name-day party, 177-181; Rousseau's, 178-182, 2 7 7 n l l Confessions, The (Rousseau), Dostoevsky on, 178-179, 181 Confessions of an English Opium Eater (de Quincey), 120 Conrad, Joseph, 270n 32 Created Self, The (John Preston), 242 Correspondence, supportive of Dostoevsky, 20-21 Crime and Punishment, 33, 50, 178; narrative method in, 2, 273n3; effectiveness of, 18; interest of, 24; as expression of idea, 35; ending of, 41; internal dialogues in, 62-63; overtones of incest in, 112; relation to The Idiot, 233, 282n6 Critics, ambivalence toward, 21 Culler, Jonathan, 241 Cumberland, Richard, 166

Cannibalism, in Lebedev's story, 202-204 Castle of Otranto, 120 Cervantes, Miguel de, 82, 189, 241; use of inserted narration by, 166, 276nl and n3 Characterization: determination of, 46; of Myshkin, 51, 60-69 Charles ( M a d a m e Bovary), 157-158 Charterhouse of Parma, The (Stendhal), 121 Chateaubriand, 259n4 Chernyshevsky, Nikolai, 185 Chinese vase, breaking of, 145-146, 150, 221 Christ, 114, 234; Myshkin's attitude toward, 67; portrayal of through action, 84; Holbein's painting of, 212-213, 217; as mediator, 220; enigma in, 226; see also "Prince Christ" Christmas Tree and A Wedding, A (Dostoevsky), 277nl6 Chulkov, Georgy, 26, 28 Cleopatra, as fatal woman, 270n35 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 4, 122, 245, 270n32 Comedy: in presentation of the good man, 81; adopted by Dostoevsky for the Idiot, 82-83; and tragedy in Gothic novel, 112-113 Comic voice in narration, 8, 82 Communication: problems of, 2, 224; emphasis on indirect, 13; as ultimate goal, 224-225; novel as, 238 Conciseness, a goal in The Idiot,

Dalton, Elizabeth, 60, 72, 262n9, 264n35 Davidovich, M. G., 275nl6 Dead Souls (Gogol), 259n4 Death: preoccupation with, 168, 169, 183; Ippolit's attraction to, 205-207 Defoe, Daniel, 121 De Quincey, Thomas, 120, 277nl6 Dernier jour d'un condamne, Le (Hugo), 280n37 Desdemona, 89, 158 Devils, The. See The Possessed Devushkin, Makar ( P o o r Folk), 6, 14-15 Dialogue, strategies of, 9 Diary of a Writer, The (Dostoevsky): letter to Solov'ev on, 12-13; acceptance by readers of, 20-21; time pressures vs. expression of ideas in, 36-37; on political Don Quixote image, 279n31 Dickens, Charles, 74, 82, 108, 165, 270n32; mixture of comedy and realism in, 113; comic relief in, 136; inserted narratives of, 276nl Digressions: as revealing narrator, 9293, 123-125; on railroads, 128-130; effect on reader, 131-132, 136; on the ordinary man, 141-142 Doktorenko, Vladimir (The Idiot), 128, 192, 195, 197, 203, 253 Dolinin, A. D., 25, 27, 237; on Dostoevsky's plans, 38 Don Quixote (Cervantes), 9-10, 190; inserted narratives in, 166

Index

289

Don Quixote, 157, 233; prototype of "good man," 17, 74, 81; madness as cloak for, 152; and "the poor knight," 189; mediator of, 219; and Madame Bovary, 258nl2; "comic envelope" of, 259n6 Dostoevsky, Anna Grigor'evna 20, 24; letters to, 37, 41; on Dostoevsky's planning The Idiot, 48; Diary of, 274nl3 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 241; use of inserted narratives by, 166; as polemicist, 187; on Don Quixote types, 278279n31; attitude toward his readers, 223-224; device of multiple authors and multiple readers, 224, 230-231; see also Author; Narrator Dostoevsky, Mikhail, 14; letters to, 33-34

Epanchin, General Ivan Fyodorovich, 77, 128; first description of, 94; family of, 98-100; attitude toward Nastasia, 101-102; Gothic overtones in description of, 113; confession of, 179-181 Epanchin, Lizaveta Prokof'evna, 132, 145, 158, 173, 253; on reading of Pushkin poem, 190-191; and article on Myshkin, 193 Epileptic seizures, 275n22; in Part II, 116, 117, 119, 124; in Part IV, 150, 221 Eternal Husband, The (Dostoevsky), 50 282n6 Etov, Vladimir, 236-237 Evnin, F. I., 24-25 Exempla, 182-183, 204

Double, The (Dostoevsky), 14, 49; criticisms of, 18 Dowden, E., 257n2 "Dream of a Ridiculous Man, The" (Dostoevsky), 2, 112 Dreams: narrator on Myshkin's, 138; Myshkin's, 140 du Barry, Countess, 183 Dumas, Alexandre, 108, 270n35

Faces, reading of, 105, 267nl2 Failed acts, expressiveness of, 218-219 Faith, religious feeling: Myshkin on, 185-186; Ippolit on, 208-209; threatened by laws of nature, 209 Family structure in The Idiot, 52; development of, 53-55, 61, 62; relation of illegitimacy to, 60; and the novel of manners, 98; the Epanchins, 98-101 Fanger, Donald, 259n4; on the reader, 7-8, 258n8; on reading, 250-251 Fathers and Children (Dostoevsky), 35 Faulkner, William, 270n32 Fedotov, Goerge, on the yurodivyi, 65-66 Ferdyshchenko (The Idiot), 10, 83, 85, 107, 201, 253; as jester, 175-176 Feuilletonist, 266n4 Fielding, Henry, 121, 165, 166, 241, 246, 266nl0; on the Gothic novel, 269n29; inserted narratives of, 276nl and n3 Fish, Stanley, 240, 241, 244, 245, 249, 250 Flaubert, Gustave, 157 Florence, 51 Form (style, technique): determined by idea, 48-49; Gothic mode in service of, 122; Frank on, 159; and the order of narration, 187 Forster, Ε. Μ., 42-43, 136, 261n30, 265nl Fowler, H. W, 239 Fowler, Roger, 241 Frank, Joseph, 155, 237; reading of The Idiot, 159-161; on being a reader, 265n2; on shift of narrator, 273n8

Eliot, Goerge, 223, 257n2 Endings of novels, 41-42; importance of, in The Idiot, 41-42; as expansions, 42-43 Engelgardt, Β. M., 97 Enigmas; balanced against explanation, 78-79 , 81; as intentional, 87; Dostoevsky's emphasis on, 226 Entertainer, vs. artist and poet, 25, 49, 224 Entertainment, see Interest Epanchin, Adelaida, 169, 170, 173, 253, 267nl2 Epanchin, Aglaya ( T h e Idiot), 80, 83, 89, 252, 253, 267n2; and Nastasia, 85, 102; as implied reader, 133, 148; on marriage with Myshkin, 134-135, 145, 218-219; Myshkin's proposal to, 147; on Myshkin's parables, 169, 171, 173; on Myshkin as "the poor knight," 188-191, 192; role in the novel, 190; and Lebedev's story, 204-205; on Ippolit's confession, 218; Nastasia's letters to, 219-220 Epanchin, Alexandra, 100-101, 173, 218, 253, 267nl2 Epanchin family, 54, 56, 69, 253; irony in presentation of, 95-96, 98-100, 115, 227, 266n9; described in Part III, 130

290

Index

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), 118 Frankenstein, 114 Friedman, Norman, 257n6 Frye, Northrop, 240; on intentional fallacy, 243 Gambler, The (Dostoevsky), 24, 277nl6 Gautier, Theophile, 270n35 Geneva, 50 "Gentle Creature, A" (Dostoevsky), 2 Gide, Andre, 282n6 Girard, Rene, 219-220 Gogol, Nikolai, 6, 215, 234, 241, 250; method contrasted with Dostoevsky's, 14; Dostoevsky compared to, 18, 131, 237, 259n4; irony of, 95; mixture of comedy and realism in, 113; references to in The Idiot, 141, 143 Golyadkin ( T h e Double), 14, 62, 63 Goncharov, I. Α., 36 Good deeds; obstacles to enactment of, 209-210; by Myshkin and Ippolit, 211212; defeated by laws of nature, 212-213; effectiveness of, 214 Good man, the : Dostoevsky's portrayal of, 17; prototypes of, 17; Myshkin as, 170 Gothic novels: influence on Dostoevsky, 108-112; sublime and beautiful in, 109; mixture of comedy and tragedy in, 112-113; vampire in, 114-115; basic lack of explanation in, 120; excessive religious devotion in, 279n34; in Part II, 228; revival of interest in, 270n32; fatal women in 270n35 and n37; emphasis on weather in, 271n39; popularity of, 271n49 Gothic voice in narration, 8, 108, 113, 115; in Part 111, 134-135 "Grand Inquisitor, The" (Dostoevsky), 39 Grigorovich, Dmitri, 18 Grossman, Leonid, 8, 233-234, 237; on interest vs. artisitc execution, 28; on influence of Gothic novel, 120-122; on inserted narratives, 166; on the confession, 277nl6 Grushenka (The Brothers Karamazov), corrupted beauty, 112 Guilt and responsibility, final understanding of, 230 Gus, Mikhail, 237 Hamlet, 280n2 Hardy, Thomas, 46, 270n32 Hero-villains; of Gothic novels, 112, 114; of Dostoevsky, 112; Miltonic, 114

Heroes, fatal, of romanticism, 114-115 Heroine: changing conceptions of, for The Idiot, 53-54; fatal, 114-115 Herzen, Aleksandr, 273n4 Historical novel, related to Gothic, 120 History of Tom ]ones: A Foundling (Fielding), 276n3 Hoffman, Ε. Τ. Α., 108 Holbein, Hans: painting of dead Christ, 184, 212, 267nl2; reactions of Myshkin and Ippolit to, 212-213 Holland, Norman N., 270n32 Hollander, Robert, 272nl House of the Dead, The (Dostoevsky), quoted, 46 Hugo, Victor, 37, 44, 108, 280n37 Hume, Robert L., 270n32 Hyde, Virginia, 270n32 Iago, Plan for (Dostoevsky), 68; relation of the Idiot to, 68-69, 88; related to "Prince Christ," 84; enigma in, 226 Ideas: expression of, in writing, 32-33; threatened by deadlines, 34-35; struggles to express, 35-37; embodied in plan, 38-40; narrative manner determined by, 45, 90, 224; distortion of, 137, 141; Myshkin's attempt to state, 150-152, 155, 2 6 7 n l l ; inability of language to express, 184, 197, 205, 214, 216, 230; and the inserted narratives, 230 Idiocy: significance of, 63-64, 263nl9; indefinability of, 195 Idiot, the: notebooks on role of, 52, 53, 225-226; changing family relationships of, 53-56; a yurodivyi, 54, 61, 65, 69; problem of legitimacy, 57-60; development of basic concept of, 60; and children, 61-62, 76; reason for idiocy, 63-64; lack of early biography for, 64-65; as Holy Fool, 65-67; as catalyst (Iago), 68-69; innocence of, 81-82; as perpetual Sphinx, 82; narrative voices in, 90-91; see also "Prince Christ" Idiot, The, 33; Dostoevsky's opinion of, 1; notebooks for, 7, 46-89; effectiveness of, 18; Maikov on, 26-27; as expression of idea, 33; importance of ending, 41, 42; multiplicity of voices in, 44, 163-164; changes in conception of Myshkin, 51; Parts I and III compared, 127; Frank and Lord on, 158-161; Zundelovich on, 161-163; effects intentional, not accidental, 227 Illegitimacy, 57-60, 71 Ilyusha (The Brothers Karamazov), 50

Index

Implication, as strategy for maintaining interest, 6 Implied author, the: fantastic world of, 125; and narrator, 127-130; in dramatic scenes, 132; occasional direct speaking of, 139, 142; attitude toward Myshkin, 152; demands on reader's judgment, 155; distrust of narrator exploited by, 156; responsible for narratives related by characters, 165; on confessions, 177, 179; on religious feeling vs. words, 185; on Aglaya's reading of Pushkin, 191; pictorial expressions of, 213; use of inserted narratives by, 230 Implied reader, the, 3, 5, 15, 139; basis for, 21-22; gap between narrator and, 131, 153-154, 224; Aglaya's resemblance to, 133; on quickened tempo of modes, 133-134; occasional closeness to narrator, 139; and changes in chronology, 146, 152; on Myshkin at the Epanchins' party, 150; suspicion of ability of narrator, 154-155; demands of implied author on, 156, 229; reaction to article on Myshkin, 196; reaction to Ippolit's confession, 216, 217-218 Incest, overtones of in Dostoevsky's novels, 112 Inserted texts, narratives, etc., 165, 276nl and n3; purpose of, 9-10; uses of, 166-168; in Part I, 168-183; parables, 168-176; confessions, 176-182; exempla, 182-183; in Part II, 183-198; accomplishments of, 198-199, 230; in Part III, 201-220; Lebedev's tale of cannibalism, 202-205; Ippolit's confession, 205-219; Nastasia's letters, 219-220; in Part IV, 220-221 Insulted and Injured, The (Dostoevsky): narrative method in, 2; confessions in, 179 "Intentional fallacy," 243 Interest: strategies for maintaining, 5, 32; Dostoevsky's stress on, 23-24, 28-29, 32; vs. artistic execution, 2425, 28; as narrative strategy, 31, 81, 167; types of, 31; Gothic devices for, 122 Irony, 92; in sketch of Epanchin family (Part I), 95-96, 98-101, 102; in balance with mystery, 118; more bitter in Part III, 131; in inserted material, 165; in use of language, 185 Iser, Wolfgang, 240, 242, 243, 246-247, 249, 257n2; on the Gothic novel, 269n29

291

Iskra, 280n36 Ivanov, Vyacheslav, 233 Ivanova, Sonya: letters to, 17, 18, 25, 26 , 35-36, 72, 189; letters on The Idiot, 74, 89 Ivolgin, General Ardalion Ivanovich (The Idiot), 10, 77, 85, 253; on Myshkin's biography, 174; anecdotes by, 175, 183, 220 Ivolgin, Nina Alexandrovna, 253 Ivolgin family, 68, 69; conception of, 53, portrayal of, 103 Ivolgin, Gavril Ardalionovich (Ganya), 2 6 3 n l l ; relation to the Idiot, 55-56, 68; development of, 76-77, 83; relation to Nastasia, 101; as an "ordinary person," 143; Myshkin's lies to, 173-174; on confessions, 177; on selfpreservation, 202 Ivolgin, Kolya, 77, 158, 2 6 3 n l l ; biography of Myshkin read by, 192-193 Ivolgin, Varya, 253 Jackson, Robert, 49, 258-9nl, 262n4 James, Henry, 90, 223; on interest, 31; on Dostoevsky, 167-168; on omniscience of narratory, 266n5 Joseph Andrews (Fielding), 246, 276n3 Journalistic writing: Dostoevsky's defense of public in, 22-23; interest as narrative strategy in, 29-31 "K***" (Pushkin poem), 188 Kafka, Franz, 270n32 Kant, Immanuel, 268nl7 Katkov, Mikhail, 24; letters to, 33 Keech, James, 270n32 Keller (The Idiot), 253; article on Myshkin by, 192-197; on form and style, 197, 280n38 Kenotic saints, 66-67 Kira, Julius, 237 Korvin-Krukovskaia, Anna, 43 Kovacs, Arpad, 237 Krieger, Murray, 235 "Landlady, The" (Dostoevsky), 117 Lebedev family ( T h e Idiot), 69 Lebedev, Lukian Timofeevich, 83, 128, 193, 253; first glimpse of, 93, 94; preoccupation with death, 183, 200; story on cannibalism, 202-205; compared to Ippolit, 205-206, 280n2 Lebedev, Vera, 158, 253 Lebyadkin, Captain (The Possessed), 50 Legros, a prisoner, 168 Lermontov, Mikhail, 6, 259n4 LeSage, Alain Rene, 276n3

292

Index

Letters from a Dead House (Dostoevsky), 15; see also Notes from the House of the Dead Levin, Harry, 258nl2 Levy, Maurice, 271n49 Lewis, Matthew, 108; The Monk, 113, 118; novel of horror, 119 Lies: kinds of, 220-221; narration and lies, 154, 168, 172-173, 174-181, 207; mixture of truth and, 196, 198-199, 200 Life of a Great Sinner, The (Dostoevsky), 34-35, 37, 225 L'lndependance Beige, 175 Lord, Robert: on expression in The Idiot, 159-161; on being a reader, 265n2; on epilepsy, 275n22 Lotman, Yury, 2 7 7 n l l Lovejoy, Arthur O . , 263nl5 Lubbock, Percy, 265nl Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 9-10, 157-158, 219, 258nl2, 274nl3 Magic, 149, 273n5 Maikov, Apollon, 19; letters to, 15, 16, 18, 23, 41-42, 49, 60, 189; as ideal reader, 16; on interest, 26-27; letters on writing The Idiot, 72-74, 88 Malthus, Thomas R „ 202, 273n4 Manners, novel of, 98-99, 102; change in Part III, 131 Marie (The Idiot): resurrection of, 50; Myshkin's story of, 170, 171, 173; Myshkin's pretended love for, 172 Martin, Wallace, 239 Mary Magdalene, 170 Matthewson, Rufus W., Jr., 259n6 Maturin, Charles, 108, 126; Melmoth, 113; novel of horror, 119; popularity in Russia, 120; influence on Dostoevsky, 121, 267nl5 Melmoth the Wanderer (Maturin), 113, 114, 118, 120, 269n26 Melville, Herman, 270n32 Menippean satire, 276n5; Dostoevsky's use of, 167 Michael of Klopsko, 66 Milan, 51 Milton, John, Gothic mixture of sublime and evil in, 113-114, 119 Mochulsky, Konstantin, 233-234 Moliere, 141 Monk, The (Lewis), 113, 120, 279n34 Monologues, as dialogues between doubles, 62-63 Montaigne, Michel de, 1, 90 Morality: and the reader, 1, 4-6, 102103, 242-243; seduction of reader,

106-107; reader forced to moral judgment, 155; guilt and responsibility of reader, 230-231 Müsset, Alfred de, 277nl6 "My Necessary Explanation" (Ippolit), 205-218 Myshkin (Prince Lev Nikolaevich) (The Idiot), 42; attitude of implied author toward, 4; attitude of narrator toward, 4; development of in Notebooks, 47, 51, 54, 63, 66-67, 81-84, 86-89; contrasted with Alyosha, 50; meeting with Rogozhin in train, 54, 91, 128; relation to Holy Fool, 66; growing isolation of 85-86, 149-150, 153, 155, 157, 160; mystery of, preserved, 103-106, 117; transition to suitor, 107; Gothic overtones in narration on, 115-117; on distortion of ideas, 132-133; and narrator, 133-136, 139-140, 145, 146, 149, 150-157; and Aglaya, 134-135, 136137, 145; attitude of author toward, 142, 148, 152; varying interpretations of, 158-163, 232-237; inability to express ideas effectively, 150-152, 155, 2 6 7 n l l ; parables, 168-172; inserted narratives about faith, 184-188; narratives descriptive of, 188-198; lack of self-confidence, 201; growing silence of, 205; ideas of on time, 209; on good deeds, 210-211; reaction to Holbein's "Christ," 212-213; on Ippolit's confession, 217-218; as mediator, 220; biography of, 221; final descriptions of, 274nl2; see also Idiot, The Mysteries of Udolpho (Radcliffe), 117, 120, 269n24 and n25, 271n49 Mystery: balanced with irony, 118; device in Gothic novel, 120 Narration: modes of, 8-10; Dostoevsky on strategies of, 12; method of, in The Idiot, 69-75, 77, 84-85; as balance of enigma and explanation, 89; difficulties of, 154, 227; role of inserted material in, 168; Ippolit's skill in, 214-215 Narrative: first- and third-person, 2; strategies of, 5; relation to persuasion, 6 Narrative modes: appropriate to idea, 90; narrator-observer, 91-92; ironic, 92-101; novel of manners, 98-99; dramatic, 103, 107; Gothic, 108, 113, 115; quickened pace of, 133-136; multiplicity of, 265nl Narrator-chronicler, or narrator-

Index

observer, 1; and implied author, 4, 91, 127; reader of, 5; voice of as mode of narration, 8, 15; apology to reader by, 87, 143, 153; as first voice in The Idiot, 91-92; in ironic mode, 92-101, 115, 149; digressions of, 93, 123-125; in dramatic mode, 103, 107; information withheld by, 105, 108, 123; reader implicated by, 108; in Gothic mode, 108, 113, 115, 228; as a character himself, 123125, 228; as "novelist," 125; changing relations with reader, 126, 227-228, 273n8; vs. implied reader, 131, 133134, 136, 138-140; role in dramatic scenes, 132; effect of changing voices of, 136; changes in treatment of Myshkin, 138; concern with role of reader, 142-143, 152, 155; contradictory behavior of in Part IV, 144146, 153, 226; withdrawal from Myshkin, 146-150; abdication of, 152155, 157, 272n3, 273n8; distrust exploited by author, 156; limitations of, 165; on Aglaya, 190; shared reactions with Ippolit, 214-215; failures of, 219; Myshkin's failure as, 221-222; multiple voices as ultimate expression of idea, 230 Narrator's reader, 5; and implied reader, 127, 130-131, 224; effect of digressions on, 131-132; at end of Part III, 140, 229; on Myshkin at the party, 150151; bafflement of, 155, 226 Nature; in Gothic novels, 117; power of, vs. beauty and faith, 212-213 Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich, 18-19, 35 Netochka Nezvanova (Dostoevsky), 112, 277nl6 Nevsky Prospect (Gogol), 143 Nihilists, Dostoevsky on, 183 Nilus of Sorsk, 67 Northanger Abbey (Austen), 269n25 Notebooks for The Idiot, 7, 35, 46-89; clues in, 7; differences among, 46-47; 1st and 2nd, 46-47, 50, 51-75; 3rd, 46-47, 50-51, 75-89; dates of, 50-51; plot elements in, 52-53; family relationships in, 53-55, 60; illegitimacy in, 57-60; emergence of identity of Idiot in, 60-69; on narrative manner, 69-75, 84-85; on narrative strategy, 75, 78, 79; on enigma vs. explanation, 78-81, 86-87, 89; on Sphinx and "Prince Christ," 84; notes on denouement, 87-89; value of, 225-226 Notes from the House of the Dead

293

(Dostoevsky): reader's interest in, 23, 32; relation to The Gambler, 24 Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky), 2, 268nl7; internal dialogues in, 63 "Notes of the Life of the Deceased Priest and Monk, The Elder Zosima" {The Brothers Karamazov), 39 Ong, Walter J., 240, 242, 245, 248-249 Opiskin, Foma Fomich (The Friend of the Family), 16 Originality, Dostoevsky's stress on, 23-24 Otechestvennye Zapiski (The Fatherland Notes), 19, 35 Othello, role of Iago in, 68, 84, 88 Othello; relation of the Idiot to, 88; as narrator, 171 Overcoat, The" (Gogol), 250 Parables: character revealed through, 85; of Myshkin, 168-174; mixture of truth and fiction in, 172-176; Keller's misuse of, 198 Paradise Lost (Milton), 114 Paradoxes, popular demand for, 13 Part I (The Idiot), 91-108; opening scene, 91-94; Chapt. 2, the Epanchins, 94-103; novel of manners, 98-100; use of irony, 100-101; entrance of Nastasia, 101-103; entrance of Myshkin, 103-105; Myshkin and Nastasia, 106-107; summary of, 107-108; inserted narratives in, 168-183; author's strategy in, 227-228 Part II (The Idiot), 108-122; echoes of Gothic novel in, 108-115; return of Myshkin, 115; Chapt. 5, and the novel of terror, 116-122; summary of Parts I and II, 122-125; distinction between voices of narrator and implied author in, 122-123; use of digressions in, 124; real vs. fantastic world in, 125; inserted narratives in, 183199; author's strategy in, 227-228 Part III (The Idiot), 127-140; compared to Part I, 127; use of digression in, 127-130; Epanchin family, 130-132; dramatic conversation with Evgeny Pavlovich, 132-133; Myshkin and Aglaya, 134-138; relation of narrator and reader, 138-140; transition to "fantastic reality," 140; narrative strategy in, 228-229 Part IV (The Idiot), 140-158; digression on the ordinary man, 140-141; contradictory assertion of narrator, 144-146;

294

Index

changes in chronology, 146, 152; narrator's withdrawal from Myshkin, 146-149; party at Epanchins', 148-152; further change of narrator toward hero, 153-155; demands on reader for judgment, 155; roles of three readers, 155-156; vigil of Rogozhin and Myshkin, 157-158, final details, 158; narrative strategy in, 228, 229-230 Pavlishchev, Nikolai Andreevich (The Idiot), 83, 195, 196 Pavlovna, Anna (War and Peace), 59 "Pedantry and Literacy" (Dostoevsky), 29 Pere Goriot (Balzac), 273n3 Personality, suppression of own, 23-24 Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, A (Burke), 109 Pickwick, Mr. (Pickwick Papers), 74; prototype of the good man, 17, 81 Pirogov (Nevsky Prospect), 143 Pisemsky, Alexei, 15 Pobedonostsev, Konstantin, 16; as ideal reader, 20, 21 Plan, for The Idiot: Dostoevsky's work on, 33-38, embodiment of idea, 38-40; difficult preliminary stage of novel, 48; circularity of, 51; see also Notebooks Platzner, Robert L., 270n32 Pleasure of the Text, The (Barthes), 244 Poe, Edgar Allan, 108, 268n21 Poet: vs. artist and entertainer, 25, 49, 224; and the writing of The Idiot, 48 Poor Folk (Poor People) (Dostoevsky), 6, 14, 49, 277nl6; absence of author's voice in, 14-15; reaction to, 18; incest in, 112 "Poor Knight, The" (Pushkin), 86; as mysterious, 105; Myshkin as, 188, 205, 237 Portrait, The (Gogol), 269n26 Possessed, The (Dostoevsky), 33, 34, 227nl6; narrative method in, 2, 89, 228; notebooks for, 7, 50; interest of, 25, 32; attempted omission of artist from, 26; as expression of idea, 33, 35-36; writing of, 40; ending of, 41-42; multiplicity of voices in, 44; material for, 71; vampire legend in, 270n37; deflation of mood of terror, 271n43 Poulet, Georges, 281n4, 244, 249 Praz, Mario, 114-115, 268nl8 and n21, 269n25 Preston, John, 242, 245-246, 249 "Prince Christ," 84, 168, 227, 264n40

Ptitsyn, Ivan Petrovich (The Idiot), 202, 221, 253, 2 6 3 n l l Public: hostility of, 16; vs. reader, 16-17; acceptance by, 20; defense of, 22-23; necessity to entertain, 23; see also Audience Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, 6, 44, 86; narrator in work of, 3; on the poor knight, 10, 188-189, 191, 237, 279n33, 34, 35; and the common people, 22; on the fatal woman, 270n35 Radcliffe, Ann, 108-109, 113, 117, 118, 269n24; on terror and horror, 119; popularity in Russia, 120-121; influence on Dostoevsky, 121 Radomsky, Pavlovich Evgeny, 76, 86, 128, 132, 203, 235; Myshkin's discussions with, 137, 155; effect of responses of, 155-156; at end of novel, 158; on self-destruction, 202; on Ippolit's confession, 218 Railroads, use of as device in novel, 128-130, 272nl Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment), 41, 62; and The Idiot, 233 Raw Youth, A (Dostoevsky), 33, 34, 277nl6; narrative method in, 2; notebooks for, 7; Nekrasov on, 19; Strakhov on, 19; as expression of idea, 35; plan for, 37-38; similarities to material from notes for The Idiot, 71-72 Reader: impact of narrative on, 2; reallife vs. implied, 3-4; kinds of, 5; Dostoevsky on, 16-21; expectations of, 106-108, 122-125, 146; relation with narrator, 126-127, 145, 149-150, 152; addressed by narrator, 128, 139, 143, 153; effect of changes in narrative tone on, 131-132, 136; three simultaneous, 155-156, 158, 163-164, 224; Ippolit, as 217; Dostoevsky's demands on, 223-224, 228-230; new critical emphasis on, 238-251; final meaning achieved through, 231; historical roles of, 242; defining the role of, 243-249 Readers, for beginners, 29-30 Reading: a phenomenology of, 25, 224; temporal and spatial views of, 249250 Real author, 3, 5; see also Author; Implied author Real reader, 3; independence of, 9; relation to narrator, 125, 126, 140, 152-153, 227; confusion of, 129, 138, 142-143, 149, 155; effect of digres-

Index

sion on, 131-132; misled by narrator, 145; as both narrator's reader and implied reader, 156; Dostoevsky's use of, 224; Parts I and II contrasted in manipulation of, 228-229 Revelations, 280nl; see also Apocalypse Revision, necessity for, 43-44 Rhetoric of Fiction, The (Booth), 3, 257n2 and n4, 266n5 Richardson, Samuel, 11, 121, 241 Riffaterre, Michael, 241, 244 Rogozhin, Parfyon Semyonovich (The Idiot), 42, 68, 209, 252; meeting with Myshkin on train, 54, 91, 128; development of, 77, 78-79; element of enigma in, 79; murder of Nastasia by, 85, 88; as hero-villain, 112; as fatal hero, 114; portrayed in Gothic mode, 115-117, 135, 272n2; final meeting of Myshkin with, 157; and copy of Holbein's Christ, 212, 217; foiled murder by, 218-219 Roman feuilleton, 120 Romantic realism, novel of, related to Gothic, 120 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 178-182, 2 7 7 n l l Russki Vestnik (The Russian Messanger), 19, 25; The Idiot sent to, 72, 75 Sade, Marquis de, 118, 121, 269n24 St. Augustine, 277nl6 Sakulin, P. N.: on dating of notebooks, 50; on family structure, 52; see also Bel'chikov Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail, 193; on The Idiot, 232 Sand, George, 108, 277nl6 Satan, Gothic overtones of, 114 "Scenes from the Times of Chivalry" (Pushkin), 188 Schiller, Friedrich, 268nl7 Schmid, Wolf, 245, 247 Scholes, Robert, 244 Scott, Sir Walter, 108, 122, 259n4, 270n32, 271n49; on inserted stories, 276n3 "Second Coming, The" (Yeats), 201 Self -preservation, Lebedev on, 202, 206 "Self-Sufficient Fedya" (SaltykovShchedrin), 193-194 Sergius, St., 66-67 Setchkarev, Vsevolod, 269n26 Shakespeare, William, 263nl0; and the Gothic novel, 112-113, 119 Shch , Prince, 128, 191, 253 Sherman, Leona F., 270n32 Shklovsky, Viktor, 237, 241 Sholokhov, Mikhail, 271n43

295

Skaftymov, A. P., 233 Slatoff, Walter, 239-240, 245, 249-250 Smollett, Tobias, 121, 165 Sociological vignettes: of "all-knowing gentlemen," 92; of second-rank characters, 94; see also Digressions Socratic dialogue, 167 Solov'ev, Vsevolod, 12-13; as ideal reader, 20 Soulie, Frederic, 108, 277nl6 Sovremennik, 193 Sphinx, the Prince as, 82-83 Spitzer, Leo, 249, 250, 265n3 Staiger, Emil, 249 Stavrogin (The Possessed), 71: material from notebooks on, 72; as hero-villain, 112; as fatal hero, 114; and the vampire legend, 270n37 Steiner, George, 120-122 Stendhal, 121 Sterne, Laurence, 121, 241, 246, 259n4; use of inserted material by, 276nl Strakhov, Nikolai, 16; advice from, 1920; letters to, 26, 34, 40, 89; on interest, 27; on Dostoevsky's complexity, 27-28, 37, 43-44, 167; on Dostoevsky and Rousseau, 182 Structuralists, on reader's role, 243-245, 246 Sublime, the; in reaction to Gothic novel, 108-109; Burke on beauty and, 109; of Milton, 114 Sue, Eugene, 108, 271n43 Supernatural: Dostoevsky's use of, 112; in Gothic novels, 113 Surikov (The Idiot), 212 Svidrigaylov hero-villain, 112 Swift, Jonathan, 241 Switzerland, 171-173 Synthesis, importance of in narration, 15 Tate, Allen, 274nl4 Terentiev, Ippolit (The Idiot), 10, 68, 76, 85, 143, 192, 253; horror of death, 168, 169, 170; on reason, 184; and article on Myshkin, 196-197, 198; statement of, 200; confession of, 205218; bungled suicide, 218-219 Terror, novel of, 119 Theodore Studite, St., 66 Theodosius, St., 66 Tikhon, St., 66, 67 Tillotson, Kathleen, 257n2 Time: Myshkin's obsession with, 168169, 186, 188; Ippolit on, 206-208; Myshkin and Ippolit compared, 209 Time. 29, 293

296

Index

Todorov, Tzeveton, 243, 246, 249 Tolstoy, Leo, 11, 35, 241, 261n39; Dotoevsky compared with, 19, 37; Strakhov on, 27; influence on The Idiot, 59-60; James on, 167 Tom ]ones (Fielding), 166 Totsky, Afanasy Ivanovich (The Idiot), 100-101, 177, 227; description of related to Gothic, 113; confession of, 181 Triangles of desire, mediators of, 219-220, 2 8 1 n l 0 Trilling, Lionel, 258nl2, 266n8 Trofimovich, Stepan, 42 Trollope, Anthony, 126, 165 Truth: indirect expression of, 13; coexistence of with falsehood, 196-198, 205; and lies in Nastasia's letters, 219; function of inserted narratives for, 230 Tunimanov, V. Α., 273n8 Turgenev, Ivan, 36, 259n6 Tyutchev, Fyodor Ivanovich, 224, 259n2 Umetsky, Olga, 53, 55 Umetsky case, 262n8 and n9 Uncle, in the Notebooks: family relationships of, 53-55; the Idiot's relation to, 56; lessening importance of 56-57; as Versilov, 58 "Uncle's Dream" (Dostoevsky), 2 Valjean, Jean (Les Miserables), prototype of good man, 17, 74 Valkovsky {The Insulted and Injured): hero-villain, 112; fatal hero, 114

Vampire, 114-115, 270n37 Varma, Devendra P., 271n49 Veinburg, P. I., 88-89 Verbal Icon, The (Wimsatt and Beardsley), 240 Vevey, 51 Voltaire, 12 Vrangel, A. E., letters to, 35 Walpole, Horace, 108, 113 V\!ar and Peace (Tolstoy): Strakhov on, 27; illegitimacy in, 59; influence on Dostoevsky, 59-60 Wasiolek, Edward, 49-50, 236, 2 6 3 n l l ; on family structure, 52 Watt, Ian, 258nl2, 269n25 "White Nights" (Dostoevsky), 2 Wimsatt, W. K., 240 Words· oxpressiveness of, 10; inability to express ideas, 137, 151, 184, 197, 200; inappropriateness of, 148; used for lies, 198 Yanovsky, Stepan, 20-21 Yeats, W. B., 201 Yurodivyi: the Idiot as, 54, 61, 63, 65, 69; common conception of, 65; as Holy Fool, 66-67 Zhemarin trial, 203, 209, 221 Zhinkin, N., 272-273n3 Zosima (The Brothers Karamazov), 44 Zundelovich, la. O . , 161-163, 237, 275n37