Newsgroups: bit.listserv.literary
Date:         Sat, 25 Jul 1992 14:00:24 EDT
From:         Tim Johnson <PH408014@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Prince Mishkin

>        So I've been afraid to read most of the Russian writers in case I
>end up reading The Idiot and finding out for sure whether it was an insult
>or a compliment.  (All I've read is Nabokov who I doubt counts as a classic
>Russian writer.)
>-Ian

  Well, it is more of a compliment than not.  I do, however,
*highly* recommend the novel.  It is my favorite Dostoevsky
novel.  Despite its obvious problems (Dostoevsky seems to
keep forgetting that there is indeed a plot he is set on
resolving, and seems to drop it regularly to follow up other
ideas) it is probably the book Dostoevsky had the most fun
with - he is at his most sarcastic, without being as dark as
in _The Possessed_.  (If I had my copy here - it is all marked
up - I'd subject y'all to some quotes....)

  (I'm way behind in this discussion, but trying to catch up)

  My favorite scene in the novel was mentioned, I think, in one
of the responding posts - where Prince Mishkin is "assaulted" by
the angry young men...and how he handles them.  I think, too, that
it gives a lot of insight into Dostoevsky.  Mishkin was supposed
to be, like Aloysha in _Brother's Karamazov_, Dostoevsky's idea of
the ideal man.  Calm, considerate, rational, even-tempered, and with
a certain genuine love for his fellow man.  But Dostoevsky threw in
this scene, *I* suspect, because despite all of these ideals,
Dostoevsky didn't want his heroes to be too much the Mr Milquetoast,
and *especially* because that was so much a part of Dostoevsky
(read his treatment of the thinly disguised Turgenev in _The Possessed_)
to completely disown it.  Mishkin makes some feeble apologies for
his "rough" treatment of those punks, but you can tell that both
he and Dostoevsky were having the time of their lives.

  Of course, this only goes to demonstrate again the essential
contradictions of Dostoevsky.  An agnostic (atheist?) who nevertheless
wanted to believe in the Russian God.  Promoting (in his good guys)
a certain love of mankind, but unable to hide his antipathy toward
individual men.  The curious sympathy he has with his "bad" characters.
And the two "types" of younger women who show up in his novels (most
characteristically in _The Idiot_, as a matter of fact).  Accused by
Tsars of being a radical, and by Soviets of being a reactionary.  (My
favorite quote of Dostoevsky criticism comes from a soviet critic who
describes Dostoevsky's novels as the output of a "profoundly diseased
organism" or something similar.  ;-)

  Dostoevsky himself was part of a larger contrast - he and Tolstoy
seem almost created as foils for each other.  Tolstoy's novels are
well structured, where Dostoevsky's are haphazardly strung together,
sometimes on the flimsiest of circumstances.  (It is interesting to
watch him recycle the incidental characters... he just can't seem to
let them go.)  Dostoevsky's are (IMHO) profound insights into the
nature of humanity, and the struggle with weakening sense of religion -
where Tolstoy's novels read more often like shallow morality plays.
And Dostoevsky's complex starring characters compared to Tolstoy's
simpler ones.  (How can Karenin ever compare to any of the Brother's
Karamazov?)  (Someone once wrote, in a book about Tolstoy and
Dostoevsky that, despite the superficial similarities between the
two authors, in general, one was either a fan of Dostoevsky or a
fan of Tolstoy - one couldn't truly appreciate them both.  Put me
in the camp of Dostoevsky.)

                                -Tim

----------------------------------------------------------------
I reason like this: 'As soon as I die, the devils are sure
to crag me down to their place with their hooks.'  But then
I think: 'What hooks?  What are they made of?  Are they iron
hooks?  If so, where were they forged?  Do they have some kind
of ironworks down there, or what?'  Why, I'm sure the monks in
the monastery take it for granted that hell has, for instance,
a ceiling.  But it would be easier for me to imagine a hell
without a ceiling - that would be more refined, more enlightened,
more Lutheran, that is.  And what difference does it make whether
hell has a ceiling or not?  Oh no, it damn well makes all the
difference in the world, because if there's no ceiling, there
aren't any hooks either, and if there aren't any hooks, then
the whole idea goes to pieces.  And that too is hard to believe
because, if they're not going to drag me down to hell, what justice
is there in the world?

                         Fyodor Dosteovsky, _The Brothers Karamazov_
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