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Summary: Experiment
Review: As all Dostoyevsky's novel, this is one is also an experiment. The passion, hate, greed - all are condensed.
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Summary: dostoyevsky was right--he just missed
Review: dostoyevsky tried to write about the good everyman and how he could not survive in russia in the late 1800's. in todays world he would not even last as long as myshkin did.
but he was disappointed in this book. he was probably too self critical, becuase the book is a very interesting read. this is so eventhough there is very little action and mostly storytelling and dialog.
in my opinion, where he misses the point, is in the selction of the main storyline. although good is interesting, the dark side is always better. the best characters in this novel are roghozin and natassya philipovna. roghozin appears early and periodically throughout the novel, but is always a presence with his eyes in the crowd. he is the dark side of myshkin.
natassya appears only in the 1st part and the last. i would have prefered if the book focused on these 2 characters and their relationship rather than the ones they did. what drove these people would be much more interesting than myshkin's reaction to them.
to dostoyevski fans this is a must read. to lovers of russian literature it is highly recommended.
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Summary: The Child Within ... Dead And Forgotten?
Review: So many have written excellent, insightful reviews. Let me simply add a few observations. Prince Myshkin, the main character, indeed represents the "Christian" personality prototype, the "child" who is welcomed into the Kingdom of God. He lives and relate on a deeply spiritual level, making him unfit for survival in the highly materialistic world around him.The prince loves on a different level, too. The only form of love he is aware of, which makes him ridiculous to many, cares for the truest well-being of the subjects of his "affection." His love is non-sexual, though the author goes to great lengths to express the sensuality of the two women with whom his life collides. (I think his rare, negative impression of one 'minor ' character, Vera Lebedeva, stems from the seeds of his sensual nature. Vera is perhaps the purest person he encounters ' a servant with a servant's heart ' and fosters within a budding 'temporal' love to which he is a complete stranger. He casts it off.) I find the prince and the leading characters highly allegorical. The various characters - each - yearn for what the prince has managed to maintain, his true humanity. Each of them have traded key aspects of their true selves in order to function in a world centered around fame, prosperity and comfort. The reader comes to pity them in some respects more than the main character, though his plight is well expressed. One idea drawn from the allegory: That materialism is rampant, and that the materialist sacrifices everything truly human to their detriment. The pure Christian soul cannot survive in a world dominated by materialism. "Humanity" cannot survive without sacrificing deep temporal cravings for the primacy of serving, in love, others. The symbolism behind Holbein's painting? In the setting of the Idiot, steeped in materialism as it is, Christ is dead as a doornail. The world surrendered to myriad forms of greediness condemns Christ to permanent death, with no hope of resurrection ' no 'gospel of Christ.' The painting's significance ' indeed its very placement ' represents the hopelessness of the human state as it ruthlessly pursues fulfillment of spiritual emptiness with evanescent sensory pleasure.
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Summary: Moral goodness impedes Myshkin from resolving his plight
Review: The Idiot is Dostoevsky's second novel. The book is a hybrid of biographical sketches and anecdotes of the writer. The protagonist, Prince Myshkin, bears traces of his creator in his suffering of epilepsy. Dostoevsky often deviates from the main plot and voices his perspectives on pain, suffering, capital punishment, and moral goodness. The notion of suffering incessantly sifts through the novel as if true suffering plays a key role in purifying the protagonist and granting him the overriding power to the [evil] society in which he seeks to gain acceptance. However excruciating and painful it might be, physical suffering and bodily agony would distract the mind from spiritual suffering. That is, the physical aching deprives functioning of mental thinking. The worst suffering, as Prince Myshkin contemplates, are the knowledge and the inevitable truth of one's imminent death, the invincible parting of soul with the body. Being mindful of one's death would only perpetuate suffering. Readers should grip this idea and bear in mind. Morally upright, magnanimous, forgiving, humble, loving, honest, virtuous and mindful of others needs, Prince Myshkin embodies all human virtue and goodness. He is almost like God, or perfecting to be like God. He is a man capable of an ideal. He is stuck and torn between the love of Aglaia and Natasya upon his return to Russia from medical treatment in Switzerland. Myshkin's self-stigmatizing, humble, and diffident element often agitated Aglaia whose love for him manifests to the full in her passionate recital of a poor knight poem. She shows desire to marry him despite the wonted taunting. She assures that Myshkin is more honorable than anybody is and nobody is worth his little finger let alone his heart and soul. Out of volition and obligation, Myshkin believes he is responsible to rescue the vile, [evil] Natasya from her deranged mental state. The cause of his love for her was more than just the bewitching, demonical beauty: it is rather eagerness on Myshkin's part to be of service to his country after being abroad. He has long set an ideal and having faith in such ideal empowers him to give up his life blindly to it. Though Natasya is surprised at Myshkin's discerning words that she ought to be ashamed and that she is not what she pretends to be, she tortures herself by not falling in love with him lest to disgrace and ruin his life. In her importunate letters to Aglaia, Natasya implored and coaxed her to marry Myshkin as she did not wish to besmirch him. But destiny plays a cruel joke on them. Myshkin bears such tender spot for the afflicted, disgraced women in Natasya. However pertinacious not to love him, Natasya acknowledges his irresistible impact on her and regards him as the first and only man she has met in her whole life that she has believed in as a sincere friend. When Aglaia accuses her being a manipulator, Natasya falls down on her knees and thwarts Myshkin from leaving, who then comforts her and agrees to marry her. Many readers, myself included, would mull at the meaning of the title. It would be impossible to do Myshkin justice by abasing him as an idiot. A simpleton at best? Myshkin is looked upon as an idiot (from Greek meaning private and ignorant) for his not being compromised with the vanity, vices, [evilness], mendacity, and avarice of a vain society. Unyielding as he might be, it is almost like naivete that Myshkin always resolves to be courteous, honest, and trustful with everyone. Such naivete somehow gives way to philosophical outlook and idealism and thus ennobled him. Others harbor the effrontery to inveigle him, to launch a calumny against him in order to usurp his fortune. Maybe his ignorance of the vile and magnanimity for others' wrongdoings create in him an idiot (a private person). The Idiot, as cumbersome and lengthy as it seems, is rather a simple novel in plot. Dostoevsky often deviates from the main plot to reflect (and to reiterate) his philosophy through the prince, somehow bears an overriding sense of mission in the society, if not the whole world. I have denounce some critics' portraying the story as some bitter love triangle, for Dostoevsky has no room for a melodrama. In an epic that evokes Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky seeks out the most ordinary characters whose ordinary tales (Madame Epanchins' imaginative troubles and whining, Ippolit's nightmares, General Ivolgin's delirious memories of his childhood encounter with Napoleon) lend a special note of verisimilitude in the lives of Russians. Like Crime and Punishment, The Idiot is dim, melancholy, doleful, and somber though the Epanchins, Lebedyev, and General Ivolgin animated, lightened up with a tinge of comic relief. Myshkin's desire to cure Natasya of her madness only relapsed himself into insanity. The Idiot evokes in readers a sense of tenderness and sympathy for the protagonist whose unyielding righteousness impedes him from resolving his own plight. 4.2 stars.
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Summary: most definitely purchase this immaculate literature.
Review: dostoyovsky is my favorite book dude and this is my favorite book, dude.
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Summary: American stupidity
Review: I have read this book in its original Russian. You Americans know nothing. One cannot possibly translate this book and do it justice. All readers who think they know Dostoyevsky must master the Russian language before they can admit to appreciating it. You idiots!!
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Summary: i thought it was marvellous....
Review: this is a truly harrowing and tragic tale of sick love. love that corrupts and ruins and drives men insane. nastasia filipovna is tormented soul that can only love chirst. Her 'christ' is the holy fool myshkin. this is an intellectual work, not for those who think a book is just a pass time or for those who dont take books seriously in general. read this with a serious mindset and forget american popular culture. russia is not america, it never has been it never will be. The Idiot is an novel about a strange land told in a way only dostoyevsky could tell it. I have read all his works and I think only the Devils and Brothers Karamazov equal it in terms of its depth and errie looked at the twisted souls of man. its the greatest....
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Summary: The Mystery of Myshkin
Review: With the third major novel from Dostoevsky's post-Siberian era, we encounter a striking volte-face from techniques and thematic focus employed in his previous works. Whereas works like Crime and Punishment allow the reader to savor the bitter fruit of rational egoism through the actions of its protagonist, The Idiot in sharp contrast revolves around the interactions of a "perfectly beautiful man". What is the outcome of this simulation? Does Dostoevsky succeed in this most ambitious goal? SYNOPSIS: Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a clinic in Switzerland. From the very first scene, the Prince makes rapid fire acquaintances, all of whom are affected in varying degrees by his disarming naivete and sincerity. One thing leads to another, and the first part culminates in an uproarious scandal at a party of a notorious kept-woman, Nastasya Filippovna. The next two parts explore the various side-themes developed mostly by other characters, while the Prince mostly languishes, torn between the love for Nastasya and Aglaya. In the final part, the two rivals of his heart head for an inevitable collision course ... Before I proceed any further, I think some admonition is useful for the would-be reader. First of all, this is probably not a good gateway drug into Dostoevsky. It's obvious that The Idiot is the most chaotic of the great post-Siberian novels (in the straitened circumstances under which it was written, it is not surprising) and so its result is mixed. Whatever the novelistic norm of his day was, the condemning fact stands that the middle two parts smother the Myshkin-Christ plot under loosely tied, though interesting, side-plots. In fact, the first part was brilliant, and can possibly stand by itself as a short story, while the next two diluted it. The idea is ambitious enough as it is, to bury it under subplots is bad. I also felt that events like Ippolit's confession amidst a raging Champagne party, is too melodramatic even for Dostoevsky, an author who does require some resistance to saccharine scenes from the reader. Compounded to this, is a bewildering web of intrigues, the motivations for which is too vaguely intimated. Furthermore, there are some characters like the sycophant Lebedev or Keller ("gentleman with the fists") who is more cartoon villain than human and mars the human scenery. In the end I'm almost tempted to side with Dostoevsky's friend Apollon Maikov who thought that the characters are lighted with an artificial "electric spark", which casts a "supernatural brilliance" on these fantastic creations. Between the lines, the letters spell 'hokey'. BUT, here is what I think the reader ought to keep in mind when tackling Dostoevsky: the reader should not expect concrete realism from Dostoevsky. A suitable metaphor for Dostoevsky's supercharged characters is what the engineers and mathematicians call a Laplace Transform. In the process, equations are inevitably brought to what is called the "s-domain". It always struck me as being very odd that a totally fictitious space would somehow help in distilling truth out of reality. But this resembles albeit superficially the function of Dostoevsky's "fantastic realism" as I understand it. Many of Dostoevsky's important characters cannot exist (I hope); they are by and large too supercharged, volatile, a bit sappy, and overall too fantastic for the earth. But Dostoevsky is not interested in writing some trite chronicle-of-a-dysfunctional-family. He is after the eternal themes of humanity, which in the context of The Idiot would be: theodicy (consider: why shouldn't the ailing Ippolit rebel against his fate?), and existence of God (the omnipresent and provocative picture by Hans Holbein) among others. These are certainly themes you cannot easily explore by having a bunch of characters, say, eat donuts over coffee placidly discussing the merits of a lawn sprinkler or something. By necessity, the characters are jazzed up and hyper-activated, in order that, once set free, their energetic trajectories would reveal something profound about ourselves we would otherwise have not known. According to this internal logic, then, the near-hysterical encounters are, if not justified, valid. Lastly, there is the problem of Prince Myshkin's personality. My personal opinion is that it is disjointed. There is a clear discontinuity between Myshkin in Part I and the rest. The original Myshkin - the one I prefer - is nominally "an idiot" but his brutally frank opinions adumbrate a very keen understanding of humanity. He says to Ganya, for instance, that "... you're simply the most ordinary man that could be, only very weak and not the least bit original." (pg.122) This appraisal cannot be more correct though inopportune. The uncompromising sincerity of his tone, manners, and motives form a splendid contrast to that of the hypocritical personages surrounding Nastasya at her birthday party. In the later parts, either the narrator is distancing himself further from Myshkin (until it breaks completely in "... because we ourselves, in many cases, have difficulty explaining what happened." (pg.573)) or the remission of his 'idiocy' is slowly fading, either one of these facts must excuse the break in his character. But at least the discontinuity is finite and the transform should still work. Apparently, the author himself was undecided over the nature of his idealized man, but then again, it is only appropriate that he stay enigmatic. After all, the gospels themselves are narrated by people other than Jesus himself, (on a lesser note) Malory does not give us access to Sir Galahad's mind only to Lancelot's, and it is difficult to entertain the mindset of a Pickwick or Don Quixote directly. In quick conclusion, what damage the over-theatrical elements and the diffuseness of the plot in The Idiot effects, is repaired by the puzzle of Myshkin and the eternal themes that crowd into 500 pages. The book is highly recommended for all people, but with the above warning in mind. Those who prefer down-to-earth and concrete storyline should look elsewhere. I also strongly recommend picking up Joseph Frank's "The Miraculous Years", a literary-historical biography of Dostoevsky to which this reviewer is heavily indebted.
Rating: 
Summary: OK premise, bad translation
Review: I read this book shortly after reading Crime and Punishment (which I loved), and I was sadly let down. I don't know if the translation was bad or if the actual story just didn't interest me. The ideas portrayed were somewhat broad and unfocused and I couldn't ever put my finger on what the whole thing was about. The prose was so bland that even in moments that ought to be intense, seemed just like ordinary everyday happenings. The general idea I got from the book was about a genuinely good person deemed an idiot because pure goodness is not normal in society. I never found myself caring about any particular character except Aglaya and her situation is never resolved at the end. If you do plan to read this book, I'd try a more modern translation. Darby
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Summary: Classic Dostoyevsky....
Review: At times a bit disjointed and tedious, Dostoyevsky surely makes up for these moments of abated fluency by the substance of his words and his ability to articulate both the psychology of the individual and the struggle for solidarity through spiritual awareness. This novel is about the individual and the struggle to find meaning, beauty, and compassionate understanding with one's fellow human being in an oftentimes cold and callous world whose values are in a diametrically opposing position. Well worth the time....
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