THE IDIOT BY FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

Accidentally found the book when I am looking for Crime and Punishment. This is my very first Russian Literature book and I don’t really know how to write about it. 

Publisher: Signet Classic 

Translated by: Henry and Olga Carlisle 

Cover: Thin Paperback 

Price: RM 18.95 

Bookstore: Kinokuniya 

Synopsis: 

Extracted from GoodReads: 

"Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women—the notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaia—both involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkin’s honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him" 

This is not a romance, not a typical common literature but more to philosophical novel. This book is too philosophical and it’s evolving around the one's morality and perspective towards life. This book has no concrete, constructive plot like a normal literature novel. I can understand the flow in the beginning but when the story moved to the second part, you can’t make out the storyline. "What is the storyline actually" "where is the plot" you will keep questioning yourself. Eagerly read with speed and flip through the next pages just to have a justification on the storyline. My advice. Don’t do that. You have to read it slowly, steadily and calmly. Honestly, i would rate this book as very difficult to read. If you stop in the middle, and you want to continue reading, you need to go through the previous page just to put you on the right track of the story. I need to heavily depend on Google to understand few terms which appear to me as unusual. I'm not very sure whether the sentences or word used by the translator are difficult or how. But i think the translator try her best to use the right choice of words just to make sure the story is translated accurately as in Russian version. That might explained why the sentences are hard to read and comprehend. Or my comprehension skill is not too great. I think the latter. hahahaha. Another thing is like i said before, this is my first Russian literature book so I am not familiar with the names. The character name are so long and hard to remember. 

So what is it all about? The Idiot was referring to the prince. Prince Myshkin is naive, innocent, child-like, honest, in which all these trait appear to be abnormal for a normal human being. Prince Myshkin or his full name Prince Lev Nikolayevitch Myshkin. The story started with the prince's journey from Switzerland to his homeland Russia by train after undergone a treatment for his seizures. Inside the train, he met with Rongozhin, a guy with sudden fortunate fall on him and Lebedev. The significant encounter will change the prince's life throughout the story. The story continued with the first encounter between the prince and General Ivan, the head of Yepanchin. From here the story started to develop into a conflict. There are few themes that i love to highlight here, there are a lot actually but i have no capacity to write on everything. 

Madness 

This was portrayed by Nastassya Filippnova. Nastassya has been left as an orphan was soon taking in by Totsky who later served as her benefactor. The poor Nastassya has been corrupted by Totsky and this has drove her crazy. Her vengeful feeling towards Totsky has made him suffered and damaged emotionally. For him to be free, he offered her 75 thousand rubles and marrying her off to Ganya. Her madness doesn't stop at there. On her birthday party, the day she decided to announce her decision on the marriage, suddenly Rongozhin appear with 100 thousand rubles on hand. Nastassya decided to not continue with the marriage and go with Rongozin instead. The prince, out of pity and compassion towards her, proposed to her. Nastassya was touched but she felt like she doesn’t entitled for the compassion turned him away. Before leaving, Nastassya said to Ganya that he deserves to be rewarded with the 100 thousand rubles but, he must take it from the fire. Nastassya threw the pack of money into the fireplace and it slowly burned. Ganya, stand stupefied unable to move only watched the money burn while Nastassya keep on mocking him for being such a coward. This event had cause a great commotion among the guests. After being mocked and humiliated, Ganya slowly stepped forward and suddenly collapsed on the floor. The money was saved by the other guest however Nastassya decided to give it to Ganya. Laughing hysterically she left the place with Rongozhin. Her insanity doesn’t stop there, inside the story, it was told there was an incident where Nastassya run away from Rongozhin on the day of their marriage. 

When I read the novel carefully, I believed that the madness was solely because of lack of love and compassion from people around her. She was violated by someone who she feels she can trust and because of that she grown up as a spiteful and vengeful woman. The prince saw the sadness and darkness inside her, and out of pity willing to marry her in order to give her happiness that she deserves. However, she feels the opposite even though she started to love the prince. Nastassya's story is tragic and her ending is nothing but a tragedy. She never feels happiness until the end of her life. 

The same madness can be seen in Rongozhin. He is deeply in love with Natassya but due to his jealousy towards the prince, the love turned into a hatred, an extreme hatred to the point he wanted to kill Nastassya and the prince. 

Fatalism 

According to fatalism, the ending of something is predetermined by the beginning. No matter what, you cannot change the ending. When something is bound to happen, it will happen. For example, you are terminally ill and there is no chance of recovery so calling a doctor is futile. This can be seen in Nastassya's story. She knows exactly she won’t be able to attain happiness, so when the prince comes, she make a fun of him to avoid his existence in her life. The principle of fatalism can be seen in Hippolite's story as well. Hippolite is in his final stage of Tuberculosis and have been told to have only few weeks to live. He decided to commit suicide instead of waiting for the week to pass as he feels there is no point in waiting because he will die anyway. 

The Inhuman act of Execution 

In the first part of the story, the prince voice out his opinion on the death execution. This can be read on the first chapter where he told Rongozhin and Lebedev his experience watching a death sentence in France. The sentence was conducted using guillotine. According to the prince the act of the sentence is inhuman and far worse than the crime committed. He added the real suffering is not the death sentence, the most painful thing is knowing you have only few minutes or second to live and that is the real terror, knowing your life will be ended in split second. 

“... the worst, most violent pain lies not in injuries, but in the fact that you know for certain that within the space of an hour, then ten minutes, then half a minute, then now, right at this moment—your soul will fly out of your body, and you'll no longer be a human being, and that this is certain; the main thing is that it is certain. When you put your head right under the guillotine and hear it sliding above your head, it's that quarter of a second that's most terrible of all... Who can say that human nature is able to endure such a thing without going mad? Why such mockery—ugly, superfluous, futile? Perhaps the man exists to whom his sentence has been read out, has been allowed to suffer, and then been told: "off you go, you've been pardoned". 

There are other theme embedded in the novel but since it is difficult to interpret, I will just leave it out. Corruption, apocalypse, destruction, naivety and others. 

If you are looking something that is out of norm, I would recommend the book. It’s pretty enjoyable to read, even though it is difficult to grasp the actual message that the author wanted to deliver. There is TV mini series adaptation (Russian), i just knew about it. Will check it out.

My rate: 3.9/5 

GoodReads rate: 4.2/5