Historical Context

Even if actual events are not directly addressed in ‘The Idiot,’ there are still a number of significant components of Russia’s past that shed light on the story and its themes. The work is set in Russia in 1861–1862, and one of these, perhaps the most significant, is the mood of reform that predominated at the time. Serfdom was outlawed by Tsar Alexander II in 1861, which was a significant development that reduced social inequality and sparked the growth of the urban middle class. Moreover, Alexander abolished the death penalty as part of his legal reforms, which is a significant theme in the book.

But it’s vital to keep in mind that these changes weren’t overnight successes. Alexander was reacting to the rise of nihilistic thought, which is one of the novel’s main themes, as well as socialism, anarchism, atheism, and other dissident ideas. The Tsar and other prominent Russians believed that moderate reform would stifle the revolutionary energy behind these fresh social and intellectual currents.

Materialism Criticized in The Idiot

With the growth of industry, capitalism was introduced to Russia, and it shifted the focus to private competition and the accumulation of wealth among the expanding middle classes. Traditional social and class structures were altered by industrialization, which also shifted power to the newly wealthy. In addition, scientific trends—particularly the theory of evolution as it was presented in British naturalist Charles Darwin’s (1809–82) ‘On the Origin of Species’ (1859)—attacked humanity’s relationship with God and were perceived by traditionalists like Dostoevsky as denigrating to both men and women as mere creatures of nature. By adding individuals to the list of objects beneath the scientist’s microscope, science objectified them. Also, as another commodity to be bought and sold, individuals were objectified by capitalism.

Dostoevsky criticizes how the new materialism has affected Russian society. How individuals get corrupted by the quest for wealth and power is a prominent theme. For instance, General Epanchin, the son of an ordinary foot soldier, rises in prestige and wealth, invests in a business, and will do whatever it takes to improve his social standing. He is therefore thinking about wedlocking his oldest daughter to the depraved aristocrat Tótsky, who spent years training a girl named Nastasya Filippovna and exploiting her for his sexual gratification starting when she was 16 years old.

Parallel to this, Gánya, the man selected to remove Nastasya from Tótsky’s care, intends to wed her in order to obtain the 75,000 rubles that Tótsky gave to Nastasya as a sort of perverted dowry. Several characters close to Prince Myshkin are repeatedly corrupted by money throughout the book and lose sight of traditional Russian ideals, frequently with terrible repercussions.

Dostoevsky’s Epilepsy and Esotericism

In the story of ‘The Idiot,’ Dostoevsky discusses the mental experience of spiritual rapture that came before his epileptic episodes. The world suddenly makes perfect sense, and dread vanishes. The narrator writes in Part 2, Chapter 5, “The sense of life, of self-awareness, surged nearly tenfold in these times, which flashed past like lightning.” Prince Myshkin’s forerunner to an epileptic fit encounters radiance, release from worry and uncertainty, and profound peace. The narrator of the book agrees with Dostoevsky, who claimed that such “illumination” moments immediately before a seizure were “worth a whole life” due to his epilepsy. Myshkin himself shouts, “Indeed, one might give one’s entire life for this moment!”

Seizures that commonly last one to two minutes are what set epilepsy apart from other neurological disorders. When brain communications between nerve cells are weak or overwhelmed, seizures like these can happen. Convulsions, unconsciousness, strange movements or behaviors, and emotional abnormalities are all possible symptoms of seizures. Recent clinical studies have found a strong correlation between religious experiences and epileptic seizures, especially in people with temporal lobe epilepsy, where epilepsy has historically been associated with the divine or demonic forces.

Politics in 19th-century Russia

Russia lagged behind Western European nations in the development of technology and industry in the late 19th century, in large part because it was still an agrarian nation run on an outdated class system. Even while the middle class in Russia developed, the bulk of the population was still composed of peasants, many of whom were recently released serfs—unfree laborers bound to the land—and the Russian aristocracy, headed by the czar, still held the majority of the authority. Even Nevertheless, there was some expansion in the Russian industry, particularly in the densely populated regions. By introducing European knowledge and technology to Russia, modernization enhanced European influence. Both capitalism and socialism—economic systems distinguished by private enterprise and government enterprise, respectively—became competing ideologies among the educated classes in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. Slavophiles—people who valued Russian culture over European influences—like Dostoevsky disapproved of both ideologies.

Dostoevsky was harshly punished with a spell in Siberia from around 1850 to 1854 for his brief involvement in a socialist group as a young man. This punishment caused him to consciously revert to Russian Orthodoxy and develop a hatred for anything socialist-sounding. Dostoevsky was reprimanded and later turned into a Slavophile, or someone who believed Catholicism and Western Europe were morally corrupt. The Russian Orthodox Church and the way of life of the common people were preferred by the Slavophiles, who rejected both capitalism and democracy in the manner of the Europeans. Prince Myshkin is a Slavophile, and he condemns Catholicism in Part 4, Chapter 7, as an unchristian faith that preaches a distorted Christ. Myshkin dislikes the Catholic Church because it has a history of wielding temporal power.

Polyphony in The Idiot

Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) coined the term “polyphonic” to describe Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels in his work ‘Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics‘ (1929, revised and edited in 1963). Bakhtin argues that Dostoevsky’s novels are characterized by the exploration of conflicting ideas and perspectives with minimal intervention from the narrator. According to Bakhtin, Dostoevsky employed this compositional technique because he believed that genuine self-discovery could only occur in the absence of external influence.

Dostoevsky employs various forms of polyphony in his novels. In ‘The Idiot,’ for instance, the characters often express themselves directly to the reader without any narrative mediation. At other times, the narrator intervenes and acknowledges the presence of conflicting rumors. Towards the end of the novel, the narrator even suggests that the truth of events may forever remain elusive. Consequently, the uncertainty generated by polyphony is further intensified by the unreliability of the narrator.

FAQs