Chloe Frantzis

It is tempting to cast Fyodor Dostoevsky as a modernist writer—one aware of form and conscious of various narrative planes. While his novels certainly set the stage for later psychological and structural frameworks in fiction, Dostoevsky was, at best, begrudgingly adherent to the limitations and “liminalities” of the narrator function. In two of his later novels, The Idiot (1869) and Demons (1872), Dostoevsky infringes on a traditionally omniscient (and impartial) retelling, like what we find in Crime and Punishment (1866). Instead, he opts, perhaps inadvertently, for a focalizing lens which expands and complicates the storytelling experience. In The Demons, we get an overly-informed first-person narrator who somehow has unfettered access to an array of scenes which supposedly happened in private. The Idiot is told through a third-person omniscient narrator, yet a different array of oddities emerge when we consider how this narrator seems to give up on—or forfeit—his protagonist, Prince Myshkin.

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I believe that on some level, Dostoevsky wanted his narrator to accomplish more than the then-conventions of fiction permitted. Yet at the same time, he was not going to exert a great deal of energy thinking about how to incorporate these big systematic changes effectively and coherently. Thus, much of his novels, like the ones listed above, are rigged with structural inconsistencies which can never quite be resolved. We cannot fault Dostoevsky for lacking such foresight though—no novelist of the 19th century paused to ponder the subversive powers locked away in narrative manipulation. Instead, we can do justice to the author’s proto-narratorial ingenuity by exploring how these inconsistencies subtly enrich our reading experience and established scholarship on the texts. 

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In her now-influential essay, “Prince Myškin, the True Lover and ‘Impossible Bridegroom’: A Problem in Dostoevskian Narrative” (1983), Diana Burgin argues that the “problem” of the The Idiot “lies not within [Myshkin’s] character, but in the strange, almost manipulative way he is presented to the reader. [...] The problem of Prince Myshkin boils down to a problem of Dostoevskian narrative, and the limitations of the novelistic genre as a vehicle of Dostoevskian truth” (Burgin 160). Burgin goes on to present a wonderfully innovative assessment on the nature of love and suffering in the novel. I intend to expand Burgin’s argument and investigate how the “manipulative way” Myshkin is presented by the narrator in fact corroborates the major moral trends in the novel. To do this, we must re-examine the role pity plays in The Idiot. 

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First, I would like to suggest that there are a host of thematic shifts and plot structures in place which allow us to see the narrator’s abandonment as a result of the pity he (and by extension, Dostoevsky) feels for the prince. Rather than observing the narrator to be in conflict with Dostoevsky’s own attitude towards Myshkin (i.e., the narrator “chucked” the prince), we can view the narrator’s tactful retreat as an extension of the sympathy we witness in part one. Specifically, Myshkin’s change in countenance towards Nastasya from love to pity (as noted by Burgin and Krieger) serves as a paradigm, or prototype, for the manner in which the narrator’s portrayal of his protagonist will shift throughout the course of the novel. 

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Mirroring structures: love and pity

The Idiot houses one of Dostoevsky’s most perplexing and rewarding narrative structures. The form of the novel swells under the pressurized chaos of Dostoevsky’s politically and ideologically charged tirades; still, the author manages the mayhem through a narrator attuned to these pressure points, who modulates accordingly. The narrator’s tact is certainly on display in his handling of Myshkin’s osculating personality. For example, in part I of the novel, the narrator champions Myshkin for withstanding the gossipy, cut-throat atmosphere of upper-class Russian society. He is the only one who can see Nastasya’s innate ‘goodness,’ professing it openly and unabashedly; however, characters and the critics of The Idiot are quick to point out a shift in Myshkin after the events of part I. The next time we readers encounter the prince, he has become irritable, absent-minded, wandering, and untrusting; the question is, why this change in characterization, but also why this narrator seems to lose faith in Myshkin because of it. 

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One possible explanation is to view the shift in the prince’s countenance as a hallmark of his altered attitude towards Nastaya. He goes from loving her in part I, to pitying her in part II (and for the remainder of the novel). Rogozhin reflects to Myshkin, “It seems to me that your pity is greater than my love,” and Myshkin in a later chapter retorts: “I explained to you [Rogozin] before that I don’t love her with love, but with pity” (The Idiot 196-197). Moreover, in explaining his feelings to Aglaya, Myshkin again states: “I only pitied [Nastasya... I] don’t love her anymore” (The Idiot 413). Critic Murray Krieger in his analysis of The Idiot validates Myshkin’s self-assessment, noting that when the prince embraces his “new life” (The Idiot 348) apart from Nastasya, love and pity “become separate entities,” where they were previously conjoined (Krieger 44). Burgin, however, goes a step further, remarking that this “change from love to pity” is not narrated directly: “It is a crucial, but deliberately underplayed moment in the ‘off-stage’ action between parts one and two” (Burgin, 168). Here, Burgin permits a kind of analysis which depicts the narrator as an abetting force—one capable and culpable of manipulating the narrative structure to push a specific agenda. So while the narrator is not directly responsible for Myshkin’s change in character, he is certainly liable for how readers perceive it.

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Thus, I would like to suggest that we cast the narrator’s “abandonment” of the prince in the same light as Myshkin’s abandoned love of Nastaya: both are the results of pity. They represent a mirroring thematic and structural shift in the novel, as the “off-stage” change in Myshkin is simultaneously rendered in the narrator. We recognize that Myshkin turns to pity early on (after part I), whilst it takes the narrator a some time longer. Yes, we start to see signs of dissent and disillusionment in part II (as noted above), but the turn towards pity on the narrator’s part does not manifest until quite late in the novel—until the last few chapters of part III. 

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Where did the narrator go?

If we focus carefully on the structure of the last few chapters, it is not just that the narrator undermines the prince’s stoical disposition—we also begin to notice how frequently he undercuts his own ability to function as an omnipresent authority. To put it another way, the narrator stops telling the story. On the surface, this gesture seems to affirm the notion that Dostoevsky’s narrator abandons the prince. Yet considering the sustained binary of love versus pity in the novel, this paradigm suggests that the narrator’s retreat is more complicated than we may suppose. 

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Readers begin to notice a shift in chapter X of part four of The Idiot when the narrator remarks that, on the eve before Nastasya and the prince’s wedding, the bride was found in hysterics, “So, as least, Darya Alexeevna reported afterwards [...] we do not know what they talked about” (The Idiot 592). It is a common narrative respectability (we see in Austen or Dickens) for an omniscient voice to feign ignorance to the particularities of an intimate scene between lovers (or women in their chambers). Hence the privacy afforded to Nastasya at this moment. Yet this retelling or “reporting” by another character proves to be more than just a one-off instance. As the wedding nears and its aftermath unfolds, we see a pattern emerging where the narrator defers to outside sources for his account of the prince. This character, Darya, is not the only one who will take on the task of keeping the reader up to date. Most all the rest of the story is told like this—through the reflections and reports of an array of characters. 

Darya’s observations thus set in motion a series of recollective anecdotes which propel the story to its conclusion. Here are just a few of the many which ensue: “Afterwards, Keller blamed the unexpectedness [...],” “Only later did the girl understand,” “Keller himself later recalled,” “It seemed [the prince] wanted very much to get home [...]” (594); “‘Till tomorrow!’ [said the prince]. So at least Vera recounted afterwards [...] it seemed to her that he was quite cheerful” (596); “they reported afterwards that [the prince] ‘turned terribly pale,’’’ “All this was suspicious and shady” (599); “All these ladies reported afterwards that the prince studied every object in the rooms [...]” (601); “God knows how long he thought and God knows what about” (602); “In any case, when after many hours, the door opened and people came in, they found the murderer totally unconscious [...] And if Schneider himself had come now from Switzerland to have a look at his former pupil and patient, he, too, recalling the state [...] would have waved his hand now and said, as he did then: ‘An idiot!’” (611). 

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I recount these occurrences to show how frequent, but also how varying, the narrative interludes are. Readers get the sense that the narrator has completely absolved his story-telling capabilities over to the characters themselves, who then tell these final scenes as they “report,” “recall,” or “testify” (The Idiot 614). This brings us to another point, namely that the final chapters are presented as internal heterodiegetic analepsis (to borrow some terms from narrative theory). They are “internal” and “analepic” because they are given as flashbacks told by characters who operate in the same universe as the preceding story; they are “heterodiegetic” in that it is a minor or supporting character who is doing the relaying. Given the dense and detailed nature of Dostoevsky’s prose, it is easy to forget that the final series of events have, indeed, already taken place. This highlights two other oddities of the structure: first, that unlike in say, Demons, the retelling is not done homodiegetically (i.e., by a protagonist or narrator); and second, that the analeptic structure only begins in the last 8th of the novel (unlike Demons again, or Dickens’s Bleak House or Austen’s Mansfield Park). To me, this signals the puzzling but nevertheless dynamic inclinations of The Idiot’s narrator. 

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Turning to the minor characters who have taken over the narrator’s responsibilities, it remains unclear how biased or prone to lying they are. Even if we take their word at face value, they still have less of an objective insight into Myshkin’s internal, tragic drama than the narrator himself. As Burgin writes, “Since even the narrator is more a hindrance than a help to understanding [Myshkin], the reader must assume the often frustrating task of ferreting out the truth about Myshkin that lies embedded in others’ sometimes intelligent, often conflicting, but always only partially correct interpretations” (Burgin 161). Her comment is particularly helpful to our effort to understand the conclusion of the novel, as she reminds us that these minor figures are not altogether untrustworthy. They, like the reader, want to get to the bottom of Myshkin’s demise. 

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But this notion spurs an ethical predicament as well: are these minor characters—who now hold the weight of the narrative responsibility—all just gossips looking for an amusing dinner table anecdote? Are we readers any different? This then begets the final question, which is that even though readers must “assume the often frustrating task of ferreting out the truth,” does the narrator’s escape from the web of gossip not suggest some lingering reverence (or pity) for the prince? To me, his exit feels like an astounding act of mercy. 

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Another kind of love

The end of The Idiot certainly morphs into a kind-of journalistic amalgam or gossip column. The reporter or “organizer” of these various anecdotes is not part of the diegetic world of the text, but rather the narrator himself. So even if he is not the one directly relaying the facts, he (like Dostoevsky) is still present as a narrative foreman or overseer. Thus, the narrator did not “chuck” the prince; rather, by diluting his direct authority, he saves Myshkin from something far worse than societal scrutiny—that is, the scrutiny of the reader. If the narrator is removed from the web of gossip and lies, then he joins the ranks of Dostoevsky and the astute reader. Whether or not this move was intentional on the author’s part is besides the point (it probably was not): what matters is that the pity the narrator shows the prince is emblematic of a larger moral framework, one which suggests sympathy and forgiveness lie at the heart of the novel, and a healthy (Russian) christian society. 

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While this final shift in narration is a bizarre one, I do think we do get a hint as to why the narrator gives up telling the story. In a pivotal scene towards the end of chapter IX part four, Myshkin and the suddenly crucial character, Evgeny Pavlygch Radomsky, get into a heated debate over the two women in the prince’s life. Fed up, Evgeny Pavlygch scolds Myshkin: ‘“Aglaya Ivanovna loved as a woman, as a human being, not as… an abstract spirit. You know, my poor prince: most likely you never loved either of them!”’ (The Idiot 583). It is a scathing remark, one readers certainly stop to ponder themselves. Evgeny Pavlygch spends most of this scene talking, analyzing the prince’s actions throughout the novel (Myshkin barely gets in a few lines). In this regard, the narrator yields his own critical judgment of the prince to this character. Evgeny Pavlygch goes on to imply that, where with Aglaya he could have had a real, human love, Myshkin surrenders this path by embracing a purely spiritual and abstract kind of love embodied in Nastasya. Myshkin thus stands in stark contrast to both Rogozhin and Ganya, where the latter’s love is animalistic, and the former’s opportunistic. 

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Yet even alongside these foils, Myshkin, according to Evgeny Pavlygch, does not come across in a positive light. And I believe this is because Radomsky fails to identify Myshkin’s true attitude towards these women. After his conversation with the prince, he thinks to himself: “And what was this about loving two women? With you different loves of some sort?” (584). It is not that Myshkin “never loved” Nastasya—rather, he, at the end of the novel, loves Aglaya and pities Nastasya. Pity is the “different [...] sort” of love that Evgeny Pavlygch fails to identify. 

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 “The final indication that [Evgeny Pavlygch] has not fully understood the Prince comes from Myshkin himself [...], and from the narrator whose note that [Radomsky] ‘went away with strange convictions’ and more questions than answers undercuts the validity of his eloquent explanation” (Burgin 172-173). Burgin is right here, in that Radomsky is a ruse of a narrator set to trick readers into denouncing Myshkin. Yet at the same time, the questions Radomsky thinks to himself prompts us to reconsider what these “different loves” truly entail. Burgin reminds us that it is the narrator who notes that Radomsky left thinking these thoughts. This subtle gesture implies that he, the narrator, is ultimately still on the side of the prince. After all, what was not said is perhaps more crucial than what was. Pity is never mentioned once in this scene, yet it is precisely the feeling Radomsky struggles to locate. With each evocation of an “abstract” or “different” kind of love, Radomsky misses the mark, for it is a pity for the prince which the narrator wants us to recollect. 

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Conclusion

“The psychological relationship between self-image and true self in The Idiot is analogous to the narrative relationship in the novel between interpretations of the Prince and the Prince him [...]” (Burgin 163). At the end of the novel, the narrator gives us an array of “interpretations” of prince Myshkin focalized through Evgeny Pavlygch and a host of other minor characters. These interpretations are decidedly unfavorable—both Evgeny Pavlygch and Schneider conclude their respective chapters by labeling the prince an “idiot” (The Idiot 584, 611). So why permit these hijackers in the first place? Ultimately, the narrator wants these negative lenses to seep into the story so that someone else can question, scold, and denounce Myshkin (who is, afterall, a tragically flawed and imperfect character). This is not the narrator shying away from responsibility, but rather him withdrawing in order to create a new vantage point where pity and sympathy remain the final, overarching lens through which the character is viewed. 

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It is clear that love and pity represent an important binary in the novel, and perhaps the most important binary embodied in Prince Myshkin. This association, however, begets another more ancient binary: that of pity and fear. Most famously evoked in relation to tragedy in Aristotle’s Poetics, pity and fear also play a central role in Fredrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (published just three years after The Idiot). Aristotle and Nietzsche share an interest in unraveling the boundary between art and reality, for both would stipulate that tragedy—the most noted genre in both their respective works—is not primarily a matter of individuality: pity and fear are social agents, which, even within the dramatic realm, effect the spectatorship and culture they reside in. 

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When considering Aristotle’s dramatic discourse, we must keep in mind that what he is discussing is the way in which tragedy produces effects by symbolizing, or approximating to, the turmoil of emotional events in “real life” (Punter 15). Nietzsche acknowledges a similar reaction, as he writes, “the serious events [of tragedy] are supposed to prompt pity and fear to discharge themselves in a way that relieves us” (Nietzsche 132). In The Birth of Tragedy, as opposed to his more politically-minded pieces, Nietzsche presents pity as self-emptying and self-cleansing, providing a wholly new edifice through which to understand the emotion. With the coupling of “pity and fear” we also see Nietzsche paying brief homage to Aristotelian dramatic tradition: “Never since Aristotle has an explanation of the tragic effect been offered from which aesthetic states or an aesthetic activity of the listener could be inferred” (Nietzsche 132). 

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Aristotle and Nietzsche could not be more different in their respective philosophies. But when it comes to pity and fear in relation to a tragic tale, they find some common ground. This lens can aid our analysis of the end of The Idiot, for there must be some reason why the narrator’s pity for Myshkin causes him to alter his structure and style to such extremes. Finding the common ground between philosophers thus help us see that pity enacts an audience’s emotional transformation. Nietzsche writes: “We [the audience] are supposed to feel elevated and inspired by the triumph of good and noble principles, at the sacrifice of the hero in the interest of a moral vision of the universe” (Nietzsche 132); Aristotle phrases it more succinctly, asserting that tragedy should evoke catharsis (Aristotle VII.1449b21-28). Thus, the effects of tragic drama are not confined to the stage, and catharsis is not simply experienced in the individual psyche. Pity, coupled with fear, involves a real and visceral realization which pushes our emotional capacity outwards, colliding into the spheres of others. As Burgin notes, “Myshkin’s suffering is so great that the other characters and the reader seek some justification for it” (Burgin, 171). I would conjecture that it’s not just the reader and characters searching for some kind of closure. The narrator is also affected by Myshkin’s alteration—thus pity is the natural and self-cleansing response.

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Works Cited

Aristotle. Poetics. Ed. and trans. Stephen Halliwell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995

Burgin, Diana L. “Prince Myškin, the True Lover and ‘Impossible Bridegroom’: A Problem in Dostoevskian Narrative.” The Slavic and East European Journal 27, no. 2 (1983): 158-175

Dostoevsky, Fydor. The Idiot (Vintage Classics). Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 2003

Krieger, Murray. “Dostoevsky’s ‘Idiot’: The Curse of Saintliness.” In Tragic Vision. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc. (1960): 209-227

Nietzsche, Fredrich. The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music. Ed. Michael Tanner, trans. Shaun Whiteside. London: Penguin, 1993

Punter, David. “Pity and Terror: The Aristotelian Framework.” The Literature of Pity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2014): 12-23

Viacheslav, Ivanovich Ivanov. “Chapter III: The Stranger.” In Freedom and the Tragic Life: A Study in Dostoevsky. New York, NY: The Noonday Press (1989): 86-106

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