THE ENDING: ‘like a lamb dumb before his shearer’
What are we to make of the ending of ‘The Idiot’? Some on the forum have suggested: the imitation of Christ; serious stress brings you down; a bad woman’s a man’s downfall; naivety is bad karma; and once an idiot, always an idiot. For me, the ending speaks to the noblest of love shown by the sanest of men, whose voluntary ‘burden of love’ touches and ultimately offends those around him. This post began life as a short reply on another thread but grew as I better appreciated complexities in the novel’s ending.
Consider the character of Prince Myshkin. While his friends and acquaintances occasionally suggest he is simple, naïve and an idiot, they say so with little conviction. He can sway others to his generous view of the world, as instanced by the unanimous about-face in attitude of the guests at the house of General Yepanchin where the prince confronts the ‘Nihilist’ gate-crashers, Ippolit and his tipsy mates. Throughout the novel, the actions of the prince surprise, I think, because he is attuned to the needs of the moment, unfettered by the past and having ‘no thought for the morrow’ (Matthew 6:34). Is this perspective simple-minded idiocy or enlightened heroism?
In living for today, his attachment to Nastasya Filippovna, Aglaya and Roghozin - not to mention Ippolit, Keller, Burdovsky and Lebedev - is always generous and even-handed: to each according to need. Impartially is particularly evident in the prince’s altruistic (astonishing) dealings with the brash, suicidal, consumptive Ippolit and his abrasive mates.
The prince, who seems to love men and women alike, has little concept of being ‘in love’. Rather than romantic infatuation or lust, his interactions with Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaya suggest social naivety, embarrassment and sincere kindness - unlike other suitors in the novel. His love is compassion – he wants to help, to save, to redeem – even reaching out through marriage and beyond. He loves, he acts, without counting the cost to himself, or the suffering. (Yet he understands suffering, for he stares at and long remembers that dreadful ‘Deposition’: the poor Holbein copy, ‘at Roghozin’s in one of his gloomiest rooms, over the door’.) The focus of the prince is directed outwards, on others, as when twice deserted by Nastasya Filippovna on the brink of their wedding. 'Love so amazing, so divine'.
Nearing the end, Prince Myshkin bemoans his inability to unshackle Aglaya, owing to circumstances unforeseen. But does he really suffer a breakdown when he confronts Roghozin and finds Nastasya Filippovna murdered? Unable to save her from Roghozin’s knife, we are thunderstruck that the prince appears more distressed by his failure to save the murderous Roghozin from himself.
The prince has anguished on several fronts, shouldering an enormous burden of love - seemingly too much for one man - even one living authentically from moment to moment. (Dostoevsky was much influenced by the existentialism of Soren Kierkegaard, as in his ‘Works of Love’ of 1847) Yet, were Prince Myshkin given the chance to relive those final weeks, I’m sure he would do it all again, willingly and without regret.
As the old doctor in Pavlofsk told Lebedev, just days before the fateful wedding day, it won’t do to dismiss the prince as mad ('no one left for keepers'). After all, the prince is prone to seizures of epilepsy rather than psychosis. He is distraught but thoroughly sane as he lies weeping, on the cheek of Roghozin. 'Jesus wept' (John 11:35). The prince had been frantic in his efforts to save Nastasya Filippovna and worried about Aglaya’s teetering future, but is finally heartbroken over the plummeting psychopath Roghozin, with whom he had exchanged crosses – his tin one for Roghozin’s gold. Does the prince mourn for all these, for Ippolit, for General Ivolgin? No. Living in the here and now, the prince mourns for the living, for Roghozin, his 'brother'!
But to society, to the world, the selfless and unbounded love of the prince for the murderer of his fiancée, lying dead in the same room, is lunacy - almost an offence. Danger was looming as early as the eve of his wedding. Prophetic are the words of the prince in response to Keller (the boxer), in church at General Ivolgin’s funeral:
'"I assure you, prince, that Lebedev is intriguing against you. He wants to put you under control. Imagine that! To take from you the use of your free-will and your money—that is to say, the two things that distinguish us from the animals! I have heard it said positively. It is the sober truth."
The prince recollected that somebody had told him something of the kind before, and he had, of course, scoffed at it. He only laughed now, and forgot the hint at once.'
The weaponry of public umbrage facing Prince Myshkin at the funeral was as nothing compared with that following the discovery of him weeping tears of gold, side by side with the murderer Roghozin. 'Greater love hath no man than this' (John 15:13). Extremes, even extremes of love, are rarely understood or tolerated by society. If Prince Myshkin has a nervous breakdown, it likely follows the universal consensus that a Swiss asylum is the place for him…the place for love, for beauty. Is this what happens to truth in our world?
Back in Switzerland, ‘like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth’ (Acts 8:32). Our unfortunate 'idiot' suffers silently a very slow death…you might say, a crucifixion. And the occasional visitor to Dr Schneider’s patient sees something awful but edifying, not unlike Holbein’s ‘Deposition’. Was Prince Myshkin’s sacrifice in vain? Perhaps not, if the testimonies of virginal Vera Lebedev, forthright Lizabetha Prokofievna, and sceptical playboy Evgenie Pavlovitch matter. How fitting, if the story closes with an unlikely resurrection.
Am I misrepresenting this breathtaking novel?
