Anyone who has ever read Fyodor Dostoyevsky, please comment

[Tsuyoiko]

Myshkin and Jesus had about the same likelihood of surviving in society, yet would you describe Jesus as naive?

It's not the fact that Myshkin is unlikely to survive in society that makes him naive, but his lack of experience in society, which I don't think applied to Jesus. As I said, this naivete is not an intrinsic trait of Myshkin's, it is a description of his situation. He is naive from the viewpoint of society (which of course does him an injustice).

A man left his betrothed to spend time with another woman and marry her after a fortnight. Will anyone believe he was sacrificing himself like Jesus? I wouldn't if I were the first one. How about you?

You're judging with an ordinary human understanding of romantic relationships and with your emotions. The understanding Myshkin had was far beyond this; he saw his duty to other human beings from an objectively compassionate standpoint. He loved everyone in the way that Jesus taught when he said "love your neighbour as yourself".

Imagine Myshkin is a doctor. There has been an accident in which his fiancee is injured very slightly, but his ex-lover is seriously wounded. Who should he help?

You will object that the situation is different, but that is the point. To Myshkin, they are the same. Because of his superior compassion, he is capable of acting totally unselfishly and going to the aid of one he judges to need him most.

[virginiawang]

You are judging the prince's case as if he were really a God, dealing with living organisms without his own feelings getting involved. I don't think Dostoyevsky intended to portray his main character as a God-like, indifferent machine, and the women there as simply dull objects to be saved, or he wouldn't have portrayed Nastasya's beauty, Agala's affability and subtlety in such details. The author was thinking about a world where human beings inhabited rather than some etherial place of acient Gods, or an area filled with mechanic devices, when he wrote the book. If, according to you, he treated everyone with equal love just like Jesus did, why did he choose the two most pretty women to fall in love with? It's a book of human beings, who have senses to feel and a heart to live, and it deals with the noblest part of human sentiments. A true love for one is even beyond God's love in that it transcends above our consciousness. God's love is fair, equal, and in a sense,dull and unemotional, so the difference between a theology book and the book, The Idiot, manifested itself.
The prince had great compassion for everyone including the two women he had affairs with, but he surrendered himself to the strongest love for a woman toward the end of the novel. That love exceeded his compassion for Aglaya, so he did what he did. The true cause of his everlasting idiocy was the sight of the dead woman whom he loved most all his life. It is a love tragedy, not a theological story about missions impossible.
Read one or two paragraphs from Bible and you'll feel the omnipotent God all at once, which is different from a mere human being like the idiot, who was susceptible to all inflences in his surroundings and the beautful woman who captured him at the first sight. Though his sentiments involved compassion, that didn't devalue his love for her. Some sentiments of compassion can be a part of the romantic love as well. Dostoevsky here portrayed the most agitated workings of a heart beyond consciousness so well that he had been considered as one of the most romantic writers I've ever known.

[JCamilo]

Will you please tell me how we should follow Bartleby as a model in Bartleby, the Scrivener, wriiten by a pessimistic writer of the American Romanticism? By the way, I quite agree with you in believing the innocence of the prince.

There is the anti-model. You should not follow Ahab or be like him, but his traits are idealized, he is the anti-hero. Keep in mind that Melville is hard to cathegorize, because he may have romantic traits such in Moby Dick or Billy Budd but at sametime his writings are already poiting to modernism or the endo of IXIX century literature. (to guys like Kafka, Dostoievisky)
Dostoievisky is more close to european romantism such as Dickens than north-americans who are a separeted group.
Another thing: It is not that Dostoievisky had no romantic trait on his work. He do have. After all he was created by this movemment. The thing is that Dostoievisky add a new perspective to romanticism, even as a form of criticism because the idealism, and this already place him out of the group and moving foward to the XX century.
And realism deal with feelings. How Zola is without feelings? Or Flaubert? (Realism as school is a myth, but if we categorize the writers of second half of XIX century they would be there).

[JCamilo]

No. Prince Myshkin trusts the likes of Ippolit and Roghozin simply because he rightly perceives sparks of goodness in them.

The prince trust more than one person. Altough this is irreelvant, the prince pretty much judges others by his own standards and that is social naiviety.

Cynical? The several Dostoevsky novels I have read are full of restrained hope - even Crime and Punishment. And Brothers Karamazov, most will agree, is thoroughly inspiring despite grim circumstances. Dostoevsky paints a penetrating, if uncomfortable, picture of human life that accentuates the positive in people.

I have no idea how being cynical is contrary than showing hope, but most of the novels have a character that have hope inside a sittuation of no-hope. It is the contraditory that Dostoievisky explores. He create sittuations of stress - two different viewpoints that enhance the other side. Mishkin would be a dull character but inside the society of The Idiot, he is a notable character. The same society would be just irrelevant without the presence of the Prince. Aliocha enhances the conflicts of his brothers and his father character. But hope? In the end, Dostoievisky have the conclusion always open, it is always hard to cause any change, it is not clear if anything turned better or worst. He is not optimistic, and even the Prince final fate is hardly something that can be somehow positive.

The novel's title, The Idiot, is ironic. The prince is surrounded by idiots! As the old doctor in Pavlofsk told Lebedev, Prince Myshkin is the sanest of men, although all around him would wish to think otherwise.

The old doctor would be one of those idiots, right...
Meh, The prince is an Idiot because all his traits puts him a sittuation where he is the idiot, not the others! It is ironic because we know he is not an idiot (by the way, someone can be sane and an idiot) but inside that sittaution he is one, exactly because he is not part of that society and hypocrisy. In the end, it is always a gamble: while the prince shows that the socieity is made of idiots, the society shows the prince is an idiot.

There is much more to The Idiot, JCamilo, than your two dimensional interpretation would have us believe.

err, do not be pretentious. My interpretation is hardly two dimensional, in fact I am adding aspects to your interpretation because you seems to refuse to acknowledge that the critic of Dostoievisky is not limited just to the society but to the prince as well, even if his human traits are louvable (Or exactly because of that).

[virginiawang]

Do you really think Nastasya would have committed suicide if the prince had gone with Aglaya, from an objective standpoint? She didn't commit suicide when her seducer insulted her and left her in the beginning of the novel. How would she commit suicide if the prince did not follow her instructions?The fact that the prince was convinced that she would do so only tells us that the prince was utterly bewitched by the woman. The comparison you made about a doctor and his two lovers, whom, according to you, he didn't love as a man loves a woman, is supposed to be changed as such. A doctor had to choose between his betrothed and his ex-lover, who was not wounded more than his betrothed. To go on does not make sense, I think.

[bazarov]

The gap between realism and romanticism is the feelings involved. Realists writers portrayed events and people drily without emotions getting involved, and those writers of naturalism, an outgrowth of realism even did their best to remain calm and objective. They more often than not did not give their chracters names. However Dostoyevsky was driven by his feelings to write, and as far as that is concerned, Dostoyevsky could never be classified as a realist. As for existentialism, I believe his feelings did direct him to some hidden truth about life.

Totally wrong. Realists tried to show real people in real situations, and it was very objective and Dostoevsky is along with Tolstoy the best in that. Just read Crime and Punishment and after that The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Hugo and you will see the obvious difference. Naturalists are far from objective, they are too pessimistic.

Mishkin have a vision of genious? He is a mockery, Dostoieviksy intents him as a critiic of naivity... How come he saw really what is underneath his peers? He often trust them basead on his own godness. Apparently, irony in Dostoisviksy is lost by the feelings towards Mishkin.

He used Mishkin to criticize society, not his naive; it was just the tool he used to show it.

Dostoievisky is cynical, are you joking me? The underground man, his own experiencer ithat almost resulted with his death on siberia, brothers karamazov, works of genial cynic

No, Dostoevsky just showed how people and society really are. That's sad, not cynical. Maybe we could describe Gogol as cynical, but not Dostoevsky.

The novel's title, The Idiot, is ironic. The prince is surrounded by idiots! As the old doctor in Pavlofsk told Lebedev, Prince Myshkin is the sanest of men, although all around him would wish to think otherwise.

Miskin is The Idiot, not society that surrounds him. His idiotism lays in fact that he cannot realize and understand how humans and world really functions. And we could hardly say that all of others characters in the novel were idiots. They actually act totally normal - everyone was just looking for their interests no matter of others.

[JCamilo]

I have to disagree here. If anything, Dostoevsky intended Myshkin as a critique of society. He characterises Myshkin as an idiot to show us how society would view a person who is completely pure in his nature. There is irony here, but it is in the fact that society would reject the pure of heart. The parallel with Jesus seems blindingly obvious.

Yes, that is one side of The Idiot. The other is also using Myshkin as a critic to idealized or idealistic members of russian society. Neither side of The Idiot is free of Dostoievisky critic, at the same time the society would not accept Myshkin, Myshkin would also not fit there. Dostoievisky do not pick sides or give confort to Myshkin, his fall is also his doing. The message is of the book is more "everything is wrong" than "there is one good option to follow"...
I think Brothers Karamazov is where Dostoievisky can achive this vision of society more completely.

[virginiawang]

But you said in your post before that Romanticism deals with heros to be followed as models, not anti-model or whatever. I am curious to know how one should follow an anti-model, a term I've never heard before. Therefore, according to you, everyone can be followed as a hero, because you can always find him in either of the two categories, models and anti-models, and that's really an interesting way of looking at things.
By the way, I have to tell you realism and naturalism do not involve feelings, and you can get to know more from all websites about them.

[bazarov]

Don't want to be rude or inpolite, but virginiawang; did some male done something really bad to you lately in your life?

[virginiawang]

Totally wrong. Realists tried to show real people in real situations, and it was very objective and Dostoevsky is along with Tolstoy the best in that. Just read Crime and Punishment and after that The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Hugo and you will see the obvious difference. Naturalists are far from objective, they are too pessimistic.

Please go to websites about realism and naturalism, to get to know more about the two terms. Naturalists are objective and indifferent. They don't even give their characters names.

[virginiawang]

Don't want to be rude or inpolite, but virginiawang; did some male done something really bad to you lately in your life?

You are quite mistaken. I would like to share with you the most beautiful blessings in my life, but my reason forbade me. Sorry.

[JCamilo]

He used Mishkin to criticize society, not his naive; it was just the tool he used to show it.

I reckon that sentence I wrote is not sounding like it should, Yeah, not a critic of Naive just it, what really I wanted to say is that his naive is the perspective he uses to build the critic of book, which is the society (or others characters in the book) in contrast with Myshkin natural good.

No, Dostoevsky just showed how people and society really are. That's sad, not cynical. Maybe we could describe Gogol as cynical, but not Dostoevsky.

I can describe both. Cynics distrusts the motives of society, are often pessimists. Also they often used contraditory sittuations to show up the wrongs of a society, exactly like throwing a good natural man into a den of wolves and labeling him an Idiot. Cynism is related to the XIX existencialism, pessimism and nihilism, philosophical movements who found in Dostoievisky works a bridge to the XX century. Cynism is not hypocrisy or telling lies, at least I am not using the term as such.

[JCamilo]

But you said in your post before that Romanticism deals with heros to be followed as models, not anti-model or whatever. I am curious to know how one should follow an anti-model, a term I've never heard before. Therefore, according to you, everyone can be followed as a hero, because you can always find him in either of the two categories, models and anti-models, and that's really an interesting way of looking at things.

Heroes and anti-heroes. You are not supposed to follow, as a positive thing, the anti-heroes, but they have a lot of idealized traits. They can be charming or genial, they can be brave, but they are often leading those around them to negativity - Ahab for example? Or Hatchliff from Wuthering Heights...
The thing about romanticism is that at sametime they directed their lights towards to ordinary people they also aimed to a higher individualism, but it was a world that was skeptical, so the models are twisted. Therefore the idealized heroes of the past turned to be flawed as well.

By the way, I have to tell you realism and naturalism do not involve feelings, and you can get to know more from all websites about them.

There is no art without feelings, but I do not need websites: Madame Bovary is part of french realism and is full of feelings. You can have, as they have, the distance from the characters in the book, the narrator without intervention,but even that is something that Dostoievisky used, because he is exactly, alongside with Tolstoy, the top guys that teached realists how to write.

[bazarov]

Please go to websites about realism and naturalism, to get to know more about the two terms. Naturalists are objective and indifferent. They don't even give their characters names.

Believe me; I've read so much books from those periods that I should make those websites instead of them

[virginiawang]

Realists and naturalists shunned emotions. You need to know the truth about the two schools of writing rather than imagine them in your head as much as you like.
By the way, you blurred the point you made in the very beginning. "a hero to be followed as a model " was what you proclaimed in that post, not anti-model or whatever, so I wanted to know how we should follow Bartleby as a model? Or is it a mistake you've made accidentally?