Anyone who has ever read Fyodor Dostoyevsky, please comment

[Gladys]

Myshkin...is naive from the viewpoint of society (which of course does him an injustice)

We agree, Tsuyoiko. Many considered Jesus naive in that sense, as Paul suggests in:

1 Corinthians 3:18-20___Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool [an Idiot], that he may be wise.___For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.___And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.

The prince trust[s] more than one person.

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.

And not just in relation to Nastasya Filippovna. He acts the same way towards everyone: Roghozin, Ippolit, Keller, Burdovsky, Lebedev and even Aglaya herself. Prince Myshkin is focussed on love - but never the romantic, infatuated variety. He seeks and finds something to love in everyone (just as 'God so loved the world...'). Loving and self-sacrificing, but not gullible.

...and even the Prince final fate is hardly something that can be somehow positive.

And yet, like Crime and Punishment, the final page is 'somehow positive'.

The old doctor would be one of those idiots, right...

Right, but a disinterested idiot, and therefore credible.

In the end, it is always a gamble: while the prince shows that the society is made of idiots, the society shows the prince is an idiot.

While I agree with the former, the latter is only true if you take a cynical, negative view of the Prince Myshkin. As I've said earlier, the 'crucified' prince is 'resurrected' on the last page as argued in THE ENDING: ‘like a lamb dumb before his shearer’.

you seems to refuse to acknowledge that the critic of Dostoievisky is not limited just to the society but to the prince as well

I do indeed. The prince is akin to Sonya or Lizaveta (another idiot) in Crime and Punishment: he is portrayed as entirely positive.

Miskin is The Idiot, not society that surrounds him.

Barazov, the book's title is a double entendre. The idiot prince is the opposite of what he seems - he is literally the sanest - the most down to earth - of men.

Do you really think Nastasya would have committed suicide if the prince had gone with Aglaya, from an objective standpoint?

The prince is probably more worried about Roghozin than Nastasya. Here is the paramount subtlety in The Idiot!

But in the denouement, he puts his own feelings aside and goes with Nastasya because his capacity for agape takes precedence over his romantic love for Aglaya.

Romantic? Interesting, although I feel sure that Prince Myshkin's relationship with Aglaya is driven by agape: he wishes to rescue her from a future Polish misadventure. And in this he fails too (like Jesus on Calvary – despised, betrayed and deserted).

I think the message of the book is more like "it's pointless to try to be too good"

We agree in much, Tsuyoiko, but here I must demur. The message is rather the buoyant: Prince Myshkin lives a life of love (agape), and though achieving nothing in the eyes of the world, he touches with grace the lives of some. As did Sonya (the prostitute) and Lizaveta (the idiot) in Crime and Punishment.

[virginiawang]

Love transcends the boundary of reasoning faculties, counsiousness and even sub-consciousness. It creeps into the innermost layer of our soul surreptitiously, without letting us know, and bids us to perform mariad deeds, some may be considered ludicrous, some out of all proportions to reality, and some truly outrageous. However before we discern the curious change we undergo, we have been cast a spell by this magic for perhaps quite a long time, and that's why we sometimes find ourselves not doing the sort of thing we would normally do but can't figure out why.
Sometimes people even battle with the emotions that arise in their minds, and oftentimes they find their efforts futile. When they try to figure out the truth about this condition, they end up in profound perplexity. Indeed the keenest observer cannot see through the minutes of the workings of his heart under this spell. Not only the prince himself, who couldn't have grasped the meaning of all the actions he took, the author, as well, may not see into this innermost layer of a soul. Dostoyevsky was driven by his momentary impulses to write, so he couldn't have known what would come next to his charaters the moment before. Perhaps he intended to write about a perfect man, but as he unfurled his plot, the man turned out to be someone quite different from what he originally expected. He kept writing whatever came to his mind, so he was not able to discern the secret visit of love to his charcter. I will give evidence to Dostoyevsky's way of writing from an introduction to the book, The Idiot. " On the other hand, it is no less true that Dostoyevsky's method of writing seemed to demand a condition of continuous mental strain, a condition of constant over-excitement and tearing rage.....Dostoyevsky first began with the main idea of his novel and never had a carefully worked-out plan of it or its characters." Flow of emotions, which cropped up one by one led him to write, so perhaps he didn't create love intentionally, but as he developed his story further and further ahead, his charaters encountered love coincidently. That was what made him a romatic writer of all time.
I don't know too much about God or its existence, so forget about it. Now neither the author nor the prince was able to tell the prince's heart under the influence of human love between a man and a woman, we only know the most obvious fact that he chose Nastasya in the end.

[virginiawang]

Dostoyevsky has been classified by most literary people as a witer of Psychological Realism, which originated from some sort of romantic writing, so Dostoyevsky was a romantic writer without doubt.
Herman Melville was a transcendentalist, and that was a fact known to all peopel who study literature. Your model-to-be-followed theory in Romanticism does not apply to Bartleby, but you blurred the point, wrote a lot of unrelated pharagraphs that only show something I have no wish to disclose. Realism and Naturaism have been understood by all people as forms of literature in which authors made their best attempt to shun emotions and portrayed with objectivity events and their characters. So perhaps you have invented some new explanation to the two literary terms, and indulged yourself in it. That's not a bad thing perhaps.

[virginiawang]

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.

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

I agree with you. The prince, being hyper-sentive since the day he was born, could detect the most delicate sutleties in his surroundings and in his mind, which would have escaped the eyes of ordinary people. He could even divine vaguely what would happen to him in the future by his keen intuitions, as could be found in the broken vase case, and that was beyond the power of ordinary people. An idiot, when considered in another light, becomes an intelligence.

[JCamilo]

And yet, like Crime and Punishment, the final page is 'somehow positive'.

Yeah, very positive. We all know that Dostoievisky is an optimistic by nature.

Right, but a disinterested idiot, and therefore credible.

I was ironic because a sane man can an idiot as well. So the good doctor opinion does not help to build a case to defend the Prince as not the idiot in the title.
In fact, in many aspects Dostoievisky apply a traditional use of idiot: someone who act like an idiot but because of that is free to point that the king is naked.

While I agree with the former, the latter is only true if you take a cynical, negative view of the Prince Myshkin. As I've said earlier, the 'crucified' prince is 'resurrected' on the last page as argued in THE ENDING: ‘like a lamb dumb before his shearer’.

We are talking about Dostoievisky, there is several momments where he condemn the idealism that dominated the russian society. The Prince is obviously a positive person, a idealized good guy. What is negative is the sittuation where Dostoieviksy place him. With this, Dostoievisky allow us to show the flaws of the society but also the problems a person like Mishkin - or the pure idealistic - suffer when facing reality.

I do indeed. The prince is akin to Sonya or Lizaveta (another idiot) in Crime and Punishment: he is portrayed as entirely positive.

All the good characters of Dostoievisky (Alioach, the prince) are positive. The negativity is the sittuation that Dostoievisky place them and the internal conflict generated by it. Analysing Dostoievisky characters outside the book is a mistake. As much the prince defines those around him, he is defined by those same individuals.


Virginia:

Voltaire philosophical tales were originated from oriental parables, this would mean Voltaire is an oriental writer? Dostoievisky is influenced by romantic writers but what make him expectional and not just one more is that he moved foward, not only in themes but in form also. His psychological work is considerable different from Dickens or Emily Bronte.
Melville being a trancendentalist is irrelevant. His many texts are not easy to classify because they break patterns. He is not a typical romantic writer - Benito Cereno or Baterbly stand up for this. There is no heroic model in tBaterbly (not all romantics used heroes), Ahab is an anti-hero of shorts, and Billy Budd an idealized good guy just like Mishkin.
And you certainly confund the objetivism of realism or the distance of the writer defended by Flaubert with absence of emotions. I need no literary terms, I need Madame Bovary. It proves that realism deals with emotions as much as anything, any claim otherwise needs a better explaination to be accepted.

[virginiawang]

You used the word "originate" in a different context, so the comparison does not make sense. However, I can still make something out of it. "Voltaire's philosophical tales were originated from oriental parables, " This clause points to the fact that Voltaire's philosophical tales were oriental, not that Voltaire was an oriental writer. He might come from any part of the world, but he wrote stories that had oriental origins. You see the difference?
Dostoyevsky was more inflenced by himself than by romantic writers and that could be proved by his spontaneous writing style. I have no wish to explain more. You can read my previous posts: let me explain, and reply to me afterwards. His writing being different from any other writer doesn't alter the intrinsic qualities of his works. As for Herman Melville, all literary people had put him under the category of Transcendentalism. How about your model-to-be-followed theory? Let me tell you it's no use to attempt to disown Melville as a transcendentalist, because a great many transcendentalists wrote gloomy stories just like Herman Melville. Your hero theory cannot apply to any of them, if only you don't twisted your original meaning of that theory. As far as realism and naturalism are concerned, I think it is better for you to reach out for truth than to make sketches with your own imagination. If you insist on those two writers involving emotions in their writing, I have to tell you that the classification of literary works is made by comparison rather than by delving deeper and deeper into someone's work to search. Romantic works cannot have only emotions. They do need some descriptions about what really happened, or the stories would otherwise not have been stories. Works of Realism and Naturalism do involve a bit emotions because they were created by human beings rather than machines. However it's the degree of emotions involved that made the gaps between all categories. They shunned emotions as best as they could and remained objective, when they were compared with romantics. You were not making sense when you insisited that they involved emotions in their writing. Of course, their writing involved emotions because they were not created by machines.

[bazarov]

Yeah, very positive. We all know that Dostoievisky is an optimistic by nature.

Actually, ending of Crime and Punishment really is a positive. Nobody dies, and Raskolnikov is morally a new peaceful man, nothing from a crazy murderer from the beginning of the story.

Virginia; do you trust more to some websites and sources or to your personal opinion based on numerous books you have read?

[Gladys]

I was ironic because a sane man can [be] an idiot as well. So the good doctor opinion does not help to build a case to defend the Prince as not the idiot in the title.

I well understood your irony. As I wrote to Barazov:

Barazov, the book's title is a double entendre. The idiot prince is the opposite of what he seems - he is literally the sanest - the most down to earth - of men.

Actually, ending of Crime and Punishment really is a positive.

Even so, Crime and Punishment seems more negative than others I've read, including The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Compared with say Thomas Hardy or Emily Bronte, isn't Dostoevsky optimistic?

Analysing Dostoievisky characters outside the book is a mistake.

Am I guilty of this?

The Prince is obviously a positive person, a idealized good guy. What is negative is the sittuation where Dostoieviksy place him. With this, Dostoievisky allow us to show the flaws of the society but also the problems a person like Mishkin - or the pure idealistic - suffer when facing reality.

Agreed. But do you see the wonderful and overarching paradox central to The Idiot?

Despite 'the problems a person like Mishkin' suffers in society, he shines a radiant beacon (Nietzsche's 'superman') inspiring all who would see. Especially so, as his tears fall on murderer Roghozin's cheek, and when the positive influence of the prince remain undiminished even though exiled to a Swiss asylum.

A rainbow in a dismal firmament!

[Gladys]

Love transcends the boundary of reasoning faculties, consciousness and even sub-consciousness…Sometimes people even battle with the emotions that arise in their minds… Indeed the keenest observer cannot see through the minutes of the workings of his heart under this spell.

Thanks for explaining your view of romantic love. What you write about romantic love, Virginiawang, may well be true: transcending reason, an emotional battle, the workings of the heart, and an entrancing spell. Unfortunately for you, the nature of the love Prince Myshkin shows to all he meets, including Aglaya, has little in common with romantic love. To avoid confusion, let me label Myshkin's love: 'agape'.

Like Henrick Ibsen (in the plays Brand of 1866 and The Wild Duck of 1884), Dostoevsky borrowed the concept of agape from the great Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard (the father of existentialism), whose awesome insights into Biblical psychology are radical even today. Kierkegaard explained the nature of agape in his "Works of Love" (1847).

I don't know too much about God or its existence, so forget about it.

You can't entirely forget about God because Dostoevsky, a professed Christian, alludes to and is influenced by Biblical perspectives, and particularly as expressed in Kierkegaard’s writings. You do need to grasp his existential concepts. For instance, the scripture ‘God is love’ has nothing to do with romantic love. Interestingly, the existentialist philosophers that sprung from Kierkegaard (including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre) were all atheist.

For Kierkegaard (Dostoevsky and Ibsen) agape differs from romantic love as follows.

1. Agape is fundamentally an act of will - a decision, a work, an action, a duty.
   
   
2. Agape is never an emotion, but a compassionate way of being.
   
   
3. Agape rejects the preferential (the aesthetic, the romantic) choice of the other.
   
   
4. Agape demands limitless self-sacrifice for one's neighbour (‘Love your neighbour as yourself’).

If agape sounds infinitely onerous, consider the courage and fate of Prince Myshkin (or Jesus Christ). Romantic love (infatuation) is not a trait of the prince.

An idiot, when considered in another light, becomes an intelligence.

Equally true of Prince Myshkin and Jesus Christ: two lights shining in darkness.

[JCamilo]

You used the word "originate" in a different context, so the comparison does not make sense. However, I can still make something out of it. "Voltaire's philosophical tales were originated from oriental parables, " This clause points to the fact that Voltaire's philosophical tales were oriental, not that Voltaire was an oriental writer. He might come from any part of the world, but he wrote stories that had oriental origins. You see the difference?

None, Dostoievisky sytle may be born from romantic writers, but he is not one. In Literature the fact you are under influence of writer does not means you belong to that writer style.

Dostoyevsky was more inflenced by himself than by romantic writers and that could be proved by his spontaneous writing style.

He was influenced by himself? That works well. Another thing, Spontaneous writing style (something more applied to surrealists french writers) does not eliminated influence at all.

I have no wish to explain more.

You better explain youself. Just saying things out of blue and not explaining it is a pointless argument. We should trust you basead on your blue eyes only?
And you better explain how you found a single writer that is not under the power of influence considering how himself said about Gogol influence, how anyone can see Dickens (and other other novelists) giving form to Dostoievisky, his daily "fight" with Tolstoy, Pushikin, bible... Before coming to claim his lack of influence.

You can read my previous posts: let me explain, and reply to me afterwards. His writing being different from any other writer doesn't alter the intrinsic qualities of his works.

his writings are quite similar to many works. It is how he does it and the orginality (mostly moderm stuff, he did build the stream of conciousness for others) and nobody is even discussing in this thread how good or bad dostoievisky is. Everyone agrees he is good.

As for Herman Melville, all literary people had put him under the category of Transcendentalism.

I doubt you know all the literary people. You know why? Because Melville bleak vision is not transcendental. He moves away from Emerson, being closer to Nathaniel Hawthorne and Poe , but critics of transcendentalism.
But mostly, this is irrelevant, Melville could be labeled as transcendentalism, a traint that have more phylosophical and spritual traits and still be a writers which style of writing is a not a typical romanticism.

How about your model-to-be-followed theory? Let me tell you it's no use to attempt to disown Melville as a transcendentalist, because a great many transcendentalists wrote gloomy stories just like Herman Melville.

I never tried to dismiss it (Until now) because a transcendentalist is optimistic and idealistic. He gives a model. What I said, pointing to you the books of Melville is that he is hardly a typical writer.

Your hero theory cannot apply to any of them, if only you don't twisted your original meaning of that theory.

I never applied the use of heroes and anti-heroes to them. I said romantics have the tendency to use such idealized figure, but not all of them. I care little for them as they have no place in this argumentantion. Dostoievisky is not one of them, that simple. But I could easily build the argument, as Thomas Carlyle is one of the main influences of them - He is very similar to Emerson by the way and Carlyle main theory of history is the existence of heroes.

As far as realism and naturalism are concerned, I think it is better for you to reach out for truth than to make sketches with your own imagination. If you insist on those two writers involving emotions in their writing, I have to tell you that the classification of literary works is made by comparison rather than by delving deeper and deeper into someone's work to search

I would ask you to read the books and explain them instead of giving such answer. Madame Bovary and Flaubert, the archetypical realistic writer. By the way, Balzac, Machado de Assis, Zola, Tchekhov - they are filled with emotions and are realist. So as a group your claims are just plain wrong.

Romantic works cannot have only emotions. They do need some descriptions about what really happened, or the stories would otherwise not have been stories.

doh! Stories need aspects of narrative or they would not happen! Amazing.

Works of Realism and Naturalism do involve a bit emotions because they were created by human beings rather than machines. However it's the degree of emotions involved that made the gaps between all categories.

The difference between realism and romanticism is not the degree of emotions. You obviously do not grasp it.

They shunned emotions as best as they could and remained objective, when they were compared with romantics. You were not making sense when you insisited that they involved emotions in their writing. Of course, their writing involved emotions because they were not created by machines.

Again, explain to me how Madame Bovary is less emotional than Geral Inspector by Gogol or Hoffman's tales.

[JCamilo]

I well understood your irony. As I wrote to Barazov:


Even so, Crime and Punishment seems more negative than others I've read, including The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. Compared with say Thomas Hardy or Emily Bronte, isn't Dostoevsky optimistic?

Dostoievisky is not optmistic. Wuthering Heights ends with a loving couple, united, a version of Cathy-Heatcliff couple, but they are honets and good. Bronte is bleak but her final is totally optmistic.

Agreed. But do you see the wonderful and overarching paradox central to The Idiot?

Not only I see, like I pointed a hundred times that the contradiction also works to show the flaws of Mishkin, thus a critic of him.

Despite 'the problems a person like Mishkin' suffers in society, he shines a radiant beacon (Nietzsche's 'superman') inspiring all who would see. Especially so, as his tears fall on murderer Roghozin's cheek, and when the positive influence of the prince remain undiminished even though exiled to a Swiss asylum.

obviously, the prince is good. So? The book and Dostoievisky still passes the notion that being good is not enough and maybe even damaging. Dostoievisky may be even projecting his own moral flaws when using guys like Mishkin or Aliocha and how they are impossible: one is crazy and the other a recluse. Both deny the real world and the real world is where Dostoievisky rules.

[bazarov]

Dostoievisky is not optmistic. Wuthering Heights ends with a loving couple, united, a version of Cathy-Heatcliff couple, but they are honets and good. Bronte is bleak but her final is totally optmistic.

I would agree. His only optimism is in Alyosha and speech to kids in TBK and in ending of Crime and Punishment; everything else is rather pessimistic (although I am trying to invent new term ''pure realism'' )

[virginiawang]

Thanks for explaining your view of romantic love. What you write about romantic love, Virginiawang, may well be true: transcending reason, an emotional battle, the workings of the heart, and an entrancing spell. Unfortunately for you, the nature of the love Prince Myshkin shows to all he meets, including Aglaya, has little in common with romantic love. To avoid confusion, let me label Myshkin's love: 'agape'.


You can't entirely forget about God because Dostoevsky, a professed Christian, alludes to and is influenced by Biblical perspectives, and particularly as expressed in Kierkegaard’s writings. You do need to grasp his existential concepts. For instance, the scripture ‘God is love’ has nothing to do with romantic love. Interestingly, the existentialist philosophers that sprung from Kierkegaard (including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre) were all atheist.

For Kierkegaard (Dostoevsky and Ibsen) agape differs from romantic love as follows.

1. Agape is fundamentally an act of will - a decision, a work, an action, a duty.
   
   
2. Agape is never an emotion, but a compassionate way of being.
   
   
3. Agape rejects the preferential (the aesthetic, the romantic) choice of the other.
   
   
4. Agape demands limitless self-sacrifice for one's neighbour (‘Love your neighbour as yourself’).

If agape sounds infinitely onerous, consider the courage and fate of Prince Myshkin (or Jesus Christ). Romantic love (infatuation) is not a trait of the prince.

Equally true of Prince Myshkin and Jesus Christ: two lights shining in darkness.

Did you ever notice a difference in Bible, a book of equal love to all human
beings, and the book, The Idiot? If the book, the Idiot is all about an equal compassion for all people, why did the prince choose the two most pretty women to fall in love with? Why did the author portray the beuaty of one and the delicacy of another in the greatest details? The author also describeed the princes's resnsponces to the two pretty women. This was an attachment between a man and a woman, in another word, romance, not God's equal love for human beings. Or can you give me an example where God is attracted by a woman from the Bible? You may say that the prince had great compassion for everyone, but you cannot deny the fact that he had been in love with two women and had romance. By the way, no one can see through the prince's heart, including himself, but we know by the end of the novel, he chose Nastasya.

[virginiawang]

I would agree. His only optimism is in Alyosha and speech to kids in TBK and in ending of Crime and Punishment; everything else is rather pessimistic (although I am trying to invent new term ''pure realism'' )

Have you ever heard of a term,"Dark Romanticism", the writers of which wrote pessimistic and romantic works? Herman Melville, Nathanial Hawthorn were writers of this school. However it can never be the same as Realism, in which writers shun emotions and wrote from an objective point of view.

[virginiawang]

I looked up a dictionary and found the definition of the word,"agape" as "
unselfish love of one person for another without sexual implications; brotherly love." Do you really think the prince love Aglaya and Nastasya as Jesus loved his sheep, or as one loves his neibhors. If it were so, the prince could have chosen Rogazine or Ippolot to get married with, for a man made no difference from a woman to him, who only had agape for everyone. Did you not feel the attachment between he and Nastasya when he stroke his face and hair tenderly after Aglaya left and the attachment between he and Aglaya, being different from the way he agaped other chracters in the novel? Did you not feel he was somewhat shocked by the beauty of Nastasya at the first sight of her portrait? Though you may tell me, he had compassion more than that, you have to admit some sort of enchantment between a man and a woman was also involved, in addition to his great compassion. At least, his love for the two women cannot be called agape. Then you may want to tell me his compassion for human beings surpassed his selfish love for any woman, and he only wanted to save the one who needed him most. Let me answer you step by step. First of all, the statement that Nastasya would commit suicide if the prince left with Aglaya was not true. She didn't commit suicide when her seducer insulted her and left her in the beginning of the novel. Do you think she would die if the prince did not follow her instructions? To view it from an objective standpoint, we all know the answer is no. It was a delusion rooted deeply in the prince's head. You may say it was a sign of deep compassion. Compassion does not lead to blindness. The fact that the prince was not able to consider the whole thing in an objective way proved that he was bewitiched by the beautiful woman. God was never misled by anyone into believing something that had no likeness to truth. Please think about it deeply. It is a novel of humans beings, not God with omnipotent powers. Do you really think such a hyper-sensitive and delicate young man to not have heeded the vacissitudes around him at all, as a God did? Does the story really go like this?