Did Myshkin love Nastasya or Aglaya?

[legokangpalla]

one more thing....the introduction on my edition described the novel "an appropriation of Jesus Christ's crucification and life. However, in my opinion, Prince Myshkin was everything but a Christ, their moral strength is just far too different. Myshkin and Jesus both offered unconditional love and forgiveness. However, Myshkin lost his mind on grief, whereas Christ chose death out of his free will as his final and strongest act of love( in which I don't quite understand being an atheist).

Anyone agree?

[Gladys]

Anyone agree?

I agree with your all propositions except, perhaps, the implication that Prince Myshkin's grieving end is in some way negative. Reread the final page.

In the aftermath of Nastasya Filippovna's murder, the prince has been crucified by society, while his friends draw back offended. Back in Switzerland, "like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth" (Acts 8:32), our unfortunate "idiot" suffers silently the slow death of one crucified. 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.

Rather than a Christ figure, the prince is more akin to Soren Kierkegaard's knight of faith. The prince is crushed but never, for a moment, doubts the temporal triumph of the good.

[Captain Pike]

Sure he loved them both -- just like I love Jodie Foster and, let's see, Amanda Peet, okay?

Just like in eighth grade, as long as one was interested, he went after the other. But on the other hand, they were pretty bad head cases themselves. Agala just toyed with him all the time -- that would piss me off! And the other one, a trophy girlfriend -- high maintenance and, well, she should've been high-performance, but it doesn't really get into much of that.

[aliengirl]

Finished "The Idiot" last night at 2 o'clock. I was so overwhelmed (yes, this is the perfect word) that I could not sleep afterwards. It struck me much more than "Crime and Punishment" which I read just before "The Idiot". My head was in a whirl. Never dreamed that the novel would end in a circular way.

For me, the essence of ‘The Idiot’ is how selfless and heroic love fares in our mediocre and conformist world.

The ‘pain and embarrassment’ the prince ‘caused Aglaya and her family’ is dwarfed by his urgent mission to save others. His ‘attachment’ to Roghozin, Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaya varies with their need for him. ‘His compassion for’ Roghozin is ultimately the greatest, because Nastasya Filippovna is no more, Aglaya is permanently out of reach, and TB has taken Ippolit.

Thanks for this explanation. At first I was quite unhappy about the end, almost angry. But then I realized that such a pure soul as P.Myshkin could not survive in this "sane" world. I agree that in his love and compassion for humankind he is like Christ. And now, I don't think that the end is very negative. (Anyway, it is better for Myshkin to go to Switzerland than to get married to Aglaya who would have toyed with his love all his life. Silly woman!)
As for his love could change people or not, I'd site the example of Evgenie Pavlovitch and Keller. Both of them became certainly better and more compassionate human beings.

[Gladys]

(Anyway, it is better for Myshkin to go to Switzerland than to get married to Aglaya who would have toyed with his love all his life. Silly woman!)

True but rather beside the point. The prince would have married Aglaya purely to save her: an act of selfless love.

There little evidence that Prince Myshkin liked Nastasya Filippovna the most. Rather, her need (and Rogozhin’s) had been the greatest. Maybe that’s why Myshkin was so confident he could justify to Aglaya his imminent wedding: if only he could talk with her. The prince understood the need to save Aglaya from herself...from what became her destructive Polish adventure.

[aliengirl]

I think the marriage between Prince Myshkin and Aglaya would have been a failure for Prince would not have been able to save her from her misadventures. Initially she seemed to have some sense but her meeting with Nastasya proved otherwise. Aglaya was too haughty to value the love of Myshkin. She could have had a Polish adventure irrespective of her marriage. (It does not cancel your argument that Myshkin's love originated from a sense of saving others.)

[Gladys]

I think the marriage between Prince Myshkin and Aglaya would have been a failure for Prince would not have been able to save her from her misadventures.

Exactly so! But "love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself".

Failure or success is here a matter of perspective. In the end, society adjudges a dismal failure the prince's relationships with Nastasya Filippovna, Aglaya and Roghozin. Whereas success for Prince Myshkin relates only to selfless commitment, to love, and is independent of outcome. The prince acts out of love and, of course, must do so again given the same circumstances, regardless of the cost to himself.

[Theunderground]

I think dostoevsky conclusively proves in this tale that there is a incomparable unbridgeable gulf between real love and pity. It also shows the failure in reality of 'universal' love. To me its also an indictment on the accepted message of christ and any kind of socialist utopian brotherhood of man. To redeem christs failure the Alyosha of TBK displays a surer and more realistic message on how love/compassion can be realised by his befriending of the boys and his message of eternal love starting from practical deeds and affection.