The Insanity of Holiness in Doestoevsky’s “The Idiot” (Warning: Spoilers)

Dostoevsky, as he puts it, was out to give us “a completely beautiful human being.” He was Prince Myshkin. He was unique. He was harmless and ever-beneficent. He was—all in all—an idiot. When one follows the chronicles of fictional Prince Myshkin’s life and times in 19th century Russian society, one’s vision of the line between the Prince’s unfortunate epilepsy and holy ethicality becomes blurred unto the point of seeing him only for his composite insanity. He is adored by his neighbors; he is despised by his neighbors. He is trusted; he is deceived. Against the startling magnitude of his innocence is harbored an equally startling variety of responses. His radically Christ-like respect toward the miserably dishonored young woman Nastasya Fillipovna winds up alienating himself from not only her; but from his friend, her infatuated suitor; from Myshkin’s only promising love interest, the young Aglaia Ivanovna; and from her family, try as they might to appreciate him. In his dedication to reasonably treating human beings with the grace he thought they ought to be shown, he became unreasonable in a graceless company of people. His humility, intelligence, and patience were his idiocy. Such a loving person was by his love determined unlovable, and beyond the bounds of stable human acceptance. On the last page, his relapse into epileptic stupefaction is but a picture of the ruin brought upon him by the world for his true dysfunction, i.e. his miraculous holiness. (Collin Duling)