"The Idiot" and Prince Myshkin

I plowed through the last of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" thanks to a head cold.

First impressions:
1) WHY OH WHY did the Prince go back to Nastasya Filippovna!
2) To my great relief, Prince Myshkin is not quite the male counterpart to Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
3) My favorite character was Aglaya, until the epilogue.

General things to keep in mind:
1) Dostoevsky was a Christian Russian nationalist living in Western Europe at the time this was written (under deadline, in serial form) ... he had been in prison & had epilepsy
2) A lot of critics consider this one of his less impressive works because it's not cohesive in terms of plot and characters
3) I read this because I kept finding references to it (Kerouac & Ginsberg & Milan Kundera)
4) The only other Russian lit I've read is "Dr. Zhivago" and I don't remember it

So, to go through this review/critique, I'll probably just follow along where I starred passages in the book and introduction (which I read after). Most of the literary criticism out there focuses on the religious undertones in the book, which I thought were fairly obvious. Another thing to come back to, later down the road: why is there such an emphasis on faces? (As masks? As real?)

The Prince is not Don Quixote because he isn't comical, but tragic. And, well, kinda pathetic. BUT, why did he strike me as pathetic? Because he couldn't engage with a materialistic, cynical and cruel reality-- although he does in certain moments, it's really not something he can generally handle. ("The horror! The horror!" -Conrad's Heart of Darkness parallel) The reason I can't stand these pure, innocent main characters --exemplified by Tess of the D'Urbervilles-- is that they are totally unable to DO anything in their own self-interest. Childish behavior in an adult world always meets a bad end. (And anyway, I disagree with the stereotype of innocent children.)

To portray the Prince as a Christ-like figure is ok, to a point. I mean, Jesus wasn't this naive guy wandering around. I guess Dostoevsky wanted to show the rejection or unwillingness to accept religion in a world that is increasingly materialistic and egocentric -- many of the passionate speeches in the book mention atheism and nihilism (existence is meaningless) -- by showing the Christ-like Prince as a well-intentioned idiot that cannot navigate society's double faces. Ehhh, not sure how I feel about that. Yes, Jesus forgave Mary Magdelene (arguably a fallen woman like Nastasya Filippovna) but Mary wasn't still traipsing around afterward in an effort to preserve her self-destructive personality.

Lastly, before I get to my laundry list of interesting bits, it's intriguing to note that Jack Kerouac often considers himself (throughout his years of letters to Ginsberg) in "Dostoevskian situations" or that he himself is "the Idiot" ... which is SO INTERESTING because, in the end, Prince Myshkin the idiot succumbs to his illness when confronted with the cruelty of reality (murder/senselessness) .... and of course Kerouac in his later years was an alcoholic and a recluse from the constant barrage of press and the public eye, before dying of alcoholism. WOW.

The themes of illness in the novel: epilepsy (psychological), tuberculosis (physical), self-destructiveness (philosophical). And everyone is a victim of their illnesses in the end. In keeping with Russian lit trends, half the people in this book are straight-up out of their damn minds.

"Murder by judicial sentence is immeasurably more horrible ... all this final hope, with which it's ten times easier to die, is taken away for certain."

"It's natural,' he said, 'that it occurred to my client, being so poor, to commit this murder of six people, and indeed is there anyone in his shoes to whom it would not have occurred?'"
(poverty as an excuse for crime - right or wrong or gray area or what)

"Show me an idea that binds the mankind of today ... And do not try to intimidate me with your prosperity, your wealth, the infrequency of famine and the swiftness of the paths of communication! The wealth is greater, but the power is less; there is no binding idea left; everything has grown soft, everything has stewed to mush!"
(Dostoevsky was alluding to Western Europe, but I can imagine him saying the same thing about America today)

"... in every serious human idea that is conceived in someone's head, there always remains something that cannot be conveyed to other people, even tough whole volumes were written and your idea explained for thirty-five years ... so that you will die without perhaps ever having conveyed to anyone the most important part of your idea."

"Suicide may possibly be the only action I can still begin and end of my own free will. What of it, perhaps I want to take advantage of my last chance to act?"
(ah yes, ye olde philosophy of suicide ... a reaction to powerlessness. I want to read Camus' take on this situation, so I might come back to this quote later in my travels)

"Is it enough simply to exclaim: 'Oh, I'm to blame!' You're to blame, yet you persist!"
(name at least two people you know in real life that do this on a regular basis)

Tangential to this reading: Gogol, Balzac, Nabokov's "Lectures on Russian Literature", Tolstoy's "War and Peace" staring me down from my bookshelf, Kundera's "The Comical Absence of the Comical".

Naive Reading

Imagine my delight when I stumbled upon this NYTimes article on reading & literary criticism!

"Naïve reading can be very hard; it can be done well or poorly; people can get better at it. And it doesn’t have to be “formalist” or purely textual criticism. Knowing as much as possible about the social world it was written for, about the author’s other works, his or her contemporaries, and so forth, can be very helpful."

(UPDATED: A comprehensive response to the NYTimes article, here. Two things I liked about this ... 1) "the study of literature prepares you for the study of anything" and 2) the comparison between a naive Henry James reading and a naive Stephanie Meyers reading - i.e., by reading Henry James without lit crit guidance you lose some ability to appreciate his uniqueness)

The first commenter on this article mentioned ye olde question of 'what is the canon' and its constant evolution (see previously mentioned Excel sheet) -- leading up to the problem of how does one become "well read"? The commenter referenced a piece from www.pandalous.com, which seems to have been created by some juvenile webmaster but actually yielded this wonderful comment from user Hanna:

"One of the things I love about reading is that each book dictates where I go next. The only person I'm out to satisfy when I read is myself ... I am constantly encouraged to keep going down all the side roads. I take turns this way and that, but always find myself heading back down that main highway. And I love seeing when my choices are validated. As you continue your own literary journey you'll begin to see hints of one book inside another even though they are separated by centuries. And as these connections grow and expand, then you'll know you've become well read. You'll begin to see the ember at the heart of literature, a hint at an eternal dialogue between writers and thinkers across all human existence."

Ditto!

In other news: stalled out for a week on "The Idiot" due to errands & such, but now back in the swing of things.

Book List Update!

Finally finally finally finished Machiavelli's "The Prince" and man, that thing was dry as dirt. Two things that interested me: 1) so little has changed, politically, that this book is still relevant if you read 'prince' as 'president' and 2) he mentions Marcus Aurelius and Commodus ("Gladiator") ... apparently Commodus really was like that. So, with that, I gleefully crossed it off my list and dumped the pdf into the recycling bin. :)

I'm about halfway through "The Idiot" and it's HILARIOUS. More on this later.