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The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Prince, a young nobleman suffering from epilepsy arrives in St. Petersburg and from there the story unwinds around him. He meets the Yepanchins, a wealthy family with three daughters. Aglaya falls in love with Myshkin. He also meets Nastassya Filippovna, good looking - bit of a weapon, and Ganya, who's reaching, trying to marry Nastassya.

Myshkin's ends up in a love triangle between Nastassya Filippovna, Aglaya, and Ganya. Nastassya Filippovna eventually chooses Rogozhin, who's in love with her, and the two leave together. Prince Myshkin spends the next six months following Nastassya Filippovna as she runs from Rogozhin to the prince and back. Rogozhin eventually stabs Nastassya Filippovna and she dies in Myshkin's arms.

Quotes

'Beauty will save the world'

'Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.'

'It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.'

'There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.'

'Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.'

'Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.'

'I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.'

'A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.'

'It's life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.'

'One can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan't understand them thoroughly.'

'Do you know I don't know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? How can one talk to a man and not be happy in loving him! Oh, it's only that I'm not able to express it...And what beautiful things there are at every step, that even the most hopeless man must feel to be beautiful! Look at a child! Look at God's sunrise! Look at the grass, how it grows! Look at the eyes that gaze at you and love you!'

'In every idea of genius or in every new human idea, or, more simply still, in every serious human idea born in anyone's brain, there is something that cannot possibly be conveyed to others.'

Some general notes

  • The protaganist is supposed to be a mirror of Jesus.
  • In a way it's an exploration of how society might treat a truly good character.
  • It's my thinking that Myshkin is written to get on your nerves. And you'll usually see a bunch of people with negative opinions of his character.
  • Lot's of ideas here around simplicity and humility.
  • One point I took from it was on the idea of truth and learning. Not sure if it's exactly the points emphasised in the book, but there are some good ideas here around dogmatism, rigidness and where rigidnes comes from. Perhaps some unwillingness to allow yourself to be a child constantly in learning means that you end up forcing yourself to be more confident in yourself and your knowledge.
  • In the attempt to try and prove themselves smart, they make themselves dumb. Being an idiot only works when everyone else is too.
  • Don't think I can really get this book without being russian.
  • It's written in a windy style. Havent read enough of Dostoevsky to know if that's universal. If it's specific to the book then I could make some connections. Mainly around the winding nature of knowledge.
  • Probably could be re-read at some stage, but not on the bandwagon, might be a cult behind it.