Jostein Børtnes Dostoevsky's Idiot or the Poetics of Emptiness1 ...

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marked emphasis on the differences between them. In his confrontation with the prince in one of the last chapters, Radomsky explicitly rejects the analogy between Nastasya Filippovna and the woman taken in adultery, thereby also implicitly rejecting the parallel between Jesus and the prince: What do you think: the woman taken in adultery, the same kind of woman, but she was not told that she was doing well and that she was deserving all kinds of honour and respect, was she? (Как вы думаете: во храме прощена была женщина, такая же женщина, но ведь не аказано, достойна вссяких почестей и уважения?) (Dostoevsky 1973:482) Instead of being a fulfilment of a biblical pattern, or typos, Myshkin’s attempt to save Nastasya Filippovna is here shown to represent the content of the Gospel story in a highly distorted, «deconstructed» fashion. We observe the same process as in the juxtaposition of the prince with Don Quixote and the «poor knight». Neither in his relationship to Nastasya Filippovna nor in his connection with Aglaya does the prince come out as a fully-fledged symbol, in which the cultural content of the prototypes finds a new expression. On the contrary, the bringing together of the idiot with the Urbild of Christ as well as with the «poor knight» and his comic counterpart, Don Quixote, the «most complete of all the beautiful characters of Christian literature», has a de-symbolising effect in the novel. Aglaya, who, according to her own words, has read a great many books the last year — «я весь последний год готовилась и училась и оочень много книг прочла» — (Dostoevsky 1973:358), and Nastasya Filippovna, who, in Radomsky’s view, «has read too much poetry» — «Про вас Евгений Павлович сказал, что вы слишком много поэм прочли, [...] что вы книжная женщина» (Dostoevsky 1973:472), project their literary reminiscences onto Myshkin in much the same way as Tatyana projects hers into the figure of Evgeny in Pushkin’s novel. In a kind of Bovaryism, like Emma in Flaubert’s novel, 10
they both see in the male protagonist an embodiment of their heroic ideals, a role for which he is totally unfit. This de-symbolising purport of The Idiot anticipates the representation of Stavrogin in The Devils, where a number of different people project their ideologies onto Stavrogin, seeing in him, this empty figure, an incarnation of all their dreams. There is, however, also a symbolising process at work in The Idiot, a process originating in the Holbein picture of the dead Saviour when he has just been taken down from the cross. The painting represents one of the leitmotifs of the novel. It is already alluded to when in his first encounter with the Epanchin ladies, Myshkin refers to a picture he once saw at Basel. In Rogozhin’s house there is a copy of it that the prince identifies on his first visit there, observing that some people may lose their faith by looking at it — «от этой картины у иного еще вера может и пропасть» — (Dostoevsky 1973:182). Rogozhin, on his part, confesses that he loves to look at the picture. Later, the thought of the painting comes back to Myshkin during his quest for Nastasya Filippovna just before Rogozhin tries to kill him with his knife and he has his first fit of epilepsy. However, the theme of the dead Christ is only fully developed in Ippolit’s speech, where it is expanded into a genuine ecphrasis and interpreted as an «expression of the idea of a dark, insolent, and senselessly eternal power, to which everything is subordinated, and this idea is suggested to you unconsciously»: Here one cannot help being struck by the idea that if death is so horrible and the laws of nature so powerful, then how can they be overcome? How can they be overcome when even He did not conquer them, He who overcame nature during his lifetime and whom nature obeyed, who said Talitha cumi! and the young girl arose, who cried, Lazarus come forth! and the dead man came forth? (Dostoevsky 1973:339) The dead Christ as he is described and explained by Ippolit, is the central symbol of The Idiot. In his interpretation, the painting is turned into a symbol of the new, 11
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Jostein Børtnes Dostoevsky's Idiot or the Poetics of Emptiness1 ...

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