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

nineteenth-century idea of a humanised Jesus, not the Christ of the Church, "fully
divine and fully human", who rose from the dead, "conquering death by death"
(смертию смерть поправ), but a wholly human figure, perfect but mortal. In The
Idiot, the dead body in Holbein’s painting has become an empty signifier, its very
emptiness signifying that the sacrifice of Christ has lost its meaning, thereby
depriving the whole of Christian culture of its meaning, too. In this post-Christian
world the pre-Christian, archaic idea of human sacrifice is revived. Nastasya
Filippovna is put to death by Rogozhin’s knife in the alcove of his study that serves as
his bedroom. For the occasion, the alcove has been turned into a bridal chamber by a
green damask curtain dividing the study form the alcove. By this arrangement,
Rogozhin’s study reminds the reader of a church, the curtain having a function
similar to the iconostasis by which the chancel is hidden from the rest of the interior
(Onasch 1976:152). But in contrast to the "terrible liturgy" - the «страшная служба»
— of the Church, when Christ’s sacrificial death on Golgotha is ritually re-enacted in
the bloodless sacrifice of the divine service, Nastasya Filippovna’s lifeless body gives
expression to exactly the feeling of terrible anguish and dismay — «страшную тоску
и смятение» — that according to Ippolit overwhelmed those surrounding the dead
man depicted in Holbein’s picture «on that evening which had shattered all their
hopes and almost all their beliefs at one fell blow» — «в тот вечер раздробивший
разом все их надежды и почти что верования» (Dostoevsky 1973:339).
REFERENCES
Биография, письма и заметки из записной книжки Ф. М. Достоевского. с
портретом Ф. М. Достоевского и приложениями, С-т Петербург 1883. (Полное
собрание сочинений Ф. М. Достоевского, т. 1.)
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