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

of the novel can hardly be exaggerated» (Onasch 1976:132). And at exactly the time
when he was writing The Idiot, Dostoevskya was exploring what Onasch calls the
«poetische Nutzbarmachung» - the poetic usability - of this hagiographic genre in
connection with three other projects: the novel referred to as The Emperor, the
unfinished Story of Captain Kartuzov, and the sketch called The Holy Fool. (Er hat
sich gerade während der Beschäftigung mit dem Roman «Der Idiot" sehr intensiv mit
der poetischen Nutzbarmachung dieser hagiographischen Gattung befasst» (Onasch
1976:133).
Even in the opening chapter of The Idiot Rogozhin concludes that Prince
Myshkin is a «юродивый», the reason being that the prince, according to his own
words, has no experience of women:
— А до женского пола вы, князь, охотник большой? Сказзывайте
раньше!
— Я, н—н—нет! Я ведь... Вы, может быть, не знаете, я ведь по
прирожденной болезни моей даже совсем женщин не знаю.
— Но коли так, — воскликнул Рогожин, — совсем ты, князь, выходишь
юродивый, и таких, как ты, Бог лювит! (Dostoevsky 1973:14)
The fact that the prince is sexually inexperienced because of his inborn handicap is
hardly sufficient to make him a «юродивый» in the hagiographic meaning of the
word. In orthodox hagiography, a «юродивый» is the Russian equivalent of Greek
«salos»:
a person who serves God under the guise of foolishness. In principle, the
disguise is not discovered until the fool is dead. Then he or she becomes a
saint. If the holy fool happens to be recognised earlier, he runs away, or else
commits an act that is so foolish that the rent in his disguise is repaired"
(Rydén 1981:106).
6