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The Idiot · Part Four

The denouement

DeathMadnessTruth and LiesCompassion and CharityFaith

Summary of the part

The thread running through this part is the prince's compassion, tested to the end, and what it does to the people around him. In the first four chapters, the story of General Ivolgin works as a small model of the novel: an old man who stole, lies so as not to see himself, and collapses at the very moment he was about to confess, treated by the prince with a gentleness that relieves him and at the same time humiliates him. Then the book turns to the engagement with Aglaya, which is made and unmade in the same night (the hedgehog, the public proposal, the apology), and to the gathering where the prince, convinced he is among friends, speaks of the Russian Christ, breaks the vase he feared breaking, and falls into a fit in front of society. The center of the part is the meeting of the two women: Aglaya and Nastasya Filippovna demand that he choose, and he does not choose; he stays with the one who suffers most. From there everything rushes toward the end: the marriage set by compassion and not by desire, the bride's flight on the church steps, the night in which the prince and Rogozhin keep watch together over Nastasya Filippovna's body, and the word in the title, spoken by the Swiss doctor who takes him back in.

Chapter I: The Ivolgin House in Crisis

Chapter summary

A week after the conversation on the green bench, the narrator pauses the story to speak of the "ordinary" people, who make up most of any society and whom the novelist cannot leave out without damaging verisimilitude. He divides them into two kinds: the limited, who think themselves original without hesitation and are therefore happier, and the "much more intelligent," who distrust their own mediocrity and do not resign themselves to it. Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin, his sister Varvara Ardalionovna Ivolgina and her husband, Ptitsyn, belong to the second group. Varya comes back from the Epanchins' house with the news that the prince is Aglaya's formal fiancé, and the conversation between the siblings shows why Ganya lost her: he calculated where calculation drove people away. The crisis in the house comes from the father, General Ivolgin, who has been beside himself for a week and, it seems, stole Lebedev's four hundred rubles, and who bursts into the room, furious and followed by the whole family, while Ganya and Varya were talking about Hippolyte.

Analysis

умный «обыкновенный» человек, даже если б и воображал себя мимоходом (а пожалуй, и во всю свою жизнь) человеком гениальным и оригинальнейшим, тем не менее сохраняет в сердце своем червячка сомнения, который доводит до того, что умный человек кончает иногда совершенным отчаянием; если же и покоряется, то уже совершенно отравившись вогнанным внутрь тщеславием., the clever "ordinary" man, even if he imagined himself, in passing (and perhaps for his whole life), a man of genius and the most original of men, nonetheless keeps in his heart a little worm of doubt, which sometimes drives the clever man to complete despair; and if he does submit, it is already entirely poisoned by vanity turned inward.

The portrait explains what drives Ganya everywhere: he does not suffer from being mediocre, he suffers from knowing it and not accepting it. Hence the motto he repeats to himself (if he is to be a scoundrel, let him be one to the end) and his habitual retreat at the moment of the leap, because he is too clever for the mad, honest gesture and too honest for great baseness. The narrator also says that he returned to the prince the hundred thousand rubles he had burned, and then regretted it a thousand times, though he took a certain vanity in it.

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Chapter II: The General's Curse

Truth and Lies

Chapter summary

Hippolyte has been in Ptitsyn's house for five days, where Ganya brought him, calculating that the young man would help him against the prince, and he already feels better: he coughs less and has put on weight. The general, who has not drunk for three days, storms in demanding that Ptitsyn choose between him and that screwball who pierces his soul and tries to make him believe in atheism. Hippolyte explains that the old man came to talk to him about a certain Captain Yeropegov, and he only said aloud that perhaps this captain had never existed. Ganya confirms, without beating around the bush, that he never existed, and the general, who has borne far worse insults, collapses.

Analysis

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Chapter III: The General Seeks the Prince

Money and Wealth

Chapter summary

The narrator goes back a few days to explain the crisis of General Ardalion Alexandrovich Ivolgin. In other times, an outburst like this would have come to nothing: the old man would argue, demand an impossible respect, vanish from home, and return repentant to Nina Alexandrovna, who forgave him in silence. This time everyone seems to know something and to fear saying it. On the eve of the conversation the general asked the prince for, two men ask him for what they cannot say: the general, who approaches him in tears, talking of respect and rights, and Lebedev, who claims to have found the wallet, left it where the old man would find it and, when it vanished and reappeared in his own coat, took to showing it off to him. The prince calms the general with a hollow phrase and makes Lebedev hand over the money, asking that the old man merely notice the wallet is no longer in the flap, and he is left worried about the hour of destiny. The narrator gives up explaining everything by causes:

Analysis

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Chapter IV: Napoleon's Page

Truth and LiesCompassion and Charity

Chapter summary

On the appointed day, the prince is late and finds the general waiting, transformed: restrained, dignified, like someone who has made a decision. He returns a book with a soldier's memoir about the French in Moscow, which he calls a liar, and announces that he has left Lebedev's house, because his friend had the gall to tell him that he lost a leg in 1812, as a child, and buried it in the Vagankovo cemetery, with a headstone and an annual mass. The reason for the offense becomes clear: Lebedev was answering the general's own story, that he had been a page to Napoleon Bonaparte. The prince gets flustered, and the general, condescending, tells everything: at ten years old, in Moscow, he pushed through the crowd, met Napoleon's gaze, became a chamber page, heard the emperor's crying and moaning at night, advised him to go home and write to Josephine, and received from him, in his sister's album, the advice never to lie. The prince, to escape blushing, praises the idea that the truth sometimes seems impossible:

Analysis

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Chapter V: The Hedgehog and Aglaya's Proposal

Money and WealthDeath

Chapter summary

The narrator corrects Varya: she exaggerated the certainty of the engagement, perhaps to poison her brother's heart a little more, because at the Epanchins' there had been only insinuations. But it is true that everyone there suddenly had the same idea, that the fate of Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina was being decided, and all swore they had known since the Poor Knight. Yelizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina cannot even frame the question: is the prince good or not? To her he is a sick idiot, with no position or rank, and what troubles her most is her own heart, which asks her what he lacks. Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin thinks, with reservations, that the prince's name would support a declining family name; Aleksandra Ivanovna Epanchina says the prince was never a fool. Yelizaveta Prokofyevna rushes to Petersburg to consult old Princess Belokonskaya, Aglaya's godmother, who treats her with disdain, thinks they have made an elephant out of a fly, and reminds her that the prince openly keeps a mistress.

Analysis

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Chapter VI: The Eve of the Solemn Gathering

Beauty

Chapter summary

The Epanchins schedule a small gathering of "friends of the house" for the next evening, to present the groom to old Princess Belokonskaya, who will soon leave the city. The parents, unable to decide alone whether there is something strange about the marriage, want society to receive the prince from the hands of a powerful patroness, where any strangeness would seem smaller. Everyone in the house fears the impression Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin will make and assumes that, out of simplicity, he does not notice it; he does notice, but what overwhelms him is Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina, increasingly somber and capricious. When he says he would like to see Evgeny Pavlovich Radomsky again, she leaves the room in irritation. Late that night, as she sees him out, she asks him to come only when the guests arrive, mocks the schoolbook words he uses, asks him to break her mother's Chinese vase, and finally warns him:

Analysis

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Chapter VII: The Speech and the Broken Vase

MadnessBeautyFaith

Chapter summary

While watching Aglaya talk with Prince N. and Evgeny Pavlovich, Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin hears an elderly Anglophile, Ivan Petrovich, pronounce the name of Pavlishchev, the benefactor who raised him. Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin, who wants to show the fiancé to important people, introduces the two: Ivan Petrovich is a cousin of the ladies who looked after the prince as a boy, remembers him sick, remembers that the eldest beat him and the youngest spoiled him. The prince is overcome with gratitude, laughs at himself as the idiot he was, and suddenly hears that Pavlishchev, late in life, gave up everything to convert to Catholicism and nearly became a Jesuit, under the influence of an Abbé Gourot. The elderly dignitary attributes such cases to fatigue and to the elegance of Roman preaching. The prince replies that Catholicism is a non-Christian faith, and no longer even a faith:

Analysis

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Chapter VIII: The Two Rivals Face to Face

MadnessCompassion and Charity

Chapter summary

Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin wakes after the attack with a sense that something definitive will happen that day. Vera Lebedeva weeps on seeing him, and he kisses her hand, moved by the compassion of the young woman. Nikolai Ardalionovich Ivolgin demands to know what is being hidden from him, and the prince tells him of his father's theft with great delicacy: perhaps what kills the old man is the horror of his own fault, which not everyone would be capable of. Kolya breaks inside with Ganya, Varya and Ptitsyn and offers himself to the prince as a faithful servant. The Epanchins come to visit him at the order of Yelizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina, who, changing course on her walk, decides to go in, because he is sick and is no stranger, whatever Aglaya may say.

Analysis

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Chapter IX: Two Weeks of Rumors

Truth and LiesCompassion and CharityBeauty

Chapter summary

Two weeks pass, and the narrator admits he will limit himself to stating the facts, because in many cases he himself cannot explain them. Already in early July all of Pavlovsk is telling an anecdote: a prince who made a scandal in an honorable house, renounced his bride, and is to marry a fallen woman in public. The most accepted version is that of the sensible gossips: the prince, half fool and half nihilist, broke the vase on purpose and insulted the dignitaries to prove that there are no fallen women or virtuous ones, only the free woman. The wedding is indeed set: Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin has handed the preparations to Lukyan Timofeyevich Lebedev and Keller, who will be his best man, while Burdovsky will be Nastasya Filippovna's; she was the one who wanted the haste, and he consented as if asked to do something ordinary.

Analysis

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Chapter X: The Interrupted Wedding

DeathMadnessCompassion and CharityFaith

Chapter summary

The marriage is hurried, and it takes place about a week after Evgeny Pavlovich's visit; there was a rumor that the visit had been inspired by the Epanchins themselves, who would go no further than that attempt. Vera Lebedeva weeps in secret and barely appears. Nikolai Ardalionovich Ivolgin buries his father. On the eve, Nastasya Filippovna wavers between victory over Aglaya and fear of the harm she will do the prince; on the morning of the wedding she leaves the house where she dressed, pale, runs into the middle of the crowd, and grabs Rogozhin's hands, begging him to take her away. Informed at the church, the prince accepts the flight as a symptom of her state and does not call himself betrayed. He receives the curious at home as friends, and in the evening he arranges with Vera the seven o'clock train: in the morning he leaves for Petersburg without telling anyone what he means to do.

Analysis

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Chapter XI: The Night Beside the Body

DeathMadnessCompassion and Charity

Chapter summary

At nine in the morning, Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin rings the bell at Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin's place in Petersburg. The maid of his mother says he is not in; the caretaker says he is, but that he has gone to Pavlovsk. From the sidewalk across the street, the prince seems to see Rogozhin's face in the gap of a white blind. He then goes to Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova's former apartment, in the house of a professor's widow, where no one has seen her, and where the whole family, knowing of the wedding, receives him as a marvel. He goes to the house of a German friend of hers who had quarreled with her, and he returns three times to Rogozhin's house, which does not open. He stays at the same hotel where he had the fit weeks before and, in the evening, asks to see Nastasya Filippovna's rooms:

Analysis

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Chapter XII: Conclusion, What Remained

Money and WealthDeathMadnessFaith

Chapter summary

The professor's widow rushes to Pavlovsk and frightens Darya Alexeyevna; the two turn to Lukyan Timofeyevich Lebedev, and Vera tells what she knows. The next morning, around eleven, the apartment of Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin is opened in the presence of the police, of Lebedev, of the ladies and of his brother, Semyon Semyonovich, after the janitor declares he saw his employer slip in with a visitor. The threads of the book close: Rogozhin, after two months of fever, is sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor; Hippolyte dies; Aglaya marries a false Polish count and falls into the hands of a Catholic confessor; and the prince, returned to Schneider's sanatorium in Switzerland, no longer recognizes the Epanchins, who visit him and weep for him.

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