Who He Is
Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin, Ganya, is twenty-eight at the start of the book, handsome, with a Napoleonic goatee, and works for General Epanchin in a company (ch. II of Part One). He is the eldest son of the retired general Ardalion Alexandrovich Ivolgin, ruined and drunk, and of Nina Alexandrovna, and brother of Varvara Ardalionovna Ivolgina and of Nikolai Ardalionovich Ivolgin; the family rents rooms in an apartment that is too expensive for them, which he feels as humiliation (ch. VIII of Part One). On the first day he is about to accept the arrangement of Totsky and the general: to marry Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova, whom he does not love, for a dowry of seventy-five thousand rubles (ch. III of Part One), while secretly courting Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina. What he wants is not money for money's sake, it is to stop being ordinary; what he fears is to be exactly that. In Part Four the narrator holds him up as the example of the category that suffers most: that of the intelligent ordinary man (ch. I of Part Four).
Trajectory
In ch. II of Part One, in the general's anteroom, the prince makes the book's first reading of a face, and gets it right before knowing anything:
Он должно быть, когда один, совсем не так смотрит и, может быть, никогда не смеется, when he is alone, he must look quite different, and perhaps never laughs.
In ch. III of Part One he hands the general Nastasya Filippovna's portrait and turns pale on learning that she will give her answer that very night; after hesitating, he says he wants to marry. In ch. VII of Part One he calls the prince an idiot for his indiscretion about the portrait and, the next minute, asks him to carry a note to Aglaya in secret: one word from her, and he would break with Nastasya Filippovna. Aglaya answers by dictating to the prince that she does not engage in haggling, and in the street Ganya discovers that the prince read the note at her request:
Ко всем мучениям его не доставало зависти. Она вдруг укусила его в самое сердце, all his torments had lacked envy. It suddenly bit him right in the heart.
The narrator corrects his gaze at the moment when he is most unjust:
Но именно чрез это бешенство он и ослеп; иначе он давно бы обратил внимание на то, что этот «идиот», которого он так третирует, что-то уж слишком скоро и тонко умеет иногда всё понять и чрезвычайно удовлетворительно передать, but it was precisely through this fury that he went blind; otherwise he would long ago have noticed that this idiot, whom he treats so, sometimes understands everything much too quickly and subtly, and conveys it all in a very satisfactory way.
In ch. VIII of Part One, at home, the mother asks how Nastasya Filippovna could have accepted him if he does not love her, and he turns against his sister:
В голосе Гани слышалась уже та степень раздражения, в которой человек почти сам рад этому раздражению, предается ему безо всякого удержу и чуть не с возрастающим наслаждением, до чего бы это ни довело, in Ganya's voice there was already heard that degree of irritation in which a person is almost glad of his own irritation, gives himself up to it without any restraint and almost with growing pleasure, wherever it may lead.
In ch. IX of Part One Nastasya Filippovna arrives without warning, laughs at his face, and the father comes in, in a frock coat and with dyed mustache, whom he had planned to keep away:
Еще одно непредвиденное, но самое страшное истязание для тщеславного человека, — мука краски за своих родных, у себя же в доме, выпала ему на долю, one more unforeseen but most terrible torment for a vain man, the agony of blushing for one's own family, in one's own house, fell to his lot.
«только случая ищет, чтоб осыпать его и его домашних насмешками». (В этом он был убежден.), "she is only looking for an opportunity to shower him and his household with mockery." (Of this he was convinced.)
In ch. X of Part One, when Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin calls him a Judas and raises the bid for Nastasya, and Varya calls her shameless, he grabs his sister to make her apologize, gets spat in the face, raises his hand to strike her and, when the prince seizes his arm and steps between them, he slaps him. In ch. XI of Part One he goes to the prince's room to ask forgiveness, embraces him and opens up: he is going to marry, now without hesitation, and thinks he understands the bride:
Она чрезвычайно русская женщина, я вам скажу; ну, а я ей свой готовлю сюрприз, she is an extremely Russian woman, I tell you; well then, I am preparing my surprise for her.
He says he speaks with the prince because he is the first noble man he has met, and confesses:
Подлецы любят честных людей, — вы этого не знали? А я ведь… А впрочем, чем я подлец, скажите мне по совести? Что они меня все вслед за нею подлецом называют? И знаете, вслед за ними и за нею я и сам себя подлецом называю! Вот что подло, так подло!, Scoundrels love honest people, didn't you know? And I, after all... But, for that matter, in what way am I a scoundrel? Tell me in all conscience. Why do they all call me a scoundrel, following her? And you know, following them and her, I call myself a scoundrel too! That, yes, is what is base, so base!
The prince relieves him with an honest verdict, that of an ordinary man, weak and not original at all, and Ganya hears in it the worst offense of the day:
нет ничего обиднее человеку нашего времени и племени, как сказать ему, что он не оригинален, слаб характером, без особенных талантов и человек обыкновенный, there is nothing more offensive to a man of our time and our breed than being told that he is not original, that he is weak of character, without special talents, an ordinary man.
And he gives the reason why he wants the dowry:
Деньги тем всего подлее и ненавистнее, что они даже таланты дают. И будут давать до скончания мира., money is the vilest and most hateful thing precisely because it gives even talents. And it will go on giving until the end of the world.
At the party, in ch. XIV of Part One, Nastasya Filippovna cuts him short when he begins to speak of the prince, and returns the seventy-five thousand to Totsky. In ch. XVI of Part One she throws Rogozhin's packet into the fire in front of him:
Видишь ты эту пачку, в ней сто тысяч! [...] Как только огонь обхватит ее всю, — полезай в камин, но только без перчаток, с голыми руками [...] Вытащишь — твоя, все сто тысяч твои!, Do you see this packet? There are a hundred thousand in it! [...] As soon as the fire takes hold of the whole of it, climb into the fireplace, but without gloves, with bare hands [...] Pull it out, and it's yours, the whole hundred thousand is yours!
He stands with arms folded, with a crazy smile, does not go, tries to leave and faints; she takes the bundle out with the tongs and gives him the money:
а не пошел-таки, выдержал! Значит, самолюбия еще больше, чем жажды денег., and he didn't go, he held out! So he has more self-love than thirst for money.
According to ch. I of Part Two, that same night he waited for the prince to return from Yekaterinhof, placed before him the half-burned packet and wept for two hours at his side; afterward he fell ill and gave up his job, and the narrator tells in ch. I of Part Four that he returned the hundred thousand to the prince and regretted it a thousand times, though he took pride in it. In ch. VI of Part Two he appears at Lebedev's dacha, much changed, and Aglaya notices the change for the better. In ch. IX of Part Two he presents the proofs that Burdovsky is not Pavlishchev's son, having himself fetched the young man's mother in Pskov, and concludes with venom that the prince may offer his help again. In ch. XII of Part Two, when Yelizaveta Prokofyevna accuses him of having relations with Aglaya, the prince answers for him:
Я хорошо знаю, что он меня иногда обманывает, [...] и он знает, что я это знаю, I know very well that he sometimes deceives me, [...] and he knows that I know it.
In ch. VII of Part Three, when Hippolyte finishes the Explanation and shouts that the sun has risen, Ganya yawns that it will be hot all day, and Hippolyte calls him a scoundrel. In ch. VIII of Part Three Aglaya tells the prince that, if he refuses the escape, she will marry Ganya, and she invents that Ganya held his finger over a candle for her.
In ch. I of Part Four the narrator stops the story to classify him:
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 intelligent "ordinary" man, even if in passing (and perhaps all his life) he imagined himself a genius and the most original of men, nevertheless keeps in his heart a little worm of doubt, which leads him to the point of sometimes ending in complete despair; and if he submits, it is already entirely poisoned by suppressed vanity.
Varya returns from the Epanchins with the news of the prince's engagement and explains to her brother why he lost:
Князь ее на удочку тем и поймал, что, во-первых, совсем и не ловил, а во-вторых, что он на глаза всех идиот., The prince hooked her precisely because, first, he did not even try to hook her, and second, because in everyone's eyes he is an idiot.
In ch. II of Part Four, after confirming to his father, before everyone, that Captain Yeropegov never existed, he hears from Hippolyte Terentyev, whom he himself brought home intending to use him against the prince, the last conversation:
Ненавижу я вас, Гаврила Ардалионович, единственно за то, [...] что вы тип и воплощение, олицетворение и верх самой наглой, самой самодовольной, самой пошлой и гадкой ординарности!, I hate you, Gavrila Ardalionovich, solely because [...] you are the type and the embodiment, the personification and the peak of the most insolent, most self-satisfied, most vulgar and most repugnant mediocrity!
He turns pale and does not answer. Minutes later he shows his sister a note from Aglaya setting a meeting on the green bench to ask him for advice, and, alone, he kisses the note and gives a ballet leap. In ch. VI of Part Four he does not dare go up to his father's room after the fit and laments that the misfortune comes at such a bad time. In ch. IX of Part Four, when Aglaya takes refuge in Nina Alexandrovna's house after the confrontation with Nastasya Filippovna, it is said (the narrator warns that the rumors are not entirely accurate) that he speaks of love to her, and she asks whether, as proof, he would burn his finger in a candle; he is astonished, she laughs hysterically and goes upstairs. In ch. XII of Part Four he remains as he was.
Themes Embodied
Ganya embodies the theme of Money and wealth from the inside: he is not a miser, he is someone who knows that money is vile and wants it because it makes up for what he lacks, originality (ch. XI of Part One). That is why the two scenes that define him are two tests he fails in opposite ways. At the party he refuses to go into the fire for the hundred thousand (ch. XVI of Part One), and Nastasya Filippovna reads in this more self-love than thirst for money; with Aglaya, he haggles over a guarantee before breaking off (ch. VII of Part One) and loses by haggling. The narrator sums up the pattern in ch. I of Part Four: too intelligent for the mad gesture, too honest for great baseness, he always draws back at the moment of the leap.
What wounds him is not being called a scoundrel, it is agreeing (ch. XI of Part One), and what wounds him even more is hearing that he is not even a scoundrel through and through, only ordinary. The prince says this as relief, and Hippolyte, in ch. II of Part Four, says the same thing as a sentence; the two hit the same point, and Ganya reacts to both in the same way, by falling silent. Two readings hold: the desire for distinction is what ruins him, because it makes him calculate where calculation pushes away (as Varya tells him in ch. I of Part Four), or it is what saves him, because it is that same desire which keeps him from crawling into the fire.
He is also the character who changes the most without changing place. The night of weeping beside the prince (ch. I of Part Two) and the return of the hundred thousand are genuine, and Aglaya notices the change (ch. VI of Part Two); but he keeps lurking around Aglaya, keeps her note as a victory (ch. II of Part Four) and ends the book as he was (ch. XII of Part Four).
Relationships
- Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin: the first face the prince reads in the book (ch. II of Part One), he gives him the slap meant for his sister (ch. X of Part One), confesses to him the same day (ch. XI of Part One) and weeps at his side over the half-burned packet (ch. I of Part Two).
- Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova: the bride he would accept for the dowry (ch. III of Part One), and who puts him to the test before the fire (ch. XVI of Part One).
- Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina: refuses his note by haggling (ch. VII of Part One), uses him to wound the prince (ch. VIII of Part Three), calls him to the green bench (ch. II of Part Four) and asks him for the proof of the candle (ch. IX of Part Four).
- Varvara Ardalionovna Ivolgina: the sister who spits in his face (ch. X of Part One), who for months opened the way for him to the Epanchins, and who explains to him why he lost (ch. I of Part Four).
- Ardalion Alexandrovich Ivolgin: the father before whom he blushes (ch. IX of Part One), and to whom he confirms that Captain Yeropegov never existed (ch. II of Part Four).
- Hippolyte Terentyev: brought home by him as an ally against the prince, takes leave by calling him the peak of mediocrity (ch. II of Part Four).
- Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin: the rival who calls him a Judas and recalls the two hundred rubles that the father lost to him at cards through cheating (ch. X of Part One).