Who They Are
Lukyan Timofeyevich Lebedev is the clerk with the red nose who knows everything about everyone and joins the conversation on the train, in chapter I of Part One, when he hears about Rogozhin's inheritance. A recent widower (his wife died in childbirth five weeks before the prince's return), he lives in the Peski district with his daughter Vera, twenty years old, who looks after the newborn sister, plus two more children and a nephew who despises him; he became a lawyer of small cases and has been interpreting the Apocalypse for fifteen years (chapter II of Part Two). He also has a dacha in Pavlovsk, which he rents to the prince and where he spends most of the novel (chapter VI of Part Two). He is a flatterer, a schemer, a spy and the author of anonymous letters, and at the same time the only character who tells the prince, with complete frankness, that in him lies and truth go together (chapter XI of Part Two). The book uses him as a chorus: he comments, quotes Scripture askew, and gets it right, almost always, from the wrong side.
Trajectory
In chapter I of Part One he clings to Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin over the inheritance, shows that he knows Nastasya Filippovna's story, hears the threat that he will be whipped if he says a word against her, repeats Rogozhin's holy fool to please him, and ends up going along with the gang. In chapter X of Part One he is the one who advises Rogozhin to turn to Nastasya Filippovna with the money:
Настасья Филипповна! — вскричал он, глядя на нее, как полоумный, робея и вдруг ободряясь до дерзости: — вот восемнадцать тысяч! — и он шаркнул пред ней на столик пачку в белой бумаге, обернутую накрест шнурками. — вот! И… и еще будет!, (he cried, staring at her like a half-wit, timid and suddenly emboldened to the point of insolence) here are eighteen thousand! (and he slid onto the little table in front of her a bundle wrapped in white paper and tied crosswise with cords) Here! And... and there will be more!
At the party, in chapter XV of Part One, he laughs at the prince's declaration of love and peeks over Ptitsyn's shoulder at the letter about the inheritance. In chapter XVI of Part One he answers for Rogozhin that they are going to Yekaterinhof, and when the packet goes to the fire he crawls on his knees begging to be let into the fireplace, because of his thirteen children.
In chapter II of Part Two, when the prince returns from Moscow and goes to his house, he finds him giving a speech to the family and defending himself against his nephew Doktorenko, who says that the uncle prays at night for the soul of the Countess Du Barry. Lebedev explains why:
И вот за эту-то минуточку ей, может, господь и простит, ибо дальше этакого мизера с человеческою душой вообразить невозможно, And for that one little minute, perhaps, the Lord will forgive her, for one cannot imagine a greater wretchedness for a human soul than that.
Asked his name, he gives his patronymic backwards, Timofei Lukianovich, and explains that it was out of self-deprecation. He says that Nastasya Filippovna fled from Rogozhin and came to ask him to hide her, and he tells what he read with her:
мы при третьем коне, вороном, и при всаднике, имеющем меру в руке своей, так как всё в нынешний век на мере и на договоре, и все люди своего только права и ищут, we are in the age of the third horse, the black one, and of the rider who holds a balance in his hand, since everything in this age is measure and contract, and all men seek only their own right.
The prince suspects that the letter from Lebedev that brought him to Petersburg was written only to ease his conscience, and even so he rents the Pavlovsk dacha, which Lebedev gives up on the spot, calculating a whole reversal. In chapter V of Part Two, when Kolya brings the prince home injured after the attack on the stairs, he anticipates the move, and in chapter VI of Part Two they are all already at the dacha, decorated with orange trees and jasmine bought at an auction so he could charge the tenant more. There he watches the prince, listens behind doors, moves the daughters away, and shelters the general Ardalion Alexandrovich Ivolgin; when the general tells Aglaya that he carried her in his arms and, by chance, it is true, Lebedev comments:
Вот что значит хоть раз в жизни правду сказать, — до слез подействовало!, So that is what telling the truth, just once in one's life, does: it moved them to tears!
In chapter VII of Part Two he appears with his edition of Pushkin to sell and warns that Burdovsky's young men went further than the nihilists; in chapter VIII of Part Two he is the one who hands Yelizaveta Prokofyevna the weekly with the article against the prince, and in chapter X of Part Two Keller reveals that Lebedev corrected the article. In chapter XI of Part Two, after speaking ill of Keller, who had just confessed to the prince that he cried to squeeze out money, he makes the same confession:
и слова, и дело, и ложь, и правда — всё у меня вместе, и совершенно искренно, both words and deeds, both lies and truth, it is all together in me, and perfectly sincere.
He admits having had a part, indirectly, in Nastasya Filippovna's scene with the calash before the Epanchins, and when he begins to say that the truth involves Aglaya, the prince silences him. In chapter IV of Part Three, at the prince's birthday party, drunk, he maintains that the star Wormwood of the Apocalypse is the network of railways, tells the story of the twelfth-century cannibal who gave himself up to the clergy, and draws a conclusion from it:
Стало быть, было же нечто сильнейшее костров и огней и даже двадцатилетней привычки!, So there was something stronger than bonfires and flames, and even than a twenty-year habit!
And he closes his sermon against his century:
И осмельтесь сказать, наконец, что не ослабели, не помутились источники жизни под этою «звездой», под этою сетью, опутавшею людей [...] Богатства больше, но силы меньше; связующей мысли не стало; всё размягчилось, всё упрело и все упрели! Все, все, все мы упрели!, And dare to say, at last, that the springs of life have not weakened or clouded beneath this "star," beneath this net that has ensnared men [...] There is more wealth, but less strength; the binding idea is gone; everything has gone soft, everything has rotted, and everyone has rotted! All of us, all, all of us have rotted!
In chapter VII of Part Three, the master of the house demands Hippolyte's pistol and threatens to call the police; after the shot without a cap, he doubts that the thing was forgotten. In chapter IX of Part Three he tells the prince that he lost four hundred rubles from the pocket of his frock coat on the night of the party, that the suspects are the general, Keller and Fyerdyshchenko, and he defends the general while leading the prince toward suspicion:
Лжет он беспрерывно, по слабости, но человек высочайших чувств, человек при этом малосмысленный-с, внушающий полнейшее доверие своею невинностью, He lies incessantly, out of weakness, but he is a man of the loftiest feelings, a man of little sense, sir, who inspires complete trust by his innocence.
He takes his leave swearing with his hand on his chest:
спросите всякого даже подлеца, не только низкого человека: с кем ему лучше дело иметь, с таким ли, как он, подлецом или с наиблагороднейшим человеком, как вы, искреннейший князь? Он ответит, что с наиблагороднейшим человеком, и в том торжество добродетели!, ask anyone, even a scoundrel, not just a base man: with whom would he rather deal, with a scoundrel like himself or with the most noble man, like you, most sincere prince? He will answer that with the most noble man, and in that lies the triumph of virtue!
In chapter III of Part Four, after two days of drinking and weeping arm in arm with the general, he tells the prince, between giggles, that he found the wallet and let it appear and vanish, until it reappeared on the flap of his own coat, and that he goes around with it knocking against his legs in the old man's sight. To the indignant prince he replies:
Не мучаю, князь, не мучаю, — с жаром подхватил Лебедев; — я искренно его люблю-с и… уважаю-с; а теперь, вот верьте не верьте, он еще дороже мне стал-с; еще более стал ценить-с!, I'm not tormenting him, prince, I'm not tormenting him, Lebedev caught up fervently; I sincerely love him, sir, and... respect him, sir; and now, believe it or not, he has become even dearer to me, sir; I have come to value him even more!
In chapter IV of Part Four it is learned that he answered the general's story as Napoleon's page by saying that he had lost a leg in 1812, as a child, and buried it in the Vagankovo cemetery, with a headstone and an annual mass. In chapter VI of Part Four he confesses to the prince, almost drunk, that he is the author of the anonymous letters to Yelizaveta Prokofyevna about Nastasya Filippovna, and that he took the general's wife a note from Aglaya to Gania, taken secretly from his daughter Vera; and at the door he still shows with his hands how a letter is opened. At night he weeps by the general's bed as for a brother, accuses himself aloud, and Nina Alexandrovna answers him:
ну, бог с вами, ну, не плачьте, ну, бог вас простит!, Well, God be with you, come now, don't weep, God will forgive you!
From then until the general's death he hardly leaves the house. In chapter IX of Part Four he sees to the preparations for the prince's wedding, with Keller; in chapter X of Part Four he seeks out General Epanchin, a jurist and a doctor to place the prince under guardianship, fails, and comes to confess the night before, as he does with everyone he schemes against. When the bride runs away, he applies to the prince a word from the Gospel:
Утаил от премудрых и разумных и открыл младенцам, я это говорил еще и прежде про него, но теперь прибавляю, что и самого младенца бог сохранил, спас от бездны, он и все святые его!, He hid it from the wise and prudent and revealed it to babes; I was saying this before about him, but now I add that God also preserved the babe himself, saved him from the abyss, He and all His saints!
In chapter XII of Part Four, called by the professor's widow and by Darya Alekseyevna, he is among those who open Rogozhin's apartment before the police, and afterward he goes on as before.
Themes Embodied
Lebedev is the theme of Truth and Lies in a state of craft: he tells the truth like a liar and lies with complete sincerity, and he knows it (chapter XI of Part Two). That is why the best truths about others in the book come out of his mouth sideways: the one about the general who weeps for having told the truth once (chapter VI of Part Two), the one about the general who lies out of weakness and inspires trust by his innocence (chapter IX of Part Three), the one about the century in which everyone seeks only their own right (chapter II of Part Two), the one about the prince guarded like the little ones to whom what is hidden from the wise is revealed (chapter X of Part Four). The phrase he uses of himself, that he was born Talleyrand and turned out Lebedev (chapter X of Part Four), says the size of his ambition and the size of his fall.
What moves him is not money, though he never stops calculating it (the orange trees, the dacha, the Pushkin edition): it is mattering to those who matter. He schemes when the prince keeps him away from his secrets (chapter VI of Part Four), and confesses the scheme once the distance ends, to win back his place. The theft of the four hundred rubles shows this better than anything: the general becomes dearer to him after stealing from him (chapter III of Part Four), because now there is between them a secret that gives Lebedev the power to forgive or to torture, and he does both.
He is also the reader of the Apocalypse in the novel, and his reading is not mere farce. The star Wormwood as a net that ensnared men (chapter IV of Part Three) and the cannibal who surrenders to an idea stronger than the fear of the stake prepare, between laughs, Hippolyte's Explanation and Faith put to the test soon after. Lebedev includes himself in the rot he denounces, and it is the mixture of truth and farce that makes him the spokesman no one takes seriously.
Divergent Readings
The book leaves open, in almost every one of his speeches, two readings: the prayer for Du Barry may be the piety of someone who knows himself to be as sinful as she, or theater before an audience that laughs (chapter II of Part Two); the general's defense in the case of the four hundred rubles may be the protection of a friend or a way of making the prince say the name he himself does not say (chapter IX of Part Three). In chapter XI of Part Two the prince notices that Keller and Lebedev seem to boast of their double thoughts, and that Lebedev has made a trade of them.
The divergence is settled less by choosing one of the readings than by recognizing that he lives on both, and the novel rewards him in a strange way: it is to him that Nina Alexandrovna forgives without knowing what (chapter VI of Part Four), and it is he who, quoting badly, rightly says that the bride's flight saved the prince from an abyss (chapter X of Part Four), without imagining the abyss that comes the next day. Against the cynical reading stands the sincere weeping beside the general; against the indulgent reading, the anonymous letters and the guardianship plotted on the eve of the wedding.
Relationships
- Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin: the lodger in his dacha (chapter II of Part Two), to whom he confesses his double thoughts (chapter XI of Part Two), whom he spies on and denounces (chapter VI of Part Four) and whom he tries to place under guardianship (chapter X of Part Four).
- Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin: the heir to whom he clings on the train (chapter I of Part One) and to whom he advises the eighteen-thousand bid (chapter X of Part One).
- Ardalion Alexandrovich Ivolgin: the friend he shelters in the dacha (chapter VI of Part Two), suspects of theft (chapter IX of Part Three), torments with the wallet (chapter III of Part Four) and weeps over at the deathbed (chapter VI of Part Four).
- Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova: he hides her in his house after her flight from Moscow and reads the Apocalypse with her (chapter II of Part Two).
- Yelizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina: the recipient of his anonymous letters and of the note from Aglaya that he brings her (chapter VI of Part Four); she calls him a fool at the first visit to the dacha (chapter VI of Part Two).
- Hippolyte Terentyev: whose pistol he demands on the night of the Explanation (chapter VII of Part Three) and to whom he whispers, in chapter X of Part Two, what everyone saw: that he was ashamed of his own tears.