What It Is
A large, expensive Chinese vase in the Epanchins' drawing room, a gift that Yelizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina treasures so much that, in her daughter's words, she would go out of her mind and weep before everyone if it broke. On the eve of the meeting at which the fiancé was to be presented to the old princess Belokonskaya, Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina asks Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, half in mockery, to break it; he spends the night afraid of breaking it and breaks it at the height of his speech, just before the seizure. Before it is an object, the vase is a fear of the house: already at the start of Part Four the family dreads that the prince will knock over and break something when he enters the room.
Where It Appears
In ch. I of Part Four, Varvara Ardalionovna Ivolgina tells her brother what she learned at the Epanchins' house: that the prince will be presented to Belokonskaya that evening, and that they fear he will knock over and break something when he enters before the guests, or fall himself. And she explains to her brother why the prince won Aglaya.
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 try to hook her at all, and second, because in everyone's eyes he is an idiot.
In ch. VI of Part Four, late at night, Aglaya asks the prince whether he knows how to walk into a room and drink tea with everyone watching, asks him at least to break the Chinese vase in the room and to sit deliberately beside it, and finally warns him which subjects he must not touch.
если вы заговорите о чем-нибудь в роде смертной казни, или об экономическом состоянии России, или о том, что «мир спасет красота», то… я, конечно, порадуюсь и посмеюсь очень, но… предупреждаю вас заранее: не кажитесь мне потом на глаза!, if you start talking about something like the death penalty, or the economic situation of Russia, or that "beauty will save the world," then... I, of course, will be delighted and laugh heartily, but... I warn you in advance: do not show yourself before my eyes afterward!
Still in ch. VI of Part Four, the prince replies that now he will certainly speak, and perhaps break the vase out of fear; before he feared nothing, and now he fears everything, and he will dream about it all night.
In ch. VII of Part Four, the narrator says that Aglaya frightened him: since the day before he has been certain that he will break the vase, however much he runs from it. On hearing Pavlishchev mentioned, he moves and sits down right beside the vase. In the final outburst of his speech, speaking of the Russian who has no ground beneath him, he stands up, moves his arm, and the vase falls.
От того, что он отечество нашел, которое здесь просмотрел, и обрадовался; берег, землю нашел и бросился ее целовать! [...] „Кто почвы под собой не имеет, тот и Бога не имеет“., Because he found the fatherland that he had failed to see here, and rejoiced; he found the shore, the earth, and threw himself to kiss it! [...] "Whoever has no ground beneath him also has no God."
Still in ch. VII of Part Four, what strikes him is not shame but the prophecy fulfilled, and for a moment everything opens in light, as before a seizure. Everyone laughs kindly, Yelizaveta Prokofyevna says that a clay pot is not worth the fright, and the prince, forgiven, goes back to speaking until he collapses.
Знаете, я не понимаю, как можно проходить мимо дерева и не быть счастливым, что видишь его? Говорить с человеком и не быть счастливым, что любишь его! О, я только не умею высказать… а сколько вещей на каждом шагу таких прекрасных, которые даже самый потерявшийся человек находит прекрасными? Посмотрите на ребенка, посмотрите на божию зарю, посмотрите на травку, как она растет, посмотрите в глаза, которые на вас смотрят и вас любят…, You know, I do not understand how one can pass by a tree and not be happy to see it. To speak with a person and not be happy to love them! Oh, only I cannot express it... and how many beautiful things there are at every step, which even the most lost person finds beautiful? Look at a child, look at God's dawn, look at the grass, how it grows, look into the eyes that look at you and love you...
In ch. VIII of Part Four, the next morning, the prince apologizes once more for the vase and the scandal, and Yelizaveta Prokofyevna replies that she does not pity the vase, she pities him. Later, Hippolyte Terentyev remarks that the Chinese vase came off worst and that he regrets not having been there.
In ch. IX of Part Four, the anecdote going around Pavlovsk says that the prince, to declare his way of thinking aloud, insulted the dignitaries, disowned his bride in public, and, resisting the servants who were putting him out, broke a fine Chinese vase.
What It Means
The vase is the society into which the Epanchins want the prince to enter without incident, and breaking it is the incident. Aglaya puts it in his head as a challenge, and the request becomes a certainty: the prince says he will break it out of fear, and he breaks it. The book does not decide whether it is chance or destiny; it says that, for him, the prophecy weighs more than the scandal, and it shows the room forgiving the vase without forgiving the man, who a little later falls into a seizure.
The vase falls between the two most serious speeches of the prince in the hall, the one about the ground missing under the Russian without a homeland and the one about the happiness of seeing a tree, and so the fall does not interrupt the speech, it divides it. In ch. VI of Part Four Aglaya had forbidden the subjects he loves most and had asked, in the same conversation, for the clumsy gesture; in ch. VII of Part Four he does both, breaking the vase and speaking of what she had forbidden. Two readings. In one, the prohibition produced the disaster, and Aglaya has a share in it, as the narrator grants when he says she frightened him; in the other, the vase only confirmed what the household already feared in ch. I of Part Four, and Yelizaveta Prokofyevna says the essential thing in ch. VIII of Part Four when she separates the vase from the man.
Relationships
- Default themes: Madness, Beauty.
- Themes in the novel: Madness, Beauty.
- Characters: Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina, Yelizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina, Varvara Ardalionovna Ivolgina, Hippolyte Terentyev.
- Related symbols: the poor knight, the other challenge Aglaya gives the prince in front of the family.