The Theme in the Work
Part One is a marketplace: in twenty-four hours almost everyone shows up with a figure in hand. Afanasy Ivanovich Totsky offers seventy-five thousand rubles to be rid of Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova and be free to marry; General Ivan Fyodorovich Epanchin brings her some very costly pearls that his wife had heard of; Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin accepts for the dowry a bride he despises; Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin, who has just inherited millions, raises the bid from eighteen thousand to a hundred thousand. Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin arrives with nothing and, when near midnight he discovers he has inherited a million and a half, does not use the money as a bid. The night ends with the money in the fire and with the discovery that he buys no one. The rest of the book shows what money does when it stops being a bid and becomes a right, a debt or alms: Burdovsky's group demands what the prince was already going to give, Lukyan Timofeyevich Lebedev reads in Revelation of a century in which everything is measure and contract, General Ivolgin takes four hundred rubles from his friend's pocket, and the wallet reappears in Lebedev's coat flap. In the end, Rogozhin's fortune passes to his brother, and Aglaya marries a count who was no count and whose fortune did not exist.
In ch. IV of Part One, Nastasya Filippovna accepts Totsky's capital and refuses the meaning it would have.
если она и принимает теперь капитал, то вовсе не как плату за свой девичий позор, в котором она не виновата, а просто как вознаграждение за исковерканную судьбу, if she now accepts the capital, it is by no means as payment for her disgrace as a girl, for which she is not to blame, but simply as compensation for a crippled fate.
In ch. X of Part One, in the Ivolgins' house, Rogozhin, who had come to buy Ganya, offers her 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!, Nastasya Filippovna! he cried, looking at her like a madman, timid and suddenly emboldened to the point of insolence: here are eighteen thousand! (and he dropped on 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!
In ch. XI of Part One, Ganya opens up to the prince and explains what he wants from 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.
In ch. XV of Part One, Rogozhin puts the hundred thousand on the table, and she says the price out loud.
Во сто тысяч меня оценил! [...] Да неужто ты меня в свою семью ввести хотел? Меня-то, Рогожинскую!, He valued me at a hundred thousand! [...] Did you really mean to bring me into your family? Me, the Rogozhin woman!
In ch. XVI of Part One, she throws the bundle into the fire and concludes, in front of Ganya, that he did not go after it (The money in the fire).
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.
In ch. II of Part Two, Lebedev tells the prince what he read of the Apocalypse with Nastasya Filippovna.
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 time of the third horse, the black one, and of the rider who holds the scales in his hand, because in this present age everything is measure and contract, and all men seek only their own right.
In ch. VIII of Part Two, Burdovsky's group shifts the right to the prince's money from the law to conscience.
мы именно понимаем, что если тут нет права юридического, то зато есть право человеческое, натуральное, право здравого смысла и голоса совести [...] Требуем, а не просим!, we understand very well that if there is no legal right here, there is instead a human, natural right, the right of common sense and of the voice of conscience [...] We demand, we do not ask!
In ch. IX of Part Two, after Ganya's proofs, Burdovsky tosses onto the table an envelope that should hold two hundred and fifty rubles and holds only a hundred, and Doktorenko swears the group will pay the difference, even if it is one ruble at a time.
In ch. IX of Part Three, Lebedev tells the prince he lost four hundred rubles on the night of the birthday, and leads him, laughing, to the suspicion falling on the general, who says he suspects nothing.
In ch. III of Part Four, the wallet reappears in Lebedev's coat flap, and he starts walking around with it slapping against his legs in full view of the general, and tells the prince, indignant, that he is not tormenting the general.
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 put in with fervor; I sincerely love him, sir, and... I 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, sir!
In the book money is never lacking for those who want it: what is lacking is what it was meant to buy. Rogozhin inherits millions and does not buy Nastasya Filippovna; Ganya holds the hundred thousand in his hands and gives them back; the prince inherits and shares out, paying in ch. I of Part Two even the creditors who had no documents. Whoever measures everything in money, as Ganya does in ch. XI of Part One, does so because money would give him what he lacks, originality; and what the book shows is that the lack remains on the other side of the fortune.
Who Embodies It
Ganya, who knows money is vile and wants it all the same, because what he lacks is to be someone. In ch. XI of Part One:
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.
Rogozhin, who has only money as his voice. In ch. I of Part One, barely knowing the prince, he offers him what money can buy.
Князь, не известно мне, за что я тебя полюбил. Может, оттого, что в эдакую минуту встретил [...] Приходи ко мне, князь. Мы эти штиблетишки-то с тебя поснимаем, одену тебя в кунью шубу в первейшую [...] поедем к Настасье Филипповне! Придешь, али нет?, Prince, I don't know why I took a liking to you. Maybe because I met you at such a moment [...] Come to my house, Prince. We'll take those little spats off you, I'll dress you in the finest marten-fur coat [...] let's go see Nastasya Filippovna! Are you coming or not?
The prince, who puts no price on anything and therefore misjudges prices. In ch. IX of Part Two, after apologizing incoherently for the public offer of ten thousand, he hears from Doktorenko the two readings of himself.
Это или уж слишком невинно, или уж слишком ловко, Either this is too innocent, or it is too clever.
Where It Appears
- Part One, ch. I: Rogozhin tells how he bought diamond earrings for Nastasya Filippovna with the money from his father's bonds, and promises the prince a marten-fur coat.
- Part One, ch. IV: Totsky, with the general at his side, offers Nastasya Filippovna seventy-five thousand rubles to marry her to Ganya, and she accepts them as compensation, not as payment.
- Part One, ch. X: Rogozhin puts eighteen thousand on a little table and raises the bid to forty and then to a hundred thousand.
- Part One, ch. XI: Ganya tells the prince that money is vile because it even gives talent, and that with the dowry he will start from capital.
- Part One, ch. XIV: Nastasya Filippovna returns the seventy-five thousand to Totsky and the pearls to the general.
- Part One, ch. XV: Rogozhin puts the hundred thousand on the table, and she tells everyone he valued her at a hundred thousand.
- Part One, ch. XVI: The prince inherits a million and a half; Nastasya Filippovna throws the hundred thousand into the fire, and Ganya does not take it out.
- Part Two, ch. I: In Moscow, the prince pays almost all of the dead merchant's creditors, even those without documents; Ganya returns to him the half-burned packet.
- Part Two, ch. II: Lebedev says we live in the time of the black horse of the Apocalypse, when everything is measure and contract.
- Part Two, ch. VIII: Burdovsky's group demands Pavlishchev's money in the name of conscience, and the prince offers ten thousand in public.
- Part Two, ch. IX: Burdovsky refuses the ten thousand and returns an envelope that is short one hundred and fifty rubles.
- Part Three, ch. IX: Lebedev tells the prince he lost four hundred rubles and that only three men could have taken them.
- Part Four, ch. III: Lebedev's wallet reappears in his coat flap, and the prince asks that the general notice only that the flap is empty.
- Part Four, ch. V: Aglaya examines her fiancé as if in a negotiation and is astonished that he has only one hundred and thirty-five thousand rubles.
- Part Four, ch. XII: Rogozhin's fortune passes to his brother, and Aglaya marries a false count whose fortune did not exist.
Where the Readings Diverge
The fire in ch. XVI of Part One can be read as revenge or as a test. Nastasya Filippovna says she wants to see Ganya's soul one last time because he tormented her for three months; but her conclusion, on seeing him hold out, is a recognition, and she gives him the money all the same. The narrator, in ch. I of Part Four, adds that Ganya took the money back to the prince, regretted it a thousand times, and never stopped priding himself on having returned it.
The ten thousand the prince offers Burdovsky in ch. VIII of Part Two shows the limit of charity with money: he grants the group more than half the reason and cannot say what is missing, and what is missing is precisely what money does not give, the possibility of asking and of giving thanks. Two readings: the group refuses the alms out of dignity, or it refuses the gratitude because gratitude would put it beneath the giver. The text sustains both, and Yelizaveta Prokofyevna Epanchina, in ch. IX of Part Two, says that they refuse gratitude and live on it.