The Theme in the Work
The title of the novel is a diagnosis, and the word falls on Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin from the first day: the general announces him to his wife as a poor idiot, Ganya calls him a damned idiot, Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova asks what idiot that is when she takes him for a lackey. The prince himself uses it before everyone, without shame, to speak of the state the fits left him in as a child, and says he was an idiot but no longer is. On the train, Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin gives him another name, that of the holy fool whom popular piety protects, and the book goes on alternating the two readings without choosing between them: the illness the Swiss doctor treated and the simplicity others take for lack of judgment. Beside him, the novel sets another madness, that of Nastasya Filippovna, which the prince declares aloud so many times that the word ends up serving as both judgment and excuse. The book ends with the word of the title, placed by the narrator in the mouth of the doctor who receives him back.
In ch. I of Part One, when the prince says that because of his illness he never knew a woman, Rogozhin classifies him.
Ну, коли так [...] совсем ты, князь, выходишь юродивый, и таких как ты бог любит!, well, if that is so [...] you, Prince, turn out to be a complete holy fool, and God loves people like you!
In ch. III of Part One, before the general, the prince names his own past.
Частые припадки его болезни сделали из него совсем почти идиота (князь так и сказал: идиота), the frequent fits of his illness had made of him almost a complete idiot (the prince said exactly that: idiot).
In ch. VI of Part One, to the Epanchin girls, he confesses the thought that protects him.
Меня тоже за идиота считают все почему-то, я действительно был так болен когда-то, что тогда и похож был на идиота; но какой же я идиот теперь, когда я сам понимаю, что меня считают за идиота? Я вхожу и думаю: «Вот меня считают за идиота, а я всё-таки умный, а они и не догадываются…», everyone takes me for an idiot too, for some reason; in fact I was once so ill that back then I did look like an idiot; but what kind of idiot am I now, when I myself understand that they take me for one? I walk in and think: here they take me for an idiot, and yet I am clever, and they haven't the faintest idea...
In ch. V of Part Two, just before the fit on the staircase, he thinks of the second of light that comes before the darkness.
Если в ту секунду, [...] ему случалось успевать ясно и сознательно сказать себе: «Да, за этот момент можно отдать всю жизнь!», — то, конечно, этот момент сам по себе и стоил всей жизни, if in that second [...] he happened to have time to tell himself, clearly and consciously: Yes, for this moment a whole life could be given! then, of course, that moment alone was worth a whole life.
In ch. II of Part Three, on seeing Nastasya Filippovna again at the Vauxhall, what joins his pity is the certainty that she is mad, and to the officer who asks him her name the prince only repeats this.
In ch. VIII of Part Three, on the green bench, Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina admits that he is sometimes sick in the head and, in the same breath, puts him above everyone.
я вас считаю за самого честного и за самого правдивого человека, всех честнее и правдивее [...] то зато главный ум у вас лучше, чем у них у всех, такой даже, какой им и не снился, потому что есть два ума: главный и неглавный, I consider you the most honest and most truthful man, more honest and truthful than all of them [...] but on the other hand your principal intelligence is better than that of all of them, such as they never dreamed of, because there are two intelligences: the principal and the non-principal.
In ch. X of Part Three, reading Nastasya Filippovna's letters, the prince, who had called them madness in front of Aglaya, recognizes something else in them.
но тут же заключалось и что-то такое, что было мучительно-действительное и страдальчески-справедливое, что оправдывало и сон, и кошмар, и безумие, but there was also in them something painfully real and sufferingly just, which justified the dream, the nightmare and the madness.
In ch. VIII of Part Four, before the two women waiting for him to choose, he says to Aglaya the cruelest thing he could say to either of them.
Разве это возможно! ведь она… сумасшедшая!, But is that possible? She is... mad!
In ch. X of Part Four, when he learns in the church that the bride has run off with Rogozhin, he reads the flight through her state.
я боялся; но я всё-таки не думал, что будет это… [...] впрочем… в ее состоянии… это совершенно в порядке вещей, I was afraid; but even so I did not think it would be this... [...] moreover... in her condition... this is perfectly in the order of things.
In ch. XI of Part Four, when they break down the door, the narrator closes the prince's story with the word of the title.
И если бы сам Шнейдер явился теперь из Швейцарии взглянуть на своего бывшего ученика и пациента, то и он, припомнив то состояние, в котором бывал иногда князь в первый год лечения своего в Швейцарии, махнул бы теперь рукой и сказал бы, как тогда: «Идиот!», And if Schneider himself were to come now from Switzerland to see his former pupil and patient, he too, recalling the state the prince sometimes fell into in the first year of his treatment in Switzerland, would wave his hand in dismay and say, as he did then: "Idiot!"
The word mad both protects the prince and condemns him. When he says Nastasya Filippovna is mad, in ch. II of Part Three and in ch. VIII of Part Four, he is spared from choosing between her and Aglaya, because one does not choose against someone who is ill; when others say he is an idiot, they are spared from listening to him. In ch. XI of Part Four, the two madnesses meet: Rogozhin raves beside the body, and the prince, who strokes his head, no longer recognizes anyone.
Who Embodies It
The prince and Nastasya Filippovna, on opposite sides of the word. He is the idiot no one can judge: in ch. VII of Part One, at the moment Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin insults him most, the narrator corrects the aggressor's view.
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.
She is the one everyone calls mad. In ch. XVI of Part One, when she throws the money into the fire, people shout that she has lost her mind, and everyone later claimed she lost her reason at the moment they understood that the prince, newly come into his fortune, had just asked for her hand in marriage. In ch. VIII of Part Four, when she orders the prince to choose, she shouts without believing a drop of her own bravado.
А хочешь, я сейчас… при-ка-жу, слышишь ли? только ему при-ка-жу, и он тотчас же бросит тебя и останется при мне навсегда и женится на мне, а ты побежишь домой одна? Хочешь, хочешь?, And if you like, I can now... or-der, do you hear? Just let me or-der him, and he will drop you at once and stay with me forever and marry me, and you will run home alone? Want it? Want it?
Where It Appears
- Part One, ch. I: Rogozhin calls the prince a holy fool, whom God loves, when he says he never knew a woman because of his illness.
- Part One, ch. III: The prince tells the general that the fits made him almost an idiot as a child, and uses the word himself.
- Part One, ch. VI: The prince confesses to Adelaida, Aleksandra and the general's wife that everyone takes him for an idiot and that he knows he is clever.
- Part One, ch. VII: Ganya calls him a damned idiot, and the narrator says the fury blinded him to the prince's subtlety.
- Part One, ch. VIII: Nastasya Filippovna takes the prince for a lackey and asks what idiot this is.
- Part One, ch. XVI: Nastasya Filippovna throws the hundred thousand into the fire, people shout that she has gone mad, and everyone later claimed she lost her reason when they understood that the prince, newly come into his fortune, had asked her to marry him.
- Part Two, ch. V: The prince thinks of the instant of light that precedes the fit, and the fit on the staircase saves him from the knife.
- Part Two, ch. VIII: After offering Burdovsky money in public, the prince calls himself an idiot, for lack of tact and not of intelligence.
- Part Three, ch. II: On seeing Nastasya Filippovna again, the prince feels, alongside his pity, the horror of the certainty that she is mad.
- Part Three, ch. VIII: Aglaya tells the prince that there are two intelligences, the principal and the non-principal, and that his principal one is better than all of theirs.
- Part Three, ch. X: The prince reads Nastasya Filippovna's letters and recognizes in them something real and just that justifies the nightmare and the madness.
- Part Four, ch. VII: After the broken vase and the speech, the prince falls into a fit in front of the guests, and Belokonskaya says he is ill.
- Part Four, ch. VIII: Before the two women, the prince tells Aglaya that Nastasya Filippovna is mad, and stays with her.
- Part Four, ch. X: In the church, the prince says the bride's flight is in the order of things, given her state.
- Part Four, ch. XI: They find the prince beside Rogozhin, recognizing no one, and the narrator imagines Schneider saying again: idiot.
- Part Four, ch. XII: Schneider speaks of complete damage to the prince's mental organs, without yet saying it is incurable.
Where the Readings Diverge
The word of the title is read either as a diagnosis or as the world's judgment, and the book sustains both.
Some also read the prince's fit as more than an illness: a window.
The prince's illness has two functions in the plot that pull in opposite directions. In ch. V of Part Two the fit saves him, because the cry paralyzes Rogozhin with his hand raised; in ch. VII of Part Four the fit ruins him, because it confirms before society what everyone feared. The same light he calls beauty and prayer is the one that knocks him down in the drawing room, and the end of ch. XI of Part Four does not say which of the two won.