The Theme in the Work
The novel begins with death seen from within the one who is about to die, and ends on a night beside a dead woman. In the general's anteroom, the first serious thing Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin says is about the guillotine he saw in Lyon: the worst is not the blow, it is the certainty of the hour. The same day he describes to the Epanchin girls a man pardoned in front of the firing squad, with the same fate that Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky himself lived through in 1849, and proposes as the subject of a painting the face of the condemned man one minute before the blade. The book makes this certainty the condition of Hippolyte Terentyev, the consumptive young man told he has only weeks to live, who reads aloud his reasons for deciding to kill himself at sunrise. And at its center it places the image that denies consolation, the dead Christ in Rogozhin's painting, a corpse in which nature has won even over the one who had conquered it. The death that closes the book is announced by no one: it is shown by a marble foot and a fly.
In ch. II of Part One, to the servant who remarks that at least the pain is brief when the head falls all at once, the prince replies.
А ведь главная, самая сильная боль, может, не в ранах, а вот, что вот знаешь наверно, что вот через час, потом через десять минут, потом через полминуты, потом теперь, вот сейчас — душа из тела вылетит, и что человеком уж больше не будешь, и что это уж наверно; главное то, что наверно., but the main, the strongest pain, perhaps is not in the wounds but in this: in knowing for certain that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now, this very moment, the soul will fly out of the body, and that you will no longer be a man, and that this is certain; the main thing is that it is certain.
In ch. V of Part One, the pardoned condemned man sees time as wealth only when he sees it running out.
Что если бы не умирать! Что если бы воротить жизнь, — какая бесконечность! И всё это было бы мое! Я бы тогда каждую минуту в целый век обратил, ничего бы не потерял, каждую бы минуту счетом отсчитывал, уж ничего бы даром не истратил!, what if I did not have to die! What if life were given back to me, what an infinity! And all of it would be mine! Then I would make every minute into a whole century, I would lose nothing, I would count every minute, I would not spend a single one in vain!
Still in ch. V of Part One, describing the last day of a man condemned to the guillotine, the prince imagines him scattering his time along the streets of the route.
Еще долго, еще жить три улицы остается; вот эту проеду, потом еще та останется, потом еще та, где булочник направо… еще когда-то доедем до булочника!, there is still a long way to go, three streets of life still remain; this one I cross, then there is still that one, then that other one, where there is a baker on the right... when will we ever reach the baker!
In ch. II of Part Two, Lukyan Timofeyevich Lebedev tells of the death of Countess Du Barry, who begged the executioner for one more little minute, and says why he prays for her.
И вот за эту-то минуточку ей, может, господь и простит, ибо дальше этакого мизера с человеческою душой вообразить невозможно, And for that little minute, perhaps, the Lord will forgive her, for one cannot imagine any greater wretchedness for a human soul.
In ch. V of Part Three, Hippolyte draws lots with a coin to read the Explanation, and the result strikes him like a sentence.
как будто раздавленный решением судьбы; он не побледнел бы более, если б ему прочли смертный приговор, as if crushed by the decision of fate; he could not have turned paler had they read him his death sentence.
In ch. VI of Part Three, before the painting, nature appears to him as a machine.
Природа мерещится при взгляде на эту картину в виде какого-то огромного, неумолимого и немого зверя [...] в виде какой-нибудь громадной машины новейшего устройства, которая бессмысленно захватила, раздробила и поглотила в себя [...] великое и бесценное существо — такое существо, которое одно стоило всей природы и всех законов ее, всей земли, Looking at this picture, nature looms up in the form of some enormous, implacable and mute beast [...] in the form of some gigantic machine of the latest design, which senselessly seized, crushed and swallowed up [...] a great and priceless being, a being that alone was worth all of nature and all its laws, the whole earth.
In ch. VII of Part Three, he claims the right to the weeks the illness has left him.
кому, во имя какого права, во имя какого побуждения вздумалось бы оспаривать теперь у меня мое право на эти две-три недели моего срока?, who, in the name of what right, in the name of what motive, would think to dispute my right to these two or three weeks of my term?
Still in ch. VII of Part Three, at sunrise, Hippolyte presses the pistol to his temple and pulls the trigger; only the click of the hammer is heard, because there was no percussion cap, and the fright turns into laughter.
In ch. V of Part Four, in the park, Hippolyte asks the prince how it would be best to die, and he answers by asking the dying man to pardon the living.
Пройдите мимо нас и простите нам наше счастье!, Pass by us and forgive us our happiness!
In ch. XI of Part Four, Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin leads the prince to the bed behind the curtain.
В ногах, сбиты были в комок какие-то кружева, и на белевших кружевах, выглядывая из-под простыни, обозначался кончик обнаженной ноги; он казался как бы выточенным из мрамора и ужасно был неподвижен. Князь глядел и чувствовал, что чем больше он глядит, тем еще мертвее и тише становится в комнате. Вдруг зажужжала проснувшаяся муха, пронеслась над кроватью и затихла у изголовья., At the feet, some lace was crumpled into a ball, and on the white lace, peeping out from under the sheet, the tip of a bare foot could be made out; it looked carved from marble and was terribly still. The prince looked and felt that the more he looked, the deader and quieter the room became. Suddenly a fly that had woken buzzed, flew over the bed and fell silent by the headboard.
The book sets two deaths against each other: the announced one, which the prince describes in ch. II of Part One as the worst of all because it takes away the last hope, and the one no one speaks of aloud. Hippolyte has his marked out by the doctor and fails when he tries to bring it forward in ch. VII of Part Three; Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova, who in ch. X of Part Three writes that Rogozhin is going to kill her, dies without anyone saying the word in ch. XI of Part Four. The certainty the prince called the greatest torment is, for her, something she chooses.
Who Embodies It
Hippolyte, who lives through the whole book as a condemned man. In ch. VII of Part Three, he refuses the praise they ask of him.
Неужто нельзя меня просто съесть, не требуя от меня похвал тому, что меня съело?, Can they not simply devour me, without demanding from me praise for what has devoured me?
Nastasya Filippovna, who sees her own death clearly and goes to meet it. In ch. X of Part Three, in a letter to Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina:
но я знаю их тайну [...] Я уверена, что у него в ящике спрятана бритва, обмотанная шелком, как и у того московского убийцы [...] Я бы его убила со страху… Но он меня убьет прежде…, but I know their secret. [...] I am sure he has a razor hidden in his drawer, wrapped in silk, like that Moscow murderer [...] I would kill him out of fear... But he will kill me first...
And Rogozhin, who in ch. XI of Part Four speaks of the blow as if it were a mystery.
совсем нож как бы на полтора… али даже на два вершка прошел… под самую левую грудь… а крови всего этак с пол-ложки столовой на рубашку вытекло; больше не было…, the knife went in about a vershok and a half... or even two vershoks... right under the left breast... and only about half a tablespoon of blood ran out onto the shirt; there was no more...
Where It Appears
- Part One, ch. II: The prince tells the general's servant that the main pain of the guillotine is knowing for certain the hour when the soul will leave the body.
- Part One, ch. V: The prince tells of a condemned man pardoned twenty minutes after climbing the scaffold, and describes the last day of a man condemned to the guillotine.
- Part One, ch. XIV: General Epanchin tells how the worst act of his life was insulting an old woman who was dying while he shouted.
- Part Two, ch. II: Lebedev tells of the death of Countess Du Barry, who asked the executioner for one more minute, and says he prays for her.
- Part Two, ch. X: Hippolyte says he will die in two weeks, invites everyone to his funeral, and says he came to see the trees.
- Part Three, ch. V: Hippolyte draws lots to read the Explanation and turns pale as if his death sentence were being read.
- Part Three, ch. VI: Hippolyte describes the dead Christ in Rogozhin's painting and asks how the disciples could believe in the resurrection.
- Part Three, ch. VII: Hippolyte claims the right to dispose of the weeks left to him and pulls the trigger of a pistol with no cap.
- Part Four, ch. V: Hippolyte speaks of the death of Stepan Glebov, impaled in Peter's time, and asks the prince how it would be best to die.
- Part Four, ch. X: General Ivolgin dies of a second attack, and Nastasya Filippovna shouts that Rogozhin is in the garden to kill her.
- Part Four, ch. XI: The prince sees Nastasya Filippovna's body behind the curtain, and Rogozhin tells how the knife went in under her left breast.
- Part Four, ch. XII: Hippolyte dies about two weeks after Nastasya Filippovna, and Rogozhin is sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor.
Where the Readings Diverge
The shot without a cap in ch. VII of Part Three can be read in two ways, and the text does not decide: the sincere forgetfulness of a feverish young man, or a staged scene by someone who wanted to be stopped and admired at the same time. Keller threatens anyone who doubts it, Lebedev and Evgeny Pavlovich Radomsky doubt it, and later the prince will tell Aglaya that there was no fraud.
The prince's answer to Hippolyte in ch. V of Part Four, the plea for forgiveness for the happiness of the living, can be read as the only answer the book gives to the Explanation, or as one more beautiful phrase that the dying man hears with contempt. Hippolyte laughs and says he expected something of the sort; the text lets us see that the phrase touched and offended him, and he dies, in ch. XII of Part Four, sooner than he expected, without the book saying which of the two it was.