The Theme in the Work
In the novel almost no one lies merely to deceive. General Ardalion Alexandrovich Ivolgin lies to preserve a world in which he still has friends and rank, and ends up believing what he tells; Lukyan Timofeyevich Lebedev says that in him lies and truth are together, and with complete sincerity; Keller confesses in tears and confesses too that the confession was meant to wring out money. Before all of them stands Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, who does not lie, says what he sees in faces and whose candor produces first laughter, then confession. The book does not make of this candor a simple virtue: Aglaya Ivanovna Epanchina accuses him of having only truth and no tenderness, and the prince, so as not to tell the general that he does not believe him, praises the truth that seems impossible and lets the lie go further. At the birthday party, the game of sincere confessions shows further that truth spoken in public can be a weapon, and that whoever asks for it cannot always bear it.
In chapter VIII of Part One, the general explains to the prince the death of his father with a soldier who died, was buried and reappeared.
Но ровно через полгода, на бригадном смотру, рядовой Колпаков, как ни в чем ни бывало, оказывается в третьей роте второго баталиона Новоземлянского пехотного полка, той же бригады и той же дивизии!, but, exactly half a year later, at a brigade review, Private Kolpakov, as if nothing had happened, turns up in the third company of the second battalion of the Novozemlyansk infantry regiment, of the same brigade and the same division!
In chapter XII of Part One, before a door on which another name is written, he denies the evidence.
Кулаков… Кулаков ничего не доказывает. Квартира Соколовича, и я звоню к Соколовичу; наплевать на Кулакова…, Kulakov... Kulakov proves nothing. The apartment is Sokolovich's, and I am ringing for Sokolovich; to hell with Kulakov...
In chapter XIII of Part One, Ferdyshchenko proposes the game of confessions with one condition.
но с тем, чтоб искренно, главное чтоб,, было искренно, не лгать!, but on condition that it be sincere, the main thing is that it be sincere, no lying!
In chapter XIV of Part One, General Epanchin confesses the worst act of his life and absolves himself in the same breath.
Без сомнения, я виноват, [...] тем более, что если я и виновен, то ведь не совершенно же: зачем же ей как раз в это время вздумалось помирать?, without doubt, I am guilty, [...] all the more so since, if I am guilty, I am not so entirely: why did she take it into her head to die just at that time?
In chapter VI of Part Two, General Ivolgin tells Aglaya, as he tells all the young people, that he carried her in his arms, and this time it is true.
Вот что значит хоть раз в жизни правду сказать, — до слез подействовало!, That is what it means to tell the truth at least once in your life: it moved to tears!
In chapter XI of Part Two, Keller confesses to the prince that he prepared the confession to wring money out of him, and the prince does not condemn him.
и все люди так, так что я начал было и одобрять себя, потому что с этими двойными мыслями ужасно трудно бороться, and everyone is like that too, so that I had already begun to approve of myself, because it is terribly hard to struggle against these double thoughts.
Lebedev, in the same chapter, makes a profession of the formula.
и слова, и дело, и ложь, и правда — всё у меня вместе, и совершенно искренно, both words and deed, both lie and truth, it is all together in me, and with complete sincerity.
In chapter XII of Part Two, the prince explains to Lizaveta Prokofyevna why he trusts Ganya.
Я хорошо знаю, что он меня иногда обманывает, [...] и он знает, что я это знаю, I know very well that he sometimes deceives me, [...] and he knows that I know.
In chapter VIII of Part Three, on the green bench, Aglaya accuses him, and soon after lies that she loves Ganya to gauge what he feels.
У вас нежности нет: одна правда, стало быть, — несправедливо, In you there is no tenderness: only truth, and therefore it is unjust.
In chapter IV of Part Four, the prince hears the story of Napoleon Bonaparte's page and, to escape blushing, praises the truth that seems improbable.
Пусть бы выдумал это сочинитель, — знатоки народной жизни и критики тотчас же крикнули бы, что это невероятно; а прочтя в газетах как факт, вы чувствуете, что из таких-то именно фактов поучаетесь русской действительности., If a writer had invented this, the connoisseurs of popular life and the critics would at once cry out that it is improbable; but reading it in the newspapers as fact, you feel that it is precisely from such facts that one learns Russian reality.
And the narrator classifies the general.
это был один из того разряда лгунов, которые хотя и лгут до сладострастия и даже до самозабвения, но и на самой высшей точке своего упоения всё-таки подозревают про себя, что ведь им не верят, да и не могут верить., he was one of those liars who, although they lie to the point of voluptuousness and even self-forgetfulness, nonetheless suspect in themselves, at the very height of their rapture, that they are not believed, and cannot be believed.
General Ivolgin's lies are the form that truth takes when it cannot be told. In chapter II of Part Four he collapses because his son denies an invented captain, and the narrator warns that the outcry is about something else, the theft that his son nearly throws in his face; in chapter IV of Part Four, going at last to confess to Kolya, he can only speak of Napoleon's son and say a woman's name, and falls. The lie protects what he cannot bear to confess, and when the protection falls, the man falls with it.
Who Embodies It
General Ivolgin, who lies to the point of voluptuousness and suspects that they do not believe him. In chapter II of Part Four, doubt about an invented friend is what makes the cup overflow.
по чрезвычайной странности сердца человеческого, случилось так, что именно подобная обида, как сомнение в Еропегове, и должна была переполнить чашу., through an extraordinary strangeness of the human heart, it happened that precisely an offense like that, the doubt about Yeropegov, should make the cup overflow.
Lebedev, who lies and confesses with the same sincerity, and who in chapter IX of Part Three defends the general for what he is.
Лжет он беспрерывно, по слабости, но человек высочайших чувств, человек при этом малосмысленный-с, внушающий полнейшее доверие своею невинностью, He lies ceaselessly, out of weakness, but he is a man of the highest feelings, a man, moreover, of little sense, sir, who inspires the fullest trust by his innocence.
And the prince, to whom Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova, in chapter XIV of Part One, leaves the decision about her own marriage because he believed her with a single glance.
А князь для меня то, что я в него в первого, во всю мою жизнь, как в истинно-преданного человека поверила. Он в меня с одного взгляда поверил, и я ему верю., and the prince, to me, is the one in whom I, for the first time in my whole life, believed as in a truly devoted man. He believed in me at a single glance, and I believe him.
Where It Appears
- Part One, Chapter VIII: General Ivolgin tells the prince that Private Kolpakov died, was buried and reappeared half a year later in another regiment.
- Part One, Chapter IX: The general tells the story of the little dog thrown out of the train window, and Nastasya Filippovna recalls reading it in the Indépendance Belge.
- Part One, Chapter XII: Before a plate with Kulakov's name, the general insists that his friend Sokolovich lives there, and the prince follows him without contradicting him.
- Part One, Chapter XIII: Ferdyshchenko says he has license for the truth because he has no wit and proposes that each one sincerely tell the worst act of his life.
- Part One, Chapter XIV: Ferdyshchenko, General Epanchin and Totsky tell their worst acts, and Nastasya Filippovna leaves the decision about the marriage to the prince.
- Part Two, Chapter VI: General Ivolgin tells Aglaya that he carried her in his arms, and this time it is true, and the truth makes him weep.
- Part Two, Chapter XI: Keller and Lebedev confess to the prince that the sincere confession came along with the calculation of profiting from it.
- Part Two, Chapter XII: The prince tells Lizaveta Prokofyevna that he knows Ganya sometimes deceives him and that Ganya knows he knows.
- Part Three, Chapter VIII: Aglaya tells the prince that in him there is only truth and no tenderness, and then lies that she loves Ganya to gauge what he feels.
- Part Three, Chapter IX: Lebedev says that the general lies ceaselessly out of weakness and leads the prince to the suspicion about the four hundred rubles.
- Part Four, Chapter II: The general collapses when Hippolyte and Ganya say that Captain Yeropegov never existed.
- Part Four, Chapter IV: The general tells that he was Napoleon's page and that the emperor advised him never to lie, and the narrator says that he suspects they do not believe him.
- Part Four, Chapter IX: Evgeny Pavlovich tells the prince that what began with a lie had to end with a lie.
Where the Readings Diverge
The prince's candor is read as virtue or as cruelty, and both readings are in the text. In chapter XI of Part One he calls Gavrila Ardalionovich Ivolgin an ordinary man to relieve him, and Ganya hears in this the worst offense of the day. In chapter IX of Part Four, Evgeny Pavlovich Radomsky makes the diagnosis from the opposite side: the lie was at the origin of everything.
что ложью началось, то ложью и должно было кончиться; это закон природы., what began with a lie had to end with a lie; it is a law of nature.
The prince does not lie, but he does not always contradict. In chapter XII of Part One he follows the general to a stranger's door so as not to irritate him; in chapter III of Part Four he chooses the copybook phrase that calms the old man; in chapter IV of Part Four he praises the improbable truth so as not to say that he does not believe. Delicacy relieves and, at the same time, humiliates: the general notices, breaks with him for not accepting signs of compassion that humiliate, and the prince wonders whether he did wrong in leading him to that inspiration.