The Idiot

I think I'd go a 3.5 if it was allowable on here. While Dostoevsky's penchant for engaging and incredibly realistic dialogue is often on full display, to me it often felt winding and a little much. I guess it's always maybe prideful of someone reviewing to say things could have been trimmed from the novel, since it's the author's artistic choice to leave things in, but to me a lot of the book felt superfluous. I think it's evident that a lot of these characters would later be condensed in Karamazov. Lebedev and General Ivolgin are different shades of Fyodor Pavlovich, Prince Myshkin and Kolya are two different sides of Alyosha, Keller and Gavrila are shades of Mitya, etc. So all that being said, a lot of the dialogue ends up feeling repetitive, though Lebedev and the General are genuinely entertaining characters, and in all respects the purpose is to keep using the Prince as a foil compared to more depraved beings than him, it becomes somewhat tiresome, to me anyhow.
On a different note however, the fourth part is much more engaging to me, and redeems the book quite a bit, though the ending is rather abrupt and sudden. I can also see how the length of the novel is justified by how it must orchestrate and set up such a profound test of the virtuous Myshkin. Such a specific conundrum the Prince runs into, it's an interesting corner that Dostoevsky paints him into. At the same time the ending seems to almost unravel the Prince's character. Anyhow, I also love Dostoevsky's persistent use of misquotation to make his dialogue more real, also a big help to read annotated copies, it makes the characterization deeper I'd say. Still enjoyed the book, but it's evident to me I might have been better off going to Crime and Punishment before this, though again, I don't see this as a waste of time by any means.

It was an effort to make it to the end of this book.

I enjoyed the first quarter, particularly Dostoyevsky describing (through Myshkin) the incident where he was being executed but it was called off at the very last minute, before the shots were fired. Hearing the details of what went through his head was super interesting. The retrospective on his time in exile in Siberia was great too.

I found the main story dull. Painful levels of detail. Not a lot of change in the environment to mix things up. Had to trudge through hoping it'd perk up again (it didn't until right at the end). Parts felt like reading a daytime soap opera. Nowhere near as enjoyable as The Brothers Karamazov. There were good parables in the last 3/4, but they were scattered amongst stacks of details.

Overall, a few awesome chapters, but the majority of the book was not my jam.

Child-like, epileptic Prince Myshkin returns to Russia and gets tangled up in a doomed back-and-forth love obsession, into which he pulls another teasing girl to complete it to a very flighty love quadrangle. We have to see him be pushed around by his own naive emotions and endless good will towards everyone, and by manipulations of his friends and foes. And in between it all we meet a wide range of characters, having long wordy encounters. Even though Dostoyevsky is obviously remarkable with his character descriptions, I have to only give this 3 stars because despite the novel's concise message, I found most of its characters and their often too-long monologues very frustrating. Some characters and plot-lines that were only supposed to be side-stories, expanded and took over whole parts (especially the inheritance plot in part 2 and the very tedious Hippolite in part 3).

Prince Myshkin arrives to St. Petersburg as a naive, full of life fellow. It turns out that he is quite unable to survive in the high society of the Russian metropole. The first day of the book is the most enjoyable to read. The book unfolds in the one day described so that the prince already is a complex love relationship with Nastasya Filipovna by the end of the very first day he is staying in St.Petersburg. Then Myshkin falls in love with another woman, Aglaya Yepanchina. She is a daughter of a distant relative of prince Myshkin. Eventually the story takes twists and turns that are quite a torment to read.

It is widely perceived that Dostoyevsky used many elements of his own life in creating the characters for this story. (F.e he had a lover that quite resembled the character of Nastasya filipovna.) Such notions always make a book more interesting to read.

The middle part of the book is quite philosophical and promoting russian patriotism and deep religiousness, themes that Dostoyevsky likes to discuss. Towards the end I was in pain to see how prince Myshkin was shattered slowly but surely into bits and pieces, perhaps suggesting that true virtue does not survive in the real world.

Jeez. At first I was afraid, then I was... How did the song go? All I can say is that I finished it out of sheer stubborness, but it wasn't enough to make me one of the enlightened human beings who get this book. I know the idiot is supposed to be actually the kindest pastoral sweetest guy, and it's fine, but at some point, this idn't an issue: I just didn't care. Boring and long, and it doesn't help that at that time people lived off their inheritance so nobody does anything but visit each other and babble and blush and stomp their feet and drink and say things they mean only not. Like kindergarten, but in Russia. And with a couple of characters on repeat.
Well. Clearly, not a book for me. Sad, because the last Dostoievski had hit home, but maybe I'm not ready for it.

Alright, I'm a huge Dostoevsky fan. I have a sticker of the guy on the back of my phone. Crime and Punishment is my second favorite book. But The Idiot is just boring. I love Dostoevsky for his psychologically hard-pressed characters. His characters have more emotional depth than most real humans. But The Idiot is just a disappointment. Who's Nastasya going to marry? Who's it going to be!?!? It all feels so artificial and absurd. Maybe that's why I disliked the book; I came into it expecting Dostoevsky-esque realism, but I got proto-postmodern-existentialism, with all these characters making totally inane decisions. SKIP!

Fyodor can be a genius immersing you in human psyche and of course, writing intruding and impressively winding dialogue.

But this book... It feels like Fyodor got an assignment to write a novel with absurdly high word count and is struggling to come up with anything new so he does what everyone does in that situation and fills the pages with vacuum.

Not my canister of tea.

Cheers.

J’ai du passer à côté de quelque chose mais j’avoue ne pas comprendre les critiques dithyrambiques que j’ai pu entendre sur ce livre tellement je me suis ennuyé.

Certes la galerie de personnages est intéressante mais tellement extrême et grotesque dans ses attitudes, discours et réactions que je n’ai pas vraiment réussi à m’accrocher.

La fin m’a surpris mais elle arrive de manière extrêmement brutale en regard du reste du récit.

Assez aligne avec cette critique: https://pauledelblog.fr/2022/01/18/lecture-agitee-de-l-idiot-de-dostoievski/