•
Rating:
No one will ever remember me, and it is for this reason that I thank anyone who has given me the opportunity to leave my testimony. Everyone knows that next to J. F. Kennedy was his wife Jackie, Anita next to Garibaldi, Aspasia to Pericles, and so on. Few know that I was the wife of Fedor Michailovic Dostoevsky. And not only that. If it hadn't been for me, today none of you would have had the chance to read some of his masterpieces. It's true, "Prestuplenie i nakazanie - Crime and Punishment" was born before my arrival, but I don't know if "Igrok - The Gambler" would have ever come to light if I hadn't gone to his house to work as a stenographer on the afternoon of October 4, 1866. By the 29th of the same month, it was all over, the novel and my work as a stenographer I mean to say. We married in February of the following year, but I don't want to bore you with the usual complaints about how difficult it is to live with a genius, about how burdensome those twenty years of difference were. I am here to tell you about what happened next.
Between September 1867 and January 1869, he gave birth to "Idiot - The Idiot". A small part was also developed in Italy, in Florence to be precise, in a building in Piazza Pitti. Originally the story was quite different, in fact, at the center of the plot was a family of ruined landowners hoping to redeem themselves financially through the marriage of their daughter Masa to a wealthy man. The other two children are instead the "Handsome One", adored by the mother, and the “idiot”, despised by all. There are numerous content differences between the first draft and the current novel, but I risk being verbose.
Some of you may have had a look at his notes: among drawings and doodles runs a heterogeneous but compact reflection, like a private speech. I managed to get a glimpse of it and learned for the first time what was written. The protagonist is Prince Myshkin, the last heir of a glorious fallen dynasty, a man with Christ-like kindness who returns to his homeland from Switzerland, following treatment for a nervous illness. During the journey, he meets Rogozin, a young rebel returning home to claim his paternal inheritance, with which he wishes to convince the beautiful and wealthy Nastasya Filippovna to marry him.
Arriving in Petersburg, the prince visits some distant relatives, the Epanchin family, and discovers that Ganya, the family head's secretary, wants to marry Nastasya for her dowry left by a past lover. That same evening Myshkin attends Nastasya's birthday party and, to save her from Rogozin and Ganya's humiliating demands, declares his desire to marry her. However, the woman flees with Rogozin. Meanwhile, General Epanchin's daughter, Aglaya, falls in love with Myshkin, but the prince chooses once again to pursue Nastasya who, feeling unworthy of him, surrenders again to Rogozin. He, understanding the reason Nastasya returned to him, in a fit of madness, kills her. Before the body of the woman and the lifeless body of Rogozin, Myshkin falls into irreversible madness.
I wondered how he managed to create such real characters. Then I understood that, in truth, he had created nothing at all. All his characters are a name and a point of view. I would like to describe them all, but the ink is almost gone, so I can only talk about the three essential ones. The Russian word "Idiot" indeed means "fool" but also "sick, compromised by an illness". Here is Prince Myshkin. Throughout the novel, the characters will see his extravagant behavior as the consequence of the illness ("...And if Schneider himself had now arrived from Switzerland to visit his former disciple and patient, he would have made a gesture of discouragement with his hand and would have said as before -Idiot!-."). Prince Myshkin is innocence: from the very first pages, in the way he confesses his entire life to an unknown travel companion, one understands his naivety, like a child devoid of any experience or who has failed to learn from it, and his extreme generosity seems to not consider the world's wickedness. Rogozin and Nastasya form the core of opposition to the protagonist. Rogozin qualifies for his boundless and demonic pride and the strong will to marry the woman is connected to a petty enhancement of the ego, as demonstrated by his clear intention to literally buy her. Nastasya carries the trauma of a sullied and humiliating adolescence, having been the "kept woman" of a much older man for several years. The abandonment to Rogozin, which at first might seem like a chance for redemption, is instead a sign of an indomitable tension towards evil. The references to "The Demons" abound.
"The Idiot" is also a polycentric novel, in contrast to the narrative technique of fellow countryman Tolstoy. Each character is outlined during the narrative by contrast with a third, in a continuous maieutic operation, to then meet all at a certain point in the work. Here is the case of Nastasya Filippovna's already mentioned birthday party. During the party, a guest proposes a game: everyone should tell the worst thing they've ever done in their life. I have never known anyone who knew how to talk about evil like he did. The debate on morality that emerges is never sterile; it is continuously renewed in a tight contrast between common morality and personal ethics. That American guy... Allen?... I don't know how he would have filmed "Crimes and Misdemeanors" without my husband's lesson.
Do not rush, readers, to find a univocal interpretation of the work. The range of topics he reflects on is vast (The Apocalypse, the chronicles of those past days, politics, suicide...). But above all, do not try to constrain him in a definition. Siberia cooled in him the fervent passion of the socialist; adherence to religious orthodoxy and the Slavophile nationalism that led him to consider Mother Russia as the world's peacemaker were never totalizing elements of his writing. In "The Idiot" as in all his writings, his indecipherable style, his cosmic irony, the humanity of the characters are enough. Without him, authors like your Deledda, or Thomas Mann or Andre Gide would not have produced their masterpieces. Without him, I would have really had nothing to say.
Anna Grigor'evna Snitkina
Loading comments slowly
