An outsider at his own party: The Idiot

Back to The Idiot!, which I'd put aside to read this month's book-group selection. And I admit, though I'm pretty well able to pick up where I left off, I have absolutely had to go back maybe 20 times to check the dog-eared character list that Pevear-Volokhonsky helpfully put at the front of the volume. After the uptight timidity of a British snooty upper-crust novel, it's great to jump back into Dostoevsky's world of dramatic and eccentric misbehavior. I pick up as the Prince is seemingly engaged to Aglaya Epanchin, though who can keep it straight, she's constantly insulting him and chasing him away, pledging her love and then wounding him mortally - and this bizarre beahvior continues: the Epanchins are planning a party to introduce Prince Myshkin to their "set," and Aglaya, with good reason, is worried that in some manner Myshkin will make a fool of himself - as noted many times, he's not really an idiot but more of a naif, or a holy fool - he says whatever comes into his mind, without any self-censorship or social awareness - today, we might note that he has some form of autism, but in Dostoevsky's time he was just a misfit, an object of ridicule, but of course more honest and open than any of the other characters in the novel. Anyway, Aglaya, instead of trying to put him at his ease, suggests he's likely to get excited and make a clumsy gesture and knock over her mother's rare Chinese vase. Of course this leads Myshkin to obsess all night about this possibility, and as you can imagine he's a wreck by the time he enters the party. He's quiet for a while, as Aglaya suggested. But then one of the guests mentions the benefactor who raised the orphaned Prince and the Prince Myshkin becomes oddly excited and animated and goes off on a long rant against the Catholic Church and in favor of old traditional Russian nobility - a real conservative rant of the deepest order - clearly this is Dostoevsky speaking through his character. He creates quite a scene, of course knocks over the vase, and then, I think, falls into a seizure - his second of the novel. So only the "sick" man can speak the truth (or what D. sees as the truth), and society cannot accept anyone who violates the conventions of nicety and decorum. He's the outsider at his own party and, were it not for his money (his sudden and unexpected inheritance early in the novel), he would be a beggar on the street, a horse driver, a peddler, or a peasant - ah, the bounties of birth, or of wealth, or both.