The Idiot by Fedor Dostoevskij

 One of the most important and controvertial classics of Russian Literature, The Idiot by Fedor Dostoevskij

must be read for the intensity expressed on thematics regarding life, existence, church, and much more and for that controvertial pact that there is between two men, when in love for the same woman. 

It's a book rotating on the character of the Prince Myskin, returned to Russia after a long time spent in Switzerland for curing his epilepsy. A thinker, in particular, the prince expresses with great strenght ad originality his ideas and immediately arrived in Russia falls in love for the disgraceful but beauty Natas'ja Filippovna. 

This girl grown up by a sort of tutor, is not a saint:  she understands the beauty, ingenuity and good heart that there is in the prince, embracing him, illuding him but at the same time living conflictually her feelings for him.

She wouldn't want in fact to love him, but her idea is to save him from...her. 

She is not for him, she thinks: she is a disgraceful girl: where, the prince could go with her? 

Natas'ja is also in love for Rogozin, a pretty obscure man with which Myskin will exchange a beautiful, beautiful dialogue at a certain point, and where the two, will exchange their crosses, embracing a common destiny and a common faith regarding the Filippovna. 

Your pain will be my pain: your cross will be my cross, said this exchange of objects.

The Prince doesn't love the idea that Natas'ja escapes away with Rogozin. Rogozin is not clear, he lives in a sad, mysterious house, plenty of sadness: does she want this destiny for her?

But...Having chosen Rogozin, the prince at first will ask to Aglaja Epancin if she wants to become his wife. Aglaja is another conflictual girl. She starts to receive letters in fact from Natas'ja where Natas'ja asks her to accept the court of the Prince, marrying him. Aglaja appears confused for the words used by Natas'ja, with which later, and for very different reasons, the prince will break-up the relationship with her, preferring to the Epancin Natas'ja Filippovna, she will live a direct, and strong confrontation.

Oh, the prince is so happy that he will marry the Filippovna, the woman of his life. Everything is ready for the marriage: the day is arrived. The prince thinks that maybe something horrible can happens: the Filippovna ready for going to the church will see the eyes of Rogozin somewhere, asking him to save her.

And, oh, yes, Rogozin saved her: he brought her in his house, for then killing her.

Why this? Because of his aeternal jealousy against the prince. The prince understands that something horrible happened in the while. He knows Rogozin and the horrible profoundity of his houl projected at the killing of Filippovna, as also guessed by the same Natas'ja in several passages, by the prince and the same Rogozin. He waits and waits, till at the moment in which Rogozin brings him home, letting him show the lifeless body of Filippovna and explaining him how he killed her, adding also that there hasn't been a great dispersion of blood. Yes, there are comical passages in tragedies as well. The prince hugs Rogozin, starting to caress Rogozin. Both in tears and desperate: the police men will find them in that conditions. 

The prince's good health will precipitate and will return forever in Switzerland without to recover anymore.

Why reading this book?

Because it will let you think. It's also a story of an assassination.

The beauty mentioned by Fedor is not the common external beauty, but the beauty emerging in the character of Myrkin, the prince. Myrkin is under many ways the mirror of the beauty: it's a beauty this one passing through the beauty of a soul: it is synonime also of pain, sufferance and it is not this one a beauty used as a tool of visibility: everyone of course researches beauty, and so the company of the prince, although the prince with his originality of thinking will create a lot of internal conflicts in these people of the russian elite, with ideas pretty accepted and solid, putting in them where not sufferance, conflict and doubts.

This one is also the beauty of the acceptance of the horror. 

Yes, because....The prince knows what could happen to Filippovna because of the tremendous jealousy of Rogozin: Rogozin knows that probably will kill her: Natas'ja imagines it: and no one will be in grade, let me add and underline this point, to avoid this murder: a series of personal choices and events will bring the protagonists at this final and crucial point of no return. 

And here we insert another thematic dear to the writer: the one of compassion. In Dostoevskij there is not the solidity of law that can heal the pain of what committed, no: there is only compassion: compassion as co-participation of the pain lived by the protagonist of the horrible murder, caressed by the same prince in tears, for what he had done. 

It's a book this one, that, story apart, for the profoundity of the thematics treated thanks to the dialogues of the prince with the rest of the protagonists of the story will open your brain! 

Anna Maria Polidori