In Defense of Myshkin

"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." - Matthew 5:5

I recently finished Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. I quite enjoyed the novel, though it took me a couple of years of sporadic reading to get through it. As has been recognized for the better part of a century and a half, Dostoevsky’s novels are masterpieces. Together with Tolstoy, Dostoevsky’s writing is to Russian literature what the pyramids are to Ancient Egypt. Immense fixtures, solitary products of their time, standing alone on the horizon. In fact, the one criticism that seems to hold some merit, namely, that it is too long, is also something the man himself admits in his letters¹. This book alone has no doubt minted hundreds of later writings from simple blog posts (such as this guilty piece) to PhD theses. This is why I was quite surprised to find, after reading some of these umbral writings, that Myshkin is quite a controversial figure. Many seem to be confused as to whether he is a hero or, at the very worst, a misguided idealist ^2,3 . One perspective even claims Myshkin is more Nietzschean than Orthodox⁴. Another claims Myshkin is weak and a crippling romantic (this was expressed to me verbally by someone else who had read it). All these perspectives are signs Myshkin is neither. In fact, this, I think, is further proof that Myshkin is who Dostoevsky intended him to be, an Orthodox Christian, and a “positively beautiful man.” In this article, I will attempt to defend Myshkin and argue for his standing as a true hero.

                I will give a warning that this essay will spoil The Idiot. Even if it is spoiled for those of you that have not read it, I encourage you to read it anyway. Sometimes knowing the rough skeleton of a book (especially a long book), can aid in reading it. To all be on the same page, I will summarize the relevant parts of the book, the parts that are controversial for Myshkin.

                The book starts with Myshkin going to Moscow. From the very beginning, we see that Myshkin is different. People find him disarming. They are struck by his sincerity, and he quickly gains a standing as a simple person, deeply interested in individual lives. Myshkin himself is called an Idiot, a term that doesn’t mean a stupid person, but more like a simpleton. Myshkin is coming from a mental institution in Switzerland. Though he is better, he sometimes has epileptic fits.

                The controversy of Myshkin centers around his relationship with two women, Agalya Epanchin and Nastasya Filippovna. In the beginning of the book, Myshkin has pity on Nastasya because of her struggles, saying she has “suffered terribly” (pg. 36)⁵. Because of his pity, Myshkin offers to marry her. She initially seems to accept but then changes her mind last minute and runs off with a man named Rogohzin. This is the end of book 1, the rest of the novel concerns Myshkin’s growing relationship with Agalya, the daughter of General Epanchin. Agalya is more even tempered than Nastasya. Even though she doesn’t often express that she loves Myshkin, she is stably committed to him. Myshkin and she become engaged and are on a path to getting married when Nastasya, who had been unheard of for most of the novel, shows up. Myshkin and Aglaya visit her. The visit becomes heated and ends in Agalya giving Myshkin a choice, turn his back on Nastasya and be committed only to her, or be with Nastasya and shut Agalya out forever. Myshkin hesitates and the hesitation is too much for Agalya who leaves him. The rest of the book details Myshkin’s new engagement and wedding with Nastasya. On the day of the wedding, Nastasya once again abandons him at the doors of the church and runs off, in the sight of the guests, with Rogohzin. Myshkin eventually tracks down Rogohzin and finds the body of Nastasya in his apartment. She had been stabbed through the heart by Rogohzin. Myshkin never recovers and returns to the sanitorium in Switzerland.

                Even in this summary, you have probably formed an opinion of Myshkin. Some have described his story as one of “spiritual squalor” and of a “diseased Christ”⁴. More charitable interpretations have called him “paradoxical”². In any case, it is hopefully clear why a defense is needed. Even so, this need of a defense is my first proof. Myshkin is controversial. You don’t even need to leave the novel to know that. No one in the book knows what to do with Myshkin. Myshkin is a mystery to everyone. Aglaya finds his love mysterious. Nastasya finds his pity mysterious. Rogohzin finds his trust mysterious. Lizavéta Prokófyevna finds his lack of pretense mysterious. On and on throughout the novel we find people confronted with Myshkin, as if he had suddenly come upon them and interrupted the normal flow of life. Everyone concluded he was a good man, but no one agreed on what made him good. The disagreement continues to this day in the thousands of people who have later read The Idiot. Myshkin is still mysterious even to us who live over a hundred years after publication. This is the first proof Dostoevsky may have succeeded in crafting a Christlike figure, for no man was ever so controversially good as Christ.

                Nevertheless, controversy alone is not a virtue. Unraveling the mystery of Myshkin will take more than simply saying he was mysterious. It will also do us no good to make him more complicated than he was. Some commentators have claimed Myshkin is an embodiment of the tension between spiritual and physical worlds, and a nexus between Western and Russian civilizations⁷. I personally find this approach more complicated than it needs to be, even if there is some truth in it. I would rather appeal to another Dostoevsky novel to help us illuminate Myshkin. As you may already know, Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment before The Idiot. Two novels that are exact opposites. One has a nihilist as the protagonist. The other, has a man of “pure innocence”¹. Both immense novels in their own right, but sort of pointed in opposite directions. I posit that, while these novels are incredible works of literature, they are not Dostoevsky’s best. I would argue Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s last novel, is his best. It is his best for this reason: it is essentially two books in one. It is as if Crime and Punishment shared the same story as The Idiot. Both the innocent and the nihilist are the protagonists. Myshkin is Alyosha Karamazov. Raskolnikov is Ivan and Smerdyakov. The interplay of these two opposite personalities drives the story, and it is here I think we can finally see what Myshkin means.

                The comparison between Alyosha and Myshkin has been made before³. They both are described as innocent and without guile³. They are both intensely interested in the lives of the people around them³. Both take pity on a woman who treats them poorly (Lise and Nastasya). Both have a moment of crisis that drives them to near insanity (the death of the Elder and death of Nastasya). The difference between them is that Myshkin’s crisis ends The Idiot. Alyosha’s crisis is, in my opinion, the climax of the novel. Myshkin’s life is only the first half of Alyosha’s. Alyosha is the continuation of Myshkin’s story. Alyosha, like Myshkin, experiences a death of ideals, and, some might say, of faith. But unlike Myshkin, Alyosha’s faith is resurrected. Alyosha’s faith comes back stronger and better informed, and it is that faith which carries the suffering persons for the rest of the novel. A faith that is not blind idealism, but a concrete understanding of the mission of the man of pure innocence. A faith that cannot be obtained unless it first dies and is resurrected. “Unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone” (pg 316)⁸. In The Idiot, we only see the kernel of wheat dying in the soil. We do not see the rebirth. We do not see Myshkin become Alyosha. We see the crucifixion but not the resurrection.

                To elaborate on this comparison, it may be helpful to explain a little bit more about Alyosha. Alyosha, like Myshkin, is the hero of the story. Dostoevsky makes this clear in the introduction⁸. He is described like this in the 4^th chapter,

                “…everyone loved this young man, wherever he made an appearance, and that had been so from the earliest days if his childhood. When he entered the house of his benefactor and patron Yefim Polenov, everyone in that household grew so attached to him that they treated him as one of the family…his gift of arousing a special kind of love in people was, as it were, inherent in his very nature, artless and spontaneous.” (pg. 29)⁸

                Alyosha then grows up and joins the monastery under the supervision of Elder Zossima. However, it’s clear to the Elder, and later to Alyosha, that he is not meant to stay in the monastery.

                “This is what I think of you: you will go forth from these walls, but you will live in the world like a monk. You will have many adversaries, but even your enemies will love you. Life will bring you happiness and you will bless life and make others bless it-which is what matters most. But that is how you are.” (pg. 316) ⁸

                It is hopefully clear how similar Myshkin and Alyosha are. They have the same heart and do the same things. If we can see how they are similar and accept that they represent the same man, the mysteries of Myshkin can be unraveled. The big differences between Alyosha and Myshkin lie mostly in the order of the events of their life, not in their core character and action. Unlike Myshkin, Alyosha experiences his moment of crisis in the second chapter of book 3, the death of Elder Zossima. The Elder doesn’t just die, but his body begins to decay. In the Russian Orthodox church there was and is still (as far as I can tell), a belief that the bodies of exceptionally holy persons do not decompose at death. Alyosha was brutally crushed when this did not happen for Elder Zossima. This crisis is the pivot of Alyosha’s life and we get a small commentary on this moment:

                “…there was confusion, it had arisen in spite of everything and it was so painful that Alyosha thought of that sorrowful day as one of the most painful and fateful days of his life. If, however, I were to be asked frankly: ‘Could all this distress and so great an anxiety have arisen in him simply because the elder’s body, instead of beginning at once to exercise healing powers, was, on the contrary, showing sign of early decomposition?’ I should reply without a moment’s hesitation, ‘Yes, it certainly was so.’ I would only ask my readers not to be in too great a hurry to laugh at my young hero’s pure heart.” (pg. 374)⁸

                What follows is I think the best defense of Alyosha, and by extension, Myshkin.

                “No doubt, some other youth, who responded cautiously to heartful impressions, who knew how to love not passionately, but lukewarmly, whose mind, though reliable, was a little too reasonable for his age,…such a youth, I say, would have avoided what happened to my hero; but as a matter of fact, in some cases it really is much more admirable to give way to an emotion, however unreasonable, which springs from great love, than not to give way to it at all.” (Ibid.)

                This is why Aloysha and Myshkin are such a mystery to people. Myshkin and Alyosha both had a great love. It made no sense to anyone in the story and far less sense to anyone reading The Idiot today. Myshkin loved Aglaya and Nastasya both. No one understands what that means, even people in the story didn’t get it. Because everyone around them was too reasonable, too rational, and filled with lukewarm love. They were Evgeny Pavlovich and Rakitin. They are you and I. They were every critic of The Idiot that would come after. And it’s why they are the heroes and not us. We cannot be overcome by these powerful loves. We are too rational to have such an irrational force come over us. We would never choose the Cross and it’s why we could never save ourselves. If there was ever a person in the entire history of humanity who loved so irrationally, so incomprehensibly, it would be Christ. Nothing about the Love of God makes rational sense. But if we follow the story after the crises, and wait patiently for Sunday, the irrational is resurrected, and the meek inherit the New Heaven and New Earth. That’s why Myshkin is a hero. He loved.

                If you are still not convinced, reader, then I encourage you to read Brothers Karamazov. If you are convinced, I encourage you to read Brothers Karamazov. Rereading parts of it has reminded me why it is such an incredible book and why those who have written on it have not written enough.

Works Cited

 (1)         Yen, J. Interpreting Prince Myshkin: The Idiot. An Unexpected Journal. https://anunexpectedjournal.com/58390-2/#sdfootnote1sym.

(2)          Terestchenko, M. Literature and the Good (II): Prince Myshkin, the Perfectly Beautiful Man. Revue du MAUSS 2013, 41 (1), 312–325. https://doi.org/10.3917/rdm.041.0312.

(3)          McDonough, C. The Earth and the Portrait: A Comparison of Dostoevsky’s Alyosha Karamazov and Prince Myshkin.

(4)          Ferguson, I. Nietzsche and the Prince. Stance: An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal 2015, 8, 19–27. https://doi.org/10.5840/stance201582.

(5)          Dostoevsky, F. M. (1821-1881). The Idiot; Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2002.

(6)          SLATTERY, D. P. The Idiot: Dostoevsky’s Fantastic Prince. Ph.D., University of Dallas, United States -- Texas, 1976. https://www.proquest.com/docview/288112885/citation/432B5966E2234150PQ/1 (accessed 2025-12-03).

(7)          Tucker, J. G. Dostoevsky’s “Idiot”: Defining Myshkin. New Zealand Slavonic Journal 1997, 23–40.

(8)          Dostoevsky, F. M. (1821-1881). The Brothers Karamazov; Folio Society: London, UK, 1964.