Князь Лев Мьiшкин и рьiцарство в русской истории XIX века
Prince Myshkin and knighthood in Russian history of the 19th century

Summary/Abstract: The article considers the motif of knighthood in the novel Idiot by F. Dostoevsky, compared to knighthood in Russian historical reality from the end of the 18th – the beginning of the19th century. The article is comprised of three parts: the first one investigates the historical knightly subtext in the body of "Petersburg's text", the second – the knightly ingredient in the mages of prince Myshkin and Petersburg in the novel, and the third one reveals the proximities between the historical image of Pavel I – knight Prince, Russian Don Quixote, jurodivyj, "madman" and object of mockery – and the diseased "poor knight" prince Myshkin, identified with Don Quixote and also mocked. The comparison takes into account the connection of "knighthood", in both history and novel, with other phenomena of Russian reality – Jurodstvo, Old Believers, and sectarianism – in two contexts, these of pre-Romanticism and Nihilism. A conclusion is offered that knighthood remains a foreign and doomed phenomenon in Russian reality, and in both history and literature it fails into the chaos of the sectarianism of thought and faith.

• Details
• Contents