Le crime de la compassion
The crime of compassion

Summary/Abstract: In The Idiot the drama of the breakthrough can be depicted. A breakthrough towards drama, towards the Kierkegaardian absolute. That is why researchers term it as a dramatic novel. Those who try to break through live in drama. The two genre archetypes of Miškin’s figure are Don Quijote and Hamlet, the heroes of the Urroman and the modern drama, the religious prefigurations are Iurodivii and Christ. This is how Prince Miškin “of a perfect beauty” is born, who—standing between novel and drama—explodes genre boundaries starting an enterprise being neither characteristic of drama nor of the novel, namely wanting to create a community. Still, he remains alone. Since his being is about the wish to address, to create a community, his loneliness is not caused by a withdrawal springing from his character but rather a “recoiling” withdrawal. Prince Miškin does not die of loneliness, yet it makes him dumb. According to the genre particularities of the breakthrough, in our analysis we have chosen the climactic dramatic scenes instead of the linearly developing plot. Such scenes are the Chinese vase, the dialogue of Miškin and Rogožin and Miškin and Rogožin at Nastasia’s deathbed, which scenes all close with the epileptic attacks of the prince. The “plot” itself is moved forward by two trinities, which are also distinguished by signs: the knife, the icon, the picture and the book, which gain a symbolic content. These trinities are the Aglaia-Miškin-the Jepantšins and the Nastasia-Miškin-Rogožin one. In our essay we will show, that the novelistic element consists of the community born in the St. Petersburg of the developing middle-classes after Peter and the dramatic element is the second community, which is connected to the times before Peter and to Moscow.

• Details
• Contents