It would be a shame to miss such a stunning scene.ĭostoyevsky's literary power is beyond imaginable - just take a look at the list of writers and philosophers who confess that Fyodor Mikhailovich influenced them greatly. Myshkin’s words on a condemned man are particularly powerful, delivered by a man who knew what he was talking about. For days, the future writer was waiting for his death and this dreadful experience changed him forever and deeply. Just minutes before the execution he was told that tsar Nicholas I replaced his sentence with several years of hard labor. Indeed, Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death himself, back in 1849, for being a member of a revolutionary circle. “His three descriptions of the last moments of a condemned man count among the most thrilling in literature, all the more so because we know they were not made up,” Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University Gary Saul Morson wrote in his article on The Idiot. In one of the first chapters, Prince Myshkin tells a story of a man sentenced to death. Spoiler alert: the lying man is not Prince Myshkin. There are many unforgettable charactersĪ scene from 'The Idiot' film (1958). His good will rarely seems to pay off and, to avoid spoilers, let’s say that the ending is not exactly a happy one.

People around him, however, take Myshkin for an imbecile – an idiot (he does have some medical problems).

In the writer’s blueprints Dostoyevsky refers to Myshkin as “Prince Christ,” and he is indeed Christ-like: full of love and forgiveness, with no touch of anger. “Dostoyevsky’s idea was to portray a perfect man, full of sympathy for everyone and able to understand everyone in the world of evil, filthy people,” the Polka website explains. The novel’s protagonist Prince Lev Myshkin is an ideal man. As Fyodor Dostoyevsky proves in The Idiot, being perfect is not a good case. “Why can’t I be perfect – a good, all-loving human being who helps everyone unselfishly?” we might ask ourselves during these uneasy times. Some people may question if they are a good or bad person, especially if hungover or after cutting someone off in traffic. 'The Idiot' (1958) - a scene where Prince Myshkin arrives in Russia from Switzerland, where he had been treated from epilepsy.

The idiot fyodor dostoyevsky