In September 1867, when Dostoevsky began work on what was to become The Idiot, he was living in Switzerland with his new wife Anna Grigoryevna, having left Russia in order to escape his creditors.
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29 Facts About The Idiot
2.
The Idiot was subject to regular and severe epileptic seizures, including one while Anna was going into labor with their daughter Sofia, delaying their ability to go for a midwife.
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3.
The Idiot is returning to Russia having spent the past four years in a Swiss clinic for treatment of a severe epileptic condition.
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4.
The Idiot readily engages with them and speaks with remarkable candor on a wide variety of subjects—his illness, his impressions of Switzerland, art, philosophy, love, death, the brevity of life, capital punishment, and donkeys.
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5.
The Idiot is about to strike her when the Prince again intervenes, and Ganya slaps him violently in the face.
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6.
The Idiot speaks gently and sincerely, and in response to incredulous queries about what they will live on, produces a document indicating that he will soon be receiving a large inheritance.
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7.
The Idiot knows that Nastasya Filippovna is in Pavlovsk and that Lebedyev is aware of her movements and plans.
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8.
The Idiot tries to attack her but Myshkin restrains him, for which he is violently pushed.
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9.
The Idiot's reflections are interrupted by Keller who has come to offer to be his second at the duel that will inevitably follow from the incident that morning, but Myshkin merely laughs heartily and invites Keller to visit him to drink champagne.
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10.
The Idiot informs the Prince that Nastasya Filippovna wants to see him and that she has been in correspondence with Aglaya.
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11.
The Idiot's is convinced that the Prince is in love with Aglaya, and is seeking to bring them together.
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12.
The Idiot distracts them by pretending to abandon the plan, then suddenly pulls out a small pistol, puts it to his temple and pulls the trigger.
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13.
The Idiot's continues to mock and reproach him, often in front of others, and lets slip that, as far as she is concerned, the problem of Nastasya Filippovna is yet to be resolved.
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14.
The Idiot tries to approach the subject of Nastasya Filippovna again, but she silences him and hurriedly leaves.
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15.
The Idiot is taken home, having left a decidedly negative impression on the guests.
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16.
The Idiot goes after her but Nastasya Filippovna stops him desperately and then faints.
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17.
The Idiot tries to explain to Yevgeny Pavlovich that Nastasya Filippovna is a broken soul, that he must stay with her or she will probably die, and that Aglaya will understand if he is only allowed to talk to her.
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18.
The Idiot is someone who has thought deeply about human nature, morality and spirituality, and is capable of expressing those thoughts with great clarity.
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19.
The Idiot's is torn between Myshkin's compassion and Rogozhin's obsession with her.
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20.
The Idiot's personality possesses the peculiar capacity to relativize everything that disunifies people and imparts a false seriousness to life.
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21.
The Idiot is unable to share Myshkin's intuition of the harmonious unity of all Being, an intuition evoked most intensely earlier in the novel in a description of the pre-epileptic aura.
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22.
The Idiot's unexpected tirade at the Epanchins' dinner party is based in unequivocal assertions that Catholicism is "an unChristian faith", that it preaches the Antichrist, and that its appropriation and distortion of Christ's teaching into a basis for the attainment of political supremacy has given birth to atheism.
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23.
The Idiot's is deeply angry when, instead of "defending himself triumphantly" against his enemies, he tries to make peace with them and offers assistance.
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24.
The Idiot explains it himself in an episode with the roguish but 'honourable' Keller, who has confessed that he has sought the Prince out for motives that are simultaneously noble and mercenary .
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25.
The Idiot commits a theft out of weakness, but is so overcome by shame that it helps precipitate a stroke.
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26.
The Idiot concludes the description with his own reflections on the horror of death by execution:.
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27.
The Idiot carefully explains his reasons for the suggestion, enters in to the emotions and thoughts of the condemned man, and describes in meticulous detail what the painting should depict.
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28.
The Idiot occasionally makes reference to the pre-narrative period prior to his confinement in a Swiss sanatorium, when the symptoms were chronic and he really was "almost an idiot".
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29.
Since The Idiot was first published in Russian, there have been a number of translations into English, including those by:.
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