Riassunto di The Idiot

Punto chiave 1 di 9

A prince arrives on a winter train

The novel opens on a cold November morning on a train running into Petersburg. Two young men share a third class carriage and start to talk. One is Prince Myshkin, thin, fair, wrapped in a thin cloak, coming back from Switzerland with a small bundle. The other is Parfyon Rogozhin, dark, heavy and restless, who has just inherited a huge fortune from his father.

The prince is open at once. He answers every question, including the rude ones, and he tells the strangers his illness, his poverty and his purpose. He says he has almost no relatives left in Russia and hopes to call on a distant kinswoman, General Epanchin's wife. A clerk on the train listens and sneers, but the prince does not seem to notice the sneer. His lack of defense is the first thing the reader learns about him.

Rogozhin, meanwhile, pours out his own story. He is mad with love for a woman named Nastasya Filippovna, and he has spent his father's money on jewels for her. He speaks of her with a hunger that is close to pain. The prince listens with real sympathy, and the two men part almost as friends, which is odd, since they are so unlike.

From the first pages Dostoyevsky sets two ways of loving side by side. Rogozhin loves by owning, by gripping and by fear of losing. The prince loves by pity and attention, with nothing asked in return. The novel will keep testing which of these loves can do harm, and which can save anyone.

The train scene also shows how the book works. Strangers confess at once, gossip travels fast, and every talk carries more than it seems. Within a few hours the prince has learned names that will rule his life. He steps out into Petersburg knowing nobody, yet already tied to a rival and to a woman he has never seen.