The Parable of the People's Faith and the Motive of the Crusade Fraternization in F.M. Dostoevsky's Novel "The Idiot".

Abstract

The author studied the episode of fraternization by Myshkin and Rogozhin in several aspects: 1) as a specific literary transformation of folk’s legends about fraternization with Christ 2) both as the central episode of the novel’s plot and a reference to its final scene 3) ideologically as a spiritual unit between the protagonists and the Russian folk 4) as a symbolic description of internal contradictions of the Russian national character. The episode is closely connected with the preceding talk about belief in God, in whose course Myshkin refusing to directly answer if he believed in God, tells about his meetings with “common people” and arrives at a conclusion about the chaotic and enigmatic depths of the folk’s consciousness. This was the only discourse about religious belief in the whole Dostoevsky’s Pentateuch preceding “the Brothers Karamazov” which makes Myshkin conclude that religious belief can be obtained from Russian folk as a bearer of religious mission, notwithstanding the dark abyss in his soul. The conclusions based on the analysis lets us rethink and reconstruct Myshkin’s ideological evolution in the whole novel. The article traces Dostoevsky’s reliance on folk legends about fraternization with Christ. It is a pioneering research as it points to parallels with the novel’s final in terms of symbolic gestures, paradoxically completing the rite of exchanging crosses in the second chapter of the novel. Myshkin’s thoughts are proved in the next episode when Rogozhin attempts to kill Myshkin – which would have seemed impossible after the characters exchanged their crosses. Thus the imminent catastrophe outlined in the episode dooms the novel’s final, yet not in terms of religious belief and the author’s dependence on Russian folk.