The idiot

The Idiot, someone of “entirely good” nature in a morally corrupt world. The result is Prince Myshkin: naive, sensitive, transparent—thrust into an environment dominated by ambition, selfishness, and hypocrisy.

His goodness, instead of redeeming, disturbs; instead of illuminating, it casts a shadow. Purity becomes a scandal: a society driven by calculation and cynicism does not know how to deal with innocence. What will become of our children?

What we call “idiocy” may ultimately be a form of integrity that the world no longer recognizes.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) is one of the great masters of Russian and world literature. His work delves into the darkest recesses of the human soul: guilt, faith, violence, compassion—and anticipates questions that still trouble modernity today. Imprisoned and sentenced to death for political reasons, he was saved by an Idiot. A real-life Myshkin, and he survived the firing squad and exile in Siberia. We owe the entire work of Dostoevsky to him, the Idiot.