The Tragic Beauty of Goodness

Fyodor Dostoevsky, while writing The Idiot, wondered, “What would it be like if there were a completely beautiful and pure person in this world?”

This imagination gave birth to Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin—a man who is incredibly kind, genuine, and almost unbearably good.

But in the false, glitzy, and selfish society of nineteenth-century St. Petersburg, people mistake his kindness for weakness. His innocence becomes his curse.

Myshkin returns to Russia after spending several years in a Swiss sanatorium. His illness (epilepsy) is cured, or perhaps just calmed down a bit. But the society he returns to is full of deceit, pretense, and false relationships. Yet, Myshkin stands out among everyone as a beacon—he never lies or deceives anyone.

He listens attentively when others are merely pretending.

 He forgives when people mock him.

He sees beauty even in the broken.

Those around him—the cunning Rogozhin, the wounded Nastasya Filippovna, and the restless Aglaya—all see their true selves in him. Myshkin becomes a mirror for them, in which they see their own desires and moral degradation—and that is why they hate him.

This is Dostoevsky's greatest irony:In a corrupt world, goodness seems unbearable.

Myshkin's kindness makes everyone uncomfortable, because he shows how low others have fallen.

His kindness is called foolishness, his truthfulness is called foolishness.

He is an "idiot" not because he lacks understanding, but because he refuses to lie even after understanding everything.

Prince Myshkin's tragedy isn't that he couldn't survive in society, but that society couldn't tolerate a man as pure-hearted as him.

His love for Nastasya Filippovna—pure, selfless, and almost godlike—ultimately brings destruction, not salvation.

He can save neither her nor himself, because in the world they live in, there's no place for kindness and compassion.

Dostoyevsky said, "Beauty will save the world."

But in "The Idiot," he shows that true, moral beauty is long killed by this world.

Myshkin's fate is the fate of every person who tries to remain idealistic in this harsh world—they are not understood, exploited, and ultimately destroyed.

Yet, through Myshkin, Dostoevsky leaves us with a question—

Can a soul remain pure in this world filled with lies and deceit?

If not,then perhaps the real "idiots" are not those who love too much,but those who have forgotten how to love.

Read more : - Infinite Existence