“The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot | Hacker News Reader

“The Idiot” Savant: On Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Idiot

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111 pointslermontov58 comments

This novel, along with 'Crime and punishement' deal with completely opposite personalities. One has a very optimistic view of the world, the other, Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, despises it and justifies violent crime with this mentality. Wonderful works, both of them. Unlike many, I read TBK first and decided to read Dostoevsky's other works and fell in love. Notes from the underground will always hold a special spot in my heart because of how much I can relate to the protagonist unfortunately.

Can anyone recommend other similar works of literature? I haven't read many books like this but I found Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund and Steppenwolfe by Herman Hesse to be on the same lines (deal with existentialism).

I think you would like Dead Souls by Gogol. It has the same kind of biting criticism as the idiot, but it's a bit darker (if I remember right) - not as dark as C&P, but darker than the idiot

Thanks. Yeah am not really looking for dark themes but as you said, 'biting criticism' of society and 'the human condition'

The idiot is darker than crime and punishment...

Other existentialist works include:

  - "The Plague", by Albert Camus
  - "Metamorphisis", by Franz Kafka
  - "The Moviegoer", by Walker Percy
  - "The Bridge Over San Luis Rey", by Thornton Wilder

I can't say they are enjoyable or relevant in the way Dostoevsky's books are.

If you enjoy these The Roads to Freedom series by Sartre I found great as well.

I found The Plague to be quite enjoyable, while I've struggled through Notes from Underground and The Idiot (the latter moreso because of its length). The Stranger and The Fall by Camus are also incredible, I hope to read all of them in their original French sometime soon.

I'll second "The Moviegoer." It's one of the best things I've read in a while, and I think there's a definite connection with 'Notes from Underground,' for instance. Both convincingly portray characters who are in certain ways despicable—more subtly with Moviegoer—and yet also relatable, especially in ways that derive from probably philosophically and/or socially induced mental conditions.

If you've read The Stranger, I'd describe The Moviegoer as a deeper take on a similar subject, with a more interesting backdrop.

Interesting timing, because I just started Notes from Underground yesterday. I have to say, I'm a really big fan of Russian literature for some reason.

Crime and Punishment, to me, seemed pretty straightforward, where we knew the problems Raskolnikov was having, and pretty sure of the ending where he'd confess and be punished (clearly from the title). Whereas The Brothers Karamazov if I remember, was somewhat more of a non straightforward plot. Where the characters were slightly less straightforward. I checked on wiki and said that Crime and Punishment was fourteen years before Karamazov, 1866 to 1880.

Besides Dostoevsky, I really liked a few of the Checkov short stories, and then Master and Margarita, which was written in the somewhat early 1900s. Not sure if those related to the existentialism you're talking about, but all unique.

I think my main like of both of these, and books in general, is the ability to see how similar humans are from centuries ago, and in different cultures. With the feeling of desire to be punished, or in a Checkov story, falling out of love with a woman and not really knowing how to end things. Being able to see relationships and similar thoughts from completely different people is very comforting. Otherwise we all could be stuck in our heads thinking about how everyone is different from you, where we're all more alike than we think.

Thank you, great suggestions. Adding it to my reading list.

I second Master and Margarita, epicly funny at times and more high energy but still very deep in it's approach to humanity.

i immediately fell in love with dostoevsky's work (just finished my third read of TBK), but it took me a long time to get into david foster wallace - now, i think of them as very similar. DFW is known for a lot of things (long books, footnotes on footnotes, early death) but to me at the end of the day both infinite jest and the pale king (his posthumous novel) are both incredible works that ultimately deal with existentialism. what made me think of them esp. is your comparison of C&P (cynical) and the Idiot (optimistic).

to me, infinite jest is the cynical but fun work (it's about a lot, but it's a lot about how people use drugs and entertainment and tennis(!) to (unsuccessfully) distract themselves from their larger existential problems), and pale king is the optimistic but more serious work (but with a strange reason for optimism, built in large part around the transcendence of being able to tolerate crazy boredom - it's a post-modern book about IRS employees for heaven's sake. there's a good dose of "we should probably be better citizens" - one of my fave sections describes how US taxpayers view themselves as "consumers of the government" vs. "participating citizens", digs really deep)

i actually like pale king slightly more even tho it's posthumous. it's also shorter (500 vs. 1000), i'd highly recommend starting there, though since you did TBK first, maybe you can just jump into infinite jest no problem =)

I gave up reading Infinite Jest after getting 10-15% into it. I decided to come back to it later but never got back to it. It was somewhat difficult for me (not American). But this was a few years ago. Will try it again sometime soon.

ya, i did the same, took a few tries - i actually ended up reading the pale king first, might be worth trying that. it's shorter (around 500 pages) and i think written in a more digestible/measured manner - still a DFW work, the plots are barely discernible until pretty late in the work but there's less gymnastics to the writing, i like to think because he was more mature at that point but maybe the editor played more of a role since it was posthumous, who knows!

How do you figure C&P as the cynical work and the idiot as the optimistic one? Wouldn't it be the other way around

As a Russian, I don’t understand how Americans can “get into” Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. The cultural background required to understand them is simply not there, so you’re getting maybe 50% of what’s there, and that’s an optimistic estimate.

Likewise, I’m not sure I fully understand Hemingway, Steinbeck, etc. I enjoy their work, to be sure, but I’m afraid not to the extent Americans enjoy it. Thus far I have not found an American novelist who would be anywhere near Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. My favorite US novel is “Grapes of Wrath”. Absolutely beatiful work when read in the language it was written in.

My favorite Russian novel is “War and Peace”. Russian school children are forced to read it when they’re like 15, and they don’t get it, of course. After re-reading it at 40 I was blown away. Such immense depth, such masterful pacing and character development.

I have recently re-read Crime and Punishment, another one of those books Russian school children are forced to read with no hope of understanding. I was likewise impressed with depth and sheer brutality of it. I wouldn’t say Raskolnikov hated the world. That’s not quite right, too black and white. Dostoevsky operates in the gray area. Raskolnikov was, at his core, a kind young man (see eg his empathy for Sonya), but an extreme nihilist, and he was stuck between a rock and a hard place, from which his nihilism offered him no escape. Struggling to reconcile his ideology with his humanity, he commits a stupid crime, for which his humanity makes him suffer immensely. If he really did despise everything, he would sleep well.

You are not the first Russian I have heard say that about Dostoevsky.

That’s because Russians themselves find it difficult to fully contextualize Dostoevsky. A couple hundred years from now they may not be able to do so at all, and the full depth will become inaccessible to anybody other than historians of the period in which Dostoevsky lived. Russia is still similar enough to that so a Russian of today can fill in the gaps as she reads the books. Not just what happened, that part is trivial, but how the characters really _felt_.

People still read Shakespeare, whose world was even more remote from the one that English speakers live in today. Heck, they read Homer and Virgil and Ovid.

American here. I could never "get into" American novelists like Hemingway and Steinbeck because I found their characters unrelatably thin automatons whereas Tolstoy's and Dostoevsky's characters are recognizably and deeply human. The only other English writer I have found who comes close is Graham Greene. I find it odd to think the socio-cultural understanding of a native is required to "get" the works of foreign authors as I consider such things ancillary to the point of art, which is to reveal what either cannot be or is insufficiently explained by direct language. I read to be able to get inside the minds of others and see what human existence is like in a way that is impossible from IRL interaction, not to imbibe the works as a socio-cultural commentary or to "deconstruct" them into the foundations for my own philosophical/political arguments/ramblings/delusions.

I don’t know man, I was poor myself at one point, and I’ve found Steinbeck’s characters to be very 3D and relatable. Grapes of Wrath is more like an impressionist painting. He doesn’t draw every detail, you’re supposed to transport yourself there and live it. If it helps, I have listened to The Grapes of Wrath as an audiobook, and I’ve found the version that Audible carries to be excellently narrated.

But you’re right, old school Russian writers did deliver character development in spades. Maybe at times a little too much, as in the case of Tolstoy. Though I suspect it was in part so that the reader still has something to hold onto as the story progresses, because characters sometimes disappear for a while.

> I could never "get into" American novelists like Hemingway and Steinbeck because I found their characters unrelatably thin automatons ...

I pretty much agree with you on Hemingway, and maybe there are examples in Steinbeck's work, but at least in his case I can say that most of what I've read had a pretty high degree of realism and profundity. Maybe check out 'Winter of our Discontent' if you'd like another sample.

What sort of cultural points might be missed on a non-Russian person reading Dostoevsky? I just finished Crime and Punishment a couple months back and am curious, if you have the time.

I'd be curious too. I read Crime and Punishment, Notes from Underground, The Double, and other short stories—and I found them to make quite a bit of sense.

I didn't get the sense that I'd extracted everything from "The Grand Inquisitor" (excerpt from The Brothers Karamazov), but I got the feeling it was just because it was more deep and compact, but would yield fruit with further study (even as an American).

GEB (Hofstadter's book) has a chapter about exactly this. Using Crime and Punishment as an example it is shown how different translations struggle with the lack of context.

ah shit. i also read C&P last year and GEB is on my shelf untouched. welp now i’m obligated...

Haha—this is the first thing I've heard about GEB in years that makes me again somewhat interested in reading it. There was a point when I was a teenager where it seemed like probably the most interesting book on the planet, and I'd read a decent bit of it then; but years later—after studying a bunch of math, CS, and philosophy stuff—when I'd consider reading it there just didn't appear to be enough new meaty stuff of interest (though it still looks like an enjoyable packaging of many already familiar things). I also disagree fundamentally with the possibility of a material 'strange loop' resulting in another ontological category, so I feel like I'd be missing drive to reach the conclusion.

I'd be curious to hear any opinions on GEB by those with decently strong math, cs, and/or philosophy backgrounds—might it still be worth reading? (I mean it's damn long...)

If you are interested in the context analysis in Crime and Punishment then you can read just those few pages. He goes over just the first couple sentences of the book if I recall correctly. It's not an explanation of the context for the entire book by any means but an example of how much context could be needed to read a simple sentence.

His essay about machine translation is quite illustrative of the issues of cultural context as well. Even the best translations lose a substantial chunk of meaning, because it’s often not just what the author said, but also how he said it, which particular words were used, and subtle other meanings and gradations attached to that particular choice of words (and, in Russian, the word order as well).

When I was growing up I read a ton of sci-fi. One of my favorite works is “Stranger in a strange land” by Robert Heinlein. I had two different translations of it. One was good, another one was a turd, and neither came anywhere close to living in the US for 15 years and _then_ re-reading the book in its original form. And that’s sci-fi, a relatively “shallow” literary genre.

Indeed, while a separate issue from cultural context of 19th century Russian literature, translation is a literary genre by itself. I also noticed that Americans are generally unaware of this. Not that I'd blame them. I wouldn't care about translation myself if I had been a native English speaker and enjoyed immediate access to the enourmous body of English literature :)

Not that guy, but, Dostoevsky is pretty frequently referencing thinkers and cultural currents that were important in Russia at the time he was writing, and there are references like the "yellow card" and "ordinary paper" that are just totally opaque unless someone explains them to you.

> I have not found an American novelist who would be anywhere near Dostoevsky or Tolstoy.

I haven't found any Europeans either. Of course all this is art, thus a matter of personal perception, but D. and T. are the best authors I've came across so far.

I find the depth of D's characters breathtaking.

I am Indian. You're right, one can never experience Russian literature in a way that a Russian does. But there are quite similarities in cultures shaped by religion because there are similarities in religion.

Please don’t take this as a put down or anything. I’m sure much of the meaning in Indian literature is culturally inaccessible to me as well. The problem is 100% symmetrical, one just needs to be aware of it.

I mean not to get all postmodern on you but I would argue most media stands alone to be interpreted. You can enhance or color a work by knowing factual and historical details but humans are pretty good at finding meaning in almost anything. Sometimes I think the less an object has on the surface the more we take it as a challenge to inscribe the thing with meaning.

On balance I think that's creativity in a nutshell and a good thing, though it can be taken to socially obnoxious lengths. The best kinds of "misreading" are where new and interesting ideas are born rather than just your run of the mill internet contrarianism. But the former type of creativity usually requires a kind of foresight and conviction we save for our revered term "artist."

> As a Russian, I don’t understand how Americans can “get into” Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. The cultural background required to understand them is simply not there, so you’re getting maybe 50% of what’s there, and that’s an optimistic estimate.

I'm from Pakistan, and I've adored everything I've read so far of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. I don't think you need so much cultural background to "get into" either author. In fact, part of why I enjoyed War & Peace and Anna Karenina so much is precisely because of the uncanny parallels between 19th century Russian aristocrats and modern Pakistani society. As just one example, the view of French as a more modern, cultured language vs Russian parallels how English is viewed in Pakistan.

I'm sure I must have missed out on some cultural context. But I would say I missed perhaps 10% of what's in the books, not 50% :)

I'm actually reading Crime and Punishment now, and the edition I'm reading has pretty frequent footnotes explaining all the Russian cultural references. But really, it goes beyond being Russian, doesn't it? You'd miss stuff if you weren't very familiar with the Bible, or by virtue of the fact that the Imperial Russian system it's set in no longer exists, or if you hadn't read Hugo or Pushkin, or a million other things. I'm not sure anybody catches everything casually reading the book, or even through years of study.

Hemingway himself considered himself pretty influenced by Russian authors. It's often speculated that his terse writing was in part influenced by Constance Garnett's translations of them.

I recently read Despair and Bend Sinister, both by Vladimir Nabokov, and enjoyed both greatly.

David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest also deals with existentialism.

I don't know, but I can't decide who I like more: Dostoevsky or Tolstoy. Have you read any Tolstoy? I loved Anna Karenina. It may be my favorite novel, period.

Both writers are philosophical and psychological to a degree of depth and honesty that I'm just not used to.

If you haven't, try Ursula Le Guin. Her psychologies aren't rendered in quite as much detail as Dostoyevsky's—perhaps because she comes after and therefore needs to break less ground there?—but she's unique (in my experience of) sci-fi/fantasy for her deep grasp of and willingness to explore psychology, individually and collectively.

I haven't. I've heard of it but didn't know it also as good (or better). Adding it to my reading list. Thanks.

>Can anyone recommend other similar works of literature? I haven't read many books like this but I found Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund and Steppenwolfe by Herman Hesse to be on the same lines (deal with existentialism).

If you enjoyed both Dostoyevsky, existentialism, and Hesse's work, you will like Colin Wilson's "The Outsider": https://www.amazon.com/Outsider-Exploration-Rebellion-Creati...

which deals with both (and more) and expands on these concepts.

Wilson ended up doing more fringe work, but this was his critically acclaimed initial foray into writing.

Do a deep dive on Saramago. You can start with Blindness. I'm biased because I'm from Portugal but the man was a genius. In the end you may leave with more questions than when you started the book,but you will be satisfied!

The novel is beautiful, and it's beauty is not in a traditional story arch, it's in the flawed characters. The mystery of whether Myshkin is an idiot remains through and with every scene that thought is put into question. Dostoevsky was not know for his structure, but for his characters and their meditations on life and religion.

Doesn't the word 'savant' imply wisdom? Prince Myshkin is as naive as they come. I would think someone in his shoes wouldn't mind being walked all over like he is in the book.

"Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces."

The oxymoron "idiot savant" was used for the first time by John Down during his studies. The etymology is in the scientific literature.

Today we would use a less controversial term like "savant syndrome"... It seems appropriate given the title of the book (and the plot).

I always took it as an eulogy to the plasticity of the human intellect: we always have something to learn from anybody.

I think the title is playing on the phrase "idiot savant" to indicate Dostoevsky himself, as the savant who wrote "The Idiot".

I think the main character is a Savant, who others view as an idiot. The title and its characterization are ironic. He is the smartest character in the book, but viewed as an idiot, due to a consistently ignorant society.

Not unlike, for example, Sufi poets who claim to be gods and then are humiliated and executed for heresy. His label of “idiot” is his execution. A crowd crying to crucify Christ.

He is naive, but seems to be self aware. He does realize he is not street smart, but being naive implies he is unaware of this. Prince Myshkin doesn't want to change and well realizes the cunning nature of some people around him.

He still isn't a savant, but calling him naive wouldn't be accurate either considering he did have diminished mental and physical faculties.

His words and actions show he is incapable of viewing things from others' perspectives, as demonstrated by trying to marry Nastasya. He may be aware of his own motives but he is very unaware of how the motives of others contrast.

The thing that most impressed me about the Idiot was the extreme complexity of the interpersonal relationships of the characters. It made me think that Dostoevsky was vastly overstating the intelligence of the average Russian, or maybe they were all that smart back in the day. Some of the monologues in which the main characters explain the various interpersonal relationships and intrigues are as hard to follow as any I've ever read. The only thing that comes close is some of Pynchon's stuff.

I'm tempted to think that's an artifact of a tendency in writers to give their characters thought processes resembling their own.

I don't think it's anything especially related to writing; I think everyone does it in their normal life: you want to think about how so and so is going to react to whatever, but the best we can really do is consider them as basically like ourselves +/- some known differences (which for many things is sufficient, but in my experience can also lead to absurdities due to how vastly differently some folks think).

TLDR;

Dostoevsky was considered to be a genius by many, but gave nearly every dime he ever made away, a condition that led to his unpayable debts, which he exacerbated by gambling, which led to exile.

Early in life, moments away from being executed, Tsar Nicholas spared him and the other prisoners from death but sent him to a Siberian prison for four years.

He suffered from epilepsy and had a fit while his wife went into labor. Unable to call for a midwife for "hours" their child died, and Dostoevsky blamed himself.

The Idiot breaks a lot of literary conventions, but it works, just as Dostoevsky lived a broken life, and yet is considered by many a genius.

The article is very good. I recommend reading it in full.

WRT gambling he was a fiend for the roulette wheel IIRC.

The Idiot is one of my favorite books of all time. Reading it in high school was definitely a formative experience. It was my first introduction to many existential concepts; particularly the parts about the painting by Hans Holbein the Younger.

Has anyone ever examined whether serialization had an impact on the quality of literature?

How would you tell?

Also: written in Florence (mostly).

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