What follows is a short response to The Idiot. It lacks the depth and exegesis of a "paper", but I think it can serve as a decent introduction to some important concerns. A warning: My response is engaged with the end of the novel, so if you have not read it and are concerned about the "surprise" of plot you might not want to read further.
The following question guides this speculative attempt: Considering the novel's ending, does Dostoevsky's The Idiot present a counterpart or an alternative to Holbein's painting Christ's Body in the Tomb?
What of this ending, where and how does it end?
The final chapter alone bears a subtitle. It says—"Conclusion", signifying a wholly unambiguous closure and cessation. This subtitle marks an important disjunction from the preceding narrative. The Conclusion is a highly compressed termination, a tight four pages that covers over six years (!) of upheaval with an abrupt and swift economy. Considering that Part One alone devoted nearly two-hundred pages to the day of Prince Myshkin's arrival, this turn of the work warrants closer attention.
The Conclusion describes the trial and punishment of Rogozhin, the death of the consumptive Ippolit, the scandal of Aglaya's flight and conversion, and the complete deterioration of Prince Myshkin. It is an almost clinical account of the trauma and suffering surrounding and radiating from the arrival and "departure" of the prince. The last paragraphs depict what can be described as a wake. The battered and vacant prince is surrounded by mourners and lies motionless, confined to his bed and the walls of the asylum. What scene does Dostoevsky leave us with at the end? It is a recreation of Holbein's painting.
The compressed conclusion does not allow for the expansive and disclosive exegesis of the preceding text. There is room only for the reduction of summary. The culmination of the intricate and delicate weft of narrative is a startlingly compact and mechanical enumeration of "events". Like Christ's tomb, there is headspace for the oppressive and narrow truth of "naturalism" and nothing beyond. The utterly tragic fates of the characters of the novel are the wounds manifest in "the idiot's" vacant stare. Death and disintegration in Dostoevsky's work is displayed by our narrator like the bruises and sores of Holbein's Christ. In both views of "The Dead Christ", the perspective is restricted to the pure materiality of suffering.
However, Dostoevsky's final chapter is not simply a repetition of Holbein's work. Nor is it a termination in which the possibility of transcendence (of a space for truth beyond the limits of naturalism) is snuffed out. Rather, the Conclusion is a recapitulation (as of a theme in a piece of music) of Holbein's scene of the tomb. Due to its new position at the end of the "development" of the novel, the return to Christ's tomb resounds in a new and different way.
This scene (theme) returns and is "heard" a total of three times in The Idiot. First, in the prince's fateful visit to Rogozhin's home (a building that mirrors the interiority and decay of the painting it holds). The two "brothers" view the painting, and upon learning of Ragozhin's fondness of it the prince exclaims, "A man could even lose his faith from that painting!" The "problem" of Holbein's art is first raised and heard—what if Christ was just a man? Is the truth of the scene the restricted view of the abused corpse and nothing more? This próblēma penetrates to the heart of faith, to the possibility of resurrection and transcendence.
The scene of Christ's tomb returns and is heard a second time in the words of Ippolit's "Necessary Explanation". In it, he speaks of the impression that assailed him, of the implacable, nullifying, and all-consuming reality of an entropic “nature”:
[Christ's] face has not been spared in the least; it is nature alone and truly as the dead body of any man must be after such torments... But, strangely, when you look at the corpse of this tortured man, a particular and curious question arises: if all his disciples... if all those who believed in him and worshiped him had seen a corpse like that... how could they believe, looking at such a corpse, that this sufferer would resurrect? Here the notion involuntarily occurs to you that if death is so terrible and the laws of nature are so powerful, how can they be overcome?
How can Dostoevsky overcome the naturalism he perceives in Holbein's painting? How does The Idiot secure a space for the possibility of something beyond the limits of the tomb? The novel attempts to overcome Holbein's scene through a return to it by way of recapitulation. It is a testament to Dostoevsky's modesty and deep understanding of the problem that he does not attempt to step beyond Holbein's painting; the resurrection is still in question, it is still to come. Indeed, the novel ends in the tomb (the third and final return). Dostoevsky does not (and cannot) merely "solve" or resolve the problems of faith and transcendence. To lay claim to such a "solution" would not signal an overcoming, but a flight from the matter. Rather, the recapitulation of the finale recasts the questions posed by Holbein's painting—questions that now bear the weight, so to speak, of the preceding novel.
The weight of the text is its disclosure of a truth other than naturalism—the truth of art. More precisely, its essence lies in this disclosure itself, the truth of revelation (in the broadest sense), in the language of The Idiot. In Dostoevsky’s novel, "characters", relationships, secrets, fate, and the essence of truth are revealed (unconcealed) in a way that perforates and leaps beyond the scope of naturalism. The return to Holbein’s painting is a recasting of its dilemma after the retrieval of truth as revelation. Once this “weight” is brought to bear, the portrait of Christ opens up in new way. No longer is the scene the swollen corpse of the “King of the Jews” and nothing more.
It is the advent of the prince, and the works of truth throughout the novel that overcomes the reductive naturalism so dominant in or first encounters with Holbein’s scene of the tomb. The author secures this clearing through the subtlety of the disclosive power of art. This openness remains as a hint to resurrection (that is always to come) even in the tight confines of Christ’s tomb. In The Idiot, Dostoevsky restores the question and problem of transcendence to Holbein’s art through a retrieval (recapitulation) that reveals the painter's tomb to hold more than the body of naturalism.
The following question guides this speculative attempt: Considering the novel's ending, does Dostoevsky's The Idiot present a counterpart or an alternative to Holbein's painting Christ's Body in the Tomb?
What of this ending, where and how does it end?
The final chapter alone bears a subtitle. It says—"Conclusion", signifying a wholly unambiguous closure and cessation. This subtitle marks an important disjunction from the preceding narrative. The Conclusion is a highly compressed termination, a tight four pages that covers over six years (!) of upheaval with an abrupt and swift economy. Considering that Part One alone devoted nearly two-hundred pages to the day of Prince Myshkin's arrival, this turn of the work warrants closer attention.
The Conclusion describes the trial and punishment of Rogozhin, the death of the consumptive Ippolit, the scandal of Aglaya's flight and conversion, and the complete deterioration of Prince Myshkin. It is an almost clinical account of the trauma and suffering surrounding and radiating from the arrival and "departure" of the prince. The last paragraphs depict what can be described as a wake. The battered and vacant prince is surrounded by mourners and lies motionless, confined to his bed and the walls of the asylum. What scene does Dostoevsky leave us with at the end? It is a recreation of Holbein's painting.
The compressed conclusion does not allow for the expansive and disclosive exegesis of the preceding text. There is room only for the reduction of summary. The culmination of the intricate and delicate weft of narrative is a startlingly compact and mechanical enumeration of "events". Like Christ's tomb, there is headspace for the oppressive and narrow truth of "naturalism" and nothing beyond. The utterly tragic fates of the characters of the novel are the wounds manifest in "the idiot's" vacant stare. Death and disintegration in Dostoevsky's work is displayed by our narrator like the bruises and sores of Holbein's Christ. In both views of "The Dead Christ", the perspective is restricted to the pure materiality of suffering.
However, Dostoevsky's final chapter is not simply a repetition of Holbein's work. Nor is it a termination in which the possibility of transcendence (of a space for truth beyond the limits of naturalism) is snuffed out. Rather, the Conclusion is a recapitulation (as of a theme in a piece of music) of Holbein's scene of the tomb. Due to its new position at the end of the "development" of the novel, the return to Christ's tomb resounds in a new and different way.
This scene (theme) returns and is "heard" a total of three times in The Idiot. First, in the prince's fateful visit to Rogozhin's home (a building that mirrors the interiority and decay of the painting it holds). The two "brothers" view the painting, and upon learning of Ragozhin's fondness of it the prince exclaims, "A man could even lose his faith from that painting!" The "problem" of Holbein's art is first raised and heard—what if Christ was just a man? Is the truth of the scene the restricted view of the abused corpse and nothing more? This próblēma penetrates to the heart of faith, to the possibility of resurrection and transcendence.
The scene of Christ's tomb returns and is heard a second time in the words of Ippolit's "Necessary Explanation". In it, he speaks of the impression that assailed him, of the implacable, nullifying, and all-consuming reality of an entropic “nature”:
[Christ's] face has not been spared in the least; it is nature alone and truly as the dead body of any man must be after such torments... But, strangely, when you look at the corpse of this tortured man, a particular and curious question arises: if all his disciples... if all those who believed in him and worshiped him had seen a corpse like that... how could they believe, looking at such a corpse, that this sufferer would resurrect? Here the notion involuntarily occurs to you that if death is so terrible and the laws of nature are so powerful, how can they be overcome?
How can Dostoevsky overcome the naturalism he perceives in Holbein's painting? How does The Idiot secure a space for the possibility of something beyond the limits of the tomb? The novel attempts to overcome Holbein's scene through a return to it by way of recapitulation. It is a testament to Dostoevsky's modesty and deep understanding of the problem that he does not attempt to step beyond Holbein's painting; the resurrection is still in question, it is still to come. Indeed, the novel ends in the tomb (the third and final return). Dostoevsky does not (and cannot) merely "solve" or resolve the problems of faith and transcendence. To lay claim to such a "solution" would not signal an overcoming, but a flight from the matter. Rather, the recapitulation of the finale recasts the questions posed by Holbein's painting—questions that now bear the weight, so to speak, of the preceding novel.
The weight of the text is its disclosure of a truth other than naturalism—the truth of art. More precisely, its essence lies in this disclosure itself, the truth of revelation (in the broadest sense), in the language of The Idiot. In Dostoevsky’s novel, "characters", relationships, secrets, fate, and the essence of truth are revealed (unconcealed) in a way that perforates and leaps beyond the scope of naturalism. The return to Holbein’s painting is a recasting of its dilemma after the retrieval of truth as revelation. Once this “weight” is brought to bear, the portrait of Christ opens up in new way. No longer is the scene the swollen corpse of the “King of the Jews” and nothing more.
It is the advent of the prince, and the works of truth throughout the novel that overcomes the reductive naturalism so dominant in or first encounters with Holbein’s scene of the tomb. The author secures this clearing through the subtlety of the disclosive power of art. This openness remains as a hint to resurrection (that is always to come) even in the tight confines of Christ’s tomb. In The Idiot, Dostoevsky restores the question and problem of transcendence to Holbein’s art through a retrieval (recapitulation) that reveals the painter's tomb to hold more than the body of naturalism.
Some of the aspects of the Prince that lie in contrast to my own way of existence have given me plenty to think over.
