Poor Myshkin
Dostoevsky’s Failed Fool-in-Christ
by Steven Faulkner
One afternoon last May I invited a good friend of mine to come over and discuss something that had been needling me about the writings of Dostoevsky. I had been reading Dostoevsky and wrestling with the problem of portraying the good man, the saintly man—not just the naive simpleton who sometimes passes for an innocent man. I found the questions presented intriguing and compelling, not only artistically and intellectually, but spiritually. What is it to be innocent? In the Russian religious tradition, there is what is called a fool-in-Christ, a person who appears as a fool to the world, who chooses to live and act so, but on a higher plane reflects the wisdom of God. This is not wisdom by rational argument, but by the force and beauty of a saintly life. I think St. Francis and some of his followers might easily fit into this tradition. I am not prepared to say that Dostoevsky was trying to portray the classic fool-in-Christ as such in his novels, but in some such “foolish” way he grappled with the problem of the come to mind as having such a character, but I had been particularly vexed by the character of Prince Myshkin in The Idiot.
My friend is an English teacher at a nearby university who has long been fascinated by Dostoevsky. He is a thoughtful man whose opinions I value. I shall call him by my nickname for him, Raphael, after Milton’s angel and “sociable Spirit” who descended from ethereal heights (in this case the more “earthereal” university) to explain everything to innocent Adam. He brought along a student friend whom I had met several times. I will call him Phaedrus (via Plato and Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) for he is a seeker of truth, if a rather negative soul.
That May afternoon was mild and lovely. We settled into lawn chairs in my back yard and sipped iced tea. The irises my wife had planted were up, unfolding petals of deep purple, the hawthorn was thick with fresh leaves, and below the hedge the tiny white crowns of lily-of-the-valley had appeared.
I had prepared for Raphael’s arrival with a quote from Milton:
“And now is Raphael come
Into the blissful field, through Groves of Myrrh,
And flowering Odours, Cassia, Nard, and Balm.”
Raphael smiled his recognition of the quote. “An appropriate afternoon to discuss Dostoevsky,” he said.
“Appropriate?” said Phaedrus. “If we’re to talk about Dostoevsky, it should be night, preferably cold and damp with wet snow. Or better yet, a black night with every brick and gutter exhaling spectral mists while some wretched soul wanders forlorn up a dark stinking alley talking very rationally about suicide.”
“You’ve read The Dream of the Ridiculous Man,” said Raphael.
“I’ve read Dostoevsky,” retorted Phaedrus. “That’s vintage Dostoevsky.”
Steven Faulkner teaches creative writing at Longwood University in southern Virginia. He is the author of Waterwalk: A Passage of Ghosts (2007) and Bitterroot: Echoes of Beauty and Loss (2016). Both books are memoirs of father-son journeys that followed the paths of missionary priests: Marquette (in Waterwalk) and De Smet (in Bitterroot).
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