The Concept of “Book” in Dostoevsky’s Novel The Idiot

Abstract

The article is intended as part of the project “The Role and the Image of Books in F.M. Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot.” Rather than analyzing a particular book, the author focuses on the concept of “book” itself in the novel: where and how it appears and the connections it creates in the text, leading the reader to understand the meanings that Dostoevsky wanted to communicate through it. First of all, the article analyses the presence of books as concrete objects in the novel and shows how the author constantly underlines their quality of being a repository. Further on, the author demonstrates how the level of obrazovanie (eng. “formation” or “education,” etymologically from the word obraz, eng. “image”) in the novel is connected to the quantity of read books and the quality of the reading processes. This connection is different for all characters and discloses its profound meaning in the history of Rogozhin, bezobraznyi (eng. “ugly,” literally “without image”) who needs to obrazovat’sia (eng. “receive formation / education,” same root word). Delving deeper into the theme of reading and understanding books, it is shown how it connects and opposes the two main female protagonists: Nastasya Filippovna and Aglaya. It is disclosed how in the novel the possibility of a correct interpretation depends on whether the book is read to the end: this fact throws a new light on both the contents of Ippolit’s “Explanation” and the central role of the Apocalypse in the novel. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the role of Cervantes’ Don Quixote in Dostoevsky’s novel as a complex subtext operating at different levels in different characters, thus identifying possible directions for further research.

Keywords

• dostoevsky
• the idiot
• book in the book
• concept
• book as a repository
• acquisition of an image
• don quixote