Space Beyond Time: The Tenth Chapter of The Apocalypse in the Crucial Metaphysical Scene of The Idiot

Abstract

The article examines the central metaphysical scene of The Idiot, marked by events from the strange “capture” of a knife lying on the table by Myshkin, which Rogozhin takes away from him twice, becoming increasingly irritated, to the moment when this knife in Rogozhin’s hand falls on the prince — and does not reach him. The central part of this scene contains a direct reference to chapter 10 of the Revelation of John the Theologian, the only chapter in which the prophet has to conceal and not write what he heard. The only key to the hidden becomes the Angel’s oath that “there will be no more time” — and that after the trumpet of the seventh Angel, “the mystery of God will be fulfilled, as He preached in the gospel to His slaves the prophets.” Dostoevsky comments on the words of the Angel directly in the novel’s text in an unusual way for that time. The mystery of the new existence of mankind beyond time was pondered by Dostoevsky back in 1864, in the record “Masha lies on the table...” — a record that underlies the main idea of The Idiot. In the crucial metaphysical scene of the novel, Dostoevsky shows how the mode of being beyond time can be realized already within the limits of “the proximate and the visible in its flowing immediacy.”

Keywords

• dostoevsky
• the idiot
• the way of constructing the text
• “masha lies on the table...”
• apocalypse
• mohammed
• epilepsy
• temperance (xiv arcanum of the tarot).