The shattering impression made on Dostoevskij by Holbein's
painting, The Idiot
), as well as his personal
losses during the period of his work on the
name of Holbein has been so strongly interwoven with
(F. Douce).
In my paper, entitled The Dance of Death in Dostoevskij's
I propose the hypothesis that the
structure of
As numerous scholars have shown, on a metaphorical level the image
of My&shachek;kin contains the features of Christ and the poor
knight
(from Pu&shachek;kin's poem The Legend
),
who is a serious Don Quixote,
as Aglaja puts it in the
novel. Yet the evangelical and chivalric sides of My&shachek;kin's
character split apart, as I attempt to prove, in the scene of the
meeting between Nastasja Filippovna and Aglaja. Actually, it is only
this union of Christ-like and knightly qualities that keeps
My&shachek;kin from all the associations that the word
idiocy
suggests, and brings forth the spirituality and
kindness which he radiates in the novel.
When discussing My&shachek;kin's idiocy some scholars substitute the
term jurodivyj
for idiot.
G. Ermilova,
for example, writes that through religious and folk
N. Minihan suggests that the word jurodstvo,
when
applied to My&shachek;kin, implies innocence, deep spirituality
and incompatibility with the outer world.
I argue that
My&shachek;kin can be called a jurodivyj
only for the
short period of time during which the action of the novel takes
place. Beyond this period, during his time in Switzerland,
My&shachek;kin is an idiot in the clinical sense of the word.
Why did Dostoevskij add the qualities of an idiot to the prominent
characteristics of Christ and the poor knight in his hero? I believe
that an insight into Holbein's cycle Totentanz
could
help to answer this question.
Holbein's Totentanz,
which expresses the idea of the
equality of all people in the face of death, consists of forty-nine
engravings on wood. Every piece represents a particular figure (from
The Pope to The Beggar) in the process of being seized by death. Among
these figures only two try to resist death: The Knight (with his
sword) and The Idiot (with his bladder-bauble
). I
suggest that Dostoevskij perceived Holbein's Dead
Christ
in the context of Holbein's
Futher in my paper I investigate the other reflections of the
images of the
I conclude that in spite of the fierce anti-western stance of its
author, the presence of death in the
here and now, but at the same time it is death which has been
defeated.