Dostoevsky: How Beauty will Save the World

His ancient solution to the modern problem of nihilism

No one ever captured the tragic hope of modern man in a single sentence like Dostoevsky did.

His novel The Idiot is the one masterpiece that few people ever hear of. Compared to his other great works — Crime and Punishment, Demons, and Brothers Karamazov — The Idiot has the least notoriety, yet it's the most prescient for teaching modern man to live a meaningful life today.

The Idiot is a weird novel, even for Dostoevsky’s standards. He’s known for his anti-hero protagonists and cunningly brilliant villains, but The Idiot features a protagonist so gentle and kind-hearted he draws comparisons to Christ himself. Yet this is no feel good story of finding redemption in a cynical modern world. This story is a tragedy, one that points to a brutal reality of the human condition — we live in a fallen world that despises Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. It’s hard enough to be virtuous yourself, even more challenging to hold onto Hope and Love when the world hates you for it.

However, Dostoevsky’s genius lies in this one idea:

It’s this same worldly contempt for Beauty that can actually save your life. It’s the very struggle and fight for truth, beauty, and goodness that makes your life meaningful, even in a world as miserable as 19th century pre-communist Russia.

Here then, is the brutal reality of human nature according to Dostoevsky, and the hidden wisdom of The Idiot that can help you live virtuously in the face of evil.

Heavenly Innocence

The novel begins with protagonist Prince Myshkin on a train to Russia after spending years in a Swiss sanatorium, recovering from illness. Though he’s kind and gentle-hearted, he’s returning to a world of hard-hearted, angry, and broken personalities in 19th century Russia. Beyond Myshkin, there are two important characters to track.

First is Nastasya, a beautiful woman who was abused by a wealthy benefactor in childhood. As a tormented and broken adult, she uses her beauty for manipulative and self-destructive purposes. She finds herself attracted to Myshkin for his innocence, but despising him for his naivete.

The other character is Roghozin. He loves Nastaysa, but his love is sick, perverted, and possessive. Jealousy flares at the mere thought of another man having her. He grows to despise Myshkin as competition for her heart, yet Roghozin too feels conflicted. The Prince is too pitiful to hate. There’s something so innocent about his demeanor that softens Roghozin’s wrath.

These characters are an archetypal pattern of how Russian society — a broken and fallen society that has abandoned its faith — views Myshkin. They despise him for his virtues, his contemptible naivete that leaves him a vulnerable “idiot,” to be trampled on by others, yet they cannot help but pity him for the sweet and tender nostalgia that he evokes in their souls.

It’s a paradox — Myshkin is an innocent lamb amongst wolves, a “sheep to be slaughtered,” yet it's his pitiful innocence that might just save this broken society. Dostoevsky captures this brilliant innocence in a single sentence, that is perhaps the greatest line written in the entire body of his work.