Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot was a book I already recently reviewed, and the first book I finished in 2026. Why then have I already re-read the entire 600+ page tome? Truthfully, The Idiot has been floating in my consciousness ever since I finished it back in January, but I did not feel like I had fully understood it. The first time I read it was in the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation in the Everyman’s Library edition, which are beautiful, high-quality hardcovers. The translation was wonderful, but I did not want to annotate or make notes in such a well-made, high-quality book. Therefore, my grasp on the novel was not as strong as it should have been. And, since the book was looming so heavily in my mind afterwards, I had an irresistible urge to go back to it immediately and reap the wisdom I missed the first time in a different translation by Alan Myers. I am so glad I did just that.

Re-reading The Idiot gave me a new perspective on virtually everything for good and for bad. Firstly, in the last review, I said my four favorite characters were Myshkin, Nastasya Fillipovna, Ippolit Terentyev, and Ferdischenko. Now, I am not sure I could limit my list to just four. 

To speak of the characters I have not reviewed, I will start with Aglaya Ivanovna. On a second read-through, I better understood her role in the novel and how and why she had been scheming for the Prince’s affection and teasing him with Pushkin’s knight story. Early into the novel, Myshkin describes her as “a child,” which is an apt description. She is an upper-class, overly emotional, petty, but beautiful young woman who forms part of the love triangle with Myshkin and Nastasya. However, I found that my favorite scene of Aglaya is near the end of the book at Part IV, where she sits on the green bench with Myshkin and tells him that she plans to leave Russian society. Between her teasing of and snapping at Myshkin, Aglaya clearly holds the Prince in high esteem, calling him “better than the whole lot of them.” Aglaya sees the Christian and human morals of meekness and forgiveness which the Prince lives by, and, while she could never begin to understand them fully, let alone live by them, she feels drawn to them. Through the Prince, Myshkin begins to see the superficial, corrupt, and cruel Russian society for what it is, and wants to run away with Myshkin. The tragedy, however, which Myshkin immediately comprehends, is that Aglaya is too childish and too entangled in societal mores to ever truly disentangle herself from society. She is stuck on an arrow-straight path to ruin and baseness that she has no power to lose herself from, but can only writhe in its grasp aware of her own spiritual suffering. This is something I completely missed in Aglaya in my first read-through, and made me value her character much more. 

Other characters I appreciated much more were Ganya and Varya, for a very similar reason. At the start of Book IV, Dostoevsky does a lot of telling and not showing about the two siblings, which, truth be told, he can actually make work quite well. In that opening, he describes them as two completely ordinary people, trapped in their social places, but more so in their own personalities and lives, as people who will never do something or think something truly original or extraordinary. Like Aglaya, Ganya and Varya are trapped in the hollowness of Russian society, a hollowness which they can feel and get anxiety from, but never break free of. Such is the tragedy of the smaller characters in The Idiot.

A character who I found myself much less fond of would have to be Lizaveta Prokofievna. The entire span of chapters involving Burdovsky asking the Prince for money and slandering him in Lizaveta’s presence was egregious, absolutely egregious, bad prose, and much worse than I remembered. If The Idiot as a whole has one big problem, it is pacing, as certain scenes of dialogue ramble far beyond reason, even for the story. Nowhere is this more clear than that one specific part of the book, where Lizaveta rages so unreasonably, other characters ramble for so long without being cut off, and the whole of it is so uncharming and poorly executed that I had a difficult time struggling through it at all. Lizaveta’s childish actions as a whole I never found interesting or exciting, but rather annoying, and not in a way that I could appreciate. However, this was really the only thing I disliked much more on a second read-through, and most of the changes in my opinion on the book are very positive. 

The biggest thing I’d say about The Idiot is that it truly is a philosophical novel and, in terms of social criticism, is very relevant in the modern day. The whole book is really a Socratic or Ciceronian dialogue between characters, letting Dostoevsky reckon with his own ideas personified by each character, and challenge them by having them argue with each other. The Idiot’s messages, and merely wranglings, with such questions as Christian faith, how Christ could live in the modern era, and the spiritual decay and emptiness of modern society I found incredibly insightful and poignant. I am so glad I decided to give The Idiot the second read-through it deserved so soon afterwards, and it is still haunting my consciousness at this very moment. I am so excited to see what else Dostoevsky has to offer, and let me know which novel of his I should read next!