596
PARTISAN REVIEW
time, epilep sy is the sacred di sease of shamans and prophets, who are
said to experi ence ecs tasies and visi ons durin g the "aura" p recedin g the
fit: thus the seizure can also be seen as a representa ti on of the vi o lent
descent of di vine power. Much of the extraordina ry psychological
excitement and aes thetic ten sion of Dostoevsky's fi cti on comes from the
juxtapos ition of the darkest forces in the human soul with rad iant
images of g rea t spiritual beauty. In
Th e Id io lthe
ep ilep ti c sei zure itself
appears as the violentl y conden sed express ion of th at intima te, equi vo–
cal rela tionship between the most debased and the mos t exa lted as pects
of human experience. T he novel also refl ects in a pervas ive way what
mi ght be call ed the rh ythm of epilepsy, th e sudden flu ctu ations of
energy and vi o lent alteration s of con sciou sness that cha racterize the
di sease.
Th e Id iol
suggests the importance o f epil epsy no t onl y for
Dos toevsky's con ception of experi ence, but also for hi s style, for hi s
narra tive and drama ti c structure, and especiall y for tha t peculi ar
compul sion towards extreme mental sta tes tha t gives to the novels their
almos t unbearable inten sity.
The novel was written during a peri od o f great turmo il in the
author's life. Dostoevsky h ad gone to Europe with hi s pregn ant wife
under threat of arrest from his creditors; he left Ru ss ia, as he wrote hi s
fri end Maikov, " to save my health and even my life." Epileptic seizu res
were recurrin g once a week: " it was unbearable to be full y
conscious
of
the di sorder of my nerves and
brain.
I was goin g mad, tha t's the truth . I
felt it; the di sorder of my nerves sometimes drove me to moments of
furi ous madness." He went
to
Dresden, to Hamburg, and then
to
Baden , where he suffered an intense recurrence of hi s gamblin g mani a.
Finall y hi s wife managed to get him to Geneva, where, n earl y des titu te,
he began work on
Th e Idi ol.
We know from the notebooks that
Dostoevsky had great diffi culty in proj ecting the pl o t of the novel. An d
becau se of his commitment to his editor and hi s terribl e fin ancial
plight, each section had to be submitted for publica ti on before the next
had been written or even sketched out.
In
these despera te circum–
stances, it would seem tha t Dostoevsky was fo rced back upon the
spontan eous images and rhythms o f hi s mental life to a grea ter extent
than in an y other work.
It
is perhaps because the novel reveals so
openl y the nature of that life that its author's feelings about it were
peculi arl y inten se. Something about the novel evidentl y had quite
special significance for him. "As for
Th e Idio l,"
he wrote to Maikov,
' 'I'm afraid , I'm so afraid-you can 't imagine. A kind o f unn a tural fear
such as I've never felt before." The progress of the novel was intima tely
linked in Dostoevsky's mind to the course o f hi s epilepsy. As the story
