ELIZABETH DALTON
597
of the ep il ep ti c prince took shape, Dostoevsky's own condition wors–
ened: " the di sorder of my nerves has increased and my fits are more
frequent and violent." He compl a ined of being in " the most terr ibl e
depress ion .. . . The day before yes terda y I had a very ser io us attack [of
ep il epsy ]. Nevertheless I wrote yesterday, in a state close to madness."
The excitement tha t info rms the climacti c scenes with their fur y and
brilliance expressed itself in life in the epil eptic seizures, and Dosto–
evs ky reckoned the cost of the g rea t scenes in fits: " I wrote thi s fin a le
[1
as tasya's birthday party] in a sta te of in spira ti on , and it cos t me two
fits in a row." Dostoevsky endowed a ll of hi s characters with parts of
himself, but it is to Myshkin a lone amon g hi s principa l heroes tha t he
gave the ambi g uous gift of hi s illn ess. The novel is in an important
sense an a ttempt to understand tha t illness; it is a t some level Dos toev–
sky's exp lora ti o n of the meaning of hi s ep il epsy.
One has th e sense in reading
The Id iot
tha t th e acti on of the novel
is balanced perilously, th a t just beyond o r benea th its precari o us
coherence is a kind of mae lstrom or abyss in which emo tion mi ght lose
it s connecti on with intelli gibl e form and manifest itself in some
unimagin a bl y direct, "raw" sta te; here ordinary coherent speech and
gesture mi ght give way to frenzy or blankness. And indeed the novel
does present us with the image of thi s extremity in the ep il eptic fit.
In
fact, th e seizure is a sort of pa radigm of the emotiona l progress ion of
th e book's great scen es.
In
most of these scenes th ere is a pattern o f
rising excitement focused upon one centra l figure whose consciousness
becomes more and mo re stra ined or exa lted, until a moment of
unbea rabl e ten sion , when there is a loss of control, followed by
physical and menta l coll apse.
This is th e pattern of the climacti c episode a t Nas tasya's birthday
party, when Nas tasya throws the hundred thousand rubl es into the fire
and Gan ya fa ints.
It
is a lso the pattern of Ippolit's confession, read in a
sta te o f g rowing delirium culmina ting in Ippo lit's suicide a ttemp t.
T hi s sequence appears mos t cl earl y in the two epi sodes tha t end with
Myshkin's epilep ti c attacks. The las t scene of the novel, in which th e
murderer Rogozhin leads Myshkin to the body of Nas tasya, ends with a
to ta l loss of control: Rogozhin goes mad, and Myshkin coll apses in to
idi ocy and bl ankness.
In
lesser fo rms, the same phenomenon appears
thro ughout the novel, in the constant tendency to uncontro ll ed behav–
ior and wi ld emotion.
The novel a lso shows thi s "epil eptic pa ttern " in its larger struc–
ture: the acti on seems to progress un evenl y, in waves o f tensi on th a t
gather and burst in climacti c scenes of spectacul ar emo ti o nal violence,
