Starts Diary of a Writer.

1874

Resigns from The Citizen. Seeks treatment for emphysema in Bad Ems.

1875

A Raw Youth.

1875-8

Tolstoy: Anna Karenina.

1876

1877

Turgenev: Virgin Soil.

1878

Birth and death of son, Alexey. Visits Optina monastery with Vladimir Solovyov.

1879

1879-80

The Brothers Karamazov.

Tolstoy's religious crisis, during which he writes A Confession.

1880

Speech at Pushkin celebrations in Moscow.

Death of Flaubert and George Eliot.

1881

Dies of lung haemorrhage. Buried at Alexander Nevsky Monastery, St Petersburg.

TRANSLATORS' NOTES

LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Russian names are composed of first name, patronymic (from the father's first name), and family name. Formal address requires the use of first name and patronymic. Diminutives are commonly used among family and intimate friends; they have two forms, the familiar and the casual or disrespectful; thus Varvara Ivolgin is called Varya in her family, but Varka by her little brother. A shortened form of the patronymic (i.e., Ivanych for Ivanovich, or Pavlych for Pavlovich), used only in speech, also suggests a certain familiarity. In the following list, stressed syllables are marked. In Russian pronunciation, the stressed vowel is always long, and the unstressed vowels are very short.

Myshkin, Prince Lev Nikoláevich

Baráshkov, Nastásya Filippovna (Nâstya)

Rogôzhin, Parfyôn Semyônovich

Epanchin, General Iván Fyódorovich

_______, Elizavéta (Lizavéta) Prokófyevna

_______, Alexándra Ivánovna

_______, Adelaída Ivánovna

_______, Agláya Ivanovna

Ívolgin, General Ardalión Alexándrovich

_______, Nína Alexándrovna

_______, Gavríla Ardaliónovich (Gánya, Gánechka, Gánka)

_______, Varvára Ardaliónovna (Várya, Várka)

_______, Nikolái Ardaliónovich (Kólya)

Lébedev, Lukyân Timoféevich

_______,Véra Lukyânovna

Teréntyev, Ippolit (no patronymic)

Ptítsyn, Ivân Petrôvich (Vánka)

Radômsky, Evgény Pávlovich

Shch., Prince (no first name, patronymic, or last name)

Tótsky, Afanâsy Ivanovich

Ferdyshchenko (no first name or patronymic)

Keller, Lieutenant, ret. ("the fist gentleman"; no first name

or patronymic) Pavlishchev, Nikolái Andréevich

Dárya Alexéevna ("the sprightly lady"; no last name) Burdôvsky, Antip (no patronymic) Belokónsky, Princess ("old Belokonsky"; no first name or

patronymic)

A NOTE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF ST PETERSBURG

The city was founded in the early eighteenth century by a decree of the emperor Peter the Great. It is built on the delta of the river Neva, which divides into three main branches: the Big Neva, the Little Neva, the Nevka. On the left bank of the Neva is the city center, where the government buildings, the Winter Palace, the Senate, the Summer Palace and Summer Garden, the theaters, and the main thoroughfares such as Nevsky Prospect and Liteiny Prospect (Liteinaya Street in Dostoevsky's time) are located. Here, too, were the Semyonovsky and Izmailovsky quarters, named for army regiments stationed there. On the right bank of the Neva before it divides is the area known as the Vyborg side; on the right bank between the Nevka and the Little Neva is the Petersburg side, where the Peter and Paul Fortress, the oldest structure of the city, stands; between the Little Neva and the Big Neva is Vassilievsky Island. Further north are smaller islands such as Kamenny Island and Elagin Island, which were then mainly garden suburbs. To the south, some fifteen or twenty miles from the city, are the suburbs of Tsarskoe Selo ("the Tsar's Village") and Pavlovsk, where much of the action of The Idiot takes place.

THE IDIOT

PART ONE

I

Towards the end of November, during a warm spell, at around nine o'clock in the morning, a train of the Petersburg-Warsaw line was approaching Petersburg at full steam. It was so damp and foggy that dawn could barely break; ten paces to right or left of the line it was hard to make out anything at all through the carriage windows. Among the passengers there were some who were returning from abroad; but the third-class compartments were more crowded, and they were all petty business folk from not far away. Everyone was tired, as usual, everyone's eyes had grown heavy overnight, everyone was chilled, everyone's face was pale yellow, matching the color of the fog.

In one of the third-class carriages, at dawn, two passengers found themselves facing each other just by the window—both young men, both traveling light, both unfashionably dressed, both with rather remarkable physiognomies, and both, finally, willing to get into conversation with each other. If they had known what was so remarkable about the one and the other at that moment, they would certainly have marveled at the chance that had so strangely seated them facing each other in the third-class carriage of the Petersburg-Warsaw train. One of them was of medium height, about twenty-seven years old, with curly, almost black hair, and small but fiery gray eyes. He had a broad, flat nose and high cheekbones; his thin lips were constantly twisting into a sort of impudent, mocking, and even malicious smile; but his forehead was high and well formed and made up for the lack of nobility in the lower part of his face. Especially notable was the deathly pallor of his face, which gave the young man's whole physiognomy an exhausted look, despite his rather robust build, and at the same time suggested something passionate, to the point of suffering, which was out of harmony with his insolent and coarse smile and his sharp, self-satisfied gaze. He was warmly dressed in an ample lambskin coat covered with black cloth and had not been cold during the night, while his neighbor had been forced to bear on his chilled back all the sweetness of a damp Russian November

night, for which he was obviously not prepared. He was wearing a rather ample and thick sleeveless cloak with an enormous hood, the sort often worn by winter travelers somewhere far abroad, in Switzerland or northern Italy, for instance, certainly not reckoning on such long distances as from Eydkuhnen¹ to Petersburg. But what was proper and quite satisfactory in Italy turned out to be not entirely suitable to Russia. The owner of the cloak with the hood was a young man, also about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, slightly taller than average, with very blond, thick hair, sunken cheeks, and a sparse, pointed, nearly white little beard. His eyes were big, blue, and intent; their gaze had something quiet but heavy about it and was filled with that strange expression by which some are able to guess at first sight that the subject has the falling sickness. The young man's face, however, was pleasant, fine, and dry, but colorless, and now even blue with cold. From his hands dangled a meager bundle made of old, faded foulard, containing, apparently, all his traveling possessions. On his feet he had thick-soled shoes with gaiters—all not the Russian way. His black-haired companion in the lambskin coat took all this in, partly from having nothing to do, and finally asked, with that tactless grin which sometimes expresses so unceremoniously and carelessly people's pleasure in their neighbor's misfortunes: