The Idiot

I found The Idiot to be a more puzzling and less engaging novel than The Brothers Karamazov.  Since so much of it is taken up with dialogue detailing the various intrigues by which each character defines themselves in relation to the titular Prince Myshkin that it can sometimes appear to border on the soap operatic.  The main action of the plot is confined to hardly more than two scenes. The rest of the book is a fairly elaborate set-up for the incredible scenes with Rogozhin.  Still, there's something moving about Dostoevsky's depiction of what seems to be a completely and genuinely good man.  Yes, he's like a child that wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know ... why everyone is so unhappy.  But isn't that exactly the question we all keep forgetting to ask ourselves?  That's the puzzle of the idiot -- his goodness seems to consist in nothing more than compassionately mirroring back to us the best aspect of our intentions.  While this may sound like (and from the Prince's perspective actually is) a philosophy of affirmation, its effect on others is mostly to make them aware of their pettiness without providing them the means to overcome it.  Why are we wrapping ourselves in knots, scheming and intriguing against one another and even against ourselves, when at bottom we all desire the same peace and joy?  Dostoevsky clearly conceives of this as a Christian question, and its certain that the Prince is a Christ figure.  Less obviously, he also seems to conceive this question as somehow related to a contrast of foreign (ie. European) reason and Russian passion.  Is our reason too hollow?  Is our passion too overwhelming or too depraved?  I think to understand Doestoevsky better on this point I would need to be more familiar with the intellectual and political climate of his day.  And one of these days, I'm going to let Joseph Frank explain it to me.