Dear one,
You might need to forgive me: I am now rereading Dostoevsky’s, The Idiot. As others have observed, in The Idiot Dostoevsky’s sought to depict a character who is most Christ-like; for him that character is Prince Myshkin. Thus, when Myshkin enters into the upper echelons of St. Petersburg society, others immediately view him as an “idiot”: he is not concerned about his appearance; gives little thought to money; and speaks plainly and openly—like a child he hides little.
Of course, these stated attributes are mostly “negative”: what Myshkin does not. However, Dostoevsky positively characterizes him as sensitive and caring, as generous and kind, as patient and guileless: Myshkin readily reads the hearts and minds of others, who then marvel at his insights and easily confide in him. Soon they relish his company and yet they resist him; soon they are caught in an approach-avoidance web of their own weaving.
In contrast to Myshkin is Nastasya: she is the epitome of those values most esteemed by Petersburg society. At age twenty-five, her beauty is stunning; she is highly educated and refined; wears exceedingly well the latest styles; lives in luxury amid great art and royal furnishings; and has her own box at the Bolshoi. Nonetheless, she is imperious: cold and callous, argumentative and angry, calculating and capricious. But Myshkin, ignoring those traits most highly esteemed by Russian society, sees in her a woman (or little girl?), who is alone, afraid, devalued, and broken—longing to be loved simply because she is. In his view, she is to be loved, not because of what she has or has not said or done; not because of the “trophy-value” she might confer. She is loved because she is to be loved.
Myshkin (who also is broken) and Nastasya have captured my imagination: when all of the layers of our sophistication—our achievements, acquisitions, expertise, and defenses—have been stripped away, do we not long to be “simply loved”? Do we not repeatedly need to hear and believe:
“But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”? (Ephesians 2:4-6).
In a world plagued by pandemics and racial injustice; in world lauding values which devalue, may we live as those who are “simply loved.”
In hope,
Stan
Ps. The portrait above is of Dostoevsky.