SOURCE: Hollander, Robert. “The Apocalyptic Framework of Dostoevsky's The Idiot.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 7, no. 2 (1974): 123-39.

In the following essay, Hollander argues that critics who have commented on the aesthetic failure of The Idiot have not considered that a thematic interpretation of the novel based on the Book of Revelation does indeed bring the characters and events together.

The Idiot¹ is frequently described as being an aesthetic failure. One major complaint is that, formally at least, the parts do not constitute a whole. The problem is well expressed by one of Dostoevsky's most schooled and intelligent readers: “The first part of The Idiot was conceived and written as a self-contained unity, which may perhaps best be read as an independent novella. After this point, however, it is clear from Dostoevsky's notebooks and letters that he had no satisfactory idea of how to continue...