SOURCE: Burgin, Diana L. “Prince Myshkin, the True Lover and ‘Impossible Bridegroom’: A Problem in Dostoevskian Narrative.” The Slavic and East European Journal 27, no. 2 (summer 1983): 158-75.

In the following essay, Burgin analyzes the ambivalent nature of Myshkin's love for Nastasya Filippovna, arguing that it is not so much a character defect as it is “a problem of Dostoevskian narrative and the limitations of the novelistic genre as a vehicle of Dostoevskian truth.”

“The truth … very often seems impossible.”

—General Ivolgin to Prince Myškin

I

The Idiot's statement on love, human and divine, hinges on the true perception of its hero, Prince Myškin, as a lover in every sense of the word. Yet, ironically, no aspect of Myškin's “problematic” character has created more critical controversy than the apparently ambiguous nature of his loving. While few readers and critics have doubted the Prince's unbounded (and therefore possibly...