It is a Another crucial moment in The Idiot where the sense of being is experienced passively, all senses alert, with an exceptionally intense and it relates to the last moments before the execution of a convicted capita to death - an experience that Dostoevsky himself lived in the early morning of December 22, 1849 when he led his comrades on the square Semenovski, until at the last moment, his true conviction it was announced four years in prison followed by relegation in Siberia. The same evening Dostoevsky wrote to his brother: "Life is everywhere, life is in us and in the outside world" in a clear allusion to the words of Christ, "The Kingdom of God is within you."
During his first visit to the girls Yepanchins, Prince tells of his meeting in Switzerland with a man who had been sentenced to death and whose sentence was commuted at the last moment, while awaiting execution. The story returns with a powerful drama, the feelings he experienced during these terrible times. Minute after minute, Second after second, the inevitability of death is inexorably approaching, but, simultaneously, time is condensed giving rise to reflections ultimate where rabies to end, and that everything happens as soon mingled with the beauty of what he saw around him - "Not far away, there was a church, and the top of the dome, with its golden dome, shining under a bright sun "[liv. I, 5, p. 111] - making him discover his "new kind". Follows the resolution, if it were still escape death, to begin a life where nothing would be dissipated and wasted, "He said that nothing was harder at that moment that this constant thought:" And if we should not die? And if we brought back to life - how infinite! And all this is mine! Then I will transform every minute in a century, I should lose nothing, I keep track of every minute I waste nothing! "But this resolution
live fully "infinite life" will prove impossible to achieve in reality: this is so that in the ordinary course of days, we can not fail to let slip the deeper meaning of life. When asked Alexandra to know what he did by following this "wealth" if he "kept count of every minute," succeeds the following dialogue:
- Oh no, I l has himself said - it's a question I asked him - not at all how he lived, he lost many, many minutes.
- Well, here's an experiment, and therefore it is impossible to live for good, is not "taking into account". We do not know why, but it's impossible.
- No, we do not know why, but it's impossible ... repeated the prince. I said it myself ... And yet, I do not know, can not believe ...
- You think, that is to say that you live smarter than others? Aglaia said.
- Yes, that too, I thought sometimes.
- And yet you think?
- Yes, again, "said the prince, who continued to watch her smile with Aglaia tranqueille and even sweet, but he recovered immediately again laughing, and looked cheerful.
- That is modest ! Aglaia said almost irritably. " [id ., P. 111-112]
As we see, what emerges from this passage Capital is an inability to live, continue to live, that is the height of knowledge fully alive and sensitive to the beauty of life , the gift of life, the world is there, that precedes us and we're not far, as it gives the experience of time-limit above the certainty of imminent death, as if this loss of consciousness, that blindness was inevitable and that it was impossible to "take account" of every moment, turning every minute in a century. And if so for one who has been exposed to the imminence of death, how much more this unconsciousness is it the mainstream of ordinary lives. The law
tragic human existence is controlled by the inability to experience the infinite beauty of life, even among those who, having experienced a moment fully, as soon forget. This hole is lost when the consciousness of life, destroying the feeling of joy that should accompany the simple fact of existence - a joy that we can only get a glimpse down here but, according to Dostoevsky, can be lived fully as in the afterlife - deploys its consequences into all aspects of human existence, which can not escape a kind of mediocrity at once existential and ethical. The suspension of temporality (the estate of the time) in the illumination of the beauty of life - where a minute is equivalent to a century - is common at times, like flashes of eternity, before the seizure and to a lesser extent, capital punishment, but it is not possible that human time is maintained continuously in the present without past or future spoken Kierkegaard. Live every moment in the consciousness of absolute beauty of life require each complete and continuous presence to itself, others and the world, as always, we can not fail to lose our time and that "the ego interferes" with his selfishness that makes screen.
The prince, in many ways an exception to this common law of human existence. Hence his "kindness", the unique way that distinguishes it from others to be present at what they are, their joys, their sufferings, even though it seems absent and indifferent to what society, with its facade of propriety and his law of-interest, requires each.
Sense knowledge of the beauty of life, whatever the circumstances in which it is lived, is an inner illumination and experience the joy that generate a total existential upheaval, which has also brought "ethical" fundamental. For, indeed, the mode of being in relation to others which only corresponds to the consciousness of the beauty of life is kindness, a way to accommodate every being that comes with a complete lack of self respect , trial and calculation. Comnent not think of the major themes guiding philosophy of Rousseau? For it is precisely on these points deciding what The Idiot suggests to us that will recognize the profound Rousseauism Dostoevsky.
Dostoevsky and Rousseau
No reader of Rousseau, I think, who would think, in fact, make the connection between this story of the prince, as the narrator relates - but here it ' is Dostoyevsky himself, who speaks - and the experience of happiness, as described in the fifth of Reveries of the Solitary Walker. For it is precisely on these decisive points that The Idiot says and suggests that we will recognize the profound Rousseauism Dostoevsky.
"Everything is in continual flux on earth, nothing keeps a constant shape and stopped, and our affections which attach to the outer things come and go as they need. Always ahead of or behind us, they remind us that the past is more or prevent the future that often must be no point: there is nothing solid to attach to the heart. So have we not here on earth but fun is happening because the happiness that lasts I doubt there is known. No sooner is it in our deepest pleasures a moment when the heart can truly say: I wish that this moment last forever, and how can we call happiness a state fugitive still leaves the heart empty and anxious, which makes us regret even after something?
But if a state where the soul finds a solid enough base to rest and gather a whole then his whole being, without needing to recall the past nor to span the future, where time does nothing for her, where the present lasts forever, but does not mark its duration and without any trace of succession without any other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear that one of our existence , and that sentiment alone could fill a whole; as this state lasts one that is there can be called happy, not an imperfect happiness, poor and on like that found in the pleasures of life but a sufficient happiness, perfect and full, which leaves no vacuum in the soul that feels the need to fill. Such is the state I found myself often in the Isle of St Peter in my solitary reveries, or lying in my boat that I let drift with water or sitting on the shores of Lake stirred or elsewhere beside a beautiful river or stream murmuring on the gravel.
What do you enjoy in such a situation? Of anything external to itself, nothing else of himself and of his own existence as long as this state lasts we are self-sufficient like God. The feeling of existence devoid of any other condition is itself a precious feeling of contentment and peace that would only exist to make this dear and sweet to be ruled without saying that all sensual impressions and land are constantly coming we distract and disturb the sweetness here below. "
It would take more space than we have here to analyze the profoundly Pascal - in the themes discussed, up vocabulary - the beginning of this passage. At this diffétence closely, and that obviously changes everything, that by itself - in the pure experience of feeling to exist - not in Christ, that subjectivity is his "base" the strongest. For what it is that happiness is, if, as Rousseau wrote, enjoyment "of himself and his own existence"? And traits of the "happiness sufficient, perfect and full" when the soul feels no vacuum and needs no otherness, why not see it, at least in these moments, equivalent to the self-sufficiency God, love of self in which God delights infinitely itself, if one believes Nicolas Malebranche? And it is true that the prince is actually the figure of Christ, the Incarnate Word, is it not clear when it is not only that his goodness is recognized her face divine, but to this that he too knows what it is for one to be sufficient by itself and indulging its existence in the fullness of the higher synthesis of life, although this state can take in no man really , that is to say forever. The fall in temporality and return to the world of men is inevitable. It is through this fall as the novel opens, as we have seen. But it is Christ himself, when it appears explicitly in The Idiot is also introduced with the morbid traits of divinity fallen (Christ's death Hans Holbein).
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