The “French” Theme in F.M. Dostoevsky's The Idiot

The article focuses on the “French” theme in F.M. Dostoevsky's The Idiot and analyses the image of Napoleon, which is a rare case in the academic circles. The author argues that the “French” theme of Dostoevsky's novel, confined to the description of public execution and the image of Napoleon in the burning Moscow, originates from the French Revolution and is determined by both Dostoevsky's historical and philosophical views and the specificity of his narrative about Napoleon. Alongside the well-known idea that Dostoevsky epitomises the essence and ideology of Napoleonism in Raskolnikov's theory in Crime and Punishment, scholars rarely if ever conceive that the writer creates an artistic image of Napoleon - Napoleon in the burning Moscow - in The Idiot. Traditional underestimation of Napoleon's role in The Idiot has determined the need for its analysis, which, however, should be imbedded into a much broader research context of Dostoevsky and France, due to the unfolding French discourse, particularly important for the entire novel. In the novel, the “French” theme is manifested within the special context of guillotine and public execution. First, it is Prince Myshkin's description of public capital punishment in Lyon, then, Lebedev's story of Marie-Jeanne, comtesse du Barry, decapitated by Charles-Henri Sanson, a well-known executioner of the French Revolution. Thus, the “French” theme is primarily confined to the French Revolution and revolutionary tribunal. It is believed that the French discourse is introduced into the novel as a psychological or ideological basis to tell about Dostoevsky's own experience of public execution for his participation in M.V. Butashevich-Petrashevsky's circle. In The Idiot, Dostoevsky describes his unique life experience for the first time. One of the most significant historical consequences of the French Revolution was the Napoleonic wars that changed Europe. The second component of the “French” theme in The Idiot is a fictional character of Napoleon. The way the French commander is depicted in the novel is rather specific: Napoleon in the burning Moscow is described by General Ivolgin - a greatest liar, who tells an apparently false and comic story of his being a page to Napoleon, when the latter was in Moscow. However, this fake story has an extremely serious final, its emotional culmination is Napoleon in Moscow appealing for compassion and sympathy. Ivolgin's story about Napoleon anticipates a specific historical narrative, from which then all modern narratology grows. While Raskolnikov's theory represents Napoleon as one of the most extraordinary people endowed with a special historical mission and “extraordinary” rights, in The Idiot, Napoleon is depicted as a victim to historical events and circumstances, and there is no room for an “extraordinary” person. Thus, the “French” theme in The Idiot is determined by the description of the public execution and the fictional character of Napoleon in the burning Moscow, and originates from Dostoevsky's historic and philosophical views of a man as a victim to the world historical process. Such views grow out of the writer's own life experience as of a member of the Petrashevsky's circle, for the first time described in the novel.

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