I felt such a sense of accomplishment reading the more than 600 pages thick The Idiot written by Fyodor Dostoevsky published by Vintage Classics, considering I could never proceed beyond the first chapter of War and Peace.
Dostoevsky's writing is so alive that I keep feeling like I am watching a drama (albeit by words only) as I plough through page after page relentlessly while in commute shutting out the other commuters.
The Idiot is set in the time contemporary to Dostoevsky's own life, so the Zeitgeist is very real and describes the lives and thoughts of people living in the Tsarist Empire. Physiognomy appeared to be in vogue then, as the term was used multiple times in the novel. I had to look up what it meant, and realised that it was the precursor of what criminologists in the 19th century used to "define" physical characteristics of criminals. Brain fever is also something I had never heard of, however the descriptions appear to allude to inflammation in the brain, or perhaps some psychotic episodes.
The different characters in The Idiot are colourful and amply described. I was so tempted to do up a list with for each character with their relevant descriptions to see for myself how Dostoevsky had mapped the complexity of the different personalities.
Nastasya Filippovna's life is heart rendering to read, and various incarnations of her continue to appear in screenplays for dramas and movies today. Wikipedia tells me that there have been adaptations of The Idiot, but these were rather far back in time and likely inaccessible to me now. I do wonder, if there might be production teams ambitious enough to adapt The Idiot now.
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