Cervantes’ Don Quixote in Dostoevsky’s Novel The Idiot

Abstract

The article analyses the significance of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote for the understanding of the author’s intention in the novel The Idiot. The material presence of the book Don Quixote in Dostoevsky’s text assumes that the reader is familiar with Cervantes’ novel and will be able to trace all the necessary connections inside the text, taking into account not only the image of don Quixote, but also the whole novel, which Dostoevsky knew well and highly appreciated. From this perspective, the starting point for analysis is the figure of Aglaya Epanchina, who is both the reason for the inclusion of Don Quixote in the plot of The Idiot and its sole interpreter within the novel. However, Aglaya’s interpretation leads the reader down a false path, identifying Myshkin, don Quixote, and Pushkin’s “poor knight” as representative of “medieval platonic love.” The article demonstrates how the references to Cervantes’ novel indicate that Aglaya herself acts according to Don Quixote, understanding love as an arbitrary one-sided choice of a carnal receptacle for an invented ideal. Another kind of love defines Prince Myshkin’s relationship with Nastasya Filippovna, whose image displays quite different quixotic traits. On a deeper level, Cervantes’ Don Quixote concurs in structuring the image of the protagonist, who can discover himself as a whole only through the relation with the other (Rogozhin, Sancho Panza); it is illustrated how the image of the donkey that awakened the prince in Basel also has its roots in Cervantes’ work. The conclusion offers some reflections on the relation between the peculiar structure of the protagonist in both novels and Dostoevsky’s intentions to portray a “positively beautiful individual.”