How The Idiot drew on Don Quixote
A documented line of influence: Fyodor Dostoevsky demonstrably engaged Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra · 1605
RenaissanceThe influenced
The Idiot
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1869
The Age of the NovelRelevance
8/10
On The Idiot’s page
- Myshkin is Dostoevsky's answer to the question Cervantes posed: can pure goodness survive in the world?
- He named Don Quixote as the chief model for his "positively beautiful man" — and inside the novel Aglaya makes it explicit, equating the prince with the knight and the "poor knight"
- Read Cervantes first and Myshkin's saintly absurdity reads as a deliberate Russian reincarnation of the deluded Spanish knight
On Don Quixote’s page
- Cervantes' deluded, gentle knight became Dostoevsky's explicit blueprint
- Attempting a "positively beautiful man" in Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky named Don Quixote — in an 1868 letter to his niece — as the chief model for the type
- Read it first and you'll catch what Dostoevsky was after: the holy fool the world can only laugh at