John; they are all asleep together, these worthy men, about whom Christ in His goodness has experienced disappointments over and over again. He has shared His thoughts with them as though they understood His words, as though it were in actual fact possible to communicate His thoughts to such as these, to arouse in them something like a vibration of kinship, something akin to understanding, to relationship, to unity with Himself. And now in the moment of unbearable torment, He turns to these few comrades He has. He is so utterly human, so utterly alone, so utterly the Man of Suffering, that He would now approach them as never before, to find some poor solace, some poor support in any stupid word they might utter, even in a friendly gesture. But no, they are not even there—they are sleeping, snoring.
This cruel moment, in what way I know not, seared itself into my mind in early youth, and when I think of Jesus, unfailingly it springs into my memory.
The parallel with Myshkin is this. When I think of The Idiot, an apparently unimportant moment bursts upon me in the same way. In that case also the moment is one of incredible isolation, of tragic solitude. The scene I have in mind is that evening in Paslovsk in the Lebedyevs' house, when the prince, convalescent, some days after his epileptic attack, receives the visit of the whole Epanchin family. Into this society, serene and elegant, in spite of tensions and hidden fires beneath, there suddenly bursts a band of young revolutionaries and nihilists. The wretched youth Ippolit with the pretended "Son of Pavlishtchev," with the "Boxer" and the other individual make their appearance. Then comes that disagreeable, repellent scene, a scene which one reads with equal excitement and disgust. These shallow-minded and misled youths stand upon the stage, naked in their helpless malignity. Every single one of their words inflicts a double pain upon Myshkin, the pain of their effect upon himself and the pain caused by the revelation of their own souls through every word they utter. This strange and unforgettable scene, though not in itself particularly weighty is the one to which I referred. On the one side a company of elegant people, people of the world, rich, powerful, and conservative. On the other the raging young anarchists, inexorable in their hostility, caring only to gratify their spite against everything that exists, with consideration for no one and, in spite of their rhetorical pretence of in-
