Prince Myshkin Prince Myshkin Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin (pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform ) is the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot". Dostoevsky wanted to create a character that was "entirely positive... with an absolutely beautiful nature", someone who is truly 'Christian'. According to Joseph Frank, the character of Prince Myshkin approaches "the extremest incarnation of the Christian ideal of love that humanity can reach in its present form, but he is torn apart by the conflict between the contradictory imperatives of his apocalyptic aspirations and his earthly limitations." Prince Myshkin has been in Switzerland for the last four years, at a
Lev Naryshkin Lev Naryshkin Lev Alexandrovich Naryshkin (; also known as Léon Narychkine) (5 February 1785 - 1846, Naples) was a Russian aristocrat who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. He was the son of Alexander Lvovich Naryshkin and his wife Maria Alexeyevna Senyavina, daughter of Admiral Alexei Senyavin. This made Lev brother to Elena Aleksandrovna Naryshkina and first cousin to Prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov, who fought in the Napoleonic Wars and the conquest of the Caucasus. Naryshkin was educated at home by private tutors under the French abbé Nicol. He entered the court as a page and became a chamberlain on 15