Foolishness for Christ appears several times in the novels of Dostoevsky. "The Idiot" explores the ramifications of placing a holy fool (the compassionate and insightful epileptic Prince Myshkin) in a secular world dominated by vanity and desire. According to Joseph Frank "though the gentlemanly and well-educated prince bears no external resemblance to these eccentric figures, he does possess their traditional gift of spiritual insight, which operates instinctively, below any level of conscious awareness or doctrinal commitment." In "Demons", the madwoman Marya Lebyadkina displays many of the attributes of the holy fool, as do the characters of Sofya Marmeladova and Lizaveta in "Crime and
Fyodor Dostoevsky Ranke, Hegel and Kant. "The House of the Dead", based on his experience in prison, was published in 1861 in the journal Vremya – it was the first published novel about Russian prisons. Before moving in mid-March to Semipalatinsk, where he was forced to serve in the Siberian Army Corps of the Seventh Line Battalion, Dostoevsky met geographer Pyotr Semyonov and ethnographer Shokan Walikhanuli. Around November 1854, he met Baron , an admirer of his books, who had attended the aborted execution. They both rented houses in the Cossack Garden outside Semipalatinsk. Wrangel remarked that Dostoevsky "looked morose. His sickly,