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
Demons (Dostoevsky novel) darkness of Stavrogin is confronted by the radiance of Bishop Tikhon, a character inspired by Tikhon of Zadonsk. Of Pyotr Verkhovensky, Dostoevsky said that the character is not a portrait of Nechayev but that "my aroused mind has created by imagination the person, the type, that corresponds to the crime... To my own surprise he half turns out to be a comic figure." Most of the nihilist characters associated with Pyotr Verkhovensky were based on individuals who appeared in the transcripts of the trial of the Nechayevists, which were publicly available and studied by Dostoevsky. The character of Shatov represents