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
Fyodor Dostoevsky the novel, remarking that "Only "Crime and Punishment" was read in 1866" and that Dostoevsky had managed to portray a Russian person aptly and realistically. Otherwise, it received a mixed reception from critics, with most of the negative responses coming from nihilists. Grigory Eliseev of the radical magazine "The Contemporary" called the novel a "fantasy according to which the entire student body is accused without exception of attempting murder and robbery". The novel's protagonist, the 26-year-old Prince Myshkin, returns to Russia after several years at a Swiss sanatorium. Scorned by Saint Petersburg society for his trusting nature and naivety, he