Prince Myshkin Rewritten by Tolstoy, Chekhov and Pasternak

The article is devoted to the reinterpretations of the main character of Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” in the novels of Tolstoy and Pasternak (“Resurrection” and “Doctor Zhivago”) and in Chekhov’s short novel “My Life.” At the same time, Tolstoy’s novel is considered as a kind of hybrid hypertext of Dostoevsky’s works (“The Idiot” and “Notes from the Dead House”). Unlike Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, Prince Dmitry Ivanovich Nekhludoff is trying to save the victim of his own sin. In Tolstoy’s novel, the plot situation is resolved only through the sacrificial love of the heroine for Nekhludoff. At the same time, his gradual Christian epiphany is accompanied by obvious moments of spiritual deafness, which, apparently, reflected some of the problems of Tolstoy’s personality development in the last decades of his creative career. The inner correlation of the hero of Chekhov’s “My Life” Misail with the image of Myshkin is manifested primarily in the similarity of naming, self-sacrifice, which eventually receives recognition, and in the love of Masha Dolzhikova and Anyuta Blagovo for him. Their relationship with the hero resembles the relationship between Myshkin, Aglaya Epanchina and Vera Lebedeva. Masha and Anyuta’s hatred for each other is more like the relationship between Aglaya and Nastasia Filippovna in the finale of Dostoevsky’s novel. At the same time, Anyuta in the finale of Chekhov’s short novel becomes not a wife, not a lover, but a kind of associate of Misail. In this regard, she also vaguely resembles Vera Lebedeva, who in the last chapters of the novel “The Idiot” is a bit like the “faithful followers” of Christ who “followed him to Jerusalem.” At the same time, like Myshkin, Misail is a largely autobiographical character. We find another reincarnation of Prince Myshkin in Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. At the same time, the plot-motive complex of Dostoevsky’s novel was significantly transformed by Pasternak, who obviously relied on Chekhov. This was manifested in the motive of the hero’s ordinariness of “holiness,” identified by Olga Sedakova, and in the fact that a “Christian” and “democrat” without a profession or occupation turns into a doctor in Doctor Zhivago, who continues to fulfill his professional duty in all, even the most tragic circumstances.