The spiral curve of The Idiot

On first reading The Idiot, the dominant sensation is giddiness, trepidation, stress. The constraining dynamics of the action feels like an attack.

However, when we consider the novel as a whole, we find a strange parallel between the rhythm of the first two parts (first and second) and the last two (third and fourth), although there is noticeable break between them, since the last day of the second part is also the first day of the third. The two wholes thus formed both begin with a crescendo of great purity (one day in the first part, two nights in the third) and continue to alternate doubtful periods, or plateaus where chronicle time is dominant, with dramatic summits when the crisis explodes.

The repetition of figures accentuates this impression of parallelism. Myshkin has two epileptic fits, Nastasya Filippovna directs two libels against Yevgeniy Pavlovich, Ippolit makes two proclamations, one oral, the other read from a script. Nastasya runs off twice with Rogozhin into the night, there are two strange wanderings by Rogozhin and Myshkin through the streets of Petersburg, two meetings fixed by Aglaya on the green bench (first with Myshkin, then with Ganya), two chivalrous interventions by Myshkin to protect women, and both with fairly painful results, Ganya's slap and the officer's blow on the chest.