idioti dostojevski — (a thorough investigation)

idioti, dostoyevsky-adjacent, is the only foreign word i can pronounce with confidence, and i pronounce it most often while microwaving pineapple pizza, which the man across the hall in 4B has informed me through a wall is a war crime.

the slavic spelling — idioti dostojevski — is what we are here for. it is 2:18pm on a thursday. carla blocked her morning with an invite titled “vendor sync — 90 minutes” and put a small green dot next to her name in the directory, which is the office equivalent of a closed door. so i have, give or take, the rest of the morning to settle a thing about a 19th-century novel and a topping nobody invited me to defend.

idioti dostojevski: a slavic spelling — found in czech, croatian, slovenian, and adjacent — for fyodor dostoyevsky’s 1869 novel about a man so kind he is mistaken, by everyone in his life, for an idiot. in english we write the idiot, dostoyevsky. in slavic languages the title sheds vowels, picks up softer consonants, and lands at idioti dostojevski, which sounds, to a working idiot, more correct than the english version ever has.

IDIOTI. IS. NOT. AN. INSULT. IT. IS. A. JOB.

some words, in another language, you find and go, ah, yes, same word. some you find and go, oh — that is what we meant, and english has been, on this one, slightly off the mark.

idioti dostojevski, the title in slavic spelling

the english title is the idiot. the russian original, transliterated, is idiot. the slavic neighbours — czech, croatian, slovenian — write the author and book together as idioti dostojevski. the suffix isn’t a plural. the case system does work the english brain isn’t equipped to follow without a chart. i looked at the chart for forty seconds. i did not understand it. i closed the tab. i counted that as research.

what i can tell you, after opening five tabs in five languages and reading two paragraphs in each, is that idioti dostojevski reads, to an untrained ear, with a softness idiot in english does not have. in english, the word is a slap. idioti is a small bow. somewhere in that difference is the reason i have stayed with this novel for twenty years and not finished it.

the novel summary, allegedly

the protagonist of idioti dostojevski is prince myshkin. he is good. that’s the engine. he is good in a way other people, scheming about money or a woman or both, find baffling, then exploitable, then unbearable. he says what he thinks without rehearsing it in the shower, which is, in 19th-century russia and in my apartment, a tactical error.

and they call him an idiot. that is the title. that is the joke. the only person in the room behaving with basic decency is the one labelled stupid by the others. dostoyevsky leaves you to do the math. i did the math years ago. it is why i call myself idiot again on a website that, technically, also pays my rent. i am picking the word up where it was dropped.

one airpod, in my left ear, is playing a russian-language audiobook of the idiot at half speed. i don’t understand it. it sounds important, which is enough. the right airpod has been in a sock drawer since february. binaural is a luxury i no longer afford.

defending pineapple on pizza, briefly

you are here for the slavic spelling, but also because the open mentioned pineapple pizza and you’d like to know whether the writer is a serious man or a frivolous one.

the take has held since 2017, when a woman at a wedding said “you’re one of those pineapple people, aren’t you”, and i said yes before i had decided whether i was. i decided afterwards. retrofit identity. it works.

the 4B guy who has read it, supposedly

the 4B guy (whom i log in my notes as the_4b_guy) has informed me — through the wall, last thursday, at 11 something pm — that idioti dostojevski is a book he has read in english, in serbian, and in some half-version on audiobook he started on a flight in 2018. i don’t know if any of that is true. the wall is thin and the 4B guy uses it as a stage. last month he claimed, also through the wall, to have written a sonnet about a vacuum cleaner. some claims should not be tested.

but on this novel, he was, briefly, useful. he yelled — verbatim, i wrote it on the back of an envelope from a bank i don’t open envelopes from — “the prince is the only one who isn’t faking, mate, that’s the whole book.” i had to stop chewing. the 4B guy, between insulting my pizza and arguing with what sounds like a small dog at 2am, had given me the cleanest summary of idioti dostojevski i have ever heard. i ate the rest of the pineapple pizza. i did not thank him through the wall. you don’t reward the wall.

hank from 1B and the russians, a small connection

hank is a small dog who lives in 1B with the lady who travels too much. she once told me, in the elevator, that hank was named after a character from a russian novel she could not remember the name of and had not actually read. she said it like a fact. i believed her because i needed to be off the elevator.

i mention hank because, if prince myshkin had a dog, the dog would have been hank. small, anxious, devoted, prone to stopping in a hallway for no reason and looking at you as if you’d asked him a question. i once stood in the hallway with hank for four minutes while my phone slid down to 23% battery, waiting for a not-important call. hank stared. i stared back. nobody learned anything. that, also, is the novel.

closing pulpit, the prince is fine, the pizza is also fine

let me tie this off — carla’s green dot has, by my last refresh, gone amber, which is the visual equivalent of a footstep in a hallway.

the parent reading — the etymology, the slow career of the word — lives at the cluster pillar on idiot. for the english-language meaning, i did the work in idiot meaning — what they don’t tell you. the cathode-ray cousin lives at idiot box, spongebob. the modern novel that borrowed the title is at the elif batuman idiot, which i have not read. and what an idiot looks like outside his apartment, with cameras: an idiot abroad — i would never, and here’s why.

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