Prince Myshkin returns to Russian society after years in a Swiss sanatorium, his Christ-like innocence clashing with the cynical aristocratic world of 1860s St. Petersburg. Dostoyevsky's 1869 psychological fiction explores what happens when pure goodness encounters corruption, jealousy, and passion through the prince's relationships with the volatile Nastasya and the conflicted Aglaya.
Towards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o’clock one morning, a train on the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed. The morning was so damp and misty that it was only with great difficulty that the day succeeded in breaking; and it was impossible to distinguish anything more than a few yards away from the carriage windows. Some of the passengers by this particular train were returning from abroad; but the third-class carriages were the best filled, chiefly with insignificant persons of various occupations and degrees, picked up at the different stations nearer town. All of them seemed weary, and most of them had sleepy eyes and a shivering expression, while their complexions generally appeared to have taken on the colour of the fog outside. When day dawned, two passengers in one of the third-class carriages found themselves opposite each o…Continue reading →
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