Idiot

9th September, 2008

The reasoning behind this post is really only me marvelling at Dostoevsky.

“There’s no reason to be troubled because we’re absurd is there? You know it really is true that we’re absurd, that we’re shallow, have bad habits, that we’re bored, that we don’t know how to look at things that we can’t understand; we’re all like that, all of us, you, and I, and they! And you are not offended at my telling you to your faces that you’re absurd? Are you? And if that’s so, aren’t you good material? Do you know, to my thinking it’s a good thing sometimes to be absurd; it’s better in fact, it makes it easier to forgive one another, it’s easier to be humble. One can’t understand everything at once, we can’t begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan’t understand them thoroughly. I say that to you who have been able to understand so much already and. . . have failed to understand so much.”

Prince Myshkin, The Idiot.