Will Beauty Save the World? 3 comments

By Peggy Rosenthal

“Beauty will save the world.” This was the title of Laura’s post a while ago in which she mused insightfully about her search for beauty in the midst of bureaucracy. She didn’t need to cite the source of the title phrase, because we all know it’s from Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot, right? Well, sort of. With many other people, including probably most readers of Image, I treasure this famous quote and I share the hope that beauty will indeed save the world. In fact I’m writing a book just now with this conviction as its premise. So out of curiosity, I recently re-read The Idiot to find exactly how Dostoevsky uses the phrase. I assumed that it would be in the mouth of the protagonist, Prince Myshkin, who is Dostoevsky’s creation of a truly beautiful spirit.

But guess what? Myshkin never utters the phrase anywhere in the novel! The phrase occurs twice, both times in the context of typically Dostoevskyan chaotic scenes in which demonically-possessed characters hurl accusations at one another. The first occurrence is in Part 3, Ch. 5, and its context muddies the quote considerably. The scene is a drunken all-night party in celebration of Myshkin’s birthday; all the other characters are speaking at fever pitch about their frenetic love/hate entanglements. Joining in the fray, the young man Ippolit, who is dying of consumption, incoherently sounds forth:

“Where’s Lebedyev? Has he finished then? What was he talking about? Is it true, prince [i.e. Myshkin], that you said once that ‘beauty’ would save the world? Gentlemen!” he shouted loudly, “the prince asserts that beauty will save the world!”

—though in the novel, we’ve never heard Myshkin assert this or even mention the topic. Ippolit raves on:

“What sort of beauty will save the world? Kolya told me…[ellipsis in original]. Are you a zealous Christian? Kolya says that you say you’re a Christian yourself.” Myshkin looked at him attentively and made no answer.

Then again in Part 4, Ch.6, Myshkin is accused of proclaiming that beauty will save the world—this time by Aglaia (the frenzied young woman he “loves”—whatever that means in this novel of impassioned love/hates). Again, the phrase is part of an outburst directed at Myshkin:

“Listen, once for all,” said Aglaia, losing all patience. “If you talk about anything like capital punishment, or the economic position of Russia, or of how ‘beauty will save the world’… of course I should be delighted and laugh at it…but I warn you, never show yourself before me again!” [All ellipses in original.]

This polemical way that the statement “beauty will save the world” is treated in The Idiot—and these are its only appearances—makes me wonder if the phrase wasn’t in currency among the intellectual circles of Dostoevsky’s day. And now that I’ve finished re-reading the novel, I can say that the term “beauty,” though not ever specifically used of Myshkin, is indeed characteristic of his soul as Dostoevsky has created it. Myshkin has a non-judgmental core, an impulse of forgiveness, of wanting to heal rather than hurt—all of which contrast to the spirit and qualities of the people around him. In fact they persistently label him an “idiot” because that’s their only way of perceiving someone who doesn’t participate in the destructive ugliness of their own behavior. Myshkin repeatedly takes their ugliness into himself and dissipates it.

Yet, alas—and here is the irony of our beloved phrase—at the novel’s end, their ugliness wins out. Myshkin is ultimately destroyed by it. Beauty, in this novel, does not save the world, but is rather demolished by the world.

How intriguing, then, that the quote has become so quotable—and generally attributed to Dostoevsky as if he proclaims it unequivocally and triumphantly (through Myshkin). My hunch is that we wish that he had…and that we let it be his, and Myshkin’s, because it does truly express their vision, a vision wrung out of the torment of predominantly ugly human behavior and flung as a hope into their world and ours.