Posted by Joffre on 14/1/2011, 12:11:58, in reply to "The Idiot"
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I'm not reading The Idiot now, but I've read it a couple times.
I read somewhere that Faulkner's idiot Benji in The Sound and the Fury is more convincing than Dostoevski's. I take Dostoevski's title ironically or something like that. Is Myshkin really meant to seem mentally challenged, or is he just completely lacking in self interest? Perhaps that would be a handicap, but it's not the same as Benji's.
My translation of The Idiot uses the phrase 'ironic glance'. I think it's by Sydney Monas. Do other translations use that phrase? What is an ironic glance? Is it a look that seems to imply that one thinks what one is hearing is the opposite of the truth? Even if that's it, I find it a very awkward phrase since the irony is in the statement and not the glance. Did I ask this here before?
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