Beauty Will Save the World

This weekend I finished listening to the novel The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I was motivated to take on the large work by an article published online about the book and what it teaches about faith and suffering. It describes the main the primary character, Prince Myshkin, this way: “The prince, known as an ‘idiot’ for his epileptic seizures and his innocent child-like view of the world, was Dostoevsky’s creation of a ‘perfectly beautiful man.’” He was “someone who embraced and loved the world all while perfectly knowing its darkness.” The article discusses a scene in which the prince was in the house of an evil man named Rogojin and saw the painting of the dead Christ by Holbein. In the Gutenberg text online we read, “They passed through the same rooms which the prince had traversed on his arrival. In the largest there were pictures on the walls, portraits and landscapes of little interest. Over the door, however, there was one of strange and rather striking shape; it was six or seven feet in length, and not more than a foot in height. It represented the Saviour just taken from the cross.” Rogijin expressed how he liked to look at the picture, and the prince told of how he had seen it in Switzerland (which is, indeed, where the original actually resides in Basle) and could not forget it. The prince then exclaimed, “That picture! That picture! Why, a man’s faith might be ruined by looking at that picture!” The reason the picture could ruin one’s faith is because it shows the Christ dead like any other man, and it looks nothing like that of a divine figure that we would expect in the Son of God. The image leads us to question. Did the Creator of the world really die like every other person on earth? Why did He who was greatest above all have to suffer and submit to the worst of mortality? It captures a time shortly after His death when the disciples surely struggled to retain their faith too, as expressed by one in these agonizing words, “But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel” (Luke 24:21).

                The end of the book was a shock to me but ultimately ties back to this scene with the painting of Christ. The prince was to marry Nastasia Philipovna, but at the wedding itself, before they were married, she ran away impulsively with Rogojin and escaped. The prince sought out Rogojin and the next day they finally met. Rogojin took the prince secretly back to his house, the same house where the painting of the dead Christ was. He brought the prince into his room in the darkness, and there eventually showed him the dead body of Nastasia Philipovna. Rogojin had taken her back and killed her in an attempt to always have her for himself. The most shocking part was the calm reaction of the prince himself who stayed there that night with Rogojin hidden in his room. Eventually Rogojin himself started to lose his mind, speaking incoherently. The book recounts, “Then Myshkin stretched out his trembling hand to him and softly touched his head, his hair, stroking them and stroking his cheeks… he could do nothing else! He began trembling again, and again his legs seemed suddenly to fail him. Quite a new sensation gnawed at his heart with infinite anguish. Meanwhile it had become quite light; at last he lay down on the pillow as though utterly helpless and despairing and put his face close to the pale and motionless face of Rogozhin; tears flowed from his eyes on to Rogozhin’s cheeks, but perhaps he did not notice then his own tears and was quite unaware of them.” Eventually people found them and the murderer was “completely unconscious and raving. Myshkin was sitting beside him motionless on the floor, and every time the delirious man broke into screaming or babble, he hastened to pass his trembling hand softly over his hair and cheeks, as though caressing and soothing him.” He was comforting the murderer, a man who, earlier in the book, had also physically assaulted the prince! The prince was, as I read it, so good of a man that his natural reaction was to calm and comfort and provide strength to this suffering man who had done the most awful of deeds. It was the ultimate act of forgiveness and love, and it took everything from him. The prince from that day forth fell back into his illness in which he didn’t even recognize anyone anymore. In some sense he died in that room where he showed forth perfect forgiveness and kindness, just as the Christ showed perfect love on the cross before dying. He cried out, “Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). And then after giving all of His love to the world, He gave up the ghost and lay dead in a tomb as depicted by this Holbein painting.

                One of the most famous lines from the prince in the book is this one: “Beauty will save the world.” The beauty of Christ and his gospel indeed will save the world. The prince showed that he could remain beautiful and pure even amidst the evil around him. I like how this article summarized the message for us: “We live in a world that often feels like Holbein’s Christ, dead and dying still; a world full of wars and rumors of wars, where the hearts of men continue to fail them day and night. We currently live under the real threat of nuclear war, as Dostoevsky before the firing squad. We stand before this world as Dostoevsky before the dead Christ, ‘as if dumbstruck.’ Yet beyond the dark chaos there is light — and that light is Christ, the one who overcame this world. No matter the human torture that was forced upon Christ, or however we try to limit Him with our words, our poetry, even our painting, he is still the light of the world. Whether wrapped in swaddling clothes, hanging on the cross or descending in robes of crimson, Christ is the King of Kings, and the hope of the world — the beauty that will save the world.” Though Christ did indeed die, and laid lifeless for a short time in the tomb, He rose again to save the world. As Abinadi so powerfully put it, “He is the light and the life of the world; yea, a light that is endless, that can never be darkened” (Mosiah 16:9).