The Idiot/Trivia

• What Could Have Been:
  • In Dostoevsky's original notes, Prince Myshkin wasn't a figure of Incorruptible Pure Pureness, but a proud and passionate villain who would have undergone a complete regeneration by the novel's end.
  • At the time Dostoevsky finished Part One, he was still planning on a very different ending in which Myshkin would redeem both Nastasya and Rogozhin.
• Write What You Know: Myshkin’s epilepsy, his reaction to Hans Holbein the Younger’s painting Christ’s Body in the Tomb, his thoughts on Catholicism: all modeled on Dostoevky’s own thoughts and experiences. Myshkin recounts via hearsay the thoughts of a condemned criminal awaiting execution; Dostoevsky had himself been condemned, run through a mock execution, and only informed at the last second that his sentence had been reduced.