Hello everyone,
The possible inconsistency occurs in Part 3 Chapter 3/4. Even though I read it at least twice, it still seems that the events are impossible to occur the way that they occur.
Chronologically,
Myshkin bumps into Keller, who has been following him since he left the Epanchins’, Keller offers protection to Myshkin which he thinks is absurd. Then Myshkin walks to the park where Rogozhin appears, they discuss some stuff, and Myshkin remembers that it is his birthday. Myshkin invites Rogozhin to join him to celebrate in his villa.
Now this is where it gets unreasonable,
When Myshkin and Rogozhin arrive at Myshkin’s villa, the whole squad is waiting for them. Long story short, we are told that Keller told the squad that it was Myshkin’s birthday.
The problem I see is that there is no way that, as I understand the plot, Keller might know it was Myshkin’s birthday. On top of Keller barely knowing Myshkin, even Myshkin did not remember it was his birthday.
from wiki:
French and English translations were published in 1887, and a German translation in 1889. European critical response was also largely negative, mainly due to the novel’s apparent formlessness and rambling style.^([70]) Morson notes that critics saw it as “a complete mess, as if it were written extemporaneously, with no overall structure in mind—as, in fact, it was.”^([71]) Typical of the western critics was the introduction to the first French translation which, while praising the energetic style and characterization, notes that “they are enveloped in a fantastic mist and get lost in innumerable digressions.”
Prominent modern critics acknowledge the novel’s apparent structural deficiencies, but also point out that the author was aware of them himself, and that they were perhaps a natural consequence of the experimental approach toward the central idea. Joseph Frank has called The Idiot “perhaps the most original of Dostoevsky’s great novels, and certainly the most artistically uneven of them all,”^([73]) but he also wondered how it was that the novel “triumphed so effortlessly over the inconsistencies and awkwardnesses of its structure.” Gary Saul Morson observes that “The Idiot brings to mind the old saw about how, according to the laws of physics, bumblebees should be unable to fly, but bumblebees, not knowing physics, go on flying anyway.”^([71])