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 A.M.GORKY INSTITUTE OF WORLD LITERATURE
OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

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ISSN 2619-0311 (Print)
ISSN 2712-8512 (Online)

Romantic Connotations to the Image of Hippolytus Terentyev (from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Novel The Idiot)

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  • Author: Alexandr B. Krinitsyn
  • Information about the author:

    DSc in Philology, Associated Professor, Department of the History of Russian Literature, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leninskie Gory, 1/51, 119991 Moscow, Russia.

    https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0262-5058

    E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • For citation:

    Krinitsyn, A.B. “Romantic Connotations to the Image of Hippolytus Terentyev (from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Novel The Idiot).” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 2 (30), 2025, pp. 107–142. (In Russ.)

    https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2025-2-107-142 
  • Received: 12 Feb. 2025
  • Approved after reviewing: 14 March 2025
  • Published: 25 June 2025
  • Issue: 2025 no. 2 (30)
  • Department: HERMENEUTICS. SLOW READING
  • Pages: 107-142
  • DOI: Visit Website
  • EDN:

    https://elibrary.ru/HEJUDH
  • UDK: 821.161.1.0+821.112.2.0
  • BBK: 83.3(2Рос=Рус)+83.3(4Гем)
  • Publication Type: Research Article
  • Keywords: Dostoevsky, Schiller, Goethe, Hölderlin, nature, landscape, romanticism, Christianity, heavenly harmony, sublime, tragic, suicide.
  • Abstract: The article examines the image of Hippolytus Terentyev and the motives behind his “necessary explanation” in relation to the ideas of German idealism and Romanticism, offering an analysis that allows us to explore more deeply the theme of nature in its existential relation to man. In German natural philosophy as well as in Christianity, nature is viewed as a process of eternal life and a phenomenon of supreme beauty — an expression of God’s omnipresence in the world. However, in Romantic thought, it acquires a more independent meaning, endowed with spirituality and divinity together with pantheistic overtones. This makes the hero’s dialogue with nature philosophically significant and responsible. A similar dynamic happens to Hippolytus. Unable to fully believe in God, he can only turn to nature, which appears ambivalent to him: on one hand, it is a source of life and unfathomable beauty (symbolized by the sun), on the other, a “dark force” that condemns all living things to death (figuratively expressed as a tarantula). Accordingly, the hero either strives to merge with nature, or rebels against it, in despair at his alienness to it and his doom. The article compares Hippolytus’ views with the ideas and imagery of Schiller, Goethe, and Hölderlin. A Romantic foundation can also be found in Prince Myshkin’s worldview, creating a kind of dualistic relationship between him and Hippolytus. However, Myshkin manages to adapt the romantic idea of nature to his Christian worldview. While the prince is associated with the idea of saving and liberating the world through beauty, Hippolytus, in his tragic hopelessness, seeks freedom through another aesthetic category: the sublime (from Schiller’s treatise On the Sublime). His polemic with Myshkin relates to this. The reconciliation of ideas can be found in a relation to nature as an eternal earthly paradise, a source of God’s grace, harmony and beauty. 

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