A non-fantastic character of the "fantastic novel “The Idiot”"

Two figures of Russian history - Count G. A. Kushelev-Bezborodko and Prince V. F. Odoevsky - have been considered up to now the prototypes of the protagonist of Dostoevsky's novel “The Idiot”. This opinion was conditioned by similar biographical events and traits of their characters and appearance. This article offers a new approach to the problem: spiritual life of a real person may be prototypical. Thus, E. A. Stackenschneider, Dostoevsky's good acquaintance, represents a personality extremely exciting for the author of “The Idiot”: a handicapped person due to the insolence of Nature, who is deprived of a right for mere human happiness, she is experiencing and overcoming the metaphysical insult complex embodied in a variative way in the images of Ippolit Terentyev and Prince Myshkin in the novel. The diary of E. A. Stackenschneider (including its pages not published up to now) renovates the conception of the life context of the novel “The Idiot” and verifies the author's claim about a non fantastic character of his hero.