Rogozhin's Attempt on Myshkin's Life

Rogojin's attempt on Myshkin's life is the novel's central act of physical violence, a failed murder that crystallizes the rivalry over Nastasia Philipovna and the pathological jealousy consuming Parfen Rogojin. The attack occurs on the dark staircase of the prince's hotel, immediately after Rogojin has stalked him all day, and is thwarted only by the sudden onset of an epileptic fit that sends Myshkin crashing down the steps. The episode transforms the psychological duel between the two men into a literal confrontation with death, and its aftermath—Rogojin's flight, the prince's convalescence, and their eventual exchange of crosses—establishes the strange, fraternal bond that shadows the rest of the narrative.

Stalking and the Day of the Attack

The day of the attack is a long chain of ominous sightings. At the railway station that morning, as the prince steps off the Moscow train, he catches a pair of "strangely glowing eyes" fixed on him from the crowd; he cannot identify the owner, but the impression is so disagreeable that he later wonders whether it was a hallucination . Throughout the afternoon, as he wanders aimlessly through St. Petersburg, he catches himself searching for something he cannot name—a compulsive, uneasy scanning of his surroundings. He stops before a cutler's shop window and stares at a knife marked sixty copecks, a detail that will later acquire a terrible resonance. When he finally reaches the Petersburg Side house where Nastasia Philipovna has been staying, he sees Rogojin standing fifty yards off on the opposite side of the road, watching with folded hands, "plainly in view and apparently desirous of being seen" . The prince turns away without approaching him, though their eyes have met. The demon of suspicion whispers that Rogojin has been spying on him all morning in a frenzy of desperation, and that after discovering the prince has not gone to Pavlofsk, Rogojin has come to this house to watch for him there.

The Staircase Confrontation

Returning to his hotel in the evening, the prince finds the doorway dark and gloomy; a thunderstorm has just broken, and rain pours down in torrents. In the semi-darkness he distinguishes a man standing close to the stairs, apparently waiting. He feels an irresistible conviction that it is Rogojin. The man moves up the stairs; the prince follows, his heart frozen within him. On the first landing, a small niche in the massive stone column offers just enough space for a man to conceal himself, and the prince senses a figure standing there. He takes a step forward, then turns his head. The same two eyes meet his. For one second they stand face to face. The prince catches Rogojin by the shoulder and twists him toward the light. Rogojin's eyes flash, a smile of insanity distorts his countenance, and his right hand is raised with something glittering in it. The prince does not try to stop it. All he can remember afterward is that he seemed to call out: "Parfen! I won't believe it" .

The Epileptic Fit as Intervention

Before the knife can strike, something bursts open before the prince: a wonderful inner light illuminates his soul. This lasts perhaps half a second, during which he distinctly remembers hearing the beginning of the wail—the strange, dreadful cry that bursts from his lips of its own accord, which no effort of will can suppress. The next moment he is absolutely unconscious; black darkness blots out everything. He has fallen in an epileptic fit. The fit occurs instantaneously: his face, especially his eyes, become terribly disfigured, convulsions seize his limbs, and the terrible cry breaks from him—a wail from which everything human seems blotted out, so that it is impossible to believe the man who has just fallen is the same who emitted the dreadful cry. Many people have borne witness to this impression, and many cannot behold an epileptic fit without a feeling of mysterious terror and dread . It is this very terror that overtakes Rogojin and saves the prince's life. Not knowing it is a fit, seeing his victim disappear head foremost into the darkness and hearing his head strike the stone steps below with a crash, Rogojin rushes downstairs, skirting the body, and flings himself headlong out of the hotel like a raving madman .

Aftermath and Discovery

The prince's body slips convulsively down the steps until it rests at the bottom. Within five minutes he is discovered, and a crowd collects. A pool of blood near his head gives rise to grave fears—is it accident or crime? It is soon recognized as a case of epilepsy. Colia Ivolgin, who has returned to his hotel at about seven o'clock and is sipping tea in the coffee-room, hears excited whispers of someone found at the bottom of the stairs in a fit; he hurries to the spot with a presentiment of evil and recognizes the prince. The sufferer is taken to his room; though he partially regains consciousness, he lies long in a semi-dazed condition. The doctor states there is no danger from the wound on the head. As soon as the prince can understand what is happening, Colia hires a carriage and takes him to Lebedeff's house, where he is received with much cordiality. Three days later they are all at Pavlofsk .

Thematic Significance: The Knife, the Cross, and the Face of Death

The attack is the violent climax of a day saturated with death-anticipation. Earlier that same afternoon, in Rogojin's gloomy house on the Gorohovaya, the prince had noticed a garden knife lying on the table beside Solovieff's Russian History—a plain knife with a bone handle and a blade about eight inches long. Rogojin twice snatched it from the prince's hand when the latter absently picked it up, and later put it inside the book and threw it to another table . The prince had also stood before Holbein's painting of Christ taken from the cross, a picture that Rogojin said he liked to look at, and had murmured that a man's faith might be ruined by gazing at it . The painting's depiction of a mangled, un-beautified corpse—nature's blind, implacable force devouring the most precious Being—had filled the prince with horror. This same horror of death, of the dumb, irresistible power that crushes life, is what the attempted murder makes flesh. The prince's fit, which Rogojin mistakes for death, becomes a kind of enacted death that saves him; the murderer flees not from a living man but from the terrifying spectacle of a body that seems already to belong to the other world. The episode thus prefigures the novel's final scene, in which the prince and Rogojin will again sit together through the night beside a dead body—this time Nastasia Philipovna's—and the prince will stroke the murderer's hair as he once stroked the hair of a child.