The Idiot — Part III — Chapter VI

Hippolyte explains that recent entanglement with “reality” made him forget his sentence of imminent death. He describes months of isolation at home, tormenting family and neighbors, including mocking the grief of the meek Surikoff, which later haunts him. In March, feeling briefly better, he finds a stranger’s stuffed pocketbook and pursues him to a squalid lodging.

There, Hippolyte meets a provincial medical man and his ailing family, initially provoking the man’s pride before returning the pocketbook. Hearing the story of intrigue, dismissal, and starvation, Hippolyte promises to ask his former school rival Bachmatoff to intercede with Bachmatoff’s influential uncle. He does so, and within a month the doctor is appointed anew, expenses paid; a farewell dinner confirms the success.

Walking home drunk with Bachmatoff, Hippolyte argues that individual charity can sow unknown, lasting good, citing a Moscow “old general” who aided convicts. This night plants the seeds of his “last conviction”: with only months left, even doing good collapses before time’s limits, a realization that terrifies him and grows into a fixed idea.

A strange encounter accelerates his resolve. After visiting the taciturn Rogojin, Hippolyte falls ill and obsesses over a grim painting at Rogojin’s—Christ just taken from the cross, devoid of idealized beauty. He meditates on death and nature as an implacable, mechanical force that could shatter the disciples’ hope.

That night, Hippolyte experiences a silent, jeering visitation by Rogojin in his room; in the morning he learns the doors were locked and concludes it was a humiliating hallucination. Disgusted by such tormenting forms and the dark force he imagines, he fixes his final determination to end his life, feeling calmer only after deciding.