Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot": "Beauty will save the world".In the 19th century it was roulette, today it is online poker. In any case, a man's struggle with gambling addiction can be as terrible for him as it is enigmatic and despairing for the people around him.
It is common for those who see a loved one wasting his time in the obstinate mirages of luck to try to stop him, to help him, to make him see reason... and, instead, they only succeed in alternating alarm and frustration at the falls and relapses of this person who is more and more possessed by vice. How to reflect on this?
Dostoyevsky knows well the art of presenting borderline characters to show us new dimensions of the human being. In the novel "The Gambler" (only 183 pages long!), Fyodor presents us with the fall of a normal young man into the underworld of compulsive gambling. This story, if we look at it with humility, has a very powerful force to help us empathize with people who have fallen into addiction, and also to better understand ourselves.
The argument
In the novel, there are two main narrative lines that rival each other in the heart of the protagonist: the torn love for a woman and a growing fever for roulette. Faced with these two forces that are so difficult to moderate, the question is imminent: which of them will conquer Alexei's soul?
The family of a retired Russian general is spending a leisure season in the fictitious town of "Rulettenburg" in southwestern Germany. As can be deduced from the name of the town, the casino is the center of attention there.
The atmosphere around the roulette wheel is dark and nervous: one and all are dragged by the greed of multiplying money, debts loom in the corners like mocking ghosts and vices parade impudently through the corridors: greed, selfishness, envy, anger, frivolity, despair, etc.; although all this is tinged with dissimulation, good manners and general unawareness.
Within the general's entourage we find the protagonist of the story: Alexei Ivanovich, a young Russian tutor who speaks and reads 3 languages, and who works for the head of the family in the education of his young children.
The general is a widower and is in love with a sophisticated and frivolous Frenchwoman, who, by all accounts, will say yes to the marriage proposal as soon as there is news of an inheritance that the suitor is expecting.
They are also accompanied by other relatives, a cynical Frenchman, a kind-hearted Englishman and the general's stepdaughter, Polina, with whom Alexei is in love to the teeth.
Initially, the young Alexei manages to more or less defend himself against the general spirit of meanness, but Polina asks him to play for the first time in the game so that he can bet on her account. He does well in that first operation and that moves him to take his own risks; he wins, and then the novel takes another flight: adrenaline infiltrates his veins, a force pushes him to return with seductive promises of fame, glory and success; he remotely notices that roulette goes against his reason, but how difficult it is to walk away, how not to recover what has been lost?
After many vicissitudes that alternate episodes of love and anguish, the compulsion for gambling grows in Alexei's heart; the situation is tense and a family catastrophe explodes the network of relationships (I don't give details for spoiler's sake). The family disperses and the young Alexei ends up alone, degraded in the skin of an unconfessed addict. He is no longer a tutor, he is now a compulsive gambler who sometimes realizes his captivity, but as soon as he gets a few coins he runs into the arms of Chance.
His own description of his situation is moving: "I live, needless to say, in perpetual anxiety; I play very small amounts and I am waiting for something, I make calculations, I spend entire days at the gaming table observing it, I even see it in my dreams; and from all this I deduce that I am becoming numb, as if sinking in stagnant water".
The double face of addiction
Dostoyevsky knows that human problems need a twofold approach to be solved, that of theory and that of experience. In his case, the latter usually holds more information than the former. In this line, the author leads us with unprecedented skill through the intricate labyrinth of a man who gradually loses his self-control.
When Chance displaces God from his throne and men place their trust in him, that idol shows his fangs; sometimes he gives, sometimes he asks; but above all he asks, and sometimes he also asks for human sacrifices.
Alexei was a man who knew how to save, plan and live, but he ends up degraded into someone who only spends, regrets and misses out on life. A man with a future, a career and friends ends up breathing like a simple little bird of the field, nervous and unaware of his alienation, dedicated body and soul to look for worms to eat, in an endless voracity without sense.
He glimpses his misery, but condemns himself by postponing the change of life for an always illusory "tomorrow".
Dostoyevsky gives us two keys to look correctly into the labyrinth of addiction: first, he shows us the story of a human being who is being irremissibly deceived by a diabolical lure and makes us witness every step, every hesitation of a man eaten away by passion.
Thanks to this effort, we suddenly realize that we are able to empathize with his affliction. The second key, more interesting in my opinion, is that Dostoyevsky raises in us the disturbing question of whether Alexei, in some not too remote way, could perhaps be me.
If you had been in Alexei's shoes, would you have behaved better? The truth is that we are as likely to fall into addiction as Dostoyevsky's character; the gambler of the novel lives inside us and is waiting for us to play with fire to jump in and take control of our lives. It is so, we are perfectly capable of reaching the last rung of moral existence (besides, today it is much easier to find a roulette wheel, or other sources of addiction, because we carry them in our pocket...).
With the awareness of our fallen nature it is easier for us to be charitable to the sinner, for how can I despise someone for his falls, when tomorrow the addict could be me? With this humble and realistic attitude we can approach that person and try to understand him, help him and even love him.
Thus the door is opened for us to give effective help, because in the love of our neighbor we discover Christ: and He alone can save us.
I suppose Dostoyevsky thought of all this when he created these characters, for he dictated the novel only three years after he fell into the same web that trapped Alexei. In his case, it all began in late August 1863. Fyodor was passing through Germany, burdened by debts, and tried his luck at roulette: he won about 10,000 francs. So far everything seemed to be going well, but he made the mistake of not leaving the city.
An irresistible temptation drove him back to the casino and thus began a fever that would trouble him for the rest of his life. Writing "The Gambler" in 1866 helped him to survive; and since then it has helped us to live.
