Everything was before him

Dostoevsky describes General Epanchin's position in life with these shining words: "Но все было впереди, время терпело, время все терпело, и все должно было придти современем и своим чередом." ... "But everything was before him, there was time enough for everything, and everything would come in time and in due course." What a wonderful place to be! No wonder he continues: "Да и летами генерал Епанчин был еще, как говорится, в самом соку, то-есть пятидесяти шести лет и никак не более, что во всяком случае составляет возраст цветущий, возраст, с которого, по-настоящему, начинается истинная жизнь." ... "As for his years, General Epanchin was still, as they say, in the prime of life, that is, fifty-six and not a whit more, which in any case is a flourishing age, the age when true life really begins." (translation, as often, from Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky).

A few pages earlier, in describing Totsky, the man who lives with Nastasya Filippovna, Dostoevsky refers to the mid 50s: "потому совсем, то-есть, лет достиг настоящих, пятидесяти пяти, и жениться на первейшей раскрасавице во всем Петербурге хочет." ... interestingly (and perhaps strangely), Pevear and Volokhonsky add in the phrase "prime of life" here as well ... "because he's reached the prime of life, he's fifty-five, and wants to marry the foremost beauty in all Petersburg." Totsky is fifty-five, he's getting on a bit, now is the time he should be thinking of marrying a beauty, but of course it is plausible that he marry a great beauty, so in this sense perhaps we can take it as the "prime of life", but I am not sure the addition of the phrase in the translation is justified.

[Painting by Фёдор Александрович Васильев]

Money for nothing in return

Dostoevsky again, getting us on-side with some entertaining complaints about the medical profession:

особенно засмеялся он, когда на вопрос: "что же, вылечили?" - белокурый отвечал, что "нет, не вылечили".
- Хе! Денег что, должно быть, даром переплатили, а мы-то им здесь верим

He laughed particularly when to his question 'Did they cure you?' the blond man answered 'No, they didn't.'
- Heh, Got all that money for nothing, and we go on believing them.

Of course, the same holds now in spades for the consultants big companies hire to cure themselves.

Russian difference

The theme of Russian difference is touched lightly upon in the first pages of The Idiot: "Но что годилось и вполне удовлетворяло в Италии, то оказалось не совсем пригодным в России." - "But what was proper and quite satisfactory in Italy, turned out to be not entirely suitable to Russia". The comic lightness of touch in the phrasing "не совсем пригодным" is delightful: the polite understatement also carries within it some of the mockery that animates Rogozhin.

Narrative gambits

After a quick paragraph of scene-setting, Dostoevsky gets the narrative of The Idiot running with the second sentence of the second paragraph: "Если б они оба знали один про другого, чем они особенно в эту минуту замечательны, то, конечно, подивились бы, что случай так странно посадил их друг против друга в третьеклассном вагоне петербургско-варшавского поезда." ... "If they had known what was so remarkable about each other at that moment, they would certainly have marvelled at the chance that had strangely seated them facing each other in the third-class carriage of the Warsaw-St Petersburg train."

What is it, we want to know, that is so "замечательны", so "remarkable" or "wonderful" about these figures. Surely we too shall shortly "marvel." We read on.