도스토옙스키의 『백치』에 나타난 얼굴의 문제

This paper aims to understand Dostoevsky’s labyrinthine novel The Idiot by examining the meaning of the human ‘face,’ which is addressed with great importance in this novel. The novel is saturated with depictions of people’s faces, and It is well known that Dostoevsky paid considerable attention to the human face. For him, human face embodies not only one’s characteristic and psychology, but one’s spirit. Only Mishkin, the protagonist in this novel, has the capability to ‘see’ other’s pain and agony through their faces. Similar to Mishkin, Emmanuel Levinas, the French philosopher in the 20th century, considered the human face as the very source of connecting each being to the other in an ethical way. By expounding the meaning of the Hans Holbein’s painting “The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb” in connection with the meaning of the human face, this paper intended to demonstrate that the conclusion of The Idiot implies unfathomable faith and ethics, albeit it is ended in tragedy outwardly.