I am reading The Idiot again. Dostoevsky is always new, no matter how many times one reads him. Besides, the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky is only a couple of years old.[1] And so I started the book with some excitement. I was ready for surprises. More, I was eager for them. Still, the first one awaited me much earlier than I had expected—on page 13 at the end of Section I. This is where the prime of life is set at the age of fifty-five. Three pages later, at the beginning of Section II, the prime of life comes up again, at fifty-six. This is a “flourishing age,” writes Dostoevsky with palpable gusto, “the age when true life really begins.” The emphasis is in the original, too. Never before have I spotted these two passages, but the true surprise is elsewhere. Namely, I felt vindicated. It was as though I was deeply convinced already that I was in the prime of my life. At the tender age of fifty-seven, no less.

Addendum (May 8, 2018)

Having come across this piece entirely by chance, I immediately remembered the new research about age and happiness (“The U-Bend: A Letter to The Economist,” December 20, 2010; and “The U-Shaped Happiness Curve,” June 25, 2015). To wit, happiness declines from the late teens through the fifties, and then it increases until the last few years of life, when it declines once again. More often than not, the last decline is triggered by illness. These findings pertain mainly to rich countries, though. Returning to Dostoevsky, he belonged to the rich among Russians at the time. Whence his felicitous claim that mid-fifties are the prime of life. Amazingly, he was an entire century ahead of the researchers behind the U-shaped happiness curve! Which only goes to show that a good writer and/or thinker is way ahead of his or her times. The rest of humanity catches up at long last, but only just. The Idiot is still unreachable by the bulk of the human race.

Footnote

1. London: Granta Books, 2001.