Partially examine life relies on your support. To find out how to help,

in ways that are cheap or even free for you, check out partiallyexaminedlife.com-support.

You're listening to the Partially examined life. This is episode 164 part two on Dusty Afsky's novel

The Idiot. We had just gotten to Dusty Afsky's overall critique of Russia at the time and it's

enlightenment ten C's and how that led to socialism and how that was missing some special sauce of

ethics. This might be a good time to shift gears and talk a little more about his religious views

and how they fit into this novel. There's a lot of Christ symbolism or if not symbolism,

for one thing there's an actual picture of Christ that's in Rogogen's house that first

Michigan sees and then this character that we haven't talked about yet,

Epolyte in his long speech gives a lot more information about this. So it's the picture of Christ

had just been taken down from the cross and it just shows him really messed up. This is part three

chapter six. Yep. And Michigan sees this, he says that picture could almost make you lose your

faith. It's so antithetical to what we think of as Christ is in it. This is a real painting that

Dusty Afsky saw in Switzerland while he was writing this book and apparently he stood transfixed

at it for like an hour and his wife had to tear him away for fear that he would go into an

Epolyte's seizure. You should go and look at it right now on Wikipedia. It's called the dead

Christ in the tomb. Even just as a little like three by five on your screen you can tell

it's called Holbein. Yeah. It's an incredibly, he looks like a real dead guy, his body's

starting to putrify and there's nothing radiant at all about it. And then the form of it is very

striking. Like he's, you're almost looking at him from the side in a coffin almost.

Except he's got a little pointy Russian beard. He's giving us the middle finger. Yes. The painting,

I think it's kind of interesting to think it's almost a painting of Nietzsche's idea of the death

...