Ultimate Freedom

Welcome to Episode 445 of Celebrate Creativity - Ultimate Freedom - This is the third and final episode devoted to characters with epilepsy from   the writings of Fydor Dostoyevsky.

In addition to Prince Myskin and Smerdyakov, there was another major character who has a relationship with epilepsy called Kirillov from dostoyevsky’s novel by the name of Demons.  You see, Dostoevsky never explicitly says Kirillov is epileptic, but there are strong echoes of the condition, and scholars often connect him to Dostoevsky’s own experiences of seizures. 

In Demons, Kirillov is obsessed with ultimate freedom and the idea of overcoming the fear of death by committing suicide. At several points, he describes moments of sudden, radiant joy that come to him — a kind of ecstatic clarity just before unbearable suffering. Dostoevsky himself experienced something very similar with his own epilepsy. He wrote that just before some of his seizures, he would feel a sudden, luminous happiness, as though eternity were revealed to him in a single instant.

In Demons (Part II, Chapter 1), Kirillov says:

“There are moments, and it is only for a few seconds, when you feel the presence of eternal harmony … You feel it in all your being, and it is clear, it is undeniable. At such moments you would not exchange it for all the joys of earth.”

This is almost identical to Dostoevsky’s personal description of his epileptic aura. Many readers — and critics — have taken this as evidence that Kirillov is written as an epileptic character, even if Dostoevsky never uses the word.

Transcript

Welcome to Episode 445 of Celebrate Creativity - Ultimate Freedom - This is the third and final episode devoted to characters with epilepsy from   the writings of Fydor Dostoyevsky.

In addition to Prince Myskin and Smerdyakov, there was another major character who has a relationship with epilepsy called Kirillov from dostoyevsky’s novel by the name of Demons.  You see, Dostoevsky never explicitly says Kirillov is epileptic, but there are strong echoes of the condition, and scholars often connect him to Dostoevsky’s own experiences of seizures. 

In Demons, Kirillov is obsessed with ultimate freedom and the idea of overcoming the fear of death by committing suicide. At several points, he describes moments of sudden, radiant joy that come to him — a kind of ecstatic clarity just before unbearable suffering. Dostoevsky himself experienced something very similar with his own epilepsy. He wrote that just before some of his seizures, he would feel a sudden, luminous happiness, as though eternity were revealed to him in a single instant.

In Demons (Part II, Chapter 1), Kirillov says:

“There are moments, and it is only for a few seconds, when you feel the presence of eternal harmony … You feel it in all your being, and it is clear, it is undeniable. At such moments you would not exchange it for all the joys of earth.”

This is almost identical to Dostoevsky’s personal description of his epileptic aura. Many readers — and critics — have taken this as evidence that Kirillov is written as an epileptic character, even if Dostoevsky never uses the word.

Comparing Kirillov with Smerdyakov:

Smerdyakov: His epilepsy is concrete, physical, and narrative. His seizures provide an alibi, a way of hiding guilt, and become tied to deception and murder.

Kirillov: His “epileptic” experience is inward, philosophical, and mystical. Instead of convulsions, it’s visions of harmony. But it’s just as dangerous, because it leads him toward his final act of self-destruction.

So epilepsy functions differently: in Smerdyakov, it’s a bodily mask; in Kirillov, it’s a mystical temptation. And Prince Michigan is portrayed as more of our Christ figure. The three characters show how Dostoevsky reimagined his own illness in multiple ways across his novels - reflecting Dostoevsky’s epilepsy, but in various degrees of the body and of the spirit.

When we think about Dostoevsky’s use of epilepsy in his characters, Smerdyakov may seem the most obvious example: his convulsions are visible, physical, and central to the plot of The Brothers Karamazov. But Dostoevsky also gave another of his characters an experience that closely mirrors his own seizures — though in this case, it is more hidden, more inward. That character is Kirillov, from Demons - also known as the possessed

Remember that in Kirillov, Dostoevsky has taken the epileptic aura — that fleeting ecstasy before the fall — and woven it into the heart of a character. But while Smerdyakov’s seizures provide him with an alibi for murder, Kirillov’s ecstatic moments feed into his obsession with suicide.

For Kirillov, these visions of eternal harmony lead to a terrifying conclusion: if such divine joy is possible, then death itself must be nothing to fear. And if death is nothing to fear, then man can make himself absolutely free by choosing the moment of his own death. That’s the logic that drives Kirillov to his final, chilling act of self-destruction.

So if we place Kirillov beside Smerdyakov, we see two very different faces of Dostoevsky’s illness:

In Smerdyakov, epilepsy is external and physical. It twists his body, gives him a disguise, and becomes a weapon of deception.

In Kirillov, epilepsy is internal and spiritual. It offers visions of harmony and eternity — but these very visions are what propel him toward despair.

Together, they show us the two poles of Dostoevsky’s own experience with the disease. Epilepsy could bring him moments of almost mystical bliss, but it also brought terror, suffering, and danger. And in his fiction, he split those extremes into different characters: the manipulative Smerdyakov, the tormented visionary Kirillov, and the kind Prince Michigan.

In that way, Dostoevsky’s epilepsy doesn’t just shape his novels — it inhabits them, breathing through his characters, turning illness into a lens on the deepest questions of fate, freedom, and the human soul.

Remember, that unlike many of the writers we have discussed, Dostoevsky lived with epilepsy from his twenties until his death, and he turned the experience into some of his most unforgettable characters. In the idiot, we made Prince Michigan, who is basically a Christ figure. In The Brothers Karamazov we meet Smerdyakov, whose seizures are as physical as they are suspicious. And in Demons we meet Kirillov, whose ecstatic visions echo the aura Dostoevsky himself felt before a seizure. And in the idiot, we encounter Prince Michigan with his almost angelic nature. Together, these three characters show us both the light and the darkness of Dostoevsky’s illness.

Let's look at Smerdyakov, the illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovich. Right away, Dostoevsky establishes his condition almost clinically:

“Smerdyakov was subject to occasional fits of epilepsy. He was an epileptic, but of a special kind: not the violent sort, with convulsions and falling down, but a milder kind… Yet, once or twice a year he had full attacks, with convulsions.”

This isn’t just background. Smerdyakov’s epilepsy becomes a turning point in the novel. On the night of Fyodor Pavlovich’s murder, he suddenly collapses:

“At that instant Smerdyakov was suddenly seized with an epileptic fit. He screamed, was shaken, and fell senseless to the floor. Ivan ran up and tried to lift him, but he lay convulsed and groaning, quite unconscious of what was happening. Ivan had to send for help.”

The fit seems to excuse him from suspicion. A man writhing on the floor can hardly be a murderer. But Dostoevsky never lets us rest easy. Ivan begins to wonder whether the timing of the seizure was, in fact, too convenient:

“But it suddenly struck him that Smerdyakov might have had his fit just when it was most necessary. That epileptic fall might have been only a trick, a sham, to put him out of the way.”

And in a chilling confession, Smerdyakov admits that he anticipated the fit, and still had the strength to act:

“I had a fit that evening, but it was not such a violent one… I knew I should have one, and I lay down beforehand to be ready… But I could still manage to get up afterwards and do what was wanted.”

So Smerdyakov’s epilepsy becomes more than a medical condition. It is a mask, an alibi, a tool of deception. Dostoevsky makes the disease both realistic and symbolic: something that distorts the body, but also distorts the truth.

Now let’s return to Kirillov, a very different kind of figure. Unlike Smerdyakov, he’s not explicitly called an epileptic. He doesn’t convulse, doesn’t collapse. But Dostoevsky gives him something that echoes the disease in a different way: moments of sudden, radiant joy — the exact kind of “aura” Dostoevsky himself experienced before a seizure.

Here’s Kirillov in Demons:

“There are moments, and it is only for a few seconds, when you feel the presence of eternal harmony … You feel it in all your being, and it is clear, it is undeniable. At such moments you would not exchange it for all the joys of earth.”

Compare that with Dostoevsky’s own description of his seizures: he wrote of “a second of highest happiness … that I would not exchange for all the joys that life can give.” The connection is unmistakable.

But where Smerdyakov’s seizures shield him from suspicion, Kirillov’s ecstatic visions pull him into a terrifying philosophy. He becomes convinced that if such joy is possible, then death itself is nothing to fear. And if death is nothing to fear, then the ultimate freedom is suicide — choosing the moment of your own death. His epileptic “aura” becomes the seed of his destruction.

Bringing Them Together
So we have three characters - all characters shaped by epilepsy, but in very different ways.

Prince Michigan can be compared to a Christ figure.

Smerdyakov’s epilepsy is physical, external, and deceptive — a body in convulsions, used as an alibi for murder.

Kirillov’s epilepsy is spiritual, inward, and visionary — an ecstasy that leads him to embrace suicide.
Between them, we see both faces of Dostoevsky’s own illness. For him, epilepsy could mean unbearable suffering, but it could also mean transcendent joy as well as unbelievable kindness He split those extremes into different characters: Smerdyakov, the manipulator, and Kirillov, the visionary, and Prince Michigan, the Christ-like figure.

Here epilepsy becomes more than a disease. It becomes a metaphor for the human condition itself — the sudden collapse, the terrifying doubt, the flashes of joy, the questions of freedom and fate that Dostoevsky wrestled with his entire life.

So when we read Dostoevsky, we don’t just encounter stories about Russian families or revolutionary conspiracies. We encounter his very body, his very suffering, transformed into literature. In Smerdyakov and Kirillov, and Prince Michigan, epilepsy becomes a window into the deepest mysteries of Dostoevsky’s imagination — and perhaps into the deepest mysteries of our own.

Remember that The Idiot is an excellent example of how art can contribute to scientific observation. Dostoevsky lets us see into the mind and emotion of the individual with epilepsy through the character Prince Myshkin.  Here Prince Myshkin describes the onset of a seizure.

'He was thinking, incidentally, that there was a moment or two in his epileptic condition almost before the fit itself (if it occurred in waking hours) when suddenly amid the sadness, spiritual darkness and depression, his brain seemed to catch fire at brief moments....His sensation of being alive and his awareness increased tenfold at those moments which flashed by like lightning.  His mind and heart were flooded by a dazzling light.  All his agitation, doubts and worries, seemed composed in a twinkling, culminating in a great calm, full of understanding...but these moments, these glimmerings were still but a premonition of that final second (never more than a second) with which the seizure itself began.  That second was, of course, unbearable.

This description is very similar to Dostoevsky 's  observation of his own epilepsy

" For several instants I experience a happiness that is impossible in an ordinary state, and of which other people have no conception.  I feel full harmony in myself and in the whole world, and the feeling is so strong and sweet that for a few seconds of such bliss one could give up ten years of life, perhaps all of life.

I felt that heaven descended to earth and swallowed me.  I really attained god and was imbued with him.  All of you healthy people don't even suspect what happiness is, that happiness that we epileptics experience for a second before an attack.”

I think it's especially interesting that modern neurologists have studied Dostoevsky’s seizure descriptions with awe — because they are so precise, they’re sometimes used in medical training even today.

If you’d like to explore Dostoevsky, epilepsy, and how these experiences shaped characters such as Prince Michigan from the idiot,  Smerdyakov from (The Brothers Karamazov) and Kirillov from (Demons), here are some extremely accessible resources:  

Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time (Princeton University Press, 2010) — a masterful single-volume biography with excellent chapters on Dostoevsky’s illness and fiction.

Edward Wasiolek, Dostoevsky: The Major Fiction (MIT Press, 1964) — a classic study of Dostoevsky’s themes, including the role of illness.
James L. Rice, Dostoevsky and the Healing Art (University of Michigan Press, 1985) — explores Dostoevsky’s knowledge of medicine and his portrayal of epilepsy.

Jutta Scherrer, “Epilepsy and the Creative Process: Dostoevsky’s Use of Illness in His Work,” in Dostoevsky and His Time (Ardis, 1971).

Fun fact: Dostoevsky’s descriptions of seizures are so vivid that modern neurologists still use them as case examples in teaching.

Remember that Dostoevsky didn’t just write about epilepsy — he lived it. In this episode, we explore how his own seizures shaped two unforgettable characters: Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov and Kirillov in Demons, where illness becomes both an alibi for murder and a vision of eternity.

Absolutely! Here are a few snappy, one-sentence episode title ideas for your Dostoevsky episode:

“Seizures and Sin: Dostoevsky’s Smerdyakov and Kirillov”

“Epilepsy and Eternity: The Hidden Life of Dostoevsky’s Characters”

“Fits of Fate: How Dostoevsky Turned Illness into Art”

“From Smerdyakov to Kirillov: Dostoevsky’s Epileptic Vision”
Dostoevsky himself suffered from epileptic seizures, and he incorporated extremely vivid, phenomenologically accurate descriptions of them into his fiction. Modern neurologists often cite his work when teaching about the subjective experience of seizures—particularly temporal lobe epilepsy—because he captures not only the physical but also the psychological and existential sensations of a seizure, which medical texts rarely convey with such depth.

A classic example is from The Idiot, where Prince Myshkin experiences a seizure. Dostoevsky describes the premonitory aura, the physical convulsions, and the intense internal perception:

“A sudden chill ran over me, my knees shook, I was seized with an indescribable feeling of anxiety, as though something terrible were about to happen… My head began to spin, my heart beat wildly. And then, as if I were being drawn into a dark abyss, all consciousness fled me. I could feel the world pressing in on me, and yet I was utterly alone, floating in a vast, silent void… The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor, the seizure had passed, but my body was limp and exhausted, my mind still quivering with fragments of that overwhelming fear.”

Neurologists highlight passages like this because Dostoevsky captures several key clinical phenomena that textbooks now emphasize:

Aura: The sense of impending dread, unusual sensations, or anxiety before the seizure.

Loss of consciousness: The “void” or detachment from reality.

Postictal state: Physical exhaustion and mental disorientation after the seizure.

Subjective experience: The existential and emotional dimensions, which are rarely documented clinically but are crucial for understanding patient experience.

Joint celebrate creativity for episode 446 - Flaubert is NOT Colbert

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