A couple of things that struck me in the second reading

These ideas are all more or less disconnected, so I will just use bullet points this time.

• Myshkin says in chapter VI that he lived in Lucerne, Switzerland. This reminds me of a book that I read for my thesis, San Manuel Bueno, Mártir, by Miguel de Unamuno. It's really too bad that I compared it only to The Underground Man and The Brothers Karamazov because the similarities here are incredible. Myshkin says about the lake in Lucerne, "Я чувствовал, как оно хорошо, но мне ужасно было тяжело при этом" ("I felt how good it was, but also terribly weighed down because of that") and he later explains, "Мне всегда тяжело и беспокойно смотреть на такую природу в первый раз; и хорошо, и беспокойно" ("I'm always weighed down and anxious when I see such nature for the first time; both good and anxious"). In Unamuno's book, the setting is Valverde de Lucerna, a fictitious village in Spain. The main character, a Catholic priest who believes that he does not truly believe in God, but rather is priest for the sake of the people, is also anxiously enchanted by the local lake, which, according to legend, has certain magical properties. He walks around the lake and the nearby monastery ruins quite often and says that he sometimes just wants to dive in (with the intention of never again resurfacing). But it is also believed that the real village is at the bottom of the lake, so his desire is not only suicidal, but also reflects a search for real substance and truth. Of course, Unamuno wrote this long after Dostoevski's death and I didn't find any evidence during my thesis investigations that Unamuno had actually read any of his works, but maybe this is just a common idea in literature: the magic lake that has the power to both give and take away, that both reflects reality and somehow purifies it.
• Myshkin's artistic abilities (also ch. VI): now it's clear that they go beyond calligraphy. When Adelaida asks him for advice on what to paint, she says says that he knows how to "глядеть" ("look, gaze") because he has seen such marvellous landscapes in Switzerland (the lake, etc.). And when he answers that he was simply happy there, whether he learned something or not, Aglaia says "Вы умеете быть счастливым? Так как же вы говорите, что не научились глядеть? Еще нас поучите" ("You know how to be happy? Then how can you say that you didn't learn to look? You'll be teaching us now"). Here the girls imply that the prince is master of two arts: the art of gazing upon something (seeing it for what it truly is or simply noticing all the details as well as the big picture?) and the art of being happy, which seem to go hand in hand. And, as Oxana and others wrote, he has mastered the art of understanding and describing people's souls. Also when Myshkin tells Adelaida how she should paint the guillotine scene, it is clear that he has the eye and the imagination of an artist. He also mentions several paintings throughout the book. He seems to have a very impressionable and imaginative mind in general, because he says that he dreamt of the guillotine killing (which he saw) and of how his friend was pardoned right before being killed (which was only described to him) many times. I think that this must be related to the suspicions about Myshkin (both on the part of us readers and on the part of other characters): if he is so good at art, no wonder you get the feeling at times that he's just playing, or acting a certain way with a certain purpose. Someone mentioned here on the blog how he got Epanchin to invite him to stay and in this section we saw how he got Ganya to apologize to him on the way to the Ivolgins' house. Even the Epanchin girls suspect that he is a "большой плут, а вовсе не идиот" ("big swindler, and not at all an idiot"). I suspect we'll see more such sneaky behavior in the coming sections.