Interestingly, the "dead water" motif found in Slavic folklore is more than just a substance deadly for living creatures. It transforms the living into the dead, true, but it also affects the dead, for example it heals wounds found on a dead body. In a way it provides sustenance - for the dead. Like the "living water" - for the living.
No heroes, no leviathan - only dead water.
Discord among people and within them.
"What!? I'm just bla-bla-ing"
This quote have long since found it's place in my head:
"it's very rude to look at and judge a man's soul the way you're judging Ippolit. You have no tenderness, only truth, that makes it unfair."
Prince Myshkin's response is also great:
"I think you are being unfair to me," he said. "I don't find anything bad in his thinking that way, because everyone is inclined to think that way; besides, maybe he didn't think at all, but he merely wanted... he wanted to meet people for the last time, to deserve their respect and love; those are very good feelings, only somehow nothing turned out right; it's his sickness, and something else as well." (italics are mine-KK)
The last sentence reminds me of another great quote from Tarkovsky's Solaris about the "hallucinations" being a result of an alien hostile interference:
"No... It has something to do with conscience."