Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Grand Inquisitor

TRANSLATED BY DAVID MCDUFF

PENGUIN BOOKS — GREAT IDEAS

Contents

Part One: ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ from The Brothers Karamazov

Part Two: Selections from The House of the Dead

  i The House of the Dead

 ii First Impressions (1)

iii First Impressions (2)

iv First Impressions (3)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

1821–1881

Note

‘The Grand Inquisitor’ is a ‘poema’ or narrative argument from Book Five of The Brothers Karamazov, which considers the idea of freedom. In the preceding chapter, Ivan introduces it to his brother Aloysha:

‘Listen Aloysha, don’t laugh, but I once composed a poema – I did it about a year ago. If you’re able to waste another ten minutes or so with me, would you let me tell you what it says?’

‘You’ve written a poema?’

‘Oh no, I didn’t write it,’ Ivan said, laughing, ‘never in my life have I written down so much as two lines of verse. No, I dreamed this poema up and committed it to memory. I dreamed it up with passion. You shall be my first reader, or listener, rather,’ Ivan said with an ironic smile. ‘Shall I tell you what it says or not?’

‘By all means,’ Aloysha managed to get out.

‘My poema is entitled “The Grand Inquisitor”, a preposterous thing, but I feel like telling it to you.’

In ‘The House of the Dead’ Dostoyevsky recreates the time he spent in a Siberian convict prison through his fictionalized narrator Alekzandr Petrovich Goryanchikov.

‘The Grand Inquisitor’ from
The Brothers Karamozov

‘You see, even here we can’t get by without a preface – a literary preface, that is, confound it!’ Ivan said, laughing. ‘And what kind of an author am I? Look, the action of my poem takes place in the sixteenth century, and back then – as a matter of fact, this ought still to be familiar to you from your days at school – back then it was the custom in works of poetry to bring the celestial powers down to earth. Dante I need hardly mention. In France the magistrates’ clerks and also the monks in the monasteries used to give entire dramatic spectacles in which they brought on to the stage the Madonna, the angels, the saints, Christ and even God Himself. Back in those days it was all very unsophisticated. In Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, under the reign of Louis XI, an edifying spectacle is given to the people free of charge in the auditorium of the Paris Town Hall, to celebrate the birthday of the French Dauphin, under the title Le bon jugement de la très sainte et gracieuse Vierge Marie, in which she herself appears in person and pronounces her bon jugement. In our own country, in the Moscow of pre-Petrine antiquity, dramatic spectacles of almost the same kind, especially of stories from the Old Testament, also took place from time to time; but, in addition to dramatic spectacles, there passed throughout all the world a large number of tales and “verses” in which when necessary the saints, the angels and all the powers of heaven wrought their influence. The monks in our monasteries also occupied themselves with the translation, copying and even the composition of such poems, and in such times, too: under the Tartar yoke. There is, for example, a certain little monastic poem (from the Greek, of course) entitled The Journey of the Mother of God Through the Torments, with scenes and with a boldness that are not inferior to those of Dante. The Mother of God visits hell, and her guide through the “torments” is the Archangel Michael. She beholds the sinners and their sufferings. This hell, incidentally, contains a most entertaining category of sinners in a burning lake: those of them who sink into this lake so deep that they are unable to swim to its surface again are “forgotten by God” – a phrase of exceptional force and profundity. And lo, the shocked and weeping Mother of God falls down before God’s throne and appeals to him to grant forgiveness to all who are in hell, all whom she has seen there, without distinction. Her entreaty with God is of colossal interest. She implores him, she will not depart, and when God draws her attention to the nailed hands and feet of His Son and asks her: “How can I forgive his torturers?” she commands all the saints, all the martyrs, all the angels and archangels to fall down together with her and pray for the forgiveness of all without discrimination. The upshot of it is that she coaxes from God a respite from the torments each year, from Good Friday to Whit Sunday, and out of hell the sinners at once thank the Lord and loudly cry unto Him: “Just and true art thou, O Lord, that thou hast judged thus.” Well, my little poem would have been in similar vein, had it appeared in those days. He appears on my proscenium; to be sure, in my poem. He does not say anything, only makes his appearance and goes on his way. Fifteen centuries have now passed since He made his vow to come in his kingdom, fifteen centuries since his prophet wrote: “Behold, I come quickly.” “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, not even the Son, but only my Father in heaven,” as He himself prophesied while yet on the earth. But humankind awaits him with its earlier faith and its earlier tender emotion. Oh, with even greater faith, for fifteen centuries have now passed since the pledges have ceased to be lent to man from the heavens:

Thou must have faith in what the heart saith,

For the heavens no pledges lend.

‘And only faith in that which is said by the heart! To be sure, there were many miracles back in those days. There were saints who effected miraculous healings; to some righteous men, according to their life chronicles, the Queen of Heaven herself came down. But the Devil does not slumber, and in humankind there had already begun to grow a doubt in the genuineness of these miracles. Just at that time there appeared in the north, in Germany, a terrible new heresy. An enormous star, “burning as it were a lamp” (that’s the church, you see), “fell upon the fountains of the waters, and they were made bitter”. These heresies began blasphemously to contradict the miracles. But all the more ardent was the faith of those who remained true believers. The tears of humankind ascended to Him as before, He was awaited, loved, trusted in, people thirsted to suffer and die for him, as before… And for how many centuries had humankind prayed with faith and ardour: “O God the Lord, show us light”, for how many centuries had it appealed to Him that He, in His immeasurable compassion, should deign to come down among His supplicants. He had been known to condescend before and had visited certain men of righteousness, martyrs and holy cenobites while yet they lived on earth, as it is written in their “Lives”. Among us Tyutchev, who believed profoundly in the truth of His words, announced that

Weighed down by the Cross’s burden,

All of you, my native land,

Heaven’s Tsar in servile aspect

Trudged while blessing, end to end.

Which really was the case, I do assure you. And so it happens that He conceives the desire to manifest Himself, if only for an instant, to His people – to His struggling, suffering, stinkingly sinful people that none the less childishly love Him. My poem is set in Spain, at the most dreadful period of the Inquisition, when bonfires glowed throughout the land every day to the glory of God and

In resplendent autos-da-fé

Burned the wicked heretics.

Oh, this is not, of course, that coming in which He will appear, according to His promise, at the end of days in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory and which will take place suddenly, “as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west”. No, He has conceived the desire to visit his children at least for an instant and precisely in those places where the bonfires of heretics had begun to crackle. In His boundless mercy He passes once more among men in that same human form in which for three years He walked among men fifteen centuries earlier. He comes down to the “hot streets and squares” of the southern town in which only the previous day, in a “resplendent auto-da-fé”, in the presence of the king, the court, the knights, the cardinals and the loveliest ladies of the court, in the presence of the numerous population of all Seville, there have been burned by the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor very nearly a good hundred heretics all in one go, ad majorem gloriam Dei. He has appeared quietly, unostentatiously, and yet – strange, this – everyone recognizes Him. That could have been one of the best bits in my poem – I mean, the question of why it is that everyone recognizes him. The people rush towards him with invincible force, surround him, mass around him, follow him. Saying nothing, He passes among them with a quiet smile of infinite compassion. The sun of love burns in his heart, the beams of Light, Enlightenment and Power flow from his eyes and, as they stream over people, shake their hearts with answering love. He stretches out His arms to them, blesses them, and from one touch of Him, even of His garments, there issues a healing force. Then from the crowd an old man, blind since the years of his childhood, exclaims: “O Lord, heal me, that I may behold thee,” and lo, it is as though the scales fall from the blind man’s eyes, and he sees Him. The people weep and kiss the ground on which He walks. The children throw flowers in his path, singing and crying to Him: “Hosannah!” “It’s Him, it’s Him,” they all repeat, “it must be Him, it can’t be anyone but Him.” He stops in the parvis of Seville Cathedral just at the moment a white, open child’s coffin is being borne with weeping into the place of worship: in it is a seven-year-old girl, the only daughter of a certain noble and distinguished citizen. The dead child lies covered in flowers. “He will raise up your child,” voices cry from the crowd to the weeping mother. The cathedral pater who has come out to meet the coffin looks bewildered and knits his brows. But then the mother of the dead child utters a resounding wail. She throws herself at his feet: “If it is You, then raise up my child!” she exclaims, stretching out her arms to him. The procession stops, the coffin is lowered to the parvis floor, to his feet. He gazes with compassion, and his lips softly pronounce again: “Talitha cumi” – “Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.” The girl rises in her coffin, sits up and looks around her, smiling, with astonished, wide-open eyes. In her arms is the bouquet of white roses with which she had lain in the coffin. Among the people there are confusion, shouts, sobbing, and then suddenly, at that very moment, on his way past the cathedral comes the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself. He is an old man of almost ninety, tall and straight, with a withered face and sunken eyes, in which, however, there is still a fiery, spark-like gleam. Oh, he is not dressed in his resplendent cardinal’s attire, the attire in which yesterday he showed himself off before the people as the enemies of the Roman faith were being burned – no, at this moment he wears only his old, coarse, monkish cassock. Behind him at a certain distance follow his surly assistants and servants and the “Holy” Guard. He stops before the crowd and observes from a distance. He has seen it all, has seen the coffin being put down at His feet, has seen the damsel rise up, and a shadow has settled on his face. He knits his thick, grey brows, and his eyes flash with an ill-boding fire. He extends his index finger and orders the guards to arrest Him. And lo, such is his power and so accustomed, submissive and tremblingly obedient to him are the people that the crowd immediately parts before the guards, and they, amidst the sepulchral silence that has suddenly fallen, place their hands on Him and march Him away. Instantly, the crowd, almost as one man, bow their heads to the ground before the Elder–Inquisitor, and without uttering a word he blesses the people and passes on his way. The Guard conduct the Captive to a narrow and murky vaulted prison in the ancient building of the Ecclesiastical Court and lock Him up in it. The day goes by, and the dark, passionate and “unbreathing” Seville night begins. The air “of lemon and of laurel reeks”. In the midst of the deep murk the prison’s iron door is suddenly opened and the old Grand Inquisitor himself slowly enters the prison with a lamp in his hand. He is alone, the door instantly locks again behind him. He pauses in the entrance and for a long time, a minute or two, studies His face. At last he quietly goes up to Him, places the lamp on the table and says to Him:

‘ “Is it you? You?” Receiving no answer, however, he quickly adds: “No, do not reply, keep silent. And in any case, what could you possibly say? I know only too well what you would say. And you have no right to add anything to what was said by you in former times. Why have you come to get in our way? For you have come to get in our way, and you yourself know it. But do you know what will happen tomorrow? I do not know who you are, and I do not want to know: you may be He or you may be only His likeness, but tomorrow I shall find you guilty and burn you at the stake as the most wicked of heretics, and those same people who today kissed your feet will tomorrow at one wave of my hand rush to rake up the embers on your bonfire, do you know that? Yes, I dare say you do,” he added in heartfelt reflection, not for one moment removing his gaze from his Captive.’

‘I don’t quite understand this part of it, Ivan,’ Alyosha smiled; all the time he had listened in silence. ‘Is it simply an immense fantasy, or is it some mistake on the part of an old man, some impossible quiproquo?’

‘Why don’t you assume it’s the latter.’ Ivan burst out laughing. ‘If you’ve been so spoiled by contemporary realism that you can’t endure anything fantastic and you want it to be a quiproquo, then so be it. It certainly can’t be denied,’ he laughed again, ‘that the old man is ninety, and might easily have long ago been driven insane by the idea that is in his mind. On the other hand, the Captive might have struck him by His appearance. Or it might simply have been a hallucination, the vision of a ninety-year-old man on the threshold of death, given added feverish intensity by the previous day’s auto-da-fé of a hundred burned heretics. Is it not, however, a matter of indifference to us whether it’s a quiproquo, or whether it’s a colossal fantasy? The point is merely that the old man wants to speak his mind, to finally say out loud the things he has kept silent about for ninety years.’

‘And the Captive says nothing either? Gazes at him, but says no word?’

‘But that is how it must be in all such instances,’ Ivan laughed again. ‘The old man himself remarks to Him that He has not the right to add anything to what has already been said by Him in former times. If one cares to, one can see in that statement the most basic characteristic of Roman Catholicism, in my opinion, at least; it’s as if they were saying: “It was all told by you to the Pope and so it is now all of it in the Pope’s possession, and now we should appreciate it if you would stay away altogether and refrain from interfering for the time being, at any rate.” That is the sense in which they not only speak but also write, the Jesuits, at least. I’ve read such things in the works of their theologians. “Do you have the right to divulge to us so much as one of the mysteries of the world from which you have come?” my old man asks Him, supplying the answer himself: “No, you do not, lest you add anything to what has already been said by you, and lest you take away from people the freedom you so stood up for when you were upon the earth. Anything new that you divulge will encroach upon people’s freedom to believe, for it will look like a miracle and their freedom to believe was what mattered to you most even back then, fifteen hundred years ago. Was it not you who so often used to say back then: ‘I want to make you free’? Well, but now you have seen those ‘free’ people,” the old man suddenly adds with a thoughtful and ironic smile. “Yes, this task has cost us dearly,” he continues, looking at him sternly, “but we have at last accomplished it in your name. For fifteen centuries we have struggled with that freedom, but now it is all over, and over for good. You don’t believe that it is over for good? You look at me meekly and do not even consider me worthy of indignation? Well, I think you ought to be aware that now, and particularly in the days we are currently living through, those people are even more certain than ever that they are completely free, and indeed they themselves have brought us their freedom and have laid it humbly at our feet. But we were the ones who did that, and was that what you desired, that kind of freedom?” ’

‘Once again I don’t understand,’ Alyosha broke in. ‘Is he being ironic, is he laughing?’

‘Not at all. What he is doing is claiming the credit for himself and his kind for at last having conquered freedom and having done so in order to make people happy. “For only now” (he is talking about the Inquisition, of course) “has it become possible to think for the first time about people’s happiness. Man is constituted as a mutineer; can mutineers ever be happy? You were given warnings,” he says to Him, “you had plenty of warnings and instructions, but you did not obey them, you rejected the only path by which people could have been made happy, but fortunately when you left you handed over the task to us. You gave your promise, you sealed it with your word, you gave us the right to bind and loose, and so of course you cannot even dream of taking that right from us now. So why have you come to get in our way?” ’

‘I wonder if you could explain the meaning of that phrase: “you had plenty of warnings and instructions”?’ Alyosha asked.

‘Yes, well, that is exactly the point on which the old man wants to speak his mind.’

‘ “The terrible and clever Spirit, the Spirit of self-annihilation and non-existence,” the old man continues, “that great Spirit spoke with you in the wilderness, and we are told in the Scriptures that it ‘tempted’ you. Is that so? And would it be possible to say anything more true than those things which he made known to you in three questions and which you rejected, and which in the Scriptures are called ‘temptations’? Yet at the same time, if ever there took place on the earth a truly thunderous miracle, it was on that day, the day of those three temptations. Precisely in the emergence of those three questions did the miracle lie. Were one to imagine, just for the sake of experiment and as an example, that those three questions put by the terrible Spirit had been lost without trace from the Scriptures and that it was necessary to reconstruct them, invent and compose them anew so they could again be entered in the Scriptures, and for this purpose to gather together all the sages of the earth – the rulers, the high priests, the scholars, the philosophers, the poets, and give them the task of inventing, composing three questions, but of such a kind