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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Grand Inquisitor, by Feodor Dostoevsky This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The Grand Inquisitor
Author: Feodor Dostoevsky
Translator: H. P. Blavatsky
Posting Date: June 28, 2010 [EBook #8578]
Release Date: July, 2005
First Posted: July 25, 2003
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE GRAND INQUISITORBy
Feodor Dostoevsky
(Translation by H.P. Blavatsky)
[Dedicated by the Translator to those sceptics who clamour so loudly, both in print and private lettersââShow us the wonder-working âBrothers,â let them come out publiclyâand we will believe in them!â]
[The following is an extract from M. Dostoevskyâs celebrated novel, The Brothers Karamazof, the last publication from the pen of the great Russian novelist, who died a few months ago, just as the concluding chapters appeared in print. Dostoevsky is beginning to be recognized as one of the ablest and profoundest among Russian writers. His characters are invariably typical portraits drawn from various classes of Russian society, strikingly life-like and realistic to the highest degree. The following extract is a cutting satire on modern theology generally and the Roman Catholic religion in particular. The idea is that Christ revisits earth, coming to Spain at the period of the Inquisition, and is at once arrested as a heretic by the Grand Inquisitor. One of the three brothers of the story, Ivan, a rank materialist and an atheist of the new school, is supposed to throw this conception into the form of a poem, which he describes to Alyoshaâthe youngest of the brothers, a young Christian mystic brought up by a âsaintâ in a monasteryâas follows: (âEd. Theosophist, Nov., 1881)]
âQuite impossible, as you see, to start without an introduction,â
laughed Ivan. âWell, then, I mean to place the event described in the poem in the sixteenth century, an ageâas you must have been told at schoolâwhen it was the great fashion among poets to make the denizens and powers of higher worlds descend on earth and mix freely with mortals⊠In France all the notariesâ
clerks, and the monks in the cloisters as well, used to give grand performances, dramatic plays in which long scenes were enacted by the Madonna, the angels, the saints, Christ, and even by God Himself. In those days, everything was very artless and primitive. An instance of it may be found in Victor Hugoâs drama, Notre Dame de Paris, where, at the Municipal Hall, a play called Le Bon Jugement de la Tres-sainte et GraciĂšuse Vierge Marie, is enacted in honour of Louis XI, in which the Virgin appears personally to pronounce her âgood judgment.â In Moscow, during the prepetrean period, performances of nearly the same character, chosen especially from the Old Testament, were also in great favour. Apart from such plays, the world was overflooded with mystical writings, âversesââthe heroes of which were always selected from the ranks of angels, saints and other heavenly citizens answering to the devotional purposes of the age. The recluses of our monasteries, like the Roman Catholic monks, passed their time in translating, copying, and even producing original compositions upon such subjects, and that, remember, during the Tarter period!⊠In this connection, I am reminded of a poem compiled in a conventâa translation from the Greek, of courseâcalled, âThe Travels of the Mother of God among the Damned,â with fitting illustrations and a boldness of conception inferior nowise to that of Dante. The âMother of Godâ visits hell, in company with the archangel Michael as her cicerone to guide her through the legions of the âdamned.â She sees them all, and is witness to their multifarious tortures. Among the many other exceedingly remarkably varieties of tormentsâevery category of sinners having its ownâthere is one especially worthy of notice, namely a class of the âdamnedâ sentenced to gradually sink in a burning lake of brimstone and fire. Those whose sins cause them to sink so low that they no longer can rise to the surface are for ever forgotten by God, i.e., they fade out from the omniscient memory, says the poemâan expression, by the way, of an extraordinary profundity of thought, when closely analysed. The Virgin is terribly shocked, and falling down upon her knees in tears before the throne of God, begs that all she has seen in hellâall, all without exception, should have their sentences remitted to them. Her dialogue with God is colossally interesting. She supplicates, she will not leave Him. And when God, pointing to the pierced hands and feet of her Son, cries, âHow can I forgive His executioners?â She then commands that all the saints, martyrs, angels and archangels, should prostrate themselves with her before the Immutable and Changeless One and implore Him to change His wrath into mercy andâforgive them all. The poem closes upon her obtaining from God a compromise, a kind of yearly respite of tortures between Good Friday and Trinity, a chorus of the âdamnedâ singing loud praises to God from their âbottomless pit,â thanking and telling Him: Thou art right, O Lord, very right,
Thou hast condemned us justly.
âMy poem is of the same character.
âIn it, it is Christ who appears on the scene. True, He says nothing, but only appears and passes out of sight. Fifteen centuries have elapsed since He left the world with the distinct promise to return âwith power and great gloryâ; fifteen long centuries since His prophet cried, âPrepare ye the way of the Lord!â since He Himself had foretold, while yet on earth, âOf that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven but my Father only.â But Christendom expects Him still. âŠ
âIt waits for Him with the same old faith and the same emotion; aye, with a far greater faith, for fifteen centuries have rolled away since the last sign from heaven was sent to man, And blind faith remained alone
To lull the trusting heart,
As heavân would send a sign no more.
âTrue, again, we have all heard of miracles being wrought ever since the âage of miraclesâ passed away to return no more. We had, and still have, our saints credited with performing the most miraculous cures; and, if we can believe their biographers, there have been those among them who have been personally visited by the Queen of Heaven. But Satan sleepeth not, and the first germs of doubt, and ever-increasing unbelief in such wonders, already had begun to sprout in Christendom as early as the sixteenth century. It was just at that time that a new and terrible heresy first made its appearance in the north of Germany.* [*Lutherâs reform] A great star âshining as it were a lamp⊠fell upon the fountains watersâ⊠and âthey were made bitter.â This âheresyâ
blasphemously denied âmiracles.â But those who had remained faithful believed all the more ardently, the tears of mankind ascended to Him as heretofore, and the Christian world was expecting Him as confidently as ever; they loved Him and hoped in Him, thirsted and hungered to suffer and die for Him just as many of them had done beforeâŠ. So many centuries had weak, trusting humanity implored Him, crying with ardent faith and fervour: âHow long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not come!â So many long centuries hath it vainly appealed to Him, that at last, in His inexhaustible compassion, He consenteth to answer the prayerâŠ.
He decideth that once more, if it were but for one short hour, the peopleâHis long-suffering, tortured, fatally sinful, his loving and child-like, trusting peopleâshall behold Him again.
The scene of action is placed by me in Spain, at Seville, during that terrible period of the Inquisition, when, for the greater glory of God, stakes were flaming all over the country.
Burning wicked heretics,
In grand auto-da-fes.
âThis particular visit has, of course, nothing to do with the promised Advent, when, according to the programme, âafter the tribulation of those days,â He will appear âcoming in the clouds of heaven.â For, that âcoming of the Son of Man,â as we are informed, will take place as suddenly âas the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west.â No; this once, He desired to come unknown, and appear among His children, just when the bones of the heretics, sentenced to be burnt alive, had commenced crackling at the flaming stakes. Owing to His limitless mercy, He mixes once more with mortals and in the same form in which He was wont to appear fifteen centuries ago. He descends, just at the very moment when before king, courtiers, knights, cardinals, and the fairest dames of court, before the whole population of Seville, upwards of a hundred wicked heretics are being roasted, in a magnificent auto-da-fe ad majorem Dei gloriam, by the order of the powerful Cardinal Grand Inquisitor.
âHe comes silently and unannounced; yet allâhow strangeâyea, all recognize Him, at once! The population rushes towards Him as if propelled by some irresistible force; it surrounds, throngs, and presses around, it follows HimâŠ. Silently, and with a smile of boundless compassion upon His lips, He crosses the dense crowd, and moves softly on. The Sun of Love burns in His heart, and warm rays of Light, Wisdom and Power beam forth from His eyes, and pour down their waves upon the swarming multitudes of the rabble assembled around, making their hearts vibrate with returning love. He extends His hands over their heads, blesses them, and from mere contact with Him, aye, even with His garments, a healing power goes forth. An old man, blind from his birth, cries, âLord, heal me, that I may see Thee!â and the scales falling off the closed eyes, the blind man beholds HimâŠ
The crowd weeps for joy, and kisses the ground upon which He treads. Children strew flowers along His path and sing to Him, âHosanna!â It is He, it is Himself, they say to each other, it must be He, it can be none other but He! He pauses at the portal of the old cathedral, just as a wee white coffin is carried in, with tears and great lamentations. The lid is off, and in the coffin lies the body of a fair-child, seven years old, the only child of an eminent citizen of the city. The little corpse lies buried in flowers. âHe will raise the child to life!â confidently shouts the crowd to the weeping mother. The officiating priest who had come to meet the funeral procession, looks perplexed, and frowns. A loud cry is suddenly heard, and the bereaved mother prostrates herself at His feet. âIf it be Thou, then bring back my child to life!â she cries beseechingly. The procession halts, and the little coffin is gently lowered at his feet. Divine compassion beams forth from His eyes, and as He looks at the child, His lips are heard to whisper once more, âTalitha Cumiââand âstraightway the damsel arose.â The child rises in her coffin. Her little hands still hold the nosegay of white roses which after death was placed in them, and, looking round with
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