Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Impressions of Russian Literature - VI
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for whose sake alone “The Brothers Karamazof” ought
to be translated.
Christ has come back upon the earth. He shows
himself at a great auto-da-fé in Seville, where hundreds of
heretics are burned in his honor, gently walking about
in the ashes of the fire. All know him, the common
people throng around him, he blesses them. Then the
chief inquisitor, an old man of ninety, causes him to be
arrested, imprisoned, and placed in a cell used for those
who are condemned to the stake, and there visits him in
the night. A conversation then follows between the
inquisitor and Christ, or rather a long monologue of the
former, which is not interrupted by any answer, — a
monologue in which the cardinal shows the Saviour how
wrong he has been in coming again and disturbing the
work of his believers, and proclaims to him his fixed
intention of letting him be burned alive as a heretic
in order to bring peace to his work. The inquisitor
unfolds to Christ the faults, the political faults, he
committed in his lifetime. The most important of all
was that he did not accept the offer of the tempter to
change stones to bread, but showed himself to men with
empty hands. He thereby made it possible for them
who rise up against him to rally about the watchword:
“Give them first meat, if thou wilt that they shall be
good.” “We,” says the cardinal, “give them bread. We
understand how to lie, and we speak in thy name. And
they end by bringing us their freedom, laying it down
at our feet, and asking us for chains and bread. There
are only three forces on earth which can keep that
humanity in check, which is really so weak and yet
so rebellious, and these are: the miracle, the mystery,
and the authority. And thou hast rejected these forces
to proclaim a freedom which it was particularly
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