The Grand Inquisitor

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Grand Inquisitor , with the addition A Fantasy , is the fifth chapter of the fifth book from the novel The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky , which was also published separately under the same title. Ivan Karamazov tells his brother Aljoscha a fantastic story. Jesus appears in Seville in the 16th century, where the Inquisition is taking place. The people recognize Jesus and also the aged Cardinal Grand Inquisitor who has him arrested in prison and tries to explain to him in a long monologue why Jesus no longer has the right to disturb the work of the Church by reappearing. The Russian writer Vasily Rosanov made it famous with the article The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor , published in 1894 in the journal Russki Westnik .

content

The brothers Ivan and Aljoscha Karamazov meet in an inn. The younger Alyosha is a deeply religious monk , while Ivan is an atheist intellectual. After a “literary-historical preface” to examples of stories in which “the heavenly powers are brought down to earth”, Iwan begins with the story he devised about the Grand Inquisitor.

It is the age of the Inquisition, Seville in the 16th century. A hundred heretics have just been tortured to death when Jesus Christ appears. Although he does not speak a word, he is recognized by all who see him. When a blind old man asks “Lord, heal me so that I can see you!” Jesus lets him see. When a dead child is carried into the cathedral in a coffin and the grieving mother asks him to do so, Jesus performs a second miracle and brings the child back to life.
This is noticed by the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor, who, almost 90 years old and wearing a coarse monk's robe, observes Jesus from a distance. He orders his guards to take Jesus. The people are so submissive and obedient that they allow the arrest to occur and Jesus is placed in a dungeon in the building of the Holy Tribunal.
During the night the Grand Inquisitor enters the dungeon and accuses Jesus in a long monologue that he has no right to come back to earth and “disturb the order” that the Roman Catholic Church has established over a thousand years. For this he will sentence him to death at the stake the next morning as "the worst of all heretics ".

At this point Aljoscha Iwan asks whether the statement of the aged Grand Inquisitor in this story is Ivan's unbridled imagination or whether it is an unheard of qui pro quo . Ivan laughingly explains that it doesn't matter. The old man "say that out loud what he has kept secret for the whole ninety years" - for whatever reason.

Although Jesus remains silent, the Grand Inquisitor explains that whoever he is, he has no right to "add anything to what he has said before." The church has taken on this task for fifteen centuries and convinced people of freedom through Christ - whereby people have placed their freedom at the feet of the church.

Aljoscha interrupts again, this time with the question of whether the Grand Inquisitor is making fun of it, meaning it ironically. This is not the case, explains Iwan. The old man is convinced that the rebellious nature of the people will be overcome by the Inquisition and that they will be free to follow the only right path, that of the church.

The Grand Inquisitor turns to Jesus' conversation with the devil in the desert ( Mt 4,1-11  EU ): He accuses Jesus of rejecting the bread, the miracle and the power that Satan had offered him and thus of humanity gave a freedom with which she could not do anything and which has lived in misery ever since. There is nothing more agonizing for people than the freedom of conscience to be able to decide what is good and what is bad - and this was Jesus' work. By giving himself up to the three questions, he could have automatically freed people from this anguish. He also did not come down from the cross in front of everyone in order to be able to convince everyone directly through this miracle. But that is precisely what the Church has achieved. She gave the weak people a secret to which they could blindly submit. She improved the teaching and based it on strict authority - and thus eased the human burden. The aged Grand Inquisitor confesses to the Antichrist : “We are not in league with you, but with him , that is our secret!” Eight centuries ago, the Church received Rome and the emperor's sword from the “mighty spirit” in order to rule the world and to save people from themselves, which Jesus rejected with the third question. The bread that is distributed was not made from stones by a miracle, but was taken away from those to whom it was distributed again afterwards - and they would be happy about it! Through her actions the Church makes all people happy, only she herself is unhappy and has taken on sin because she has to keep this secret. But even Jesus could not condemn them for that.
Finally, he confirms once again that Jesus will be burned: “Tomorrow you will see how this obedient flock will rush down at my first sign to paw glowing coals at your pyre ... for coming to disturb us . "

Aljoscha interrupts again, describes what he has heard as "nonsense" and only as the worst elements of Catholicism. Ivan, on the other hand, holds the question of who in the Catholic movement has not surrendered to the desire for power and "dirty goods" in the last few centuries. At the end of his life the Grand Inquisitor was honest in the knowledge that the poor, "only created beings of God" only consider themselves happy through the instructions of the "terrible spirit" and through lies and deception. It is his misfortune to realize in old age that all this is happening in the name of Jesus, but contrary to his actions.

The Grand Inquisitor is waiting for an answer from Jesus. But he remains silent and kisses the old man on the bloodless lips, whereupon the Grand Inquisitor opens the dungeon door and releases the prisoner with the words "... don't come back at all ... never, never!"

Ivan has finished his story and Alyosha is sad about his point of view. Ivan calms him down with the words "all just nonsense" and "crazy poetry by a crazy student". Ivan admits to his “power of Karamazov's meanness”, to amorality and radical conception of freedom: “Everything is allowed”. When he asks his brother whether he will break away from him because of this, the latter silently kisses him on the mouth in response, which Iwan describes as " literary theft ". Before the brothers leave the inn and part ways - Ivan to the left into the world, perhaps to America, Aljoscha to the right into the monastery - Ivan promises his brother that he will visit him before he “opens the cup when he is thirty to fling the ground ”.

interpretation

Swetlana Geier , who translated Dostoyevsky's works into German, gives three aspects that make up the meaning of this story (which can only be grasped in the overall context of the novel): On the one hand, Dostoyevsky criticizes Western Christianity and specifically the Roman Catholic Church , which in contrast to orthodox Christianity only embodied bare power. On the other hand, with the story he expresses the worldview of its narrator Ivan, which is characterized by pity, but remains unrelated and superficial in its attachment to the worldly. Finally, in the Grand Inquisitor, Dostoevsky analyzes freedom as a revelation of the divine principle in man. This only becomes clear when the story of the Grand Inquisitor is compared with the “Conversations and teachings of Starez Zosima” reproduced in the sixth book , in which the latter comes from the ecstatic vision of the unity of all being to the central statement for the plot of the novel: “All are to blame for everything ”. Only through active love can selfless freedom be realized.

The church-critical meaning of the legend seems to be clear at first: Christ shows himself to the believers, but "his" church feels disturbed by him because his gifts supposedly overwhelm the people. But one can also read The Demons (Part Two, Chapter One , Part VI) as a political commentary on the legend of the Grand Inquisitor. Many interpreters interpret the Grand Inquisitor in his mania for rule as a symbol of a coming anti-Christian and totalitarian epoch, the protagonist of which Ivan Karamazov can be understood. When Dostoyevsky was reciting the legend of the Grand Inquisitor to students at St. Petersburg University in December 1879 , he wrote an introduction which states:

“If faith in Christ is falsified and mixed up with the aims of this world, then the meaning of Christianity is also lost. The mind falls into disbelief, and instead of the great ideal of Christ, only a new tower of Babel will be built. While Christianity has a high conception of the individual human being, humanity is only viewed as a large mass. Under the guise of social love, nothing but overt misanthropy will flourish. "

reception

The parable of the Grand Inquisitor has a special history to this day.

Thinkers such as Leo Schestow , Nikolai Berdjajew , Friedrich Nietzsche , Max Weber , Georg Lukács , Albert Einstein , Martin Heidegger and Albert Camus interpreted their content or tried to substantiate their own, sometimes contradicting, theses through them. In theology in particular , Romano Guardini , Karl Barth and René Girard illustrated God's relationship with people and the role of the church.

"The basic conception of the Grand Inquisitor in their indictment directed against the 'anti-Christian' ways of Rome ... the old master of the Russian novel took from the young friend of his last eight years, Vladimir Soloviev ," as Vladimir Szylkarski in his contribution "Messianism and Analytics in Dostoyevsky and Soloviev ”proves.

Dostoyevsky's text is also referred to in contemporary discourses such as Peter Sloterdijk and Ellis Sandoz .

Adaptations and mentions

music

  • Boris Blacher 's oratorio The Grand Inquisitor for baritone , choir and orchestra, first performed in 1947 in the textual arrangement by Leo Borchard, is based on Dostoyevsky's text.
  • Bernd Alois Zimmermann used in his last composition from 1970 I turned and saw everything injustice that happened under the sun. Ecclesiastic action for two speakers, bass solo and orchestra in addition to texts from the Bible and excerpts from Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor .
  • The Ocean Collective deal with the story The Grand Inquisitor in three songs on their album Anthropocentric (2010) .

Theater, film, television

  • The story was filmed as the Inquisition for Channel 5 in the UK in 2002 . Sir Derek Jacobi played the role of the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor.
  • The Grand Inquisitor is the basis for the play Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy by Tony Kushner .
  • In the episode Talitha Cumi of the TV series The X-Files , the questioning of a man with unusual abilities is carried out by the "smoker" in the style of the Grand Inquisitor. In addition to “Talitha Cumi”, the words that Jesus also said in Dostoevsky when he raised the dead girl, there are other references in the episode that point to The Grand Inquisitor .
  • In Richard Linklater's film Before Midnight , the protagonist mentions Dostojewski's The Grand Inquisitor ("The Grand Commander") in the course of a dispute.

literature

Several authors refer to the story of The Grand Inquisitor in their books :

literature

Online text versions

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The “three temptations” are referred to by the Grand Inquisitor as “three questions”.
  2. ↑ Svetlana Geier: Brat'ja Karamazovy. In: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon im dtv. Volume 3, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1986, p. 1616
  3. ↑ Geir Kjetsaa: Dostojewskij: convict - player - poet prince. Casimir Katz, Gernsbach 1986, p. 411.
  4. ↑ Antanas Maceina : The Grand Inquisitor. Historical-philosophical interpretation of the legend of Dostoyevsky. Kerle Verlag, Heidelberg 1952, pp. 247-334.
  5. ^ Program booklet for the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra from March 2nd / 3rd. February 1969.
  6. ↑ Berg, Schubert and Zimmermann at the SHMF ( memento of July 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), see also the SHMF's program of August 10, 2012
  7. ^ Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy , The New York Times, September 5, 2004; accessed on August 1, 2017.
  8. ^ Judith Gunn: Dostoyevsky: A Life of Contradiction . Amberley Publishing, December 15, 2016, ISBN 978-1-4456-5848-3 , p. 198.
  9. ↑ Before Midnight (screenplay). (PDF) Scripts.com, accessed March 28, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Grzegorz Lewicki: Dostoyevsky extended: Aldous Huxley on Grand Inquisitor, Specialization and Future of Science , Kultura i Polityka (2008), No. 2-3, pp. 210-233; accessed on August 1, 2017.
  11. ^ David Barsamian and Noam Chomsky: Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky . Pluto Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0-7453-1788-5 , p. 79.
  12. ^ First Things - David Bentley Hart: Christ and Nothing , October 2003; accessed on August 1, 2017.
  13. ^ David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest . Little, Brown, April 13, 2009, ISBN 978-0-316-07385-1 , p. 1150.
  14. ^ Yalom, ID: The gift of therapy: An open letter to a new generation of therapists and their patients , New York: HarperCollins (2002).