The Brothers Karamazov
course, from the Greek), _The Wanderings of Our Lady through Hell_,
with descriptions as bold as Dante’s. Our Lady visits hell, and the
Archangel Michael leads her through the torments. She sees the sinners
and their punishment. There she sees among others one noteworthy set of
sinners in a burning lake; some of them sink to the bottom of the lake
so that they can’t swim out, and ‘these God forgets’—an expression of
extraordinary depth and force. And so Our Lady, shocked and weeping,
falls before the throne of God and begs for mercy for all in hell—for
all she has seen there, indiscriminately. Her conversation with God is
immensely interesting. She beseeches Him, she will not desist, and when
God points to the hands and feet of her Son, nailed to the Cross, and
asks, ‘How can I forgive His tormentors?’ she bids all the saints, all
the martyrs, all the angels and archangels to fall down with her and
pray for mercy on all without distinction. It ends by her winning from
God a respite of suffering every year from Good Friday till Trinity
Day, and the sinners at once raise a cry of thankfulness from hell,
chanting, ‘Thou art just, O Lord, in this judgment.’ Well, my poem
would have been of that kind if it had appeared at that time. He comes
on the scene in my poem, but He says nothing, only appears and passes
on. Fifteen centuries have passed since He promised to come in His
glory, fifteen centuries since His prophet wrote, ‘Behold, I come
quickly’; ‘Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, neither the Son,
but the Father,’ as He Himself predicted on earth. But humanity awaits
him with the same faith and with the same love. Oh, with greater faith,
for it is fifteen centuries since man has ceased to see signs from
heaven.
No signs from heaven come to-day
To add to what the heart doth say.
There was nothing left but faith in what the heart doth say. It is true
there were many miracles in those days. There were saints who performed
miraculous cures; some holy people, according to their biographies,
were visited by the Queen of Heaven herself. But the devil did not
slumber, and doubts were already arising among men of the truth of
these miracles. And just then there appeared in the north of Germany a
terrible new heresy. “A huge star like to a torch” (that is, to a
church) “fell on the sources of the waters and they became bitter.”
These heretics began blasphemously denying miracles. But those who
remained faithful were all the more ardent in their faith. The tears of
humanity rose up to Him as before, awaited His coming, loved Him, hoped
for Him, yearned to suffer and die for Him as before. And so many ages
mankind had prayed with faith and fervor, “O Lord our God, hasten Thy
coming,” so many ages called upon Him, that in His infinite mercy He
deigned to come down to His servants. Before that day He had come down,
He had visited some holy men, martyrs and hermits, as is written in
their lives. Among us, Tyutchev, with absolute faith in the truth of
his words, bore witness that
Bearing the Cross, in slavish dress,
Weary and worn, the Heavenly King
Our mother, Russia, came to bless,
And through our land went wandering.
And that certainly was so, I assure you.
“And behold, He deigned to appear for a moment to the people, to the
tortured, suffering people, sunk in iniquity, but loving Him like
children. My story is laid in Spain, in Seville, in the most terrible
time of the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory
of God, and ‘in the splendid _auto da fé_ the wicked heretics were
burnt.’ Oh, of course, this was not the coming in which He will appear
according to His promise at the end of time in all His heavenly glory,
and which will be sudden ‘as lightning flashing from east to west.’ No,
He visited His children only for a moment, and there where the flames
were crackling round the heretics. In His infinite mercy He came once
more among men in that human shape in which He walked among men for
three years fifteen centuries ago. He came down to the ‘hot pavements’
of the southern town in which on the day before almost a hundred
heretics had, _ad majorem gloriam Dei_, been burnt by the cardinal, the
Grand Inquisitor, in a magnificent _auto da fé_, in the presence of the
king, the court, the knights, the cardinals, the most charming ladies
of the court, and the whole population of Seville.
“He came softly, unobserved, and yet, strange to say, every one
recognized Him. That might be one of the best passages in the poem. I
mean, why they recognized Him. The people are irresistibly drawn to
Him, they surround Him, they flock about Him, follow Him. He moves
silently in their midst with a gentle smile of infinite compassion. The
sun of love burns in His heart, light and power shine from His eyes,
and their radiance, shed on the people, stirs their hearts with
responsive love. He holds out His hands to them, blesses them, and a
healing virtue comes from contact with Him, even with His garments. An
old man in the crowd, blind from childhood, cries out, ‘O Lord, heal me
and I shall see Thee!’ and, as it were, scales fall from his eyes and
the blind man sees Him. The crowd weeps and kisses the earth under His
feet. Children throw flowers before Him, sing, and cry hosannah. ‘It is
He—it is He!’ all repeat. ‘It must be He, it can be no one but Him!’ He
stops at the steps of the Seville cathedral at the moment when the
weeping mourners are bringing in a little open white coffin. In it lies
a child of seven, the only daughter of a prominent citizen. The dead
child lies hidden in flowers. ‘He will raise your child,’ the crowd
shouts to the weeping mother. The priest, coming to meet the coffin,
looks perplexed, and frowns, but the mother of the dead child throws
herself at His feet with a wail. ‘If it is Thou, raise my child!’ she
cries, holding out her hands to Him. The procession halts, the coffin
is laid on the steps at His feet. He looks with compassion, and His
lips once more softly pronounce, ‘Maiden, arise!’ and the maiden
arises. The little girl sits up in the coffin and looks round, smiling
with wide-open wondering eyes, holding a bunch of white roses they had
put in her hand.
“There are cries, sobs, confusion among the people, and at that moment
the cardinal himself, the Grand Inquisitor, passes by the cathedral. He
is an old man, almost ninety, tall and erect, with a withered face and
sunken eyes, in which there is still a gleam of light. He is not
dressed in his gorgeous cardinal’s robes, as he was the day before,
when he was burning the enemies of the Roman Church—at this moment he
is wearing his coarse, old, monk’s cassock. At a distance behind him
come his gloomy assistants and slaves and the ‘holy guard.’ He stops at
the sight of the crowd and watches it from a distance. He sees
everything; he sees them set the coffin down at His feet, sees the
child rise up, and his face darkens. He knits his thick gray brows and
his eyes gleam with a sinister fire. He holds out his finger and bids
the guards take Him. And such is his power, so completely are the
people cowed into submission and trembling obedience to him, that the
crowd immediately makes way for the guards, and in the midst of
deathlike silence they lay hands on Him and lead Him away. The crowd
instantly bows down to the earth, like one man, before the old
Inquisitor. He blesses the people in silence and passes on. The guards
lead their prisoner to the close, gloomy vaulted prison in the ancient
palace of the Holy Inquisition and shut Him in it. The day passes and
is followed by the dark, burning, ‘breathless’ night of Seville. The
air is ‘fragrant with laurel and lemon.’ In the pitch darkness the iron
door of the prison is suddenly opened and the Grand Inquisitor himself
comes in with a light in his hand. He is alone; the door is closed at
once behind him. He stands in the doorway and for a minute or two gazes
into His face. At last he goes up slowly, sets the light on the table
and speaks.
“‘Is it Thou? Thou?’ but receiving no answer, he adds at once, ‘Don’t
answer, be silent. What canst Thou say, indeed? I know too well what
Thou wouldst say. And Thou hast no right to add anything to what Thou
hadst said of old. Why, then, art Thou come to hinder us? For Thou hast
come to hinder us, and Thou knowest that. But dost Thou know what will
be to-morrow? I know not who Thou art and care not to know whether it
is Thou or only a semblance of Him, but to-morrow I shall condemn Thee
and burn Thee at the stake as the worst of heretics. And the very
people who have to-day kissed Thy feet, to-morrow at the faintest sign
from me will rush to heap up the embers of Thy fire. Knowest Thou that?
Yes, maybe Thou knowest it,’ he added with thoughtful penetration,
never for a moment taking his eyes off the Prisoner.”
“I don’t quite understand, Ivan. What does it mean?” Alyosha, who had
been listening in silence, said with a smile. “Is it simply a wild
fantasy, or a mistake on the part of the old man—some impossible
_quiproquo_?”
“Take it as the last,” said Ivan, laughing, “if you are so corrupted by
modern realism and can’t stand anything fantastic. If you like it to be
a case of mistaken identity, let it be so. It is true,” he went on,
laughing, “the old man was ninety, and he might well be crazy over his
set idea. He might have been struck by the appearance of the Prisoner.
It might, in fact, be simply his ravings, the delusion of an old man of
ninety, over-excited by the _auto da fé_ of a hundred heretics the day
before. But does it matter to us after all whether it was a mistake of
identity or a wild fantasy? All that matters is that the old man should
speak out, should speak openly of what he has thought in silence for
ninety years.”
“And the Prisoner too is silent? Does He look at him and not say a
word?”
“That’s inevitable in any case,” Ivan laughed again. “The old man has
told Him He hasn’t the right to add anything to what He has said of
old. One may say it is the most fundamental feature of Roman
Catholicism, in my opinion at least. ‘All has been given by Thee to the
Pope,’ they say, ‘and all, therefore, is still in the Pope’s hands, and
there is no need for Thee to come now at all. Thou must not meddle for
the time, at least.’ That’s how they speak and write too—the Jesuits,
at any rate. I have read it myself in the works of their theologians.
‘Hast Thou the right to reveal to us one of the mysteries of that world
from which Thou hast come?’ my old man asks Him, and answers the
question for Him. ‘No, Thou hast not; that Thou mayest not add to what
has been said of old, and mayest not take from men the freedom which
Thou didst exalt when Thou wast on earth. Whatsoever Thou revealest
anew will encroach on men’s freedom of faith; for it will be manifest
as a miracle, and the freedom of their faith was dearer to Thee than
anything in those days fifteen hundred years ago. Didst Thou not often
say then, “I will make you free”? But now Thou hast seen these “free”
men,’ the old man adds suddenly, with a pensive smile. ‘Yes, we’ve paid
dearly for it,’ he goes on, looking sternly at Him, ‘but at last we
have completed that work in Thy name. For fifteen centuries we have
been wrestling with Thy freedom, but now it is ended and over for good.
Dost Thou not believe that it’s over for good? Thou lookest meekly at
me and deignest not even to be wroth with me. But let me tell Thee that
now, to-day, people are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect
freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly
at our feet. But that has been our doing. Was this what Thou didst? Was
this Thy freedom?’”
“I don’t understand again,” Alyosha broke in. “Is he ironical, is he
jesting?”