Dostoevsky quote

[Sharon Knox]

Another formulation of it is a synthesis of Miusov's paraphrase of
Ivan (quoted below) with Dmitri's paraphrase of Miusov (vse pozvoleno),
quoted back to Ivan by Alyosha at the end of the Grand Inquisitor section.

What strikes me as funny is how blatantly the argument "The
Internet Makes Honest Scholars of Us All!"undermines itself.
While it's useful to have electronic texts available,
the author drew his conclusion about Dostoevsky from a search for
three terms in translated electronic texts.  Wouldn't an "honest
scholar" actually read the text in question before attempting to
show what an author did or didn't say (or put in the mouths
of his character), rather than concluding from a random search
of a translated text that the quotation doesn't exist?
His approach takes Cliff's Notes to a new level of absurdity!


Quoting Russell Valentino <russell-valentino at UIOWA.EDU>:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> A student question brought to my attention a website,
> http://www.tassos-oak.com/extras/soundbite.html, which is devoted to
> showing the benefits of the internet in demonstrating how Dostoevsky never
> actually wrote the phrase, "If God does not exist, everything is
> permitted." Since most "great books" can now be found online, the argument
> goes, "it is no longer necessary to propagate such errors, and writers of
> honesty should no longer do so." There are many problems with this line of
> argument, of course, but I'm more interested in the attribution of the
> phrase itself.
>
> As I understand it, the statement is not a quote but a paraphrase of Ivan's
> claims (as relayed by Miusov) in Book II, Chapter 6 ("Zachem zhivet takoi
> chelovek!") of the Brothers K: "... unichtozh'te v chelovechestve veru v
> svoe bessmertie, v nem totchas zhe issiaknet ne tol'ko liubov', no i
> vsiakaia zhivaia sila, chtoby prodolzhat' mirovuiu zhizn'. Malo togo: togda
> nichego uzhe ne budet beznravstvennogo, vso budet pozvoleno, dazhe
> antropofagiia" (pp. 64-5 of Vol. 14 of the 30 vol. Nauka ed.).
>
> I am wondering, however, whether there is a more direct statement somewhere
> else, not in the book as published perhaps, but in one of the notebooks or
> drafts or in another source altogether.
>
> Can anyone help with this?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Russell Valentino
>
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