passage from The Brothers K

[Katherine Hicks-Courant]

Hey Josh,
I'm sure this has occurred to you, but Sibelan Forrester and Michael
Pesenson could be really helpful on this.
Though they might be the ones that directed you here.
Good luck!
Katherine Hicks-Courant '09

On Thu, October 25, 2007 17:13, Cohen, Josh wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> I am currently working on a paper based on Dostoevsky's The Brothers K. My
> thesis is grounded in this single passage in the English from the
> Constance Garnett translation. It is Ivan speaking to Alyosha at the end
> of "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter:
>
> "I meant to end it like this. When the Inquisitor ceased speaking, he
> waited sometime for his Prisoner to answer him. His silence weighed down
> upon him. He saw that the Prisoner had listened intently all the time,
> looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply. The old man
> longed for Him to say something, however bitter and terrible. But He
> suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his
> bloodless, aged lips. That was all his answer. The old man shuddered. His
> lips moved. He went to the door, opened it, and said to him, ‘Go, and come
> no more
.Come not at all; never, never!’ And he let Him out into the dark
> alleys of the town. The Prisoner went away."
>
> The task I am setting for myself is to derive an ethics from "the kiss". I
> am beginning by doing a line-by-line interpretation of this passage--an
> interpretation which focuses on the ambiguity of the pronouns (e.g "his
> answer": whose answer?); the phrasing of the descriptions (e.g. "looking
> gently" v. "looking gentle"); and the diction (e.g. why refer here to
> Jesus as "the Prisoner", not "Jesus"?). Clearly, my thesis is dependent on
> language, and yet I am working with English--and, alas, I do not read
> Russian.
>
> Thus, I was hoping to receive clarification regarding this passage in its
> original Russian: do the ambiguities exist? Are there certain words that
> lose layers of meaning in translation? I am paricularly concerned with the
> phrases "looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply"
> and "the old man shuddered. His lips move." Any sort of insight I can use
> to justify, or alter, my reading in the English, to dig up more precious
> ambiguity or rare untranslatable meaning, would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Josh Cohen
> Honors Religion major
> Swarthmore College, '09
>
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