passage from The Brothers K

[Katz, Michael]

Josh:

What is your e-mail so we can respond to you directly, and not to the whole list?

Michael Katz
Middlebury College


-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on behalf of Cohen, Josh
Sent: Thu 10/25/2007 5:13 PM
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Subject: [SEELANGS] passage from The Brothers K
 
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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