passage from The Brothers K

[Cohen, Josh]

Michael,

My email is jcohen2 at swarthmore.edu. Thank you!

On Thu, October 25, 2007 19:15, Katz, Michael wrote:
> 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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