passage from The Brothers K

[Cohen, Josh]

Thanks, Katherine.
Indeed it was Sibelan who directed me to the listserv.


On Thu, October 25, 2007 18:33, Katherine Hicks-Courant wrote:
> 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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