The Grand Inquisitor

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Standalone copy of the chapter "The Grand Inquisitor"

The Grand Inquisitor is a parable told by Ivan to Alyosha in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel, The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880). Ivan and Alyosha are brothers; Ivan a committed atheist, while Alyosha a novice monk.

The Grand Inquisitor is an important part of the novel and one of the best-known passages in modern literature because of its ideas about human nature and freedom, and because of its fundamental ambiguity. It was recently published as an independent text by Continuum Books.

1 The parable
2 Origins
3 Literary interpretations
4 Influence on other literary works
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] The parable

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The tale is told by Ivan with brief interruptive questions by Alyosha. In the tale, Christ comes back to earth in Seville at the time of the Inquisition. Jesus performs a number of miracles (echoing miracles from the Gospels). The people recognize Him and adore Him, but He is arrested by Inquisition leaders and sentenced to be burned to death the next day. The Grand Inquisitor visits Him in His cell to tell Him that the Church no longer needs Him. The main portion of the text is the Inquisitor explaining to Jesus why His return would interfere with the mission of the church.

The Inquisitor frames his denunciation of Jesus around the three questions Satan asked Jesus during the temptation of Christ in the desert. These three are the temptation to turn stones into bread, the temptation to cast Himself from the Temple and be saved by the angels, and the temptation to rule over all the kingdoms of the world. The Inquisitor states that Jesus rejected these three temptations in favor of freedom. The Inquisitor thinks that Jesus has misjudged human nature, though. He does not believe that the vast majority of humanity can handle the freedom which Jesus has given them. Thus, he implies that Jesus, in giving humans freedom to choose, has excluded the majority of humanity from redemption and doomed humanity to suffer.

Ivan indicates that the Inquisitor is an atheist. After a lifetime of pursuing God, he has given up in frustration. He is nevertheless left with his love of humanity and desire to see humanity not suffer. Despite declaring the Inquisitor to be an atheist, Ivan also implies that the Inquisitor and the Church follow "the wise spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction," i.e. the Devil, Satan, for he, through compulsion, provided the tools to end all human suffering and unite under the banner of the Church. The mulitude then is guided through the Church by the few who are strong enough to take on the burden of freedom. The Inquisitor says that under him, all mankind will live and die happily in ignorance. Though he leads them only to "death and destruction," they will be happy along the way. The Inquisitor will be a self-martyr, spending his life to keep choice from humanity. He states that "Anyone who can appease a man's conscience can take his freedom away from him."

The segment ends when Christ, who has been silent throughout, kisses the Inquisitor on his "bloodless, aged lips" (22) instead of answering him. On this, the Inquisitor releases Christ but tells him never to return. Christ, still silent, leaves into "the dark alleys of the city." Not only is the kiss ambiguous, but its effect on the Inquisitor is as well. Ivan concludes, "The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his ideas." The kiss that Christ plants on the lips of the Grand Inquisitor is the equal of Christ's whispered words to Judas (John 13.27) "that thou doest, do quickly." Just as Jesus in no way condones Judas' betrayal, so Christ's kiss does not excuse the Grand Inquisitor.

Not only does the parable function as a philosophical and religious work in its own right, but it also furthers the character development of the larger novel. Clearly, Ivan identifies himself with the Inquisitor. After relating the tale, Ivan asks Alyosha if he "renounces" Ivan for his views. Alyosha responds by giving Ivan a soft kiss on the lips, to which the delighted Ivan replies, "that's plagiarism!" The brothers part soon afterwards.

[edit] Origins

Dostoevsky's notebooks show that he was inspired to use the figure of the Grand Inquisitor after he encountered it in a play by Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos (1785-1787).

[edit] Literary interpretations

There are a number of interpretations of The Grand Inquisitor.

George Steiner's Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in Contrast (London: Faber and Faber, 1960) interprets the parable of the Grand Inquisitor as "an allegory of an encounter between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky" (pp. 342-43).

[edit] Influence on other literary works

The scene is the basis of the play Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy by Tony Kushner.

The third season finale ("Talitha Cumi") of the TV Series The X-Files borrowed heavily from this parable for an interrogation between Cancer Man and Jeremiah Smith (as the Inquisitor and Jesus, respectively).