Ukraine War Day #797: A Modern Parable

THE RETURN OF THE GRAND INQUISITOR

Quite impossible, as you see, to start without an introduction, laughed Ivan Karamazov. Well, then, I mean to place the event described in my poem in the Twenty-First century, an age—as you must have been told at school—when it was the great fashion among TikTok bards to photoshop the denizens and powers of higher worlds, as they descend to earth and mix freely with mortals… Characters of all eras of human history mingle and opine on current events.

Amidst the turmoil, a child appears on the scene. A young girl, pre-teen, wraith-like and slender, her dark eyes burning with a light that is not of this world…

It was just at that time that a new and terrible heresy first made its appearance in the land of Canaan. Women and children tortured and burned to death, in grand auto-da-fes.

It was here that the child appeared, just as the bones of the heretics, sentenced to be burnt alive, had commenced crackling at the flaming stakes. In the guise of a 12-year-old girl she descends as an Angel from Heaven, yet in the same physical form as she had first appeared a century earlier. She descends, just at the very moment when before President, Parliament, Army, Priests, and Foreign Dignitaries, the entire population of Gaza are being roasted alive, in a magnificent auto-da-fe ad majorem Dei gloriam, on order of the powerful GRAND INQUISITOR.

She comes silently and unannounced, this blessed child; yet all—how strange—yea, all recognize her, at once! The population rushes towards her as if propelled by some irresistible force; it surrounds, throngs, and presses around, it follows her…. Silently, and with a smile of boundless compassion upon her lips, she crosses the dense crowd, and moves softly on. The Sun of Love burns in her heart, warm rays of Light, Wisdom and Power beam forth from her eyes, and pour down their waves upon the swarming multitudes of the rabble assembled around, making their hearts vibrate with returning love.

She extends her slender white hands over their heads, blesses them, and from mere contact with her, aye, even with her garments, a healing power goes forth. An old man, blind from his birth, cries, “Anne, heal me, that I may see Thee!” and the scales falling off the closed eyes, the blind man beholds her… The crowd weeps for joy, and kisses the ground upon which she treads. Children strew flowers along her path and sing to her, “Hosanna!” It is she, it is herself, they say to each other, it must be she, it can be none other but she! She pauses at the portal of the old Mosque, just as a wee white shroud is carried in, with tears and loud ululations. Wrapped in the shroud lies the body of a young Palestinian boy, the latest victim of the repulsive festivities. The procession halts, and the little shroud is gently lowered at her feet. Divine compassion beams forth from her eyes, and as she looks at the child, her lips are heard to whisper “Arise!” and straight away the boy arises. Looking round with large astonished eyes the boy smiles sweetly at his rescuer…. The crowd is violently excited.

A terrible commotion rages among them, the populace shouts and loudly weeps, when suddenly, before the cathedral door, appears the Grand Inquisitor himself…. He is A tall, gaunt-looking old man of nearly four-score years, with a stern, withered face, and deeply sunken eyes, from the cavity of which glitter two fiery sparks. He has laid aside his gorgeous cardinal’s robes in which he had appeared before the people at the auto da-fe, and is now clad in an ordinary business suit and tie. His sullen assistants and slaves of the “Holy Guard” are following at a distance. He pauses before the crowd and observes. He has seen all. He has witnessed the placing of the little shroud at the feet of the divine visitor, the calling back to life of one child to another child. And now, his dark, grim face has grown still darker; his bushy grey eyebrows nearly meet, and his sunken eye flashes with sinister light. Slowly raising his finger, he commands his minions to arrest Anne Frank….

Such is his power over the well-disciplined, submissive and now trembling people, that the thick crowds immediately give way, and scattering before the guard, amid dead silence and without one breath of protest, allow them to lay their sacrilegious hands upon the wisp of a girl. They lead her away…. That same populace, like one man, now bows its head to the ground before the old Inquisitor, who blesses it and slowly moves onward. The guards conduct their prisoner to the ancient building of the Holy Tribunal; pushing her into a narrow, gloomy, vaulted prison-cell, they lock her in and retire….

After the auto da-fe

The day wanes, and then night — a dark, hot breathless desert night — creeps on and settles upon the city of Jerusalem. The air smells of laurels and orange blossoms. In the Cimmerian darkness of the old Tribunal Hall the iron door of the cell is suddenly thrown open, and the Grand Inquisitor, holding a dark lantern, slowly stalks into the dungeon. He is alone, and, as the heavy door closes behind him, he pauses at the threshold. Where, for a minute or two, he silently and gloomily scrutinizes the small radiant being that sits before him. At last approaching with measured steps, he sets his lantern down upon the table and addresses the little girl in these words:

“It is thou! … thou!” … Receiving no reply, he rapidly continues: “Nay, answer not; be silent! … And what couldst thou say? … I know but too well thy answer…. Besides, thou hast no right to add one syllable to that which was already written by thee before…. Why shouldst thou now return, to impede us in our work? For thou hast come but for that only, and thou knowest it well. But art thou as well aware of what awaits thee in the morning? I do not know, nor do I care to know who thou mayest be: be it thou or only thine image, to-morrow I will condemn and burn thee on the stake, as the most wicked of all the heretics; and that same people, who to-day were kissing thy feet, to-morrow at one bend of my finger, they will rush to add fuel to thy funeral pile… Wert thou aware of this?” he adds, speaking as if in solemn thought, and never for one instant taking his piercing glance off the thin, meek face before him.

“I will always believe that people are basically good!”

I can hardly realize the situation described, what is all this, Ivan? suddenly interrupted Alyosha, who had remained silently listening to his brother. Is this an extravagant fancy, or some mistake of the old man, an impossible quid pro quo?

Let it be the latter, if you like, laughed Ivan, since modern realism has so perverted your taste that you feel unable to realize anything from the world of fancy….

And his prisoner, does she never reply? Does she keep silent, looking at him, without saying a word?

Of course; and it could not well be otherwise, again retorted Ivan. The Grand Inquisitor begins from his very first words by telling her that she had no right to add one syllable to that which she had written before, in her childish diary. To make the situation clear at once, the above preliminary monologue is intended to convey to the reader the very fundamental idea which underlies Zionism — as well as I can convey it, his words mean, in short: Everything was given over by thee to the Pharisees, to the State and to the Army, everything now rests with them alone; thou hast no business to return and thus hinder us in our important work of genocide.

Dear Kitty: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart.”

“The terrible and wise spirit, the spirit of self-annihilation and non-being,” the Inquisitor goes on, “that Great Spirit of Negation, the Tempter himself, conversed with thee in Bergen-Belsen. We are told that he tempted thee thrice. Was it so? The promise of survival if thou wouldst reject thy idealistic humanist ideology. Thou only had to state that Man is innately evil, that Original Sin is a true concept, and thou wouldst live! Thou wouldst receive bread that had been allocated to the mouths of others less worthy.

Dear Kitty: “Whoever is happy will make others happy too.”

“Thou didst refuse that offer, and next he tempted thee with the promise of freedom, of flight. If thou wouldst reject thy fellows and put thyself over them. If thou wouldst reject they family and leave them to their fate. For their paltry lives were as nothing compared to thine.

“Again, thou didst refuse this offer, preferring to remain with thy fellows in chains forged by man, though thou couldst have soared like a bird, ascending to the pinnacle of the Tower of Babel. It was said that thou replied: I prefer my memories to any pretty dresses.”

Dear Kitty: “In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.”

“Thrice he tempted thee, and the third time the most intoxicating promise of all: Unlimited power. The power of the Sword. The power to do good, the power to rule over mankind, to lead them to the Promised Land. You see, my child, there are three Powers, three unique Forces upon earth, and these Forces are: Miracle, Mystery and Authority. Thou hast rejected all the three. Man is weak and cowardly. What matters it, if he now riots and rebels throughout the world against our will and power. Arrogant pampered students in their tent cities, filthy Gazans in their filthy tunnels — all seek to break the chains that we have bound upon them; and they pride themselves upon that rebellion? It is but the petty pride and vanity of a school-boy. It is the rioting of little children, getting up a mutiny in the classroom and driving their schoolmaster out of it. But it will not last long, and when the day of their triumph is over, they will have to pay dearly for it. The foolish children must learn some day that, rebels though they be and riotous from nature, they are too weak to maintain the spirit of mutiny for any length of time. Suffused with idiotic tears, they will confess that He who created them rebellious undoubtedly did so but to mock them. They will pronounce these words in despair, and such blasphemous utterances will but add to their misery—for human nature cannot endure blasphemy and takes her own revenge in the end.

Alyosha and Ivan Karamazov

“And thus, after all thou has suffered and seen in thy brief life, after refusing the Sword and the Scepter, look now at what has ensued. The present fate of men may be summed up in three words: Unrest, Confusion, Misery! We corrected and improved thy diary, we based it upon Miracle, Mystery, and Authority. And men rejoiced at finding themselves led once more like a herd of red heifers to the slaughter. Our work is but in its incipient stage, but it is nevertheless started. We may have long to wait until its culmination, and mankind have to suffer much, but we shall reach the goal some day, and become sole Caesars, and then will be the time to think of universal happiness for men.

“Know that I too have lived in the dreary wilderness, where I fed upon locusts and roots. I returned to join the legion of those who corrected thy childish naivete. I left the proud and returned to the really humble, and for their own happiness. What I now tell thee will come to pass. Our Kingdom of Greater Israel shall be built from the River to the Sea. I tell thee not later than to-morrow thou shalt see that obedient flock which at one simple motion of my hand will rush to add burning coals to thy stake, on which I will burn thee for having dared to come and trouble us in our important work of killing future terrorists. For, if there ever was one who deserved more than any of the others our inquisitorial fires—it is thee! To-morrow I will burn thee. Dixi [I have spoken!]”

Ivan paused. He had entered into the situation and had spoken with great animation, but now he suddenly burst out laughing.

My intention is to end it with the following scene: Having disburdened his heart, the Inquisitor waits for some time to hear his prisoner speak in turn. Her silence weighs upon him. He has seen that his captive has been attentively listening to him all the time, with her dark velvet eyes fixed penetratingly and softly on the face of her jailer, and evidently bent upon not replying to him. The old man longs to hear her voice, to hear her reply; better words of bitterness and scorn than her silence. Suddenly she rises; slowly and silently approaching the Inquisitor, she bends towards him and softly kisses his bloodless old lips. That is all the answer. The Grand Inquisitor shudders. There is a convulsive twitch at the corner of his mouth. He goes to the door, opens it, and addressing her, “Go,” he says, “go, and return no more… do not come again… never, never!” and he lets her out into the dark night. The prisoner vanishes.

And the old man?

The kiss burns his heart, but the old man remains firm in his own ideas and unbelief.

And you, together with him? You too! despairingly exclaimed Alyosha, while Ivan burst into a still louder fit of laughter.