V. Великий инквизитор

Look, my action takes place in the sixteenth century, and back then — though you ought to know this already from your schooldays — back then it was precisely the custom in poetic works to bring the powers on high down to earth.

I won't even mention Dante.

In France the court clerks, and the monks in the monasteries too, would put on whole performances in which they brought onto the stage the Madonna, the angels, the saints, Christ, and God Himself.

In those days all of this was done very artlessly.

In Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris", to honor the birth of the French Dauphin, in Paris, under Louis XI, a free and edifying performance is given to the people in the town hall, under the title "Le bon jugement de la très sainte et gracieuse Vierge Marie", in which she herself appears in person and pronounces her bon jugement.

Among us in Moscow, in the old days before Peter, almost the same sort of dramatic performances — especially out of the Old Testament — were likewise put on from time to time; but besides the dramatic performances, the whole world was then awash in tales and "verses" in which the saints, the angels, and all the host of heaven acted as the occasion required.

In our monasteries they busied themselves too with translating, copying, and even composing such poems — and when, at that! — back in the Tatar yoke.

There is, for instance, one little monastic poem (from the Greek, of course): "The Virgin's Wandering Through the Torments", with imagery and a boldness no lower than Dante's.

The Mother of God visits hell, and the archangel Michael guides her "through the torments."

She sees the sinners and their torments.

There, among other things, is one most curious class of sinners in a burning lake: those of them who sink into that lake so deep that they can never float up again — well, "those God has already forgotten" — an expression of extraordinary depth and force.

And so the Mother of God, stricken and weeping, falls before the throne of God and begs mercy for all in hell, for all those she had seen there, without distinction.

Her conversation with God is colossally interesting.

She implores Him, she will not leave off, and when God points her to the nail-pierced hands and feet of her Son and asks: how am I to forgive His tormentors? — then she bids all the saints, all the martyrs, all the angels and archangels to fall down with her and pray for the pardon of all, without exception.

It ends with her winning from God a yearly halt to the torments, from Good Friday until Trinity Day, and the sinners in hell thank the Lord then and there and cry out to Him: "Thou art just, O Lord, that Thou hast so judged."

Well, my little poem would have been in the very same vein, had it appeared in those days.

He comes on stage in mine; true, He says nothing at all in the poem, but only appears and passes by.

Fifteen centuries have already gone by since He gave the promise to come in His kingdom, fifteen centuries since His prophet wrote: "Behold, I come quickly."

"But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not even the Son, but only my Father in heaven" — as He Himself declared while still on earth.

But mankind awaits Him with its former faith and its former tenderness.

Oh, with even greater faith, for fifteen centuries have already gone by since the pledges from heaven to man ceased: Believe what the heart shall tell thee, There are no pledges from the heavens.

And only the one sole faith in what the heart has spoken!

True, there were many miracles then as well.

There were saints who worked miraculous healings; to certain righteous ones, by the accounts of their lives, the Queen of Heaven herself came down.

But the devil does not sleep, and among mankind there had already begun a doubt as to the truth of these miracles.

It was just then that a terrible new heresy arose in the north, in Germany.

An enormous star, "like a lamp" (that is, the Church), "fell upon the springs of the waters, and they became bitter."

These heresies began blasphemously to deny the miracles.

But all the more ardently do those who have stayed faithful believe.

The tears of mankind rise up to Him as before, they await Him, they love Him, they hope in Him, they thirst to suffer and to die for Him, just as in former times.

And so, for so many centuries mankind prayed with faith and fervor: "O Lord our God, appear unto us," for so many centuries it cried out to Him that He, in His immeasurable compassion, conceived the desire to descend to those who prayed.

He had come down before this, too, and visited certain of the righteous, the martyrs, and the holy hermits while they were still on earth, as is recorded in their "Lives."

Among us Tyutchev, who believed deeply in the truth of his own words, proclaimed that, Bowed beneath the burden of the Cross, The King of Heaven, in the guise of a slave, Walked the whole of thee, native land, And blessed thee as He passed.

And that it was inevitably so — this I'll tell you for certain.

And so He conceived the desire to appear, if only for a moment, to the people — to the suffering, anguished, foully sinful, yet childishly loving people.

My action is set in Spain, in Seville, in the most terrible time of the Inquisition, when fires blazed daily throughout the land to the glory of God, and In magnificent autos-da-fé The wicked heretics were burned.

Oh, this was, of course, not that coming in which He will appear, by His own promise, at the end of time in all the glory of heaven, and which will be sudden, "as the lightning that flashes from the east even unto the west."

No, He conceived the desire to visit His children, if only for a moment, and precisely there, where the heretics' fires had just begun to crackle.

In His boundless mercy He passes once more among men in that very human form in which He had walked among men for three years, fifteen centuries before.

He descends upon the "scorching plazas" of the southern city, in which only the day before, in a "magnificent auto-da-fé," in the presence of the king, the court, the knights, the cardinals, and the most charming ladies of the court, before the vast population of all Seville, nearly a whole hundred heretics had been burned all at once by the cardinal Grand Inquisitor ad majorem gloriam Dei.

He appeared quietly, unnoticed, and yet everyone — strange, this — recognizes Him.

This could have been one of the best passages of the poem — namely, just why it is that they recognize Him.

The people are drawn to Him with an invincible force, they crowd around Him, they swell up around Him, they follow after Him.

He passes silently among them with a quiet smile of infinite compassion.

The sun of love burns in His heart, rays of Light, Enlightenment, and Power stream from His eyes and, pouring out over the people, shake their hearts with answering love.

He stretches out His hands to them, blesses them, and from the touch of Him, even merely of His garments, there issues a healing power.

Here from the crowd an old man cries out, blind from childhood: "Lord, heal me, that I too may behold Thee," and lo, as though scales fall from his eyes, and the blind man sees Him.

The people weep and kiss the earth on which He walks.

Children throw flowers before Him, they sing and cry out to Him: "Hosanna!"

"It is He, it is He Himself," they all repeat, "it must be He, it can be none but He."

He stops on the steps of the Seville cathedral at the very moment when, amid weeping, an open white child's coffin is being carried into the church: in it lies a seven-year-old girl, the only daughter of a certain prominent citizen.

The dead child lies all covered in flowers.

"He will raise your child," they shout from the crowd to the weeping mother.

The cathedral priest who has come out to meet the coffin looks on in bewilderment and knits his brows.

But now the wail of the dead child's mother rings out.

She throws herself down at His feet: "If it is Thou, then raise up my child!" — she cries, stretching her hands out to Him.

The procession halts, the little coffin is lowered onto the steps at His feet.

He looks on with compassion, and His lips quietly, and once again, pronounce: "Talitha cumi" — "and the maiden arose."

The little girl rises up in the coffin, sits, and looks about, smiling, with wide, astonished open eyes.

In her hands is the bouquet of white roses with which she had lain in the coffin.

In the crowd there is turmoil, shouts, sobbing, and at this very moment, suddenly, the cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself passes by the cathedral across the square.

He is an old man, nearly ninety, tall and erect, with a withered face and sunken eyes, out of which there still gleams a glint, like a fiery spark.

Oh, he is not in his magnificent cardinal's robes, in which he had paraded before the people the day before, when the enemies of the Roman faith were being burned — no, at this moment he is only in his old, coarse monk's cassock.

At a certain distance behind him follow his grim assistants and slaves and his "holy" guard.

He halts before the crowd and watches from afar.

He saw it all, he saw them set the coffin down at His feet, saw the maiden rise again, and his face darkened.