THE COMPLETE NOVELLAS & SHORT STORIES OF FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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       Fyodor Dostoyevsky

      THE COMPLETE NOVELLAS & SHORT STORIES OF FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

      Published by

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      2017 OK Publishing

      ISBN 978-80-272-0126-6

      Table of Contents

       SHORT STORIES:

       The Grand Inquisitor (Chapter from The Brothers Karamazov)

       Mr. Prohartchin

       A Novel in Nine Letters

       Another Man's Wife or, The Husband under the Bed

       A Faint Heart

       Polzunkov

       The Honest Thief

       The Christmas Tree and The Wedding

       White Nights

       A Little Hero

       An Unpleasant Predicament (A Nasty Story)

       The Crocodile

       Bobok

       The Heavenly Christmas Tree

       A Gentle Spirit

       The Peasant Marey

       The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

       Poor Folk

       The Double

       The Landlady

       Uncle's Dream

       Notes from Underground

       The Gambler

       The Permanent Husband

       ESSAYS ON DOSTOYEVSKY:

       A SURVEY OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE by Isabel Florence Hapgood

       DOSTOYEVSKY AND HIS MESSAGE TO THE WORLD by Zinaida Vengerova

       ON RUSSIAN NOVELISTS by William Lyon Phelps

       Extract from ‘AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE’ by Maurice Baring

       BIOGRAPHY:

       Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Study by Aimée Dostoyevsky

      SHORT STORIES:

       Table of Contents

      The Grand Inquisitor

       (Chapter from The Brothers Karamazov)

       Table of Contents

       “EVEN this must have a preface — that is, a literary preface,” laughed Ivan, “and I am a poor hand at making one. You see, my action takes place in the sixteenth century, and at that time, as you probably learnt at school, it was customary in poetry to bring down heavenly powers on earth. Not to speak of Dante, in France, clerks, as well as the monks in the monasteries, used to give regular performances in which the Madonna, the saints, the angels, Christ, and God Himself were brought on the stage. In those days it was done in all simplicity. In Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris an edifying and gratuitous spectacle was provided for the people in the Hotel de Ville of Paris in the reign of Louis XI in honour of the birth of the dauphin. It was called Le bon jugement de la tres sainte et gracieuse Vierge Marie, and she appears herself on the stage and pronounces her bon jugement. Similar plays, chiefly from the Old Testament, were occasionally performed in Moscow too, up to the times of Peter the Great. But besides plays there were all sorts of legends and ballads scattered about the world, in which the saints and angels and all the powers of Heaven took part when required. In our monasteries the monks busied themselves in translating, copying, and even composing such poems — and even under the Tatars. There is, for instance, one such poem (of course, from the Greek), The Wanderings of Our Lady through Hell, with descriptions as bold as Dante’s. Our Lady visits hell, and the Archangel Michael leads her through the torments. She sees the sinners and their punishment. There she sees among others one noteworthy set of sinners in a burning lake; some of them sink to the bottom of the lake so that they can’t swim out, and ‘these God forgets’ — an expression of extraordinary depth and force. And so Our Lady, shocked and weeping, falls before the throne of God and begs for mercy for all in hell — for all she has seen there, indiscriminately. Her conversation with God is immensely interesting. She beseeches Him, she will not desist, and when God points to the hands and feet of her Son, nailed to the Cross, and asks, ‘How can I forgive His tormentors?’ she bids all the saints, all the martyrs, all the angels and archangels to fall down with her and pray for mercy on all without distinction. It ends by her winning from God a respite of suffering every year from Good Friday till Trinity Day, and the sinners at once raise a cry of thankfulness from hell, chanting, ‘Thou art just, O Lord, in this judgment.’ Well, my poem would have been of that kind if it had appeared at that time. He comes on the scene in my poem, but He says nothing, only appears and passes on. Fifteen centuries have passed since He promised to come in His glory, fifteen