Der Großinquisitor - Softcover

Dostojewski, Fjodor Michailowitsch

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3946257097 ISBN 13: 9783946257097

Publisher: Officina Ludi, 2023

Synopsis

The "Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" is probably the most famous chapter from the novel "The Brothers Karamasov" by Fyodor M. Dostoevski, in which the resurrected Messiah appeared on earth at the time of the violence of the Spanish Inquisition and is immediately arrested by the Grand Inquisitor to be burned as a "heretic". This fascinating text has already appeared several times in independent illustrated editions in the past century, characteristically almost exclusively shortly after the two world wars, i.e. in times of upheaval and new beginnings. Also at present there is talk of a "turn of time", and we read Dostoevski's narrative, which plays in the Inquisition period of the 15th century, with a whole new understanding and find with amazement how modern and current this text is again today. How can it be, so we wonder that in parts of the world autocrats and dictators have come to power again and again (not rarely even through free elections), whom the masses cheer despite the obvious lies of their rulers? Is the "freedom" so highly valued by us not so high a good that you would have to defend at any cost? Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor gives the cynical answer: "Nothing is as seductive to man as the freedom of his conscience, but there is also nothing that plagues him more." And elsewhere it says about the people: "We will convince them that they only gain their freedom if they renounce their freedom in our favor and give themselves to us... They will become anxious, they will hang on us and are afraid of us like chicks to luck. They will admire and fear us and be proud of us because we are so powerful and so clever that we can tame a scattered, untamed herd of a thousand million heads." Dostoevsky's parable follows Rousseau's sentence: "Man is born free, but he always finds himself in chains" - under this sign, Rainer Ehrt has illustrated the narrative with his double-decked and unmistakably ironic pen drawings, with picture metaphors and detailed double-sided tableaus, perhaps also as a suggestion for younger readers, a access to this first Reading may find some bulky text.

Edition details

• Publisher: Officina Ludi
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: German
• ISBN 10: 3946257097
• ISBN 13: 9783946257097
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Ehrt Rainer
• Number of pages: 56