2b2
PARTISAN REVIEW
terms of the social pathos of the age and outlining in some detail
the main ideological theme of the Legend, which he did not actually
write till three years later, in 1879.
The letter to Alexyev contains the ideas of the Legend but
no hint of its plot. And of this plot of Christ's return to earth and
His encounter with the Inquisitor it should be said that it is not quite
so original as it appears at first sight, far less so in fact than the ideo–
logical content of the Legend. The return of Christ is a theme touched
upon in one way or another by not a few writers whose work Dostoev–
sky knew well, among them Voltaire, Goethe, Jean-Paul Richter,
Balzac, Hugo and Vigny. Here we can only indicate two possible
sources that are of particular interest and that Russian scholars have
remarked upon. The first is Jean-Paul's fantastic story "A Dream,"
in which an atheist gives an account of finding himself in a cemetery
at midnight and overhearing a colloquy between Jesus and the dead.
The dead ask Him whether God exists and He replies that He had
sought God in vain and that everywhere He had come upon nothing
but emptiness. Then children rise from their graves and ask: "Jesus,
are we really without a father?" "Yes," is the answer, "we are all
orphans." The second source is Victor Hugo's poem
Le Christ au
Vatican,
an anti-clerical pamphlet published in Geneva in 1864.
(Dostoevsky, an assiduous reader of Hugo, wrote a preface to the
Russian translation of
Notre Dame de Paris.)
In this poem Christ,
fearing that men had forgotten his message, resolves to return to
earth in His human shape.
(Depouillons, il le fau't, ma divine na–
ture/ Prenons l'habit modeste et l'humaine figure/ Que j'avais en
.ludie.
... ).
He appears in Rome but is denied access to the Pope.
In a conversation with some officials of the Vatican, among them a
cardinal, he learns that the popes have long ago assumed the role
of Caesar and that
La saintete a d'autres choses
a
faire / Que de
penser au Christ, au ciel, au breviaire.
Christ's retort to this startling
news is rendered in the last stanza of the poem:
Le cardinal parlait encore
Que jesus Christ comme sur le Thabor
S'etait transfigure. Dans son regard austere
S' allumaient les eclairs de la sainte colere
Qui l'anima lorsque jadis
Il chassa les vendeurs loin du sacre parvis.
