In The Karamazov Brothers,[1] the parable of the Grand Inquisitor is alternately referred to as a poem and a tale. Its literary status is ambiguous. When Ivan first mentions it to Alyosha, he calls it “a kind of poem.”[2] It is called a tale three times,[3] and a poem three more times.[4] It is interesting to note that the last reference is by the Devil himself, who calls it “a promising poem” when he visits Ivan the night before Mitya’s trial. Dostoevsky was clearly of two minds about the parable’s status. So many years later, we are still uneasy or perhaps embarrassed about poetry in prose, for that is what the poem or tale about the Grand Inquisitor actually is. Poetry in prose—the literary vehicle of the divine.

Footnotes

1. Dostoevsky, F., translated by Ignat Avsey, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 (first published in 1994).

2. Op. cit., p. 308.

3. Op. cit., pp. 309, 312, and 330.

4. Op. cit., pp. 309, 329, and 813.