Two Councils by A.N. Maykov in F.M. Dostoevsky’s Novel The Brothers Karamazov

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issue of reception of the poems about Catholic Church written by A.N. Maykov, a close friend of F.M. Dostoevsky, in his novel The Brothers Karamazov and, above all, in The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor. We are talking about the poems - The Queens Confessions. The Legend of the Spanish Inquisition, Sentence. The Legend of the Constance Council and The Legend of the Clermont Council. It is The Queens Confessions which led Dostoevsky to make Seville the setting for the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor. The main character of the Sentence, Cardinal Hermit, became the prototype of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevskys novel, and the main character of The Legend of Clermont Council, the Pilgrim Hermit, in many ways became the prototype of the unrecognized Christ from the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor. The article presents significant textual parallels between Maykovs poems and The Brothers Karamazov .

Keywords

• a.n. maykov
• f.m. dostoevsky
• the brothers karamazov
• prototype
• literary sources