Karamazov Count: Page 300/The Grand Inquisitor

My mind is mulch. I'm still tackling the dense and almost paragraph-less chapter "The Grand Inquisitor", which has taken me over the 300 page mark of "The Brothers Karamazov". Fyodor's hypergraphia must have possessed him with a reckless intensity during the writing of this chapter/manifesto. My back is bent, my hair is falling out; I wouldn't be surprised if I start weeping tears of blood.

The Grand Inquisitor. A veritable ecstasy of verbosity and barely restrained incomprehensibility is Ivan Karamazov's theological tale set during the height of the Spanish Inquisition, with an anachronistic Jesus Christ being questioned/berated (rhetorically - Jesus can't get a word in!) by a Catholic Cardinal. Page after page of unyielding diatribe - lots about loaves of bread and freedom, and especially about the Catholic Church's powerful, sometimes despotic, influence over humans (my analysis is not very indepth due to the torpid word-boiled state of my brain). In case there is any doubt about the obtuseness of this chapter, here are two excerpts (featuring the craziness of the loaves and freedom):

"No science will give them bread while yet they are free, but the end of it will be that they will bring us their freedom and place it at our feet and say to us: 'Enslave us if you will, but feed us.' At last they themselves will understand that freedom and earthly bread in sufficiency for all are unthinkable together, for never, never will they be able to share between themselves! They will also be persuaded that they will never be free, because they are feeble, depraved, insignificant and mutinous. You promised them the bread of heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare in the eyes of the weak, eternally depraved and eternally dishonourable human race with the earthly sort?" (The Brothers Karamazov, pg 291)

"Receiving loaves from us, of course, they will clearly see that what we have done is to take from them the loaves they won with their own hands in order to distribute it to them without any miracles, they will see that we have not turned stones into loaves, but truly, more than of the bread, they will be glad of the fact that they are receiving it from our hands! For they will be only too aware that in former times, when we were not there, the very loaves they won used merely to turn to stones in their hands, and yet now they have returned to us those very same stones have turned back to loaves again. All too well, all too well will they appreciate what it means to subordinate themselves to us once and for all!" (The Brothers Karamazov, pg 297)