Значение “неназванного имени” пленника в рассказе о Великом Инквизиторе Достоевского

The Significance of the “Unnamed” Name of the “Prisoner” in Dostoevsky’s Story of the Grand Inquisitor In Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor, the figure of the “prisoner” is generally taken to be Jesus Christ, although the text itself fails to precisely identify this figure. The absence in The Grand Inquisitor of a Proper Name for the “prisoner”, together with other textual details, is crucial to the narrative’s intrinsic structural ambiguity. Despite the author’s project and his later comments, The Grand Inquisitor does not represent a dialogue between the old inquisitor and Christ, but a monologue before a silent, lofty figure, who may be Christ – or may not be. As in Dostoevsky’s literary work in general, ambiguity is the main mark of a dominant “poetics of paradox”. Keywords: Dostoevsky; Grand Inquisitor; Christ; paradoxality; ambiguity