"I...demand simply and directly that I be destroyed."

[Kire]

"No, they say, live, because without you there would be nothing. If everything on earth were sensible, nothing would happen. Without you, there would be no events, and there must be events."

~The Devil
The Brothers Karamazov
4.11.9 -- p. 642

[dweller]

1. same sentiment

The Delicate, Plummeting Bodies

A great cry went up from the stockyards and
slaughterhouses, and Death, tired of complaint
and constant abuse, withdrew to his underground garage.
He was still young and his work was a torment.
All over, their power cut, people stalled like street cars.
Their gravity taken away, they began to float.
Without buoyancy, they began to sink. Each person
became a single darkened room. The small hand
pressed firmly against the small of their backs
was suddenly gone and people swirled to a halt
like petals fallen from a flower. Why hurry?
Why get out of bed? People got off subways,
on subways, off subways all at the same stop.
Everywhere clocks languished in antique shops
as their hands composed themselves in sleep.
Without time and decay, people grew less beautiful.
They stopped eating and began to study their feet.
They stopped sleeping and spent weeks following stray dogs.
The first to react were remnants of the church.
They falsified miracles: displayed priests posing
as corpses until finally they sneezed or grew lonely.
Then governments called special elections to choose those
to join the ranks of the volunteer dead: unhappy people
forced to sit in straight chairs for weeks at a time.
Interest soon dwindled. Then the army seized power
and soldiers ran through the street dabbling the living
with red paint. You're dead, they said. Maybe
tomorrow, people answered, today we're just breathing:
look at the sky, look at the color of the grass.
For without Death each color had grown brighter,
At last a committee of businessmen met together,
because with Death gone money had no value.
They went to where Death was waiting in a white room,
and he sat on the floor and looked like a small boy
with pale blond hair and eyes the color of clear water.
In his lap was a red ball heavy with the absence of life.
The businessmen flattered him. We will make you king,
they said. I am king already, Death answered. We will
print your likeness on all the money of the world.
It is there already, Death answered. We adore you
and will not live without you, the businessmen said.
Death said, I will consider your offer.

How Death was restored to his people:

At first the smallest creatures began to die--
bacteria and certain insects. No one noticed. Then fish
began to float to the surface; lizards and tree toads
toppled from sun-warmed rocks. Still no one saw them.
Then birds began tumbling out of the air,
and as sunlight flickered on the blue feathers
of the jay, brown of the hawk, white of the dove,
then people lifted their heads and pointed to the sky
and from the thirsty streets cries of welcome rose up
like a net to catch the delicate and plummeting bodies.

Stephen Dobyns


dp

[Kire]

2. thanks!

[Igel]

3. And earlier

2.4.3
- ß ñêàçàë íåëåïîñòü, íî...
- Òî-òî è åñòü, ÷òî íî... - êðè÷àë Èâàí. - Çíàé, ïîñëóøíèê. ÷òî
íåëåïîñòè ñëèøêîì íóæíû íà çåìëå. Íà íåëåïîñòÿõ ìèð ñòîèò è áåç íèõ ìîæåò
áûòü â íåì ñîâñåì íè÷åãî áû è íå ïðîèçîøëî. Ìû çíàåì ÷òî çíàåì!

Alesha: I said something absurd, but ...
Ivan: "That's it, precisely!" shouted Ivan. "You know, novitiate, that absurdities are far too needed on earth. The world is grounded on absurdities, and without them absolutely nothing on earth could occur. We know what we know!"
(I think that's an accurate translation, too hurried to actually track a published one down)

Some parts of BK I love, others are a bit to Manichaean for my tastes. But it's been years since I've read it, so maybe it's time to track down my copy and read it again.

On edit: you'll have to set your character code to either Windows or Unicode Cyrillic (I wrote in unicode, but browsers and servers sometimes handle Cyrillic rather strangely.
Oh, and the text is cut from http://az.lib.ru/d/dostoewskij_f_m/text_0110.shtml)

[Kire]

4. get the translation I linked to in the OP

It's won a lot of awards, and "one finally gets the musical whole of the pice)

it is so much more readable than what you posted, the word "novitiate" never appears (I assume they mean novice)

your translation is not very musical

[Igel]

5. My translation was made on the fly.

Like I said, easier to chunk out a translation than to look one up.

And a quicky translation isn't always musical. It's quick.