Abstract
From a close reading of the original manuscript of the play Processo Karamazov o La leggenda del grande inquisitore (“The Karamazov Trial or The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”) held in the Diego Fabbri archive, Antonella Cavazza has obtained information that has enabled her to identify the translation of Brothers Karamazov used by the Italian playwright Diego Fabbri, who had no knowledge of Russian. She has been able to confirm that Fabbri’s play was based on the Italian version of Brothers Karamazov (I fratelli Karamazov, transl. A. Polledro, Mursia, Milano 1958). Moreo- ver, Cavazza has analysed Fabbri’s usage and re-elaboration of Polledro’s translation of Dostoevskij’s novel, whilst always taking the original Russian into account. A collation of passages shows that Fabbri took Polledro’s translation literally, giving dramatic shape to something which was writ- ten from a narrative perspective. In Fabbri’s play, The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor does not have merely an explanatory function as in Dostoevskij’s text. On the contrary, in Fabbri’s play the “poem” composed by Ivan becomes a judicial document. Even though there are notable changes, Fabbri’s text retains the legend of the little onion.
