Tolstoy’s life were to be followed out we should be surprised at the
frequent recurrence of morbid and despondent moods. Nothing seems more
characteristic of his later years than fruitless quarreling with the
life of Yasnaya Polyana, threatening to run away, lamentations,
self-lacerations. But now and again in relief Tolstoy did actually flee.
He took the road to Moscow to live like a simple artisan and earn his
living by carpentering, or he set off for a monastery where some famous
monk lived in his cell, and sought relief by confession and Christian
intercourse.
That going forth on the road, a-seeking new life, is characteristic. At
times one would think half Russia is on the road. Utility has been flung
aside, the chances of gain have been passed over, the so-called duty to
work and fulfil your place in the state has been flung to the winds, and
the Russian is out on the dusty road, wearing out his boots, thinking,
trudging, praying, recognising—finding what his soul desires. That is
not morbidity, but a noble form of life.
And many promise themselves wholly to God and enter monasteries or
convents, and there find happiness, the bright ray of destiny they
sought with their eyes in a dark world.
Every morning, noon, and night
Praise God! says Theocrite
—that is not a morbid life, though a life of denial. It does not mean
that every one who would live well should enter a monastery or a
convent, it only means that some one whose soul craved such a life has
found his way. How we have suffered in England from the difficulty of
giving one’s soul to God in that way. Those who would have been monks
and sisters have had to give themselves in other ways. There are
thousands of other ways. Every one who is living well has found a way.
The way meant renunciation, hardship, sorrow—but not morbid sorrow, the
sorrow which leaves you as you were, as the cloud of gnats wailing by
the tree and the stream leave the tree, leave the stream, just as they
were, just what they were.
The differentiation between morbid sorrow and real sorrow, between
self-laceration and the tribulation that comes of destiny, is important
if we would understand aright what the Russian means by the “Religion of
Suffering.”
The religion of suffering, of which so much is said, is a term easily
misunderstood, meaning differently in the mouths of different people.
The political propagandist holds that the Russian people are melancholy
because their institutions are so bad, and that the religion of
suffering is the religion of revolution, a growing resentment against
the government.
The morbid Russian will say that the religion of suffering is the
knowledge of the truth that _only_ in suffering and near to death can
you understand anything about life. He will deny that anything else can
teach you.
The peasant pilgrim will interpret it as the religion of taking to the
road and bearing the cross; being a beggar for Christ’s sake; refusing a
lift on the road to the Sepulchre, holding that where Christ walked it
is not for them to ride.
Another will say it is the religion that helps you to face suffering,
and point to Tolstoy’s story of the death of Ivan Ilyitch. Ivan Ilyitch
was a man who had no religion, and had never faced suffering in his
life, an ordinary bourgeois of the type of lower intelligentsia, jovial,
selfish, cynical, fond of cards and of his dinner, and having no other
particular interest in life except an ambition to make more money.
Suddenly he is stricken with cancer, and lives for years in increasing
pain till at last he dies in agony. He has no spiritual comfort; pain
quite o’ercrows his spirit. The truth is, no pain really conquers the
spirit, the spirit always triumphs at the last, even if the body is
rendered useless by the struggle. But this truth is lost in the
irreligion of Ivan Ilyitch. It would seem it would have been better if
he had lived a more regular and healthy life in his youth, but that is a
false moral. The fact is he had never faced the solemn mystery of life,
never taken his ordinary human share in suffering, and so was lost in
the hour of pain. But perhaps there were more spiritual gleams in the
end of Ivan Ilyitch than Tolstoy tells us of. Tolstoy was a moralist.
But in any case Ivan Ilyitch presents a contrast to a religious Russian
on his death-bed, in his last agony, gripping tight in his hand a little
wooden cross, his eyes upon the ikon of his patron saint before which
the candle is burning.
Another will say, the religion of suffering is that which helps you to
face life, which is perhaps another way of saying that it is the
religion which helps you to face death ... the religion which prompts
you to take risks and will face no dangers. He is losing his soul. In a
great war he wakens up and offers himself—and saves his soul. Or in the
ordinary course of things, in the “weak piping times of peace,” he
resolves to make a leap in the dark and get life, he gives up the old
for the new—he saves his soul, and out of his sufferings springs a
glory.
Still it is not for every one to make this leap in the dark. Villagers,
the peasants of a countryside, have obviously no call that way, or
seldom a call that way. They have not the need that the townsman has,
they have satisfying visions of truth, from nature, in their way of
life, in their traditional customs. _Brand_ was probably wrong trying to
lead his village flock up among the glaciers and avalanches to make a
church of ice. He should have preached such sermons and made such
appeals in towns. He would have led people from the towns. Nevertheless
there has been a cult of _Brand_ in Russia, especially since Ibsen’s
long drama was produced at the Theatre of Art, and many divinity
students and young priests have been touched by his vigorous onslaught
on the quiet lives of simple folk.
On the other hand, there have not been wanting vigorous opponents to
_Brand_ and the “God of the Heights,” and I have even seen the scientist
working to relieve pain put in opposition to _Brand_ working to increase
the pain and sorrow in the world. But in that opposition lies a
misconception. Crucifixion under chloroform does not conquer death and
sin, and there is no sleeping-draught for the young man on the threshold
of life who has got to dare and suffer and die many times before he
emerges at his noblest and richest.
Dostoieffsky voiced the religion of suffering for Russia, he suffered
himself, and in his personal suffering discovered the national passion.
He sanctified Siberia, redeeming the notion of it from that of a foul
prison and place of punishment to a place of redemption, and finding
one’s own soul. He did not find Siberia an evil place, but on the
contrary, found it holy ground. These men came face to face with reality
who had lived till then in an atmosphere of unreality. The roads of
Siberia were roads of pilgrimage. Dostoieffsky sent successively his two
most interesting heroes to tread those roads—Raskolnikof and Dmitri
Karamazof. Tolstoy develops and materialises the idea in the story of
Katya and Neludof.
Then in his novels Dostoieffsky generally shows the suffering ones,
never suggesting the idea that the suffering should be removed. He has
no interest in the non-suffering normal person. He prefers a man who is
torn, whose soul is disclosed and bare. He feels that such a man knows
more, and that his life can show more of the true pathos of man’s
destiny. Such people think, dream, pray, hope, they are infinitely
lovable, they are clearly mortal. Hence a pre-occupation with suffering,
a saying _yes_ to suffering when the obvious answer seems to be _no_,
and _Let this cup pass from me_. It is perhaps because the West has
taken it for granted that suffering is an evil thing, and has set itself
consciously the task of eliminating suffering from the world that the
East has emphasised its acceptance of suffering. Nietzsche noted what he
called the watchword of Western Europe—“We wish that there may be
nothing more to fear.” He despised that wish. The East does not despise
the wish, but finds it necessary to affirm its own belief more
vigorously. It accepts many things which the West considers wrong in
themselves—War, Disease, Pain, Death.
Footnote 8:
Cited by the priest Florensky, who copied down the song as he heard it
(_The Pillar and Foundation of Truth_).
VI
THE TWO HERMITS
Although self-laceration and being wilfully gloomy are frequent in
Russian life the idea of repentance is not popular, there being no
particular passion for righteousness and consequently no insistence on
sin as something deadly in itself. In Russia you never hear that the
wages of sin is death. The man who sins is even thought to be nearer to
grace than he who never sins, the prodigal nearer than his elder
brother. “Sin committed is nothing to grieve over. What is done can’t be
helped. Hurry on and do something else, don’t waste time in penance or
repentance.” There is no idea of penance in connection with the Russian
Church, and consequently no “indulgences.” Russia has escaped the evil
of thinking that it is possible to pay for past actions and neutralise
their effect. Even in asceticism the Russian has no idea of paying for
sins by fasting and praying and mortifying the flesh. And he who sets
out on pilgrimage does not do so as a penance for sin, he is not trying
in any way to make up to God for sin. His act is an act of praise, a
promise, his asceticism is a denial of this world in honour of the world
to come, a denial of the world’s peace in praise of the peace which
passeth understanding, a denial of the world’s truth in allegiance to
the Holy Ghost, a showing forth in symbolic act of the glory of man’s
heavenly destiny.
The story of two hermits given by the Russian philosopher Solovyof gives
a Russian point of view.
In the desert in Egypt two hermits were saving their souls. Their caves
were quite near one another but they never entered into conversation
unless it were to sing psalms at one another or call one another by name
now and then. In this way of life they passed many years, and the fame
of their sanctity spread beyond Egypt and into many lands. But in course
of time the devil, mortified by their holiness, succeeded in tempting
them. He snared them both at the same time, and, not saying a word to
one another, they gathered the baskets and pallets which in their long
spare time they had plaited from grasses and palm leaves, and they set
off together for Alexandria. There they sold their work, and on the
money they got for it they spent three gay days and nights with
drunkards and sinners, and on the fourth morning, having spent
everything, they returned to their cells in the desert.
One of them wept bitterly and howled aloud. The other walked at his side
with bright morning face and sang psalms joyfully to himself. The first
cried:
“Accursed that I am, now am I lost for ever. I shall never out-pray my
hideous sin, never, never. All my fasts and hymns and prayers have been
in vain. I might as well have sinned all the time; all lost in one foul
moment! Alas! alas!”
But the other hermit went on singing, quietly, joyfully.
“What!” cried the first hermit. “Have you gone out of your mind?”
“Why?” asked the joyful one.
“Why don’t you repent?”
“What is there for me to repent of?” asked the joyful one.
“And Alexandria, have you forgotten it?” asked his companion.
“What of Alexandria? Glory be to the Almighty who preserves that famous
and honourable town!”
“But what did we do in Alexandria?”
“What did we do? Why we sold our baskets of course, prayed upon the ikon
of holy St. Mark, visited several churches, walked a little in the town
hall, conversed with the virtuous and Christly Leonila....”
The repentant hermit stared at the other in pale stupefaction.
“And the house of ill-fame in which we spent the night ...” said he.
“God preserve us!” said the other. “The evening and night we spent in
the guest-house of the patriarch.”
“Holy martyrs! God has already blasted his reason,” cried the repentant
hermit. “And with whom did we get drunk on Tuesday night? Tell me that.”
“We partook of wine and viands in the refectory of the patriarchate,
Tuesday being the festival of the Presentation of the most Blessed
Mother of God.”
“Poor fellow! And whom did we kiss, eh?”
“We were honoured at parting with a holy kiss from that father of
fathers, the most blessed Archbishop of the great city of Alexandria and
of all Egypt, yes and of Libya, and of Pentapolis, and of Kur-Timothee
with its spiritual court, and with all the fathers and brothers of his
divinely appointed clergy.”
“Ah, why do you make a mock of me? Does it mean that after yesterday’s
abominations the devil has entered into possession of you. You embraced
sinners, you accursed one.”
“I can’t say in whom the devil has found a home, in me or in you,” said
the other, “in me when I rejoice in the God’s gifts and His holy will,
when I praise the Creator and all His works, or in you who rave and call
the house of our most blessed father and pastor a house of ill-fame, and
defame the God-loving clergy, calling them sinners as it were.”
“Ah, you heretic!” screamed the repentant hermit. “Arian monster! Thrice
accursed lips of the abominable Appollonion!”
And the repentant hermit threw himself upon his companion and tried to
kill him. But failing to do that he grew tired of his efforts, and the
two resumed their journey to their caves. The repentant one beat his
head on the rock all night and tore his hair and made the desert echo
with his howls and shrieks. The other calmly and joyfully went on
singing psalms.
In the morning the repentant hermit made the following reflections:
“Just think of it. I had earned from Heaven especial blessings and holy
power by my fasts and my _podvigs_.[9] This has already become evident
by the miracles and wonders I have lately been enabled to perform, but
after this that has happened, all is lost. By giving myself up to
fleshly abomination I have sinned against the Holy Ghost, and that sin,
according to the word of God, will be forgiven me neither in this life
nor in the life to come. I have thrown the pearl of heavenly purity to
be trampled under feet by swine, by devils. The devils have taken my
pearl, and, no doubt, having stamped it into the mire, they will come
after me and tear me. Well, well, if I am irrecoverably lost whatever is
there for me to do out here in the desert?” And he returned to
Alexandria and gave himself up to a life of debauch. Eventually, on one
occasion when he was hard up he conspired with other vagabonds, fell
upon a rich merchant, killed him, and robbed him. He was tracked down,
caught and tried in the courts. The judge condemned him to death and he
died without repentance.
But his old companion continued his holy life, his
_podvizhnitchestvo_[10] attained a high degree of sanctity and became
famous through the many miracles wrought at his cave-mouth. At a word
from his holy lips a woman past the age of child-bearing yet conceived
and brought forth a male child. When at last the good man died, his
shrivelled and worn-out body, suddenly as it were, blossomed in beauty
and youth, becoming translucent and filling the air with a heavenly
perfume. Over his holy relics a monastery was built, and his name went
forth from the church of Alexandria to Byzantium and thence to the
shrines of Kief and Moscow.
The lesson of this story is, according to Varsonophy, who told it, that
there are no sins of any importance except despondency. Did not both
these hermits sin alike and yet but one of them was lost, namely, he who
desponded?
Varsonophy was a pilgrim from Mount Athos, who used to say, “Eh, eh,
don’t grieve about your sins, be done with them, they don’t count. Sin
539 times in a day but don’t grieve about it, that’s the chief thing. If
to sin is evil, then to remember sin is evil. There is nothing worse
than to call to mind one’s own sins.... There is only one deadly sin and
that is despondency, from despondency comes despair, that is more than
sin, it is spiritual death.”
Footnote 9:
_Podvig_ is a Russian word for holy exploits and victories, especially
for those consisting in a denial of the world. See Chapter on
_podvigs_, page 111.
Footnote 10:
_Podvizhnitchestvo_ = the life of going on doing _podvigs_, the
continuance of denial of the world.
VII
AT THE CONVENT OF MARTHA AND MARY
One Sunday I went to the convent of St. Martha and St. Mary in the
Bolshaya Ordinka on the other side of the Moscow river. It is a
wonderful institution, belonging to the new Russia and yet being part of
the old, a young dainty stem with leaves sprung from the rugged
many-wintered tree of the Russian Church. Like St. Vladimir’s Cathedral
at Kief, its beauty lies not in any antiquity or ruin. It is a new
institution; it is served by young people; and has new life, new
interest, and ideals. It is the convent of which the Grand Duchess
Elizaveta Federovna, the widow of the Grand Duke Sergius, whose murder
was contrived by Azef the Jewish agent-provocateur during the
revolutionary period, is the abbess.
The remains of the Grand Duke were deposited at the shrine of St.
Alexey, and praying there, the grief-stricken widow promised herself,
her life, and her estate to God. The beautiful sister of the Empress
found her way from desolation and the tomb to a bright and spacious and
yet devoted life, and she was consecrated and took the veil.
One of the first deeds of her new life was to purchase a building site
in one of the poorer parts of the city, and to have it consecrated for
the building of a convent and churches. A temporary church was put up
and services took place from the first. The first plans were realised in
1907; the sisterhood was already formed and had begun work by February
1909. The Grand Duchess is the abbess and there are about a hundred
sisters. Every one is young, every one is active. No woman over forty
can enter the sisterhood, no one also who is weak physically or likely
to be unable to perform the arduous labours for and among the poor which
the sisters impose upon themselves.
The convent combines in its ideal the imitation of both Martha and Mary.
Each sister dedicates herself to “God and her neighbour.” She would sit
at Jesus’ feet like Mary, and be occupied with many things like Martha.
But certainly the idea of Martha and service stands first in their
minds. Their religion is the religion of good deeds. They visit, clothe,
comfort, heal the poor, and all but work miracles, flowers springing in
their footsteps where they go. They receive and consider thousands of
letters and beggars. They perform work which is often left to the
municipalities and Care committees in the West, but the work is much
more fruitful since it is done in the Name of Christ rather than in the
name of reason. In some convents the sisters are divided into Marthas
and Marys, and there is a question when a new one takes her place—a
Martha or a Mary? But in the Martha Marinskaya all have to be Marthas.
Each sister has a specific calling and name, _e.g._ the letter-writer,
the purchaser, the guest-receiver: there are medical sisters, church
sisters, kitchen sisters, and so on.
The service in the convent church is open and free. All and sundry may
go in. And yet necessarily one is in a way a guest, a visitor. It is a
very gentle and delicate experience to stand on the stone flags of the
wide church beside fifty or sixty maidens in white and avow allegiance
to the same emblems, praise the same splendid Creator and God.
I came to the service, but I also wished to satisfy a desire to see the
frescoes and wall-paintings by Nesterof. The rood-screen, the apse, and
the sides have been painted by that great artist, and two or three of
his most beautiful pictures are the surface of the walls.
There is a large picture, the whole width of the church, a presentment
of Holy Russia at the margin of a birch forest; plains and folding
valleys and uplands and broad acres in the distance. In the foreground
bright green grass thick with purple labiate and yellow rattray, an
opening in the forest, delicate silver birches on each side and tiny
pine trees, seedlings of pine-trees. In the opening all manner of
characteristic Russian “poor folk” gazing, praying, kneeling, crying.
For a haloed Christ stands among the birch trees and receives all who
will come to Him.
The Russian peasant believes that Christ wanders on his roads—
the heavenly King
Our mother Russia came to bless
And through our land went wandering;
and he is quite right, believing that. The thought, almost by itself,
constitutes the idea of “Holy Russia.”
The most beautiful picture in the church is the dedicatory Martha and
Mary—“The Master is here and calleth thee”[11]—a panel in front of which
stood a sister all in white like a statue, little candles in front of
her, a stout six-feet wax candle beside her.
A tall and portly priest with long hair, whimsical and gentle, took the
service—Father Mitrophan; and he walked to and fro, now with the people,
now behind the sacred gates. A score of sisters in black veils and with
black crowns on their heads sang in the choir. A sister stood at a
counter by the door and sold candles. A congregation of sisters,
fashionable visitors, peasants, working-people, and beggars grouped
themselves miscellaneously in the wide, open, light-filled body of the
church. Of course there were no seats. It was pleasant to be there;
there was good air, a fragrance occasionally of flowers, and a sense of
young women in a certain mood towards God. We sang, assented, crossed
ourselves, bowed. The sixty sisters all in white prostrated themselves,
and there was a billowy flood of white linen on the floor. And the black
choir sang, gently, pitifully, sweetly, exaltedly, with _pale_ voices.
It was their church, their temple. They expressed themselves there as a
maid expresses herself in her private room at home. The gentle Nesterof
paintings pertained to them specially. They were chosen by them.
In the midst of the service in come the convent waifs, children of the
childless, two dozen little boys in green blouses, two dozen little
girls in blue frocks and drab pinafores. And they stand in the midst of
the church. They are so small, they might be the children of dwarfs.
Father Mitrophan comes out to deliver his sermon, and we all move up
closer towards the altar rails so as to hear him. He is higher than we,
and looks a shepherd with a flock about him. A gentle sermon: “You have
parents in the flesh, you have also parents in the Spirit. There are
earthly families, there are also spiritual families; worldly intercourse
and heavenly intercourse. Our parents bore us and then as soon as
convenient brought us to the font to give us back to God. The parents
were not present at the baptism because they were only parents of the
flesh, but the guardian angels were present because they were parents of
the Spirit. To-day is the day of St. Afanasief and of St. Sergey,
spiritual fathers, to whom we must look for guidance and love. What do
they teach us? Why, first of all, to do things, to work. What a worker
was St. Paul, for instance, writing fourteen epistles. We mustn’t be
lazy! We shan’t get anything without making effort. Fast day comes; we
say it doesn’t matter much, we’ll eat ordinary fare. It’s time to go to
church; you say to yourself, ‘No, no, don’t need to,’ and you take a
stool and a book of church verses and sing to yourself pleasantly and
comfortably. No, no, it won’t do. The Fathers of the Church didn’t go
lazy like that, or where should we be....” And so on, in a sententious
manner and sing-song tone, nodding his head and pronouncing many of his
dicta in a colloquial tone of voice like an old woman saying proverbs.
He had an Orthodox voice. There is such a thing in Russia, a voice and
manner in which the Church and the Church service are reflected. It
communicates itself to the worshipper and is often a superadded grace of
personality in a man or woman, a certain Byzantinism in expression, a
holding oneself like a figure in a fresco.