THE HOLY ISLES.
Chief in a group of rocks and banks lying off the Karel coast--a group
not yet surveyed, and badly laid down in charts--Solovetsk is a small,
green island, ten or twelve miles long, by eight or nine miles wide.
The waters raging round her in this stormy sea have torn a way into
the mass of stones and peat; forming many little coves and creeks; and
near the middle, where the convent stands, these waters have almost
met. Hardly a mile of land divides the eastern bay from the western
bay.
Solovetsk stands a little farther north than Vatna Jökull; the
sixty-fifth degree of latitude passing close to the monastic pile. The
rocks and islets lying round her are numerous and lovely, for the sea
runs in and out among them, crisp with motion and light with foam; and
their shores are everywhere green with mosses and fringed with forests
of birch and pine. The lines are not tame, as on the Karel and Lapland
coasts, for the ground swells upward into bluffs and downs, and one at
least of these ridges may be called a hill. Each height is crowned by
a white church, a green cupola, and a golden cross. On the down which
may be called a hill stands a larger church, the belfry of which
contains a light. Land, sea, and sky are all in keeping; each a wonder
and a beauty in the eyes of pilgrims of the stormy night.
Running alongside the wharf, on to which we step as easily as on to
Dover Pier, we notice that beyond this beauty of nature, which man has
done so much to point and gild, there is a bright and even a busy look
about the commonest things. Groups of strange men dot the quays;
Lopars, Karels, what not; but we soon perceive that Solovetsk is a
civilized no less than an enchanted isle. The quay is spacious, the
port is sweet and fresh. On our right lies that dock of which Father
John was speaking with such pride. The "Hope," a more commodious
pilgrim-boat than the "Faith," is lying on her stays. On our left
stands a guest-house, looking so airy, light, and clean, that no
hostelry on Italian lake could wear a more cheerful and inviting face.
We notice a lift and crane, as things not seen in the trading ports;
and one has hardly time to mark these signs of science ere noticing an
iron tramway, running from the wharf to a great magazine of stores and
goods.
A line of wall, with gates and towers, extends along the upper quay;
and high above this line of wall, spring convent, palace, dome, and
cross. A stair leads up from the water to the Sacred Gates; and near
the pathway from this stair we see two votive chapels; marking the
spots on which the Imperial pilgrims, Peter the Great and Alexander
the Beneficent, landed from their boats.
Every thing looks solid, many things look old. Not to speak of the
fortress walls and turrets, built of vast boulders torn up from the
sea-bed in the days of our own Queen Bess, the groups of palace,
church, and belfry rising within those walls are of older date than
any other work of man in this far-away corner of the globe. One
cathedral--that of the Transfiguration--is older than the fortress
walls. A second cathedral--that of the Ascension--dates from the time
when St. Philip was prior of Solovetsk. Besides having this air of
antiquity, the place is alive with color, and instinct with a sense of
art. The votive chapels which peep out here and there from among the
trees are so many pictures; and these red crosses by the water-margin
have been so arranged as to add a motive and a moral to the scene.
Some broad but not unsightly frescoes brighten the main front of the
old cathedral, and similar pictures light the spandrel of the Sacred
Gates; while turrets and cupolas of church and chapel are everywhere
gay with green and gold.
One dome, much noticed, and of rarest value in a pilgrim's eye, is
painted azure, fretted with golden stars. That dome is the crown of a
new cathedral built in commemoration of 1854--that year of
wonders--when an English fleet was vanquished by the Mother of God.
Within, the convent looks more durable and splendid than without.
Wall, rampart, guest-house, prison, tower, and church, are all of
brick and stone. Every lobby is painted; often in a rude and early
style; but these rough passages from Holy Writ have a sense and
keeping higher than the morals conveyed by a coat of lime. The screens
and columns in the churches glow with a nobler art; though here,
again, an eye accustomed to admire no other than the highest of
Italian work will be only too ready to slight and scorn. The drawing
is often weak, the pigment raw, the metal tawdry; yet these great
breadths of gold and color impress both eye and brain, especially when
the lamps are lit, the psalm is raised, the incense burning, and the
monks, attired in their long black hoods and robes, are ranged in
front of the royal gates.
This pretty white house under the convent wall, near the Sacred Gates,
was built in witness of a miracle, and is known as the Miracle Church.
A pilgrim, eating a bit of white bread, which a pope had given him,
let a crumb of it fall to the ground, when a strange dog tried to
snatch it up. The crumb seemed to rise into the dog's mouth and then
slip away from him, as though it were alive. That dog was the devil.
Many persons saw this victory of the holy bread, and the monks of
Solovetsk built a shrine on the spot to keep the memory of that
miracle alive; and here it stands on the bay, between the chapels
erected on the spots where Peter the Great and Alexander the Second
landed from their ships.
When we come to drive, and sail, and walk into the recesses of this
group of isles, we find them not less lovely than the first sweet
promise of the bay in which we land. Forests surround, and lakelets
pursue us, at every step. The wood is birch and pine; birch of the
sort called silver, pine of the alpine stock. The trees are big enough
for beauty, and the undergrowths are red with berries and bright with
Arctic flowers. Here and there we come upon a clearing, with a dip
into some green valley, in the bed of which slumbers a lovely lake. A
scent of hay is in the air, and a perfume new to my nostrils, which my
companions tell me breathes from the cotton-grass growing on the
margin of every pool. At every turn of the road we find a cross, well
shaped and carved, and stained dark red; while the end of every forest
lane is closed by a painted chapel, a lonely father's cell. A deep,
soft silence reigns through earth and sky.
But the beauty of beauties lies in the lakes. More than a hundred of
these lovely sheets of water nestle in the depths of pine-wood and
birch-wood. Most famous of all these sheets is the Holy Lake, lying
close behind the convent wall; most beautiful of all, to my poor
taste, is the White Lake, on the road to St. Savatie's Cell and
Striking Hill.
Holy Lake, a sheet of black water, deep and fresh, though it is not a
hundred yards from the sea, has a function in the pilgrim's course.
Arriving at Solovetsk, the bands of pilgrims march to this lake and
strip to bathe. The waters are holy, and refresh the spirit while they
purify the flesh. Without a word, the pilgrims enter a shed, throw off
their rags, and leap into the flood; except some six or seven
city-folk, who shiver in their shoes at the thought of that wholesome
plunge. Their bath being finished, the pilgrims go to dinner and to
prayers.
White Lake lies seven or eight miles from the convent, sunk in a green
hollow, with wooded banks, and a number of islets, stopping the lovely
view with a yet more lovely pause. If St. Savatie had been an artist,
one need not have wondered at his wandering into such a spot.
Yet the chief islet in this paradise of the Frozen Sea has one defect.
When looking down from the belfry of Striking Hill on the intricate
maze of sea and land, of lake and ridge, of copse and brake, of lawn
and dell; each tender breadth of bright green grass, each sombre belt
of dark-green pine, being marked by a white memorial church; you gaze
and wonder, conscious of some hunger of the sense; it may be of the
eye, it may be of the ear; your heart declaring all the while that,
wealthy as the landscape seems, it lacks some last poetic charm. It is
the want of animal life. No flock is in the meadow, and no herd is on
the slope. No bark of dog comes on the air; no low of kine is on the
lake. Neither cow nor calf, neither sheep nor lamb, neither goat nor
kid, is seen in all the length of country from Striking Hill to the
convent gate. Man is here alone, and feels that he is alone.
This defect in the landscape is radical; not to be denied, and never
to be cured. Not that cattle would not graze on these slopes and
thrive in these woods. Three miles in front of Solovetsk stands the
isle called Zaet, on which sheep and cattle browse; and five or six
miles in the rear lies Moksalma, a large grassy isle, on which the
poultry cackle, the horses feed, and the cows give milk. These animals
would thrive on the holy isle, if they were not driven away by
monastic rule; but Solovetsk has been sworn of the celibate order; and
love is banished from the saintly soil. No mother is here permitted to
fondle and protect her young; a great defect in landscapes otherwise
lovely to eye and heart--a denial of nature in her tenderest forms.
The law is uniform, and kept with a rigor to which the imperial power
itself must bend. No creature of the female sex may dwell on the isle.
The peasants from the Karel coast are said to be so strongly impressed
with the sin of breaking this rule, that they would rather leap into
the sea than bring over a female cat. A woman may come in the pilgrim
season to say her prayers, but that duty done she must go her way.
Summer is a time of license--a sort of carnival season, during which
the letter of a golden rule is suspended for the good of souls. A
woman may lodge in the guest-house, feed in the refectory; but she
must quit the wards before nine at night. Some of the more holy
chapels she may not enter: and her day of privilege is always short. A
male pilgrim can reside at Solovetsk for a year; a female must be gone
with the boats that bring her to the shrine. By an act of imperial
grace, the commander of his majesty's forces in the island--an army
some sixty strong--is allowed to have his wife and children with him
during the pilgrim's year; that is to say, from June to August; but
when the last boat returns to Archangel with the men of prayer, the
lady and her little folk must leave their home in this holy place. A
reign of piety and order is supposed to come with the early snows, and
it is a question whether the empress herself would be allowed to set
her foot on the island in that better time.
The rule is easily enforced in the bay of Solovetsk, under the convent
walls; not so easily enforced at Zaet, Moksalma, and the still more
distant isles, where tiny little convents have been built on spots
inhabited by famous saints. In these more distant settlements it is
hard to protect the holy men from female intrusion; for the Karel
girls are fond of mischief, and they paddle about these isles in their
light summer craft by day and night. The aged fathers only are allowed
to live in such perilous spots.