Part 7

Instead of life understood as Evolution, life understood as a marvellous phantasmagoria.

Instead of Time understood as a passage or corridor, Time as a labyrinth.

Instead of the world-ideal of garden cities and carefully planned parks and squares, a belief in the maze of the world.

Instead of a belief in the coming of universal peace, a belief in the recurrence of wars. No belief in the “making virtuous of the world and all people.”

No belief in any explanation as sufficient.

No prejudice against impossibilities; a cheerful acceptance of miracles, infractions of the “laws of Nature,” of the significance of dreams and visions, of the design of destiny hidden in apparent accident; a predisposition towards superstition.

A belief that in apparent failure lies a truer destiny than in apparent success.

A saying “yes” to the mysteries of the Birth, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Christ. The West would take Christ down from the cross, heal His wounds, and save Him. The East would not do that; she knows that she must crucify Him.

X THE LABYRINTH

Man is a labyrinth. He is masked, and there are masks over masks. When you have gone past his first surface you come to a second. He is like thousands of overpainted frescoes. His soul is a mystic temple with a hundred and a thousand standing-places further forward or further back. His soul circulates in passages, hides in caves or recesses, is missed among intricacies or complexities. It has the power of metamorphosis and can lurk in the by-ways of his being in strange guise. It manifestly takes possession of his body, or it dwells in dim caves and recesses, or marches soundingly along corridors; it creeps insidiously through secret mazes; it dwells lingeringly in empty chambers, makes its exit stealthily by little doors leading as it were to vast reservoirs; or hurriedly it traverses many apartments to look from the outmost gate like a newly risen moon. It is sometimes enthroned like a king or a queen, or descending from the throne trails long robes over marble. Or it is abased to a slave or a prisoner and is confined in towers and dungeons serving tyrants for unknown ends; or it lies stretched on couches, in trances, overcome in chambers of voluptuousness, escaping again and again from the spell of enchantment and the stress of tyranny, from would-be masters too weak finally to enthral. There are issues of joy from many passages of pain. There are processions in the temple of the soul; and sometimes the soul is a victim bound to be sacrificed in honour of some conqueror, or it is the priest at the altar, or the conqueror-god to whom sacrifice is made. The sense of destiny in the soul may rise to a majestic height of godhead, or may be extinguished to the dull inanition of the worm or perverted to the fury of a devil. But even lying at great depths and in great darkness it sees the eternal stars, as the stars are seen even in the glare of the Egyptian noonday from the innermost chambers of the pyramids. It becomes upon occasion an enchanter, an Ariel who can summon fairies and sprites with pageants and choruses, and make heavenly music in every passage and turn and cranny in the great labyrinth of man’s being.

There are many labyrinths. Squares and circles and straight lines are in themselves lies—they are disjointed fragments of labyrinths. There is no truth in them until they are pieced together. A labyrinth is something which cannot be drawn by mathematical instruments, which cannot be photographed. It can be sensed, it can be conveyed to the mind by music, by a certain sort of impressionism in writing and painting. We have knowledge of the labyrinth of the world because our body and soul and being is a labyrinth, and part answers to part. We understand such music with our whole bodies, not only with our ears; we see such pictures with the soul itself, which is all eye, rather than with the mere physical eye. It is truth—heavenly harmony.

A paragraph of good writing is a labyrinth: it is comprised in one breath, and mirrors in its construction the natural stops and alleys of the body. Every fruit is a labyrinth.

All disorder is a diviner order not understood: the order of the labyrinth, the disorder of the starry sky, the disorder of the forest, the disorder of the world, of a nation, of the web of intricacies on the palm of a hand.

All astronomy, astrology, geography, cosmography, botany, natural history, palmistry are more or less the tracing of the lines of the labyrinth, our playful attempts to follow out the mystical maze of natural phenomena.

The lines which men trace in their goings to and fro upon the world are part of the mystical tracery, so also are the tracks of the clouds, the outlines of coasts, the ramifications of the lines of rocks.

Reflections of the labyrinth are caught in many curious pictures and patterns: in the design on butterfly’s wings, the markings on plumage, the lines and mottling on birds’ eggs, the frosting on the window-pane.

All the rest of nature seems unconscious of it; but we men are half conscious, and pause and stare continually at what we call astonishing or curious or wonderful things. Our life is a life of lisping and marvelling. Every thrill is the accompaniment of a perception of part of the labyrinth; death itself is our greatest thrill, and is perhaps the necessary phenomenon of fuller initiation.

II MARTHA AND MARY

I THE _PODVIG_

Russian Christianity is sharply in contrast with Western Christianity in the characteristic idea of denial of “the world,” as opposed to our Western idea of accepting the world and “making the best of it.” An essential idea in Russian Christianity is denial of “the world,” denial of this mortal life as real life, denial of material force as real force, denial of speech as real speech. An act of denial is called a _podvig_, and a man who does some great act of denial is called a _podvizhnik_.

The act of Jesus on the mountain denying the road that led to the empire of the world in favour of the road that led to an ignoble death is a _podvig_—denial of the world.

“Turning the other cheek” is a _podvig_—denial of material power.

Going two miles with the man who forces you to go one is a _podvig_.

Mary, breaking the precious box of alabaster which might have been sold in aid of the poor, accomplished a _podvig_.

Simon Stylites, standing on the pillar when he might have been doing “useful work in the world,” was a _podvizhnik_.

The hermits of the Thebaid were all doing _podvigs_—renouncing the world.

Father Seraphim, who took an oath of silence and was silent thirty-five years—proving in himself that silence was golden—accomplished a great _podvig_.

It is difficult in Russia to carry on a discussion of any point of religion without coming to a consideration of this idea of the _podvig_. For instance there is a saying in Russia, “Blessed is he who can escape and yet chooses to take the punishment the world would give him.” A story is told in Russia that when Jesus was stretched on the cross many of those who had accepted his doctrines were in great distress not knowing that this had got to be; but they said among themselves, “You will see: there will be a miracle. I wouldn’t be in the place of these stupid and brutal Roman soldiers for worlds. You will see He will step off the cross, and amaze and conquer the world.” And in their anxiety and excitement they cried out: “Save thyself.” Pessimists whispered to one another sad thoughts, “Alas, alas! has it not always been so in the world’s history; mankind has stoned the prophets of God. Now He is going to die, to perish miserably, and the whole new movement will be ruined. People who never saw Him work miracles will say He was a charlatan, and that He never had any mission or any power. But we who saw Him raise the dead know He has the power to save Himself.” But both the optimists and the pessimists were wrong. They did not realise that the Man on the cross was giving the lie to the reality of death and to the material power of the Romans and the Jews. The giving the lie is the _podvig_.

That strange German fairy tale of the three sluggards is probably taken from conquered Slavs. There lies in it something of the Russian point of view. The old king gave his kingdom to the son who would not save himself from the gallows-tree, even though a knife were put into his hand to cut himself down. The German version is that the king gave the throne to the laziest of the three, but in reality he gave it to the one who was most capable of denying the world.

Dostoieffsky had a habit of saying that he was glad to have gone through penal exile in Siberia, and he felt that those revolutionaries who fled abroad and did not accept the worldly judgment and punishment meted out by the Russian court were not true to Russian ideas and not in reality helping Russia. He would have preferred that they accepted the cross which Russia put upon them. Dostoieffsky constantly refers to himself as a slice from the loaf of Russia, a slice from the communion loaf—a share in the sacrifice. Those who flee from punishment are outside the communion, they have no real portion in Russia. “The religion of suffering” does not mean “suffering for its own sake,” but rather the religion of not avoiding suffering, not avoiding or trying to avoid destiny. The religion of the _podvig_.

A tempter once came to a hermit living in a cave, and told him about the pain and misery and poverty of his fellow-men living in the world, and asked him what he would do if a million of money were brought to his cave and put at his disposal. The hermit crossed himself and muttered, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” The tempter was annoyed and urged his point. “But what would you do?” he asked.

“I should not alter my way of life,” said the hermit.

That was a _podvig_, a denial of the reality of misery on earth, a denial of the power of money to gain real happiness for man.

One of the most interesting of Russian mystery plays, Andreief’s _Anathema_, is concerned almost wholly with this idea. A man after God’s own heart succumbs to the temptation of thinking he can put the world right with money. He inherits a million from a relative who has died in America, and he sets to work to alleviate human suffering. But the more suffering he tries to remedy the more appears before him, till finally he is drowned in suffering, and God says to Human Reason, “Not by these measures shall it be measured, nor by these numbers shall it be counted, nor by these weights shall it be weighed, O Anathema, dwelling among numbers and measures, and not yet born into light!”

This idea is so pervasive, so characteristic, that I would call it an extra letter in the alphabet of Russian philosophy.

* * * * *

The history of literature is the history of ideas.

Man first made sounds to represent elementary ideas such as hunger, cold, warmth, danger, death. Then he made signs to represent sounds, and invented reading and writing. The signs were systematised; they were split up into letters and then remade as words. Alphabets and dictionaries were made. Languages grew.

At first people spoke only of hunger, cold, pain, pleasure, fighting, death, and such simple things. They had perhaps only five hundred or so words. But year by year they added to words as they discovered new things in the world and in themselves.

At first clever men, brave warriors, intrepid hunters gave us words; then philosophers and astrologers and historians; then priests and minstrels and poets. They named all the things on the world and their feelings about the things; they named the ideas for which men fought, for which tribes and nations fought. They named the things of which they were afraid, the evil spirits in the darkness, in the forests, in the earthquakes and tempests. Last of all, when they found and considered the great spirit of man, the spirit in themselves, they named the gods, and they named the transcendental glories and sorrows of man.

The minstrels struck their harps and sang of the great deeds of famous men, and then poets without harps wrote of the same deeds, changing into words the music of the harp as well. Priests burned sacrifices on altars, and the poets wrote of it and changed the smoke of the incense into words. Great warriors fought before Troy, and the poets changed their passion into words. They sailed the terrible seas ten years to get home, and the poets changed the storms into words. The poets found out the assonances of mankind, what every one admired, and they gave to whole generations watch-words, words that were battle-flags. The poets described the gods.

Poems were so much read that whole lines and verses were as familiar as ordinary words, and people could quote a line of poetry and everybody would know the idea that was meant. And when the name of a god or a hero was mentioned there rose at once to people’s minds stories about him, poems about him.

Stories became like extra words in the language. That is what the wonderful Greek stories such as those of Narcissus, Demeter, and Persephone, and the labours of Hercules became—extra words in the dictionary or, better still, extra letters. For simple people took them into their lives, and combined them with their own thoughts, and made new words of their own. People learnt to use these stories in their prayers and in all their thoughts of mankind.

Some nations like the Jews, the Egyptians, the Greeks, grew to great culture, and the peoples in their beautiful capitals struck thousands of harps and sang thousands of songs, whilst away in the backwoods and lost places of the world the rest of mankind lived almost inarticulate, almost like beasts,—in Germany, in Gaul, in what is now Russia, in Britain. But their upward movement was at hand. A new idea came into the world and all the old order changed, giving place to new. The last of the stories which became a word was the story of Christ on the cross. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” An extraordinary new letter was given to the world, and people fitted it into their thoughts and made new words, new languages, new cultures.

The savage races of Western Europe came turbulently to the knowledge of the God-like in themselves, and threw the world into confusion, observing the old words and stories and culture of the ancient world. They followed the word-flags of Christianity, the watchwords. Once more the making of language was first in the hands of clever artificers, brave warriors, intrepid hunters, adventurous sailors. It passed into the hands of mediæval philosophers, alchemists, and scholars, to minstrels, priests, and poets. At last they realised a wide and wondrous culture, and they took from the ancient world all the stories and extra words and letters now called myths, and they added them to their own stories and words, as one might add strings to a stringed instrument. They learned to praise God on many strings.

To-day we express ourselves with great orchestras as formerly, long long ago, man, emerging from the animal, the rude Pan learned to express himself on a simple reed.

The discovery of words has been the history of self-expression. Words have no value in themselves. They are symbols or tokens of ideas in us. And when we find words continually adding themselves to our vocabulary and our culture, we know ourselves increasing in the knowledge of ourselves and of the beauty and passion which lie latent in our souls. Education in its highest sense is the learning of words and the learning how to use them, learning the notes of the great instrument, learning how to play the music of the ages, and to express with that music and with that playing the passion and the mystery of our own souls.

The highest of literature, like the noblest of music, is that wherein the great stories are used as extra letters and words. Rich writing is that which is full of allusions which we all understand. Poor literature is often that in which the author is frequently making allusions to events and stories which are known only to a few and have no strong significance. To use stories as words when the majority of people do not know the stories is to write in a language that is not understood, it is to write in words that are not in use. The reality of a book that draws its allusions from the Bible and from the Greek myths and general European history is immeasurably greater than one that is constantly referring to the Koran or the stories of the Buddha or Zoroaster or Khrishna or Confucius. That is in itself an adequate defence of Christianity as a religion for us. Its stories are our stories. Its Word is the living Word. The other stories are not our stories. Christianity is our language. If ever asked to defend Christianity, the defence lies not in the historical accuracy of Christian documents or the verity of records. Christianity is the _Word_. All words are at our disposal for the expression of our passion and the sense of our mystery. The Christian story is the word that fits.

Our golden deeds, the deeds we consider as golden, are our extra letters. Let the poets and musicians blend them into their music. Every time a golden deed is made to sound beautifully in allusion a common chord is struck in the souls of men.

* * * * *

And the _podvig_ is an extra letter. There are many who claim that it is the word itself; that denial of “the world” is actually the _logos_ of Christianity. Even in Russia, where there is also the richer and grander conception of the Church, there are those who stand for the _podvig_ only, for denial of the world and material force only. Witness Tolstoy and many of his followers. It is even held by some that the whole of true and vital and historical Christianity is founded on—“If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.” The important sect of _Skoptsi_ go so far as to say that the begetting of children is sin, and they mutilate themselves, and in that way deny life in the name of the spiritual life.

II THE HERMITAGE OF FATHER SERAPHIM

Thinking of the _podvig_, I made a pilgrimage to the hermitage of Father Seraphim, a few hundred miles from Moscow.

Over treeless wastes and desolate commons, where far-away churches on the sea of snow look like ships sailing under full canvas; through snow-blown forests of pines, through woods of tall birch trees; very seldom past villages or human beings—to the holy city of Arzamas in the Government of Nizhni-Novgorod. A night in an inn among the many churches of Arzamas, and then on the road across fifty miles of desolate snow-covered moor that lie between the city and the great monastery. I hear of the terrible hurricane that has swept southern Russia, and the flood that has drowned hundreds of poor fisher-folk and workmen on the shores of the Azof. To-day there is bad weather all over Russia. It is ten degrees colder, it still snows, and a high easterly gale is blowing up the fallen snow and the drift-tops and drift slopes in blinding clouds that look like engine smokes and volumes of vapour. A bitter day.

There are no pilgrims on the way, the weather is too heavy for them. Often as you stand and try to go forward over the uneven road, the wind sets you sliding backward on the clumps of ice, and you suddenly blunder into two feet of soft snow. You come to little cottages on the Sarof side of which stand drifts higher than the cottages themselves; they look like cliffs, and the snow blowing off unceasingly and tempestuously above the cottage roofs looks like long white grass going in all directions at the sport of the gale. In the afternoon the snow ceases to fall from the sky, but it still rises in smokes and sprays over the rolling plains. Far away on the horizon to which I am journeying the black line of the wolf-haunted forest is visible. At night I sleep in a peasant’s hut, on felt spread on the floor. A whole family goes to sleep in the same room, and as I lie stretched flat on this primitive couch, resting my weather-beaten limbs, each of the others says his prayers before the many ikons. There are many ikons in the room, and besides them, holy oleographs enough to give the idea that the bare wooden walls have been papered on some religious design. Chief among the pictures is a representation of the Tsar and the Grand Dukes giving their shoulders to the triumphal carrying of the relics of the Father Seraphim, on the occasion of the canonisation of the Russian hermit and _starets_.

Father Seraphim was a saintly monk and ghostly counsellor of the type of Father Zosima, familiar to English readers of _The Brothers Karamazof_. He accomplished extraordinary holy exploits during his youth and middle age, conquering the flesh and denying the world, and in his old age became famous for his godly sagacity and humility. When he died his body was reputed to have in it holy charm, and thousands of peasants brought their sick and their blind, and their sins and their sorrows to the miracle-working relics. Finally the Empress, wishing to have a male child, abode at the monastery and prayed, and Father Seraphim gave Russia a Tsarevitch. The Tsar named Seraphim as a saint, and the shrine of Sarof, already astonishingly sought of pilgrims, gained a great ecclesiastical distinction. Hence this grand oleograph on the wall.

I slept as one sleeps who, after weeks in town, is one day surcharged with open air. Next morning the whole family was up before dawn, and the samovar was on the table in the grey light of sunrise. A man from the village decided to accompany me to Sarof.

“Haven’t been there for four years,” said he, “and now I’m homesick to see it again. I think I’ll go and pray a little.”

We talked of Father Seraphim on the way.

“Is the cell still there where he fed the bear with bread?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s there; about five versts from the monastery away in the woods. There is a shrine there now. You’ll see the stone, too, on which he prayed a thousand days and a thousand nights without moving away. And the spring that he found. Many people have been cured there. It’s quite unusual water. Will you bathe?”

“Perhaps,” said I. “But the weather’s cold.”

“No one ever takes cold there,” said the peasant. “It’s quite safe. The water is very very cold. But there’s something about it. You take it home, it doesn’t go bad like ordinary water.”

“He was a great saint, this Father Seraphim!”

“Of course; he was a God-serviceable man, he did many _podvigs_.”