Chapter XLIV. Holy Russia

In a village in the forest I saw a girl who had died on the road to Solovetz; a pilgrim. She was a wonderful flower, pure and holy, sent to breathe where none prized her beauty. She sprang up out of the dark secret earth of humanity. She perished and returned to the darkness. Nature did not prize her and Russia did not grudge her to death.

Nesterof's picture "Holy Russia"

In Russia there are many such women. They flourish and perish, and flourish again like flowers upon the roadway of existence. They are the strength behind the Russian nation, the spirit of its beauty. They are born in poor men's houses. Strong women rear them: strong men look down upon them. They spring up slenderly; they work within the house; they toil upon the fields; they feed cows, rock cradles, chop wood, bake bread; they gather in the harvest; they pray many times a day; they go on long pilgrimages; they marry and bear strong children and again they pilgrimage and they die. During all their life they never forget God, they never sully themselves, they are never tempted by evil. Simply and tranquilly they live, their eyes full of light because their hearts are pure. Because of them the woodsman is strong and happy. Because of them Russia is strong. Because of them the sun shines freshly and the birds sing. Because of their holiness men are allowed to be secular.

For as a priest once said to me naively, "Man is a Kremlin wall, and the woman is the church inside. The Kremlin is the army of warriors who have put their women inside. The men fight the outside world, but inside the women pray. The woman is the more sacred and precious part of the race. Better five men perish than one woman. That's why a husband protects his wife, and why all men wish to protect women—because the women are holy." And the strength and beauty of the men outside depends on the prayers of the women within.

Russia herself, as has been observed, is a woman-nation. She is the Western-man's wife, the womb of nations. Because of her holiness and simplicity, we may be worldly wise and live in towns. She gives us bread, and gives us prayers. She is the contented one. She is our steady, beating heart. For woman is an inner and more sacred consciousness, a temple within our souls, a place of refuge from the outside world. Woman is a church. Coming into her presence we lift our hats and compose our souls. Russia also is a church, a holy place where the Western may smooth out a ruffled mind and look upon the beauty of life.

The devils could not destroy Peer Gynt because of the women behind him; Peer Gynt in all his worldly career was saved by the faith of Solveig kneeling in his forgotten forest hut. Ibsen was symbolical. He meant that the commercialised man was saved from damnation by the peasant girl behind him. Woe for Europe when it has brought all her 'peasants to the towns, when the Solveigs are no more and Holy Russia has vanished away.

The strength of the young man may be seen in his eyes where behind the mysterious veil of the soul one sees his women kneeling. The man forgets God in the town and lives evilly. Then one by one those kneeling women rise and flee, till the man's house remains desolate. As long as one woman remains he is saved to life, but when the last is gone he is devoted to death. The money changers have full possession of the temple. His soul has ceased to be a church and has become a tavern, and now behind the curtained windows of his eyes a mysterious company sits over the wine.

Sometimes it seems to me that in any man lives all mankind, and that every man going to and fro upon the earth represents a self within myself, and that because each other man is living his peculiar life I can live mine freely. I live my little life and give my little contribution to the grand harmony, in the faith that all other people are fulfilling their parts and making their due contributions. And England also lives its peculiar life in the faith that other nations are living their peculiar lives.

England needs Russia living on the soil in holiness and simplicity, needs it living so, as a man needs a woman, for the food she gives him and the prayers she offers.

One evening I was in a little convent church with other worshippers. We all stood in a group about the priest and held candles. At one point in the service we lit the candles, at another we extinguished them and then afterwards lit them again. The church was dark and quiet; black-veiled nuns read the lessons, nuns sang. In front stood the Ikonostasis a-glitter with candles; at each side stood the dark-robed nuns. We were a score of worshippers at vespers. Behind us in the background, waited two peasant women with babies to be baptised. At one point we were all kneeling, the priest, the nuns, ourselves ; and I had a vision of Holy Russia, of the holy one who sits at home and prays whilst we more secular go abroad into the world. I saw all the sisters and brothers who have vowed themselves to God, the holy peasants toiling in the fields, a hundred millions of them submissive unto God, the peasants pilgrimaging' to shrines, the Ikon lamps a-burning, the communion services, the Remembrance Days and meals with the dead, the fasts, the festivals, glorious Easter, the monks praying for the departed, the priests performing rites in empty churches, the hermits, the village saints, the ascetics who have loaded themselves with chains, those who have sworn themselves dead to the world and taken the oath of silence, the holy pictures prayer-transfigured, the wonder-working Ikons and precious relics full of influence, the holy monks who kneel eternally in the presence of the Mystery.

And I was glad of these because they expiated my more worldly life; glad for Europe because they were Europe's background. Not in vain did the lamp burn, the peasant pilgrimage, the ascetic labour in chains, the monk kneel. In the soul of Europe, in the shadowy temple, the monk kneels and the women kneel. If ever they are forced to rise and depart Europe will be lost. Russia is the night to which spiritual forces return for refreshment; and kneeling in the convent church I realised that our day was so bright because that night was so dark — the brightness was so full of gladness because the darkness was so full of holiness.

But the progress of socialism or of civilisation does not wish darkness anywhere. It abhors darkness and cries "More light, more light! It is like a character in one of Andreef's plays, a man who says "Light up all the halls and every corner and passage, and let there not be even a shadow or a dark place anywhere." Progress defines itself as the lighting of lamps till there be no darkness anywhere—enlightenment. " Let us have no dark corners," says a philosopher, " make the home public, make it all public." But if they do completely lighten the West—there will still remain, I believe, that shadowy background, Russia, where the benighted moujik kneels in secret—the saving grace of Europe.

Again, Russia is the dark virgin earth, the secret mysterious soil. Whatever is beautiful in Russian art or literature and in the lives of the intelligentia, owes its strength to the peasantry and the Church. God sees in secret and rewards openly. Whatever strikes root downwards bears blossom upward. Whatever goes down into the deeps riseth again into the heights, and whatever is high is supported by all that is low.

Each night we sleep and lie bathed in mysterious refreshment, and the following morn we rise to a perfect world. God who seeth in secret rewardeth openly.

The seed falls into the dark soil and communes with Nature and finds its colours and its beauty — and on it blossoms. God who seeth in secret rewardeth openly. There is not a prayer of the peasant that is without avail, not one moment of his communion with God that shall not add a lustre to the rose, not a rite that is in vain, not a sacrifice superfluous. God will not judge us for our pleasures, they were paid for in advance; our happy life is not to be expiated in other realms, it is itself a reward, a glory, a thanksgiving. Holy Russia is our peace with God.

I arrived at Moscow at the time of the first sting of the autumn weather and the people stared at me mightily. I took a seat in the open market at Sukhareva and bought myself a pair of leather boots. A beggar came up and begged from me my old discarded lapti.

"Oh no," said the peasant girl, "he is a dalny barin, a far-goer; he goes belike to the monastery of St Seraphim beyond Nizhni."

I gave the beggar five copecks instead and kept my birch-bark boots. For lapti in which I had travelled several hundred miles were a curiosity.

I put up at an inn near the Cathedral of St Saviour. And whom should I see some days later but Varvara Sergievna, Alexey Sergeitch's sister, whom I had met at Liavlia. She shared rooms with a girl-student just three doors away from me. There I met two other students who had obtained their release from banishment, and whom I had met at Liavlia. Pereplotchikof also was in Moscow and greatly interested in my writing of Holy Russia and in my tramp. He showed me over his studio and gave me pictures for reproduction.

As I heard, the Russian Government was releasing almost all the Liavlia folk and they were coming to Moscow. Alexey Sergeitch, however, they would not release, and even refused his petition to be allowed to go to banishment in Paris. There were too many revolutionaries in Paris already. Pereplotchikof proposed a " Liaviensky " evening some time ahead, when all who had met in that happy village should have a supper and an evening of gaiety together. I knew many people in Moscow, both old friends and new; I even had my dinner with Varvara Sergievna and her little circle at the University Club on the quay. What crushes these dinners were, and what immense pots of soup were brought on to the tables straight off the fire! Pereplotchikof introduced me to the artists and the Bohemian life of Moscow.

But what am I writing? This is not the Undiscovered, though even here the unknown peeps round the corner of the known, and the sacred breathes everywhere through the secular. Slava Tebye Gospody!