Moscow gave me his personal guidance through the length and breadth of this Old Russia.[1]
Old Russia, Russia in contrast to Europe! Yet the monk in Gethsemane, the pilgrims, the Orthodox, the peasantry—they all carried me back in memory to childhood, when my primitive faith was undisturbed. Such were my own beliefs and such were my own actions when I went on pilgrimage in boyhood; such are still the beliefs and actions of the children and the wives of our Slovak peasants when they visit the shrine of the miracle-working virgin on Mt. Hostein; such were the beliefs and such was the teaching of my own mother. But this childhood has passed away for ever, simply because childhood must yield place to maturity. . . .
Russia has preserved the childhood of Europe; in the overwhelming mass of its peasant population it represents Christian medievalism and, in particular, Byzantine medievalism. It was but a question of time when this middle age would awaken to modernity, and the awakening was in large part due to Peter and his successors.
I am acquainted with a fair proportion of the civilised and uncivilised world and I have no hesitation in saying that Russia was and is the most interesting country known to me. Slav as I am, a visit to Russia has involved many more surprises than a visit to any other land. In England and America, for example, I had no feeling of surprise. The latest novelty seemed to me nothing more than an obvious development of something with which I was already familiar at home. Yet in Russia, although as a Slav I am competent, I believe, to grasp in Russian literature what is termed the spirit of the language and of the nation; although Russian life, as revealed in the creative works of Russian authors, is intimately congenial to my own moods, in so far as these are Slav, and arouses harmonious echoes in my own Slav nature—yet in Russia I ever and anon feel surprise! The European, one who lives in the present, has the current of his thought involuntarily directed towards the future, and anticipates the conclusions that will follow from the given historic premises. But in Russia he finds himself back in the past, often in the middle ages, finds
- ↑ The novels of Mel'nikov (whose pen-name is Pečerskii) entitled "In the Forests," and "On the Mountains," give an excellent description of old believer life as far as details are concerned, but the general picture is marred by a modern, decadent, subflavour.
