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copy of a collection of articles, The Phenomenology of Holy Foolishness—that the former stableman would prepare and submit his piece about the general for the collection. As a person who gave his all to his material, Petrov-Pokhabnik
himself began holyfooling it a bit, too. He would walk
Prague’s streets barefoot in any season—something people
there still recall—and shock passers-by with announcements about how there had simply not been any truly scientific
studies of holy foolishness until his. Sometimes he tossed stones at the windows of the Prague Linguistic Circle.
Oddly enough, Kvasha’s primary grievance with his prede-
cessor was that he did not understand the phenomenology of 580VV_txt.indd 248
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holy foolishness. His predecessor’s infatuation with holy fools’
external attributes (this infatuation manifested itself, among other things, in the curses Petrov-Pokhabnik addressed to
his opponents) meant he could not gain genuine insight into holy foolishness as an occurrence. From Kvasha’s point of
view, by focusing on the eccentric side of the matter, Petrov-Pokhabnik did not discern the foremost aspect of holy
foolishness: the spiritual sense.
Alongside this was the Prague researcher’s misunder-
standing of several Church Slavonic texts. After all, noted the unrelenting Kvasha, Petrov-Pokhabnik’s previous line
of work did not assume his familiarity with Church
Slavonic. Kvasha himself knew the language perfectly,
which allowed him to not only quote Church Slavonic
texts with ease but also to fully understand them. After
briefly touching upon the history of the study of holy
foolishness as a whole, referencing myriad articles from
around the world, Kvasha appealed for the most important
points to be stressed, and then moved on to examine an
issue related to the general.
Kvasha did not deny elements of holy foolishness in the
general’s behavior. Beyond that, he showed—basing his
discussion on research into the hagiography of holy fools—
that the general’s contemporaries’ recollections about him were often rooted in ancient Russian examples. For the
presenter, one of the key points of this juxtaposition was the description of holy foolishness as being dead for the world.
‘“The hagiographical hero”,’ Kvasha read, bringing his
glasses to his eyes to read from Tatyana Rudi’s ‘On the Topic of the Hagiography of Holy Fools’, ‘withdraws from the
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into another society or—from the point of view of that
previous society—into an “alien” one, as if he has ceased
to exist for it (the previous society) and has thus shifted within it to the status of “dead”.’ After finishing the quotation from Rudi’s article, the researcher offered eloquent
examples of how the general left his society.
First and foremost, he addressed statements about the birds staying in the train car with the general and mentioned, as a parallel, a story (from the Kiev Caves Patericon) about Isaac of the Kiev Caves, in which an incident with a raven served to push Isaac into becoming a holy fool. The presenter,
however, answered in the negative regarding whether the
general’s holy foolishness began with the appearance of the aforementioned birds in the train car.
Continuing the avian theme, Kvasha also recalled parallels that were closer to the general, both in terms of time and line of work. He had in mind facts from the biography of
Russian Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov, who did not
consider it disgraceful to crow like a rooster in cases of objective necessity. And so, after announcing for all to hear that he would attack the Poles under Kosćiuszko’s command
at the first rooster’s crowing, he misled them (the Poles).
In fact, the field marshal himself cock-a-doodle-doo’d that evening, without waiting for the morning roosters. He also flapped his arms against his sides, striving for an external resemblance to a bird. His troops marched out at twilight
and thoroughly routed the enemy. Under more tranquil
circumstances, the great commander was known to wake
his soldiers with a cock-a-doodle-doo.
Beyond that—and this was the closest parallel to the
general’s behavior—at Great Lent, Suvorov ordered that
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one room in his house be strewn with sand, then he arranged potted firs and pines there and let in birds. The birds were released into the wild after Easter, upon the arrival of warm weather.
Needless to say, the presenter mentioned the general’s
infamous conversations with horses, something Petrov-
Pokhabnik had examined in his day, too. Kvasha considered
his predecessor’s coverage of this topic detailed but tendentious.
Kvasha also acknowledged that the general’s ride on a cart with a load of sand along the frozen Sivash was not exactly traditional for the upper echelons of the officer corps. Despite the ride being explainable—to verify the ice’s strength—the method itself could not but provoke questions.
In working with materials from the Crimean Agricultural
Archive, Kvasha was also able to discover a statement about how the general ordered soldiers and officers to help peasants plow the land in their free time away from battle. As grounds for this order, he cited the expropriation of the
peasants’ horses for the cavalry, which obliged the army to at least help them (the peasants), if only in this way. Irritated by having to fulfill functions not appropriate for them,
according to the discovered document, the officers ‘indulged in grumbling.’ All that reconciled them with the strange
order was that the general personally harnessed himself up and pulled a plow, accompanied by a tiller of the land who smiled, bewildered. In analyzing the fact that he had cited, the presenter cautioned attendees against considering this a complex form of Tolstoyism. Despite the special places
in Lev Tolstoy’s writings for both the horse theme ( Strider, The Story of a Horse) and the railroad theme ( Anna Karenina), 580VV_txt.indd 251
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the writer’s position on religious issues was not close to the general’s. It is well known, too, that Lev Tolstoy’s tilling of the land did not mean he foresaw the human being replacing the horse.
Amidst the extensive material that drew Kvasha’s scrutiny, there was a special place for the famous instance when the general was being photographed in a coffin. Going against
long-standing research traditions, the presenter was not
inclined to explain that action simply with the general’s
eccentricity. From Kvasha’s point of view, in this instance, the general’s striving for the dead world received one of its most visible expressions. The presenter also reminded his
listeners that some saints chose a coffin as their permanent residence.
In Kvasha’s opinion, this intense attention to the theme
of death was a distinguishing feature for the general. As a component of his profession, death, it seemed, needed to
become a customary thing for him (‘Although can one grow
accustomed to death?’ Kvasha asked, taking his gaze away
from the lectern for a moment) and, in some
sense, work-
aday. That is likely how things were during the general’s
service in the active army. His—if it could be expressed this way—liveliest interest in death began manifesting itself after the Civil War, and only grew over the years.
The general gathered information about the lives but,
even more meticulously, the deaths of his fellow pupils,
brothers-in-arms, and even enemies, at least those who did not leave him indifferent. He even created two folders,
accordingly labeling them Living and Dead. One of the folders—the choice depended on the state of the person of
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about each person’s life or death. The Living folder was initially unbelievably plump, while the Dead folder seemed nearly weightless. The situation changed over time. The
general was forced, ever more frequently, to transfer sheets from one folder to the other. This continued until only one lone sheet remained in the Living folder. That was the sheet titled General Larionov.
And then the general began to doubt the accuracy of
the records he had kept. He lost faith that he was the only one alive and all the others had died. This appeared illog-ical. ‘Why,’ noted the general on the sole remaining sheet,
‘am I, who should have been shot back in 1920, alive, but
those whom nobody had planned to shoot are dead?’ The
situation seemed so provocative to him that he transferred all the sheets from the Dead folder into the Living folder.
After a pause, he put his own sheet in the Dead folder.
Only that way—Kvasha raised his gaze to the audience
again—was it possible not to allow the living and the dead to mix.
The researcher also examined, apart from the other
proceedings, two oral stories about the general taken down by a folklore expedition in the Crimean village of Izobil’noe.
The first told how, allegedly, the general took Perekop
without the permission of Anton Denikin, Commander-in-
Chief of the White Army, and sent Denikin a telegram with
the following content: ‘Glory to God, glory to us, Perekop’s captured, it’s here with us.’ The second story described a Christmas dinner that took place in the commander-in-chief ’s Sevastopol headquarters. In answer to Denikin’s
question about why General Larionov, who was sitting at
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father, one mustn’t eat before the first star.’ Purportedly, Denikin ordered right then and there that the general be
awarded a star.
Kvasha’s paper subjected the stories to criticism, both
from a factological perspective and for the handling of information sources. In brief, that boiled down to the following: 1) the commander-in-chief during the period under examination was no longer Anton Denikin but Baron Petr
Wrangel;
2) General Larionov had not taken Perekop but had,
rather, defended it; and
3) stories about Alexander Suvorov were precursor texts
for both accounts.
In the initial story about the dispatch in verse form, it
was not Perekop under discussion but the Turkish fortress
Turtukai; additionally, the letter was addressed to none other than Field Marshal Petr Rumyantsev. In the story about the star being awarded, Suvorov was addressing not Petr
Wrangel (and certainly not Anton Denikin) but Catherine
the Great, accordingly calling her ‘dear mother’. For Kvasha, the most interesting aspect in both folkloric pieces seemed to be that folk art made no distinctions whatsoever between Generalissimo Suvorov and General Larionov. The researcher called that circumstance ‘symptomatic’.
In concluding his paper, Kvasha lamented that, other than
Petrov-Pokhabnik’s vague allusions, there was nothing
known about the general’s strange actions during the time
Yalta was surrendered. The presenter called on his colleagues to make every effort to ascertain what actions might have
been under discussion. From his point of view, clarifying
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of the general, but might also shed light on the question
that still remained unanswered: how, as a matter of fact,
had the general remained alive?
Kvasha appeared to want to add something but Grunsky
was tapping on the microphone. Kvasha tossed up his hands, put his papers in a folder, and calmly (by comparison with Tarabukin, at any rate) descended from the stage. Kvasha’s conflict-free departure heartened Grunsky, who announced
the next paper and called on the presenter to stick to the schedule. Everyone understood that the moderator’s stern
tone referred to the previous presenter.
Solovyov listened inattentively to this paper and the next.
His head had begun to ache. Likely from an abundance of
impressions that day, he thought. Or was it from the outing to the scorching Mount Mithridates (sun stroke)? Striving
to grasp what exactly the presenter wanted to say increased the ache, extended it, and forced him to feel every brain
cell.
‘The operation’s name was signifying,’ said the presenter, Kholin.
The presenter’s exceedingly soft voice and inability to speak directly into the microphone did not encourage focus. The
discussion concerned operation Foxhole, something Solovyov himself had studied a little. Kholin quoted the operation’s English-language name, the one Larionov used with western
envoys. Before the Reds’ decisive storm of Perekop, the
general had ordered two additional rows of trenches be dug, as if the quantity might still change something.
‘So these trenches replace the fighting spirit that I need, but my army has lost!’ the general shouted to the shovelers.
He was walking along the defensive lines and earth was
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scattering out from under his boots into the freshly dug
trenches.
‘I want to lie down in your trench, so everyone will leave me in peace!’ the general shouted in another place.
The shovelers did not know that was the general’s old
dream. They silently went about their work, puzzled as to
why he needed such a big trench in this case.
‘The name of the operation was signifying,’ Kholin repeated. ‘If you divide the word Foxhole in two, you’ll understand what the general wanted to say.’
Kholin observed, not without pleasure, as the whispers
of everyone reading at once ran through the audience.
‘It was as if,’ said the presenter, waving his hands but still speaking quietly, away from the microphone, ‘the general
was saying goodbye with that word, that he would survive.’
The audience absorbed this for an inadmissibly long
time.
‘The key word is whole,’ said a smiling Kholin. ‘He was saying that he was a sly fox and would escape whole.’
The whispering gradually transformed into a buzz. With
a bob of his head, the presenter returned some unruly hair to its place. Baikalova wrote something on a piece of paper and showed it to Grunsky. Grunsky read what she had
written, moving
his index finger from one word to another.
Twice. He shrugged.
‘But the second part of the word,’ the concerned
Baikalova said into the microphone, ‘I mean, in “foxhole”, it would be “hole”, with just an “h”, which means a pit. So it’s not “whole” with the “w” for entire . . . I did study English . . .’
Kholin leaned on the lectern and his head twitched toward
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his shoulder. His face expressed nothing but fatigue. He
smoothed his hair and slowly began shifting his papers on
the lectern. Baikalova rose from her place and looked questioningly at the presenter.
After a silence, Kholin said, almost as silently, ‘I will verify your information.’
Solovyov felt like getting some fresh air. To do that, he
would have to give an excuse to Dunya but did not know
what to say. In any case, he had missed the transition to a new presenter and now it would be awkward to leave.
Solovyov was annoyed at his own indecision. Alex Schwartz, a gender studies specialist from Boston, was speaking. She spoke Russian in a pleasant masculine baritone. She selected her words carefully, preferring infinitive verb forms and
nouns in the nominative case. Solovyov’s headache kept
worsening.
Schwartz began her report on the general with a detailed
story about famous ‘cavalry maiden’, Nadezhda Andreevna
Durova (1783–1866). The American researcher reminded
attendees that it was not easy for women to make their way into the Russian Army at the turn of the nineteenth century.
A woman’s lot was considered to be needlework (Schwartz
demonstrated several motions for embroidery). The kitchen
(cutting imaginary vegetables). Bed (motions of horseback
riding).
But. Young Nadezhda had trouble with needlework. Lace.
To tear (miming). To ruin (miming). To tangle (miming).
Schwartz read a quotation from Durova’s book The Cavalry Maiden: ‘“These two so very contradictory feelings,”’ Schwartz quoted Durova, ‘“love for one’s father and repugnance for
one’s sex—perturbed my soul with identical force and so,
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