The Goddess Pose

by Michelle Goldberg

  “I dwelt upon”: Daniel Caldwell, ed., The Esoteric World of Madame Blavatsky (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 2000), p. 71.

  “the Folly of Science”: Washington, Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon, p. 45.

  Her grandfather was the Russian government’s administrator: K. Paul Johnson, The Masters Revealed: Madame Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 19.

  “They were reversing the usual flow of emigration”: Washington, Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon, p. 59.

  “had many followers in her native land”: Sir Paul Dukes, The Unending Quest: Autobiographical Sketches (London: Cassell and Co. Ltd., 1950), p. 49.

  “The people at once had accepted her”: Indra Devi, Forever Young, Forever Healthy: Simplified Yoga for Modern Living (New York: Prentice Hall, 1953), p. 3.

  He taught Dukes breathing: Dukes, The Unending Quest, p. 106.

  “For the ignorant, life is delusion”: Quoted in R. H. Stacey, India in Russian Literature (New Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985), p. 68.

  CHAPTER 2

  Eugenia longed to follow her adored mother: Francesca Falcone and Patrizia Veroli, “The Teaching of Victor Gsovsky in Berlin, 1926–1936, As Seen by Lilian Karina,” Dance Chronicle 24, no. 3 (2001): 307–50.

  “Everyone was affected”: Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 237.

  “We do not take defeat amiss”: Quoted in Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996), p. 283.

  Cafés threw open their doors: Figes, A People’s Tragedy, pp. 318–19, 351.

  “A miracle has happened”: Ibid., p. 351.

  Police records were torched: Ibid., p. 317.

  “All of us who had dreams and projects”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 46.

  In March 1917: John E. Malmstad and Nikolai Alekseevich Bogomolov, Mikhail Kuzmin: A Life in Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 128, 257.

  Screaming, she feigned panic: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 32.

  Her improvisation was, he said: Ibid., p. 32.

  where she met futurist poets: Ibid., p. 33.

  “So many horses”: Antony Beevor, The Mystery of Olga Chekhova (New York: Viking Press, 2004), p. 57.

  “[m]ost young actresses”: Ibid., p. 77.

  “One morning when a young actress”: Theodore Komisarjevsky, Myself and the Theatre (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1929), p. 10.

  When the guard entered: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 34.

  “had an atmosphere of frenzied excitement”: Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 555.

  “All spring”: Mikhail Bulgakov, The White Guard (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 54.

  He was famous for songs: Richard Sites, Russian Population Culture: Entertainment and Society Since 1900 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 14.

  “[e]normous, serene blue”: Kohle Yohannan, Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity (New York: Rizzoli, 2009), p. 26.

  At his urging: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 36.

  Other Chekists devised: Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 646.

  A touring company: Beevor, The Mystery of Olga Chekhova, p. 63.

  At night, they turned: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 52.

  Eugenia, meanwhile: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 37.

  “Where did all this come from?”: Ibid., p. 35.

  In a demented inversion: Figes, A People’s Tragedy, pp. 665, 678.

  “What brings you here?”…“She had learned from her mother”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 55; Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 40.

  engraving them in their memories: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 56.

  She worried that he had fallen: Ibid., p. 60.

  More than one hundred thousand Russians: Tom Reiss, The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life (New York: Random House, 2006), pp. 114–15.

  “Were you in Tiflis?”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 62; Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 74.

  On it, she said she’d been held for a month: FBI memo 65-4944, report made by Roger S. C. Wolcott, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request; passenger manifest of SS General William H. Gordon, NARA microfilm M1410, manifest number 1300-46001, p. EC 18, line 9; private communication with William Greene, Archivist at the National Archives in San Francisco.

  “I wouldn’t do it”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, pp. 61–64; Apostolli, Indra Devi, pp. 74–78.

  One sounded: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 66.

  “Smiling to myself”: Ibid., p. 67.

  She longed to do real theater: Apostolli, Indra Devi, pp. 83–84; Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 68.

  “India appeared to me”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 68.

  CHAPTER 3

  Berlin’s population had doubled: Reiss, The Orientalist, p. 171.

  “After the war”: Quoted in John E. Bowlt, “Art in Exile: The Russian Avant-Garde and the Emigration,” Art Journal 41, no. 3 (Autumn 1981): 215–21.

  By March of 1923: Bernd Widdig, Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), p. 39.

  “Herds of foreigners”: Quoted in Emil Julius Gumbel, “Four Years of Political Murder,” in Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), p. 102.

  by the mid-1920s: Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, p. 718; Marlise Simmons, “Amsterdam Tries Upscale Fix for Red Light District Crime,” New York Times, February 24, 2008.

  “The indifference with which”: Gumbel, “Four Years of Political Murder.”

  “unifies within itself”: Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, p. 554.

  In her off-hours: Mel Gordon, Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2006), p. ix.

  An anxious representative: Corinna Treitel, A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Creation of the German Modern (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), p. 57.

  Police departments all over: Ibid., p. 144.

  “and swore on their mezuzahs”: Interview with Mel Gordon.

  “Aspiring occultists”: Treitel, A Science for the Soul, p. 154.

  “new, influential metaphysics”: Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg, eds., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, p. 685.

  As Treitel points out: Treitel, A Science for the Soul, p. 25.

  “[A]gainst every instance”: Ibid., p. 160.

  “The whole thing’s lost”: Peter Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 143.

  At once titillating: Alan Lareau, “The German Cabaret Movement during the Weimar Republic,” Theatre Journal 43, no. 4 (December 1991): 471–90.

  “pearl of the light genre”: Alan Lareau, “Designer Cabaret in 1920s Berlin: The Blue Bird and the Gondola,” Theatre History Studies 14 (1994).

  “a world, glowing”: Alfred Polgar, quoted in Mark Konecny, ed., Experiment: A Journal of Russian Culture 12 (2006).

  “Der Blaue Vogel”: Lareau, “Designer Cabaret in 1920s Berlin,” p. 122.

  “completely in tune with my own”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, pp. 69–70.

  “When I met him”: Ibid., p. 70.

  “He was an adventurer”: Beevor, The Mystery of Olga Chekhova, p. 48.

  “It was a period”: Charles Marowitz, The Other Chekhov: A Biography of Michael Chekhov, the Legendary Actor, Director, and Theorist (New York: Applause Theater and Cinema Books, 2004), pp. 70–71.

  According to her: Beevor, The Mystery of Olga Chekhova, p. 77.

  “eine charmante Frau”: Ibid., p. 130.

  “Tired of politics”: Lareau, “Designer Cabaret in 1920s Berlin,” pp. 121–22.

  “[E]verywhere I read”: Kaes, Jay, and Dimendberg, ed
s., The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, p. 557.

  “sublime harmonies”: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 92.

  Feeling as if she were going crazy: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 71.

  Once he arrived: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 92.

  “captivated”: Interview with Polish theater historian Georgy Suchno, conducted by Agnese Luse. The quote comes from a review by Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, in Suchno’s personal archive.

  He responded by firing: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 73.

  “The only thing that remained”: Ibid., p. 73.

  Indeed, though Eugenia: Ron Nowicki, Warsaw: The Cabaret Years (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1992), p. 67.

  There, she performed: “New Year at A.T.,” event listing in Segodna, December 30, 1924.

  He was much changed: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 96.

  Suddenly she was shot through with terror: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 74.

  She should go to India: Ibid.

  “All of Warsaw’s best”: Nowicki, Warsaw, p. 50.

  He intoned: Ibid., p. 67.

  “The world’s leading scholars…The epitome of the Nordic race!”: Interview with Alicia Nitecki.

  “A conversation with him”: Mieczysław Lurczyński, The Old Guard: A Play, trans. (and introduction by) Alicia Nitecki (Albany: Excelsior Editions/State University of New York Press, 2010), p. ix.

  “Do you know that in”: Ibid., p. 21.

  That’s almost certainly: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 97.

  With his wavy black hair: Ibid., p. 100.

  “When we’re married”: Ibid. p. 101.

  She wondered if perhaps: Ibid., p. 106.

  CHAPTER 4

  Extra ferries from: Roland Vernon, Star in the East: Krishnamurti, the Invention of a Messiah (Boulder, CO: Sentient Publications, 2002), p. 161.

  “Such readers as have ever”: Rom Landau, God Is My Adventure: A Book on Modern Mystics, Masters, and Teachers (London: Faber and Faber, 1964), p. 89.

  “The camp is beautifully situated”: Associated Press, “Secrecy Veils Cult Camp,” Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1926.

  Attendees carried their own plates: Mary Lutyens, Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening (Boston: Shambala, 1997), p. 232.

  “insipid”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 79; Devi, Forever Young, Forever Healthy, p. 5.

  “You give me phrases”: Lutyens, Krishnamurti, p. 233.

  “Whenever He speaks”: A.E.L., “A Spiritual Aristocracy,” Herald of the Star 15, no. 9, September 1, 1926.

  Madame Blavatsky and Henry Steele Olcott’s: Washington, Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon, p. 59.

  “The fundamental appeal”: Mark Bevir, “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress,” International Journal of Hindu Studies 7, no. 1/3 (February 2003).

  “The greatest recent event”: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 343.

  “In the minds of many Victorians”: Bevir, “Theosophy and the Origins of the Indian National Congress.”

  “For our own part”: Carlson, No Religion Higher Than Truth, p. 42.

  Under pressure from Olcott: Washington, Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon, p. 85.

  “stimulated in me the desire”: Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), p. 68.

  “Oh, my dear”: Arthur Nethercot, The First Five Lives of Annie Besant (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 286.

  “Mme. Blavatsky”: Ibid., p. 199.

  “Are you willing to give up”: Ibid., p. 293.

  “Staggered by this unprepared blow”: Quoted in ibid., p. 283.

  “Glad sensation”: Lutyens, Krishnamurti, p. 15.

  “My dear Annie”: Ibid., p. 17.

  According to his lifelong friend: Ibid., p. 21.

  “The Brahmins of India”: The Reverend W. B. Norton, “Krishnamurti, East Indian, Is Declared Returned Messiah,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 29, 1926.

  “a turning point in my life”: Devi, Forever Young, Forever Healthy, p. 5.

  Shortly after she’d come home: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, pp. 81–82.

  She kept working in the theater: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 110.

  “an Englishwoman of great dignity”: G. Venkatachalam, Profiles (Baroda, India: Nalanda Publications Co., 1949), p. 299.

  “It’s better that she goes”: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 111.

  “I was in a state”: Devi, Forever Young, Forever Healthy, p. 6.

  “[h]appy beyond measure”: Ibid., p. 7.

  CHAPTER 5

  “like an ancient Druid priest”: Major-General the Hon. Kenneth Mackay, “Adyar—An Impression,” The Theosophist 49, part 1 (October 1927–March 1928).

  Visitors entered: The Theosophist 49, part 2 (April–September 1928).

  Inside the main meeting hall: J. Krishnamurti, with descriptive letterpress by C. W. Leadbeater, Adyar: The Home of the Theosophical Society (Adyar, Madras, India: The Theosophist Office, 1911).

  “Never shake hands”: Margaret MacMillan, Women of the Raj: The Mothers, Wives, and Daughters of the British Empire in India (New York: Random House, 2007), p. xii.

  “untrammeled alike”: Mackay, “Adyar—An Impression.”

  “Here,” writes Mackay, “it has been”: Ibid.

  “artists and art students”: Venkatachalam, Profiles, p. 299.

  “Adyar becomes a miniature world”: Ibid., p. 40.

  “with bazaars and restaurants”: Ibid.

  Besant was convinced: Washington, Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon, p. 257.

  The attempt to create an organization: Ibid., p. 275.

  “Out of those who come to listen”: N. R. Deobankar, “Krishnaji at Adyar,” The Theosophist 50, part 1 (October 1928–March 1929).

  she would compile a list of problems: Indra Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, pp. 85–86.

  “All humanity’s greatest”: Krishna Kripalani, Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography (Calcutta, India: Visva-Bharati Publishing Department, 1980), p. 305.

  “Yatra visvam bhavati”: Visva-Bharati website, http://​www.​visvabharati.​ac.​in/​EDUCATIONAL_​IDEAS.​xhtmll, accessed October 18, 2014.

  “You will find a famous European Scholar”: Visva-Bharati: A Visitor’s Impression of Santiketan, pamphlet distributed by the India Society of America, February 1929.

  Eugenia adored it: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 87.

  “By God’s infinite blessing”: Quoted in Kumari Jayawardena, The White Woman’s Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia during British Rule (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 199.

  Life in Europe seemed gray: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 90.

  “I maintain that Truth is a pathless land”: Lutyens, Krishnamurti, pp. 272–74.

  “Thousands felt betrayed”: Vernon, Star in the East, p. 185.

  “My fundamental belief”: Associated Press, “Mrs. Besant Loyal to Krishnamurti,” New York Times, August 6, 1929.

  “Amma says to me”; “get out of all this rot”: Lutyens, Krishnamurti, p. 277; Vernon, Star in the East, p. 185.

  Traveling cinemas: Priti Ramamurthy, “The Modern Girl in India in the Interwar Years: Interracial Intimacies, International Competition, and Historical Eclipsing,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 34, no. 1/2, The Global and the Intimate (Spring/Summer 2006).

  Musicians accompanied screenings: Suresh Chabria, ed., Light of Asia: Indian Silent Cinema, 1912–1934 (New Delhi, India: Wiley Eastern Limited, 1994).

  “Film Actors”: Neepa Majumdar, Wanted Cultured Ladies Only! Female Stardom and Cinema in India, 1930s–1950s (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), p. 41.

  “It is really a perplexing problem”: Ganeshiam U. Vaswani, “Social Status of Film Stars,” Cinema, June–July 1931.

  After the smashing success: Ramamurthy, “The Modern Girl in India in the Interwar Years”; Majumdar, Wanted Cultured Ladies Only!, p. 95.
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  “God, I have come”: Madhu Jain, The Kapoors: The First Family of Indian Cinema (New Delhi, India: Viking/Penguin Books India, 2005), p. 3.

  “The Nehru-Gandhis”: Ibid., p. xvi.

  She told Mishra: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 129.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Jean is an artist of a sort”: Venkatachalam, Profiles, p. 308.

  His salary was just enough: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 131; Jain, The Kapoors, p. 10.

  “excellent force: Jan Strakaty personal service record, electronic file sent to the author by the Czech Foreign Ministry Archives, Prague.

  Instead, he went: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 134.

  In the end: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 97; Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 135.

  “in that manner”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 97.

  “Don’t try”: MacMillan, Women of the Raj, p. 48.

  One friend even warned her: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 140.

  A friend of hers: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 97.

  “Her rooms”: Venkatachalam, Profiles, p. 168.

  “our Mickey Mouse”: Vishwanath S. Naravane, Sarojini Nairu: Her Life, Work, and Poetry (Hyderabad, India: Orient Longman Limited, 1996), p. 149.

  “Akka”: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 142.

  Sure enough: Naravane, Sarojini Naidu, pp. 62, 149.

  “The young ones among”: Shashi Tharoor, Nehru: The Invention of India (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2003), p. 71.

  “The object of jail”: Stanley Wolpert, Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 113.

  “It’s a complete reversal”: Frank Moraes, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (Mumbai, India: Jaico Publishing House, 2008), p. 221.

  “This old and typical”: Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 186.

  “As you seemed to be interested”: Nehru letter to Devi, provided by the Fundación Indra Devi, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

  “Certainly I would like”: Ibid.

  “I felt that I was being initiated”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 104.