If you came to the Lavra, you could see the old, bent-over Hierodeacon Filadelph leaning on the hand of the young Hieromonk Porfirii as they came out of the monastery to go to church:
“How are you, Fr Filadelph?”
“We’re making crackers. Have you read the papers? It’s beginning again …”
Or you would see the former camp prisoner Archimandrite Zosima, whose eye had been poked out by an NKVD2 agent and who had been sentenced to many years at Solovki. He would sadly shake his head when I approached for a blessing:
“Yes, yes, evil times are ahead … Did you see the article?”
There was a story about him, that when he became ill with the flu and ended up in the monastery clinic, his young nurse tried to take his blood sample, sighing heavily:
“Why isn’t your blood flowing at all, grandfather?”
“It’s because the Bolsheviks drank it all, child, the Bolsheviks!” he replied.
But I must return to my story. My husband did go to that vigil, and to the Liturgy; he came up to the bishop to be anointed, and he partook of communion from him, and kissed the cross in his hands. Every time, Vladyka would call him by name, “Vladimir,” and say two or three words to him. But to actually speak to him, to ask him a question and hear the answer, was not yet to be.
And so the new age approached, 1988. Metropolitan Anthony came to Moscow and invited us to join him at his hotel, the Ukraine.
Excited and timid, we came to his hotel room. And even though I saw him then for the first time, I had a feeling that I had known this person for such a long time and had loved him for all that time, that he was so near and dear to me that I was struck by the accuracy of the expression “He is a man after my own heart.”
Our conversation, too, flowed right away: it was so lively, sporadic, joyful—as if we talked about nothing at all—it was like when people haven’t seen each other for a long time, and they are happy just to be together, happy for the sense of being in each other’s company again.
Finally, I approached Vladyka with a few of my problems —specifically, Orthodoxy and creative work. Well, Berdyaev wrote that humility and creativity, like genius and villainy, are two incompatible things. Looking at creative work from a spiritual point of view, I was always wary of the fact that the process itself (all right, let us call everything by its proper name: the inspiration) completely devoured a person. When I wrote poetry, I practically ceased to notice the world. I literally stopped watching the clock. What should I do then about the virtue of sober-mindedness? How could I keep watch over my passions?
Moreover, I felt energy and strength inside myself that were impossible to attribute to my own physical being—in this state I could work the whole night through. But how could I learn to distinguish between the spirits, how could I be sure that it was not the evil one giving me strength?
In addition—sometimes I wrote something that surprised even me: it was as if I didn’t know a thing before I named it, and having named it, then I knew it. It was as if the creative soul saw more than my daily quotidian “I” … and yet—perhaps it was not the creative soul but a suggestion from the enemy? Could it be that I was falling into some sort of delusion, God forbid? Could it be that while the poet in me was in a state of bliss, the Christian in me was dying?
All this I imparted to Vladyka Anthony. I also added how I sometimes tried to fight this so-called creative energy: one, two!—and I resolved to cut it off with a willful gesture. How I tried to insert my Orthodox consciousness, or call upon it as a censor; how I tried to place the sign of the cross over all the dark corners and recesses of my soul, how at times I twisted the end of a poem in order to crown it with something tried and true, something spiritually beneficial: an allusion from the Gospel, or a veiled quotation from the holy fathers, or a simple moral. But the poem would only be distorted from these intrusions; it would collapse like a man whose legs had been tied; it would lose its vitality.
Here Vladyka stopped me and said strictly, almost severely:
“Don’t you dare do that! You will ruin everything that way! I don’t say this in general, but only to you. Remember that there is a parable in the Gospel about the grains and the weeds. A man planted a good harvest in the field, but his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat. When his slaves offered to pull out the weeds to their master, how did he answer? He answered: ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them’ (Mt 13:29).
“It is the same with you in that moment: when you begin to artificially destroy what you wrote, feigning virtue and wonder, and inserting something universally known and acknowledged, you ruin your wheat, what may be your good harvest. Leave everything as it is, even if it has some weeds, and it will fall to you to be the judge of it.”
Thus Metropolitan Anthony spoke to me, so that I would understand that wherever there is the spirit of Orthodoxy, there must be freedom. But where there is freedom, there is always risk.
Fr Vladimir, on the other hand, who at the time was not yet Fr Vladimir, asked Vladyka among other things what to do: the publishing council of the Patriarchate had asked him to compile Dmitry Donskoy’s life for his canonization. But he was dismayed by several facts of his biography that seemed to him inconsistent with sanctity, and so he declined. And now that the right-believing prince had been canonized, what was he to do with these doubts?
Vladyka answered with authority:
“You must sort it out with him in your prayers. He is a saint, after all!”
Thus we sat, so wonderfully—asking, listening, and wondering—when suddenly the telephone rang. Vladyka took the phone, broke out into a smile, and cried out joyfully, affectionately, even:
“Dear Vladychenka!3 Come in, come in!”
Then he turned to us:
“You will not object if a bishop who is a very good friend of mine joins us right now? I know that he is looked upon in different ways here, but I love him very much. He is a very spiritual person—Archbishop Ioann Snychev.” (At that time Ioann Snychev was the Archbishop of Kuibyshevsk.)
“How can we object?” we answered, taken aback, especially since the name meant little to us.
In three minutes flat there was a knock at the door, and the archbishop entered. They kissed each other in greeting, gave each other the mutual blessing, and it was obvious to us that their relationship was one of warm and touching brotherly love, as between two people who are very close to each other. They slapped each on the shoulder, called each other “vladychenka” and “vladychka,” addressed each other in more familiar language, smiled at each other, joked with each other. It became joyful, hot, and crammed in the room. We received the archbishop’s blessing, while the manager of that hotel, now transformed into a monastic cell, introduced us, pointing at me and saying, “She’s a poet.”
At that moment, Vladyka Ioann noticed on the table a pile of journals with my poems that I had brought to show Metropolitan Anthony, and he said:
“What do you have here? Let’s take a look,” and taking one of the open journals, he began to read them aloud, chuckling and tripping a little over the words.
In that moment, I caught the disconcerted glance of Vladyka Anthony and understood that he worried that his amiable friend would begin to treat my work with irony and offend me with his sarcastic tone.
In theory, I can say that I would not be against such a recitation of my work, especially considering it was the poem “The Correspondence of Ivan the Terrible and Kurbskii”—aggressive, indicative, shall we say “in the manner of a holy fool.” Every line begins with either “Kurbskii to Ivan:” or “Ivan to Kurbskii:”, and after each respective colon—endless quarrels, the eternal debate of Westerners and those bound to their home, liberals and nationalists.
But Vladyka Anthony didn’t know this and hurried to my defense.
Recovering from his momentary discomposure, he tried to take away the journal:
“That’s not for you, it was a gift to me, you
don’t understand things like this!”
Archbishop Ioann, in the meantime, began to turn and hide the journal behind his back:
“No, no, let’s take another look, let’s see what they’ve come up with, those pen pushers!”
So they stood, waving their arms and trying to take the journal from each other. Finally, Vladyka Ioann emerged the victor: he grabbed the unfortunate edition from Metropolitan Anthony’s hands and ran away from his friend to the other side of the small desk standing next to the couch, trying to read on the run despite being hotly pursued. After having run several times around the desk, laughing and out of breath, Vladyka Anthony suddenly jumped onto the couch, positioning himself over the very head of his guest, who in turn momentarily lost sight of him, and, victoriously taking away the journal, even lightly tapped him over the head with it.
The hierarchs laughed, panting for breath, while my husband and I were in tears from laughter—it was all so joyous, so wonderful, performed with such happiness and the type of love that only exists between close friends and brothers. They were both: friends and brothers.
Only several years later did I learn that it was a habit of malicious members of certain parties to pit these wonderful archpastors of the Church against each other, saying that Vladyka Ioann was a spiritual leader of the “patriots,” while Vladyka Anthony was the spiritual leader of the “liberals”—although what kind of a liberal was he, a monarchist, a traditionalist, anti-Catholic, anti-ecumenist?
I even came across informal secular and “Orthodox” questionnaires that attempted to sort the test takers into categories using questions such as: “How do you feel about Vladyka Ioann? And what about Vladyka Anthony?” And if you answered: “I have much respect for Vladyka Ioann,” then you would immediately be categorized as an extreme reactionary, but if you admitted that you will eternally love Vladyka Anthony, you would be practically labeled a Mason.
Alas! This habit of thinking in Party categories turned these two lovely and bright archpastors into flat token figures, scarecrows to frighten off adversaries, a trump card to defeat opponents.
In reality, of course, they stand immeasurably above these human—too human—accounts, divisions, and groupings. They stand higher than both Kurbskii and Ivan the Terrible, who ever continue to quarrel.
That poem of mine that Vladyka Ioann had so futilely tried to read ended thus:
… And such discord rushes through the centuries,
Echoes within the Russian soul, multiplies,
Its apparitions are troubled:
A halfwit tyrant has lodged in it visibly,
A turncoat, oprichnik,4 a spy from Rome,
And the innocents cry out that they are killed.
Rivers spill, uncontained by their banks,
The earth bellows, and the earth burns underfoot.
There is a full moon. A solar eclipse …
But out of the groans and wailing arises
The miraculous image of the Martyr Philip,
And Cornelius hails from the smoldering embers!
Somewhere there, next to the most blessed Metropolitan Philip and the humble Abbot Cornelius, or at any rate in the same row, so to speak, from the point of view of heaven but not of earth, we should contemplate the wondrous images of these archpastors, alongside whom the Lord has allowed us to live, create, repent, rejoice, sorrow, celebrate, and sing with a single mouth and heart the creed and “Hallelujah!”
After Vladyka Anthony died, my husband and I received some comfort when we were given a remarkable photograph. On it were two young, fresh-faced, wonderful bishops. Looking at them, my heart comes alive, my outlook is brightened, my soul rejoices. It is Bishop Alexy, the future patriarch, and Bishop Anthony, the future metropolitan. Two Russian bishops—von Ridiger and Bloom—each “an angel in the flesh, a man of heaven.”5 We look at them, and they in turn look at us with their fixed gaze.
In the end, you begin to understand that the main treasures of this earthly life are people whom you’ve met, come to know, gained as friends, and grown to love … And this is something nobody can take away!
“You Do Not Know What You Ask” (Mk 10:38)
My friend Nadiusha ardently dreamed of getting married. She was, as they say, a divorcée, a single mother past thirty years old, and this caused problems.
Discovering that there was a wonderful saint called the Martyr Tryphon, to whom people prayed specifically to help them get married, she began attending the Church of the Mother of God of the Sign that had his miracle-working icon and ordering prayer services to him.
And so, one day after the prayer service, some guy came up to her and asked:
“You were also praying to get married?”
She fixed her gaze at him in amazement and mumbled something unintelligible.
“Well, there you go,” he continued happily, “I was too. Let’s get married, apparently God sent us to each other!”
Nadiusha looked him up and down and arrogantly shrugged her shoulders: the man seemed extremely simple, a manual laborer, completely not her type. Nadiusha had an entire checklist: her husband should be intelligent, able to support himself, on the right social level … She, herself, was attractive, elegant, highly educated …
“Oh, goodness me, no!” she shrank back from her unexpected suitor.
“Why not?” he said in genuine disbelief. “This is not the first time I’ve seen you here. You asked for a husband yourself! Well, here I am.”
And he squared his shoulders.
“No,” wailed Nadiusha, “I didn’t ask for you at all!”
For two days she was in a state of spiritual stupor—she felt terribly hurt. How she had pleaded, only to get such an unsuitable commodity!
Then someone taught her: when you ask for something, ask for something more concrete—this and that.
And she began to ask not simply to get married, but for her husband to be smart, rich, preferably a foreigner, even more preferably a Western European or an American (but only of a certain kind).
And soon such a man (smart, rich, foreign) did indeed appear in her vicinity. Everything happened just as she had asked: he proposed to her, she married him, and left with him to America.
But—alas! This did not bring her happiness. First of all, her former husband, the father of her child, categorically refused to allow the boy to leave Russia or to sign his release. So she was forced to leave her child with his grandmother. This was payment for the fact that her husband was a foreigner.
Second, it turned out that Nadiusha herself didn’t have anything to do in America—she didn’t need to earn any money with a rich husband, after all! She began to attend a university and graduated with a degree in conversational Russian.
Third, the American decided to divorce her, but he did this stealthily and secretly so that she wouldn’t get any of his money. He found some place where it is legal to get a divorce without paying the spouse alimony. His lawyer simply presented the divorce documents to Nadiusha. And that was all. This was payment for the fact that her husband was smart.
So Nadiusha came home. Now she was reunited with her child, and on her wall hung a diploma awarded for excellent knowledge of conversational Russian. But now she spoke this language in a broken voice, with an intonation that suggested the suffering she had experienced.
How are we supposed to understand this? It can be said that you can get a masochistic sort of high from taking every little bit that you can from life, seemingly enjoying your misfortune … As for me, I was reminded of this story when I read something by St Nil Sorsky:
“Pray with the words: ‘Let Thy will be done in me.’ In prayer, I often stubbornly asked for myself alone, for what seemed good to me, foolishly coercing the will of God and not allowing Him to arrange everything as He best saw fit. But, when I did receive what I had asked for, I would grow extremely despondent—why did I ask for my will to be done, for something that turned out completely differently for me than I had imagined?”
And so? If we were to look dispassionately on our disappointments and failures, it would be impossible not to see that many of them were elicited by us, blindly snatched from life.
Wishes Come True
One glorious September day, we—the poet Oleg Chukhontsev, critic Sergei Chuprinin, and I—walked along Nevsky, chatting happily. We had come to St Petersburg on a business trip and were staying in a fine hotel; there was plenty of time left before the evening, when we had a literary event scheduled, and so we were simply walking around and enjoying ourselves.
“If you think about it, our dreams have essentially come true,” said Chukhontsev suddenly. “I, for one, always dreamed not to have to labor hard for my work, not to go around to all the editors, but just sit at home and they would call me from their offices and ask for my poems. That’s what happened. Now they call me and ask me—I don’t even have enough poems for them.”
In his youth, before the collapse of the Soviet powers, he was barely published; he was censored, and every published work, for which he had to wait years only to see it in a butchered state, was acquired through heartache and agony.
“What about you, Sergei Ivanovich, what did you dream about?” Chukhontsev asked Chuprinin.
“I?” he hesitated, a little disconcerted, and said: “Well, I began in Rostov. So I really wanted to be the chief editor of a thick literary magazine.”
“Oh, how perfectly you achieved your goal!” laughed Chukhontsev. “How many years already have you been the chief editor of Znamia now? Twenty?”
“What about you? What was your dream?” they asked me.
“Me?”
A cool wind blew from the Neva, blowing through the skirts of my thin raincoat. Golden rays flowed down from the dome of the Kazan Cathedral and flooded our faces. There stood a red-cheeked and slightly tipsy Peter the Great with some important lady in a curled wig and crinoline—you could take pictures with them as a souvenir. Next to them appeared a carriage with a coachman—did we want a ride? All over Nevsky Prospekt there were a thousand possibilities for entertainment.
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