I can now say for certain that in spite of his desperate struggle with the misfortunes which poured upon him as though from the horn of plenty, he continued then as before, in all the difficult circumstances of his life, to retain the soul of a true poet.
Hence it was, in my opinion, that during my childhood, in spite of great want, there constantly reigned in our family unusual concord, love and the wish to help one another.
Owing to his inherent capacity for finding inspiration in the beauty of the details of life, my father was for us all, even in the most dismal moments of our family life, a source of courage; and, infecting us all with his freedom from care, he engendered in us the above-mentioned happy impulses.
In writing about my father, I must not pass by in silence his views on what is called the ‘question of the beyond’. Concerning this he had a very particular and at the same time simple conception.
I remember that, the last time I went to see him, I asked him one of the stereotyped questions by means of which I had carried on, during the last thirty years, a special inquiry or quest in my meetings with remarkable people who had acquired in themselves data for attracting the conscious attention of others. Namely, I asked him, of course with the preliminary preparation which had become customary to me in these cases, to tell me, very simply and without any wiseacring and philosophizing, what personal opinion he had formed during his life about whether man has a soul and whether it is immortal.
‘How shall I put it?’ he answered. ‘In that soul which a man supposedly has, as people believe, and of which they say that it exists independently after death and transmigrates, I do not believe; and yet, in the course of a man’s life “something” does form itself in him: this is for me beyond all doubt.
‘As I explain it to myself, a man is born with a certain property and, thanks to this property, in the course of his life certain of his experiencings elaborate in him a certain substance, and from this substance there is gradually formed in him “something or other” which can acquire a life almost independent of the physical body.
‘When a man dies, this “something” does not disintegrate at the same time as the physical body, but only much later, after its separation from the physical body.
‘Although this “something” is formed from the same substance as the physical body of a man, it has a much finer materiality and, it must be assumed, a much greater sensitivity towards all kinds of perceptions. The sensitivity of its perception is in my opinion such as—you remember, when you made that experiment with the half-witted Armenian woman, Sando?’
He had in mind an experiment I had made in his presence many years before, during a visit in Alexandropol, when I brought people of many different types into various degrees of hypnosis, for the purpose of elucidating for myself all the details of the phenomenon which learned hypnotists call the exteriorization of sensitivity or the transference of sensations of pain at a distance.
I proceeded in the following way:
I made from a mixture of clay, wax and very fine shot a figure roughly resembling the medium I intended to bring into the hypnotic state, that is, into that psychic state of man which, in a branch of science which has come down to our day from very ancient times, is called loss of initiative and which, according to the contemporary classification of the School of Nancy, would correspond to the third stage of hypnosis. I then thoroughly rubbed some part or other of the body of the given medium with an ointment made of a mixture of olive and bamboo oil, then scraped this oil from the body of the medium and applied it to the corresponding part on the figure, and thereupon proceeded to elucidate all the details that interested me in this phenomenon.
What greatly astonished my father at the time was that when I pricked the oiled place on the figure with a needle, the corresponding place on the medium twitched, and when I pricked more deeply a drop of blood appeared on the exactly corresponding place of the medium’s body; and he was particularly amazed by the fact that, after being brought back to the waking state and questioned, the medium remembered nothing about it and insisted that she had felt nothing at all.
And so my father, in whose presence this experiment had been carried out, now said, in referring to it:
‘So, in the same way, this “something”, both before a man’s death and afterwards until its disintegration, reacts to certain surrounding actions and is not free from their influence.’
My father had in connection with my education certain definite, as I have called them, ‘persistent pursuits’.
One of the most striking of these persistent pursuits of his, which later produced in me an indisputably beneficent result, acutely sensed by me and noticeable also to those with whom I came in contact during my wanderings in the various wilds of the earth in the search for truth, was that during my childhood, that is, at the age when there are formed in man the data for the impulses he will have during his responsible life, my father took measures on every suitable occasion so that there should be formed in me, instead of data engendering impulses such as fastidiousness, repulsion, squeamishness, fear, timidity and so on, the data for an attitude of indifference to everything that usually evokes these impulses.
I remember very well how, with this aim in view, he would sometimes slip a frog, a worm, a mouse, or some other animal likely to evoke such impulses, into my bed, and would make me take non-poisonous snakes in my hands and even play with them, and so forth and so on.
Of all these persistent pursuits of his in relation to me, I remember that the one most worrying to the older people round me, for instance my mother, my aunt and our oldest shepherds, was that he always forced me to get up early in the morning, when a child’s sleep is particularly sweet, and go to the fountain and splash myself all over with cold spring water, and afterwards to run about naked; and if I tried to resist he would never yield, and although he was very kind and loved me, he would punish me without mercy. I often remembered him for this in later years and in these moments thanked him with all my being.
If it had not been for this, I would never have been able to overcome all the obstacles and difficulties that I had to encounter later during my travels.
He himself led an almost pedantically regular life, and was merciless to himself in conforming to this regularity.
For instance, he was accustomed to going to bed early so as to begin early the next morning whatever he had decided upon beforehand, and he made no exception to this even on the night of his daughter’s wedding.
I saw my father for the last time in 1916. He was then eighty-two years old, still full of health and strength. The few recent grey hairs in his beard were hardly noticeable.
His life ended a year later, but not from natural causes.
This event, sorrowful and grievous for all who knew him, and especially so for me, occurred during the last great periodic human psychosis.
At the time of the Turkish attack on Alexandropol, when the family had to flee, he was unwilling to leave his homestead to the mercy of fate; and while protecting the family property he was wounded by the Turks. He died soon after, and was buried by some old men who had happened to remain there.
The texts of the various legends and songs he had written or dictated, which, in my opinion, would have been his most fitting memorial, were lost—to the misfortune of all thinking people—during the repeated sackings of our house; yet perhaps, by some miracle, a few hundred of the songs he sang, recorded on phonograph rolls, may still be preserved among the things I left in Moscow.
It will be a great pity for those who value the old folklore if these records cannot be found.
The individuality and intellectuality of my father can, in my opinion, be very well pictured in the mind’s eye of the reader if I quote here a few of his many favourite ‘subjective sayings’, which he often used in conversation.
In this connection, it is interesting to remark that I, as well as many others, noticed that when he himself used these sayings in conversation, it always see
med to every hearer that they could not have been more apt or better put, but that if anyone else made use of them, they seemed to be entirely beside the point or improbable nonsense.
Some of these subjective sayings of his were as follows:Without salt, no sugar.
Ashes come from burning.
The cassock is to hide a fool.
He is deep down, because you are high up.
If the priest goes to the right, then the teacher must without fail
turn to the left.
If a man is a coward, it proves he has will.
A man is satisfied not by the quantity of food, but by the absence
of greed.
Truth is that from which conscience can be at peace.
No elephant and no horse—even the donkey is mighty.
In the dark a louse is worse than a tiger.
If there is ‘I’ in one’s presence, then God and Devil are of no
account.
Once you can shoulder it, it’s the lightest thing in the world.
A representation of Hell—astylish shoe.
Unhappiness on earth is from the wiseacring of women.
He is stupid who is ‘clever’.
Happy is he who sees not his unhappiness.
The teacher is the enlightener; who then is the ass?
Fire heats water, but water puts out fire.
Genghis Khan was great, but our policeman, so please you, is still
greater.
If you are first, your wife is second; if your wife is first, you had
better be zero: only then will your hens be safe.
If you wish to be rich, make friends with the police.
If you wish to be famous, make friends with the reporters.
If you wish to be full—with your mother-in-law.
If you wish to have peace—with your neighbour.
If you wish to sleep—with your wife.
If you wish to lose your faith—with the priest.
To give a fuller picture of my father’s individuality, I must say something about a tendency of his nature rarely observed in contemporary people, and striking to all who knew him well. It was chiefly on account of this tendency that from the very beginning, when he became poor and had to go into business, his affairs went so badly that his friends and those who had business dealings with him considered him unpractical and even not clever in this domain.
And indeed, every business that my father carried on for the purpose of making money always went wrong and brought none of the results obtained by others. However, this was not because he was unpractical or lacked mental ability in this field, but only because of this tendency.
This tendency of his nature, apparently acquired by him when still a child, I would define thus: ‘an instinctive aversion to deriving personal advantage for himself from the naïveté and bad luck of others’.
In other words, being highly honourable and honest, my father could never consciously build his own welfare on the misfortune of his neighbour. But most of those round him, being typical contemporary people, took advantage of his honesty and deliberately tried to cheat him, thus unconsciously belittling the significance of that trait in his psyche which conditions the whole of Our Common Father’s commandments for man.
Indeed, there could be ideally applied to my father the following paraphrase of a sentence from sacred writings, which is quoted at the present time by the followers of all religions everywhere, for describing the abnormalities of our daily life and for giving practical advice:Strike—and you willnot be struck.
But if you do not strike—they will beat you to death, like Sidor’s goat.
In spite of the fact that he often happened to find himself in the midst of events beyond the control of man and resulting in all sorts of human calamities, and in spite of almost always encountering dirty manifestations from the people round him—mani—festations recalling those of jackals—he did not lose heart, never identified himself with anything, and remained inwardly free and always himself.
The absence in his external life of everything that those round him regarded as advantages did not disturb him inwardly in the least; he was ready to reconcile himself to anything, provided there were only bread and quiet during his established hours for meditation.
What most displeased him was to be disturbed in the evening when he would sit in the open looking at the stars.
I, for my part, can only say now that with my whole being I would desire to be able to be such as I knew him to be in his old age.
Owing to circumstances of my life not dependent on me, I have not personally seen the grave where the body of my dear father lies, and it is unlikely that I will ever be able, in the future, to visit his grave. I therefore, in concluding this chapter devoted to my father, bid any of my sons, whether by blood or in spirit, to seek out, when he has the possibility, this solitary grave, abandoned by force of circumstances ensuing chiefly from that human scourge called the herd instinct, and there to set up a stone with the inscription:I AM THOU,
THOU ART I,
HE IS OURS,
WE BOTH ARE HIS.
SO MAY ALL BE
FOR OUR NEIGHBOUR.
III
MY FIRST TUTOR
AS I HAVE ALREADY MENTIONED in the previous chapter, my first tutor was Dean Borsh. He was at that time dean of the Kars Military Cathedral and was the highest spiritual authority for thewhole of that region conquered not long before by Russia.
He became for me, through quite accidental life circumstances, so to say, a ‘factor for the secondary stratum of my present individuality’.
While I was attending the Kars municipal school, choristers for the choir of the fortress cathedral were being chosen from among the pupils of this school and I, having then a good voice, was one of those chosen. From then on I went to this Russian cathedral for singing and practices.
The fine-looking old dean, who was interested in the new choir chiefly because the melodies of the various sacred canticles to be sung that year were of his own composition, often came to our practices; and, loving children, he was very kind to us little choristers.
Soon, for some reason or other, he began to be especially kind to me, perhaps because for a child I had an exceptionally good voice, which stood out even in a big choir when I sang second voice, or perhaps simply because I was very mischievous and he liked such rascals. In any case, he began to show an increasing interest in me and soon even began to help me prepare my school lessons.
At first these teachers were the candidates for the priesthood, Ponomarenko and Krestovsky, graduates of the Theological Seminary who were serving as deacons at the cathedral while waiting for posts as army chaplains. A physician, Sokolov, also gave me lessons.
Ponomarenko taught me geography and history; Krestovsky, Scripture and Russian; Sokolov, anatomy and physiology; mathematics and other subjects were taught me by the dean himself.
I began to study very hard.
Although I was very capable and learning came very easily to me, I nevertheless scarcely found time to prepare so many lessons and rarely had a single moment free.
A great deal of time was spent in going and coming from the house of one teacher to that of another, as they lived in different districts; particularly long was the walk to Sokolov, who lived at the military hospital at Fort Chakmak, three or four miles from the town.
My family had at first intended me for the priesthood, but Father Borsh had a quite particular conception of what a real priest should be.
According to his notion a priest should not only care for the souls of the members of his flock but should know all about their bodily diseases and how to cure them.
As he conceived it, the duties of a priest should be combined with those of a physician. He said: ‘Just as a physician who does not have access to the soul of his patient cannot be of any real help to him, so also one cannot be a good priest without being at the same time a physician, because the body and soul are interconne
cted and it is often impossible to cure the one when the cause of the illness lies in the other.’
He was in favour of myhaving a medical education, though not in the ordinary sense but as he understood it, that is, with the aim of becoming a physician for the body and a confessor for the soul.
I myself, however, was drawn towards quite another way of life. Having had from my early childhood an inclination for making all sorts of things, I dreamed of technical specialization.
As at first it was not definitely decided which way I was to go, I began at the same time to prepare myself to be a priest and a physician, the more so since there were certain subjects necessary in both cases.
Afterwards things continued by themselves and I, being capable, was able to progress in both directions. I even found time to read a great many books on various subjects, either given to me by Father Borsh or which fell into my hands.
The father dean worked intensively with me in the subjects he had undertaken to teach me. Often after the lessons he let me stay with him, gave me tea, and sometimes asked me to sing some canticle he had just composed, to verify the transcription for the voices.
During these frequent and extended visits he would have long conversations with me, either on the subjects of the lessons I had just finished or on quite abstract questions; and little by little such a relationship was formed between us that he began to talk to me as to an equal.
I soon got used to him and the feeling of shyness I at first had towards him disappeared. Retaining all my respect for him, I nevertheless sometimes forgot myself and began to argue with him—which did not in the least offend him but, as I now understand, even pleased him.
In his conversations with me he often spoke about the question of sex.
Meetings With Remarkable Men Page 6