‘Later, when that good old lady, the sister of Prince Lubovedsky, took me under her wing, she persuaded me to learn to play the piano. “Every well-educated, intelligent woman,” she said, “should know how to play this instrument.” In order to please the dear old lady, I gave myself up wholly to learning to play the piano, and in six months I did indeed play so well that I was invited to take part in a charity concert. All our acquaintances present praised me to the skies and expressed astonishment at my talent.
‘One day, after I had been playing, the prince’s sister came over to me and very seriously and solemnly told me that, since God had given me such a talent, it would be a great sin to neglect it and not let it develop to the full. She added that, as I had begun to work on music, I should be really educated in this field, and not just play like any Mary Smith, and she therefore thought that I should first of all study the theory of music and, if necessary, even take an examination.
‘From that day on she began sending for all kinds of books on music for me, and she even went to Moscow herself to buy them. Very soon the walls of my study were lined with enormous bookcases filled to overflowing with all kinds of musical publications.
‘I devoted myself very zealously to studying the theory of music, not only because I wished to please my benefactress but also because I myself had become greatly attracted to this work, and my interest in the laws of music was increasing from day to day. My books, however, were of no help to me, for nothing whatsoever was said in them either about what music is, or on what its laws are based. They merely repeated in different ways information about the history of music, such as: that our octave has seven notes, but the ancient Chinese octave had only five; that the harp of the ancient Egyptians was called tebuni and the flute mem; that the melodies of the ancient Greeks were constructed on the basis of different modes such as the Ionian, the Phrygian, the Dorian and various others; that in the ninth century polyphony appeared in music, having at first so cacophonic an effect that there was even a case of premature delivery of a pregnant woman, who suddenly heard in church the roar of the organ playing this music; that in the eleventh century a certain monk, Guido d’Arezzo, invented solfege, and so on and so forth. Above all, these books gave details about famous musicians, and how they had become famous; they even recorded what kind of neckties and spectacles were worn by such and such composers. But as to what music is, and what effect it has on the psyche of people, nothing was said anywhere.
‘I spent a whole year studying this so-called theory of music. I read almost all my books and finally became definitely convinced that this literature would give me nothing; but my interest in music continued to increase. I therefore gave up all my reading and buried myself in my own thoughts.
‘One day, out of boredom, I happened to take from the prince’s library a book entitled The World of Vibrations, which gave my thoughts about music a definite direction. The author of this book was not a musician at all, and from the contents it was obvious that he was not even interested in music. He was an engineer and mathematician. In one place in his book he mentioned music merely as an example for his explanation of vibrations. He wrote that the sounds of music are made up of certain vibrations which doubtless act upon the vibrations which are also in a man, and this is why a man likes or dislikes this or that music. I at once understood this, and I fully agreed with the engineer’s hypotheses.
‘All my thoughts at that time were absorbed by these interests and, when I talked with the prince’s sister, I always tried to turn the conversation to the subject of music and its real significance. As a result she herself became interested in this question, and we pondered over it together and also began to make experiments.
‘The prince’s sister even bought several cats and dogs and other animals specially for this purpose. We also began inviting some of our servants, served them tea and for hours on end played the piano for them. At first our experiments produced no result; but once, when we had as guests five of our servants and ten peasants from the village formerly owned by the prince, half of them fell asleep while I was playing a waltz of my own composition.
‘We repeated this experiment several times, and each time the number of those who fell asleep increased. And although the old lady and I, making use of all kinds of principles, composed other music intended to have different effects on people, nevertheless the only result we attained was to put our guests to sleep. Finally, from constantly working on music and thinking about it, I grew so tired and thin that one day, when the old lady looked at me attentively, she became alarmed and, on the suggestion of an acquaintance, hastened to take me abroad.
‘We went to Italy and there, distracted by other impressions, I gradually began to recover. It was only after five years had passed, when we went on our Pamir-Afghanistan expedition and witnessed the experiments of the Monopsyche Brotherhood, that I again began to think about the effect of music, but not with the same enthusiasm as at first.
‘In later years, whenever I remembered my first experiments with music, I could not help laughing at our naïveté in giving such significance to the guests’ falling asleep from our music. It never entered our heads that these people fell asleep from pleasure, simply because they had gradually come to feel at home with us, and because it was very agreeable after a long day’s work to eat a good supper, drink the glass of vodka offered them by the kind old lady, and sit in soft armchairs.
‘After witnessing the experiments and hearing the explanations of the Monopsyche brethren, I later, on my return to Russia, resumed my experiments on people. I found, as the brothers had advised, the absolute “la” according to the atmospheric pressure of the place where the experiment was to be carried out, and tuned the piano correspondingly, taking into consideration also the dimensions of the room. Besides this, I chose for the experiments people who already had in themselves the repeated impressions of certain chords; and I also took into consideration the character of the place and the race of each one present. Yet I could not obtain identical results, that is to say, I was not able by one and the same melody to evoke identical experiences in everyone.
‘It cannot be denied that when the people present corresponded absolutely to the mentioned conditions, I could call forth at will in all of them laughter, tears, malice, kindness and so on. But when they were of mixed race, or if the psyche of one of them differed just a little from the ordinary, the results varied and, try as I might, I could not succeed in evoking with one and the same music the mood I desired in all the people without exception. Therefore I gave up my experiments once more, and as it were considered myself satisfied with the results obtained.
‘But here, the day before yesterday, this music almost without melody evoked the same state in all of us—people not only of different race and nationality, but even quite unlike in character, type, habits and temperament. To explain this by the feeling of human “herdness” was out of the question, as we have recently experimentally proved that in all our comrades, thanks to corresponding work on themselves, this feeling is totally absent. In a word, there was nothing the day before yesterday that could have produced this phenomenon and by which it could somehow or other be explained. And after listening to this music, when I returned to my room, there again arose in me the intense desire to know the real cause of this phenomenon, over which I had racked my brains for so many years.
‘All night long I could not sleep, but only thought what could be the real meaning of it all. And the whole day yesterday I continued to think, and even lost my appetite. I neither ate nor drank anything, and last night I grew so desperate that either from rage or exhaustion or for some other reason, I almost without knowing it bit my finger, and so hard that I nearly severed it from my hand. That is why my arm is now in a sling. It hurts so much that I can hardly sit on my horse.’
Her story touched me deeply, and with all my heart I wanted to help her in some way. In my turn I told her how a year earlier I had happened to come across a phenomenon,
also connected with music, which had greatly astonished me.
I told her how thanks to a letter of introduction from a certain great man, Father Evlissi, who had been my teacher in childhood, I had been among the Essenes, most of whom are Jews, and that by means of very ancient Hebraic music and songs they had made plants grow in half an hour, and I described in detail how they had done this. She became so fascinated by my story that her cheeks even burned. The result of our conversation was that we agreed that as soon as we returned to Russia we would settle down in some town where, without being disturbed by anyone, we could really seriously carry out experiments with music.
After this conversation, for all the rest of the trip, Vitvitskaia was her usual self again. In spite of her injured finger, she was the nimblest of all in climbing every cliff, and she could discern at a distance of almost twenty miles the monuments indicating the direction of our route.
Vitvitskaïa died in Russia from a cold she caught while on a trip on the Volga. She was buried in Samara. I was there at the time of her death, having been called from Tashkent when she fell ill.
Recalling her now, when I have already passed the half-way mark of my life and have been in almost all countries and seen thousands of women, I must confess that I never have met and probably never will meet another such woman.
And so, to continue my interrupted story of my elder comrade, my essence-friend Prince Lubovedsky, I will say that soon after my departure from Constantinople he also left, and I did not see him again for several years. But thanks to letters which I received from him periodically, I was kept more or less informed as to where he was and what was the most important interest of his life at the given time.
First he went to the island of Ceylon, and then undertook a journey up the river Indus to its source. After that he wrote to me at various times from Afghanistan, from Baluchistan, from Kafiristan, until our correspondence suddenly ceased; and from then on there was neither news nor rumour of him.
I was convinced that he had perished on one of his journeys, and little by little I had become accustomed to the thought that I had lost for ever the man nearest to me, when suddenly, quite unexpectedly, I ran across him again in exceptional circumstances in the very heart of Asia.
In order to throw more light on this last meeting of mine with a man who, according to my notions, represents in contemporary conditions of life an ideal worthy of imitation, I must again interrupt my present story to say something about a certain Soloviev, who also became my friend and comrade. Soloviev was later an authority on what is called Eastern medicine in general, and on Tibetan medicine in particular, and he was also the world’s greatest specialist in the knowledge of the action of opium and hashish on the psyche and organism of man.
My last meeting with Yuri Lubovedsky took place during a journey in Central Asia on which I was accompanied by Soloviev.
SOLOVIEV
Four or five miles from the town of Bukhara, the capital of the Bukharian khanate, the Russians had built round the station of the Transcaspian Railway the big new town called New Bukhara.
I was living in this new town when I first met Soloviev. I had gone there chiefly to visit places where I could gain a more thorough knowledge of the fundamental principles of the religion of Mohammed, and to be able to meet Bukharian dervish acquaintances of various sects, among whom was my great and old friend Bogga-Eddin. He was not at that time in Bukhara and nobody knew where he had gone; but I had grounds for counting on his speedy return.
On my arrival in New Bukhara I had taken a small room in the house of a fat Jewess who sold Russian kvass. I lived in this room with my devoted friend, a large Kurd sheep-dog, Philos, who for nine years accompanied me on all my wanderings. This Philos, by the way, quickly became famous in any town or village where I happened to stay for a while, particularly among small boys, thanks to his talent for bringing me hot water for my tea from the chaikhanas and taverns to which I sent him with a kettle. He even used to go with a note from me to make purchases.
In my opinion this dog was so astonishing that I do not consider it superfluous to spend a little of my time acquainting the reader with his rare psyche. I will in any case describe a few incidents showing the associative ingenuity of his psychic manifestations.
A little before this, I had gone to the Bukharian town of P to see several dervishes of a certain sect who were then living there, and with whom Bogga-Eddin had advised me to get acquainted. The first incident took place just after these dervishes had left the town of P and I myself had decided to move to the city of Samarkand.
My financial resources were almost at an end and, after paying for my room in the caravanserai and settling my other debts in P, the very most I would have left would be sixty kopeks. It was impossible in that town to earn money in any way, because it was not the working season, and it was none too easy in such a remote place, far from European civilization, to sell any artistic or mechanical trifles. In Samarkand, on the other hand, there were many Russians and other Europeans; besides, foreseeing the possibility of my going to Samarkand, I had already given instructions to have money sent to me there from Tiflis.
Not having the wherewithal to pay for the trip, I decided to do this distance, about seventy miles, on foot, and one fine day I set out with my friend Philos. Before leaving I bought myself five kopeks’ worth of bread and for another five kopeks a sheep’s head for Philos. I drew on our supply of food, mine as well as Philos’, very economically, so it could not be said that we were satisfied.
At a certain place on both sides of the road were bostani, that is, vegetable gardens. In many parts of Turkestan it is the custom to fence off one garden from another and from the road, by planting hedges of Jerusalem artichokes, which grow very high and thick and serve the purpose of wooden or wire fences. Walking along, I came to just this kind of fence.
As I was very hungry, I decided to dig up several artichokes. Looking round to see whether anyone could see me, I hastily dug up four big artichokes and, as I continued on my way, ate them with great pleasure. I also gave a piece to Philos to try, but after sniffing at it he refused to eat it.
Arriving in New Samarkand, I took a room in the house of a local inhabitant on the outskirts of the town, and went off at once to the post-office to see if my money had come from Tiflis, but it had not yet arrived. Pondering on where to get money I decided to earn some by making artificial paper flowers. For this purpose I immediately went to a shop to buy coloured paper, but, calculating that for my fifty kopeks I could get very little, I decided simply to buy some thin white paper and a little aniline dye of different colours and to colour the paper myself. In this way for a trifling sum I could produce a large quantity of flowers.
From the shop I went to the town gardens to rest on a bench in the shade of the trees. My Philos sat down beside me. Buried in my thoughts, I looked at the trees where sparrows flitted from branch to branch enjoying the stillness of the afternoon. Suddenly the thought entered my head: ‘Why not try to make money with the sparrows? The inhabitants of this place, the Sarts, are very fond of canaries and other kinds of song birds; is a sparrow any worse than a canary?’
On the street which ran alongside the town gardens was a cab-stand, where a number of drivers were resting and dozing on their boxes in the afternoon heat. I went over and plucked from the horses’ tails the hairs I needed, made snares of them and set them in various places, Philos watching me all the time with great attention. A sparrow soon fell into one of the snares. I carefully took it out and carried it home.
At the house I asked the landlady for scissors, clipped my sparrow to the shape of a canary, and then coloured it fantastically with the aniline dyes. I took this sparrow to Old Samarkand, where I immediately sold it, claiming that it was a special ‘American canary’. I charged two roubles for it. With the money I at once bought several simple painted cages and from then on began selling my sparrows in cages. In two weeks I sold about eighty of these American canaries.
The day after I stopped taking Philos with me, he disappeared from the house early in the morning and only returned in the evening, tired and covered with dirt, and solemnly placed on my bed a sparrow—to be sure, a dead one. This was repeated each day; he would leave early in the morning and would invariably bring back and place on my bed a dead sparrow.
I did not risk a long stay in Samarkand. I was afraid that the devil would play a joke, and that my sparrows might suddenly get wet in the rain or that some American canary in its cage might take a fancy to bathing in its drinking trough, and then indeed there would be a great uproar, as my American canaries would be turned into disfigured, clipped and miserable sparrows. So I hastened to get away with my skin whole.
From Samarkand I went to New Bukhara, where I expected to find my friend, the dervish Bogga-Eddin. I felt like a rich man, for I had over a hundred and fifty roubles in my pocket, which at that time was considered a fairly large sum.
In New Bukhara, as I have already said, I took a room in the house of a fat Jewish woman who sold kvass. This room had no furniture, and at night I spread out a clean sheet in one comer for a bed and slept on it without a pillow. I did not do this for economy alone. No.... It cannot be denied that such a way of sleeping is indeed very cheap, but I did this chiefly because at that period of my life I was a pure-blooded follower of the ideas of the famous Hindu yogis. All the same I must confess that in those days, even at times of great material difficulty, I could not deny myself the luxury of lying on a clean sheet and of rubbing myself at night with eau de Cologne, which had to be of a strength not less than eighty per cent.
Meetings With Remarkable Men Page 15