Pierre Bezukhov (Part II)

Pierre, once the illegitimate son of a rakish nobleman, is now the legitimized inheritor to a vast fortune, married to the most beautiful woman in the world, and occupying a high place in society. And yet he is unhappy, especially since his wife has compromised her virtue with another man, namely Dolokhov, one of his former drinking buddies. Dolokhov was in fact living at his house and even borrowed money from him.

The breaking point came at a dinner in honor of General Bagration, one of the heroes of the Battle of Austerlitz. That very morning, Pierre had received an anonymous letter making fun of him, saying that “he saw poorly through his spectacles and that his wife’s liaison with Dolokhov was a secret to no one but him.” At the dinner Dolokhov mocks him with a toast: “To the health of beautiful women, Petrusha, and of their lovers.” Pierre soon challenges him to a duel, and the next morning, the two meet at the Sokolniki woods with their seconds and begin the duel. As it is his first duel, Pierre’s second Nesvitsky has to show him how to hold the pistol and shoot it.

On the count of three, the two adversaries approach each other. Pierre fires first. Bang! In his childishness, he “smiled at his own impression and stood still.” When the smoke clears, Dolokhov still keeps going, but he was shot in the side, and soon collapses. He aims and fires, but misses due to Pierre’s ridiculous luck.

Coming to his senses, Pierre realizes that he could become a murderer, and runs through the snow yelling out “stupid…stupid! Death…lies…” Everything becomes topsy-turvy and meaningless to him. The society which mocked him for being a cuckold now mocks him for dueling, because of the apparently scanty evidence of infidelity. Hélène herself bitterly reproaches him, and Pierre, losing it, nearly kills her with a giant marble slab. They separate, and Pierre goes to Petersburg; Hélène retains control of much of Pierre’s fortune.

In St. Petersburg, Pierre gets introduced into Freemasonry, with his mentor being Osip Bazdeev, who is sort of like an Obi-Wan figure to him. Pierre is inducted in a secret ceremony (natch) and throws himself wholeheartedly into Masonic activity and beliefs. This starts an obsession with mysticism, esotericism and the like, which for Pierre helped him answer the aching questions that he had about the meaning of life. He even has the gumption to kick out Prince Vassily when he comes to ask Pierre to reunite with Hélène.

However, Pierre’s enthusiasm for Freemasonry does not pan out well. On the basis of his new creed he attempts to reform his estates in Southern Russia, but due to his lack of practicality and the wiliness of the chief steward his reforms don’t work out. Moreover, he realizes that his brother Masons aren’t as charitable and focused on brotherhood as he once thought, and that for many (such as Princess Drubetskoy’s son Boris) joining the Masons is basically just another way to step up the social ladder.

Yet the beliefs which Pierre adopted—which happen to be not too far from Christianity—make an impact on his friend Prince Andrei. After the Battle of Austerlitz, a wounded Prince Andrei returned as if from the grave to his family estate near Smolensk. There, he saw his wife die in childbirth, which throws him into a deep depression. Pierre says to him, “If there is a God and if there is a future life, then there is truth, there is virtue; and man’s highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must life, we must love, we must believe…that we do not live only on this scrap of earth…” Andrei is reminded by this of the time, when he fell on the field of battle, that he saw the infinite sky above. And he starts to live again.


Soon, Pierre introduces Andrei to a family friend, Natasha Rostov, a young girl of sixteen who is just entering society at the New Year’s Ball. They dance splendidly, and something awakens in both Andrei and Natasha. Pierre, having unhappily reunited with his wife, is sullen because (despite her stupidity) she gained a rather high reputation. From there, Pierre, Andrei, and Natasha’s lives will be irrevocably intertwined.

To be continued…

Pierre Bezukhov (Part I)

For my final paper for Russian Literature, I read War and Peace and decided to write about one of the main characters, Pierre Bezukhov, who is an unlikely hero. Large, fat, and bespectacled, he stumbles into fashionable society and shocks people with his unconventional political views. He is both physically and socially awkward, and does not fit the conventional characteristics of a hero. Yet in War in Peace, Leo Tolstoy makes Pierre one of the main protagonists for precisely this reason. Pierre shows through his development in the novel that what is important is not necessarily external actions, but one’s inner attitude. Thus, by the end of the novel, Pierre does not change externally—he doesn’t become less absent-minded or lose weight—he does undergo a complete spiritual transformation due to the many misadventures and sufferings that he undergoes.

We first meet Pierre at a St. Petersburg soirée in 1805. Tolstoy describes him as being “a massive, fat young man” and the illegitimate son of a rich nobleman, Count Bezukhov. Anna Pavlovna Scherer, a lady-in-waiting to the dowager empress and the hostess, immediately feels discomfort at Pierre’s arrival, not on account of his physical girth but because of his “intelligent and at the same time shy, observant, and natural gaze which distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing room.” Pierre, being raised abroad in Paris, is an outsider ignorant of the unwritten rules of society, making him somewhat of a wild card. Anna Pavlovna’s fears are confirmed when Pierre has a lively political conversation with the French viscount who was the guest of honor. Pierre defends Napoleon’s execution of the duc d’Enghien, saying that it was “a necessity of state,” and even praises the French Revolution, which did him no favors with the other party guests, who pepper him with questions. Pierre answered them all with a simple, childish smile, which showed that even with his radical views, he really was harmless.

Pierre acts as a foil to his best friend Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who matches Pierre’s youthful exuberance and idealism with cynicism. Prince Andrei, tired of society life and of his marriage to the beautiful Lise, is entering the army to fight against Napoleon. “Never, never marry, my friend,” he tells Pierre, “Marry when you’re old and good for nothing…Otherwise all that’s good and lofty in you will be lost.” Andrei wants to leave his wife and society for the sake of greatness, but Pierre begins to become tangled up in worldly affairs, since he might inherit his father’s immense fortune.

Despite becoming potentially one of the richest men in Russia, Pierre is quite clueless. He carouses with another friend, Anatole Kuragin, and gets himself banished to Moscow. When he visits his dying father while he receives Holy Unction, he acts out of place, like everything is somewhat alien to him. Tolstoy expertly shows Pierre’s feeling of detachment from his father and everything surrounding him by calling all the clergy participating in the rite “clerical persons.” Although he was raised in Paris and had no real connection with his father, Pierre felt societal expectations pressuring him into awkwardly acting out the part of a dutiful son at his father’s deathbed.

Pierre is surrounded by people who claim they have his best interests in mind, but have their own ulterior motives. Prince Vassily, Anatole’s father, wants to covertly change Count Bezukhov’s will so he could inherit the lion’s share of the wealth. Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskoy, a family friend of the Bezukhovs, wants Pierre to inherit everything so she and her son Boris could benefit. Prince Vassily’s machinations fail, and Count Bezukhov dies making Pierre (whom the tsar conveniently recognized as legitimate) the new count and inheritor of a vast fortune.

Hélène and Pierre

As for Pierre, he remains subject to the whims of other people as well as to his own passions—he is stuck in the mire of the world. St. Theophan the Recluse describes the world as full of people who go around in circles, questioning, seeking pleasure, and being subject to their own whims: “There is an entire world full of people…whose every way in all of this has led to a system, placed everyone under its laws, and made these laws a necessity for everyone who belongs to this sphere.” Thus, Pierre gets caught up with the beguiling but empty-headed Hélène Kuragin, Prince Vassily’s daughter. Pierre finds her physically attractive but is full of doubt because she doesn’t seem like the brightest lampada in the chapel. Yet all of society, and especially the Kuragins, seem to conspire to put them together, until finally, after a party, Prince Vassily marches in on the two of them and acts as if Pierre and Hélène are already engaged in a tragicomic scene. Left alone, Pierre says to her, “Je vous aime,” and they kiss. Yet he soon comes to regret this Je vous aime. When Hélène starts to be unfaithful to Pierre things start to take a turn for the worse for him. Trapped in a loveless marriage and surrounded by people who only want his money, it does not take too much to make Pierre snap…

To be continued.

Клирос и Кладбище

I was already lying awake for a few minutes in bed when my computer lit up and played “Mr. Blue Sky.” Silencing the alarm, I got ready for kliros. During Lent, most of the daily services (Matins, Hours, and Vespers) are done in the morning, starting around six and taking three to five hours, depending on a number of variables. Due to the time and the length of the service, whoever gets assigned that day is excused from classes. Friday is a pretty light day for kliros. We read two less kathismata* and don’t have to do Vespers since that is done later in the day combined with the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.

When I got to church, the monks were finishing up the Midnight Office and were still reading commemoration books for the dead. I picked up a few books and started scanning through the names, some of them written down ages ago. Then it was time to start. Hierodeacon Tikhon and I went at a pretty good pace through the service, with help from the serving priest, Fr. Anatoly. We were finished in only three hours, with two hours to rest before the Presanctified Liturgy at 11 o’clock. I used the time to finish up an article on Wikipedia that I’ve been working on, and then went to liturgy. Tonight I’m actually going to Albany to sing at their service so I’ll be attending two Presanctified Liturgies today.

Presanctified went as usual, but at the end I got pulled off the kliros by my friend, who told me that Fr. Victor needed me to sing a funeral. Having gone without much rest for the past six hours, I was not very peppy but agreed to do it.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a full funeral but a short burial service. We drove up to the cemetery on the hill where most people are buried. It’s probably one of the largest Orthodox cemeteries in the country. Soon after we arrived, a man came up driving a van holding the coffin. We opened up the back, and saw that the coffin was encased in a cardboard box marked with a sticker saying ‘SYR’ and purple tape labeled “Handle Carefully: Human Remains.” The body was shipped from Sacramento to Syracuse. The name of the reposed was Tamara, 98 years old. She came from China with St. John. We lifted the blue metal coffin and started singing “Holy God…”

The muddy, snow-covered ground was slippery for our feet, and the last few yards to the grave were covered with a foot of snow which easily gave way and got into our shoes. We struggled through to the grave, and began the burial service under the ash gray sky. I didn’t exactly know the words to the hymns, but we managed to get through the best we could. In the end, Fr. Gabriel took the shovel and committed the coffin to the earth. We threw in clods of mud into the grave and went our way.

To the newly-reposed handmaid of God Tamara, memory eternal.

*A kathisma (pl. kathismata) is a division of the Psalter, composed of an average of 8 or 9 psalms. There are twenty kathismata in the Psalter.

Book Review: Do You Know Yourself?

For the first week of Great Lent, in between the hours of church services and sleeping we had a decent amount of time on our hands. I spent it reading.

One of the books I finished was this one, by Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos, called Do You Know Yourself? Psychological Problems and the Spiritual Life. The author is a pretty prominent figure in Greece who founded several monasteries. The talks which made up this book were made in the early 1970s but are still relevant today, if not more so.

Fr. Symeon’s main thesis is that many people are not making spiritual progress because they are stuck in psychological ruts. The truth is that we have very little understanding of ourselves. Look at a pond: it may seem calm and tranquil on the surface, but stir it up and who knows what might come up? As the holy prophet Jeremiah says, “The heart is deep beyond all things.”

In order to help us overcome these psychological “blocks,” Fr. Symeon uses the work of the psychologist Karen Horney, who deviated from her teacher Freud by situtating the cause of neuroses in how people interact with one another. He cites extensively her book Our Inner Conflicts, which might be helpful to read in order to better understand the concepts in the book, but is not necessary (I didn’t read it).

According to Horney, and by extension Fr. Symeon, the three flawed “movements” that people make in relation to each other are: moving toward people, moving against people, and moving away from people. Fr. Symeon spends the most time developing the first and the third movements, apparently seeing the harm in moving against others in a domineering fashion to be obvious to everyone. Most people manifest all three of these movements in various situations in life.

The first movement comes from a distortion of love. We all feel the need for love and affection and so naturally desire to be with others. But this can easily turn into an attachment or obsession. Many people do good deeds and seek to serve others merely in order to hear the words “Good job!” from them. Or they focus on how many “likes” they get on Facebook, or how many people look at their blog. Countless young people, addicted to love, go from relationship to relationship, trying to find a partner that can solve their problems. If things don’t go well from such people there could be outbursts of hostility and other bad consequences.

The opposite tendency is to shut oneself off from others. Out of a desire to be self-sufficient, to be independent, or to simply do whatever one wants, this person builds an emotional wall around himself, not wanting to be beholden to anyone. Tragically, people who do open themselves to others often end up being burnt by them or suffering a nervous breakdown. In failing to have a “correct stance” towards others, we become psychologically (and spiritually) unhealthy.

Fr. Symeon then turns to what he calls the “idealized image,” a false view of oneself. One can be merely delusional, but oftentimes we compare the idealized images we have with ourselves with the reality, and either beat ourselves up over not being good enough or engaging in an obsessive desire for perfection. (A concrete example of this is the problems many women have with body image in modern society.) One can even start projecting his own shortcomings on others and cause quite a mess. There are a variety of ways the idealized image rules over us, creating a “dictatorship of the self.”

The only way out of this, the only way to destroy these idealized images and have a correct stance before people, is to face reality and humble oneself. You must ask yourself: “Could it be that I don’t see things well? Could it be that I'm led astray? Could it be that I'm not acting correctly?” Fr. Symeon assures us that  “The weakest, the most sinful human being – when he decides to let himself go to God’s grace – he’ll be redeemed.”

Do You Know Yourself? makes for excellent Lenten reading, and I highly recommend it. It is available at Holy Trinity Bookstore and other fine booksellers.

Do You Know Yourself? Psychological Problems and the Spiritual Life
Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos
Translated by Monk Cosmas (Shartz)
Divine Ascent Press, 2010, 189pp.

BlinFest 2013

Kustodiyev, Maslenitsa

This week is Cheesefare Week, known in Russian as Maslenitsa. As the week before the beginning of the Orthodox Great Lent, we do not eat animal flesh, but are allowed to eat fish and dairy products. It’s comparable to Carnival or Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday in the West. In fact, Shrove Tuesday is also known as Pancake Day because Catholics used to also abstain from dairy products like the Orthodox, and thus had to get rid of their butter and milk somehow.

Russians also enjoy pancakes, or rather rich crepes called blini. I first read about blini when I was an elementary school student studying to compete in the Geography Bee. “The Russians can eat pancakes at any time of day!” I was amazed. After becoming Orthodox, I soon got to enjoy blini, though for a while I could not pronounce the word correctly.

Last year, I got to prepare blini that our Russian Literature teacher Fr. Victor had made. But this year I got to make the blini! A couple of us used our free hours and went to the kitchen across the way from the monastery refectory. Fr. Victor was already flipping four pans of blini. My compatriot and I relieved him, each taking two pans.

Making blini is relatively simple. Since they’re crepes, the batter is somewhat more watery than regular pancake batter. Just pour some batter into the pan and spread it out a bit. when it looks like it’s getting a little dry, add some melted butter and flip it over. Add copious amounts of butter on the other side as well. After a minute on each side, you’re done. A properly-made blin should slide out of the pan. My first attempts were of course rather clumsy (but at least they weren’t lumpy!) but after a while I got the hang of it.

They matched my hoodie.

Fr. Victor took a few blini and fed the monastery cats. “Good, the cats are eating the blini…that means it’s edible. If they weren’t eating…I would be concerned.”

I guess they liked it.

The blini were ultimately destined for the festal meal after the fifth anniversary of Vladika Lavr’s repose, which was yesterday. Metropolitan Hilarion and a number of priests came to celebrate the liturgy. I think the blini was a hot commodity. With good turnover, if you will. Okay, enough of that.

Tomorrow is the first day of Great Lent. They’ve already changed the colors in the church from gold to black. I hope that your Lent is spiritually productive, and that you have a joyous Pascha. Forgive me, a sinner!

The Maestro

It is a rare event in one’s life to encounter a true craftsman. One who steadily works on his art, continually perfecting it, demanding more and more from the materials he works with. Someone sensitive to the little nuances others would miss. Someone like Jiro Ono, the three-star sushi chef who was the subject of my favorite documentary.

After this weekend, I can say that I have met such a man. Vladimir Gorbik, the maestro from Moscow, conductor of ten choirs at the Moscow Representation Church of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, father of nine children. Last weekend he took his talent and attempted to mold twenty-six of us into a powerhouse choir. It was both a great challenge for us and for him, I’m sure. Jiro works with dead fish, but Gorbik works with living humans.

We were from three different seminaries—St. Tikhon’s, St. Vladimir’s, and Holy Trinity—having a long history of sometime rivalry. Although all three institutions can be said to be in the Russian tradition, it was the first time in history that we got together to sing a concert. There were four from Jordanville, six from Crestwood, and fourteen from South Canaan. Plus Alex Cooley and Elias from Montreal.

Rehearsals began on Thursday evening. We sat in our seats in fearsome expectation of the coming of the Maestro. I heard stories that he could be a harsh taskmaster. Then, a man in a gray dress shirt came in. His eyes were deeply set and looked like they had pored over many a music manuscript. He looked serious. Gorbik motioned for us to pray, and we begun with “O Heavenly King.”

We then started with the Great Doxology. Maestro Gorbik first worked with us in the bass section. He raised his arms. We sang: “Glo—” He stopped us. “Glor—” Nope. “G—” No way. He took out his iPhone, threw it in the air, and caught it. “This is how I want you to start.” We tried again, and as soon as his hand fell, we all started at the same time.

The rehearsals—over sixteen hours over three days—went much like that. We stopped and started. As soon as the Maestro found a little problem, we went over it again and again until it was fixed. “Stop singing like you’re enjoying a hot shower!” he told us again and again. This all caused us to go rather slowly at first, and I consider it almost a miracle that we were able to go over the concert repertoire. He also made us responsible for our own singing. If, during rehearsal, we sang the wrong note or breathed incorrectly, we had to stand up and sing several phrases. We were all popping up and down like whack-a-moles.

He also encouraged us not only to sing correctly, but also to sing with the right meaning, taking in the spiritual meaning of the text. To that end, he told us quite a few anecdotes, translated by our very hard-working interpreter. He told us about his time in the Holy Land, his amazement at the Vatopedi choir on Mount Athos, the death mask of Beethoven. All these anecdotes helped us not only understand what we’re doing (wrong), but also established a rapport between him and us. For example, while we were singing “Doors of Repentance,” he told us about King David: “Now, when King David found out that his son Absalom was killed—his own son, who rebelled against him—he went on procession barefoot, and sprinkled ashes on his head. Can you imagine Barack Obama—or Vladimir Putin for that matter—doing that? You need to sing with David’s spirit of repentance.”

There were a few breaks during rehearsals, and several hours each day, but we were basically doing nothing but singing, eating, and sleeping. We had Vigil and Liturgy at the St. Tikhon’s Monastery Church, with His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon serving. His Beatitude liked the singing, but we (and Gorbik) knew that we had made some glaring errors and needed to work some more.

After Liturgy, I approached Benedict Sheehan, the conductor of the St. Tikhon’s choir, with a desire to sing the solo for “The Waters of Babylon.” I had the feeling that I wasn’t going to get it, but I wanted to try. Benedict explained the situation to Gorbik, who was at first reluctant but decided to hear me out. We went to Benedict’s office. I sang the first canonarchal verse: “We hanged our harps upon the willows…”

“Stop. Try again,” he said.

I stuck my diaphragm to the sticking point and somehow found some extra room in my upper palate. When I reached the last note it felt as if my entire head was ringing like a bell. He got the sound he wanted. I worked with him one-on-one, with the assistance of Benedict, Elias, and the interpreter. It wasn’t jelling. As I tried singing for the umpteenth time, he got up. “I’ve got a good exercise for you. Archimandrite Matfei taught me this.” He went to the piano. “Think that you’re picking up a piano when you’re singing.” Apparently he was only being figurative but I took him literally and grabbed one corner of the upright piano and pulled upward. This time my voice sounded a lot stronger. Apparently the tension caused by lifting the piano did good things to my abs. By the end of rehearsal I felt like I just did fifty sit-ups.

The concert was at an Episcopalian church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. At the sound check (which was really the final rehearsal), Maestro Gorbik was still pushing us. When I tried doing my solo, he sent me to the piano! It didn’t have the effect he wanted. (I blame the piano. I work better with uprights, not grands.) “Keep practicing,” he said. I went off to a conference room, which luckily had an upright piano, and kept singing until it was time to go to the green room.

The Maestro gave us his pre-game pep talk. He was only strict to us in order to get out the best possible sound. “What’s the sense of telling you ‘Good job!’ when you made a mistake? You’re grown adults, not children.” As the Lord chastiseth those whom He loveth, so also did he chastise us. We lined up and marched out to face the audience of three hundred.

I could describe the concert, but why don’t you judge for yourself from this clip? The sound quality is camcorder-level, but it captures some of the spirit of our performance.

It wasn’t perfect, and there were some obvious hiccups in singing, but the audience received us enthusiastically. Bishop Michael of the OCA also stood up and gave some congratulatory words. I think we were all ready to sleep. The concert will be featured on local radio (available streaming here) in the near future; I’ll let you all know when it comes on. Also, God willing, we’ll eventually have a CD of the performance!

I’m very happy that I got the chance to work with Maestro Gorbik and all the other people who made this concert a success, and hope that we can do this again next year. I also recommend to anyone wanting to improve their vocal strength to start lifting pianos. Don’t sing yourself a hernia, though.

The Feast of Friendship

Lent is fast approaching for Orthodox Christians, which means that the time window for eating meat is quickly closing. This causes Jordanville seminarians to go on a yearly trek to Dinosaur Ribs.

Dinosaur Barbecue is a restaurant started up in Syracuse by a biker who traveled the South, sampled many of its tasty meat creations, and brought back the best stuff to Upstate New York. There’s also a branch in Albany, which is the one we went to this time. There were eleven of us, including Pete, Kate, and their baby Lucy, a.k.a. Cuteness. When our waitress Brittany came to our table, it was love at first sight:

“Welcome to Dinosaur! Have any of you been here bef-ooooh helllOOOOO!!!!!!” Behold the power of Cuteness.

Most of us guys ordered the full rack of ribs. When Brittany came to me, there was a moment of hesitation. “Are you sure you can finish it?” I meekly said yes. However, I was prepared to eat my words when the ribs came.

It doesn’t even fit in the frame!

Though we were having some good conversation beforehand, once the food came it was all business. And lamentation from stuffing ourselves with so much. We had to finish everything to prove that we were not weenies. “Finishing” involved eating our two sides. “Once we’re finished, we’ll have five sides,” said one of us.

By the end of dinner most of us had finished our racks—save me. I had three ribs left. I attempted to separate the meat from the bone in order to make it look like not so much, but that psychological tactic did not win against my stomach’s cries that it had had ENOUGH. In shame, I asked for a box.

“You don’t deserve this.” Said Brittany sternly. Although she was nice afterward.

“It’s okay, John. You’ll appreciate them more tomorrow.” Said Kate.

Pete answered, “he’s not going to appreciate the ribbing we’re going to give him!” Groaaaaaan.

Nevertheless, I did finish the ribs in the end, before we left the restaurant. However, as it was after we had stood up and paid the bill, it did not count. But STILL! there weren’t any (meat) leftovers.

I may have lost this time, but I’m looking forward to the rematch!