🪆would love one featuring Russian thoughts on God! ✝️
SO. I could have sworn that I've posted "Avvakum in Pustozyorsk" on this blog before, but I can't seem to find it so here it is.
(For context, this is written in the voice of a 17th century Russian Orthodox priest and religious dissident (an "Old Believer"). Avvakum was sent to the military outpost of Pustozyorsk where he was imprisoned four fourteen years, then eventually burned at the stake. It uses this historical voice to reflect on the religious persecution of the Soviet era. Also, it's fairly long, so I've highlighted my favorite stanzas.)
Avvakum in Pustozyorsk
The walls of my church
are the ribs round my heart;
it seems life and I
are soon bound to part.
My cross now rises,
traced with two fingers.
In Pustozyorsk it blazes;
its blaze will linger.
I’m glorified everywhere,
vilified, branded;
I have already become
the stuff of legend:
I was, people say,
full of anger and spite;
I suffered, I died
for the ancient rite.
But this popular verdict
is ugly nonsense;
I hear and reject the
implied censure.
A rite is nothing –
neither wrong nor right;
a rite is a trifle
in God’s sight.
But they attacked our faith
and the ways of the past,
in all we’d learned as children,
and taken to heart.
In their holy garments,
in their grand hats,
with a cold crucifix
in their cold hands,
in thrall to a terror
clutching their souls,
they drag us to jails and
herd us to scaffolds.
We don’t debate doctrine,
of books and their age;
we don’t debate virtues
of fetters and chains.
Our dispute is of freedom,
and the right to breathe –
about our Lord’s will
to bind as he please.
The healers of souls
chastised our bodies;
while they schemed and plotted,
we ran to the forests.
Despite their decrees,
we hurled our words out
of the lion’s mouth
and into the world.
We called for vengeance
against their sins
along with the Lord;
we sang poems and hymns.
The words of the Lord
were claps of thunder.
The Church endures;
it will never go under.
And I, unyielding,
reading the Psalter,
was brought to the gates
of the Andronikov Monastery.
I was young;
I endured every pain:
hunger, beatings,
interrogations.
A winged angel
shut the eyes of the guard,
brought me cabbage soup
and a hunk of bread.
I crossed the threshold –
and I walked free.
Embracing my exile,
I walked to the East.
I held services
by the Amur River,
where I barely survived
the winds and blizzards.
They branded my cheeks
with brands of frost;
by a mountain stream
they tore out my nostrils.
But the path to the Lord
goes from jail to jail;
the path to the Lord
never changes.
And all too few,
since Jesus’s days,
have proved able to bear
God’s all-seeing gaze.
Nastasia, Nastasia,
do not despair;
true joy often wears
a garment of tears.
Whatever temptations
may beat in your heart,
whatever torments
may rip you apart,
walk on in peace
through a thousand troubles
and fear not the snake
that bites at your ankles –
though not from Eden
has this snake crawled;
it is an envoy of evil
from Satan’s world.
Here, birdsong
is unknown;
here one learns patience
and the wisdom of stone.
I have seen no colour
except lingonberry
in fourteen years
spent as a prisoner.
But this is not madness,
nor a waking dream;
it is my soul’s fortress,
its will and freedom.
And now they are leading me
far away and in fetters;
my yoke is easy,
my burden grows lighter.
My track is swept clean
dusted with silver;
I’m climbing to heaven
on wings of fire.
Through cold and hunger,
through grief and fear,
towards God, like a dove,
I rise from the pyre.
O far-away Russia –
I give you my vow
to return from the sky,
forgiving my foes.
May I be reviled,
and burned at the stake;
may my ashes be cast
on the mountain wind.
There is no fate sweeter,
no better end,
than to knock, as ash,
at the human heart.
--Varlam Shalamov
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