Algernon Blackwood

Name: With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem
Author: Algernon Blackwood

Summary

“With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem”, is a work by Algernon Blackwood. It explores elements such as the Holy Land, peasant and pilgrimage.

Quotes from With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem (Algernon Blackwood)

Algernon Blackwood, With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem

“ Tramps are plentiful today, overdone, in fact; tramping is almost as fashionable a pose as caravanning. But pilgrims are rare. A pilgrim may take as little luggage as a tramp, but where the tramp is a mere wanderer, listless as the wind, the pilgrim has a definite goal, usually difficult of attainment. He has, moreover, faith, and the city he seeks lies hid in that vastest and most puzzling of all strange lands⁠—the heart. These seven thousand Russian peasants, journeying to Jerusalem, months and months on foot, journeyed at the same time to the goal of all their lives, the New Jerusalem. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Blackwood, With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem

“ It is a fortunate thing that the first man to describe this unique and remarkable pilgrimage should be one who could have written A Tramp’s Sketches and A Vagabond in the Caucasus, both of them revealing a type of mind and heart not too common in the army of writing folk today. Only a man of simple, understanding heart, yet with the faith and vision of a poet, could do justice to such a theme. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Blackwood, With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem

“ It is more edifying, as well as better worth while, however, to dwell upon the charity and spirit of kindliness that animated the entire army of seven thousand simple peasants, and to read how they shared their food and money and clothing with each other, tended each other in sickness, prayed and sang and laughed together like a lot of children journeying to fairyland. There is something inspiring in the record, superstitious though the underlying faith may seem to most. With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem is a poem, and a poem to read again and again with deep enjoyment. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Blackwood, With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem

“ They come because the mandate is in their hearts. For months before the journey begins they set aside crusts of bread to carry with them, and these crusts, yellow, green and mouldy, form the chief sustenance of the larger portion on the way. The procession, as it goes from Jerusalem to Nazareth, is over a mile in length, and though mules are provided by the Russian Palestine Society for those who may succumb, the majority prefer to suffer pain and misery, moving at the rate of half a mile an hour beneath the blistering sun rather than ride⁠—since Christ himself walked and bore a burden too. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Blackwood, With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem

“ Those obvious stage effects that seduce most writers on the Holy Land are contemptuously ignored; except for a few vivid touches the author himself hardly appears at all; one sees only the crowd of aged Pilgrims (there are no young among them) , confusion in their minds but ecstasy in their hearts, scornful of pain, discomfort, even of death itself, moving in a body to that Holy City where Christ was crucified and buried, and where He rose again. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Blackwood, With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem

“ The obvious chicanery and fraud practised on them everywhere has no effect upon them, whether they buy an actual fragment of the Virgin’s gown or touch a plank that Jesus himself planed, for their passionate belief sublimates all tawdry humbug into beauty, and these details are to them but external symbols of a faith in their hearts which is inextinguishable. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Blackwood, With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem

“ To give a résumé of this great pilgrimage within the space of a brief notice is hardly possible. “The pilgrimage is not so much to the Holy Land or to Jerusalem as to the sacred stones.” It is a promise the peasant gives to his God. “The peasants feel that when they have been to Jerusalem the serious occupations of their life are all ended. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Blackwood, With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem

“ All bring money, some more, some less, and of this, what does not go to the greedy monks for the saying of prayers goes into the pockets of the shopmen who sell sacred articles of every sort and description at exorbitant prices. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Algernon Blackwood, With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem

“ They mostly hope to die in the Holy Land, preferably near the Dead Sea, where the Last Judgment will take place. If they must retum to their native village in Russia, it will be to put their affairs in order and await death. ”

Algernon Blackwood

Summary

Quotes from With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem (Algernon Blackwood)

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