Rhapsodist

“ In order to do so, one must unite oneself with me in body and soul. Everything which proceeds from me is holy, and cleanses one from sin.
On the strength of this theory, Rasputin declared that he could do whatever he liked or wished. He surrounded himself with worshippers of both sexes, who believed that by a close union with him they could obtain their eternal salvation, together with divine forgiveness for any sins they might have committed during their previous existence. ”

“ If I say that I never saw the evil side of Gregory Rasputin I shall be called a liar or a fool—perhaps, more chivalrously, the latter. It is, however, the truth when I say that we never saw the evil side of him. May I, therefore, plead for a hearing on the grounds that some men possess dual natures, and that they adapt these to the company in which they find themselves? I have heard of men who at home have led most moral lives, leading elsewhere existences before which an up-to-date French novel is as naught.{94} Yet they never betrayed themselves to their nearest and dearest. ”

“ Among all these heresies there are two which have attracted more than the others the attention of the authorities, thanks to their secret rites and to their immoral tendencies. They are the Skoptsy, or Voluntary Eunuchs, about which it is useless to say anything here, and the Khlysty, or Flagellants, which to this day has a considerable number of adepts and29 to which Rasputin undoubtedly belonged, to which, in fact, he openly owed allegiance. This sect, which calls itself “Men of God,” has the strangest rites which human imagination can invent. ”

“ For something like two years Rasputin followed him, until at last he began himself to assume the character of a lay preacher, to apply himself to the study of the Scriptures and to try to establish a sect of his own, the principles of which he exposed to his followers in these terms:
I am possessed of the Holy Spirit, and it is only through me that one can be saved. ”

“ Pre-Raphaelitism, a movement headed by Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and Millais, of revolt against the style of art in vogue, traceable all the way back to Raphael, and of a bold return to the study of nature itself, agreeably to the advice of Ruskin, that "they should go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought than how best to penetrate her meaning: rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing" ”

“ We begin, in all probability, by telling the youth of fifteen or sixteen, that Nature is full of faults, and that he is to improve her; but that Raphael is perfection, and that the more he copies Raphael the better ”

“ The gift of looking into the future is given to a few men and women in the world, those persons who sometimes when they look into the face of another hold their breath and remain silent, because they see death written upon the countenance before them. This curious faculty was possessed by Rasputin to a very marked degree—a faculty which has puzzled scientists through all the ages, a faculty which usually runs side by side with an overweening vanity and an amazing self-consciousness. ”

“ Always on the alert, and just as keen an observer as Raspoutine himself of the weaknesses of human nature, with the additional advantage of being a very well educated and cultured man, he very quickly grasped the importance of what the “Prophet” confided to him when he started to relate to his friend the details of his first interview with the Empress of All the Russias. ”

“ Rasputin was far too clever to apply to the fine ladies, whose help he considered essential to the progress of his future career, the same means by which he had subjugated the simple peasant women and provincial girls whom he had depraved. He remained strictly on the religious ground with his aristocratic followers, and he tried only to develop in them feelings of divine fervour verging upon an exaltation which was close to hysteria in its worst shape or form. ”

“ They are different in their choice, different in their faculties, but all the same in this, that Raphael himself, so far as he was great, and all who preceded or followed him who ever were great, became so by painting the truths around them as they appeared to each man's own mind, not as he had been taught to see them, except by the God who made both him and them. ”

“ I must now make one remark which is absolutely necessary in order to enable the foreign readers to understand how the numerous legends which were connected with Rasputin and the influence of the latter on the course of public affairs could come to be accepted by the nation at large. One can seek its principal reason in the tendency which the Russian government has cultivated since immemorial times to forbid the open discussion of certain things and facts. ”

“ Yet the censors did not allow any mention of Rasputin to be made in any organ of publicity. Thanks to this senseless interdict, it helped the invention of the most unbelievable tales concerning him and the attitude which he had adopted in regard to state affairs, with which he had begun to occupy himself, much to the dismay of those who had by that time learned to appreciate the fact that the “Prophet” was but the plaything of men far cleverer than himself and 50,000 times more dangerous. ”

“ It is not at all wonderful if those shameless adventurers started the conspiracy for the success of which they required the moral influence of Rasputin and the authority of his person. It was, after all, such an easy matter to say that in such and such a case he had been acting in conformity with the Imperial will. ”

“ The people and the herd must be angry with me: a robber shall Zarathustra be called by the herdsmen.
Herdsmen, I say, but they call themselves the good and just. Herdsmen, I say, but they call themselves the believers in the orthodox belief.
Behold the good and just! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker:—he, however, is the creator.
Behold the believers of all beliefs! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker—he, however, is the creator. ”

“ His success at court was due to the superstitious dread with which he contrived to inspire the Empress in regard to her son. She was constantly trembling for him, and being very religiously inclined, with strong leanings toward mysticism, she allowed herself to be persuaded more by the people who surrounded her than by Rasputin himself. She believed that the man of whose holiness she was absolutely persuaded, could by his prayers alone obtain the protection of the Almighty for her beloved child. ”

“ But they have opposed themselves as a body to that kind of teaching above described, which only began after Raphael's time: and they have opposed themselves as sternly to the entire feeling of the Renaissance schools; a feeling compounded of indolence, infidelity, sensuality, and shallow pride. Therefore they have called themselves Pre-Raphaelites. If they adhere to their principles, and paint nature as it is around them, with the help of modern science, with the earnestness of the men of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they will, as I said, found a new and noble school in England. ”

“ Rasputin began proceedings in his native province. He was a marvellous preacher, and easily attracted many followers, though some of the forms taken by the new religion were indescribable. The believers of both sexes were in the habit of assembling in an open field, in the midst of which a bonfire was lighted. They would form a chain and dance round the fire, praying for their sins to be forgiven, as they had repented of them. ”

“ Thou art worried.” (He “tutoyed” everybody) . “Well—nothing in life is worth worrying over—‘tout passe’—you understand—that’s the best outlook.”
He became serious.
“It is necessary to have Faith. God alone is thy help. Thou art torn between thy husband and thy child. Which of them is the weaker? Thou think’st that thy child is the more helpless. This is not so. A child can do nothing in his weakness—a man can do much.”
Rasputin advised me to go to Copenhagen, but I did not go. I left Petrograd next day for the country—perhaps out of bravado! ”

“ People began to dread Rasputin, not on account of any supernatural powers he might have been endowed with, but because they saw that he had managed to get into association with individuals utterly unscrupulous and ready to resort to every means, even to assassination, in order to come to their own ends. ”

“ Encouraged by the notion of Antichrist, the Raskol's opposition against the modern reform of government spread until it embraces in its hostility everything brought from the West. In no other of its developments do we see more distinctly the characteristic features of the schism, its narrow formalism and its coarse allegorizing, its blind worship of the past and its national exclusiveness. It presented the novel spectacle of a group of popular sects holding in abomination every object of foreign commerce, everything new—material articles of consumption not less than the discoveries of science. ”

“ Only the other day, I might say, WHEN WE WERE LEAVING TUMEN, a rabble of Yiddish suttlers began yelling at ME: "Rasputin! Rasputin! where is your Rasputin!" ... Now Grisha Rasputin was a friend of the Metropolitan Archbishop of Protopopov. He was seeking to redeem the reputation of a horse-stealing father if I remember right—'He was a friend of Stuermer, Niki, not a friend to you,' interrupted the ex-Empress... 'You are right, darling,' returned the 'prisoner,' 'quite right, I know.'... 'What kind of a mountebank was RASPUTIN?' I asked to feel my 'prisoner' out.... ”

“ Raffaelle was a painter of humanity, and assuredly there is something the matter with humanity, a few dovrebbe’s, more or less, wanting in it. We have most of us heard of original sin, and may perhaps, in our modest moments, conjecture that we are not quite what God, or nature, would have us to be. ”

“ But Krafft merely shrugged his shoulders, and his colour subsided as rapidly as it had risen.
"Are you still such an outsider," he asked, "after all this time—in my society—as to attach importance to a word? What is 'giving a word'? Do you really think it is of any value? May I not give it tonight, and take it back to-morrow, according to the mood I am in, according to whether I believe it myself or not, at the moment?—You think a thing must either be true or not true? You are wrong. ”

“ Such were the men who virtually controlled every action of the “Prophet,” and it is no wonder if guided by them he sometimes contrived to influence never the Czar himself, but the latter’s Ministers and officials who had been told, they did not even know by whom, but probably by the loud voice of the public, that to do anything to please Rasputin was to secure for oneself the good graces of the highest people in the land. ”

“ It is an interesting psychological study: in some of the family this trait is manifest in their undeviating pursuit of worldly ambition, in others it is apparent in their views of morality and domesticity. In the case of the Empress, morality, domesticity and religion were subjects in which she brooked no contradiction.
Had the Emperor been less religious, he might have (from a worldly point of view) influenced his wife to have seen less of Rasputin. ”

“ Moreover I see the spectators also weeping, sympathising with my emotions, and looking aghast at what they hear.”8 This assertion of the vehement emotional effect produced by the words of the poet as declaimed or sung by the rhapsode, deserves all the more credit — because Plato himself, far from looking upon it favourably, either derides or disapproves it. Accepting it as a matter of fact, we see that the influence of rhapsodes, among auditors generally, must have been derived more from their efficacy as actors than from their ability as expositors. ”

“ Some of the extreme sects of the Raskol have actually reached this point. A perfect carnival of wild interpretation prevailed among this ignorant rabble, and crazy doctrines and grotesque tenets were not slow in following in its train.
The Old Believer loves his peculiar rites, not only for the meaning he puts into them, but also for the sake of the authority on which he holds them: the moral and social rationale of the schism is a deep respect for traditional customs and for the habits handed down from his forefathers. ”

“ The commencement of endless intrigues dates from this period, as Elidor and Germogen were afraid that Rasputin would become more important than themselves.
I must now deal with Rasputin’s alleged influence over the Empress. There is no doubt that her subconscious belief in his spiritual powers was confirmed by the long arm of coincidence. The Tsarevitch fell ill, the attack was severe and his parents were frantic. If any mother with an only son reads these pages, she will admit that the word “frantic” best describes the feelings of a mother at such a crisis. ”

“ I hesitated—I knew my husband’s distaste for anything{102} touching the supernatural. But, when I saw how ill Titi was, I hesitated no longer. At any rate, no one could possibly condemn the prayers offered for a sick child. Rasputin promised to come at once, and he arrived in company with an old woman who was dressed as a nun. This quaint creature refused to enter the boy’s bedroom, and sat on the stairs, praying. ”