“There is a country called God, and Russia shares her border with it.”

On Tuesday we went out with Natasha (the Russian girl who showed us around when we first got here), since it was her last night before heading back home for the summer. That was at 5pm so we had some time to kill. We ended up in the area where I live, walking around, seeing the park some, and going to this pretty little church that was built by Empress Elizabeth—the Preobrazhenskiy Church, or Church of the Transfiguration. The church is dedicated to the Preobrazhenskiy guards who helped her to come to power. It is designed by Stasov and very light and airy—not something I was expecting from an orthodox church; it’s definitely more neoclassical in style.

The gate running along the outside of the church is made from the metal of enemy Turkish guns.



It was nice to spend a little more time looking at icons, even if these weren’t especially important or old ones. Most were based off of more well known prototypes (some of which I had seen in the Russian museum). People revere these icons so much, for they are not just copies of some “better” icon. To Orthodox believers, the fact that it is just a copy makes no difference, because it refers to the original prototype and is thus being infused with all the original’s holiness. There’s actually a very strict way of making icons that hasn’t really changed in hundreds of years, so the icons made nowadays look the same as they used to, with strict rules about gesture, dress, pose, objects, and symbols that denote who’s who (a language able to be read by the faithful). There were/are even rulebooks from which to copy.

What was interesting at the church was to observe various people at prayer and worship. I came back the next day in the afternoon when I figured people would be getting off work (voyeuristic I know). I came in when the priest (or whomever oversees the church) was leading a small prayer off to the side of next to a depiction of the cross, lighting candles with some babushkas lined up before it. Orthodox churches are so different from any other church I’ve been in. No rows of benches to sit on, no big stained glass windows, no singular point of focus (toward the front). Instead it’s people milling about in the middle, along the sides, in little alcoves, lighting candles, bowing before, murmuring before, crossing themselves, and kissing icons. It’s all very strange and mysterious.

The whole notion of icons is odd, because Orthodox believers say that they do not venerate the material icon, but rather the image of God. For them, icons mimic Christ himself—a sublime combination of both the material and the spiritual—with the spiritual informing and breaking through onto the material. It is the “flesh”(or wood, canvas, paint, plaster, gold, etc.) made holy. By looking at these icons, and contemplating them before the low yellow light of slender candles, these people are able to be isolated and transported into some spiritual realm I can’t quite see.



The icons are not provocative like looking at Renaissance depictions of Christ or God, but they are something you must come to by yourself—to understand its signs and symbols, the shy beauty and message behind the seemingly rigid forms and expressionless faces. In icons, our world is an extension of theirs (through inverse perspective), instead of the painting being an extension of and window from our own world (as is usual in Renaissance and correct perspective). It is they who look at us quietly, as everything is from the perspective of those large, elliptical eyes. Everything in icons lies in the eyes and hands (for these were the two body parts left to the best icon masters in their workshops). As Professor Dorontchenkov explained, the icon will never speak to you, it is not seductive nor earthly or fleshy, you must first speak to it—and of course the hypnotic candlelight and incense facilitate this conversation.

The whole church and the icons inspire contemplation and focus, and it is through the contemplation of beauty that Russian Orthodox believers think we can come closer to God. It is this beauty that humans take part in and create (mimicking God’s own creation) when contemplating and creating icons, allowing people to rise above the squalor and horror of life (something Russians know much about). Golstein spoke some about Job, and how the story of Job has meant much to Russian Orthodox faith—Job must attempt to keep his faith in the face of incomprehensible suffering; and in answer to Job’s questions, God projects the beautiful panorama of His world. For Orthodox, God’s answer to suffering is this beauty (God’s very creation). For Russians who suffered so much throughout their history, and in a country that tended to lapse into the dark ages (and probably would still be had not Peter come along), this religion is far more understandable.

People are not very educated about their faith here, or why they do what they do or go to the liturgy (the Soviet period did a good job of trying to squash that out). Perhaps due to this ignorance about their religion, the incarnation of faith through beauty (icons and the church itself) became important. For simple people, seeing was believing. Faith quells despair, and Russia was and still is to a degree a land of human misery, uncertainty, and religiosity. I guess Orthodox would agree with Plato about beauty being the splendor of truth, but not about painting, because for them it is in mimetic representation (icons) that lies the ultimate reality—the invisible through visible. If nothing else these icons have a certain power by mere virtue of how much suffering and also how much happiness they have been bombarded with over the years and, with some icons, over many centuries.

Russians seem not to be able to exist without God, especially in precarious times (just look at Dostoevsky’s conversion). Religion is everywhere here. Everyone has a cross around their neck, and icons are everywhere—in marshutkis, in cabs, in classrooms, in random rooms of people’s homes. It was interesting to just look at people who came in at the church, from old grandmothers, to young teenagers in their skin tight jeans, to businessmen, to local thugs. I watched one rough looking young man come in, stand before one of the major icons, cross himself, and with reddened eyes begin to weep. I suppose he experienced something Russians call ymelenia (sp?), when one is overcome with God’s grace and tenderness—a softening of the heart in Golstein’s words. After reading and listening to lectures about the subject, it all solidified when watching this type of worship still go on and realizing how prevalent religion still is in Russian society. After being raised Jewish, where faith is augmented by the search for knowledge, questioning, study, the hope for wisdom, in a temple that was often just a modest vessel to gather and think and pray, unadorned with elaborate pictures of God or heaven or hell or whatever, it was very interesting to watch such a different approach to faith in action.

In any case, Patrick is going to tell me that this post was too long.

So dinner with Natasha was good. We went to a more American place that had their menu in English (YES!). We were all so happy to have more American style food that we all ordered pizzas.