Laurus

Read during Christmastide 2021–2022. I really enjoyed this book. It’s a great story and I really enjoyed the writing style. Made me really want to read the Alexander Romance, which comes up a lot and with which I am totally unfamiliar. I was sometimes not thrilled by the translation. It is impossible for me to verify how well she did, since I don’t read Russian at all. Nevertheless, there were some grammar mistakes in the “ye olde Englishe” parts that stood out to me, and elsewhere some vocabulary choices that surprised me. These caused me to wonder whether she always knew what she was doing. The glossary at the end had some very interesting and helpful entries on Russian culture, but was a little sparse, making me wonder why it was included at all. Jonathan Pageau points out that it is written in a realistic style, like the classic Russian novels, yet the supernatural breaks through; a kind of magical realism, similar to Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, but there they serve a kind of solipsistic fantasy, like the surrealist painters; in Laurus, rather, the miraculous elements move towards a Christian re-enchantment of the world.

The Book of Cognition

Ε

• After Arseny’s parents die of the plague, he moves in with his grandfather, Christopher
  • “One starry October night, Christopher took the boy to a meadow and showed him where the earthly firmament and the heavenly firmament meet.”
  • Arseny asks if the heavenly spheres are large
  • Christopher reckons the moon’s circumference is about 120,000 stadia, which if my calculations are correct (120,000 stadia = 72,000,000 Roman feet = 69,919,200 English feet = 13,242 English miles, and according to space.com the moon’s circumference is 6,783.5 miles) is about double today’s reckoning
  • And he reckons the sun’s circumference is about three million stadia, which if my calculations are correct (3·106 stadia = 1.8·109 Roman feet = 1.748·109 English feet = 331,057 English miles, and according to space.com the sun’s circumference is 2,715,396 miles) is about one eighth of today’s reckoning
  • Not bad!
• “Christopher told the boy about the double sun he had seen more than once in his life: its appearance to the east or to the west signifies great rain or wind.“
  • Is this the phenomenon known as Nebensonnen?

Ι

• Christopher reads a book “of Abraham not from the Holy Scripture”
  • This seems to be a text called the Testament of Abraham
  • God sends the Archangel Michael to tell Abraham that the time has come for him to pass from this life
  • Michael says it is not so simple to announce this to a friend of God
  • It is revealed instead to Isaac in a dream
  • Isaac awakes and goes to see his father in the night, throwing himself upon Abraham’s neck and kissing him, weeping
  • Michael sees them both weeping, and weeps with them, and “his tears were as stones”
  • Christopher and Arseny weep too
  • “And the Lord ordered Archangel Michael to adorn Death—who was coming to Abraham—with great beauty. And Abraham saw that Death was approaching him and he was very afrayde and said to Death: I implore thee, tell me, who may this be? And I ask you to get away from me, for my soul became confused when first I saw you. I cannot abide your glory and I see your beauty is not of this world.”
  • This is quoted again in ch. ΙΖ, p. 80, when after Ustina and the baby die, Arseny falls into a deep sleep, and has an out-of-body experience where he seems them all lying in the cabin
    • Death is there, and also Ustina’s soul, pale, inconspicuous, and childlike
    • “Upon seeing Death, Arseny’s soul said: I cannot abide your glory and I see your beauty is not of this world.”
• Arseny shouts when he wakes up and finds Christopher has died
  • “He inhaled all the available air in the house and shouted. When Elder Nikandr heard this shout at the monastery, he told Arseny: There is no need to shout so loudly, for his passing was peaceful.”
  • This mirrors a passage later on in ch. ΙΖ, p. 78, after Arseny has managed to pull the baby out of Ustina, and is trying to staunch the flow of blood
    • “Ustina, do not leave, Arseny shouted with such might that Elder Nikandr heard him at the monastery. The elder was standing in his cell, in prayer. I am afraid it is already useless to shout, said the elder (he was watching as the first snowflakes of the year floated in through the open door and, just as a draft blew out the candle, the moon broke out from behind the ragged clouds and illuminated the doorway), which is why I will pray for your life to be preserved, O Arseny. I will pray for nothing else in the coming days, said the elder, latching the door.”

IE

• Arseny teaches Ustina the alphabet and also the numerical values of the letters
  • We’re told that the year of Christ’s birth was ,ΕΦ (5500 years since the Creation of the World according to the Byzantine calendar, based on the Septuagint)
  • Later in this book we learn that the year AD 1492 is the 7000 in the Byzantine calendar, which would make Byzantine year 5500 the year 9 BC

ΙΘ

• After the villagers open up the cabin and find Arseny and his dead wife and son, they want to take the bodies to the potter’s field
  • The Elder Nikandr appears and tells Arseny to let them, and they have a tête-à-tête
  • He says he does not pity Arseny, as he is responsible for Ustina’s death
  • He will not say that it is already too late to save her life
  • “Because there is no already where she is now. And there is no still. And there is no time, though there is God’s eternal mercy.”
  • The soul is helpless after leaving the body, it only acts through its body
  • We are only saved in our earthly life, and Arseny took that away
  • “So then give her your own.”
  • “But is it really possible for me to live instead of her?”
  • “If approached from the proper perspective, yes. Love made you and Ustina a united whole, which means a part of Ustina is still here. It is you.”

The Book of Renunciation

Α

• Arseny is travelling away from Rukina Quarter and he sometimes talks to Ustina, though she remains silent
  • “Believe me, my love, I do not seek death, said Arseny. To the contrary, actually: my life is our mutual hope. Could I really seek death now?”
  • Kind of reminds me of Severian and Thecla
• In Velikoe Selo he begins to help people suffering from the plague
  • At first he has a rag tied over his face as a face mask, but after a while he realizes it has fallen off
  • He has no time to search for a new one, so he prays to his Guardian Angel “who was on his right shoulder, warding off the scourge of pestilence with his wings.”
  • That night Arseny dreams of his Guardian Angel, who never furls his wings, even at night
  • He asks how he does not tire
  • Angels do not tire, and if Arseny does not think about the finiteness of his own strength he too will not tire
  • “Know, O Arseny, that only he who does no fear drowning is capable of walking on water.”

Β

• Arseny travels along the frozen river Sheksna
  • “The Sheksna was not large, but the depth of its flowing water radiated a certain unusual energy of motion, even under the ice. This force was new in Arseny’s life and it made him uneasy. It awakened in him the thought of pilgrimage.”

Ϝ

• While living in Belozersk, Arseny learns some German from a merchant Afanasy Flea
  • “By following along as the mearchang read the unfamiliar symbols and translated the words they composed, Arseny grew interested in the correlations between languages. Thanks to the story for the confusion of tongues, Arseny knew of the existence of seventy-two world languages, but he had yet, in his whole life, to hear a single one of them beyond Russian.”
  • Refers to Genesis 10, where the number of the descendents of Noah listed is 72 (only in the Septuagint; the Masoretic and Vulgate have a different number of descendants)
• Arseny stays up late at the home of the boy Silvester and his mother Kseniya, reading Christofer’s manuscripts to them
  • One of the manuscripts is about Diogenes the Cynic: “When Diogenes was asked how to live with the truth, he answered: Do as with fyre: do not go so exceadyngely close that it will burn, but do not go so farre away or the colde will reache you.”
  • Arseny is about to begin a very Diogenian life, cf. ch. ΙΓ, p. 145

ΙΒ

• Arseny comes to the city of Pskov (after losing the manuscripts, health, nearly his memory, etc.)
  • He sees the walls of Pskov’s kremlin or krom
  • “Even a wall like that did not preclude the danger of an internal enemy if he were to appear behind that wall. You might say that would be the worst possible thing: now that would truly be a critical situation.”
  • Reminded me of Matthew 15:11, “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man: but what cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man;” Mark 7:15 “There is nothing from without a man that entering into him, can defile him. But the things which come from a man, those are they that defile a man.”

ΙΘ

• It seems like Arseny freezes to death but is miraculously revived by “a man with a splendid appearance”
  • “His face shone like a sunbeam and in his hand he held a branch scattered with scarlet and white flowers. The branch did not look like the branches from the decaying world and its beauty was unearthly.”
  • The pairing of red and white is christological

K

• Arseny/Holy Fool Ustin heals a man named Davyd
  • “What is this? the new abbess asks those present, herself most of all. Is this the result of our brother Ustin’s therapeutic measures or the Lorde’s miracle, appearing independently of human action? Essentially, the abbess answers herself: one does not contradict the other, for a miracle can be the result of effort multiplied by faith.”

The Book of Journeys

Α

• Ambrogio Flecchia predicted Columbus’ discovery of America, though his father is not especially interested
  • Ambrogio is worried about it though because in his vision the caravelles are ominously illuminated
  • “One did not want to think that on October 12, 1492, [his countryman] would do something unseemly, and thus the child was inclined to explain the light effects as excessive electrification within the Atlantic atmosphere.”
• Therapont, a merchant from Pskov comes to Florence, and Ambrogio is very interested in his Russian belief that the world will end in 1492 (7000 on the Byzantine calendar)
  • I am confused about why his name is Therapont and not Ferapont, since the translator usually gives names in local pronunciations

Β

• The least understandable of Ambrogio’s visions is related in this chapter
  • Story of the 1970s, a Leningrad State University archeology student, Yury Alexandrovich Stroev, is sent to Pskov where he meets Alexandra, a teacher he falls in love with
  • She asks why he chose medieval history
  • He says maybe because medieval historians always looked for moral reasons as an explanation for historical events; they didn’t seem to attach much significance to the mechanical causes or other direct connections between events
  • Instead they looked above the everyday and sought higher connections
  • Time connects all events, even though “people didn’t consider that connection reliable.”
  • Back in Leningrad Stroev tells a colleague about Alexandra, trying to figure out whether it is love he feels, since he finds that he misses her but isn’t “behaving like a madman”
  • “You’re talking about passion that really is a form of insanity. But I’m talking about love, which is sensible and, if you like, predestined. Because when you miss someone, we’re talking about lacking a piece of you, yourself. And you’re looking to be reunited with that piece.”
  • While heading back to Pskov to ask Alexandra to marry him, in an imagined conversation, Parkhomenko the violin player accuses Stroev of delaying, lacking an internal fire, of never reaching final conclusions like in his dissertation
    • “You’re afraid the decision you make will deprive you of further choice, so that paralyzes your will.”

Δ

• Arseny asks Abrogio how he can prove that his calendar calculations are correct, that Jesus Christ was born in the year 5500, that the year 7000 is approaching, etc.
  • He gives the following defence and Arseny tells Ustina it is sound reasoning, and consents to go to Jerusalem with him:
  • “The figures, O Arseny, have their own higher meaning, for they reflect that heavenly harmony you are asking about. Now listen carefully. The Passion of Christ fell on the sixth hour of the sixth day of the week and that indicates that the Saviour was born in the middle of the sixth millennium, meaning the 5,500th year since the Creation. This is also indicated because the sum of the measures of Moses’ ark, according to the twenty-fifth chapter of the Book of Exodus, totalled five and a half cubits. Thus Christ, like a true Ark, should also have come in the year 5500.”

Ε

• On letters of recommendation when travelling:
  • A person has not just come out of nowhere, they had a life before they arrived
  • He was “travelling honestly around an expanse”
  • “In the most general sense, journeys confirmed to the world the continuity of expanse, a concept that continued to evoke certain doubts.”
• East-West reconciliation
  • Mayor Gavriil: “I thought for a long time about who to send to Jerusalem and chose you. You are of varying faiths but both are true. And you seek the same Lord. You will be going to Orthodox and non-Orthodox lands and your differences will help you.”

Η

• Arseny is asking Ambrogio about how history unrolls like a scroll in the hands of the Almighty
  • Essentially he is wondering about free will and how people can have it if history is foreordained
  • “People are free, Ambrogio replied, but history is not free. As you say, there are so many intentions and actions that history cannot bring them all together, and only God can holde them all. I would even say that it is not people that are free but the individual person.”

ΙΒ

• Arseny and Ambrogio visit the Kiev Monastery of the Caves
  • I really liked the descriptions of the tombs and relics in this chapter
  • Arseny at the tomb of the Venerable Agapit, a physician
    • “You know, Agapit, all my healing, it is such a strange story… I can’t really explain it to you. Everything was more or less obvious, as long as I was using herbal treatments. I treated and knew God’s help came through the herbs. Well then. Now, though, God’s help comes through me, just me, do you understand? And I am less than my cures, far less, I am not worthy of them, and that makes me feel either frightened or awkward.”
    • Reminds of Severian and the Claw of the Conciliator
  • “The saints seemed to raise their heads, smile, and beckon, barely perceptibly, with their hands.”
    • “A city of saints, whispered Ambrogio, following the play of the shadow. They present us the illusion of life.”
    • “No, objected Arseny, also in a whisper. They disprove the illusion of death.”

ΙΔ

• Arseny tells his worries about Ustina to Ambrogio, whether anything he is doing is helping her
  • Ambrogio: “I am going to tell you something strange. It seems ever more to me that there is no time. Everything on earth exists outside of time, otherwise how could I know about the future that has not occurred? I think time is given to us by the grace of God so we will not get mixed up, because a person’s consciousness cannot take in all events at once. We are locked up in time because of our weakness.”

ΙΕ

• The caravan guardian Vlasy asks those around the campfire if they know whether people with dogs’ heads really exists
  • “The guardian was young and loved edifying conversations.”
  • The general impression of characters in this book is that they are all very curious about the world

ΙϜ

• Vlasy is dying, Arseny tells him that sooner or later we all die
  • Vlasy: “But I am dying sooner.”
  • Arseny: “The words sooner and later do not determine the content of occurrences. They relate only to the form in which they flow: time. Which Ambrogio reckons does not, in the final analysis, exist.”
  • Ambrogio: “The poet dies at, say, thirty-seven years old, and when people lament over him, they begin debating about what he might yet have written. But perhaps he had already accomplished what he had to and expressed all of himself.”
• Vlasy worries about dying without Communion and Confession
  • Arseny: “Confess to me. I will take your Confession to Jerusalem and, I do believe, your sins will turn to dust.”
  • He reiterates, that even though he will get there and confess after Vlasy’s death, after may well simply not exist

ΙΗ

• Brother Hugo knows a bit about the Hyperboreans
  • The surface of the Hyperborean Mountains is smooth like glass and easily reflects the suns
  • The mountains have a dish-like form that focusses on one point, warming the air
  • The height of the mountains prevents that air from mixing with the cold Arctic air
  • Hence the climate of Hyperborea is remarkably pleasant
  • The Hyperboreans reach such an age that they tire of the world and throw themselves off cliffs “for no apparent reason whatsoever, thus putting an end to their existence, which is, of course, a sin.”
• Brother Hugo: “Moving around within an expanse enriches our experience.”
  • Ambrogio: “It compacts time, and makes it more spacious.”

ΚΕ

• Surprises me that Latin is not mentioned as a spoken language. I’m assuming German is the lingua franca aboard the Saint Mark for some reason.

ΚϜ

• The storm chapter
• Really enjoyed this one
• I like the captain’s speculations about the seas that lie behind the heavenly firmament, and his fear that they might connect somewhere to the earthly seas (if one sailed unwittingly into the uppers seas, one might not be able to return to the lower seas again)
• This talk of waters up above is a great prelude to the storm
• The chapter is full of choppy, incomplete, interrupted sentences and images, and I love the mighty, chaotic feel it gives; Arseny is in awe of the storm, despite almost drowning, and his actions aren’t always clearly motivated, and this is reflected in the style of the text
• The storm brings darkness, but not the tranquil darkness of night
  • “This was a restless gloom that devoured light, contradicting the established changes from day to night. It was not uniform: it swirled, thickened, and dissolved depending on the density of the clouds, and its border was at the horizon itself, where a thin ribbon of sky still shone.”
• Weird passage, would like to know what the sailors were doing: “Two sailors were making their way past him along the deck. They moved, hunched, their feet set widely apart. And spreading their arms as if for embraces. They were pulling some sort of rope from the mast to the side of the ship, attempting to tighten it, but they themselves were tied to the mast with ropes. They kept slipping and falling to their knees. Their work, which was incomprehensible to Arseny, resembled either a dance or supplication. Perhaps they actually were praying.”
• The captain says he has seen St. Germanus, and that they might be saved by him
  • St. Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre (Autissiodurum) (c. 378–31 July, 448), who calmed a storm by anointing the sea with drops of oil on his passage from Gaul to Britain to combat the Pelagian heresy
  • Perhaps their helplessness in the storm is also an anti-Pelagian reminder that we are not saved by our own merits alone

The Book of Repose

There is a Wolfian break in the narrative after Ambrogio is killed in the Holy Land, and Arseny is now back at Pskov. Holy Fool Foma is now dead, and a pestilence has struck.

B

• Arseny fights against human fear, not just the illness
  • He tells people not to panic and stay inside their homes, neglecting their neighbours
  • If only we had heeded him during coronavirus!
• “Time truly was going backwards. It did not accommodate the events designated for him—those events were too grand and raucous. Time was coming apart at the seams, like a wayfarer’s travelling bag, and it was showing its contents to the wayfarer, who contemplated them as if for the first time.”

Γ

• This chapter is Arseny’s prayer at the Holy Sepulchre
• “Here I am, O Lord, and here is the life I have already been able to live before coming to see you. And also that part of my life that, by Your ineffable kindness, I may still live.”
• “I attempted, as best I could, to serve as a substitute for Ustina and perform, in her name, good deeds that I could never have done in my own name.”
• Arseny is rebuked for seeking knowledge and a sign (that he is saving Ustina), for seeking horizontal motion without vertical motion
• Elder by the Empty Tomb: “Knowledge does not involve spiritual effort; knowledge is obvious. Faith assumes effort. Knowledge is repose and faith is motion.”
• Arseny just wants to know the general direction of his and Ustina’s journey
• “But is not Christ a general direction? Asked the elder. What other kind of direction do you seek? … I am not saying wandering is useless: there is a point to it. Do not become like your beloved Alexander who had a journey but had no goal. And do not be enamoured of excessive horizontal motion.”

Ϝ

• Arseny comes to Kirillov Monastery; he says to Elder Innokenty: “I think I recognize you, O elder. Might it have been you I spoke with in Jerusalem?”
• “Quite possible, answered Elder Innokenty.”

Ζ

• Arseny/Amvrosy talks to Ustina about time going in cycles
  • the different stages of the Passion commemorated at the Hours of the day
  • the days of the week and their characters
  • the great cycle of the year determined by the sun and moon
• Elder Innokenty tells him time is more like a spiral: “After I have become enamoured of geometry, I will liken the motion of time to a spiral. This involves repetition but on some new, higher level. Or, if you like, the experience of something new but not from a clean slate. With the memory of what was experienced previously.”
  • This was brought up in Jonathan Pageau’s interview of Vodolazkin
  • Jonathan thinks of the final image in the Book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem, containing the garden of Eden inside itself
  • It is both a return to the beginning, but also a transformation into something completely new
  • History is turning, but also ascending
  • Elder Innokenty’s walk around the monastery: the first circuit he is walking, the second circuit he is actually floating above the ground, but only a little bit
  • Thus Amvrosy is able to see the shape of Christian Time as a spiral
  • See also J.R.R. Tolkien’s Letter 78 to his son Christopher where he talks about the impossibility of recovering Eden, though we may come to something like it, since the way of repentancce is a spiral and not a closed circle

ΙΕ

• Arseny/Ustin/Amvrosy takes the Great Schema and the name of Laurus on 18 August, Feast of the Martyrs Florus and Laurus
• Laurus says to Elder Innokenty that he struggles to believe that his previous lives were really him, “Life resembles a mosaic that scatters into pieces.”
• The elder reminds him that only close up does a mosaic seem to be separate pieces, but there is “one who looks from afar” in whom all the pieces are gathered together

Κ–ΚΓ

• Wonderful ending, Laurus humbles himself to save the pregnant woman Anastasia’s baby, redeeming himself and Ustina; I was very moved