On Hieromonk Clement (Sederholm)

A recent comment on this post, by ‘a Lutheran (conservative Missouri Synod-type) with many years’ interest in Orthodoxy’, suggested the idea of a little post on Hieromonk Clement (Sederholm) (1830-1878), the 19th-c. Lutheran convert to Orthodoxy, monk of Optina, and biographer of the first two Optina Elders, Ss Leonid and Anthony. I don’t have a lot to offer, but I know of passages on Fr Clement in two of my books—Leonard Stanton’s The Optina Pustyn Monastery in the Russian Literary Imagination and Fr Sergius Chetverikov’s Life of the Optina Elder, St Ambrose. First, here is the passage from Fr Chetverikov:

As if to strengthen the physically infirm Elder, the Lord sent him right at that time several active and devoted assistants. In 1863 Constantine Karlovich Sederholm became numbered among the skete brethren. He was the son of the senior pastor of a Protestant [Lutheran] church in Moscow, a man with a university education and a friend of T.I. Philipov and the poet B.N. Almazov, a master of the Greek language and literature, who had at one time been an attache for the Over-Procurator of the Holy Synod, Count Alexei P. Tolstoy. He had travelled to the East and was well acquainted with the condition of the churches in the Middle East, and had been converted from Protestantism to Orthodoxy ten years before in that very Skete by Elder Macarius. He was a deeply religious man and devoted to Orthodoxy, which he had felt drawn to from his very childhood.

When he joined the Skete, Sederholm became one of Elder Ambrose’s closest disciples. He helped him with his voluminous correspondence, as well as the publication of books that continued during Fr Ambrose’s time as it had been in Fr Macarius’ time.

In monasticism Sederholm received the name Clement, and, having lived for fifteen years in the skete, he died of pneumonia in 1878. (His biography was written by Constantine N. Leontiev and entitled: Fr Clement Sederholm, a Hieromonk of Optina Monastery (Moscow, 1882), and published by the Kazan-Ambrose Shamordino Convent.) [1]

Here is what Stanton has to say about Fr Clement (it looks like he has confused the father’s name with that of his son):

The author [of the Life of Elder Leonid of Optina], Karl (later Father Kliment) Zedergol’m, died in 1878, before Dostoevsky’s last visit to Optina. Zedergol’m was a cantakerous man of great culture and learning. He was at home both in a monastic setting and in the inner circles of Russia’s literary beau monde. He graduated in classics from Moscow University in 1853, having written a master’s thesis on Cato the Elder that [Constantine] Leont’ev, his biographer, called both stimulating and controversial. In the same year, Zedergol’m converted from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy. (His father was the head Lutheran pastor in Moscow at the time.) Zedergol’m was at home in the brilliant Moscow salons, particularly Mrs Elagin’s with its erudite ferment of German Romantic thought and Slavophilism. He was a protégé of Ivan Vasil'evich Kireevskii, Russia’s first original philosopher, and counted among the friends of his youth some of the leading lights of the Moscow literary intelligentsia, including Tertii Filippov and the ‘young editors’ of The Muscovite. After a brief career as a layman working in the Holy Synod, Zedergol’m entered Optina Pustyn in 1862 and soon became a monk and a priest as well. He was never himself an elder, nor was he possessed of a sufficiently irenic disposition ever to have been considered for elderhood. He devoted himself to literary endeavors at Optina, as a translator of spiritual works from Latin and Greek into Russian, as the author of the elders’ biographies, and as secretary to Elder Amvrosii. [2]

In this post, Christopher Orr discusses a recent book on Fr Clement which contains Leontiev’s biography, eliciting in the comments an impromptu translation of the opening paragraphs, rendered by one John Hogg. Here is Hogg’s translation:

Father Clement Sederholm, Hieromonk of the Optina Hermitage

Constantine Leontyev

I

In the spring of 1878, in April, Hieromonk Clement, in the world Constantine Karlovich Sederholm, passed away from inflammation of the lungs. He was not yet fifty years old.

Fr Clement was neither an eloquent preacher nor did he have the exterior appearance of a bodily ascetic that would capture the imagination. He was also not one of the famous spiritual fathers or elders whose spiritual guidance and advice is sought not only by monks but also by laypeople of all conditions and ages. He didn’t live long enough to occupy an administrative position. He had only just been made the abbot of one of the monasteries of the Kaluga province when his days were cut short by an unexpected and early death.

Fr Clement wrote and printed but you could not really say either that his publications were numerous, nor especially influential nor did they contain anything particularly biting, uniquely characteristic, or really anything out of the ordinary.

In spite of all of these things that he was not, nevertheless, Fr Clement was a remarkable person and an even more remarkable monk.

His merits, his story, and his role were completely unique and to leave them in oblivion would be the greatest injustice.

Here is a short history of his previous life in the world. Instead [of] a dry and sequential listing of events, instead of the usual formulaic list of obituaries, I will give you what he himself told me in two or three chats about his earliest childhood.

Constantine Karlovich Sederholm’s father was the Reformed Superintendent of Moscow. He had a few other brothers. One of them was in the last campaign of the Caucus army as a general. He passed away a little bit earlier than Fr Clement. This is what he himself told me: ‘Our family was a good and well respected family, but you know, it was a dry, German family. Protestantism didn’t repulse me at all but nor did it attract me. I didn’t like our church service. I experienced a completely different feeling when I happened to be in an Orthodox Church. I had strong religious needs but everything that our pastors used to say wasn’t quite in accord with my heart and it didn’t satisfy me.’

Finally, in a series of posts here, Ручьёв of Incendiary—at Orr’s instigation—has translated ten letters of Fr Clement to his Father. Here is the tenth letter:

In your last letter you asked me how I, without an alphabet [the basics?], want to make a grammatical, historical exegesis in order to penetrate into the meaning of Scripture. Academic exegesis is, all the same, an invention of the mind, and the mind did not come from exegesis, therefore, even though it helps many, it is not such an urgent necessity. By the way, if there will be the possibility, I will try to acquire exegesis. Many have the correct understanding even without exegesis, and many others are mistaken in their exegesis as a few Swiss pastors, who consider it unnecessary to believe in the Holy Trinity, in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Name in which they were baptized. By the way, if you re-read my last letter you would see that I only asked what can be done without exegesis. I openly admit to you that in your letter I did not find any answer to my questions. So, for example, I asked you to explain the Apostolic words (Jude 1:19) that people, having separated themselves from the unity of faith, are natural (1 Cor. 2:14) and do not have the Spirit. You pass over that place in silence and say only that a Christian must strive for unity. Why does not the Apostle not say that about those who do not strive for unity, but only about those who separate themselves from it? You have not explained this. In place of this you object to opinions which I never said and against trends which our Church never had. For example, you speak about those who say that they already perfectly attained to the truth of everything holy and about those who want to cover up human errors in the Church with divine rules. What gave you cause for this I do not know. About the first, I never spoke and never even thought. The second has a bit of truth in relationship to the Roman church, against which you justly object to in many things, but that does not concern our Church, which you very often do not separate from the Roman Church. That which concerns the Church itself, I find contradictions in you. At first you, as it were, agree that it is from God, but then, as it were, reject its divine beginning and relate it to an institution. Well, no. The Church is the pillar and ground of truth [I Tim. 3:15], and the Lord said, I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it [Matt. 16:18]. What kind of comparison can be made here with an institution? I don’t understand.

Well, I wrote to you what came to mind and what was passed to the pen.

January 25, 1864

[1] Fr Sergius Chetverikov, Elder Ambrose of Optina (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1997), pp. 149-50.

[2] Leonard Stanton, The Optina Pustyn Monastery in the Russian Literary Imagination (NY: Peter Lang, 1995), p. 152.

St Sebastian of Optina on Tolstoy's Last Days, Part 2

Continued from this post.

After his departure from Optina on 29 October 1910, Tolstoy’s next stop was the women’s monastery at Shamordino, which was under the guidance of the Optina Elders and where his sister, Mother Maria, lived. According to Stanton, upon arrival Tolstoy immediately spoke to his sister about his inability to continue living at Yasnaya Polyana and his wife’s suicide attempt. Mother Maria seems to have sympathised with this, concluding that his wife was an unbalanced person. Then, according to Stanton, Tolstoy related ‘his intention to rent a small cottage near Shamordino where he could settle into a life of quiet contemplation until the end of his days’. Apparently he had been thinking about doing something like this prior to the flight as well, having written to ‘a peasant admirer’ just five days earlier asking for help finding a ‘small cottage’ in his village. [1] Stanton speculates that Tolstoy may have been trying to get away from both his wife and his ‘followers’, both of whom were vieing for control over him and his wealth. Stanton writes:

Tolstoy’s letters and diaries reveal occasional impatience with the ‘Tolstoyans’ and in particular with the idea of Tolstoyan colonies. Could the prospect of a simple life in the shadow of Shamordino’s and Optina’s walls have held forth the hope of liberation from the clutches of both of the camps that competed for his love and allegiance? [2]

The evidence is inconclusive, though Stanton is not persuaded that Tolstoy was seeking reconciliation with the Church at this time.

But the idea of staying at Shamordino was abandoned when Tolstoy’s daughter Alexandra, a zealous disciple, arrived, ‘bringing news that raised her father’s fear that he would be pursued by his wife and possibly the police’. On the morning of 31 October, they boarded a train south, debarking that afternoon when Tolstoy became sick with fever. For an entire week, Alexandra and the other ‘Tolstoyans’ prevented anyone, including Tolstoy’s wife, from seeing him. St Barsanuphius, the skete superior at Optina, was among those who arrived (on 5 November), only to be denied access. According to Stanton:

Most commentators have portrayed Elder Varsanofii as an emissary of the Holy Synod, commissioned to receive Tolstoy back into the Church on his deathbed. This view has not been documented by any telegrams or letters from the Holy Synod to Optina. Elder Varsanofii, who died in 1912, did not leave any verifiable confirmation or denial of the Synod’s having entrusted him with any duties at Astapovo. Still, the preponderance of circumstantial evidence indicates that Varsanofii’s presence at Astapovo came to assume at least a semi-official character, whatever his original stimulus to go to Tolstoy might have been. [3]

But then Stanton continues:

It is not unreasonable to hypothesize that Varsanofii went to Astapovo in a pastoral role, rather than as a representative of the Holy Synod. Tolstoy, it could be argued, had made an overture to the Church in having visited Optina just several days past—and this without any prompting by the Synod. Nor is it difficult to entertain the possibility that someone at Astapovo, or even Mariia Nikolaevna at Shamordino, might have sent a message to Optina requesting an elder be sent. The Tolstoyans at Astapovo, and Aleksandra in particular, were genuinely concerned to shelter Tolstoy from any conversations he might have found stressful or unpleasant; that is why his wife and sons were barred until the last few minutes before his death. Moreover, the Tolstoyans clearly had an interest in preventing any reconciliation between their hero and the Orthodox Church, and they made sure that Tolstoy had no chance to give Varsanofii either a deathbed testimony of conversion or even a word of repentance. Finally, after the dust of the events had settled, it would also be in the interest of the more cynical of the Tolstoyans to obscure, if possible, the true nature of Varsanofii’s visit to Tolstoy at Astapovo, if his mission was truly pastoral. [4]

Now, apart from the debatability of the notion that St Barsanuphius was either sent by the Synod, or came out of pastoral concern, but both could not have been true simultaneously, this account is still rather incomplete. True, Stanton adds a lengthy endnote mentioning the views on the matter of Prof. Ivan M. Kontsevich, who, in Optina Pustyn’ i eia vremia, offers testimony from a couple of other sources that St Barsanuphius had been summoned by a telegram from Astapovo [presumably sent by Tolstoy himself] requesting an Elder, and that a report that the Elder was sent by the Holy Synod had been deliberately falsified. Concerning Kontsevich’s account, Stanton writes:

Although Kontsevich’s coloration of his reprise of the events at Astapovo is highly speculative, it is not altogether implausible. It is consisten with the minority view that Tolstoy’s appearance at Optina in October 1910 resulted from more than an accidental decision made in the haste of his flight. [5]

But let us now consider St Sebastian’s testimony, which because of their separation by the Iron Curtain, even Kontsevich would not likely have known. St Sebastian takes up the story after Tolstoy’s departure from Optina:

Later there was a message to the Elder [Joseph] from Tolstoy’s sister, the Nun Maria, that he had left her from Shamordino. Then from the Astapovo railroad station a telegram arrived for us concerning the illness of Leo Nikolaevich in which, in his name, the Elder was asked to come to him. Fr Barsanuphius immediately left, but those who surrounded Tolstoy would not let him see Leo Nikolaevich. Fr Barsanuphius passed a letter in to his daughter Alexandra.

He wrote to her that ‘it was, in fact, the will of your father that I come.’ All the same, they didn’t let him in. Nor would they allow Tolstoy’s wife Sofia Andreyevna. She had come in her own train-carriage and lived at the station in it. This was a very difficult experience for Fr Barsanuphius; he returned nearly ill and always became upset when he recalled it. And he said, ‘Though he was a lion [alluding to Tolstoy’s Christian name], yet he could not break the chains. It’s a pity, a great pity.’ Elder Joseph also felt deeply sorry for him.

Fr Barsanuphius said that it was not true that someone had sent him. ‘It was solely because of the desire of Leo Nikolaevich himself that I went to Astapovo,’ he affirmed. [6]

Although Mother Maria did not think Tolstoy had gone to Optina with the intention of returning to the Church, this does not mean that he didn’t either change his mind when finally facing the prospect of death, or at least desire something short of full reconciliation—perhaps even just some kind of prayer or reassurance. it seems to me that if Ss Barsanuphius and Sebastian say that there was a telegram from Astapovo, then they are to be believed over those who had motives, including mercenary ones, to lie about the issue. Prof. Kontsevich reports the testimony of Sergei Morevich, a ‘buffet attendant at Astapovo’. As Morevich apparently told it, ‘The fact of Tolstoy’s having visited Optina Pustyn and the summoning of the elder was like a bomb exploding in the Tolstoyan circle, which couldn’t withstand the blow and fell to pieces.’ [7]


[1] Leonard Stanton, The Optina Pustyn Monastery in the Russian Literary Imagination: Iconic Vision in Works by Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, & Others (NY: Peter Lang, 1995), p. 211.

[2] Ibid., p. 213.

[3] Ibid., pp. 213-4.

[4] Ibid., p. 214.

[5] Ibid., p. 227, n. 23.

[6] Tatiana V. Torstensen, Elder Sebastian of Optina, ed. Vera Koroleva, tr. David Koubek (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1999), pp. 79-80.

[7] Stanton, p. 227, n. 23.

St Sebastian of Optina on Tolstoy's Last Days, Part 1

Until quite recently, when I began tutoring a grad student working on an independent study course on Tolstoy, I had only recalled vague circumstances of the author’s last days. I knew something about a flight from Yasnaya Polyana, something about Optina Pustyn monastery, and something about a train station, and that was about all, literally. But in the course of discussing the possibility of my student doing a paper on the Confession which would focus on death (as it turned out, this idea was largely abandoned), I reread with special attentiveness the account of Tolstoy’s last days in Leonard Stanton’s fascinating The Optina Pustyn Monastery in the Russian Literary Imagination. Then, while looking through the Platina translation of the life of St Sebastian the Confessor, Elder Sebastian of Optina, I was very excited to learn even more about this fascinating story. To begin with, here is a typical account, this one taken from Wikipedia (here).

Tolstoy died of pneumonia at Astapovo station in 1910 after leaving home in the middle of winter at the age of 82. His death came only days after gathering the nerve to abandon his family and wealth and take up the path of a wandering ascetic; a path that he had agonized over pursuing for decades. He had not been at the peak of health before leaving home, his wife and daughters were all actively engaged in caring for him daily. He had been speaking and writing of his own death in the days preceding his departure from home, but fell ill at the train station not far from home. The station master took Tolstoy to his apartment, where his personal doctors were called to the scene. He was given injections of morphine and camphor. The police tried to limit access to his funeral procession, but thousands of peasants lined the streets at his funeral. Still, some peasants were heard to say that, other than knowing that ‘some nobleman had died’, they knew little else about Tolstoy.

But this account leaves out so much as to seem almost deliberately misleading. Noting the statement that the great writer ‘fell ill at the train station not far from home’, one would think he had only just left and had as yet been nowhere to speak of before falling sick. But from the time of his flight to the time of his sickness—28 October to 31 October 1910—nearly four full days had lapsed. During that time, he had visited two places: Optina Pustyn and its womens’ dependency, Shamordino, where Tolstoy’s sister, Mother Maria, was living the monastic life.

According to Stanton, Tolstoy had been to Optina at least four other times, beginning in 1877, and had visited Elder Ambrose on three of those occasions. The latter said very little about their final conversation (in 1890), but told Constantine Leontiev:

‘When Tolstoy came into my cell, I blessed him, and he kissed my hand. But when he came to leave, in order to avoid a blessing, he kissed me on the cheek.’ When he was saying this, the elder was barely breathing—he was so worn out from his conversation with the Count. ‘He is very proud,’ added Father Amvrosii. [1]

While it is impossible to be sure of his plans prior to the morning of 28 October 1910, it is clear that Tolstoy had had Optina on the mind, if not as a destination, then as a sort of spiritual symbol or choice lying before him. According to Stanton:

We must wonder if thoughts of Optina prompted him to read Dostoevsky in the troubled month prior to his flight from home, or if his reading of The Brothers Karamazov turned his thoughts to Optina. Whatever the case, Tolstoy read the first part of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in October 1910. He mentioned Elder Zosima in a diary entry of 19 October, and nine days later, on the 28th, he was at Optina. On 26 October, only two days before his flight, Tolstoy had a dream in which Grushenka, Dostoevsky’s heroine, was involved in a romance with Nikolai Strakhov, the critic who had accompanied Tolstoy to Optina in 1877. [2]

Stanton concludes that the flight to Optina ‘was, if not unpredictable, made suddenly and in haste’, but that nevertheless ‘he did go to Optina, and he did so of his own free will’. At this point, Stanton gives the account of this visit:

While at Optina, Tolstoy did not visit either Iosif or Varsanofii, the two elders then in residence. Tolstoy and Dr Makovitskii [‘his follower and personal physician’] arrived at Optina in the early evening of 28 October. They were given a comfortable room at the monastery’s hostel. Tolstoy had some tea, and by eight o’clock he was making a comparatively long journal entry, describing the previous night’s disturbance, his flight, and the wearying trip to Optina. That night Tolstoy slept uneasily. He awoke on the morning of the 29th to hear news brought from Yasnaya Polyana by Chertkov’s assistant, Alyosha Sergeenko. Some of it was bad. Sofiia Andreevna [Tolstoy’s wife] had attempted suicide by drowning, and the family had given some consideration to having Tolstoy seized by the police and declared mentally incompetent by the court. Other news brought Tolstoy some comfort. Letters from [his disciple] Chertkov and [his daughter and follower] Aleksandra applauded his departure and reassured him that all was for the best.

Later in the day, Tolstoy, who walked regularly for exercise, took a stroll about Optina’s grounds, pausing here and there to exchange a few inconsequential words with some ordinary monks. He never spoke with Elder Iosif, though; he ventured up to the hermitage, lingering for a time at Iosif’s door, but he left after a discomfiting interchange with the Elder’s cell attendant.

That afternoon, the old novelist and his physician left Optina to continue their journey. Although Tolstoy expressed an intention to return to Optina, he did not live to do so. [3]

I shall take up the story after their departure in another post. For now, I’d like to relate the story of the visit to Optina from another perspective—that of St Sebastian, who claims to have been the cell attendant at the time of Tolstoy’s visit. According to St Sebastian:

When Leo Tolstoy came to the Skete on one of the last days of October, 1910, I was serving as Elder Joseph’s cell attendant [an obedience St Sebastian fulfilled from his entrance to the monastery in January of 1909 until St Joseph’s death in April of 1911]. Leo Tolstoy had arrived in Optina from Kozelsk the day before, late in the evening, and had spent the night in the monastery guesthouse. The guest master, Fr Michael, later related that, after tea, Tolstoy had questioned him about the Elders and asked which of them was receiving people, and if Elder Joseph might receive him, saying that he had come to visit and have a chat with the Elders. [4]

Torstensen then relates the testimony of the guestmaster, Fr Michael:

They came—there were two of them. They knocked. I opened the door. Leo Nikolaevich asked, ‘May I enter?’

I said, ‘Please do.’

But he said, ‘Perhaps it’s not possible for me; I’m Tolstoy.’

‘Why not?’ I said, ‘we’re happy to receive everyone who has a desire to see us.’

Then he said, ‘Well, greetings, brother.’

I answered, ‘Greetings, your Excellency.’

He said, ‘You weren’t offended that I called you brother? All men are brothers.’

I replied, ‘Not in the least; and it’s true that all are brothers.’

Well, that’s how things stood between us. I conducted him into the best room. Early in the morning I sent an assistant to the skete Superior, Fr Barsanuphius, to warn him that Tolstoy was coming to the Skete to see him. [5]

At this point, Torstensen returns to St Sebastian’s testimony:

Elder Joseph was ill, and I was sitting beside him. Elder Barsanuphius called on us and related that Fr Michael had sent to warn him that Tolstoy was coming to see him. Elder Barsanuphius said, ‘I asked him, “Who told you?” and he replied that Tolstoy himself had said so.’

Hearing this, Elder Joseph said, ‘If he comes, we’ll receive him with affection, respect and joy, even though he’s been excommunicated. This time he came on his own—no one indeed forced him to come, otherwise we couldn’t receive him.’ Then they sent me to look outside the skete enclosure. I saw Leo Nikolaevich and reported to the Elders that he was walking close alongside the house, at first approaching, then stepping back.

Elder Joseph said, ‘It’s hard for him. He’s surely come to us for living water. Go and invite him in, if he’s come to see us. Go ask him.’ I went out, but he was no longer there; he had left. He could only have just gone off but, after all, he would have been on a horse, so I couldn’t have caught up with him. . . . [6]

And so the final visit to Optina ended. From his words to Fr Michael about having ‘a chat with the Elders’, it does not sound as though Tolstoy was quite ready to reconcile with the Church. But that he wanted to speak with them seems significant, and that he did not seems a great tragedy. Based on St Sebastian’s testimony, it does not seem likely that Tolstoy really did have ‘a discomfiting interchange with the Elder’s cell attendant’, since according to St Sebastian he didn’t speak with him at all. One wonders if this supposed ‘cell attendant’ was simply some other monk who recognised Tolstoy and disapproved of his being there.

But the entire story is not quite done. I shall tell the rest—continuing to place Stanton’s and St Sebastian’s accounts in juxtaposition—in a subsequent post or posts.

Continued here.


[1] Qtd. in Leonard Stanton, The Optina Pustyn Monastery in the Russian Literary Imagination: Iconic Vision in Works by Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, & Others (NY: Peter Lang, 1995), p. 206.

[2] Ibid., p. 210.

[3] Ibid., pp. 210-1.

[4] Tatiana V. Torstensen, Elder Sebastian of Optina, ed. Vera Koroleva, tr. David Koubek (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1999), p. 78.

[5] Ibid., pp. 78-9.

[6] Ibid., p. 79.

'A Successor of the Grace of Optina Eldership'—St Sebastian the Confessor

Today, 6 April on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of St Sebastian the Confessor of Optina and Karaganda (1884-1966). Although St Sebastian carried out his struggles as an Elder far away from the monastery of his repentance, in exile in Kazakhstan, in the decree of his glorification, Archbishop Alexei of Alma-Ata and Semipalatinsk describes him as ‘successor of the grace of Optina eldership’. [1] (For those as yet unfamiliar with the Elders of Optina, I have written of their number and glorification, compiled some links, and reposted an overview in a post here.) St Sebastian was renowned for his ‘soft-heartedness and compassion’. [2] According to his Life, St Barsanuphius of Optina called him ‘the grace-filled one’, while his own Elder, St Joseph, said, ‘He is a tender soul.’ [3] Here is a brief overview of his life by the compiler of the available material on St Sebastian at the time of his glorification, Vera Koroleva:

One of the last elders who grew up from the root of pre-revolutionary Optina is Schema-archimandrite Sebastian (Fomin, 1966)—a disciple [and cell-attendant] of Elder Joseph and, after his death, of Elder Nektary. Having absorbed within himself the traditions and the grace-filled patristic spirit of Optina Monastery and having been tried, like iron, in the furnace of fiery trials, enduring banishment and imprisonment in the soviet camps, he, by the ineffable judgments of God, bore his service of eldership in the sultry steppe of Central Kazakhstan, in much-suffering and blessed Karaganda where, during the period from the 1930s to the 1950s, one of the most tragic acts of the God-fighting drama of our century unfolded. The unbounded steppe of Kazakhstan stretches out like a massive antimension, filled with the blood of the martyrs and sanctified by their prayers, over which the Optina Elder, Schema-archimandrite Sebastian of blessed memory, extended his powerful wings. [4]

Even as a child, St Sebastian had longed to follow an older brother into Optina. He studied hard and ‘had a great thirst for reading’. [5] He worked as a shepherd, being very fond of animals all his life, and this gave him time for reading and prayer. Later, as a monk under the guidance of Elders Joseph and Nektary, ‘he developed the spiritual gifts which he had had since birth and acquired many new, lofty ones—the gifts of meekness, discernment, exalted prayer, clairvoyance, mercifulness and compassion.’ [6] He was eventually ordained a hierodeacon. After the forced closure of the monastery in 1923, St Sebastian followed his Elder, St Nektary, performing errands for him, and undergoing ordination to the priesthood, until the latter’s blessed repose in 1928 under the epitrachelion of the future Archbishop Andrew of Novo-Diveevo.

St Sebastian’s hagiographer, T.V. Torstensen, tells us the Elder ‘had a natural breadth of soul, a love for beauty in general and for the beauty of nature in particular. . . . He felt great warmth and love for art. There was a certain special softness of soul in him.’ She continues:

All of these qualities and all of his spiritual experience—acquired during fourteen years of life in the Skete and nineteen years of close daily interaction with the great Optina Elders, his life having passed under their guidance—predetermined his path toward active ascetic service to men, taking the most varied forms of help. [7]

For five years St Sebastian served as a priest in Tambov province, continuing to receive spiritual children. The Elder became a Confessor for the Faith when he was arrested and taken to the GPU in 1933. According to the files of the UFSB in Tambov province, St Sebastian told the authorities:

I look upon all the measures of the soviet authority as the anger of God; this authority is a punishment for the people. I have expressed such views among those close to me, as well as among the rest of the citizens with whom I have had occasion to speak on this topic. At these times I have said that one must pray, pray to God, and also live in love. Then only can we be delivered from this. I have been little pleased with the soviet authorities because of the closing of churches and monasteries, since by this the Orthodox Faith is being destroyed. [8]

St Sebastian was placed in a forced labour camp in the summer of 1933 and was transferred to Karaganda in Kazakhstan in May of 1934. He remained there, subjected to beatings and tortures in an attempt to destroy his faith, until the eve of the Ascension, 1939. A number of spiritual children, in particular a few of the nuns of Shamordino, followed him into exile and did what they could to help him while he suffered in the camp. When he was released, these nuns formed the core of a community of spiritual children who lived as best they could a monastic life in the world. As long as necessary, the Elder would conduct services in secret at the homes of the faithful. Torstensen writes:

Ah, Batiushka! Batiushka! How gentle, radiant and loving! Whoever was once with him at Lower Street will never forget it. Soon the residents of Mikhailovka learned about him and began to invite him over to their houses with liturgical request, since he could not receive them at home. After the daily refectory meal Fr Sebastian would take the addresses which had been left for him and would go to conduct the requested services until evening. Permission to conduct the various services had not been given, but he went without refusing. The people in Karaganda were faithful then. ‘Don’t betray him,’ they would say. Even the children, although they all knew, observed the rule ‘not to tell’.

People in other suburbs also heard about him and strove to come to see him. Yea, and not only people, but even the beasts as well. When he, small and insignificant, walked with his quick, light stride along the street of Mikhailovka in his long, black overcoat and black skufia, dogs would crawl out from behind all the fences to see him. They rushed, fearing to be late, to miss him. When the gap in the fence was narrow and they could not crawl through it, then, having sniffed the Elder, they would dig a hole with their paws under the fence in order to force their heads through and would lie there, flat as a pancake. Laughing, their owners would tell of this, and I myself saw it. ‘When Fr Sebastian walks by,’ the people said, ‘they crawl out like snakes.’ Where houses had low garden fences, the dogs would fly over them like birds. They would all decorously sit in front of their homes. They did not run out onto the street, nor did they bark at anyone. They would sit quietly, following the Elder with their heads as he passed by. What were they trying to express? Ah, the dogs of Mikhailovka! The dogs of Mikhailovka! How they impressed me with the keenness and depth of their dog souls and hearts. [9]

It wasn’t finally until 1955 that St Sebastian obtained permission to turn the very shabby house church in which he and the sisters had been praying into a church temple where they could hold the Divine Liturgy. Gradually, in order to get help in caring for the spiritual needs of the faithful in those dark times, the Elder brought about the ordination of three of his spiritual children to the priesthood. One of them, the former church warden, Paul Alexandrovich Kovalenko, ‘had competed several times, with the Elder’s blessing, in debates with a Baptist leader who had come to the church courtyard to put the “popes” [priests] to shame in debate. But the Baptist himself had been put to shame by Paul Alexandrovich.’ [10]

The Russian literary critic and philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin, in one of the religious debates characteristic of the early years of the godless communist regime was reported to have ‘complained of, and worried about, the fact that socialism had no care for the dead (as if there weren’t enough services for the dead!), and that, accordingly, in some future time, the people would not fogive us such neglect’. [11] Thus, it is interesting to note that the commemoration of the dead played an enormous rôle in the Elder’s ministry. Torstensen relates the following story:

Once the Elder was walking with the nuns Maria and Matha to the cemetery which lay beyond Tikhonovka. There, in the middle of the cemetery, were common graves in which two hundred reposed peasants a day had been buried, who had died from hunger and sickness. They had been buried without funerals, without mounds, without crosses. The Elder, after seeing and hearing about it, said, ‘Here, day and night, over these common graves of the martyrs, there burn candles from earth to heaven.’ And Fr Sebastian was an intercessor for them all. [12]

When St Sebastian’s community was petitioning the authorities for the opening of the church in Mikhailovka, Torstensen tells us, ‘The parents of soldiers who had died during the Second World War wrote to the military commander of the Karaganda Province that their sole consolation was to pray for their sons who had died in the war. “But,” one letter said, “they deprive us even of this possibility.”’ [13] When the church finally was opened, we read of St Sebastian:

He especially loved memorial services celebrated according to the monastery custom he had inherited—he zealously served Pannikhidas daily, and continued celebrating funeral services until the end of his life. He said that he liked to commemorate and serve funerals for women more because among women there were far fewer sins. To him all the sins of people were visible. [14]

But St Sebastian did not neglect the living either. According to Torstensen, ‘The Elder expended much labor for the nurturing of his flock. . . . The lives of these people were models of virtue. They were called the “Batiushka-ites”. . . . It was said that a good half of Mikhailovka was like a secret monastery in the world.’ [15] In addition, apart from the people immediately around him in Mikhailovka, St Sebastian would travel to other settlements to minister to the faithful there as well. Of these, he especially loved the distant community at Melkombinat, where there was a grain-milling factory. ‘He would say that in Mikhailovka he had his “Optina”, and in Melkombinat he had his “Skete”. He gathered his orphans and widows there, bought them a house and became their guardian. . . . A spirit of peace reigned here.’ [16]

Torstensen relates from her own experience what it was like to live in obedience to the Elder:

For thirteen and a half years I was Elder Sebastian’s spiritual daughter. This happiness cannot be compared with anything. There was such total protection in everything, such love. No matter what would happen, if you would only manage to run to him and succeed in informing him, he would take everything away and right every wrong. He would even prolong one’s life. As he once told me, or, to be more precise, as he once spilled out during a frank conversation, ‘How many lives I’ve prolonged.’ [17]

During Great Lent of 1966, St Sebastian’s health declined rapidly, a process Torstensen relates in minute detail in a diary she kept daily during those weeks. He fell asleep in the Lord on Tuesday, 6 April on the Church’s calendar, on Radonitsa. In the words of Tatiana Torstensen:

The earthly path of his half century of pastoral care and twenty-two years of guidance of eldership was completed in the church in Mikhailovka in the city of Karaganda, whose cemetery will always be famous, and where a white marble cross shines over the grave of Elder Sebastian. The sacred podvig of the blessed Elder, who had acquired great gifts of grace from the Lord, was now completed. His service to God, through upholding the good in mankind for the salvation of souls, had come to its end, and his superb example of holy spiritual love was concluded—‘his fruit is unto holiness and the end everlasting life’ (Rom. 6:22).

Fr Sebastian often spoke of eternal life and the kingdom of God, and this found its expression through a certain concept of his—the ‘Great Family’. Once, not long before his death (I did not note the date), to my words, ‘Batiushka, stay alive with us,’ he replied, ‘They’re already waiting for me there.’ [18]

The volume on St Sebastian compiled by Vera Koroleva, which includes Torstensen’s biography, also contains numerous accounts of his miracles by various spiritual children. Here, as just a tiny sample, are two stories related by Monk Sebastian (Khmyrov):

One day I came to church in the evening, when suddenly during the service I was seized by a fever and my nose began to feel very painful. I decided to wait for the anointing and then leave—I felt that bad. I stepped up to be anointed, and Fr Sebastian anointed me and touched my nose as if by accident. It was so painful! I was walking towards the exit and felt that I was getting better, and I understood that he had sensed my illness and had healed me.

Once he invited my sixteen-year-old daughter Lyuba, my eldest, to see him in his cell. He spoke with her, and during their conversation he was suddenly transfigured—he became young, beardless, and bright as an angel, and the whole cell was covered by an unusual light. In this manner the Lord revealed the spiritual greatness and purity of the Elder, even while he was still alive. [19]

Koroleva also has a section of various teachings of the Elder, as well as one of selections from his sermons. From the first section:

He repeatedly said, ‘If you fail to observe the fasts without a good reason, the time will come when you’ll be overtaken by sickness. Then you’ll fast against your will. The Lord will allow this because of sins.’

He would speak with pity of those who rarely came to church and who rarely if ever received Communion (especially the elderly). As an example, he would point out those who lived next door to the church: ‘They sit on the bench during the whole service but don’t come to church, even though they call themselves Christians! And other people who live in distant places, even many miles away from the church, find time, for the sake of the salvation of their souls, to come to church on feast days to pray.’ . . . [20]

And here are a couple of brief paragraphs from the ‘Selections from Sermons’:

Sermon on the Repentant Sinner
(January 18/31, 1960)

Sinner, abandon your passions and sinful habits. Heaven, with more than ninety-nine righteous ones is calling you! The angels in heaven rejoice over a single repentant sinner. Heaven is seeking your salvation. Only repent and be converted, and break yourself of sin.

For your sake the Lord Himself was born in a manger of dumb beasts and suffered. He was insulted, spat upon, crowned with thorns, and was nailed to the Cross by the hand of his own creation. He suffered and died so as afterwards to be glorified and exalted. But you, O man, what can you be proud of? What do you possess that is truly yours, which is fit for eternity? You won’t take your riches with you, and honor, glory, and health are temporal. Let us enrich ourselves for the future, and gather our wealth there through beggards, the poor, and the sick. You are a citizen of heaven, so why are you glued ot the earth?! You are an heir of the Kingdom of Heaven and you possess an immortal soul, which the Only-begotten Son Himself redeemed by His death upon the Cross. [21]

In conclusion, here are the Troparion and Kontakion of the Saint:

Troparion, Tone 3

O servant of the Holy Trinity, * earthly angel and heavenly man, * successor of the spiritual eldership of Optina, * initiate of the mysteries of Christ and confessor, * all-honorable abode of the Holy Spirit, * holy and venerable Father Sebastian, * ask for the world peace, * and for our souls great mercy.

Kontakion, Tone 3

Let us glorify, O ye faithful * him who hath entered into the joy of the Risen Lord, * the fellow-member of the choir of the Elders of Optina, * sharer in the lot of the martyrs and confessors, * co-celebrant with the initiates of God’s mysteries, * earthly angel and heavenly man, * godly adornment of the city of Karaganda, * exceeding great intercessor for the land of Kazakhstan, * praise of the Church of Russia, * and let us cry out to him with gladness: * Rejoice O our all-honored and venerable Sebastian. [22]

[1] Tatiana V. Torstensen, Elder Sebastian of Optina, ed. Vera Koroleva, tr. David Koubek (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1999), p. 174.

[2] Ibid., p. 33.

[3] Ibid., p. 54.

[4] Ibid., p. 21.

[5] Ibid., p. 26.

[6] Ibid., p. 32.

[7] Ibid., p. 72.

[8] Ibid., p. 43.

[9] Ibid., pp. 57-8.

[10] Ibid., p. 70.

[11] Qtd. in Tzvetan Todorov, Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, tr. Wlad Godzich, Vol. 13 of Theory & History of Literature (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1994), p. 4.

[12] Torstensen, pp. 56-7.

[13] Ibid., p. 53.

[14] Ibid., p. 71.

[15] Ibid., p. 75.

[16] Ibid., p. 76.

[17] Ibid., p. 78.

[18] Ibid., pp. 162-3.

[19] Ibid., p. 240.

[20] Ibid., p. 350.

[21] Ibid., p. 373.

[22] Ibid., p. 448.

An Apology on the Synaxis of the Holy Optina Elders

I’m afraid I must offer my apologies for the non-activity here the last couple of days. My family and I are staying with some cousins in Austin, TX, so we can visit the Orthodox monasteries of Texas this weekend—Holy Archangels for men, and St Paraskevi for women. In the meantime, I had brought my laptop and a couple of books with every intention of doing a post for the Synaxis of the Holy Optina Elders today, 11 October on the Church’s calendar, but, rather predictably I suppose, I’ve found myself with precious little time down here. Anyway, I refer readers to this post that I did for St Nektary of Optina, as well as to this one at another blog, where I posted an overview of the monastery written on the occasion of the glorification of the Optina Saints by the Russian Church Abroad, as well as links to other resources.

I was delighted to receive an e-mail greeting me with the feast today from Hieromonk Damascene of St Herman of Alaska Monastery, which monastery has done more than anyone to make the Optina Pustyn’ Monastery known in our day, certainly among English speakers, but even in Russia, where their publication of Russian-language materials on the monastery seems to have actually contributed to the contemporary renewal of monastic life there. Finally, as this is an unabashedly bookish blog, I cannot resist recommending one of my favourite books and one of the few English-language resources on the monastery not published by St Herman of Alaska Press—Leonard Stanton’s fascinating study, The Optina Pustyn’ Monastery in the Russian Literary Imagination: Iconic Vision in Works by Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, and Others (NY: Peter Lang, 1995). Although Stanton’s account of Orthodox theology is flawed (the old bug-a-boo of ‘Neoplatonism’ puts in an appearance!), the book remains one of the most fascinating studies of theology and literature I’ve ever seen, and has been a major intellectual inspiration to me ever since my kindly Russian professor gifted me with it in 1996.

'Lightness, Joy, & Peace'—St Nektary of Optina

Today, 29 April on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of St Nektary (1853-1928), the last elder of Optina Pustyn’. Rather than produce another account of a Saint’s life for today (Bishop Alexander of blessed memory has a page with the Life and teachings of the Elder here), I thought I would simply post the little review in my reader’s journal of the St Herman biography: Ivan M. Kontzevitch, Elder Nektary of Optina (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1998).

Begun by the late Fr Seraphim (Rose) of blessed memory, the publications of the St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood are some of the most important Orthodox books in the English-speaking world. Although at various times (and particularly in recent years) the fathers of Platina have occasionally broadened their scope, for over thirty years, they have laboured diligently to translate and publish the great heritage of Russian Orthodoxy, the spiritual fruits of St Paisius (Velichkovsky) of Niamets and his heirs, the Optina elders, a number of whose spiritual children later became great leaders in the Russian Church Abroad (Archbishop Andrei of Novo-Diveevo and the Kontzevitch brothers—Ivan M. Kontzevitch and Bishop Nektary of Seattle, who was named for the elder—are the main ones known to me). Illustrated profusely, supplemented generously with prefaces, appendices, notes, and indices, their books bring the spiritual world of late 18th-, 19th-, and early 20th-century Russian Orthodoxy vividly to life for the modern ‘seeker of truth’, as they like to call him. These books—and the wonderful series of lives of Optina elders foremost among them—are definitely treasures of the spiritual life.

St Nektary was the last of the Optina elders, and in many ways, one of the most unusual. A sometime fool-for-Christ as well as a great ascetic and clairvoyant, he endured the hardships of the early years of the revolution and civil war, and died in exile from his beloved Optina skete, prophesying still worse horrors and trials yet to come for his many spiritual children in Russia. Yet through it all, one discovers in Elder Nektary one of the most delightful of the elders, whose touching simplicity many readers will at times find quite humourous. This book presents many wonderful glimpses of his childlike love and amazing spiritual gifts through the vivid accounts of many who knew him intimately or were blessed to have had some contact with him. A thick volume, it is filled with all of the material which could be gathered, including the prima vita written by Ivan Kontzevitch, a spiritual child of the elder whose life’s work was to pass the Optina heritage on to the next generation of Orthodox. A particular favourite of mine was the account by Archpriest Sergei Schukin, who later served the Church Abroad in Canada, as I consider it to be one of the most fascinating explanations of the nature of an elder’s advice I’ve ever read:

...We entered the reception room in the Elder’s little house. There were ten or twelve of us, men of various callings. After a few minutes of waiting a small, slightly stooped old man with a small gray beard and wearing an epitrachelion came through the door with quick, inaudible steps. After praying before the icons he blessed us all and began to come up to each one in turn. We stood in a line lengthwise across the room, and the Elder passed from one to another and spoke with us. The conversations were short; Fr Nektary rarely lingered with anyone. Interrupting the occasionally long stories of his visitors, he hastened with an answer; his replies were quick and not verbose, after which he immediately moved on to the next one in line.

I was struck more than anything by the manner in which Fr Nektary conversed with everyone: he walked up to the person with whom he was speaking and, without looking at him, stood somewhat sideways near him, half-turned, and inclined his ear to him, as if he were either hard of hearing or was simply giving the speaker an opportunity to state his needs without speaking too loudly. Listening to him, Fr Nektary gazed somewhere downward, but gave the impression that he was listening to you not with his ear, but with some other organ of perception; that, in fact, it was not your words themselves that were important to him, but something else, concealed in your soul, that the Elder was trying to perceive....

When Fr Nektary came up to me I began, as briefly as possible, to explain my situation to him; but, as often happens in such instances, my brevity was not accompanied by clarity. I endeavored to explain myself better; but the Elder, having already understood me somehow, himself began to speak. As I have already mentioned, my difficulty lay in the kind of work to choose, and by what to be guided in the process. Fr Nektary answered me roughly this way (I don’t remember his actual words, but this is the sense of them):

‘Yes, yes, of course you should work...after all, you’re an educated man. Only don’t chase after anything big...step by step, take it easy....’

That was it—and he moved on to the next person. At first it even seemed to me that I hadn’t received any kind of answer to my needs; or rather, I had expected something more from the Elder than these simple words....But I remembered that elders very often don’t answer directly, but allegorically, compelling one to ponder the true meaning of the answer. Indeed, reflecting further on his reply, I soon became convinced that I had received an entirely clear and definite answer to my uncertainties. Once I had understood this, I instantly felt an extraordinary lightness, joy and peace. All the confusion and conflict of the surrounding revolutionary atmosphere ceased to exist, and my personal problems became simple and clear....

The effect of my conversation with the Elder grew even stronger within me after my return to Moscow, and remained as something that had entered solidly into my life. My whole subsequent life served as proof of the wisdom of Fr Nektary’s advice. That which happened to me after my return to Moscow revealed to me the significance of my trip to Optina to an even greater degree.... (387-9)

This is a quintessential account of the apophthegmata, the inspired ‘words’, of the elders. One can see illustrated dramatically the deceptive simplicity of the words themselves contrasted with the profound spiritual effect they have as they penetrate the disciple.

At any rate, the elders of Optina are one of the most extraordinary manifestations of the power of the Orthodox spiritual life in the last two hundred years, and these books truly will provide much spiritual nourishment to the contemporary ‘seeker of truth’, providing a glimpse of the profundity of the traditional life lived in Christ. They will perhaps be of particular interest to those of us who are spiritual sheep in the flock of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, as we stand in the direct lineage of the elders, and their life has done so much to shape the Church which has fed us.

For more on St Nektary, see this post. And here’s a cute story involving St Nektary and one of my least favourite animals.

Elder Nektary, C.G. Jung, & C.S. Lewis on Rider Haggard

The subject of imaginative literature does not often come up in the biographies of holy ascetics. One happy exception, however, is The Life of Optina Elder Nektary, published by the Optina Pustyn monastery in 1996 and rendered in English, along with other materials, by the St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood in its book on St Nektary (Elder Nektary of Optina, by Ivan M. Kontzevitch [Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1998]). The Life gives us an interesting glimpse of the Elder's use of literature, primarily for the benefit of others, but also, it would seem, for his own pleasure:

When he was still in reclusion, Elder Nektary’s spiritual preceptors blessed him, after ten years of exclusive study of spiritual literature, to read secular authors and to study the secular sciences, obviously with the aim that he acquire that knowledge which would enable him to help lead the restless souls of the groping intelligentsia to salvation. He studied science, mathematics, history, geography and classical literature, both Russian and foreign. He spoke to his visitors about Pushkin and Shakespeare, Milton and Krilov, Spengler and Hegart, Blok, Dante, Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. In his only hour of rest after dinner he would ask to have read aloud Pushkin or some fairy tales—either Russian or the Brothers Grimm. (pp. 198-9)

Interestingly, this Life records some of the Elder’s comments on one seemingly unlikely book in particular: She (pub. 1887), a work of adventure/fantasy fiction by the author of King Solomon’s Mines, Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925). Although I was somewhat familiar with She from secondary sources, the only book of Haggard’s I’ve actually read is King Solomon’s Mines itself. Fortunately, the Life provides a brief overview of the main theme of the novel:

Elder Nektary once spoke about this cleansing fire in a commentary on the novel She by the English writer, Haggard.

This legend tells the story of an enchantress who lived for several thousand years, preserving her youth and beauty because she had plunged into a flaming fountain of life hidden in a mountain cave. Having fallen in love with a mortal youth, she wanted to give him the same everlasting beauty and immortality. When he was frightened by the wave of flames, she boldly entered it herself a second time to demonstrate that the flames were harmless, but she was instantly punished by being turned into a worn out old woman and dying. (p. 205)

Then there follows the account of St Nektary’s actual references to the book:

The Elder gave a detailed account of the hidden and unattainable cave from which would periodically come forth a thunderclap, and then a great crash; then an unusual light would burst forth, and whoever would enter into this light would receive youth and beauty. ‘To Haggard was given the opportunity to reveal a part of the knowledge of this light to the world’, he stated. His listeners were perplexed, and in the evening they asked one another about the meaning behind his teaching. In the morning, when they came to the Elder for a blessing, he met them with the words, ‘The general meaning: “O Lord!”—there is thunder; “Jesus Christ”—there’s a crash; “Son of God”—the light bursts forth; “have mercy on me, a sinner”—the soul, if it so desires (here is total freedom), is allowed to step into this light and be renewed. But the soul may become aged in a week, sometimes in one day. It happens that the light itself comes to a man. St Mary of Egypt described this to St Zosima. She was lying in the sand like a corpse in the desert, and a quiet, unearthly light appeared to her.’

In the evening of the same day the Elder said, ‘A man belongs to two worlds—the visible and the invisible. Man is made up of a physical body, that of the soul, and that of the spirit or intellect. The body is given to him for convenience, as a dwelling for the spirit, so that it might function in the visible world. The visible world is reflected in the invisible world, and vice versa. And the same cave described by the writer exists in the heart of man, but it is not given to every man to descend into this cave. There are some people who never enter it, for it’s surrounded by all kinds of dangers and precipices. The sound of thunder frightens the unclean spirits, and sometimes the soul itself. Crash!—the appearance of the Savior, as though the ordinary world has burst. And when the light sparks, the soul is allowed to enter it—not once, but even many times; and it receives youth, beauty and immortality. “She”, the heroine of Haggard’s novel, having irreverently entered a second time just to show that the fire wasn’t dangerous, lost these gifts; this fire does indeed burn.’ (pp. 205-6)

It is worth noting that, while She is not typically considered a serious piece of literature, it has acquired a reputation as a work of mythic and psychological significance, despite the genre and even the actual talents of the author as a writer. Famously, Carl Jung has written (in ‘Foreword to Brunner: Die Anima als Schicksalsproblem des Mannes (1958)’, The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 18: The Symbolic Life, ed. Sir Herbert Read, et al. [London: Routledge, 1977], p. 545):

Psychology, unfortunately, cannot take aesthetic requirements into account. The greatness and importance of a motif like that of the anima bear no relation to the form in which it is presented. If Rider Haggard uses the modest form of a yarn, this does not detract from the psychological value of its content. Those who seek entertainment or the higher art can easily find something better. But anyone who wants to gain insight into his own anima will find food for thought in She, precisely because of the simplicity and naïveté of presentation, which is entirely devoid of any ‘psychological’ intent.

Alan Jacobs points out that C.S. Lewis’s ideas about myth generally can hardly have been influenced by Jung, since the latter’s work came too late to be formative for him (The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis [SF: HarperCollins, 2005], p. 141). But it is interesting to note that Lewis has said something very similar to the above comments, though with more wit and less pomposity, in a review of a biography of Haggard in Time and Tide in 1960 (reprinted as ‘The Mythopoeic Gift of Rider Haggard’, ‘On Stories’ and Other Essays on Literature, ed. Walter Hooper [San Diego: Harcourt, 1982], pp. 97-100). Lewis, of course, is more favourably disposed to ‘yarns’ than Jung, and the genre per se is not his aesthetic quibble. Lewis writes:

The real defects of Haggard are two. First, he can’t write. Or rather (I learn from Mr Cohen [the author of the biography under review]) won’t. Won’t be bothered. . . .

Secondly, the intellectual defects. No one after reading Mr Cohen can believe that Haggard was out of touch with reality. . . .

. . .

But though Haggard had sense, he was ludicrously unaware of his limitations. He attempts to philosophise. Again and again in his stories we see a commonplace intelligence, armed (or hampered) with an eclectic outfit of vaguely Christian, theosophical and spiritualistic notions, trying to say something profound about that fatal subject, ‘Life’. This is seen at its embarrassing worst whenever Ayesha speaks. If she was really Wisdom’s daughter, she did not take after her parent. Her thought is of the regrettable type called ‘Higher’. (pp. 98-9)

But here is where Lewis’s assessment begins really to dovetail with Jung’s:

What keeps us reading in spite of all these defects is of course the story itself, the myth. Haggard is the text-book case of the mythopoeic gift pure and simple—isolated, as if for inspection, from nearly all those more specifically literary powers with which it so fortunately co-exists in, say, The Ancient Mariner, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde [see my previous reference to this one here], or The Lord of the Rings. To make matters even clearer, in Haggard himself the mythopoeic power seems to have grown less as the literary art improved. Ayesha [the sequal to She] is not such good myth as She, but it is better written.

. . .

The mythical status of She is indisputable. As we all know, Jung went to it for the embodiment of an archetype. But even Jung did not, I think, get to the centre. If his view were right, the myth ought to function only for those to whom Ayesha is a powerfully erotic image. And she is not so for all who love She. . . . Ultimately the life of the myth is elsewhere.

The story of Ayesha is not an escape, but it is about escape; about an attempt at the great escape, daringly made and terribly frustrated. Its closest relative, perhaps its child, is Morris’s Well at the World’s End, which came ten years later. Both stories externalise the same psychological forces; our irreconcilable reluctance to die, our craving for an immortality in the flesh, our empirical knowledge that this is impossible, our intermittent awareness that it is not even really desirable, and (octaves deeper than all these) a very primitive feeling that the attempt, if it could be made, would be unlawful and would call down the vengeance of the gods. (pp. 99-100)

Lewis ends his review with another explicit illustration of the similarity, as well as the difference, of his view to that of Jung:

This hatred [of literary critics for Haggard’s novels] comes in part from a reluctance to meet Archetypes; it is an involuntary witness to their disquieting vitality. Partly, it springs from an uneasy awareness that the most ‘popular’ fiction, if only it embodies a real myth, is so very much more serious than what is generally called ‘serious’ literature. For it deals with the permanent and inevitable, whereas an hour’s shelling, or perhaps a ten-mile walk, or even a dose of salts, might annihilate many of the problems in which the characters of a refined and subtle novel are entangled. (p. 100)

Finally, as long as we are talking about all things She, I will conclude with this little clerihew from W.H. Auden, which I found on the Wikipedia article devoted to Haggard’s novel:

Sir Rider Haggard
Was completely staggered
When his bride-to-be
Announced ‘I AM SHE!’