"My Visit to Tolstoy": Five DiscoursesKrauskopf, Joseph
Religion
"My Visit to Tolstoy": Five Discourses
Krauskopf, Joseph
Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910
And even though no priest was nigh when the last rites over his remains
were performed, there were present, besides his family, those who were
more sacred in his eyes than priests or metropolitan, more honorable
than even the Procurator of the Holy Synod--his dearly beloved
peasants. It was these who followed him to his last resting place.
It was these who sang the mortuary hymn _Everlasting Memory_, at his
open grave. It was these, the "orphaned peasantry," as they called
themselves because of his death, who gave his burial a distinction such
as no Czarian funeral procession had ever enjoyed, notwithstanding
ecclesiastical pomp or military display. It was these whose labors and
outlook he had sought to soften and to brighten, who delivered the
briefest and most eloquent eulogy that has, perhaps, ever been spoken:
"_His heart has burst because of his unbounded love for humanity. The
light of the world is extinguished._"
In spite of herself
church has made a
saint of him.
In refusing religious sepulture to the holiest man in Russia, the
Greek orthodox church performed the crowning feat in her long series
of stupidities. And yet, by that act she did, in despite of herself,
the very thing she did not wish to see done. Like Mephistopheles in
Goethe's _Faust_ who, in response to the question who he is, says:
"_Ich bin ein Theil von jener Kraft, die stets das Böse will, und stets
das Gute schafft_," so did she prove herself the power that sought the
evil and yet performed the good. By her act of intolerance she gave
a new saint to Russia, and perhaps the only one she has. By it she
furnished a sanctuary to that country, one that may be destined to make
a Mecca of Yasnaya Polyana, one that may be more piously sought in the
future, and by larger numbers, than any shrine or sanctuary of her own
creation. By that act she shed a halo of immortal glory around the head
of him whom she sought to cover with infamy.
Has two ways of
making saints.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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