M.-M. DAVY

NICOLAS BERDYAEV

MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

by M.-M. DAVY

Translated from the French by LEONORA SIEPMAN

1967

First published as NICOLAS BERDIAEV L'MOMME DU HUITIEME JOUR by M.-M. Davy rlammarion, fiditeur 26 rue Racine, Paris

GEOFFREY BLES • LONDON

GEOFFREY BLES LTD., 1967

Printed in Great Britain

by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd

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and published by

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I am only a seeker after truth and a rebel who desires freedom from the bondage of life to things, objects, abstractions, ideologies •nd the fatalism of history.

(Dream and Reality, p. 322)

Man is the dominating idea of my life—man's image, his creative freedom and his creative predestination.

(Solitude and Society, p. 202)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to Sheed and Ward Ltd. for permission to use quotations from Donald Attwater's translation of Dostoievsky: An Interpretation by Nicolas Berdyaev; also to Donald Lowrie for quotations from his translations of The Meaning of the Creative Act and The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar by Nicolas Berdyaev which were published by Victor Gollancz, Ltd.

CONTENTS

PARTI

1. A SON OF THE LAND OF RUSSIA

2. THE RELIGIOUS ENERGY OF THE RUSSIAN SPIRIT

3. AN HSSENTIAL MAN

PART II

I. THE ONE WHO LOVES AND THE BELOVED

2. FREEDOM AND THE CREATIVE ACT

3. MYSTIC AND GNOSTIC

PART III

I. THEPHILOSOPHY OF CONFLICT

2a. THE NEW AGE

EPILOGUE

APPENDICES:

1. 1IIOGRAPHY

2. BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. LIST OF PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS ON BERDYAEV

INDP.X OF PROPER NAMES SUBJECT INDEX

FOREWORD

Iam in love with that quality of life which transcends life . . .

(Dream and Reality, p. 231)

When I look back at the men I have been fortunate enough to niccl and get to know, I can think of none whose inner self seemed 10 wide open to the transcendent as Nicolas Berdyaev. And more than that; he was a man on whom the mark of the Divine had been indelibly imprinted from childhood. He was inhabited by a presence, and his look, his thought, his very voice, bore witness to the mystery within him.

At tea-time in the dining-room of his house at Clamart,where we used to have those little Russian meat pies (piroshki) he was lo fond of, I often heard him speak of "God's fools", and he would enthusiastically relate anecdotes in which the supernatural played • key part.

When I asked him if he was one of "God's fools" he smiled tnd answered that they no longer existed, but that he was one of llirir descendants.

Let there be no mistake about it:

The difficulty with which traditional Christians are faced is not how to defend the idea of God and of his providence in the world. Sometimes I cannot help thinking that they are, in fact, endeavouring to defend and to justify not God but evil.

(Dream and Reality, p. 299)

I am not setting out here to describe all Berdyaev's thought, buf only its essentials, combining it with numerous quotations to put the reader in direct contact with it. One such quotation from Uerdyacv's work on Dostoievsky might equally well be applied to die present volume:

FOREWORD

Nor can it be said that I tackle my subject from the psychological angle, that my intention is to draw conclusions in the psychological order. No . . . my aim is to display Dostoievsky's spiritual side.

(Dostoievsky, p. n)

To understand Berdyaev's thought one needs to feel a certain kinship with it, which means that one's Being must be turned towards the Light.

M.-M. D.

PART I

CHAPTER 1

A SON OF THE LAND OF RUSSIA

In Russia the land gives freedom.

(The Russian Soul)

"I have always been truly Russian," Dostoievsky told Maykov, but his words might have been spoken by Berdyaev, who dearly loved his country. The Russian landscape, with its plains stretching away to infinity and its lack of well-defined contours, may be likened to the soul. "The vital fluid of Russia," said Berdyaev, "spreads out across the plains and flows away to the infinite."

Russia's outward aspect corresponds with an inner reality; the immensity seems to express a yearning for the Beyond, suggestive of some mysterious knowledge acquired in the way described by Gregory of Nyssa: "There is only one manner of knowing—to reach out ceaselessly beyond the known" (In Cant. Horn., i). Through the immensity of his country the Russian aspires to the unknowable, sensing like Milosa, "distance calling to distance". The horizon has a boundless quality akin to eternity:

The soul is drawn to infinite flat distances and is lost in them. . . The soul... of the Russian is apocalyptic and fluid by "build" and inclination, ever gliding towards the beckoning horizon, especially to that far one which seems to hide the end of the world.

(Dostoievsky, p. 162)

Before those endless vistas man might well feel frail and in-lipnificant if they made him conscious of his body, but, instead, like speaks to like—the boundless landscape before his eyes to that unbounded unknown land, the terra incognita within him. The

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

infinity of his inner self unfolds and all becomes vast, to use an expression beloved by Baudelaire which aptly describes the Russian plain as well as the Russian soul and places them in the dialectic of the Within and the "Without, assigning them to an "elsewhere" which no barriers can confine.

The west, with its frontiers and boundaries giving the impression that the land has been parcelled out, symbolises organisation and stability, the feeling of belonging to a nation and submitting to discipline. During his first weeks in the east the visitor may feel a nostalgia for the west but when he gets home again Europe with its partitions seems unbearable, almost suffocating. Russia is the east:

The sun rises in the east, and from the east comes the light of every religion . . . The east is the land of revelation ... It is closer to the source, the genesis, of all life; it is the realm of life's genesis, for in the east God spoke directly to man, face to face . . . That, then, is Russia, the Christian east.

(The Russian Soul)

Berdyaev contrasts Russia with Europe:

The land is an element of the Russian spirit ... In Russia the land gives freedom . . . Man does not possess the land, he is possessed by it. The Russian people believe with a primitive intensity in their land, in its power, its fertility. They believe it is unconquerable ... In Europe the primitive life-force seems to have been exhausted as a result of over-intensive cultivation combined with an exaggerated exteriorisation of man's inner strength and too perfect an organisation.

(id.)

The Russian people's love of their land is not exacerbated nationalism but, rather, a Messianic consciousness of nationhood. And with their nomadic spirit their love for it extends beyond Russia; they love Europe, they have a feeling of kinship towards the whole world. Europe and Asia together embrace every Christian and pagan trend in their distinctive form of universalism. The Russian people, "the God-bearers", as Dostoievsky calls

A SON OF THE LAND OF RUSSIA

them, never lose this universal quality; in them the outlook of the Hebrew people has been revived (cf. Dostoievsky, p. 170).

In The Origin of Russian Communism Berdyaev reflects upon his country's fate in the different phases which led to communism and in Dream and Reality he described the atmosphere in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century; people were thinking, arguing, dreaming, struggling. A new age was on its way.

There were but few classes in old Russia—a small cultured elite and the common people. In the nineteenth century the intelligentsia was torn between Czarism and the people, sometimes lupporting the powerful state and sometimes the powerless masses.

The intelligentsia was not composed solely of intellectuals and icholars but was more a kind of sect with its own customs, morals and view of the world. All its members looked alike but were recruited from every social level. Redishchev, prototype of the first eighteenth-century intelligentsia, came under the influence of Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau, and was eventually condemned to death for denouncing the humiliations inflicted upon the masses, but his sentence was commuted and he went into exile in Siberia.

Berdyaev was harsh in his judgments on a section of the intelligentsia—rootless, godless, divided against itself—while the common people "knew life's immediate truth" and could perhaps justly be called "the salt of the earth".

By the eleventh century Russia had assumed the form of an immense, unbounded peasant country, enslaved, illiterate, but with its own popular culture based on a faith, with a ruling noble class, idle and with little culture, which had lost its religious faith and its sense of nationality; with a Czar at the top, in relation to whom a religious belief was retained . . . (The Origin of Russian Communism, p. 17)

In their search for justice and freedom the common people came up against authority but, as Berdyaev wrote, "justice did not exist

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

in this Great Empire". The nobility stagnated in ignorance while men of culture were isolated.

A few years later a wind of change began to blow, bringing with it humanism. Russia or, rather, the Russians of Kiev, of the Tartar period and the Muscovite period of Peter the Great, really represented a very old civilisation. From the fourteenth century its schools of painting and architecture had been outstanding, yet it had never known a period comparable with the Renaissance. In place of an official humanism it offered a humanism founded on love of all things human. The individual suddenly became aware of what he was and could become. A new idea of man arose, with consequences both intellectual and spiritual:

To us self-consciousness meant revolt against the actual facts around us, against imperial Russia.

(id., p. 22)

The Decembrist uprising against serfdom and autocracy was suppressed; Nicholas I had its main leaders executed and the others sent to Siberia. Henceforward

. . . everything tended towards the growth of schism and revolution. The Russian intelligentsia was definitely shaped into a schismatic type. It will always speak of itself as "we"; and of the State, of authority, as "they".

(id., pp. 24-5)

Social reforms were planned and though the people were still reduced to serfdom Russians could be found who enthused over Saint-Simon and Proudhon, who read Hegel and Schelling. German romanticism and idealism had so potent an influence that they were virtually assimilated. Berdyaev compares the esteem in which German thought was held by the Slavophils with the exaltation of Plato and neo-Platonism by the Church Fathers. The Hegelian system operates at two levels—the religious and the social and the Slavophils accepted the influence of western thought while rejecting its bourgeois civilisation and money-grubbing. The most cultured among them had doubts about their

A SON OF THE LAND OF RUSSIA

own country: how could they live "in an uncouth society, under a despotic government which kept a tight grip on its humble, ignorant people"? Dreams of social change began to take shape.

Chaadayev, a convinced westerner, spoke of the Russian people's mission and went so far as to speak of their "potentialities". The imperial Government, displeased by bis independent spirit, declared him insane and placed him under medical surveillance. But that did not silence him: he produced his Madman's Apologia which was based on the principles of Russian Mcssianism. That one example is enough to show the climate of opinion.

Although the Russian genius, whether philosophical or literary, came under European influence, it remained none the less bound to its own soil, faithful to its strong taste for freedom and things Spiritual. That is why there was little groping in the dark; a movement would suddenly appear with extraordinary explosive force; literature, poetry, music, philosophy—all found their way into the world, all found their expression in some truly Russian form. Pushkin originated a method of writing in which Russian thought was reborn in all its richness and independence, its inspiration and strength, but this poet of imperial Russia also wrote revolutionary verse extolling the freedom for which so many were hoping. Though closely bound up with religion, Russian ph ilosophy was essentially anthropocentric; it dealt primarily with the real nature and destiny of man. Hence the importance given to history, to eschatology and to value-judgments based on history.

In his History of Russian Philosophy Zenkovsky dwells on these different points and one of his introductory remarks is particularly noteworthy. Starting from anthropocentric philosophy he asserts that theory cannot be separated from practice and quotes Mikhailovsky, drawing attention to the unusualness of the word "truth" (pravda): "Every time I think of the word 'truth' I cannot help admiring its strange inner beauty... I think that only in Russian are truth and justice defined by one and the same term, and that they fuse into one great whole." Russian philosophy was

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

a philosophy of the spirit which was at the same time a philosophy of life. Russian literature played its part in the search for truth and justice; it was dedicated to the service of humanity, moralising in tone and frequently religious in sentiment. For Gogol art itself had a social mission.

Thinkers, philosophers, writers and poets—all were ceaseless questers. They had none of the bourgeois easy conscience; they sought, not to produce pleasure or distraction, but to stir men's minds. There is a kind of uniquely Russian temperament, which finds expression in a positive or negative dualism and, although it goes to both extremes, is never satisfied or reassured. A westerner seldom questions the value of civilisation; a Russian, within the terms of his own yardstick, may have doubts about it.

In Russia there was a seed of revolt born from a new consciousness; it might even be said that a religious consciousness appeared. Whether in philosophy, literature or poetry, thinkers sought the good of mankind, sought to restore human dignity to the humblest moujik, to overthrow despotism, to play their part at the birth of a new dawn.

The revolution was being planned, and in a kind of strange vision men shared the same presentiments. They voiced an appeal to the future. Berdyaev quotes a poem written by Lermontov in 1830 in which he foresaw the Revolution nearly a century in advance:1

Russian writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries felt themselves over an abyss, they did not live in a stable society, in a strong fixed civilisation. A catastrophic outlook became characteristic of the most notable and creative Russians. . . An eschatological structure of spirit was built up in Russia, and, facing the future, faced it with forebodings of catastrophe, and the development of a particular mystical sensitiveness.

(id., p. 84)

In this pre-revolutionary atmosphere educated men realised they had no roots. The old Russia was gradually dying while the 1 The Origin of Russian Communism, p. 80.

A SON OF THE LAND OF RUSSIA

west created and fomented most of the new ideas. And yet, although Russia came under western influence, it was destined to remain closer to the west in its aspirations than in its achievements.

The influence of the west upon Russia was absolutely paradoxical; it did not graft western criteria upon the Russian spirit. On the contrary its influence let loose violent, Dionysiac, dynamic and sometimes demoniac forces.

(id., p. 85)

Two Russian writers were to have a decisive effect on Berdyaev —Dostoievsky and Tolstoy—and from the former he seems to have received a spiritual graft.

With him everything is steeped in a molten, fiery atmosphere, everything is in violent movement, nothing is fixed or finally shaped. Dostoievsky is a Dionysiac artist.

(id., pp. 85-6)

Dostoievsky's questioning revolved around the problem of man and his place in history. His views on anthropology and his sense of history exerted lasting ascendancy over Berdyaev's mind:

Tolstoy and Dostoievsky were possible only in a society which was moving towards revolution, in which explosive materials WCTC accumulating. Dostoievsky preached a spiritual communism, the responsibility of all for each: that was how he understood Russian sobornost,1 his Christ could not be adapted to the standards of bourgeois civilisation. Tolstoy did not know Christ; he knew only the teaching of Christ, but he preached the virtues of Christian communism; he rejected private property; he rejected all economic inequalities. The thoughts of Dostoievsky and Tolstoy are on the verge of cschatology, as is all revolutionary thought.

(id., pp. 87-8)

The quality I have already spoken of is found in Dostoievsky: he reflects the spirit of the Revolution in the prophetic current running through his work, yet in some ways he remains a conservative. The majority of Russian thinkers have this Janus aspect

1 The inward, organic and harmonious aspect of Catholicity.

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

and even Berdyaev was not exempt. The soul of old Russia and the spirit of a new, still dawning, Russia confronted each other and intermingled. Sometimes one of them flared up at the other but neither won a decisive victory. Such a situation is always uncomfortable; it lacerates a people; still worse, it divides them against one another; they are at cross-purposes with existence and they suffer.

The same tragedy affected Tolstoy, whose mind dwelt on the cosmos rather than on history, although at the personal level he was historically committed.

. . . Tolstoy certainly was a revolutionary, one who exposed the injustices of life . . . Positively, Tolstoy was opposed to communism; he did not accept violence; he was the enemy of all government and rejected the technique and rational organisation of life; he believed in the divine basis of nature and life; he preached love, not hate. But negatively he was a forerunner of communism.

(id., p. 86)

Such a duality is tragic. To those who are unfamiliar with Russian thought of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Ber-dyaev's youth, his bold, rebellious nature, his hopes, his ideas on life after death and on the meaning of man, must all remain incomprehensible. To blame him for the contradictions of thought and attitude inherent in his emotional, highly-strung and sometimes bellicose temperament would show proof of ignorance. They are undeniable but typical of a certain period; they are found in all men who try to shake off slavery, turning hopefully towards a future of freedom. It is the choice that is important—the choice between truth and existence. Some men accept falsehood because it would be impossible for them to repudiate the ideas by which they live, but others, more finely tempered, keep faith with truth and surmount the contradictions, though well aware of painful opposition.

Such men fiercely want freedom but do not want it won through hatred and blood, for the sons of the Kingdom of God

A SON OF THE LAND OF RUSSIA

arc children of peace. A spiritual revolution can be achieved through love but it presupposes a degree of awareness which most men do not possess. So the Russian revolution, like others, had to be brutal, committing atrocities, killing or exiling ill-Itarred supporters of the old regime and innocent people alike. From time to time the concern for truth and justice, which can never completely disappear from the soil of Russia, springs up when least expected, for in Soviet Russia as in the old Russia, extremes are always meeting, as Berdyaev observed: genius and laintliness with their opposites, evil and the lowest human in-Htincts.

Wounds were exhibited, the veil covering beauty or ugliness was rent apart; the very flavour of Russian literature, both old and new, made this clear. The average man who liked a quiet life and never asked fundamental questions detested Russian thought, while those whose life was a tragedy, who accepted the strangeness of the human condition, who were tortured by insoluble problems, found no answer there—they refused ready-made answers—but found stimulating food for the spirit.

In this emotional and tragic atmosphere Berdyaev was born, grew up, worked and struggled. Born in Kiev in 1874 of aristocratic parents he was descended on his father's side from a long line of generals and Knights of St. George. His mother was born Princess Kudashev, granddaughter of the Countess of Choiseul, and came from a western family of Polish and French stock. He was a day-boy at the Cadet Corps school before going on to the university and discovered his vocation as a philosopher while still a child, remaining faithful to it always, though his interest was aroused by everything to do with man in the grip of life's tragedy. 1 Ic was present in the spirit at every world event; the smallest injustice wounded him, man's exploitation of man seemed to him unbearable; oppression born of false ideas about society and religion aroused his indignation and distracted him from his own research, while all his life his absorbing creative vocation con-flirted with his commitment to the struggle for freedom:

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OP THE EIGHTH DAY

I was torn between a violent urge to pursue my intellectual battles and carry the fight into the enemy's camp, on the one hand, and moral and intellectual compassion, on the other . . . All my differences and dissensions from individual people as well as from religious, social and political movements had their origin in the matter of freedom. The struggle for freedom was for me not primarily a social struggle but one which concerned men standing over against society.

(Dream and Reality, pp. 32, 49)

Alain wrote to Simone Weil in exactly the same way: "To my mind indignation alone can distract you from your mission." These words could well apply to Berdyaev. Both writers were cruelly torn away from their work because they loved truth, freedom and justice; because they loved mankind they wanted to change the world.

Berdyaev was positively obsessed with the search for truth and justice in the special sense in which they should be understood in Russian thought. Indeed we may well ask whether he was not sometimes a victim of his own enthusiasm in having too often to choose between alternatives and a prey to his generous nature or, rather, to his faith in man's destiny. The problem is more complex: he was always clear-headed and his difficulties arose not from his enthusiasms but were the effect of the sinful world in which he was struggling. It is normal that anyone who wants to be free to work for the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven should meet opposition and apparent setbacks. These did not really affect him; they were the price to be paid for an idea which must some day triumph but which people were not yet sufficiently mature to accept and live by.

He was to suffer oppression under two opposed governments— Czarist and Soviet—and added to these was the power of the official Orthodox Church. Having left the aristocratic world of his own free will he felt himself alone and came out of his solitude "to find his way into revolutionary society". But at the same time he questioned his motives:

A SON OF THE LAND OF RUSSIA

What struck me above all was the prospect of a spiritual revolution : a rising of the spirit, of freedom and meaning against the deadly weight; the slavery and meaninglessness of the world. Actually, I was not much of a political revolutionary, and displayed little activity in this respect.

(id., p. 108)

Politics disgusted him and seemed "one of the most fruitful means for objectivation to take effect in social life". Yet he did not abandon them:

. . . my dislike of politics did not lead me to a withdrawal from the world into some blissful ivory tower: I desired the overthrow of the old order, with all its fictitious political values, and the building up of a new one upon its ashes, which would eliminate, or at least reduce, the ruthless power of politics over the heart and mind of men . . . Now it is only the revolution of the spirit which has any creative power, even though it may not be primarily concerned with raisons d'etat, conventions and objective morality, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary alike . . . And yet every liberation embodies a truth and contains a promise of true freedom.

(id., pp. 109-110)

His own revolutionary feelings rose against the sometimes reactionary character of the revolutionary movement, against a bourgeois spirit similar to that found in the class-consciousness of ihr proletariat today. Opponents are apt to take on the colour of those they are fighting against.

Hut the paradox of Berdyaev can best be explained by the fact that lie was a rebel who refused to accept the world as it is and could not submit to any authority which trammelled his spiritual freedom; he was a committed man because of his love of freedom, his compassion for those who were deprived of it and his faith in the future, but something inside him refused to let him surrender himself completely; he belonged to another world, the world of eternity. In such circumstances a man "lends himself" to a cause with absolute sincerity, accepting danger, sacrificing himself,

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

even offering his life; but some secret part of him—his awareness of which depends on the degree of his insight—is not sacrificed or offered, and cannot die.

At one of the literary gatherings arranged in St. Petersburg by Radicals and Marxists he received the unpleasant impression that it was all unnatural and artificial, and later on, whenever he had occasion to be involved with any society, whether already established or just being formed, he felt the same sensation:

I felt an urge, familiar to me before, to withdraw into myself: I seemed to lose for a moment the taste for social intercourse, for large numbers of people, for too close contacts with the political stage and political organisation.

(id., p. 126)

Such is the strange destiny of men whose true significance escapes this fallen world. Although Berdyaev was keenly aware of his own role, his revolutionary period left its mark on him as well as the memory of it, as of a "first love".

The revolutionary period through which I passed in my youth had a great influence on my moral development. Revolutionary convictions and the whole revolutionary "atmosphere" gave rise to a peculiar mood and a peculiar attitude in regard to the future and the adversities, trials, and sufferings of the present. I did not persist in this frame of mind, but its effect on me was lasting and consisted in a kind of resilience and tenacity. It may be of interest that it is precisely the revolutionary rather than the Christian period in my life which produced these qualities in me ... I accustomed myself to the thought that prison, exile and, generally speaking a life of endurance awaited me. . . My convictions, however, never induced me to become a professional revolutionary. For this I was, admittedly, too much of a theorist, a philosopher in the stricter sense of the word, and an ideologist.

(id., pp. 113-14)

Like Alain, he felt an aversion not only from military men but from politicians, lawyers and teachers; to have a fixed role in society, to belong to the bourgeoisie—that disgusted him:

A SON OP THE LAND OF RUSSIA

I was . . . convinced that the bourgeois spirit is no mere sociological phenomenon characteristic of capitalist society . . . but, in fact, may attend socialism and communism, Chistianity and Orthodoxy alike.

(id., p. 115)

Gradually Berdyaev built up his revolutionary ethic. Deeply influenced by Kant and German idealism he read Mikhailovsky, who, like Alexander Herzen, valued personal freedom in socialism but whose philosophy Berdyaev considered rather weak.

Marxism was born towards the end of 1890 and represented the highest cultural level of the Russian intelligentsia. Berdyaev's own Marxist period was brief and he remained clear-sighted and critical throughout it. In a moment of self-questioning he explained his position thus:

The Marxist movement of the late nineties was born of a new vision: it brought with it not only emancipation from the routine of populism, but also a purpose and a new conception of man. It had, furthermore, a distinctly higher intellectual and cultural standard than most of the preceding movements. Marxism, at that juncture, was in fact a signal for the spiritual as well as social liberation of man. What attracted me most of all was its characteristic appreciation of the moving forces below the surface of history, its consciousness of the historic hour, its broad historical perspectives and its universalism. The old Russian socialism seemed provincial and narrow-minded in comparison.

(id., p. 117)

The new human awareness sought by Berdyaev demanded a social and religious upheaval only to be achieved by revolution, and he saw Marxism as the tool for breaking with a past that was over and done with. He showed no naivety in his opinion of Marxist theory, drawing attention to its exaggerations, lies and brutality, but, despite its errors or beyond them, he retained his faith in the future. It would be wspng to consider such optimism ingenuous, though it is true that some of the greatest minds have

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

been ingenuous because their certainty about timeless reality is unaffected by the movement of historical events. Such men are strangers to the chicanery of those dedicated to politics or social ramifications and the compromise with principles that these may well involve.

Both Berdyaev and Simone Weil reacted to Marxism in a way that needs explanation. The only reason why materialism did not immediately provoke their violent disapproval was that they placed it within its own limits, neither of them expecting it to produce anything on the level of reality—of spiritual values. "Materialism takes all into account except the supernatural,"1 wrote Simone Weil. That is no small omission, for the supernatural is all-embracing and transcendent. Without the supernatural the universe is nothing but matter; yet to describe it thus is to apprehend but a small part of it.

That materialism destroys human freedom and dignity is not at all surprising, but the attitude of an ideology which boasts of its religious and spiritual values while protecting some classes and abandoning others to their fate, exercising its power over men's minds as well as their bodies—that is intolerable. It turns God into a potentate and man into a worshipper of idols. Nothing is worse than the sacred made profane or the wolf in sheep's clothing.

Berdyaev and Simone Weil could not bear the prostitution of the mind or the lower forms of religion which degenerate into fanaticism and lust for power. Neither of them had any illusions about Marxism: they sifted its truths from its errors by judging it against the background of how it in fact works.

They were both conscious of history and saw that, whether men like it or not, it continues on its course and that nothing could stop the march of socialism throughout the world. Teilhard de Chardin saw that the world was evolving in that direction and, incidentally, aroused a great deal of futile argument over his convictions.

During the Russian revolution Berdyaev consistently and 1 Berdyaev would not have used this term.

A SON OF THE LAND OF RUSSIA

constantly preached freedom, and was naive enough to think he would be listened to. But he had few followers. In every age, whether under fascism or communism, people are very willing to follow a leader who relieves them of responsibility, but if a lover of wisdom and justice makes them masters of their fate they become anxious and suspicious of him for offering them freedom.

Yet in spite of opposition Berdyaev gave lectures and collected round him young men from the universities and the working classes. From his travels abroad he brought back social-democratic literature in the false bottom of his suitcase. It was a period of exaltation for him.

But he was eventually arrested and spent a few days in prison for taking part in a students' demonstration in Kiev. Then later, in 1898, he was expelled from the university and again imprisoned, but soon exiled to the province of Volgoda for three years. Here lie wrote his first book, on subjectivism and individualism in social philosophy, in which he already showed the "personalism" that was to become an essential problem for him. Holding firmly to Kant's idealism and never sympathising with Hegelianism he develops the theory that beauty and goodness are dependent not on the social environment but on "transcendental consciousness", and condemns man's exploitation of man among the bourgeois classes:

This idea provided the basis for my theory of the messianic calling of the proletariat; for the proletariat is free from the sin of exploitation, and its social and psychological condition enables it to receive and bear witness to truth. I viewed the working-class as embodying, as it were, the proximity, or even the identity, of man's psychological condition with the transcendental consciousness.

(id., p. 123)

Berdyaev had no totalitarian leanings, and his contact with Marxism shaped his inner development by making him more aware of his own spiritual demands. A "new world of beauty" opened for him where he experienced the Beyond, the tran-

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

scendental. At that time he was reading Ibsen, Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, and becoming more keenly aware of himself, of his personal destiny. It was a spiritual crisis rather than a religious conversion which made him leave a movement not altogether in tune with his own ideas and his search for truth. Gradually he abandoned what he called the "earthly" philosophy of the left-wing intelligentsia.

After his exile he went through a period of depression but the "little" revolution of 1905 produced a new spiritual reaction in him; he was a true revolutionary, but a spiritual revolutionary, a "mystical anarchist", to use his own expression. His anarchism was based on metaphysics and tinged with mysticism, yet it was not that of the St. Petersburg literary circles, which he found indifferent to truth and human welfare:

The slogan adopted by the mystical anarchists was "non-acceptance of the world", and they claimed to be the champions of complete freedom of the spirit from all external conditions. I need hardly say that the cause of mystical anarchism was profoundly congenial to me . . . Freedom, unconditional and uncompromising freedom, has been the foun-tainhead and prime mover of all my thinking.

(id., p. 158)

But the atmosphere of St. Petersburg suffocated him. Although he had founded and was presiding over a religious and philosophical society, its members now seemed to him to lack any philosophical understanding and be interested only in the literature of aesthetics. So he left the capital to spend a winter in Paris and on his return to Russia went to live in Moscow where he attended many meetings and read the Slavophils. Khomyakov aroused his greatest interest because his idea of freedom as the basis of Christianity and the Church had special significance for him. The February revolution plunged him into desperate loneliness; the intellectual revolutionaries were trying to become members of the provisional government, an attitude which he found insufferable. He became a prey to conflicting sentiments of anger and serenity,

A SON OF THE LAND OF RUSSIA

accepting responsibilities for which in some cases he was ill-fitted; but then his true vocation asserted itself and he refused them:

As a result of a number of circumstances I found myself for a short time a member of the Council (Soviet) of the newly proclaimed Republic (pre-Parliament)—a position which, so far as I was concerned, seemed almost grotesque.

(id., p. 226)

At the beginning of 1918 he wrote his Philosophy of Inequality, which later he was to judge harshly, finding it unjust as well as untrue to his deeper convictions:

I defended the evident truth that the only source of true social equality is to be found in a recognition of the dignity and worth of the human person.

(id., p. 227)

Soon afterwards work in the public services became compulsory for a time and while Berdyaev himself had to clean the railway track his wife and sister cleared away the snow. I remember his sister-in-law, Genia, telling me about their active life in those needy days and I have always wondered how that little woman with her tiny, aristocratic hands could have gripped a shovel.

Berdyaev was not upset by manual work; he felt it to be just, though sometimes badly organised. But then it was the period of near-starvation, of search-warrants, of fuel-shortages; he broke up his oak tables and chairs to burn in the stove. Although he could ruvc nothing published he went on writing as well as doing his best for writers who were imprisoned.

After the storm came the calm and in 1920 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at Moscow University for a year. He was thus able to give free expression to his thoughts and inevitably criticised Marxism, in addition founding and running the Free Ac adcmy of Moral Science, which existed up to the time of his departure from Russia. On orders from the Cheka he was

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

questioned from time to time, but so sincere and courageous were his replies that, although both the Cheka and the O.G.P.U. arrested him several times, he was always released. He describes his interrogation by Dzerjinsky, who founded the Cheka and whose name struck terror into the heart of every Russian. On this occasion Berdyaev was taken from his cell at midnight and spoke for more than half-an-hour, giving reasons for his religious, philosophical and moral opposition to communism. At the end of it Dzerjinsky set him free on condition that he did not leave Moscow without permission, and arranged for a soldier to take him home by motor-cycle.

In 1922, after spending the summer in the country, Berdyaev went back to Moscow, his flat was searched in the middle of his first night there and he was arrested, kept in prison for a week and then told he was to be exiled.

My own banishment was based not on any political but on ideological grounds. When I heard of the decision, I was overcome with grief and bitterness: as I have said, I did not want to emigrate, and the prospect of merging with the Emigre world filled me with something like horror.

(id., p. 239)

Two months later he left his country by ship in a group of some sixty-five exiles and went to Berlin where he met Max Scheler and Keyserling. His stay there served as an introduction to western life and two years later he went on to Paris. From then onwards until his death there was to be nothing but exile. He might well echo Mischa Karamazov's words on emigrating to America to avoid imprisonment: "I'm not emigrating in order to have a happy life ... I love Russia." And Berdyaev might have added these further words of Mischa's: "Everyone is guilty towards everyone else", which are echoed in his own avowal:

Bolshevism came into existence in Russia and was successful because I am what I am, because there was no real spiritual strength in me ... Bolshevism is my sin, my failing. It is an

A SON OF THE LAND OF RUSSIA

ordeal inflicted upon me; the sufferings which Bolshevism have caused me are the expiation of my failings, of my sin, of our common failings and of our common sin.

(The End of Our Time)

Berdyaev often used to talk about his beloved Russia to close friends; to other exiles he seemed a communist, but to the extreme left-wing French he remained an exile from Soviet Russia, while to his friends he represented Holy Russia. Sometimes he used to say jokingly that because he was so devoted to Russia perhaps the French would refuse to keep his dead body. I could not attend his funeral (which was on a Good Friday) because I was in Budapest, but someone who was there told me that when the coffin was being lowered the grave was found to be too short and the grave-diggers had to lengthen it.

I have written in some detail of Berdyaev's position in the development—intellectual, social and political—of Russia, for his attitude helps us to understand not only his character and temperament but also the direction of his spiritual destiny.

Because he was "committed" it is essential to explain what he thought of the changes which occurred in Russia. It must be remembered that he spent five years under Soviet rule, remaining true to himself, a sad onlooker while other men betrayed themselves and were even transformed in their appearance. His judgment of the situation shows his clear-sightedness and, despite his impassioned nature, his strict impartiality:

I did not conceal my attitude to communism. Indeed, I waged an open war against its spirit, or rather against its hostility to the spirit ... I was convinced that the guilt and responsibility for the horrors of the Revolution lay above all on the men of the old regime, and that it was not for them to sit in judgment on these horrors. Later I came to realise that the leaders of the Russian renascence, of whom I was one, also had their share in the guilt of the hostile attitude of the Russian Revolution towards spiritual values: we were guilty of social irresponsibility, of softness, self-sufficiency and pseudo-aristocratism. The

NICOLAS BERDYABV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

supreme responsibility, however, lies with historical Christianity and with Christians, who have failed to fulfil their duty.

(Dream and Reality, pp. 228-9)

The lines which follow are the most important. Berdyaev's views never changed on this subject:

Communism was for me from the very start a challenge and a reminder of an unfulfilled Christian duty. Christians ought to have embodied the truth of communism: had they done so, its falsehood would never have won the day. Throughout my exile in the west this conviction was the dominant idea behind my social activities. Communism marked a crisis of Christianity as well as of humanism.

(id., p. 229)

Throughout his life he remained absorbed in the problem of Russian communism in its national and international aspects, but above all as an historic phenomenon heralding the end of an age:

Revolution is a small apocalypse of history, judgment within history . . . Within the individual life of man an end periodically comes, and death, for resurrection into a new life ... In revolution judgment is passed upon the evil forces which have brought about injustice, but the forces which judge, themselves create evil; in revolution good itself is realised by forces of evil, since forces of good were powerless to realise their good in history.

(The Origin of Russian Communism, pp. 34-5)

When Berdyaev left Russia at the age of 48 he had written several books on the philosophy of religion, had been a party-leader, founded an academy and done a great deal of lecturing; his name was known throughout the country. Twenty years later his ideas were to be talked of in America, Asia and Africa as well as Europe. Only in one country—his own Russia, did they seem forgotten, and he suffered bitterly because of it.1 His position

1 During the recent International Exhibition in Moscow some friends assured me they had seen on the Russian literature stands a number of his works alongside those of Dostoievsky, and they are now to be found in all krge Russian libraries.

A SON OF THE LAND OF RUSSIA

vis-.\-vis the White Russian Emigres was always uneasy because he never agreed with their views and condemnation of Soviet Russia.

Despite the sadness of exile and his beloved country's ignorance of his writings he retained his affection for Russia, closely following the course of events there. During the war he added an epilogue on those years to his autobiography:

The invasion of the Russian land by the German armies shook me to the depths of my being. I felt that my Russia was exposed to mortal danger ... I never lost faith in the invincibility of Russia . . . My inborn patriotism, of which I have already spoken above, reached an extraordinary intensity. I felt myself one with the successes and failures of the Red Army.

(Dream and Reality, p. 317)

And the following lines will prevent any misunderstanding:

I saw no reason for changing either my attitude to the major issues of communism or my basic "Soviet orientation". So far as international relations were concerned, I continued to regard the Soviet government as the only representative national government, even though I did not approve of its policy in some respects.

(id., p. 320)

It should be mentioned that the expression "Soviet orientation" must be understood to mean opposition to Czarism and not acceptance of Soviet doctrine. That, then, was Berdyaev's attitude to the old Russia and to Soviet Russia. His sense of justice made him rise in revolt against the Czarist regime, while as a Marxist he rebelled against the materialism of the Soviet system, and although he was sympathetic to Orthodoxy he could not stand its sectarianism and opportunism.

Old Russia, with its grandeurs and miseries, with its enslaved populace, suffered not only from economic and social troubles but was hidebound by the Orthodox Church, which had its own grandeur and misery, and injio way lost its appeal when persecuted.

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

Berdyaev can only be understood against the background of a universal religion because his spiritual development was outside all Orthodoxy in the narrow sense of the term, although its main lines accord with the eastern version of a religious cult—not tied to Rome or Geneva, or to Athens as opposed to Jerusalem. Orthodoxy was born in Jerusalem and belongs to Alexandria and Byzantium; hence its basically eschatological character, its theology of the Holy Spirit, its emphasis on freedom, the Transfiguration and the Resurrection.

Only the vast land of Russia, with its universalist religious beliefs combining the western with the eastern, could produce a man so passionately devoted to freedom.

CHAPTER 2 THE RELIGIOUS ENERGY OF THE RUSSIAN SPIRIT

Orthodoxy has an unswerving belief that divine energy can be transfused into the life of this world and of humanity.

(The Russian Soul)

Wlicn Berdyaev said, "The religious question has been a source of continuous chagrin for me", he spoke for the soul of old Russia as well as for himself. A single sentence sums up his own feelings and those of his countrymen:

God can be denied only on the surface: but he cannot be denied where human experience reaches down beneath the surface of flat, vapid, commonplace existence.

(Dream and Reality, p. 185)

In old Russia people were fond of lighting tiny oil lamps in front of the icons to symbolise their heart whose ardent flame would never die, even when faintly flickering.

Dostoievsky's world provides a true picture of Russian religious feeling, a mirror reflecting every type of person—the weak, the religious, the atheists, the rebels and those possessed of the devil. The relationship between God and man is so profound that to lose touch with God is to lose touch with oneself, and, in the same way, to lose touch with oneself means to withdraw from God. God's mystery can be found among the people, for he is faithful to his own origin; and they even have a presentiment of "the Holy obscurity of God". In spite of their failings the people always remain God's people.

Spiritual men like Makar Dolgoruky, the pilgrim in The Adolescent, Archibishop Tikhon in The Possessed, Zosima, the monk in The Brothers Karamazov, and his disciple, the gentle

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

Aloysha—such men illuminate the world with the light of their spirit; Makar showing the divine mystery in every tree and every blade of grass, Zosima telling of his brother Marcel who asked the birds for pardon because Nature does not stop at man—from one end of the world to the other all is interdependent and interrelated. Inanimate things also share in God's love; every created thing, down to the humblest leaf, sings his glory. Gentle Aloysha so loves truth that in his eyes it assumes a religious quality and the wisdom of these spiritual men is founded on the nearness of eternity, in which they are living.

The attraction of the idea of God for the people of Dostoievsky's world should perhaps be mentioned. Often some depraved or drunken character in his books will suddenly speak of Him with such an acute sense of His existence and presence that the reader is abruptly brought face to face with an unexpected illumination; for instance, the legend of The Grand Inquisitor, which is a defence of Christ, is told by the rebellious atheist, Ivan Karamazov.

It was because Russia was an Orthodox country that Dostoievsky could write, "all Russia hears the call of the Orthodox faith and looks towards the light that comes from the east".

The religious energy of the Russian spirit possesses the faculty of switching over and directing itself to purposes which are not merely religious, for example, to social objects. In virtue of their religious-dogmatic quality of spirit, Russians—whether Orthodox, heretics or schismatics—are always apocalyptic or nihilist. Russians were true to type, both in the seventeenth century as Dissenters and Old-ritualists, and in the nineteenth century as revolutionaries, nihilists and communists. The structure of spirit remained the same. The Russian revolutionary intelligentsia inherited it from the Dissenters of the seventeenth century. And there always remains as the chief thing the profession of some orthodox faith; this is always the criterion by which membership of the Russian people is judged.

(The Origin of Russian Communism, p. 9)

The theme of Moscow as the third Rome (after Rome and Byzantium) appeared in literature following the fall of the

THE RELIGIOUS ENERGY OF THE RUSSIAN SPIRIT

Byzantine Empire, and Philotea recorded its grandeur in a letter to Czar Ivan III. Berdyaev wrote on the same subject: "The Moscow autocracy will be formed under the banner of the Messianic idea; the Messianic role of the Russian people is bringing forth a nationalist Church." While realising that Russia was profoundly Orthodox Berdyaev fought against all nationalistic pretensions, saying that nationalism was a betrayal of Russia's uni-vcrsalist role in the world. It struck him as ridiculous for any nation to try to appropriate God to itself, and the doctrine that Clod revealed Himself only to the Israelites before Christ's coming seemed to him no longer credible; the diverse forms of religious life were all paths leading up towards Christian revelation; Christ's coming was an answer to the hopes of all religions and Christianity was the fulfilment of all the prophecies. On this point Berdyaev is at one with Simone Weil when she speaks of divine truth as made manifest gradually, asserting that all the evidence agrees and unexpectedly confirms the Christian faith instead of undermining it.

In differentiating between natural and revealed religions Berdyaev preferred the terms religions of nature and religions of the spirit, believing that all marked stages of revelation corresponded to humanity's degree of religious awareness. Their difference exists on the plane of the natural world and the spiritual world. The revelation of God is not

a transcendent event taking place on the objective and natural plane of reality, nor is it an illumination from without. It is on the contrary something which transpires within us, a light springing up in our inmost depths, a fact of the spiritual life which has no connection with exterior realities.

(Freedom and the Spirit, p. 90)

Revelation is spiritual and through it the spiritual world becomes one with the natural world. The distinction between what comes from without and springs from within is removed; thus God revealed Himself to Moses in.the depths of his spirit, and it is in the depth of his spirit that Berdyaev can be called Orthodox.

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

Although Orthodox in spirit he remained outside any religious community while regarding the Orthodox Church with respect and affection. If he had been a Catholic he would have been considered a heretic, but the Orthodox Church, recognising his genius, his sense of the divine and the spiritual element he could bring to the Church itself, regarded him as a philosopher, albeit an unruly one.

During the war I met several Orthodox monks who were his wholehearted admirers, whereas theologians, principally laymen, protested vehemently against his ideas. He may not have liked theologians but they disliked him even more.

He never called himself a religious man and we shall see why; in this he showed his usual honesty and closely followed his own changing religious beliefs. During his childhood religion was scarcely mentioned, for at the end of the nineteenth century it was more alive among the masses than among the aristocracy. His father, on the other hand, had spent his childhood in a monastic atmosphere and reacted violently against it, becoming a follower of Voltaire.

After much soul-searching Berdyaev decided he was a Christian:

I can remember no event in my life which could be described as a "conversion", to which western Christians attach such great importance. But there must have been a moment when I became conscious of myself as a Christian, even if I am not able to relate it to any particular day in my life ... I do not call this experience a sudden conversion, although it happened at a time of intense spiritual conflict, because before it I was neither a sceptic, nor a materialist, nor an agnostic; and because thereafter the conflicts within me did not vanish. I knew no time of enduring inner peace and went on labouring under the pressure of tormenting problems.

(Dream and Reality, p. 176)

He often refers to his religious progress: There was, however, some hidden process going on within me

THE RELIGIOUS ENERGY OF THE RUSSIAN SPIRIT

as yet not susceptible of expression, but pointing towards a deeper appreciation of the religious element.

(id., p. 162)

And he has definite views on the varieties of Christian religion:

I am not a theologian ... I speak with the voice of free religious thought ... I have read a great many theological works and tried to discover and determine for myself the nature and essence of Orthodoxy as well as of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Numerous and varied contacts with the spiritual world of Orthodoxy and with the representatives of Orthodox thought have served to deepen and widen my understanding of Orthodox teaching. As a result I was led to the conclusions that Orthodoxy is less susceptible of definition and rationalisation than either Catholicism or Protestantism. For me this was significant of greater freedom, and hence evidence of the preeminence of Orthodoxy. I cannot, in all conscience, call myself a typical "orthodox" of any kind; but Orthodoxy was nearer to me (and I hope I am near to Orthodoxy) than either Catholicism or Protestantism. I never severed my link with the Orthodox Church, although confessional self-satisfaction and cxclusiveness are alien to me.

(id., p. 177)

11 is preference for Orthodoxy lay not in the fact that it was the cult of his country but his spirit found in it an absence of legalism and could thus search for the truth more freely. Elsewhere1 he has written of it in glowing terms, but his main points are perpetually recalled throughout his writings. To understand his approach to Orthodoxy we must refer to them, particularly as the creed is little known in the west. When in Europe he met many Catholics and Protestants, but his faith did not waver; he remained an Orthodox Christian.

The Orthodox Church does not attempt to proselytise, has no

militant activities and suggests a way of life rather than of thought.

Despite its period of servitude to the Great Byzantine and Russian

empires it to some extent escaped'eontamination by the temporal

1 In an article entitled "The Truth of Orthodoxy". (French only.)

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

power for an obvious reason: it is an inner life rather than an indoctrination, a tradition rather than an authoritarian society. Hence its lack of external structure, dogmatism or legalistic severity, which astounds many western minds. But its greatness lies mainly in its changeless tradition, which is very close to primitive Christianity. It has been less disturbed by the play of history than would have been a more exteriorised Church forced to reckon with the changing world. Its heretics are not those who follow doctrines which it considers false but the faithful who are willing to lead a spiritual life that is a lie. Its authority rests in its whole congregation.

Orthodoxy ignores the Schoolmen: it has not had to "baptise Aristotle", as Laberthoniere put it. The Holy Scriptures suffice for it and it knows nothing of rationalism. It maintains that it is a Trinitarian religion and the vital element in its theology is religious experience. It knows nothing of the opposition between the natural and the supernatural; God's grace shows His action in the created world—by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Orthodoxy separates God and Nature, the Kingdom of God from Caesar's realm . . . The divine energy acts in man in a hidden manner. The created world cannot be said to be the deity nor even divine, nor can it be said to be outside the divine. God and the divine life in no way resemble the created world or natural life, and no analogy can be drawn between them. God is infinite while natural life is finite and limited. But divine energy overflows into the natural world, affecting it and illuminating it.

(cf. The Truth of Orthodoxy)

Orthodox thought is profoundly cosmic: Christ resurrected is a cosmic Christ. Hence its dynamic quality and the importance it gives to inner freedom. Its gaze is fixed not upon Christ crucified but on Christ risen. The legalistic idea of redemption is completely foreign to it,

Christ's coming is of cosmic and cosmogonic importance because it signifies a new genesis, a new day of creation. The

THE RELIGIOUS ENERGY OF THE RUSSIAN SPIRIT

thought of eastern patristic philosophy centred on "Theosis", the process of man and the whole created universe becoming divine. Salvation was precisely this process, and it applies to the whole cosmos.

(id.)

The Orthodox Church awaits a new religious event in the universe, such as the coming of the Holy Spirit or the New Jerusalem, and its concern with things spiritual, while giving it a quality of incompleteness, turns it towards the transfiguration of the cosmos by the whole creation.

God's creatures give their response to Him because they are free, while authoritarianism tends to separate the religious community from the individual. But unity must be achieved and the Church could not accept slaves, for God speaks only to free men.

True freedom of religious consciousness is found not only by one free personality isolating itself and proclaiming its individuality, but on the contrary ... in a personality that is supra-personal in the unity of the spiritual organism, which is the body of Christ, that is to say, His Church.

(id.)

It is difficult to see how Berdyaev could have drawn inspiration from any other form of religion than the Orthodox Church. True, he was only on its periphery, but was not excluded from it and in spirit he did belong there. His basic theme accorded perfectly with Orthodox thought: from the eschatological point of view anthropology leads to its natural conclusion—sacramentum futuri. Those words are not his but he believed that the whole creation would be fused in the Kingdom of God. "Eschatology," writes Paul Evdokimov, "as an existential dimension of time is inherent in history; it gives us a mystical understanding of first and last things and thus assumes the immanence of Paradise and the Kingdom of God."1 The Church Fathers always bear in mind— even after the Fall—man's first destiny, that is, his condition in the

1 Orthodoxy. (French only.) L'Orthodoxie, NeuchStel-Paris, 1959, p. 59.

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OP THE EIGHTH DAY

Garden of Eden which is like a force of gravity drawing him towards his true destiny. In Orthodox thought hope and even a certain impatience for Christ's Second Coming are always apparent in the liturgy of waiting and expectancy.

Berdyaev was familiar with this attitude both because it was inseparable from Holy Russia and because of the importance given to the Greek Fathers whom, incidentally, he frequently quotes— in particular, Gregory of Nyssa, named "Father of Fathers" by the Second Council. Because it looks towards the future, Orthodoxy leads to unity and, despite the revolution, Dostoievsky's remark in his Journal in 1881 remains valid: "Some people imagine that the Russian masses are simply atheists. Their mistake lies in not recognising the Church in the people. I do not mean the buildings or the clergy; I am not speaking of our Russian 'socialism'. . . the aim of which is an oecumenical Church, uniting all peoples and existing on this earth, in so far as the earth can contain it. I am talking of the ceaseless aspiration of the Russian people towards the great universal and fraternal union in the name of Christ. . . The Russian people's socialism does not consist in communism or outward mechanical forms; they believe they will be saved in the end only by a World Union in the name of Christ."

In an article written in 1945 Berdyaev himself confirmed the meaning of those words: "Soviet Russia masks the eternal Russia . . . The Russian people are the most community-minded in the world." The French are too individualistic to grasp easily the significance of a person's role in the community.

Berdyaev always hoped for an oecumenical Church but this is only possible if the various religions give primacy to the spirit; so long as they are social organisms, tossed hither and thither by the course of history, there can be no communion among them. Unhappily every formal religion is bound to be a social organism. Berdyaev never raised his voice against any religion or Church as such; he reproved them only for their materialistic aspect, because that is a betrayal of Christ. It was through love of God and respect for human dignity that he could not accept the socialisation of

THE RELIGIOUS ENERGY OP THE RUSSIAN SPIRIT

Christianity. With all his might he wished it to have "a new and creative life" which would be eschatologically true to the Messianic idea. Commenting on the Lord's Prayer he wrote:

"Thy Kingdom come" signifies that the Kingdom of God is not yet in the world, that we only await it, and move towards or away from it.

(Dream and Reality, p. 205)

At the time of the revolution Berdyaev thought Orthodoxy would go through a period of purification and then issue victorious from persecution; but this did not happen, at least during the years preceding his exile. He soon saw that efforts in this direction were not pursued for long and the setback caused him much sorrow. Under the Czarist regime he had been at odds with the sectarianism of the official Church, which was closely connected with the temporal power and equally despotic. When the monks on Mount Athos were persecuted he wrote an article against the Holy Synod for which he was found guilty of blasphemy and would have been exiled to Siberia if the outbreak of war had not suspended such sentences. After that painful experience it saddened him to see the vain efforts of true Christians during the revolution.

As we have already noted, the beginning of the twentieth century produced a genuine renascence in religious philosophy in Russia; alongside the political and social revolution there was a spiritual development among Russian thinkers which led to a "new religious consciousness" at the expense of historical Christianity, and at first took the form of a deepened spirituality with the rejection of hypocrisy and Pharisaism. The search for truth was shown in a willingness to be "engaged" and "disengaged"—"disengaged" from dross and deception, "engaged" in favour of sincerity, rejecting a degraded world, turning towards light and beauty. In The Origin of Russian Communism Berdyaev wrote that "the revolution burst upon the history of Christianity like a judgment on it—on Christians; -on their denial of Christ's teaching, on the mockery they had made of Christianity".

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

While the new Christian consciousness was being born Ber-dyaev explained his position vis-a-vis religious and philosophical circles:

I found myself almost automatically in the position of a "left-winger", a "modernist" and an extreme representative of the "new religious consciousness", notwithstanding my sincere desire to share in the life of the Orthodox Church.

(Dream and Reality, p. 164)

Servility among writers aroused his vehement protestations and still more did the attempt to create a dependent church:

I resented all their attempts to create a bogus, sectarian church, and I refused to accept their version of the "new religious consciousness" as an invitation to produce new sacraments.

(id., p. 163)

Unhappily the idea of a new religious consciousness, more genuine and purged of past errors, was not uniformly accepted. When the Church was being persecuted priests who were true to their faith were prepared to die for it but others compromised with the new authorities. Former servitude to the temporal power was replaced by an equally tragic prostitution of the soul which grieved and disgusted Berdyaev. When he was last interviewed by the O.G.P.U. before his final exile he met some priests in the waiting-room who belonged to the reformed Living Church.

It was a rather unseemly and painful sight. My negative impression of the Living Church was confirmed when I learned that its leaders were engaged in ... informing against the Patriarch . . . This was, to put it mildly, a dubious way of bringing about the reformation which I myself desired.

(id., p. 140)

But official religion remained outside all these problems and there were no reforms within the Church.

(id.)

THE RELIGIOUS ENERGY OF THE RUSSIAN SPIRIT

This brand of conservative religion ... is being encouraged by the Soviet government.

(id., p. 324)

Introduced by his friend, Bulgakov, to Orthodox circles he again felt a spiritual malaise. In old Russia the monks were responsible for a considerable amount of spiritual guidance; monasteries and deserts were places of pilgrimage. Berdyaev speaks of his painful experience on a visit to the Zossimov hermitage where the startsy (holy men) failed to win his admiration and seemed to him to have too much authority. His reaction to Hindu mahatmas was the same.

Only one member of the secular clergy, Father Alexis Meche-voy, regarded as a starets because of the quality of his spiritual life, had a salutary effect on him, not as a counsellor but through the spiritual discussions they had together. He also came into contact with what he called "Russia's vagabonds", Christ's fools, the God-seekers, among whom he discerned prophetic gifts and deeply religious lives passed in poverty, detachment and simplicity of heart. For his most vital religious or, rather, mystical discussions he was indebted to an illiterate farm labourer who often came to see him and talked to him through part of the night. This simple man's spiritual experiences were remarkable and astounded Berdyaev, who compared his utterances with those of Meister Eck-hart and Jacob Boehme, summing him up as "the most remarkable man I have ever met".

Throughout his life, from childhood onwards, he discussed religion, but seldom with priests. The clergy wanted at all costs to safeguard their authority, their strength and their power, while on his side Berdyaev made some harsh remarks showing his attachment to a free form of Christianity that could not be represented by priests who were virtually civil servants.

My strong and inborn aversion against clericalism seemed ineradicable, and I was never able to overcome my misgivings vis-a-vis the clergy.

(id., p. 167)

NICOLAS BERDYABV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

But his anti-clericalism was not of the usual type; in fact, he was not really anti-clerical; his position was worse, because his indignation arose from a love of truth and freedom, and his faith and love of Christianity made him reject the falsities which had arisen in the course of its history. We shall return to that in connection with his alienation from religion and this is not the moment to cavil about the justice of his feelings or the violence of his attitude. Suffice it to hear him say:

I am not a heretic and no sectarian, but a believing free thinker.

(id., p. 185)

At the same period he fought the religio-philosophical sects with equal keenness; and when occultism was flourishing he turned away from it; like theosophy and anthroposophy, it was too cos-mocentric to retain his interest.

Although he delved ever more deeply into religious philosophy his position with regard to formal religion never changed; he always adopted what he called a "supra-denominational" attitude, preferring that description to "inter-denominational". As a complete nonconformist he was isolated, but he could not think otherwise; he felt compelled to be completely faithful to what he considered the truth—which he found constrictive and, incidentally, painful. Therein lay the drama of his religious life; the easy thing would have been for him to desert his own particular approach to God. Sometimes he was more anxious than really upset, as the following passage shows:

The drama of my religious life appears to me as pre-eminently the drama of man and his creative vocation ... I do not doubt the existence of God; but I have known moments when my heart and mind were overwhelmed by the terrible thought that the current notion of this relationship may be right—the notion, namely, of God as master and man as serf, of ruler and subject. If this be so, then all is lost, and I am lost too. If this be so, then nothing remains for me but the gaping abyss of nothingness.

(id., p. 205)

THE RELIGIOUS ENERGY OF THE RUSSIAN SPIRIT

The nightmare grows confused and this cry of unrequited love bursts forth from the depths where few men have descended: "Man does not understand God".

That is the tragedy of Berdyaev's religious life—the conflict so succinctly presented in The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov. According to this there are two universal and contradictory principles, "freedom and constraint, belief in life's meaning and the denial of this belief, Divine Love and purely human compassion, Christ and anti-Christ". The Grand Inquisitor considers freedom to be a heavy burden for humanity, whose shoulders are too weak to bear its yoke. Out of compassion he wants to force men to obey him for, deprived of leadership, they become dazed; they do not want to accept responsibility; they find freedom an intolerable form of suffering so that it is a relief to submit to authority. The Grand Inquisitor's compassion is born of a lack of faith in men; he has no respect for human dignity and treats them as children who should be guided towards their destiny. Berdyaev's whole life, thought and work were a struggle against this view:

Man prefers peace and even death to freedom of choice of good or evil. . . The Grand Inquisitor says that people "look less for God than for miracles".

(Dostoievsky, p. 191)

Faith in man and faith in God were for him two opposite poles of the same belief; to doubt man was to doubt God, and vice-versa. When the Grand Inquisitor witholds from man the possibility of becoming divine, that is, of a Higher Life, it is because he denies God. He prefers humanity's fictitious happiness to its grandeur. He wants to "organise universal harmony" outside the reality of God and His Presence in man. And so, in the legend, Christ, bearing freedom, faces the Grand Inquisitor, who offers servitude and tries to win men over with his air of assurance. Christ remains silent because "effective religion cannot be expressed in words; the truth about freedom is inexpressible".

Berdyaev firmly refused to recognise the Grand Inquisitor,

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relegating him to Satan's realm and remaining faithful to Christ. Throughout history men have been divided into two opposing forces—the slaves of a false Christ, who may be compared with the anti-Christ of future ages, and the disciples of Christ who assert their right to bear the weight of human responsibility. Between the two there is an unceasing struggle, both claiming the same Master. One side serves a still-born Christ, the other, the God of Eternal Life. At the end of his autobiography Berdyaev reviews his past with poignant sincerity:

As I look back on my spiritual path I do not discern any experience which could be properly described as a "conversion". I know of no point in my life at which I underwent a decisive crisis, partly perhaps because my whole life was a series of continuous crises . . . Once I was shaken to the depth by the thought that the very search for meaning would render life significant. This insight marked a true inner revolution. This was the conversion to the search for Truth. Henceforth I was convinced that there is no religion above Truth and the awareness of this supremacy of Truth has put a lasting stamp on my spiritual and intellectual development. This "spiritualism" became the ground and framework of my whole philosophical attitude. As I understand it, however, the word spiritualism does not denote any philosophical or mystical or, indeed, any occult school of thought, but an existential awareness. I came to believe in the primary reality of the spirit at a level which is deeper than, and transcends, the sphere of discursive reasoning.

(Dream and Reality, pp. 78-9)

My life has been anything but a work of art. Neither was I ever able to play with it. I have held to life with no support save a bare search for a truth wholly and utterly unlike the world and with no other passion save the passion for freedom which dissolves the congealed and petrified moves of life and conscious-

ness.

(id., p. 315)

CHAPTER 3 AN ESSENTIAL MAN

It is very important to recognise the fact that only the eternal is real.

(The Divine and the Human, p. 156)

"An essential man" is like the eternal Which changeth not with the external.

This couplet by Angelus Silesius, while reminiscent of Boehme, is no less applicable to Berdyaev.

What is an "essential man"? He is one "whose spirit has made a breach", to use Boehme's phrase, so that he can receive the light beyond compare that enables him to enter a new time and a new space, to escape from purely temporal time and to have his being in eternity. By the same token the "essential man" begotten by eternity is a man of light and a place of metamorphosis.

First of all the meaning of the word eternity must be remembered so that it is not misused; in Hebrew it is derived from the verb alam, meaning "hidden". Eternity must not be considered as a negation of time, either beyond time or before time; it is related to time as is the infinite to the finite. We can become conscious of the infinite only through the finite, and eternity can be perceived only within time although it is outside time. According to Berdyaev the paradox of time and eternity concerns both the world's and personal destiny. Eternal life does not mean future life beyond the grave but "this life, in the depth of the moment when the rupture with time occurs". Eternity belongs to the transfigured world which we can enter without the need for physical death. Here we are teminded of the expression used by Novalis in writing to Wolman, when he said that he felt

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the birth of the eternal within him. To reveal the eternal within one—that is to hasten the advent of the spirit in time.

"Spirit," says Berdyaev, "leads a higher qualitative existence than the body or the soul" (Spirit and Reality, p. 5). The old conception which we find in the Schools of Alexandria and which was revived in the Middle Ages, particularly by William of St. Thierry, has permanent validity. For Berdyaev the primacy given to body, soul or spirit does not correspond with three successive stages which men should go through; it does not imply a corporal, psychic and spiritual nature. "It does imply that man's soul and body can participate in a new and higher order of spiritual existence" (id., p. 6). Thus the body and soul are spiritualised and man passes beyond the natural order to that of freedom.

Spirit is, as it were, a divine breath, penetrating human existence and endowing it with the highest dignity, with the highest quality of existence, with an inner independence and unity.

(id., p. 6)

There is no opposition between body, soul and spirit, no conflict between time and eternity. To understand Berdyaev's thought here it is as well to recall his theory of time, which he considered of great importance, in common with Bergson and Heidegger who made it the pivot of their philosophy.

Man's destiny is fulfilled in time which, when divided into past, present and future, is discontinuous and disintegrated. It is the product of objectivation; everything in it is extrinsic, unreal and illusory. This is the degraded time of our world of nature, but it can be transcended. Berdyaev talks of cosmic and historic time as belonging to the world after the fall; only existential time belongs to the spiritual life, and he maintains that its measurement depends on the tension and intensity of the subject. Thus existential time occurs in the inner self; that is why the "essential" man lives in the depth of his being; he draws strength from it and his inner senses are enriched. Berdyaev speaks of a subtle sense of

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smell which in his own case allowed him to distinguish human beings, since the soul gives out its scent in nauseous waves or sweet perfume.

While the conflict between the inner and outer self does not completely disappear it is at moments transcended, and when difficulties arise they do so not at the ordinary human level but on quite another plane, never reached by the average man.

The tragedy of an "essential" man has nothing to do with obstacles resulting from external circumstances or day-to-day events. It is entirely different; it lies in the ceaseless conflict bet ween the finite and the infinite, and comes from the new dimension brought into existence by the emergent spirit. The "essential" man lives in a temporal world but the treasure within him draws him towards another world by its mysterious weight. Berdyaev always felt his affinity with the spiritual, from the day he was born:

The first response to the world of a creature who is born into it is of immense significance. I cannot remember my first cry on encountering the world, but I know for certain that from the very beginning I was aware of having fallen into an alien realm.

(Dream and Reality, p. i)

He was never firmly rooted in this world; his real roots were elsewhere:

I am aware of my self as a point of intersection of two worlds; while "this" world, the world of my actual living, is known to me as unauthentic, untrue, devoid alike of primacy and ulti-macy, there is "another world", more authentic and more true, to which my deepest self belongs... I have fought battles with the world, not as a man who desires or is able to conquer and subjugate it to himself, but as one who seeks to emancipate himself from this world.

(id., pp. 20-1)

All his violence and quarrels were due to this wish to emancipate himself from the world.

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Nothing can rescue the world from its state of estrangement except God. The revolutionary and anarchic in me are intent on subverting the whole configuration of this alien world.

(id., p. 314)

Those who are isolated by their knowledge seem to withdraw into proud solitude. As Baruzi says in his study of Angelus Silesius, "It is a sign of mediocrity to want other people to resemble oneself." The "essential" man would like everyone to attend a festival in celebration of humanity. Berdyaev had no regard for his detractors; only pity for them might momentarily attract his attention; if he turned his eyes towards them it was with a look of appeal—the appeal of love freely given—and invitation.

An "essential" man feels the sense of mystery; eternity is his country and mystery his element—only there can he live and breathe. But he never apprehends mystery face to face; while he thinks he is reaching it, it is retreating and he has to advance yet farther. Mystery is an appeal, an invitation. At the very moment when he believes it is within his grasp it recedes, forcing the pursuer to cover still greater distances in his efforts to reach it.

A true realism and a true idealism issue from the recognition of mystery beneath and beyond this world; it is the attitude of him whose eyes do not tell him what they know or do not know. He who knows no mystery lives in a flat, insipid, one-dimensional world. If the experience of flatness and insipidity were not relieved by an awareness of mystery, depth and infinitude, life would no longer be livable.

(id., p. 310)

An "essential" mans shows signs of religious experience in the etymological sense of the word, not necessarily connected with any particular form of faith and perhaps not dogmatical. In Boehme's words, "a saint has his own church within him", but without discussing saintliness one can say that there is a spiritual community in an "essential" man. His religious experience, essential and occurring at great depth, is akin to revelation. And here arises a delicate point which needs precise explanation.

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Berdyaev considered that historical revelation symbolised spiritual mystery. Spiritual revelation occurs in the spirit, the secret inner self; it does not disclose new truth but explains the truth. The dry seeds of truth—to use Nietzsche's phrase—open, \ producing communication and nourishment; the corn yields its substance when the husk has been ground. The law is not rejected but transcended, for the letter is worth nothing compared with the spirit. In this way a personal revelation—which may be called a spiritual experience—resembles a prophetic inspiration, an inspiration about a known truth; the exoteric meaning of the truth was already known but now its esoteric meaning is revealed.

Among the French this immense receptiveness towards the ) divine—which seems to be innate—is seldom found; it is basically foreign to them in this form because it contains a primitive, instinctive element, an inner depth which is congenitally nearer to the Russian and German temperaments. Meister Eckhart, as well as Bochme and Angelus Silesius, knew this experience, but that of St. John of the Cross was of another kind.

All Berdyaev's experiences belonged to his religious life and took the form of a personal revelation occurring at an innermost depth. External events were echoed on a mysterious plane, indescribable but real, and all the more real for being incommunicable to anyone who has never known a revelation of that kind resounding through his inner universe. It could never become a subject for teaching or even for relating as a fact or an incident. It can be discovered and put to the test by the change in the subject who benefits from it, or by his approach, but it can only be described with images borrowed from the language of symbolism.

Berdyaev refers without bombast to two of his own experiences. He was in the country one evening in summer when the clouds were banking up at dusk and suddenly "an inner light shone forth . . .".

A symbolic dream was bound to^be full of significance for him.

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

I saw an enormous, almost boundless square, in the midst of which were standing wooden tables covered with rich food, and benches drawn up to the tables. Here an oecumenical council was to be held. I approached the tables and wanted to sit down on one of the benches, in order to take part in the business of the council and enter into communion with others who were about to confer and among whom I recognised many of my Orthodox friends. But wherever I tried to sit down I was informed that it was the wrong place, or that no place had been provided for me. I then turned round and saw at the very limit of the square a bare and rugged rock. I went towards the rock and began to climb it; but my very first efforts to do so showed the awful difficulties which were to attend my ascent. I kept on succumbing to weariness and exhaustion, and I saw my hands and feet covered in blood. Having reached a certain height, I looked round and, to the side and below me, I recognised a winding, tortuous road, up which a great number of people were making their way. With agonising efforts I continued to struggle up the rock. At last I reached the summit. And then I suddenly saw in front of me the figure of Christ crucified, his side pierced and blood flowing from the wound. I fell at his feet utterly exhausted and hardly conscious. Then I awoke, stirred and shaken by this extraordinary vision.

(id., p. 183)

When he related it Berdyaev said he felt unworthy of this "sublime" dream which exactly reflected his spiritual life.

As an "essential" man he thirsted for the truth but he blazed his own trail, and the only star he followed was that which shone from within himself. He was clearly and profoundly influenced by Nietzsche, Boehme, Angelus Silesius and Dostoievsky; indeed they might be called his kindred spirits, for those who find themselves on the same plane of perception receive the same illumination and, without knowing one another, they can express the same thing. Should we try to compare him with other writers who had a passionate desire for knowledge, Paracelsus and Pico della Mirandola are two who come to mind.

He is certainly reminiscent of Dostoievsky and the German

AN ESSENTIAL MAN

thinkers mentioned, but the reason they find an echo in him is that he belongs to their spiritual family, just as in the common consciousness there exist identical reactions, similar behaviour and an almost unique climate which corresponds to a spiritual attitude. Moreover, Berdyaev would never submit to authority, his vocation was much too personal for him to accept any outside authority and he found his inner voice the best guide. Listening to his inner self he heard the Logos, as did Dostoievsky, of whom he wrote.

There is a dash of the spirit of Heraclitus in him; everything is heat and motion, opposition and struggle. For Dostoievsky ideas are fiery billows.

(Dostoievsky, p. 12)

Speaking of himself he wrote:

The moments of greatest exultation in my life are devoid of all adornment, of all frills and furbelows, and their closest symbol is to be found in a bare flame. I feel most akin to the element of fire . . .

(Dream and Reality, p. 27)

The "essential" man is sorrowful for two reasons which are apparent in Berdyaev's works, nor can those who knew him deny the fact. Because he is free from traditional ideas such a man undergoes structural changes which make him ill-adapted to the world where most men live and have their being. The presence of an "essential" man upsets them, pains them; that is why such a man has no protection against a hostile world which rejects him.

. . . life in its actuality often reminded me also of a dream, sometimes of a nightmare, illumined only by occasional flashes of daylight.

" (id., p. 310)

In the second place the discovery of Truth, by ceaselessly demanding the renunciation of previously accepted ideas, creates an isolation which produces an appalling mental vertigo. There is no

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

way back and, added to the insecurity born of meeting the unknown, the blinding light of Truth as it flashes through the spirit may lead to death or tragic lack of balance. To a certain extent Nietzsche succumbed to this, while Schiller's young hero died because he had unveiled the idol of Sais. Thus the "essential" man's existence is an adventure; to quote Berdyaev, "Faith in the invisible and mysterious reality is a risk: you have to hurl yourself into the mysterious abyss."

There is no external guarantee, no convincing proof is offered; one's lower intelligence seems to vanish. The "true meaning of the world" is revealed to the man who accepts the paradox, the contradictions, preferring madness to this world's wisdom. The spirit is born and a new world opens before it; it communicates with the divine, the human spirit with the divine spirit, "like calling only to like".

Despite his highly-strung temperament and hypersensitivity Berdyaev faced his destiny with the sense of balance found in a trapeze artist, who must never let his attention wander: sure-footed and in perfect control, he accomplished the climb with no roped companion to help him. He never looked back to the past but kept his face turned towards a present which through his dynamic spirit included the future as well.

The painful awareness of living in the fallen world, yet belonging to another one, of having a body and soul that subjected him to necessity, yet being quickened by a spirit that was eternal, might at times seem to lead nowhere. To face such a strange destiny the "essential" man requires unswerving courage and a will of iron. True, he is not attracted by or interested in events in illusory time, but he must pretend to be like other men if they are to find his company bearable.

At the Cadet Corps school Berdyaev felt himself different from other boys of his age and tried to hide his strangeness. He was fond of his family and his solicitude for them was exemplary, although he had no family feeling as far as his own life was concerned. He was affable and lively without throwing himself into

AN ESSENTIAL MAN

the usual kind of humdrum relationships, but his whole energy was absorbed in his creative life and he found the small material incidents of day-to-day existence utterly boring. "My greatest sin has probably been my inability and refusal to bear the burden of the commonplace, that which constitutes the very stuff of life'; or to see light through the unspeakable darkness of the commonplace," he admitted in his autobiography (id., p. 24). He had his inner struggles when in his youth he was much admired by the opposite sex for his handsome, aristocratic looks. "Women have always shown greater regard for me than men; but their love cast a shadow over my youth." Yet they remained his best confidants. For him the flesh was neither "sinful" nor "holy", so that the fight against it and its temptations seemed to him both false and unreal; the renunciation of sexual life depended on the orientation of consciousness and on the spiritual attitude. The temptations of the spirit had to be actively fought against and, incidentally, were liable to appear in carnal form. He felt an uncontrollable revulsion against erotic disclosures. At the same time he had to fight against what he called his "Stavrogin side". As he explains, "I secretly relished this identification." What were these traits which he discerned in himself?

Stavrogin in The Possessed—like Prince Myshkin in The Idiot and Versilov in The Adolescent—never seeks out anyone yet all three of them exercise a hold over everyone whose path they cross. Their presence is unsettling, stimulating, awakening; they influence others and do so unconsciously. Stavrogin's appearance was irresistible—dark-haired with a pale, aristocratic countenance, elegant and self-assured. Every time people met him they saw something strange and indefinable in his face; perhaps they had not noticed it before, or was there a light in his eyes born of some new knowledge?

Although Berdyaev got the better of his over-seductive Stavrogin side he did not have to change his appearance; even if he had wanted to it would have been impossible, for the gleam in Stavrogin's eyes born of his new knowledge was also to be seen in

si-

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

Berdyaev. All who knew him were struck by the animation in his face, by his luminous features and in particular by his eyes. Every time people met him, before a word was spoken, they felt to their astonishment the presence of some new thought within Berdyaev, perhaps not new as a subject for contemplation, but elaborated so that it produced fresh enlightenment.

I can see Berdyaev again at Clamart, in his house in the Rue du Moulin-de-Pierre, coming down the stairs which led from his study to the dining-room, wearing a black velvet beret, the lower /- part of his face hidden by a scarf, for he had a horror of draughts. The visitor's attention was first caught by the velvet beret, next moved to his long grey hair and then settled on his eyes—eyes whose look of violence had gradually been toned down by gentleness, although the violence could suddenly reappear in the heat of an argument; otherwise there was no sign of it. Yet those eyes, which he said gave very good sight, showed evidence of another vision: when I saw them I always used to think that the Prophets of Israel must have had a similar look, as of a man inspired, a visionary who, while engrossed in his inner life, was at the same time yearning for the future; a look haunted by a presence like a spirit made visible in the form of a dancing flame. Age could not dim the beauty of his look nor extinguish its vivacity. Besides, it is a fact and verifiable that the eyes of a spiritual man even in old age retain a dazzling look of youthfulness, composed of spontaneity and talent.

I continue to regard myself as no more and no less than a youth. And even on looking in the mirror I can see behind the features of an aged and time-worn face the form of a youth. Each one has his characteristic and enduring age; I am still the dreamer, the enemy of "reality" of my youth.

(id., p. 311)

Berdyaev was tall and athletic in build although of frail health, and his presence emanated dignity. Nothing about him was vulgar or even slightly commonplace. When he talked his deep voice brought out the best in the listener; his presence alone bore one

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beyond one's normal limits, bringing new dynamism to the spirit and changing time's rhythm; all seemed to be quickened by him.

He gave the impression of someone tall, not overpowering but stimulating, like the sight of a snow-topped peak in the mountains. If I had to find someone to compare him with I should immediately think of Father Teilhard de Chardin, who created a similar effect on people, though he had an air of delicacy, almost of tenderness, which was quite foreign to Berdyaev, who gave more an impression of majestic simplicity when one was near him, like a tree upright between earth and sky, battered by the wind yet firm as a rock. He did not invite confidences; his very presence drained away all inessentials and, strangely enough, when near him, people were taken out of themselves and felt a strange happiness. But was it really happiness, the mysterious feeling in the depth of your being which you wished would last for ever? Something inside you came to life. It might be said, in the words of Novalis, that "the Divine Child within you stirred". You felt in some way transfigured and wanted to live in that state always, then die in serenity.

During the war I often went to luncheon or tea at Clamart on Thursdays and despite my dislike of cabbage dishes—which I never dared to disclose to Berdyaev—and despite the temporary feeling of fatigue induced by them, I used to walk or drive away slowly when I left him, for it seemed that with every yard which I put between us I ran a greater risk of losing that paradisial feeling I had momentarily attained. It was like a pilgrim's progress through an illumined country.

During the war a friend whose husband was ambassador to the Holy See used regularly to give me tea and sugar for Berdyaev, because living was rather difficult for him at that period. He got only occasional food parcels from America and just then financial difficulties were added to the complications of obtaining enough food, but he continued to invite his many friends to meals and shared the little he had with oriental generosity.

On Sunday afternoons French friends would gather round the

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OP THE EIGHTH DAY

large table with Russian imigris, and among them would be writers like Jacques Madaule, Jean Danielou and Stanislas Fumet. Metaphysical discussions started straight away and Berdyaev argued with passion; when opposition became too lively he would find himself at a loss for the right French word and resort to Russian. Sometimes his Russian friends were in such a hurry to speak that they did not wait for one another to finish his sentence. There would be nothing but a jumble of words, then Berdyaev's voice would dominate the tumult; his tone became imperious, his friends winced. Those who did not know Russian —and I was one of them—could easily believe that the speakers were at loggerheads, so violently did they argue. But suddenly peace would be restored and Berdyaev would say something humorous in French, summing up the conversation or the passing quarrel over a religious or philosophical point—for of course it had all been about ideas.

Once, when Berdyaev was staying in London with some friends we both knew, we talked until three o'clock in the morning. As I had a motor-car I wanted to drive him home, and since I knew London as well as I knew Paris it was not a difficult journey, but something, either tiredness or absent-mindedness, stopped me from getting there. When we had driven along the same streets several times in the same direction two policemen began to take an interest and stopped us. After questioning us they put us on the right road, which as a matter of fact we had completely lost. When dawn came (it was in the spring), having arrived outside Berdyaev's address in Gloucester Road we continued to sit in the car talking. Half buried under a rug in a little Peugeot 202 Berdyaev was as lucid as he had been earlier in the evening, but when I left him at his front-door I felt I ought to apologise for keeping him up all night. He burst out laughing and said, "You don't know the Russian temperament; we're never worn out. We're always ready to argue and we sleep when we have time for it." Just as I was going to drive away he made a little sign to me; I thought he was waving good-bye but, realising that

AN ESSENTIAL MAN

he wanted to attract my attention, I let down the window without getting out of the car. "We'll go on with this conversation", he said, "we've just started. I haven't explained to you yet ..." I didn't hear the end of the sentence. Not having a Russian temperament, despite my love of ideas and my affection for him, I was overcome by tiredness and could think of nothing else but getting back to my room in Cranley Gardens and going to sleep.

hi his autobiography Berdyaev talks of the meetings at La Fortelle. We went there for symposia with the de Gandillacs, the Jean Hyppolites, the Madaules, the Burgelins, Jean Wahl, Marcel More and Masson-Oursel. Leopold Senghor came to several of our meetings, so did Lanza del Vasto. Among other friends who should be mentioned were some Orthodox and Catholic priests. I remember a famous discussionbetweenBerdyaevand Father Fessard about hell. We all revolved round him and we all loved him.

Yet this fascinating man was utterly lonely despite his wife, Lydia, whom he deeply loved and whose presence soothed him, and despite his sister-in-law, Genia, whose hands seemed made for silks and satins but who used them uncomplainingly to do the cleaning and cooking, meanwhile continuing her metaphysical conversation. Yet, in spite of these two women—the latter of whom survived him—he remained a lonely man. His solitude did not alarm him but it was like a wound:

. . . even while aware of my solitude and painful estrangement from the world. Sometimes I have prevailed over my loneliness; at other times I would experience untold joy on returning to it, as if I had come home from a foreign country to my own native land . . . The experience of solitude and anguish is hardly conducive to high spirits and jocundity. To be solitary is not to be able to comply and to come to terms with the world. . (id., pp. 35-7)

He was never in harmony with his social environment, indeed it was in the company of others that he realised the depths of his solitude. Yet he seemed to be very active, giving lectures, attending meetings, enjoying discussions.

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

But the feeling of distance, the knowledge of having come from some other world, to which I would return, never left me.

(id., p. 35)

His existence seems to have been lacking in human warmth because of the isolation inseparable from such a destiny. "My religious life," he wrote, "has led me through what seemed to be a stony, waterless desert." He felt the lack of God's Grace: "I suffered drought and knew what it was to be abandoned. But," he added, "there were also moments when I was uplifted."

The path of an "essential" man leads through a succession of deserts and oases, sometimes he feels abandoned, at other times filled with Grace; the darkest night is followed by the brightest day, starvation by satiety. Of himself he said, "I am only a passerby", and the words he used of Dostoievsky are equally applicable to himself, "He's a Russian wandering about in the world of the spirit."

Thus in the view of this temporal world an "essential" man might seem to be suffering from some disability as he travels alone through the various stages of deprivation. But it would be an entirely wrong view; the life of the spirit cannot adapt itself to the world of phenomena which, according to Berdyaev, is responsible for curbing freedom. Entirely different from each other and incapable of reciprocal action, the spirit and the natural world cannot meet on any external plane; only in "the ineffable depth are the world and its illusions merged into the spirit". That was what Berdyaev meant when he wrote: "I desired to find a way out into the open, to be present in the world and to make the world present within me" (id., p. 308). When the spirit is born in man he finds himself in communion with the universe:

The whole universe dwells within, and is personified by, man, and nothing should be regarded as external to him. But the phenomenal, empirical world, as in fact it presents itself to me, is not my own; on the contrary, it impinges on me from without and is intent on destroying me, and I am not the micro-cosmos I ought to be. Man's actual condition is such as to make

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the intensity of his self-awareness a measure of his enslavement to an alien world; and he revolts against this world.

(id., p. 308)

Hence we can understand that, although solitude is sometimes painful, the "essential" man is never abandoned. In a certain way his cup is full to overflowing, so that he does not feel the need to be known and loved; he is sufficient unto himself. For him the ordeal is to abandon the creative act—even for a few hours; his escape is within, not without, yet, as we have seen, because he loves man and God, he wants to share his treasure.

It was in this sense that Berdyaev said his thought was not understood; but he did not blame his readers or listeners for their ignorance; instead, he blamed himself; because of contradictions and paradoxes his difficulty in explaining essentials in clear terms seemed to justify lack of interest on the part of others.

Shestov, whom Berdyaev considered his best friend, his only truejrienc^,stigmatised dull minds which could not grasp the meaning of the paradoxes and contradictions in a man with heightened consciousness who denied that twice two is four— that is to say, who was beyond the ordinary logic of the everyday world: "People are shocked when I give two contradictory judgments simultaneously. They insist that I reject one of the two, or that out of respect for the conventions I don't give them at the same time. But there is this difference between such people and myself: while I am frank about my contradictions they prefer to hide theirs from themselves."1

Shestov's words might well apply to Berdyaev, or at least to those who try to show up the contradictory statements in his work. Certainly his language is not always easy to understand without a similar mental attitude. He has often been accused of repeating himself, of going back to the same subjects—freedom, the creative act, human personality—and never getting away from them. It is true that he was obsessed with the problem of

1 Leon Shestov, Revelations of Death: Dostoievsky and Tolstoy. (French only.) Paris 1923, pp. xii-xiii.

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man's destiny, so he naturally returned to it again and again. But his thought matured between each of his books and, to quote Heraclitus: "Those who go down to the same rivers bathe in water that is ever renewed."

No one could be indifferent toBerdyaevortohis works; people came from everywhere to see him and his name was as well-known to eastern as to western thinkers. Yet there remains the problem of his solitude, which was in fact so tragic that it cannot be broached without feeling puzzled, almost losing one's bearings. At moments it is best to bring it out and give it a sidelong glance so as not to go mad or give way to the temptation of suicide.

This was the problem; most men lead an existence into which the essential does not enter; the external world satisfies them; they have no feeling for true beauty, no ears or eyes for it. Things seen satisfy them and the unseen holds no attraction for them. For the more gifted of them intellectual or metaphysical discoveries remain outside their ordinary lives. Seekers after truth are very few and far between, so that belief in its reality is based on faith rather than certainty. Mediocrity is man's daily bread and well it suits him. He feels no need for other food and treats those with other appetites as weird or mad.

A muffled groan rose from the depths of Berdyaev's soul as he wrote:

Communion with others is indeed a very special source of religious knowledge; and it belongs to religious life that man, partaking of it, shall overcome his isolation and enter into communion with his fellow-men. Nevertheless I have experienced particularly great difficulties in this respect, even though I never wished to remain self-enclosed in an attitude of unrelieved loneliness.

(Dream and Reality, p. 186)

Everyone lucky enough at some time in their life to meet men who love wisdom observes that they are extremely alone. The "essential" man finds that he has a compelling need to communicate his thoughts; otherwise he would be like a tree laden with

AN ESSENTIAL MAN

fruit—by virtue of its sap, but even more by the free gift of sun and rain—which nobody comes to pick when it ripens; or like the winds of spring laden with golden pollen but with no flowers to waft it into. He is a man in whom God's seed has ripened, yet no one is at hand to receive the life-giving crops that pass before their lips and eyes. Of course he is free to talk to the desert air or be consumed by the fires which burn within him; but love for humanity forbids him to remain silent or, rather, the flames which engulf him obey their own dictates—they must shine forth as light or warmth.

An "essential" man suffers both from the fallen world and from man's blindness. In speaking of Dostoievsky Berdyaev at one point said:

His work is a veritable "feast of thought" and those who will not sit down to table, because their sceptical minds deny the usefulness of all thought, are self-condemned to a diminution and dulling of their own spiritual experience.

(Dostoievsky, p. 12-13)

The wonder is that such beings, seekers after truth, can clearsightedly continue to love man instead of despairing of him, can even serve him and believe in him. It is true that their faith in man is bound up with thek faith in God, but the contrary would be equally correct: their faith in God is not unconnected with their faith in man.

Sage and saint alike carry a sun within them, while ordinary men prefer the external sun. In The Possessed man is compared with chaos, that is, a lack of order, and the dimension of the "eternal" is destroyed. Dostoievsky described them as "men of straw", who form part of our existence, turning their backs on eternity, they are, satisfied with the temporal world. They are perturbed to meet on their path a "wanderer into eternity" who discerns the temporary nature of this world, for they cannot bear others to disturb their sleep. Moreover, their mediocrity is infectious.

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

That is why Berdyaev protected his inner world. He called himself a "rebel, but a humble one", indifferent to fame.

Human appreciation struck me as touching only the superfluous levels or the outer shell of my thoughts without ever reaching the real core.

(Dream and Reality, pp. 26-7)

He felt that praise hampered his freedom and disliked the idea of supporters or disciples; they might hem him in:

The true spirit of freedom seems to me to be linked with anonymity . . . My inner world has the likeness of a desert, a wasteland bare of all but stark and solitary rocks.

(id., p. 27)

Whence comes this striking self-portrait:

I am profoundly susceptible to the tragic in life, which issues from my intense awareness of suffering in the world and in human existence. The element most congenial to me is the dramatic. I have never been able to achieve any harmony and balance between my spiritual and emotional life, and the spiritual always predominated over the emotional . . . My spirit was whole, but my soul was sick. I have never been conscious of any instability or uncertainty of thought or division of will in myself, but I have been frequently conscious of emotional confusions and indecisions . . . My quick temper was only one of the many symptoms of these shortcomings.

(id., p. 28)

Such a man needed solitude, isolation and dreams; and his reserves of affection were bestowed on animals. "That is the opposite of solitude," he said, and talked to them in the same way that Meister Eckhart spoke to the stones for lack of listeners and because the whole earth must turn towards the transfiguration.

The spiritual experience of an "essential" man is not the end of a more or less lengthy evolutionary process but the result of a clash, a series of collisions which break through the different

AN ESSENTIAL MAN

levels. Each time an "essential" man suffers a shock, in some mysterious way he "contacts" the end of the world and the transfigured world becomes his native land. Thus he brings the old world to a close and begins the new. (Cf. The Beginning and the End, p. 251.)

PART II

CHAPTER 1 THE ONE WHO LOVES AND THE BELOVED OR THE DRAMA OF GOD AND MAN

The mystery of... the interior life of the divine mystery is the need which God feels for his other self, of one who loves and is beloved, of (lie love which is realisable within the Trinity in unity, which exists both above and below, in heaven and on earth.

(Freedom and the Spirit, p. 191)

Apart from the experience of the Beloved there can be no proof of the existence of the One who loves, for He does not force the Beloved to recognise Him. The Beloved is free to testify to the presence of Him who loves or to deny it.

The mystery of the Loving One and the Beloved is the mystery of God and man, the inseparables who are at the basis of Ber-dyaev's ideas on man:

When I became conscious of myself as a Christian, I came to confess a religion of God-manhood.

(Dream and Reality, p. 18)

God cannot be conceived of in the abstract independently of man, and man cannot be envisaged in the abstract without God. That is why the traditional proofs of God's existence are worthless—arid scholasticism, linguistic philosophy or playing with concepts does not lead to God. There is no place for rational concepts in connection with God; ontology is challenged.

OHicinl religion was obsessed with the consciousness of sin and thus unable to understand man's true nature, so it seemed to Hndyaev. "There docs not exist as yet a real religious and metaphysical anthropology. Neither the anthropology of the Fathers,

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

nor scholastic anthropology, nor yet that of the humanists can satisfy us" (The Divine and the Human, p. no).

But "affirmative" theology predominates in the academic sphere, and it is a rationalist and anti-symbolic theology, for it admits the possibility of attaining a perfect system of divine knowledge by means of positive statements. It understands the Divine Being in a naturalist sense, for it conceives its reality as similar to that of the nature of the world, and regards God as being and not non-being. It refuses to see the "super-being" of divinity, and it denies its unfathomable mystery. Affirmative theology is the theology of the finite and not the infinite ... Its affirmative definitions borrowed from the natural world are transferred into the divine world. It takes symbols for realities.

(Freedom and the Spirit, p. 68)

Before the unfathomable mystery of God "negative" theology resorts to symbols; it knows the uselessness of any attempt to define God. "It is opposed," said Berdyaev, "to the naturalisation and rationalisation of the Divine Being" (id., p. 68).

Yet "negative" theology runs the risk of not surpassing the highest forms of abstraction and detachment; and here the theory of Plotinus is significant. Berdyaev regretted that the Council of Chalcedony had not touched on the anthropological aspect of the God-man revelation which it dealt with; this vital problem had been insufficiently considered as a dynamic force and remained open. Doubtless theologians and Christian philosophers would have needed some of the courage which had been wanting for centuries past if they were to clarify the close relationship of God and man in a concrete and vivid way. It had always been evaded or put badly and wrongly interpreted; so that a serious gap existed which was bound to have a harmful influence on Christianity and on man himself. Atheism and the refusal to pay heed to God or to spiritual man were doubtless the consequences of that defect.

Religious thought has often strayed into paths which could lead to neither divine nor human reality. The God whom official theology tends to construct has no profound relationship with

THE ONE WHO LOVES AND THE BELOVED

men; he is turned to stone and man is humiliated. Meister Eckhart mentions something of this kind when referring to the endless twaddle talked about God.

Berdyaev could not recognise God as described by official western theology; such a God was a stranger to whom he could not talk; He seemed lifeless, a dead God deserted by man because no relationship with him was possible.

Yet for Berdyaev Christianity was conscious of the profound mystery of the relationship between God and man and was alone in revealing God's humanity completely and inwardly: "The basic and original phenomenon of religious life is the meeting and mutual interaction between God and man, the movement of God towards man and of man towards God" (id., p. 189).

Since affirmative theology seemed ossified, and negative theology, although more acceptable, presented certain dangers, where, then, lay the path leading to the mystery of divine life? There could be only one way—that of spiritual experience, which alone was filled with life and beyond all classification, definition or abstraction. And it was not the product of imagination; it was based on reality—on the fact that God and man are related.

The first point to be stressed lies in the relationship of the One who loves and the Beloved—of God and man. The bonds between them are close, and nothing can break them.

God-manhood embodies the unity and interaction of two natures, divine and human, which are one but unconfused.

(Dream and Reality, p. 182)

Thus there is no question of man's choice with regard to God; instead it is his self-knowledge which leads him to God. If man becomes aware of himself, if he grows to know himself, he can no longer deny God's existence any more than his own.

Self-knowledge, which is considered the fount of all knowledge in the various philosophical systems as well as traditionally, is thus essential. "Let men know thajt they are men" is written in Deuteronomy XV, v. 9, thus echoing the "Know thyself" of the

NICOLAS BEHDYAEV: MAN OF THE EIGHTH DAY

Delphic oracle. In every epoch, and especially in the Middle Ages with what Stephen Gilson called the "Christian-Socratic" method, followed by St. Augustine's noverim me, noverim te, self-knowledge has always been the first step towards a knowledge of God.

Even though the problem of man's self-knowledge may always have been referred to, most of the time it was not precisely stated, and Berdyaev's originality lies in having posed it in a way which, without being completely new, may seem to us a fresh approach, for we had forgotten how dynamic were the ideas of the early Christians, which are still reflected in twelfth-century thought.

The first step in man's self-knowledge is found in the doctrine set out in the book of Genesis and adopted by the theologians— that man was created in the image and likeness of God.

For Berdyaev, God's image is at the centre of anthropology:

The only theory that is eternal and unsurpassed is the Jewish-Christian view of man as a being created by God in His own image and likeness.

(The Destiny of Man, p. 49)

Because he is made in God's image man is predestined to theosis. Gregory Palamas believed man's function was not to reflect the Light but to be the Light, and St. Basil went so far as to say, "Man is a creature who has been ordered to become God." Further, the Psalmist declared explicitly, "Ye are Gods" (Ps., LXXXII, v. 6). Thus man has two aspects, the one human, the other divine; one is relative, the other absolute; one belongs to this fallen world and exists in time, the other belongs essentially to him and therefore is not granted by God's Grace.

Man, then, is a magical icon, but a living one; made in God's image he—like the icon—is the outward sign of an unseen reality. He bears witness to God's presence and the gaze of those who contemplate him is drawn on beyond him. As he looks forward to Christ's Second Coming he holds himself ready for the Kingdom of God on earth. On the subject of icons the Council of

THE ONE WHO LOVES AND THE BELOVED

860 declared: "They tell in colour what books fail to tell in words and they bring us into God's presence." Man expresses this by his very creation, being made in the image and likeness of God.

The divine is a constituent element in man since he—like Christ —has two natures, the divine and the human, whose union creates the personality. The fusion of the two natures in God and man does not remove the distinction between them.

The image of the human personality is not only a human image, it is also the image of God. In that fact lie hidden all the enigmas and mysteries of man. It is the mystery of divine-humanity, which is a paradox that cannot be expressed in rational terms. Personality is only human personality when it is divine-human personality. The freedom and independence of human personality from the world of objects is its divine-humanity. This means that personality is not formulated by the world of objects but by subjectivity, in which is hidden the image of God.

(Slavery and Freedom, p. 44)

To understand that quotation it should be remembered that Christ is the Absolute Man. The historical event of His incarnation was not the beginning of His existence, for He has eternal life. Here we find an echo of the first verses of the Gospel of St. John, and we may also call to mind Boehme's words in the Mysterium Magnum: "God is made man in Christ alone."

The process of becoming a human being is outside the objective world; it is subjective, inspired by God's image, and its source of energy is unique. Only in so far as he is free, personally and subjectively, does man appear authentic, existential, possessing his eternal source in God.

Therefore no causal principle or determinism can intervene, neither—as Berdyaev emphasises—can any system of pantheism, monism or dualism belonging to theological rationalism grasp the divine-human mystery.

Human grandeur and dignity consist in possessing God-manhood; man's existential unity is the result of his divine-human quality and without it he is no longer one with his reality.

NICOLAS BERDYAEV: MAN OP THE EIGHTH DAY

True human-ness is likeness to God; it is the divine in man. The divine in man is not the "supernatural" and it is not a special act of Grace; it is a spiritual principle which is in man as a particular reality. In this lies the paradox of the relations between the human and the divine. In order to be completely like man it is necessary to be like God. It is necessary to have the divine image in order to have the human image. Man as we know him is to but a small extent human; he is even inhuman. It is not man who is human, but God. It is God who requires of man that he should be human.

(The Divine and the Human, p. no)

Man's divinity is the source of his freedom and, as we have seen, it is through this that he resembles God, through this freedom, says Berdyaev, which is a duty towards God rather than a right to be claimed.

Although the divine image is a perpetual subject for discussion Berdyaev's interpret