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Updated: August 1, 2024
The true ground of the opposition to this or that article or habit is to be sought not in these theological arguments, but in its novelty and late introduction. As regards his way of life and his faith, his table and his devotions, he is minded to tread in his forefathers' footsteps. A Raskolnik and a member of the orthodox Church were drinking together, when the latter took a cigar.
Not far off, on an island in the river, one can see people who are watching the fête and who think that they are present at one of the spectacles forerunning doomsday. Among the crowd are seen the "raskolnik" Cornelius, old Vitalya of the "runners," deserters, the merchant Ivanov, the clerk Dokounine ... and several others.
And just as the East has bound itself fast to externals, so the Raskolnik praises his fossilism to the skies, and would gladly run the risk of petrifying society in its inherited shape. With him, as with the child or the Oriental, wisdom and science belong to the infancy of civilization, and the maxims of antiquity leave nothing to be learnt.
At this I reminded him of Theodore Parker's distinction between men who believe and men who "believe that they believe," and said that possibly our Raskolnik was one of the latter. This changed the subject. He said that he had read Parker's biography, and liked it all save one thing, which was that he gave a pistol to a fugitive slave and advised him to defend himself.
The word Raskolnik means, literally, one who splits asunder, and that is just what the Old Believer is one who has split off from the Orthodox Church.
In 1868 the prospect of a bad harvest, caused by a prolonged drought, induced the inhabitants of a village in the Tarashchansk district to dig up the body of a Raskolnik, or Dissenter, who had died in the preceding December. Some of the party beat the corpse, or what was left of it, about the head, exclaiming, "Give us rain!" while others poured water on it through a sieve.
It does not seem to have occurred to either party that the reverse holds true as well. The Orthodox Cross has but two beams, while that of the Raskolnik has four, and is made of four woods cypress, cedar, palm, and olive; the latter, too, repeats his Allelujah thrice, the Orthodox but twice.
This is the main theological argument of the foes of the barber, and their current interpretation of the verse of Genesis, "God created man in His own image," "The image of God is the beard," writes a Raskolnik about 1830, "and His likeness is the moustache." "Look at the old images of Christ and the saints," urge the Old Believers: "all of them wear their beards."
We walked out with the old Raskolnik, and at the door I thanked him for his kindness; but even there, and all the way down the long walk through the park, Tolstoi remained silent. As we came into the road he suddenly turned to me and said almost fiercely, "That man is a hypocrite; he can't believe that; he is a shrewd, long-headed man; how can he believe such trash? Impossible!"
This particular Raskolnik, or Old Believer, to whom Tolstoi took me, was a Muscovite merchant of great wealth, living in a superb villa on the outskirts of the city, with a large park about it; the apartments, for size and beauty of decoration, fit for a royal palace the ceilings covered with beautiful frescos, and the rooms full of statues and pictures by eminent artists, mainly Russian and French.
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