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Here Ivan the Terrible, at that time a young profligate, stood weeping and watching his capital burn ; here the priest Sylvester appeared before him and with stern words transformed that monster of genius for twenty years.
Napoleon with his army skirted this hill, here his strength was broken, it was at the foot of the Sparrow Hills that his retreat began.
Could a better spot be found for a temple to commemorate the year 1812 than the furthest point which the enemy reached?
But this was not enough: the hill itself was to be turned into the lower part of the temple; the open ground down to the river was to be encircled by a colonnade, and on this base, built on three sides by nature itself, a second and a third temple were to be raised, making up a marvellous whole.
Vitberg's temple, like the chief dogma of Christianity, was threefold and indivisible.
The lowest temple, carved out of the hill, had the form of a parallelogram, a coffin, a body: its exterior formed a heavy portal supported by almost Egyptian columns, and it merged into the hill, into rough, unhewn nature. This temple was lit up by lamps in tall Etruscan candelabra, and the daylight filtered sparsely into it from the second temple, passing through a transparent picture of the Nativity. In this crypt all the heroes who had fallen in 1812 were to be laid to rest. An eternal requiem was to be said for those slain on the field of battle; the names of all of them, from generals to private soldiers, were to be carved upon the walls.
Upon this tomb, upon this graveyard, the second temple-the temple of outstretched hands, of life, of suffering, of labour-was laid out in the form of a Greek cross with its four equal arms.
The colonnade leading to it was decorated with statues from figures of the Old Testament. At the entrance stood the prophets: they stood outside the temple pointing the way which they were not destined to tread. The whole story of the Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles was depicted within this temple.
Above it, crowning it and completing it, was a third temple in the form of a dome. This temple, brightly lit, was the temple of the spirit of untroubled peace, of eternity, expressed in its circular plan. Here there were neither pictures nor sculpture, only on the outside it was encircled by a ring of archangels and was covered by a colossal cupola.
I am now giving from memory Vitberg's main idea. He had it worked out to the minutest detail ard everywhere perfectly in harmony with Christian theology and architectural beauty.
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The amazing man spent his whole life over his design. During the ten years that he was on his trial he was occupied with nothing else and, though harassed by poverty and privation in exile, he devoted several hours every day to his temple. He lived in it, he did not believe that it would never be built; memories, consolations, glory, all were in the artist's portfolio.
Perhaps one day some other artist, after the martyr's death, will shake the dust off those sheets and with reverence publish that architectural martyrology, in which was spent and wasted a life full of strength-for a moment i lluminated by radiant light, then smudged and crushed among a drill-sergeant Tsar, serfsenators, and pettifogging ministers.
The design was a work of genius, frightening, almost mad ; that was why Alexander chose it, that i s why it ought to have been carried out. It \Vas said that the hill could not have borne the weight of the temple. I find that incredible, especially if we remember all the new resources of American and Engli sh engineers, the tunnels which a train takes eight minutes to pass through, the cha in-bridges, and so on.
Miloradovich1 advised Vitberg to make the thick columns of the lower temple of single blocks of granite. On this someone observed that it would be very expensive to bring the granite blocks from Finland.
'That is just why we ought to order them,' answered Miloradovich ; 'if there were a granite-quarry on the River Moskva there would be nothing wonderful in putting them up.'
Miloradovich was a warrior poet and he understood poetry in genPral. Grand things are done by grand means.
Only nature does great things for nothing.
Even those who never had any doubt of Vitberg's honesty blame him most for having undertaken the duty of directing operations, though he was an inexperienced young artist who knew nothing of official business. He ought to have confined himself to the part of architect. That is true.
But it is easy to make such criticisms sitting at home in one's study. He undertook it just because he was young, inexperienced, and an artist; he undertook it because, when his design had been acceptPd, everything seemed easy to him; he undertook it because the Tsar himself had proposed it to him, encouraged him, supported him. Is there any man whose head would not have been turned? . . . Are there any so prudent, so sober, so re-1 Sec p. 1 0, fn. 1 0. (D.M.)
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strained? Well, if there are, they do not design colossal temples nor do they make 'stones speak' !
It need hardly be said that Vitberg was surrounded by a crowd of rogues, men who look on Russia as a field for speculation, on the service as a profitable line of business, on a public post as a lucky chance to make a fortune. It was easy to understand that they would dig a pit under Vitberg's feet. But that, after falling into it, he should be unable to get out again, was due a lso to the envy of some and the wounded vanity of others.
Vitberg's colleagues on the committee were the metropolitan Filaret, the Governor-General of Moscow,2 and Senator Kushnikov; they were all offended in advance by being associated with a young puppy, especially as he gave his opinion boldly and objected when he did not agree.
They helped to get him into trouble, they helped to slander him and with cold-blooded indifference completed his ruin afterwards.
They were helped in this first by the fall of the mysticallyminded minister Prince A. N. Golitsyn, and afterwards by the death of Alexander.
With the fall of Golitsyn came the collapse of Freemasonry, of the Bible Societies, of Lutheran pietism, which in the persons of Magnitsky3 at Kazan and of Runich4 in Petersburg ran to grotesque extremes, to savage persecutions, to convulsive dances, to states of hysteria and God knows what strange doings.
Savage, coarse, ignorant orthodoxy had the upper hand. It was preached by Foty5 the archimandrite of Novgorod, who lived on intimate terms (not physically, of course) with Countess Orlov.
The daughter of the well known Alexey Grigorevich Orlov who smothered Peter III, she hoped to \Yin redemption for her father's soul by devoting herself to frenzied fanaticism, by giving up to Foty and his monastery the greater part of her enormous estates, which had been forcibly seized from the monasteries by Catherine.
But the one thing in which the Petersburg government i s 2 Prince Q . V . Golitsyn. (A.S.)
3 Magnitsky, Mikhail Leontevich ( 1 778-1855 ) , reactionary official and mystic; \Varden of Kazan educational district and University, 1 820-6.