The Icon and the Axe

Pagan magicianstaught that insects actually begin to eat away at men while they are still alive; and that death comes only when men cease to believe in the occult powers of the sorcerer.21 The word "underground" (podpol'e) literally means "under the floor," and suggests insects and rodents who "creep up" (podpolzaf) from beneath. The first official English ambassador in the mid-seventeenth century was advised by Russian officials

to sleep together with his servants "lest the Rats run away with them being single."22

"The most mischievous enemies of unprotected and primitive man are not the big carnivora," insisted a nineteenth-century student of the Russian peasantry, "but the lower forms ot Creation-the insects, the mice, rats . . . which oveFwHafnHEIm by their numbers and ^Omnipresence."23 No less than the revolutionary who wroFelhese words, conservative writers like Gogol equated the ever-increasing swarm of inspectors and officials sent out to the countryside with these ubiquitous insects and rodents. Dostoevsky was even more frightened and fascinated by man's links with the insect world from his early^Notes from the Underground to his apocalyptical images in The Possessed^ot a rat gnawing at an icon and the human community turning into an anthill. Dostoevsky fills his works with haunting references to spiders and flies,24 which are lifted to the level of the grotesque by his sole surviving imitator in the Stalin era: Leonid Leonov. From his Badgers to The Russian Forest, Leonov mixes realistic plots with such surrealist creatures as "a new sort of cockroach," a 270-year-old rat, and an unidentified "giant microbe" prowling construction sites.25

Evenjstronger in the Jorest was^the fear of, and fascination with, fire. Ere was "the host" in the house-the source of jwarnith and light thaTfe-quired cleanliness in its presence and reverent silence when being lrj^or extinguished. In the monasteries, the lighting of fires..for cooking and baking was a religious rite that could be performe^jmly bythe sacristan brinjyfl£jaj|ame from the lamp_in the sanctuary.26 One of the words for warmth. ????'??, vyas^yriQnyjnous-githjwealth.

Russians tended to see the heavenly ordeLjn_jwins^^if_the famous writings attributed~totrle" mysHcT5ic^sjmJfor_whom angels are "living creatures of fireTTnTrrftastt^'with lightning, streams of flame . . . thrones are fire and the seraphims . . . blazing with fire."27 Russians often mention Christ's statement that "I have come to send fire on the earth" and the fact tiiat the Holy Spirit first came down TS~TnalTffifougir"'45n^uljs ^FSre."28 Wfre~nTfcTnTfch 6*Feve¥"a^Tcoln"waT^rneins"MuscovyTFwas said to have "gone on high."29 Red Square in Moscow, the site of ritual processions then as now, was popularly referred to as "the place of fire."30 The characteristic onion dome of Muscovite churches was likened to "a tongue of fire."31

A basic metaphor for explaining the perfect combination of God and man in Christ had long been that of fire infusing itself into iron. Though essentially unchanged, this human "iron" acquires the fiery nature of the Godhead: the ability to enflame everything that touches it. A Byzantine

X. I rw ruicsi

definition of Christian commitment that became popular in Russia explained that "having become all fire in the soul, he transmits the inner radiance gained by him also to the body, just as physical fire transmits its effect to iron."32 Or again from Dionysius:

Fire is in all things . . . manifesting its presence only when it can find material on which to work . . . renewing all things with its lifegiving heat . . . changeless always as it lifts that which it gathers to the skies, never held back by servile baseness. . . ,33

Heat not light, warmth rather than enlightenment, was the way to God. At the same time, fire was a fearful force in this highly inflammable civilization: an uninvited guest whose sudden appearance came as a reminder of its fragile impermanence. The popular expression for committing arson even today is "let loose the red rooster," and the figure of a red rooster was often painted on wooden buildings to propitiate him and prevent a dreaded visitation. Leonov likens a spreading forest fire to a horde of red spiders consuming everything in its way.34

Moscow alone was visited with some seventeen major_fires in the period from 1330 to 1453, and was"~to?? gutted by flames many mofe times between-thcn__ and the great ???"1???8?2???? recorded histories of Novgorod mention more T3ian a hundred serious fires.35 A sey^nteenth-century^yisitor^remarked that "to make a conflagration remarkable in this country there must be at least seven or eight thousand houses consumed."36 Small wonder that fire was the dominant symbol of the Last Judgment in Russian iconography7"Tfs red glow at the bottom ^f church frescoes and icons~was recognizable even from afar whenever, in their turn, the flames of the church candles were lit by the faithful.