1 - Earliest and Lifelong Russophilia

Summary

Slowly he sped across the snowy fields of Holy Russia on his selfimposed spiritual mission to unite the Churches … It was like a dream in the Apocalypse … With morning he stood in the holy city of Moscow … The Kremlin! Edward staggered amid fantastic golddomed cathedrals, gigantic bells hanging in the clouds, cyclopean ramparts … From the other side of the city he watched the sunset illumine the grandiose dome of the Cathedral erected to the Saviour God, saviour of Moscow from Napoleon … The doom of the Grand Army haunted Edward from the pages of Tolstoy's War and Peace … Edward decided to leave that night for Yasnaya Polyana, the home of Tolstoy.

Shane Leslie (1924, writing of the 1890s)

At the next station we were in Russia! Truly the stately amenities of a Russian customs-house afforded an unlikely introduction to a reputedly semi-barbarous land … It was midnight before we set out again by the broader-gauged Russian railway through dark leagues of birch and pine en route to St. Petersburg … We chanced to arrive on the evening of Easter Day … The blaze of a thousand sacred candles, the gorgeous vestments of metropolitan and priests, the awed ecstasy on the faces of that superstitious Slavonic mob as those mysterious, complex and colourful rites were enacted … I knew that, in spite of everything, this novel and unpredictable world was going to be full of interest, and here moreover was fresh food for art.

Arnold Bax (1943, writing of 1910)

Played for house-prayers, hymn no. 218 (Russian nat[ional]- an[them]). The boys said I took it too slowly. They gabble everything!

Benjamin Britten (1928)

The prospect of going on Monday to Russia, with all these concerts – conducting & playing, – on crutches, is a bit scaring! … However it will be exciting I'm sure, & lovely to see where Slava [Rostropovich] & Galya [Vishnevskaya] live, & what goes on in that mammoth extraordinary country – so different from ours, & yet with so many sympathetic links.

Benjamin Britten (1963)