3. Carnival and Fasting

The prince of flesh and the prince of spirit. – Features of religiosity. – A noble impulse of charity. – A royal newspaper gift. – The force of persistence.

If some magical power had instantly removed the roofs from the houses of the capital of the American continent during the first ten days of February of the new style, the eyes of an observer from a bird’s-eye view would have presented an interesting picture of a city that dances as one. These are the days of what is called Carnival, days of the highest merriment and continuous pleasures. Balls are announced one after another by advertisements and by comic carriages traveling through the streets with flags, bells, and fantastically dressed riders. And the masses of people, faithful to ancestral traditions, flow irresistibly to these balls to pay traditional tribute to the prince of carnival. Some balls are simply monstrous in the number of people gathered at them, consisting of the enormous figure of 15,000 visitors. Looking at this service to the prince of carnival or simply to the prince of flesh and its passions, an outside observer would only have shaken his shoulders and exclaimed: people labor in vain! But the inventive American mind managed to extract benefit from this apparently aimless and fruitless revelry; the monetary collection from these balls for the most part goes to benefit the poor population of the city and various charitable institutions. If one takes into account that this collection at some balls reaches as much as thirty thousand dollars, then the carnival revelry could hardly be found fruitless even by an outside observer.

As the carnival drew to a close, the revelry spread ever wider and the whirlwind of pleasures powerfully seized and spun all the city’s population. The prince of flesh celebrated its highest triumph, but at the same time its last: from behind the shoulder of his sated figure peeked the stern face of the prince of spirit—Great Lent. On Sunday, February 8th, sermons were heard in the churches about “the attractions of this world,” “whose spirit is vain and whose tongue is false, who whispers sweet promises in people’s ears and fills their hearts with deceptive dreams, never to be realized,” as one preacher characterized it. And remarkably, there is respect for the Sunday: the strongest carnival revelries did not divert the masses from the service; all the most remarkable churches were overflowing with the faithful. Walking along Fifth Avenue, the richest and finest street in the city, after 12 o’clock noon, when the service usually ends, I witnessed a sight I had never seen in my homeland: immense masses of the faithful moved smoothly along magnificent sidewalks, over which Gothic church towers stood out here and there, the closing hymns from the resonant organs poured powerfully into the street from open doors, and the playful gleam of thousands of gold-edged prayer books sparkled in the bright sunlight in multicolored flames, spreading over the masses and giving this living picture an extraordinarily solemn appearance. The next two days were the last days of carnival: its noisy merriment concluded with Tuesday, February 10th. Wednesday was already the day of Great Lent, “Ash Wednesday,” as it is called here, and devout Catholics with ashen crosses on their foreheads moved into temples—for prayer and repentance. In the newspapers rules for observing the fast appeared; to give an example of them, I will cite the rules published by the New York Cardinal M’Closkey for the guidance of local Catholics. Here are these rules: “1) on all weekdays of the fast from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday only one dish is allowed for dinner and light refreshment in the evening; 2) the rule of fasting requires abstaining from eating meat, but in consideration of human weakness we allow in our diocese eating meat in the permitted dish on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays of the fast, excluding Maundy Thursday; 3) on Sundays neither fasting nor abstinence is required; 4) fish is not allowed to be eaten with meat in one and the same dish; 5) the use of eggs, butter, and cheese is not forbidden, of course in quantities prescribed by the general rules of fasting; 6) lard can be used constantly for preparing fish or vegetable dishes, etc.; 7) the Church relieves from the obligation of fasting (but not from abstaining from meat, except in special cases of illness) the following persons: the weak, those engaged in exhausting labor, the growing young, pregnant women or those nursing children, and those weakened by old age.” Secular newspapers greeted the “fasting season” with leading articles. The New York “Herald” wrote, among other things, the following: “By the unchanging course of time the fast comes to you each year, and it must be said that each year it leaves the world better than it finds it. Quite apart from religious considerations, the effect of the fast is extremely beneficial even for those who observe it only as far as it is customary in society. Millions of hearts are occupied involuntarily with an analysis of their inner content, and the most obstinate skeptic, if he has a heart at all, will not deny the moral greatness of that period, when so many people attempt to rise above the level of simple material and animal existence.”

The fast indeed by its very arrival introduces a particular atmosphere that involuntarily acts upon those who move in it. With its coming, literary evenings began to be organized more frequently, preachers spoke sermons more often, and the newspapers themselves more often turned their attention to what is eternal and sacred. From the opinion just cited from the best newspaper regarding the significance of fasting, one can see with what seriousness the local secular press relates to established facts of religious life. But its religiosity is not limited to these. In the columns of secular newspapers you constantly encounter articles on various religious and theological questions, the Monday issues are filled with excerpts from Sunday sermons, whose recording reporters pursue with the same seriousness as recording parliamentary speeches and debates. At one time, precisely two years ago, according to the testimony of one preacher, all the secular press was occupied with the question of “the eternity of torments”; and when the famous physicist Tyndall, who lectured here, allowed himself to hint at the uselessness of prayer, since, he said, everything is governed by unchanging, fateful physical laws, there was no secular newspaper that did not publish a treatise on this question—in the overwhelming majority of an apologetic character. All this is, of course, conditioned by the strong religious feeling of the local reading public. To what degree is consciousness here sensitive to the importance of facts of religious life is shown by a very recent occurrence. One respectable newspaper published an article that with the acerbity of feuilleton satire mocked two Dutch pastors who published a commented Bible for their indiscriminate rationalism, by which they assigned half of the biblical facts to the realm of myth and fiction. One might think—what could be better?—one could only sympathize with the newspaper. But no: the next day several “letters to the editor” appeared in the newspaper, in which various people expressed their dissatisfaction that the editorial staff had entrusted such an important subject to a feuilletonist… Sunday in America is surrounded by the same rigorous respect as in England. In one large city, namely Cincinnati, the theater owner decided to give several Sunday performances. This immediately raised a terrible storm in the city; meetings were formed mostly by women of the highest classes, who drew up the following resolution: “Recognizing that theatrical and opera performances on Sundays are contrary to the good order and good morality of society, we, the undersigned, promise to abstain from attending those theaters and ball gatherings that will open their doors to such entertainments on Sundays after February 16, 1880.” This resolution, circulating through churches, began to collect numerous signatures and would undoubtedly have responded to the bold theater owner with complete ruin, had he not hastened to publicly apologize to society with the promise never again to give Sunday performances. One Presbyterian newspaper even found it possible to draw a lesson for violators of Sunday from the terrible disaster that recently occurred on one of the Sundays in Scotland, where an entire train broke through a bridge and sank with all its passengers, so that no one remained alive who could even tell of this terrible misfortune. “This catastrophe,” in the newspaper’s opinion, “can be regarded as a judgment of the Almighty upon those who in such a Sabbath-keeping country as Scotland commit lawlessness, violating the sanctity of the Lord’s day with idle railway journeys. No prayers or tears can free them (the drowned passengers) from that place where God ceases to be merciful; but we can pray that this terrible judgment may be a salutary and not fruitless warning to all other violators of Sunday.”

Americans are an extraordinarily mobile and enthusiastic people, and when their enthusiasm is directed toward good, it often presents a remarkable spectacle. Such a spectacle was presented by their noble impulse to help the starving Irish. It is well known what disaster befell unfortunate Ireland in 1879, where hundreds of thousands of people, thanks to shameless exploitation by English lords, were brought to terrible poverty, which, combined with the crop failure of that year, produced actual hunger that was destroying the population of that unfortunate country. To arouse sympathy and collect alms for the suffering people, the well-known Irish agitator Parnell came to America; but his mission was not very successful, as the American press received his tactless agitation plan with disapproval, in which he mixed highly revolutionary elements with charitable ones. The newspaper collection was taken in hand by the editorial office of the king of newspapers here, the “Herald,” and as if at the wave of a magic wand the eyes of Americans became fixed on the suffering country, hearts were seized by an irresistible impulse to help the unfortunate, and dollars flowed in a golden river from wide-open pockets. The newspaper itself opened the collection with its own truly royal contribution of 100,000 dollars, which at the current rate amounts to about 200,000 rubles. Within 11 days the editorial office had more than 200,000 dollars in its relief fund. The enthusiasm that suddenly seized everyone can only be compared to the enthusiasm of the Russian people that seized them during the great Slavic movement. Such is the moral force of this paper king, whose enormous editions of 120,000 copies are sold daily, and are certainly read by ten times that many people.

The grandiose sacrifice of the magnanimous newspaper became an important topic of the day, and preachers in many churches chose it as the subject of their Sunday sermons. One of the most famous preachers, namely Dr. Talmage, said among other things that these “hundred thousand mean much more, they mean millions. This offering as it were gave wings to other givers; its effect spread everywhere with electric speed and force. If this gift had been made for the encouragement of art, it would have been praiseworthy. If it had been made for educational institutions, it would have been glorious. But its purpose is better and higher than all of this: this offering is made for the deliverance of people from death by starvation. Let the people clap their hands and sing alleluia! People living in the realm of a telegraph network that embraces all the Christian world should not be allowed to suffer. But stronger and faster than the electric current is the bond of sympathy by which God unites all nations. Let us never suppress this sympathy in ourselves. Compassion and mercy for the world’s suffering ennoble the human heart, smooth away the sharp corners of earthly life, and make us mutually grateful. 1,400,000,000 members of the human race are all joined by the strings of human kinship, and all these strings of kinship, binding us together, carry the majestic sound of love to the heart of God, so that we all constitute one: heaven and earth, God and humanity—all are one.” This same preacher, regarding American grain trade, by which, as is well known, Americans are beginning to suppress all other agricultural peoples and, among other things, even push back Russia, taking advantage of its recent crop failures, said the following: “The United States can be the provider of the world. Other nations cry out to America: give us 230,000,000 quarters of grain, and we answer them: we will give if you pay us more than it costs! If this is really so[1], then I predict the ruin of the majority of American grain merchants. Such profiteering at the expense of hungry nations will not be tolerated in heaven, if it exists on earth. God will scatter their full granaries. If God strikes the fields and they yield no grain, then we are left only to bow before the Inscrutable. But if, after God has filled the nation’s granary, greedy people strive to overfill it at the expense of the hungry, I sound the alarm, I ring the bells. Who plays with pieces of bread plays with human blood, and I, supported by the people’s cry, will oppose this. Everything that concerns bread touches the essence of national life. This wheat-market blockade robs the masses of people here and in other countries simply to enrich those playing with bread. If we are unjust to other nations, then we must fear retribution from their side.” The language and methods of this preacher are extraordinarily distinctive, and his sermons always gather numerous listeners.

Enthusiasm for any idea in America often passes into unwavering obstinacy, producing curiosities of a purely American character. An example of such enthusiasm is none other than the wife of former President Hayes. She is a member of an extensive society for “Abstinence from Alcoholic Beverages,” and was constantly distinguished by extraordinary energy in spreading the society’s ideas. When her husband was elected president, having moved to the presidential residence in Washington—the so-called White House—she resolved with all the unwavering persistence of a true American lady to apply the rules of the “Society of Abstinence” to the highest Washington society, deciding not to serve wine to her guests. To give an official state dinner without wine was considered a pure impossibility; all Washington society was against her, and this question nearly became a matter of state. For a whole year she was the target of various witticisms, which are so hard for a woman to endure. But she patiently bore all this, and by her unshakable steadfastness finally overcame public despotism. She never offered wine, and so accustomed the highest fashionable Washington society to this that large official dinners without wine finally became a common occurrence, and at present Washington can be considered the most sober capital in the world. This fact in itself, one might say, does not go beyond curiosity, but the moral courage and persistence with which a single woman decided to struggle against a very significant habit of society and won—are truly remarkable!