Lewis Carroll by Lindsay Smith

Author:Lindsay Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

56 Theotokos Kazan (Our Lady of Kazan), 19th century, Orthodox icon, tempera on wood.

For Carroll, the Orthodox experience as he observes it in 1867, especially its engagement of the senses, enriches his own understanding of both religious and secular devotion. As early as his first visit to St Isaac’s Cathedral on 28 July, Carroll had been struck by the power, in situ, of the icons. ‘There are so few windows’, he writes, ‘it would be nearly dark inside, if it were not for the many Eikons that are hung round it with candles burning before them’ (V, 286). Icons in this way serve as lights literally illuminated by candles in the dark interiors of churches. Acknowledging as crucial to their meaning the conditions in which they were viewed, scholars have explored ‘vision’ in the context of icons in the Byzantine period as ‘more tolerant of uncertainty and obscurity’ than in the later Renaissance.44 They have shown how a vital element of the power of an Orthodox icon resided in its qualities of obscurity involved in the viewing experience itself. On visiting ‘the Cathedral Church in the fortress’ on 30 July, Carroll is again fascinated by the many icons ‘with candles burning in front of them’. On this occasion he sees ‘one poor woman go up to the picture of St Peter, with her sick baby in her arms’ and begin the process of ‘a long series of bowing and crossing herself’ as she addresses prayer to the saint. He is particularly struck both by the veneration with which she treats the icon and also by the visible weight of her conviction the saint will intercede on her behalf: ‘one could almost read in her worn, anxious face, that she believed what she was doing would in some way propitiate St Peter to help her child’ (V, 292).45

In a diary entry for 12 August regarding a visit to the Troitska Monastery, Carroll records having observed the work of boys who ‘are taught the two arts of painting and photography’:

In the painting-room we found so many exquisite Eikons, done some on wood, and some on mother-of-pearl, that the difficulty was to decide, not so much what to buy, as what to leave unbought. We ultimately left with three each, the limit being produced by shortness of time rather than any prudential considerations (V, 319).

The difficulty Carroll feels in having to leave some objects ‘unbought’ resembles the difficulty he finds in ‘leaving’ photographs. Newly confronted with such opportunities to buy Orthodox icons, Carroll is willing, as he is with photographs, to cast aside discretion. Even on a visit to ‘the Monastery of “New Jerusalem”’ on 15 August, after a monk has shown him and Liddon ‘all over the “Church of the Holy Sepulchre”, and out through the woods to see the “Hermitage” to which Nikon retreated during his voluntary banishment’, Carroll records:

On our way out, we bought at a sort of shop at the entrance, kept by the monks, small copies of the ‘Madonna of the three hands’ .

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