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Blavatsky H.P. - The English and the Russians (view source)
Revision as of 10:14, 10 April 2025
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(Created page with "{{Style P-Title|The English and the Russians<ref>''Novoe Vremya'', 1887, No. 4228, December 5, the article is signed "Radda Bai". Translated from Russian by Olga Fyodorova. Original title:“Англичане и русские”</ref>}} {{Style P-Author|Helena Petrovna Blavatsky}} Great Britain, the only nation in Europe, is absolutely peculiar – even in the fashions it adopts from Fra...") |
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{{Style P-Author|Helena Petrovna Blavatsky}} | {{Style P-Author|Helena Petrovna Blavatsky}} | ||
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Great Britain, the only nation in Europe, is absolutely peculiar – even in the fashions it adopts from France; peculiar in its moral isolation, in its psychopathic self-conceit and all other characteristics. By the geographical location of his country, the Englishman is an amphibian, by arrogant restraint he is a turtle. Just as this interesting reptile is inseparable from its horny armor, so the Englishman is inseparable from his national shell, from England, which he carries everywhere with him, which follows him like a traveling exhibition of paintings, from which he only occasionally sticks his head out, immediately hiding it inside his "personal England" at the slightest attempt by someone who is not an Englishman to look deeper under the surface of this armor... You can only recognize him at home, on his foggy island, just as you can distinguish one Englishman from another. But whether John Bull is at home or abroad, he, indifferent towards other nations, hates Russia alone! Since, in his own mind, he is the only king on the world chessboard, and all other nations are pawns, John Bull despises them, and hates Russia, perhaps because he fears her alone in the future. He hates her chronically and venomously, not losing his temper or worrying, but, on the contrary, methodically and according to a plan drawn up once and for all; he hates her solemnly and seriously, so to speak, as if he were performing a national and patriotic rite. In the best times of political calm, the English – that is, the entire nation collectively – demonstrates to the "Russian bear" condescending and mocking contempt. But once the Russians do something in Central Asia, all the English, from palaces to tents of tourists and planters in Asia and America, the whole nation, as one person, jump to their feet, make no headway, show their fists to an invisible enemy. | Great Britain, the only nation in Europe, is absolutely peculiar – even in the fashions it adopts from France; peculiar in its moral isolation, in its psychopathic self-conceit and all other characteristics. By the geographical location of his country, the Englishman is an amphibian, by arrogant restraint he is a turtle. Just as this interesting reptile is inseparable from its horny armor, so the Englishman is inseparable from his national shell, from England, which he carries everywhere with him, which follows him like a traveling exhibition of paintings, from which he only occasionally sticks his head out, immediately hiding it inside his "personal England" at the slightest attempt by someone who is not an Englishman to look deeper under the surface of this armor... You can only recognize him at home, on his foggy island, just as you can distinguish one Englishman from another. But whether John Bull is at home or abroad, he, indifferent towards other nations, hates Russia alone! Since, in his own mind, he is the only king on the world chessboard, and all other nations are pawns, John Bull despises them, and hates Russia, perhaps because he fears her alone in the future. He hates her chronically and venomously, not losing his temper or worrying, but, on the contrary, methodically and according to a plan drawn up once and for all; he hates her solemnly and seriously, so to speak, as if he were performing a national and patriotic rite. In the best times of political calm, the English – that is, the entire nation collectively – demonstrates to the "Russian bear" condescending and mocking contempt. But once the Russians do something in Central Asia, all the English, from palaces to tents of tourists and planters in Asia and America, the whole nation, as one person, jump to their feet, make no headway, show their fists to an invisible enemy. | ||
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Do those who have not read Carlyle know what "cant" really is? This is what the historian Fraude says in his essay "The Life of Carlyle" about this incurable ulcer and the opinion of the most truthful of modern English writers about it. | Do those who have not read Carlyle know what "cant" really is? This is what the historian Fraude says in his essay "The Life of Carlyle" about this incurable ulcer and the opinion of the most truthful of modern English writers about it. | ||
{{Style P-Quote| | {{Style P-Quote|“There was a horror of lying hidden in the depths of his soul! To look at the facts as they really are, to be sincere with himself, and to tell people literally what he thought was his first duty to humanity. That's why he felt such hatred for cant. | ||
“For him, cant was organized hypocrisy, the art of presenting things differently from what they are: an art so fatal that it kills the soul of those who practice it, dragging them beyond deliberate lies to the point where you begin to believe in the reality of your own illusions.... He saw this kind of cant reigning all over Europe, all over America, but mostly and more strongly than anywhere else in his England! She appeared to him plump with cant: “Cant in religion, in politics, in morals, in art – everywhere!” The middle classes, under the leadership and with the active cooperation of the clergy, have so successfully managed to force this idiosyncrasy (usually disguised as respectability) into everyday practice that even the aristocracy pays tribute to it, and the poor inevitably suffer even more from it. It alone (cant) should be attributed to a greater extent the lack of real sympathy in us for the poor, both for private individuals and for the whole class in general, and then again it (this vicious cant), it alone branded poverty as something worse than misfortune, as a crime. Cant, applied to practice, erected a barrier around our poor classes, which completely isolated them and became the cause of their brutality, their ignorance and their desperate drunkenness.”}} | |||
Sidney Whitman has just published his essay "The Land of Cant". He searches in it for the original cause of this exclusively English moral ulcer and finds its origin in the secularism of the state church and the English Protestant clergy. Indeed, in no class of European states, in no other society or caste, not even excluding the Jesuits, is there so much living, obligatory and omnipresent hypocrisy as in the 239 sects of the Protestant religion! A Jesuit lies when he finds it necessary to achieve his set goal. The Protestant clergy, from the highest church to the last dissident, is being cunning from morning to night, in front of others, alone with itself and even in a dream. | Sidney Whitman has just published his essay "The Land of Cant". He searches in it for the original cause of this exclusively English moral ulcer and finds its origin in the secularism of the state church and the English Protestant clergy. Indeed, in no class of European states, in no other society or caste, not even excluding the Jesuits, is there so much living, obligatory and omnipresent hypocrisy as in the 239 sects of the Protestant religion! A Jesuit lies when he finds it necessary to achieve his set goal. The Protestant clergy, from the highest church to the last dissident, is being cunning from morning to night, in front of others, alone with itself and even in a dream. | ||