Paix liturgique

One hundred and ninety years ago, Alexander Pushkin, the writer and poet who transformed Russian literature, wrote an unusual poem. On the one hand, its content might seem out of step with the times because it dealt with a religious theme. It is true that religion is not entirely absent from Romantic literature, but there it is usually reduced to a vague personal sentiment. But Pushkin places us within a clearly “institutional” framework. Indeed, he speaks there of “desert fathers” and “ascetic women,” from whom we have inherited a multitude of prayers. Prayers that eventually formed an organic body which, spanning the centuries, finally reached us and constitute a tradition of liturgical prayer. Of all these, there is one that holds special significance for him, and he mentions it by emphasizing its place within the ecclesiastical year: “Great Lent.”

On the other hand, while he stands alongside the poets of his time in expressing how he was capable of being “moved,” he is not moved by nature, as was often the case, but by a liturgical prayer.

Considered the father of modern Russian literature for having profoundly renewed its language by integrating cultured and popular registers, Pushkin addressed themes in his work that would shape the entire subsequent tradition.

In his famous poem The Prophet (1826), inspired by the vision of Isaiah (Is 6:5–12), Pushkin had reformulated the biblical motif of the prophetic vocation by transposing it into a literary key: the poet, subjected to an experience of radical and painful transformation, receives a word that does not belong to him and feels called to transmit it. This conception of the poet as a mediator of a higher truth—which is not merely aesthetic, but moral and existential, though detached from any specific religious institution—introduces a model that would profoundly shape the subsequent evolution of Russian literature. This initial insight would be taken up by authors such as Nikolai Gogol, Dostoevsky, and, closer to our own time, Solzhenitsyn.

Toward the end of his life, Pushkin will show a certain inclination toward the religious, perhaps an intuition of his tragic end as a consequence of a duel a few months after having written our poem. In it, he will speak especially of a prayer of which he says: “it moves me devoutly” and specifies, as we have said, the liturgical season in which it is used.

“Great Lent” is so called to distinguish it from the three “minor Lents” of the Byzantine year: those preceding the Nativity of the Lord, the Dormition of the Mother of God, and the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. Of all the hymns and prayers of this liturgical season, this brief prayer is the one that can be considered the Lenten prayer par excellence.

In the context of the Byzantine Office and Mass, which are always sung in their entirety, the exclusive or prolonged use of the spoken word, deprived of song, would have the effect of a chalice without gilding or a priest without his sacred vestments. And it would be even worse, since here music is an integral part of every liturgical celebration, just as the walls and ceiling are an integral part of the house. This music, moreover, intensely expresses the spirit and character of the various offices and their parts: joyful or sad, austere or exuberant, penitential or exultant. Therefore, when Lent arrives, and this brief prayer is recited eloquently but without singing, the effect is striking.

It is recited twice at the end of each service: the first time, with prostrations to the ground that interrupt it three times. Then twelve deep bows follow, saying in each one: “O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Finally, it is recited in one continuous passage a second time, ending with a single prostration.

Although all this must have contributed to moving him, Pushkin will focus on the very content of the prayer.

Tradition attributes it to one of the great masters of the spiritual life: Saint Ephrem the Syrian, that fourth-century deacon who was given the name “The Harp of the Holy Spirit” and whom the Church today celebrates as a Doctor of the Church. It concisely lists all the elements, both “negative” and “positive,” of the fundamental attitude that must guide one’s personal Lenten effort:

When Pushkin says that this prayer moves him deeply, he uses a Russian term that denotes not a dramatic upheaval, but rather a touching emotion capable of stirring the heart to contrition. Related to this term is, in fact, the one used to designate the famous icon in which the Mother of God appears with the Child resting his cheek against hers: the icon of the Virgin of Tenderness, which in Russian spirituality inspires in those who venerate it a “tender contrition” of the heart that leads to repentance and contemplation.

The contrast in this state of mind is striking when compared to that reflected in a letter Pushkin had written fifteen years earlier, in which, to make a joke about a mutual friend, he had paraphrased this very prayer—even if not in a directly blasphemous or irreverent manner, in a jocular and superficial tone.

The contrast is heightened by the fact that he chose Alexandrine verses for the poem, a form Pushkin rarely used. This meter, inherited from French classicism, came to be associated in Russian poetry with an elevated and reflective style. Pushkin used it occasionally to lend a sense of gravity, formal distance, or philosophical depth to his more serious reflections. And it is significant that he chose it for this poem.

It was, moreover, the meter in which that French poet whom he held in special esteem—André Chenier—had distinguished himself. And indeed, the eponymous poem he dedicates to Chenier is a paradigmatic example of the Russian poet’s use of Alexandrines.

We wonder if it is mere coincidence that, when speaking in our poem of the love of command, (i.e. of power)—so closely related to ambition—he added to the text of Saint Ephrem, to which he otherwise adheres faithfully, an expression that seems inspired by Chenier: “that hidden serpent.” Indeed, the French poet had said:

A. Pushkin, July 1836