Word: easterlies
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...Every Easter eve a vigil far older than Russia begins in the Church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, located in the village of Peredelkino, a residence of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. At midnight the clergy and members of the congregation walk in procession around the church and enter through its main doors to celebrate the Resurrection. The Soviet authorities discourage religion, but they tolerate this rite-after a fashion. Alexander Solzhenitsyn describes the vigil at Peredelkino in the following story. It is published here in translation for the first time...
...must, by means of broken lines and combinations of square and triangular planes, convey the idea of the thing rather than the thing itself. I can't for my part see how color photography could make a meaningful selection of figures and compose into a single image the Easter procession at the Patriarchal church in Peredelkino as it is held today, half a century after the Revolution. Yet that picture would explain a lot, even were it painted by the most old-fashioned methods and without the use of triangular planes...
...dance hall of a remote and dowdy workers' settlement. Shrill-voiced girls in brightly colored scarves and slacks (admittedly a few wear skirts) stroll about in threes, in fives, push their way into the church. But the nave is crowded. The old women took their places early on Easter eve. They snap at each other and the girls come out. They circle around the courtyard, shout insolently, call each other from afar, and inspect the small green, pink and white flames lit outside the windows of the church and beside the tombs of canons and bishops...
...which they keep track of the remaining minutes before the Resurrection of Christ. Here, outside the church, they, the Orthodox, are much fewer than the grinning, milling rabble who oppress and terrorize them more than ever did the Tartars. The Tartars, surely, would have let up for Matins on Easter Sunday...
...these are not our shock troops of the '30s-those who, yelling like demons, tore the Easter cakes from the believers' hands-oh no! These are moved by intellectual curiosity, as you might say. There is no more ice hockey on TV, and the football season hasn't yet begun-they're bored, that's why they crowd around the candlestand to buy candles, pushing Christians aside like sacks of straw and swearing at what they call "church businessmen...