Trifling With the Antichrist
A very subjective digression about a significant affliction of Russian literature
Is this an annihilation seen through the eyes of people doomed to live it forever, or is it merely a pain felt anew every day, caking up in the soul much like dirty snow on the never-cleaned courtyard of a once beautiful palace? How can one explain its ever-recurring specter and its sudden, unexpected materialization? What has man done, if still, in spite a whisper of common sense, against the will he pays with his humanity the price of non-human suffering? Does our very appearance in this world at once become a reason for bringing forward an accusation that has been repeated for centuries? An indictment which already at the opening of the first phrase contains the verdict? What is the Armageddon that lurks near the womb of a child-bearing mother? Whose work and whose will is this eternal ruination of souls, etching the being as the acid reaction to impurity on the copper plate?
The easiest solution is to blame the netherworld, all the gods and anti-gods we know and have ever known. It would be simplest to ascribe blame and wash hands. But providence is not pleased with such a judgment, as if out of spite, from time to time, but also maybe in a gesture of goodwill, it offers a man a chance for normality, but we’re afraid to seize this chance. In every new birth, in every miracle of creation, we’re foretelling misfortune, by pushing ourselves into the path of torment, accompanied by hellish powers, brought into existence by our very own imagination…
Behold, God created man in his image, but man, having taken a different path, awakened the devil within, making it a perfect copy of himself. Thus, we’re to blame, and we pay our choices, the annihilation that we seek to evade so eagerly shields ourselves from the work of our minds and hands. For we are the beings who worship God and yet commune with the devil, who leads them by the hand.
This “evil”, that each of us carries under the skin, has adopted a comfortable home for itself. Nowhere has it legend, the myth of the “eternal enemy”, the Christ’s antagonist, grown with such force and violence as in Russia. For Russians, stubbornly and unchangeable, strive for eschta, for things to come, hankering towards the religion of the hereafter, which scarcely touches the earth with its feet and longs for a taste of heavenly life.
Berdiaev claimed that “there are two main myths that can dynamize the life of nations — the myth of origin and the myth of the end. In Russia, the myth of the second kind — the eschatological one — dominates1. […] The Russians are a feminine and heart-driven nation. […] The masculine spirit manifests itself in the West and imposes its shape on the elemental forces of the nation. The Russian soul, on the contrary, has remained unbounded. It desires to receive everything or nothing. The humor of this nation is either apocalyptic or nihilistic. Consequently, it is a nation incapable of building a kingdom of <<austerity>>, a kingdom of civilization”2.
Major national catastrophes — from the Mongol invasions through the ‘’Great Sorrow’’ and Peter the First’s moral and religious revolution — contributed to the development of this eschatological sensibility of the Russians. But the strongest apocalyptic sentiments emerged at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century. People had become disappointed with the course of history, nothing good was expected anymore, the sense of historical thought had burned out. “What was expected was not so much the birth of a new Christian era and the coming of the Kingdom of God, but rather the Kingdom of the Antichrist.”3 “The Antichrist is coming!” — thundered Leontiev, according to whom a man is powerless so all that remains is to save his soul for soon the terrible prophecy from the icon of the Old Believers ( found in Pavel Korin’s museum) shall be fulfilled, wherein the angel of the apocalypse is immortalized destroying everything at the command of the Logos who created the universe.
The most striking manifestation of national eschatologism is this utopian one adopted from Marx and completely Russified in a short period of time. Berdiaev says that it is the work of a Jew, but one who dissociates himself from his roots, from the Jewish tradition. Marxism may be described as an ideology of hatred, as an idea that hated the future, negated embodiment — Marxism distances itself from the truth like a perverted doorframe detaches itself from the wall, there is no room in it for embodied truth, it is content only with an abstract “religion of law”. The Russian Marxists believed the lie which had been spread with so much zeal by themselves — they believed that humanity and the world it inhabits could be saved by means of some idealized order. And to make this order a reality they reached out for “thousands of heads”, for the lives of real persons.4
In no other Christian country in such a short period of time (we’re talking here merely three centuries) has a peculiar cultural-mental notion of the antichrist developed. This manifests itself especially in literature. As said in David Batha’s „Shape of Apocalipse” where he writes about „apocalyptic fiction” within contemporary Russian literature. According to him, it represents a specific kind of sacred scripture in the version of the Book of Revelation by means of which the protagonist, the narrator and, by association, the reader — each in his own separate realm, contained within himself — are initiated into a „secret wisdom” from another space-time continuum.5 The Antichrist as a living physical person first appears in Dostoevsky’s Diary, where we read “The Antichrist is coming to us! He is already coming! And the end of the world is near — nearer than you think!”
According to Bathe, Dostoevsky’s The Idiot should be read as an „apocalyptic fiction”, where Rogozhin if no longer the actual Antichrist is at least a character similar to it. Also in The Brothers Karamazov, the specter of the apocalypse is very clear and obvious due to the way it is depicted in Book IV, under the telling title The Grand Inquisitor. However, it is difficult to prove in an unobjectionable way (due to the variety of personalities and their different fates) that the inquisitor figures as a literary representation of the Antichrist. However, we can try to ascribe him a role often played by the Antichrist’s predecessors (especially among the clergy, but not excluding the strict circles of secular power). For his actions are not the result of an evil nature, but, as Bernard McGinn puts it: out of a tragic sense of having to deceive people in the name of the one in whom he has believed so passionately all his life. The Grand Inquisitor knows that he deceives himself as much as he deceives others, while the Antichrist deceives only others, being true to the ‘ultimate truth” of evil.6 Christ’s encounter with the Grand Inquisitor could be likened to St. Ignatius Loyola’s meditation on the Two Banners.7 The two completely opposite ways of establishing the kingdom are seen here as the opposition between Christ’s kenotic attitude and the will to rule the world and to maintain this dominion by force. The Grand Inquisitor succumbs to the satanic temptations that drive Christ away and thus comes closer to the Antichrist. In a word, Christ embodies freedom in suffering, while the Antichrist embodies happiness in a situation of constraint.8
The well-known and respected Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev also had much to say about the literary portrait of the antichrist,1 about whom Hans Urs von Balthasar said that as a great artist of order and organisation throughout the history of thought he is perhaps inferior only to Thomas of Aquinas.9
At the end of his life, Solovev wished to show the relationship of the sum of the most important Christian truths to the question of evil. He brought his desire to life by releasing an extraordinary work entitled The Three Conversations. The author describes his work as „apologetic and polemical, where one can agree with the second one without hesitation since the work has an amusing form of three conversations concerning theodicy, but presented in a manner that is not quite modern: Is evil only a natural deficiency, an imperfection that disappears by itself as goodness increases, or is it a real force that governs our world through temptations, so that to fight it effectively it is necessary to have a foothold in another system of existence?10 The Russian philosopher is determined to see evil in all its glory, to discern in it a real force, and stands up for this viewpoint in conversation with five people: The General, a representative of the traditional Christian milieu; the pacifist prince, a lover of Tolstoy; the politician, a modern man of progress; the lady representing the voice of common sense and, finally, Mr. Z. — authors alter-ego. The essence of evil can be deciphered, rather, according to the author’s indications in the third part of the discussion, i.e. the conversation on “the End of History”11, wherewith Mr. Z. leading the discussion proves that progress as a dynamic phenomenon is in fact a symptom of the end and that this end must involve the antichrist. If, in fact, evil is a force existing in reality — as Soloviev believed — then it is (according to Balthasar) the act of saying „No” to love, and so Mr. Z.’s thesis that progress towards the good is only an illusion, a pipe dream… For the paths of history do not lead directly to the Kingdom of God, on the way they must reveal the hidden Antichrist, out of whom the very last mask, (that of the good Christian), must be peeled off.12
The Antichrist is the embodiment of “religious insanity” — as Mr. Z. says — since the name of Christ will be appropriated for itself by certain human forces who in principle and in the depth of their being are alien and even hostile to Christ and his Spirit.13 After all Mr. Z. does not unequivocally identify the Antichrist with any kind of degeneration of Christianity but rather concentrates on the fundamental question of evil as such. Solovyov states that the essence of evil lurks somewhere between death and resurrection, thus evil is a real force, and not merely a temporary inconvenience, for people eventually die. As Bakshy records: we have only one genuine resurrection. So, if death is stronger than earthly existence, then the resurrection to eternal viability is greater than either of them. Mr. Z. argues that whoever prescribes good without doing it himself is in fact a deceiver, that is, the devil (the god of this world). The issue of deception is introduced by Mr. Z. reading to the Lady the Short History of the Antichrist14 who, at the end of the story, enters the stage of life as one among „a few believing spiritualists”. He will be a man endowed with extraordinary talents, many will take him to be a hyper-human, he will believe in God, goodness, and the Messiah, but he will also be tainted by ‘immense self-love’. He will compare himself to Christ, declare the ultimate savior, the true benefactor of humanity, whom Christ wanted to save but failed miserably… He will set himself a daunting task: to unite what Christ has divided — to bring together good and evil. Finally, at the moment of waiting for God’s sign, he asks the risen Christ a question, asking for advice: where should I go at such an important time? So he asks, but he does not know how, he cannot abase before the Christ, nor does he want to acknowledge his resurrection, so he throws himself into the abyss, but the devil raises him and gives him all his power. Bewildered by the unusual tale, the Lady asks: what does all of this mean? She do not understand, why Mr. Z’s Antichrist hates God so much, although he himself is essentially good and not evil. Mr. Z. replies: „Well, it is precisely that, not in essence. That is also the whole point. And I take back what I said before, that the Antichrist cannot be represented by proverbs alone. He can be portrayed using one and a very simple proverb: <<Not all that glitters is gold>>. After all, this false gold has too much luster, while its real power is none.”15 Finally, it is necessary to note — as observed by Czesław Miłosz — that Mr. Z.’s story has the character of a proven prophecy: “it is presented as though it had already happened.”16
Vladimir Solovyov, as McGinn writes, had a profound influence on another Russian Symbolist writer, Andrei Bely, who was present at the first reading of Three Conversations.
His novel „St. Petersburg”, first published in 1916 and later revised in 1922, is regarded in many circles as one of the masterpieces of 20th-century novelistic prose. Petersburg can be interpreted as Bely’s long story about the Antichrist, and the question of authorship and narrative hierarchy (Pansofius, Mr. Z., Solovyov), which was treated rather superficially in Three Conversations, is a central issue in Bely’s novel.17 Biely, unlike Soloviev, avoids direct confrontation with the real incarnation of evil, does not set the Antichrist in the whirlwind of the book’s events — the character so named does not appear in the story at all. Nevertheless, it can be said of the author of Petersburg that although, admittedly, he does not put a physical representation of the Antichrist in the text, the Antichrist is more present in his book, more clearly discernible than elsewhere, except that he spills over the souls and consciousness of many of the characters. Thus Biely creates a collective, universal Antichrist, who from now on, having found a path known only to himself, by moving from head to head, from one page to another, a book to a book, generation after generation…
The events of the novel take place over several days in the autumn of 1905 in St. Petersburg, a city which, due to its unique — one might say demonic — character, is one of the main characters of the book. Strange, monumental buildings, an overwhelming passion for greatness, spindly monuments and vast squares, and perhaps the most important thing of all — a kind of unearthly, almost ephemeral atmosphere, a borderline between two diametrically opposed worlds: material and spiritual, tangible and sensual, both mortal and not, because it functions as a vestibule to immortality. All of this creates an apparent correspondence between seemingly incompatible — at first glance — forms, all of which build the image of the city’s soul, which in Biale’s writing functions as a person-subject. However, nothing, not even the most excellent analysis, can capture the fragile yet extraordinary — I would even say — weaving method with which Biely, as if inspired by Goethe, weaves his story on the loom of the reader’s imagination. The main plot concerns two people: a clerk Appolon Appolonovich Ableukhov, a man of the old order, a shadow of reality in which it is impossible to live, and young Nikolai Appolonovich, for whom the father is a complete stranger and who, in contrast to the parent, is not a shadow that has been fading for some time, but the first-born of the new… The son joins the terrorists to receive from them a bomb hidden in a sardine can — a device to kill his very own father. The bomb is given to him by Alexander Ivanovich Dudkin (as McGinn notes, „a figure straight out of Nietzsche”), an individual under the influence of evil incarnate — provocateur Nikolai Stepanich Lippanchenko. Each of these characters has something of the Antichrist within himself, but in fact neither of them is the one. Biely, as if influenced by the raskolniks18, sees the “ ultimate enemy” in the person of the tsar, the founder of the city — Peter the Great. He describes the Antichrist looking down on the city over the plinth of the famous statue. The Copper Horseman contains such a load of terror that it is hard to resist — there is something in it that enslaves, something that arouses fear, brings on fearful thoughts, induces madness. Biely understood this well when he created his own version of the dramatic intervention of the rider. He must have had the stanzas of a Pushkin poem playing in his soul at the time, he must have remembered the insane Eugene, who like the drunken Dudkin comes face to face with an animated demon. „On his raised landing someone made of iron walked along, with a shocking noise of heavyweight, steps fell apart and, and here, one slumped on the edge of the threshold by the door. A violent crash, the door broke off its hinges and smoky, greenish clouds of dullness overflowed […] At the threshold among the walls, letting the verdigris-colored air through, bowing his crestfallen, greenish head and stretching out a heavy, greyish hand, there loomed a huge figure, burning with phosphorus. There stood the Copper Rider…”19
Poor Dudkin, just like Eugene, does not understand what such an encounter entails, how much one will have to pay for this single extraordinary glance, for this fraction of a second in which the eyes of mortal and Evil meet. The rider takes Alexander to himself, adopts him, pours his spirit into him — just as Soloviev’s devil did when he lifted the Antichrist from the abyss. „He was sitting in front of him, a man glowing under the moon, staring, crimson red, and having burned himself out, he turned white and ran down to Alexander Ivanovich, who was bent over, with an incinerating stream: metals poured into his veins.”20
Peter the Great as Antichrist also appears in Dimitri Mezhkovsky’s historical trilogy Christ and Antichrist. The work in question was intended to be a Nietzschean critique of historical Christianity, which opposes the body to the spirit, but it became a startling picture of the struggle that has existed for centuries in the cultural and moral realms of Europe. „In our epoch”, says Mirezhkovsky, „the struggle of the man-god, who proclaims himself divine, with the God-man, of this mystery of grace descending in humility, has become more acute than ever. It is a struggle between the spirit of the East and the spirit of the West, between the specter of war and the that of grace.”21
The first volume of Merzhkovsky’s work, Julian the Apostate: The Death of the Gods, appeared in 1895, the second, Leonardo da Vinci: The Resurrection of the Gods, in 1901, and the last, Peter and Alexei: The Antichrist, in 1905, tells the story of Peter the Great and his son Alexei, but from a slightly different perspective — the watchful gaze of the Old Ones never forsakes their presence.
Berdyaev sees Merzhkovsky’s trilogy this way: „For Russians, leaving aside all the temptations to of which they are subject, it is extremely characteristic to reject the greatness and glory of this world. This is a common way, at least, as it comes to higher feelings. Temporal greatness and fame appear to be a temptation and a sin, rather than a greater value as in the case of Westerners. […] It is interesting that about Peter the Great and Napoleon, symbols of greatness and glory, the Russian people have created legends in which they are the incarnations of the Antichrist.”22
Gogol, who was mentioned at the beginning, also romanced the Antichrist in his own literary way — I mean above all Revisor, but not only. In this play, the Evil One takes the form of a supposed inspector general. However, as it later turns out, there is a certain comedic twist here, for the title inspector is taken to be the unknown young stranger, Khlestakov, who, in fact, is an insignificant official. The supposed inspector assumes the role unwisely assigned to him and installs himself in the governor’s house, which causes a real panic among the unaware onlookers. He disappears just as he appeared, unexpectedly dissolving in the fog, as a phantom chased everywhere at the beck and call of evil forces. He leaves the town carried by the postmaster’s troika — terrified by his own lies. When the truth finally triumphs, everyone is petrified by a sudden fear, and true despair creeps in — the real inspector is about to appear in town… At first glance, the work may seem to be an amusing comedy written with a light touch. However, in 1846 Gogol wrote the Epilogue to Revisor in protest against this understanding of his idea: „Look carefully at the city described in the play. It is well known to all that is fiction… the revisor who awaits us at the grave is terrible […]. Let everyone have with him a survey of his inner-city […], where passions, like nasty officials, plunder the treasure of his soul.”23
Gogol also wrote a piece called The Portrait, in my opinion, the most interesting of his works, for he succeeded in capturing the element of double incarnation in people, with his imagination along with words he painted a picture within which he placed the mystery of revelation with the Antichrist in the background and all of this embedded in the soul of one man. In The Portrait, evil lurks in the guise of the usurer, who orders his portrait from the painter and explains his reasons: „I shall soon die, I have no children, but I do not want to die entirely, I want to live. Can you paint such a portrait so that I look like a living person?”. The painter undertakes the task, and succeeds in giving the usurer’s eyes such an expression, breathing into them such a terrifying life force, that anyone who looks at the portrait is immediately overwhelmed with fear. In such a work of art evil materializes, the painting no longer serves as an image, it unwittingly becomes an „icon of the devil”. Gogol exposes the mechanism of the birth of evil, a force for which the painter’s talent was only a transmitter. That’s why he put on a monk’s habit for many years and locked himself in solitude. Heavenly grace finally leads the artist to recreate and thus confirm the birth of Christ. After such a reading, Plato could have considered Gogol his greatest disciple, for who knew more than he did about the dual nature of things and small and great matters, about the dual incarnation of all existence.
Finally, I would like to say a few words about one more book. Among the many that I have briefly discussed here, this one holds a special place. It’s worth reading if only for the fact that not long ago, in a poll for the novel of the century, it was chosen by the vast majority of readers. The novel in question is, not surprisingly, The Master and Margarita, a masterpiece deeply rooted in the tradition of Easter mysteries written by Mikhail Bulgakov.
For someone who has read the book, Bulgakov appears to be a character out of this world, more like a sorcerer than a writer, a cunning magician who instead of a wand uses a nib to open gates leading to a foggy and shimmering land, pulsating with anxiety, to a world where scraps of ordinary reality have been sewn together with satanic thread — making them camouflage garments of everyday life, tailored to fit the devil.
The writer has contrived to bring Satan to Moscow, at the same time ascribing to him the character of a demiurge who dictates the course of contemporary events over the Easter Week, during which the capital experiences a kind of invasion of infernal powers. It seems that the author is accompanied by a fearful awareness of actual existence within the inner circle of hell, a conviction that temporal life has been taken over by the same Logos who will ultimately appear to exterminate humanity. The physical presence of Satan is read here as the only proof of the existence of God, while the existence of evil is supposed to be a guarantee that someday, somewhere out there — in some unspecified place and time — we’ll be able to experience good.
However, it took Bulgakov’s personality and suggestive power for this to crystallise in the right way and acquire the right dimensions and weight. On the one hand, the Master, whose fate he skilfully weaves into the canon of the Passion of Christ, and on the other, Marguerite, who can be treated here as an icon strengthening the lyrical framework of the works, as an almost living person who contributes to revealing the story of her own unhappy love. The master is none other than the novelist himself, and thanks to this treatment he can, in his own way, influence the fate of the protagonists, but no longer as the author, but as the subject and perpetrator of events. As Andrzej Mandalian rightly remarked, “Unlike in Bulgakov’s earlier works, the characteristic spectre of the approaching boor, a direct product of the Russian Revolution, has been replaced here by a vision of universal decay, encompassing not only the proletarian poets, Griboyedov regulars, or the viewers of the Variétes, but also almost all the protagonists and supporting characters that run through the novel. The elite has mongrelized — its moral and mental poverty is exposed by a visit of Voland and his devilish entourage, when during the Easter merriment the ugly vices of the capital’s residents, acquired throughout the years of their infernal existence, become apparent. The only representative of the intellectual patriciate (with the exception of the emissaries of the beyond) is the Master, locked up in an asylum after his return from exile. Pilate, with his eternal sense of guilt, seems to partner him from afar and on another plane.”24 A timid Pilate, I might even say, verging on cowardice. Bulgakov condemns this attitude as an unforgivable sin. But this is not the strength of the message, for, alongside the prosecutor’s sinful fear, or perhaps even with it in the background, the relationship between Pilate and Judas is cleverly portrayed. Something is disquieting in this, for it is not fear or cowardice, whatever else one may call it, that is at the heart of the problem — for the warp of fear is betrayal. Pilate orders Judas to be put to death not out of a need to avenge Yeshua, but out of fear of the eternally recurring memory of faithlessness in the face of his own conscience. Pilate lied to himself, and therein lies the secret of his sin a sin fueled by fear of being accused of offending the majesty. Bulgakov skillfully portrays the fear that all the representatives of the nation’s elite, including Bulgakov himself, had at the time. He speaks of fear so degenerating, stupefying, and debasing that even the noblest of men could not resist it. He knew and understood its power, which is why he did not hesitate to talk about it.
„The issue of cowardice, an atmosphere of fear, the primordial cause of moral capitulation and the pandering to the elite, is, in our opinion, extremely important for understanding the drama of Bulgakov himself — a writer who was as independent as possible, but who was forced to abandon open dissent and make a kind of attempt to enter into deals with the authorities. After all, it is this to which we owe the Faustian concept and the stench of sulfur emanating from the pages of his novels. In this context, it is impossible not to draw attention to the ambiguity of the character of Voland. Representing the force in the novel, “that always wills the evil and always produces the good” he is neither an antagonist nor an opponent of God. He is simply part of God’s plan. Accordingly, at Margaret’s request, he restores the Master’s destroyed work; moreover, he takes him into his care, saving him from madness. The question arises, however: as Satan, does he not exceed his powers to do good? For although the moral dubiousness of most of his actions is obvious, they are most consistent with our sense of justice.”25
Well? Wandering through the Russian literature, of which I have written, that communes with the “Evil One”, we can hardly resist a certain impression, namely, that the presence of Satan, Antichrist, etc. is always accompanied by some human affairs, that is, they are the reason, the cause of his presence, and what’s interesting, those who are the perpetrators always end poorly… Could it be that the door to the final kingdom of God is to be opened for us by no one else but Satan himself? Who is this ultimate judge, will it be Bulgakov’s Woland or a frightening reviser? Or maybe, we are allowed to choose? After all, who if not us knows more about the evil nature of the world we dwell in, and who will find it easier to distinguish between lesser and greater evils?
1M. Bierdiajew, Rosyjska idea, tł. Z ros. JC-SW, Warszawa 1987, In plus, „Bibl. Altheia”, s. 43. (in my translation)
2Op. cit. pg. 173
3Leontiev and Soloviev can serve here as flagship examples of this kind of understanding of reality. Read in (M. Berdyaev, The Russian Idea, p. 146).
4Compare. S. Frank, Swiet wo t’mie, Paris 1949, pg. 139–149.
5Check: D. Bethea, The Shape of Apocalypse in Modern Russian Fiction. Princeton University Press, 1989, pg.30–31
6Check: B. McGinn, Antychryst, wyd. Da Capo, Warszawa 1998, pg. 349.
7Check: I.Loyola, Ćwiczenia Duchowe, tł. J. Ożóg SJ, Kraków 1996, wyd. WAM, pg. 60–62.
8Compare: F. Dostojewski, Bracia Karamazow, tł. A. Wat, Warszawa 1959, PIW, I, 5, pg. 485.
9Read in: H. U. Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Asthetic, III studies in Theological Styes: Lay styles, San Francisco, Ignatius 1986, pg. 284.
10Fallowing A. Bakshy War,Progress and the End of History Anthroposophic Press 2000, pg.19
11Interesting observations on Soloviev’s vision of evil are found in von Balthasar’s book: Glory of the Lord…”, pg.296–297, 318–321, 340–341, 350–352.
12Check: H. U. Balthasar, Glory of the Lord…, pg. 296.
13Read more in A. Bakshy War Progress, pg. 173–174
14Read more in B. McGinn Antychryst, pg. 351
15 A. Bakshy War Progress, s. 227 (Polish edition, pg. 149)
16Check: C. Miłosz Science fiction and the coming of Antichrist, pg. 16.
17Read in: D. Bethea Shape of Apocalypse, pg. 114
18Raskolnik: a member of any of several sects founded by dissenters from the Russian Orthodox Church who opposed the liturgical reforms of Nikon in the 17th century.
19A. Bieły, Petersburg, przeł. Seweryn Polak, Czytelnik 1974, pg. 373 (in my translation)
20Op. cit. pg. 374
21E. Lundberg, Miereżkowskij i jego nowoje Christianstwo, S. Pietierburg 1914, pg. 41 (in my translation)
22M. Bierdiajew, Rosyjska Idea, przekł. JC-SW, Warszawa 1987, In plus, bibl. Altheia, pg. 141 (in my translation)
23P. Evdokimov, Gogol et Dostoievski on la descente aux enferers, Burges 1961, pg. 93
24A. Mandalian Zaświaty Sowietów, Gazeta Wyborcza 25–26 Wrzesień 2004. nr 226.4738. (in my translation)
25Op.cit.
