N. B. Nordman
If you have burdened yourself with food, then get up from the table and rest. Sirach 31, 24.
“I am often asked orally and in writing, how do we eat hay and grasses? Do we chew them at home, in the stall, or in the meadow, and how much exactly? Many take this food as a joke, make fun of it, and some even find it offensive, how can people be offered food that until now only animals have eaten!” With these words, in 1912, at the Prometheus Folk Theater in Kuokkala (a holiday village located on the Gulf of Finland, 40 km northwest of St. Petersburg; now Repino), Natalya Borisovna Nordman began her lecture on nutrition and treatment with natural remedies.
N. B. Nordman, according to the unanimous opinion of various critics, was one of the most charming women of the early twentieth century. Having become the wife of I. E. Repin in 1900, until her death in 1914, she was a favorite object of attention, first of all, of the yellow press – because of her vegetarianism and her other eccentric ideas.
Later, under Soviet rule, her name was hushed up. K. I. Chukovsky, who knew N. B. Nordman closely since 1907 and wrote an obituary in her memory, devoted several pages to her in his essays on contemporaries From the memoirs published only in 1959, after the beginning of the “thaw”. In 1948, the art critic I. S. Zilberstein expressed the opinion that that period in the life of I. E. Repin, which was identified by N. B. Nordman, is still waiting for its researcher (cf. above with. yy). In 1997 Darra Goldstein’s article Is Hay only for Horses? Highlights of Russian Vegetarianism at the Turn of the Century, mostly dedicated to Repin’s wife: however, Nordman’s literary portrait, preceded by a rather incomplete and inaccurate sketch of the history of Russian vegetarianism, hardly does her justice. So, D. Goldstein dwells primarily on the “smoky” features of those reform projects that Nordman once proposed; her culinary art also receives detailed coverage, which is probably due to the theme of the collection in which this article was published. The reaction of critics was not long in coming; one of the reviews said: Goldstein’s article shows how “dangerous it is to identify a whole movement with an individual <...> Future researchers of Russian vegetarianism would do well to analyze the circumstances in which it originated and the difficulties it had to face, and then deal his apostles.”
N. B. Nordman gives a more objective assessment of N. B. Nordman in his book on Russian advice and guidelines for behavior since the time of Catherine II: “And yet her brief but energetic existence gave her the opportunity to get acquainted with the most popular ideologies and debates of that time, from feminism to animal welfare, from the “servant problem” to the pursuit of hygiene and self-improvement.”
N. B. Nordman (writer’s pseudonym – Severova) was born in 1863 in Helsingfors (Helsinki) in the family of a Russian admiral of Swedish origin and a Russian noblewoman; Natalya Borisovna was always proud of her Finnish origin and liked to call herself a “free Finnish woman”. Despite the fact that she was baptized according to the Lutheran rite, Alexander II himself became her godfather; she justified one of her later favorite ideas, namely the “emancipation of the servants” through the simplification of work in the kitchen and the system of “self-help” at the table (anticipating today’s “self-service”), she justified, not least, by the memory of the “Tsar-Liberator”, who by decree February 19, 1861 abolished serfdom. N. B. Nordman received an excellent education at home, the sources mention four or six languages u1909buXNUMXbthat she spoke; she studied music, modeling, drawing and photography. Even as a girl, Natasha, apparently, suffered greatly from the distance that existed between children and parents in the high nobility, because the care and upbringing of children was provided to nannies, maids and ladies-in-waiting. Her brief autobiographical essay Maman (XNUMX), one of the best children’s stories in Russian literature, conveys incredibly vividly the impact that social circumstances depriving a child of motherly love can have on a child’s soul. This text seems to be the key to the radical nature of social protest and the rejection of many norms of behavior that determined her life path.
In search of independence and useful social activity, in 1884, at the age of twenty, she went to the United States for a year, where she worked on a farm. After returning from America, N. B. Nordman played on the amateur stage in Moscow. At that time, she lived with her close friend Princess M. K. Tenisheva “in an atmosphere of painting and music”, was fond of “ballet dancing, Italy, photography, dramatic art, psychophysiology and political economy.” In the Moscow theater “Paradise” Nordman met a young merchant Alekseev – it was then that he took the pseudonym Stanislavsky, and in 1898 became the founder of the Moscow Art Theater. Director Alexander Filippovich Fedotov (1841-1895) promised her “a great future as a comic actress”, which can be read in her book “Intimate Pages” (1910). After the union of I. E. Repin and E. N. Zvantseva was completely upset, Nordman entered into a civil marriage with him. In 1900, they visited the World Exhibition in Paris together, then went on a trip to Italy. I. E. Repin painted several portraits of his wife, among them – a portrait on the shore of Lake Zell “N. B. Nordman in a Tyrolean cap ”(yy ill.), – Repin’s favorite portrait of his wife. In 1905 they again traveled to Italy; on the way, in Krakow, Repin paints another portrait of his wife; their next trip to Italy, this time to the international exhibition in Turin and then to Rome, took place in 1911.
N. B. Nordman died in June 1914 in Orselino, near Locarno, from tuberculosis of the throat 13; On May 26, 1989, a memorial plate was installed at the local cemetery with the inscription “writer and life partner of the Great Russian artist Ilya Repin” (ill. 14 yy). The latter dedicated a pathetic obituary to her, published in the Vegetarian Herald. During those fifteen years when he was a close witness of her activities, he never ceased to be amazed at her “life feast”, her optimism, wealth of ideas and courage. The “Penates”, their home in Kuokkala, served for almost ten years as a public university, intended for the most diverse public; here lectures were given on all sorts of topics: “No, you won’t forget her; the further, the more people will get acquainted with her unforgettable literary works.
In his memoirs, K. I. Chukovsky defends N. B. Nordman from the attacks of the Russian press: “Let her sermon was sometimes too eccentric, it seemed like a whim, a whim – this very passion, recklessness, readiness for all kinds of sacrifice touched and delighted her. And looking closely, you saw in her quirks a lot of serious, sensible. Russian vegetarianism, according to Chukovsky, has lost its greatest apostle in it. “She had a huge talent for any kind of propaganda. How she admired the suffragettes! Her preaching of cooperation marked the beginning of a cooperative consumer shop in Kuokkale; she founded a library; she busied herself a lot about the school; she arranged a folk theater; she helped vegetarian shelters – all with the same all-devouring passion. All her ideas were democratic.” In vain Chukovsky urged her to forget about the reforms and write novels, comedies, stories. “When I came across her story The Runaway in Niva, I was amazed by her unexpected skill: such an energetic drawing, such true, bold colors. In her book Intimate Pages there are many charming passages about the sculptor Trubetskoy, about various Moscow artists. I remember with what admiration the writers (among whom there were very great ones) listened to her comedy Little Children in the Penates. She had a keen observant eye, she mastered the skill of dialogue, and many pages of her books are real works of art. I could safely write volume after volume, like other ladies writers. But she was drawn to some kind of business, to some kind of work, where, apart from bullying and abuse, she met nothing to the grave.
To trace the fate of Russian vegetarianism in the general context of Russian culture, it is necessary to dwell in more detail on the figure of N. B. Nordman.
Being a reformer in spirit, she put transformations (in various fields) at the basis of her life aspirations, and nutrition – in their broadest sense – was central to her. The decisive role in the transition to a vegetarian way of life in the case of Nordman was obviously played by acquaintance with Repin, who, already in 1891, under the influence of Leo Tolstoy, began to become vegetarian at times. But if for Repin hygienic aspects and good health were in the foreground, then for Nordman ethical and social motives soon became the most significant. In 1913, in the pamphlet The Testaments of Paradise, she wrote: “To my shame, I must confess that I did not come to the idea of vegetarianism through moral means, but through physical suffering. By the age of forty [i.e. e. around 1900 – P. B.] I was already half-crippled. Nordman not only studied the works of doctors H. Lamann and L. Pasco, known to Repin, but also promoted Kneipp hydrotherapy, and also advocated simplification and life close to nature. Because of her unconditional love for animals, she rejected lacto-ovo vegetarianism: it, too, “means to live by murder and robbery.” She also refused eggs, butter, milk and even honey and, thus, was, in today’s terminology – like, in principle, Tolstoy – a vegan (but not a raw foodist). True, in her Paradise testaments she offers several recipes for raw dinners, but then she makes a reservation that she has only recently taken up the preparation of such dishes, there is not much variety in her menu yet. However, in the last years of her life, Nordman strove to adhere to a raw food diet – in 1913 she wrote to I. Perper: “I eat raw and feel good <...> On Wednesday, when we had Babin, we had the last word of vegetarianism: everything for 30 people it was raw, not a single boiled thing. Nordman presented her experiments to the general public. On March 25, 1913, she informed I. Perper and his wife from Penat:
“Hello, my fair ones, Joseph and Esther.
Thank you for your lovely, sincere and kind letters. It is unfortunate that, due to lack of time, I have to write less than I would like. I can give you good news. Yesterday, at the Psycho-Neurological Institute, Ilya Efimovich read “On Youth”, and I: “Raw food, like health, economy and happiness.” The students spent a whole week preparing dishes according to my advice. There were about a thousand listeners, during the intermission they gave tea from hay, tea from nettles and sandwiches made from pureed olives, roots and saffron milk mushrooms, after the lecture everyone moved to the dining room, where students were offered a four-course dinner for six kopecks: soaked oatmeal, soaked peas , vinaigrette from raw roots and ground wheat grains that can replace bread.
Despite the distrust that is always treated at the beginning of my sermon, it ended up that the heels of the audience still managed to set fire to the listeners, they ate a pood of soaked oatmeal, a pood of peas and an unlimited number of sandwiches. They drank hay [i.e. e. herbal tea. – P. B.] and came into some kind of electric, special mood, which, of course, was facilitated by the presence of Ilya Efimovich and his words, illuminated by love for young people. The president of the institute V. M. Bekhterov [sic] and the professors drank tea from hay and nettles and ate all the dishes with appetite. We were even filmed at that moment. After the lecture, V. M. Bekhterov showed us the most magnificent and richest in terms of its scientific structure, the Psycho-Neurological Institute and the Anti-Alcohol Institute. That day we saw a lot of affection and a lot of good feelings.
I am sending you my newly published booklet [Paradise Covenants]. Write what impression she made on you. I liked your last issue, I always endure a lot of good and useful things. We, thank God, are vigorous and healthy, I have now gone through all the stages of vegetarianism and preach only raw food.
V. M. Bekhterev (1857-1927), together with the physiologist I. P. Pavlov, is the founder of the doctrine of “conditioned reflexes”. He is well known in the West as a researcher of such a disease as stiffness of the spine, today called Bechterew’s disease (Morbus Bechterev). Bekhterev was friendly with the biologist and physiologist prof. I. R. Tarkhanov (1846-1908), one of the publishers of the first Vegetarian Bulletin, he was also close to I. E. Repin, who in 1913 painted his portrait (ill. 15 yy.); in “Penates” Bekhterev read a report on his theory of hypnosis; in March 1915 in Petrograd, together with Repin, he made presentations on the topic “Tolstoy as an artist and thinker.”
The consumption of herbs or “hay” – the subject of caustic ridicule of Russian contemporaries and the press of the time – was by no means a revolutionary phenomenon. Nordmann, like other Russian reformers, adopted the use of herbs from the Western European, especially the German reform movement, including from G. Lamann. Many of the herbs and cereals that Nordman recommended for teas and extracts (decoctions) were known for their medicinal properties in ancient times, played a role in mythology, and were grown in the gardens of medieval monasteries. Abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1178) described them in her natural science writings Physica and Causae et curae. These “hands of the gods,” as herbs were sometimes called, are ubiquitous in today’s alternative medicine. But even modern pharmacological research includes in its programs the study of biologically active substances found in a wide variety of plants.
The bewilderment of the Russian press about the innovations of N. B. Nordman recalls the naive surprise of the Western press, when, in connection with the spread of vegetarian eating habits and the first successes of tofu in the United States, journalists learned that soybean, one of the most ancient cultivated plants, in China has been a food product for thousands of years.
However, it must be admitted that part of the Russian press also published favorable reviews of N. B. Nordman’s speeches. So, for example, on August 1, 1912, Birzhevye Vedomosti published a report by the writer I. I. Yasinsky (he was a vegetarian!) About her lecture on the topic “About the magic chest [namely, about the chest-cooker. – P. B.] and about what the poor, fat and rich need to know ”; this lecture was given with great success on July 30 at the Prometheus Theatre. Subsequently, Nordmann will present a “cooker chest” to facilitate and reduce the cost of cooking, along with other exhibits, at the Moscow Vegetarian Exhibition in 1913 and will acquaint the public with the peculiarities of using utensils that store heat – these and other reform projects she adopted from Western Europe.
N. B. Nordman was an early campaigner for women’s rights, despite the fact that she disowned suffragettes on occasion; Chukovsky’s description in this sense (see above) is quite plausible. Thus, she postulated the right of a woman to strive for self-realization not only through motherhood. By the way, she herself survived it: her only daughter Natasha died in 1897 at the age of two weeks. In the life of a woman, Nordman believed, there should be a place for other interests. One of her most important aspirations was the “emancipation of the servants”. The owner of the “Penates” even dreamed of legislatively establishing an eight-hour working day for domestic servants who worked 18 hours, and wished that the attitude of the “masters” towards the servants would generally change, become more humane. In the Conversation between the “lady of the present” and the “woman of the future”, a demand is expressed that the women of the Russian intelligentsia should fight not only for the equality of women of their own social stratum, but also of other strata, for example, over a million people of female servants in Russia. Nordman was convinced that “vegetarianism, which simplifies and facilitates the worries of life, is closely related to the issue of the emancipation of the servants.”
The marriage of Nordman and Repin, who was 19 years older than his wife, of course, was not “cloudless”. Their life together in 1907-1910 was especially harmonious. Then they seemed inseparable, later there were crises.
Both of them were bright and temperamental personalities, with all their waywardness, complementing each other in many ways. Repin appreciated the vastness of his wife’s knowledge and her literary talent; she, for her part, admired the famous artist: since 1901 she collected all the literature about him, compiled valuable albums with newspaper clippings. In many areas, they have achieved fruitful joint work.
Repin illustrated some of his wife’s literary texts. So, in 1900, he wrote nine watercolors for her story Fugitive, published in Niva; in 1901, a separate edition of this story was published under the title Eta, and for the third edition (1912) Nordman came up with another title – To ideals. For the story Cross of Motherhood. Secret diary, published as a separate book in 1904, Repin created three drawings. Finally, his work is the design of the cover of Nordman’s book Intimate Pages (1910) (ill. 16 yy).
Both, Repin and Nordman, were extremely industrious and full of a thirst for activity. Both were close to social aspirations: the social activity of his wife, presumably, liked Repin, because from under his pen for decades came out famous paintings of a social orientation in the spirit of the Wanderers.
When Repin became a member of the staff of the Vegetarian Review in 1911, N. B. Nordman also began to collaborate with the journal. She made every effort to help VO when its publisher I. O. Perper appealed for help in 1911 in connection with the difficult financial situation of the journal. She called and wrote letters to recruit subscribers, turned to Paolo Trubetskoy and the actress Lidia Borisovna Yavorskaya-Baryatynskaya in order to save this “very pretty” magazine. Leo Tolstoy, – so she wrote on October 28, 1911, – before his death, “as if he blessed” the publisher of the magazine I. Perper.
In “Penates” N. B. Nordman introduced a fairly strict distribution of time for numerous guests who wanted to visit Repin. This brought order to his creative life: “We lead a very active life and strictly distributed by the hour. We accept exclusively on Wednesdays from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. In addition to Wednesdays, we still have meetings of our employers on Sundays.” The guests could always stay for lunch – certainly vegetarian – at the famous round table, with another revolving table with handles in the middle, which allowed self-service; D. Burliuk left us a wonderful description of such a treat.
The personality of N. B. Nordman and the central importance of vegetarianism in her life program are most clearly seen in her collection of essays Intimate Pages, which is a peculiar mixture of different genres. Along with the story “Maman”, it also included living descriptions in letters of two visits to Tolstoy – the first, longer, from September 21 to 29, 1907 (six letters to friends, pp. 77-96), and the second, shorter, in December 1908 (pp. 130-140); these essays contain many conversations with the inhabitants of Yasnaya Polyana. In sharp contrast to them are the impressions (ten letters) that Nordman received while accompanying Repin to exhibitions of Wanderers in Moscow (from December 11 to 16, 1908 and in December 1909). The atmosphere that prevailed at the exhibitions, the characteristics of the painters V. I. Surikov, I. S. Ostroukhov and P. V. Kuznetsov, the sculptor N. A. Andreev, sketches of their lifestyle; the scandal over V. E. Makovsky’s painting “After the Disaster”, confiscated by the police; the story of the dress rehearsal of The Inspector General staged by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater – all this was reflected in her essays.
Along with this, Intimate Pages contains a critical description of a visit to the artist Vasnetsov, whom Nordman finds too “right-wing” and “Orthodox”; further stories about visits follow: in 1909 – by L. O. Pasternak, a “true Jew”, who “draws and writes <...> endlessly his lovely two girls”; philanthropist Shchukin – today his fabulously rich collection of paintings of Western European modernism adorns the St. Petersburg Hermitage; as well as meetings with other, now less known representatives of the then Russian art scene. Finally, the book includes a sketch about Paolo Trubetskoy, which has already been discussed above, as well as a description of the “Cooperative Sunday People’s Meetings in the Penates.”
These literary sketches are written with a light pen; skillfully inserted fragments of dialogues; numerous information conveying the spirit of that time; what he saw is consistently described in the light of social aspirations of N. B. Nordman, with severe and well-aimed criticism of the disadvantageous position of women and the lower strata of society, with the demand for simplification, the rejection of various social conventions and taboos, with the praise of village life close to nature, as well as vegetarian nutrition.
The books of N. B. Nordman, which introduce the reader to the life reforms she proposes, were published in a modest edition (cf .: The Testaments of Paradise – only 1000 copies) and today they are a rarity. Only the Cookbook for the Starving (1911) was published in 10 copies; it sold like hot cakes and was completely sold out in two years. Due to the inaccessibility of the texts of N. B. Nordman, I will cite several excerpts that implicitly contain requirements that are not at all necessary to follow, but which may cause thought.
“I often thought in Moscow that in our life there are a lot of obsolete forms that we should get rid of as soon as possible. Here, for example, is the cult of the “guest”:
Some modest person who lives quietly, eats little, does not drink at all, will gather to his acquaintances. And so, as soon as he entered their house, he must immediately cease to be what he is. They receive him affectionately, often flatteringly, and in such a hurry to feed him as soon as possible, as if he were exhausted by hunger. A mass of edible food should be set at the table so that the guest not only eats, but also sees mountains of provisions in front of him. He will have to swallow so many different varieties to the detriment of health and common sense that he is sure in advance of tomorrow’s disorder. First of all, appetizers. The more important the guest, the spicier and more poisonous the snacks. Many different varieties, at least 10. Then soup with pies and four more dishes; wine is forced to drink. Many protest, they say the doctor forbade it, it causes palpitations, faintness. Nothing helps. He is a guest, some kind of state outside of time, and space, and logic. At first, it is positively difficult for him, and then his stomach expands, and he begins to absorb everything that is given to him, and he is entitled to portions, like a cannibal. After various wines – dessert, coffee, liquor, fruit, sometimes an expensive cigar will be imposed, smoke and smoke. And he smokes, and his head is completely poisoned, spinning in some kind of unhealthy languor. They get up from lunch. On the occasion of the guest, he ate the whole house. They go into the living room, the guest must certainly be thirsty. Hurry, hurry, seltzer. As soon as he drank, sweets or chocolate are offered, and there they lead tea to drink with cold snacks. The guest, you see, has completely lost his mind and is delighted, when at one in the morning he finally gets home and falls unconscious on his bed.
In turn, when guests gather at this modest, quiet person, he is beside himself. Even the day before, purchases were going on, the whole house was on its feet, the servants were scolded and beaten up, everything was upside down, they were frying, steaming, as if they were waiting for starving Indians. In addition, all the lies of life appear in these preparations – important guests are entitled to one preparation, one dish, vases and linen, average guests – everything is also average, and the poor are getting worse, and most importantly, smaller. Although these are the only ones that may be really hungry. And children, and governesses, and servants, and the porter are taught from childhood, looking at the situation of preparations, to respect some, it’s good, to bow politely to them, to despise others. The whole house gets used to living in an eternal lie – one thing for others, another for themselves. And God forbid that others know how they really live every day. There are people who pawn their belongings in order to better feed the guests, buy pineapple and wine, others cut from the budget, from the most necessary for the same purpose. In addition, everyone is infected with an epidemic of imitation. “Is it going to be worse for me than for others?”
Where do these strange customs come from? – I ask I.E. [Repin] – This, probably, came to us from the East !!!
East!? How much do you know about the East! There, family life is closed and guests are not allowed even close – the guest in the reception room sits on the sofa and drinks a small cup of coffee. That’s all!
– And in Finland, guests are invited not to their place, but to a pastry shop or a restaurant, but in Germany they go to their neighbors with their beer. So where, tell me, where does this custom come from?
– Where from where! This is a purely Russian trait. Read Zabelin, he has everything documented. In the old days, there were 60 dishes at dinner with kings and boyars. Even more. How many, I probably can’t say, it seems to have reached a hundred.
Often, very often in Moscow similar, edible thoughts came to my mind. And I decide to use all my strength to correct myself from the old, obsolete forms. Equal rights and self-help are not bad ideals, after all! It is necessary to throw away the old ballast that complicates life and interferes with good simple relationships!
Of course, we are talking here about the customs of the upper strata of pre-revolutionary Russian society. However, it is impossible not to recall the famous “Russian hospitality”, the fable of I. A. Krylov Demyanov’s ear, the complaints of the physician Pavel Niemeyer about the so-called “fatting” at private dinners (Abfutterung in Privatkreisen, see below p. 374 yy) or a clear the condition set by Wolfgang Goethe, who received an invitation from Moritz von Bethmann in Frankfurt on October 19, 1814: “Allow me to tell you, with the frankness of a guest, that I am never used to having dinner.” And perhaps someone will remember their own experiences.
Obsessive hospitality became the object of sharp attacks by Nordman and in 1908:
“And here we are in our hotel, in a large hall, sitting in a corner for a vegetarian breakfast. Boborykin is with us. He met at the elevator and now showers us with the flowers of his versatility <…>.
“We will have breakfast and lunch together these days,” Boborykin suggests. But is it possible to have breakfast and lunch with us? Firstly, our time is fitful, and secondly, we try to eat as little as possible, to bring food to a minimum. In all houses, gout and sclerosis are served on beautiful plates and vases. And the hosts are trying with all their might to instill them in guests. The other day we went for a modest breakfast. On the seventh course, I mentally decided not to accept any more invitations. How many expenses, how much hassle, and all in favor of obesity and disease. And I also decided never to treat anyone again, because already over ice cream I felt undisguised anger towards the hostess. During the two-hour sitting at the table, she did not allow a single conversation to develop. She interrupted hundreds of thoughts, confused and upset not only us. Just now someone opened his mouth – it was cut off at the root by the hostess’s voice – “Why don’t you take gravy?” – “No, if you like, I’ll put you more turkeys! ..” – The guest, looking around wildly, entered into hand-to-hand combat, but died in it irrevocably. His plate was loaded over the edge.
No, no – I don’t want to take on the pathetic and outrageous role of hostess in the old style.
A protest against the conventions of a luxurious and lazy lordly life can also be found in the description of the visit by Repin and Nordman to the painter and collector I. S. Ostroukhov (1858-1929). Many guests came to Ostroukhov’s house for a musical evening dedicated to Schubert. After trio:
“AND. E. [Repin] is pale and tired. It’s time to go. We are on the street. <…>
– Do you know how difficult it is to live in the masters. <…> No, as you wish, I can’t do this for a long time.
– I can not either. Is it possible to sit down and go again?
– Let’s go on foot! Wonderful!
– I’m going, I’m going!
And the air is so thick and cold that it hardly penetrates the lungs.
The next day, a similar situation. This time they are visiting the famous painter Vasnetsov: “And here is the wife. I. E. told me that she was from the intelligentsia, from the first graduate of female doctors, that she was very smart, energetic and had always been a good friend of Viktor Mikhailovich. So she doesn’t go, but like that – either she floats, or she rolls over. Obesity, my friends! And what! Look. And she is indifferent – and how! Here is a portrait of her on the wall in 1878. Thin, ideological, with hot black eyes.
Confessions of N. B. Nordman in his commitment to vegetarianism are characterized by a similar frankness. Let’s compare the fourth letter from the story about the trip of 1909: “With such feelings and thoughts we entered the Slavyansky Bazaar yesterday for breakfast. Oh, this city life! You need to get used to its nicotine air, poison yourself with corpse food, dull your moral feelings, forget nature, God, in order to be able to endure it. With a sigh, I remembered the balsamic air of our forest. And the sky, and the sun, and the stars give a reflection in our heart. “Human, clean me a cucumber as soon as possible. Do you hear!? Familiar voice. Meeting again. Again, the three of us at the table. Who is it? I will not say. Maybe you can guess. <...> On our table there is warm red wine, wisky [sic!], various dishes, beautiful carrion in curls. <…> I’m tired and I want to go home. And on the street there is vanity, vanity. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Carts of frozen calves and other living creatures stretch everywhere. In Okhotny Ryad, garlands of dead birds hang by the legs. The Day After Tomorrow The Birth of the Meek Savior. How many lives have been lost in His Name.” Similar reflections before Nordman can be found already in Shelley’s essay On the Vegetable System of Diet (1814-1815).
Curious in this sense is the remark about another invitation to the Ostroukhovs, this time for dinner (letter seven): “We had a vegetarian dinner. Surprisingly, both the owners, and the cook, and the servants were under the hypnosis of something boring, hungry, cold and insignificant. You should have seen that skinny mushroom soup that smelled of boiling water, those fatty rice patties around which boiled raisins rolled pitifully, and a deep saucepan from which thick sago soup was suspiciously taken out with a spoon. Sad faces with an idea forced upon them.”
In visions of the future, in many respects more definite than they are drawn by the catastrophic poems of the Russian Symbolists, N. B. Nordman predicts with incredible clarity and sharpness the catastrophe that will break out over Russia in ten years. After the first visit to Ostroukhov, she writes: “In his words, one could feel worship before the millions of Shchukin. I, firmly savvy with my 5-kopeck pamphlets, on the contrary, had a hard time experiencing our abnormal social system. The oppression of capital, the 12-hour working day, the insecurity of disability and old age of the dark, gray workers, making cloth all their lives, because of a piece of bread, this magnificent house of Shchukin, once built by the hands of disenfranchised slaves of serfdom, and now eating the same juices oppressed people—all these thoughts ached in me like a sore tooth, and this big, lisping man made me angry.”
In the Moscow hotel where the Repins stayed in December 1909, on the first day of Christmas, Nordman held out her hands to all the footmen, porters, boys and congratulated them on the Great Holiday. “Christmas Day, and the gentlemen took it for themselves. What breakfasts, teas, lunches, rides, visits, dinners. And how much wine – whole forests of bottles on the tables. What about them? <...> We are intellectuals, gentlemen, we are alone – all around us are teeming with millions of other people’s lives. <...> Isn’t it scary that they are about to break the chains and flood us with their darkness, ignorance and vodka.
Such thoughts do not leave N. B. Nordman even in Yasnaya Polyana. “Everything here is simple, but not eccentric, like a landowner. <...> It is felt that two half-empty houses are standing defenseless in the middle of the forest <...> In the silence of a dark night, the glow of fires is dreaming, the horror of attacks and defeats, and who knows what horrors and fears. And one feels that sooner or later that immense force will take over, sweep away the entire old culture and arrange everything in its own way, in a new way. And a year later, again in Yasnaya Polyana: “L. N. leaves, and I go for a walk with I. E. I still need to breathe Russian air ”(before returning to the“ Finnish ”Kuokkala). A village is visible in the distance:
“But in Finland life is still completely different than in Russia,” I say. “All of Russia is in the oases of manor estates, where there is still luxury, greenhouses, peaches and roses in bloom, a library, a home pharmacy, a park, a bathhouse, and all around right now is this age-old darkness, poverty and lack of rights. We have peasant neighbors in Kuokkala, but in their own way they are richer than us. What cattle, horses! How much land, which is at least valued at 3 rubles. fathom. How many dachas each. And the dacha annually gives 400, 500 rubles. In winter, they also have a good income – stuffing glaciers, supplying ruffs and burbots to St. Petersburg. Each of our neighbors has several thousand annual incomes, and our relationship to him is completely equal. Where else is Russia before this?!
And it begins to seem to me that Russia is at this moment in some kind of interregnum: the old is dying, and the new has not yet been born. And I feel sorry for her and want to leave her as soon as possible.
I. Perper’s proposal to devote himself entirely to the spread of vegetarian ideas N. B. Nordman rejected. Literary work and questions of “emancipation of servants” seemed to her more important and absorbed her completely; she fought for new forms of communication; servants, for example, had to sit at the table with the owners – this was, according to her, with V. G. Chertkov. Bookshops hesitated to sell her pamphlet on the condition of domestic servants; but she found a way out by using specially printed envelopes with the inscription: “The servants should be liberated. Pamphlet by N. B. Nordman”, and at the bottom: “Don’t kill. VI commandment” (ill. 8).
Six months before Nordman’s death, her “Appeal to a Russian Intelligent Woman” was published in VO, in which she, once again advocating the release of the three million female servants then available in Russia, proposed her draft “Charter of the Society for the Protection of Forced Forces”. This charter postulated the following requirements: regular working hours, educational programs, the organization for visiting assistants, following the example of America, separate houses so that they can live independently. It was supposed to arrange in these houses schools for teaching homework, lectures, entertainment, sports and libraries, as well as “mutual aid funds in case of illness, unemployment and old age.” Nordman wanted to base this new “society” on the principle of decentralization and a cooperative structure. At the end of the appeal was printed the same agreement that had been used in the “Penates” for several years. The contract provided for the possibility of resetting, by mutual agreement, the hours of the working day, as well as an additional fee for each guest visiting the house (10 kopecks!) And for extra hours of work. About food it was said: “In our house you get a vegetarian breakfast and tea in the morning and a vegetarian lunch at three o’clock. You can have breakfast and lunch, if you wish, with us or separately.
Social ideas were also reflected in her linguistic habits. With her husband, she was on “you”, without exception she said “comrade” to men, and “sisters” to all women. “There is something unifying about these names, destroying all artificial partitions.” In the essay Our ladies-in-waiting, published in the spring of 1912, Nordman defended the “maids of honor” – governesses in the service of Russian nobles, often much more educated than their employers; she described their exploitation and demanded for them an eight-hour working day, and also that they must be called by their first and patronymic names. “In the current situation, the presence of this slave creature in the house has a corrupting effect on the child’s soul.”
Speaking of “employers”, Nordman used the word “employees” – an expression that objectifies true relationships, but is absent and will be absent from Russian dictionaries for a long time to come. She wanted the peddlers who sold strawberries and other fruits in the summer not to call her “lady” and that these women be protected from exploitation by their mistresses (kulaks). She was indignant at the fact that they talk about rich houses about the “front” entrance and about the “black” one – we read about this “protest” in K. I. Chukovsky’s diary entry dated July 18/19, 1924. In describing her visit with Repin to the writer I. I. Yasinsky (“vegetarian hero of the day”), she enthusiastically notes that they serve dinner “without slaves,” that is, without servants.
Nordman liked to end her letters sometimes in a sectarian way, and sometimes polemically, “with a vegetarian greeting.” In addition, she consistently switched to a simplified spelling, wrote her articles, as well as her letters, without the letters “yat” and “er”. She adheres to the new spelling in the Paradise Testaments.
In the essay On the Name Day, Nordman tells how the son of her acquaintances received all kinds of weapons and other military toys as a gift: “Vasya did not recognize us. Today he was a general in the war, and his only desire was to kill us <…> We looked at him with the peaceful eyes of vegetarians” 70. Parents are proud of their son, they say that they were even going to buy him a small machine gun: … “. To this, Nordman replies: “That’s why they were going to, that you do not swallow turnips and cabbage …”. A short written dispute is tied up. A year later, the First World War will begin.
N. B. Nordman recognized that vegetarianism, if it wants to be widely recognized, will have to seek the support of medical science. That is why she took the first steps in this direction. Inspired, apparently, by the sense of solidarity of the vegetarian community at the First All-Russian Congress of Vegetarians, held in Moscow from April 16 to April 20, 1913 (cf. VII. 5 yy), being impressed by her successful speech on March 24 at the Psychoneurological Institute prof. V. M. Bekhtereva, in a letter dated May 7, 1913, Nordman addresses the famous neurologist and co-author of reflexology with a proposal to establish a department of vegetarianism – an undertaking that was very bold and progressive for that time:
“Dear Vladimir Mikhailovich, <...> As once, in vain, without use, steam spread over the earth and electricity sparkled, so today vegetarianism rushes through the earth in the air, like a healing force of nature. And it runs and it moves. Firstly, already because every day a conscience awakens in people and, in connection with this, the point of view on murder is changing. Diseases caused by meat eating are also multiplying, and the prices of animal products are rising.
Grab vegetarianism by the horns as soon as possible, put it in retorts, examine it carefully through a microscope, and finally proclaim loudly from the pulpit as the good news of health, happiness and economy !!!
Everyone feels the need for a deep scientific study of the subject. We all, who bow before your overflowing energy, bright mind and kind heart, look at you with hope and hope. You are the only one in Russia who could become the initiator and founder of the vegetarian department.
As soon as the case passes into the walls of your magical Institute, hesitation, ridicule and sentimentality will immediately disappear. Old maids, homegrown lecturers and preachers will meekly return to their homes.
Within a few years, the Institute will be dispersed among the masses of young physicians, firmly grounded in knowledge and experience. And we all and future generations will bless you!!!
Deeply respecting you Natalia Nordman-Severova.
V. M. Bekhterev replied to this letter on May 12 in a letter to I. E. Repin:
“Dear Ilya Efimovich, More than any other greetings, I was pleased with the letter received from you and Natalya Borisovna. Natalya Borisovna’s proposal and yours, I’m starting to brainstorm. I don’t know yet what it will come down to, but in any case, the development of thought will be set in motion.
Then, dear Ilya Efimovich, you touch me with your attention. <...> But I ask permission to be with you after a while, perhaps one, two or three weeks later, because now we, or at least me, are being choked by exams. As soon as I am free, I will hasten to you on the wings of joy. My greetings to Natalya Borisovna.
Yours faithfully, V. Bekhterev.”
Natalya Borisovna replied to this letter from Bekhterev on May 17, 1913 – according to her nature, somewhat exalted, but at the same time not without self-irony:
Dear Vladimir Mikhailovich, Your letter to Ilya Efimovich, full of the spirit of comprehensive initiative and energy, put me in the mood of Akim and Anna: I see my beloved child, my idea in gentle parental hands, I see his future growth, his power, and now I can die in peace or live in peace. All [spelling N. B. N.!] my lectures are tied with ropes and sent to the attic. Handicrafts will be replaced by scientific soil, laboratories will start working, the department will speak <...> it seems to me that even from a practical point of view, the need for young doctors to study what has already grown into entire systems in the West has already swelled: huge currents that have their own preachers, their own sanatoriums and tens of thousands of followers. Allow me, an ignoramus, to modestly stretch out a leaf with my vegetarian dreams <…>.
Here is this “leaf” – a typewritten sketch listing a number of problems that could be the subject of a “department of vegetarianism”:
Department of Vegetarianism
1). History of vegetarianism.
2). Vegetarianism as a moral doctrine.
The influence of vegetarianism on the human body: heart, gland, liver, digestion, kidneys, muscles, nerves, bones. And the composition of the blood. / Study by experiments and laboratory research.
The influence of vegetarianism on the psyche: memory, attention, ability to work, character, mood, love, hatred, temper, will, endurance.
On the effect of cooked food on the body.
About the influence of RAW FOOD ON THE ORGANISM.
Vegetarianism as a way of life.
Vegetarianism as a preventative of diseases.
Vegetarianism as a healer of diseases.
The influence of vegetarianism on diseases: cancer, alcoholism, mental illness, obesity, neurasthenia, epilepsy, etc.
Treatment with the healing forces of nature, which are the main support of vegetarianism: light, air, sun, massage, gymnastics, cold and hot water in all its applications.
Schroth’s treatment.
Fasting treatment.
Chewing treatment (Horace Fletcher).
Raw food (Bircher-Benner).
Treatment of tuberculosis according to new methods of vegetarianism (Carton).
Exploring Pascoe’s Theory.
Views of Hindhede and his food system.
Lamann.
Kneip.
GLUNIKE [Glunicke)]
HAIG and other European and American luminaries.
Exploring the devices of a sanatorium in the West.
The study of the effect of herbs on the human body.
Preparation of special herbal medicines.
Compilation of folk healers of herbal medicines.
Scientific study of folk remedies: treatment of cancer with cancerous growths of birch bark, rheumatism with birch leaves, buds with horsetail, etc., etc.
The study of foreign literature on vegetarianism.
On the rational preparation of foods that preserve mineral salts.
Business trips of young doctors abroad to study modern trends in vegetarianism.
The device of flying squads for propaganda to the masses of vegetarian ideas.
Influence of meat food: cadaveric poisons.
Concerning the transmission [sic] of various diseases to man through animal food.
On the influence of milk from an upset cow on a person.
Nervousness and improper digestion as a direct consequence of such milk.
Analyzes and determination of the nutritional value of various vegetarian foods.
About grains, simple and unpeeled.
About the slow dying of the spirit as a direct consequence of poisoning with cadaveric poisons.
About the resurrection of spiritual life by fasting.
If this project had been implemented, then in St. Petersburg, in all likelihood, the world’s first department of vegetarianism would have been founded …
No matter how far Bekhterev set in motion “the development of [this] thought” – a year later, Nordman was already dying and the First World War was on the threshold. But the West, too, had to wait until the end of the century for extensive research into plant-based diets that, given the variety of vegetarian diets, put the medical aspects at the forefront—an approach taken by Klaus Leitzmann and Andreas Hahn in their book from the university series “ Unitaschenbücher”.