On this day, 4 December 1997, I was in my last year of a five-year undergraduate degree in Russian language and literature at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. That was when I had a life-changing moment.
I had to deliver a presentation, whose title was In what ways can aspects of Andreev's work be regarded as 'expressionist' in nature?
I'm glad I kept my notes for this because it really does bring it all back.
The story was that, as a student, I never really felt that I had an opinion on anything. It's not even that I thought my opinion wasn't valid, I didn't even have an opinion. For every essay I did over the five years, I would get out the recommended background reading, make notes and then write bits of this and that without ever really having any train of thought.
Presentations were more difficult than essays, because you had to present them in front of the class and the tutor. I had stage fright big time with this one, so I jumped on a bus and went back to my hometown for a few days, taking my reading material and spending time in the local town library. I felt safe there and I think it helped.
On the day of my presentation, I got the early train and bus back to St Andrews and, as the bus was winding its way through the little Fife villages, the sun came up over a hill on top of which was a tree. I had my head down in my notes and just happened to look up at that moment and I swear I heard a choir of angels. All the fear just dropped away and I became part of it the universe, in complete harmony.
I suddenly saw with real clarity how ridiculous was the fear I had been feeling - like that moment at the end of the Matrix when Neo finally gets it and the fight is no longer a fight. And the Andreev presentation? I had an idea. It was mine, all mine. It had been there all along.
Let me just quote the end of the story called The Seven Who were Hanged:
The bodies were placed in a box. Then they were taken away. With stretched necks, with bulging eyes, with blue, swollen tongues, looking like some unknown, terrible flowers between the lips, which were covered with bloody foam—the bodies were hurried back along the same road by which they had come—alive. And the spring snow was just as soft and fresh; the spring air was just as strong and fragrant. And on the snow lay Sergey’s black rubber-shoe, wet, trampled under foot.
Thus man greets the rising sun.
Pretty grim, right? But I saw hope and beauty in it, a glimpse of the universe, the great benign she-wolf. Man becomes part of that when his earthly labour comes to an end. Thus man greets the rising sun.
That was the conclusion of my thesis and I painted a picture with quotes and background leading towards that conclusion. My tutor responded that he disagreed, but that I had done exactly what one should do is a good presentation and I got one of the highest marks I'd ever got for that.
Harmony
That moment with the sunrise has stayed with me ever since. I believe that it was my first spiritual awakening, at least the first of which I was aware. Everything was in sync. I've felt those moments again and it's something that I now strive towards and usually fail miserably because, well, life I guess. It never goes away; it's just that, most of the time, I can't see or feel it.
Presentation Notes
I keep all my notes on Dropbox. Feel free to have a look. Some are in Russian of course, as I read the stories in Russian and had to quote them also in Russian. But you'll get an idea.
Dropbox Link