In the wrecks of Kingdoms, in the self-immolations of evil ... (behind the pages of Maximilian Voloshin's book "Demons of the Deaf and Dumb")

Tsaregorodtseva Svetlana Sergeevna ORCID: 0000-0002-2510-2324 PhD in Philology Associate Professor of the Department of History of Journalism and Literature, Moscow State University named after A. S. Griboyedov. 111024, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, shosse Entuziastov, 21 alatas@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Pinaev Sergei Mikhailovich ORCID: 0000-0001-7064-7510 Doctor of Philology Professor, Department of Russian and Foreign Literature, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia 125009, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moskova, per. Bol'shoi Kislovskii, 5-7, stroenie 2, kv. 18 serpinaev@mail.ru

  "Demons of the deaf and Dumb" is a deeply personal book, it is the "author's confession" of the poet. Voloshin felt his deep involvement in the "dark, drunken, cursed", but always holy Russia, which gave birth to Stenka Razin and False Dmitry, and in the arbiters of the destinies of the new Russia he saw their inevitable heirs. "... And I will come again in three hundred years..." - the "dead, but united" Dmitry-Emperor informs his descendants. "... Three saints – with Grishka Otrepyev / Yes, with Emelka we will come as a Pugach," Stenka Razin supports him. And already the poet himself, having tasted from the "torments of executed generations," states in the spirit of the Apocalypse:

            Anathema to the church having overcome the shackles,

                 They were resurrected from the coffins

            Mazeps, Razins and Pugachevs –

                 Bogeymen of other centuries…

                                    ("Kitezh", 1919)

"Demons of the Deaf and Dumb" is a historiosophical book summarizing the historical paths of Russia, leading the reader to the dramatic events of our time, summing up, but not covering them. The pictures of the carnage of the last year of the Civil War were not included in it. At the same time, Voloshin emphasized "revolutionary reflections of different centuries and latitudes," mainly Russian and French. He certainly created a tragedy book (if there is a tragedy novel, then a tragedy can be a book of poetry). Lyrical heroes were selected accordingly: Stenka Razin, False Dmitry, Protopop Avvakum ... And epochs and events are relevant in the light of the given topic: The Time of Troubles, the Split, the French Revolution, the "harbingers" of the Russian catastrophe, revolutionary Moscow, Petrograd devilry, the Brest World… And all this through the prism of Tyutchev's image, which is included in the title of the book. In the spring of 1919, Voloshin hoped to republish the collection in Odessa, having concluded an agreement with the publisher E.I. Ruzer, but nothing came of this venture.

            In general, Voloshin's poems about the revolution and the Civil War were passed around and "written off secretly and stealthily." The poet combined them into an unpublished book, The Burning Bush. The tragedy of the strife will be captured in the "Poems about Terror", which will be published in Berlin, in the February issue of the "New Russian Book" for 1923. Separately, this book was published in the "Book Publishing of Writers" with a circulation of 2500 copies. In the same place, in Berlin, in the "Book Publishing House of Writers", in September of the same year, the republication of "Demons of the Deaf and Dumb" was also carried out. However, Voloshin himself will, for obvious reasons, refuse these publications, emphasizing that poems abroad are printed without his knowledge, by persons unknown to him. Without the poet's knowledge, the collection "Usobitsa" was also published in 1923. It was released in Lviv by the publishing house "Zhivoe Slovo". Apparently, Voloshin never found out about its existence.

            Thus, the book "Demons of the Deaf and Dumb" leaves a feeling of incompleteness. It's like she's open to the future. A historiosophical forecast is made: "There is no Russia – it has burned itself, / But Slavia will shine from the ashes" ("Angel of the Times"). The basic moral pathos is expressed: to extract the "splinter" of hatred from the brains and hearts, to "conjure" "every trigger and hand".

            The book consists of three sections: "The Avenging Angel", "The Flames of Paris", "The Ways of Russia" with the adjacent poem "Protopop Avvakum". It includes 25 poems and one poem. The title of the book goes back to the figurative phrase from Tyutchev's poem "The night sky is so gloomy ...", as well as to a quote from the book of the prophet Isaiah (42, 19): "Who is so blind as my servant? And deaf as my messenger sent by me?" "The meaning of "Demons of the deaf and dumb" You have fully understood, - Voloshin wrote to A.M. Petrova on 15/19. 1. 1918. – There are not only Russian demons, but demons of history, echoing over the formal fabric of events" ^{[1, p. 46]}. Among the Russian demons of history, the poet singles out, first of all, "Dmitry the Emperor". This is a kind of demonic synthesis, an aggregate unity, "dispersed among thousands of demons." In Stenka Razin, according to Voloshin, "there is more devilry than demonism. He, like Ermak, is a real historical person who has dissolved into the masses, a "folk epic in action."

Voloshin's assessment of Avvakum is curious. The martyr of the Schism is associated with Bakunin. What brings them closer is "Christian anarchism." The poet contrasts historical Christianity with Christianity "pure, with the church, hierarchically connected with the angelic hierarchies." Their union is possible only in that epoch "when the personality of Christ begins to manifest on the etheric level." In Slavs, Voloshin believes, unlike in the West, "Christianity tends to be transferred entirely into individual feeling and to set itself against the state as the kingdom of the beast. Therefore, there is no less Christianity in the populists and terrorists than in the martyrs of the first centuries, despite their atheism" ^{[1, p. 47]}.

Commenting in an earlier letter (30. XII. 1917) on the title of the book, which goes back to Tyutchev's poem "The night sky is so gloomy..." (1865), Voloshin explained that a demon is "not necessarily a demon – it's a cross between god and man: in this sense, the demon angels and the Olympic gods are also demons. In the earthly manifestation, a demon can be both a person and a phenomenon. In both forms, the deaf-mute is an inevitable sign of the messenger, as you can see from the epigraph from Isaiah. After all, they are only the mouth through which the Holy Spirit speaks..." ^{[2, pp. 775-776]}. A demon, according to Voloshin's understanding, does not necessarily contain something sinister. In any case, he (or it, the phenomenon) is only a conductor of higher forces, a higher will, concentrating in its earthly form. As in Greek mythology, it is "an instantaneously arising and instantly departing ... fatal force that cannot be named, with which it is impossible to enter into any communication ..." ^{[3, p. 366]}.

Voloshin sees the forerunner of the Russian hard times in the deeds of one of the main demons of Russian history – Peter I. If we talk about the coming times, then the events of 1905 are highlighted here as a kind of preamble to the historical catastrophe. It is not by chance that Voloshin's book (its first section) opens with a poem with the characteristic title "Harbingers" (1905).

The first section of the book is, in fact, retrospective. It represents a kind of steps on the path of development of revolutionary events, starting with the first Russian revolution of 1905-1906. We know that the poet witnessed the consequences of the shooting of a peaceful march on January 9, 1905. Upon arrival in St. Petersburg, Voloshin was amazed: there was unrest, troops, and now – and the bodies of the dead "in cabs". He had never seen anything like it: dead men, women, smartly dressed girl… It turned out: they were taking the dead from the Trinity Bridge. However, in other places the poet encountered corpses. There were soldiers' patrols, newspaper kiosks were burning, a mounted fire brigade was rushing. In some places, the whistle of bullets was heard. He visited the editorial office of the newspaper "Rus", listened to eyewitnesses. They said all around: "They went with a procession and with a portrait of the sovereign. They sang “Save, O Lord, Thy people.” They fired a volley at the Trinity Bridge." "They should beat the Japanese, but they are crippling people here." "The icons were shot with bullets." Voloshin recorded everything he saw and heard in his diary. Someone said that nine infants were killed. At night, the tension did not subside: some footsteps, voices ("as if the whole air is full of voices sounding in the womb of time"), sometimes shots. There was something eerily mystical, unreal about it all… The riots continued the next day. Voloshin saw with his own eyes the "attack of the Cossacks" on the crowd.

The artist described his impressions of this terrible spectacle in the article "Bloody Week in St. Petersburg. An eyewitness's story", written in French. Most of all, he was shocked by the fact that unarmed people, women and children, and icons were shot at. "The bloody week in St. Petersburg was neither a revolution nor a day of revolution… These days were only a mystical prologue of a national tragedy that has not yet begun, the poet prophetically proclaims in his essay published in one of the February issues of the newspaper "European Courier". – Spectator, hush! The curtain is rising..." ^{[4, p. 498]}. Now, after the idea of "autocracy, Orthodoxy, nationality" was finally compromised, Voloshin believed, it would hardly be possible to prevent terrible events.

The theme of historical retribution, popular indignation seizes the creative imagination of the poet. In hot pursuit, he writes the poem "Harbingers", and next year - "The Angel of Vengeance" and "The Head of Madame de Lamballe" (original title: "The Head of the princesse de Lamballe"). Sending this poem to M.V. Sabashnikova on March 3/16, 1906, Voloshin confessed: "It was almost disgusting for me to write this poem. But I couldn't help but write it. It bothered me. And it seems good to me in its horror. As if some weight had fallen from his shoulders" ^{[5, p. 81]}.

In the poem "The Avenging Angel" the poet rises to historical and philosophical generalizations. He speaks as if on behalf of the Angel of Retribution, the Demon of Revolution, who cries out for trampled justice, stirring up people's consciousness, stimulates the instincts of destruction, provokes aggressive actions. Of course, in the name of "humanism".

To the Russian people: I am a sorrowful Angel of Vengeance!

I 'm in the black wounds – in the plowed new

I throw seeds. Centuries of patience have passed.

And my voice is a tocsin. My banner is like blood.

On the riotous hearths of the people 's witticism

Like ghosts, I will cultivate crimson flowers.

I will put the rapture of murder into the girl's heart

And into the soul of a child – bloody dreams.

            The object of revenge – it is understandable – looks extremely vague in the poem, vague:

                        The Sword of Justice – punishing and avenging –

                        I will give it to the power of the crowd… And he's in the hands of a blind man

                        It will sparkle, swift as lightning, striking.

                        Their son will stab their mother, their daughter will kill their father.

            Already here is the foresight of the rampant demonic, from Voloshin's point of view, forces of the Civil War tearing apart families, the assertion of the "truth" of the executioner and the victim, the guilty and the punishing. Everyone, the poet believes, perceives freedom and justice in their own way, and everyone feels their understanding is the only true and moral one ("Through everyone's mouth I will exclaim "Freedom!” / But I will give a different meaning for everyone"). Therefore, he writes in the article "Prophets and Avengers" (1906), the idea of justice is the most cruel and tenacious of all the ideas that have ever possessed the human mind. When it gets into the hearts and muddies the eyes of a person, then people start killing each other… It brings with it moral madness, and Brutus, who ordered the execution of his sons, believes that he is performing a feat of virtue. Crises of the idea of justice are called "great revolutions" ^{[6, p. 193]}.

It is not the sower who sows the prickly ear of sowing,

Whoever accepts the sword will die by the sword.

Who has once drunk the intoxicating poison of anger,

He will become the executioner or the victim of the executioner.

The poet feels the breath of the first Russian revolution and gives the impending events a mystical and symbolic character, filling his poems with numerous biblical images and reminiscences. The final stanza of the poem "The Avenging Angel" is indicative. The words of Jesus Christ addressed to one of the disciples: "... return your sword to its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword (Matthew 26:52), as well as the image of the cup with the wine of rage, which made the nations drunk and mad (Book of Jeremiah 25:15-16), will gain Voloshin's work has a concentrated, symbolic meaning.

Truly, nature itself has taken care to fill what is happening with mystical content. In the whitish haze of the sky, the murky red sun gave two reflections in the fog. And it seemed that there were three suns in the sky. This was noticed by the journalist, publisher L. Ya. Gurevich. Three suns were also noticed by Voloshin, who in an article about bloody Sunday gave a natural-scientific explanation for this: "... a phenomenon that occurs during severe frosts," however, making a reservation that, according to folk legends, it "serves as an omen of great national disasters" ^{[4, p.494]}. Pasolntsy, side suns, lit up over Russia and during the reign of False Dmitry ("Dmitrius Imperator", 1917), which marked "the flight of fierce troubles over Moscow." In the poem "Harbingers", written on January 9, 1905, Voloshin aggravates the disturbing mystical moods:

...In the crimson scrolls of winter fog

The wrathful sun has shown us a triple face,

And each disc oozes like a wound…

And there was blood on the snow shroud.

And at night through empty and echoing intersections

The rustling of invisible footsteps flowed,

And the whole city trembled with a distant echo

In the womb of time of noisy voices…

Anyway, the dramatic events of the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century did not pass by the poet. He writes to M.V. Sabashnikova about the uprising in the Black Sea Fleet, about the battleship Potemkin, reflects on the lack of will of Nicholas II, whose reign twenty years later will give a murderous characterization in the poem "Russia":

...So all the nonsense of Russia poured in

Into the empty draught of the last tsar;

Zhelvak to the Father, Khodynka and Tsushima,

Philip, Papus, Gaponov hod, Azef…

It is significant that together with the "Foreshadows" in the newspaper "Rus" of August 14, 1905, two translations of Voloshin from Verharn appear – "Execution" and "Humanity". About the first of them, the poet wrote to his mother that he dedicates it to Nikolai. And a little earlier, on June 21, it opens with A.M. Petrova: "The murder of the tsar has a sacred and ritual character… But not a personal murder, but a national execution" ^{[7, p.208]}. Voloshin is haunted by thoughts of the tsar's doom to be sacrificed "for the sins of his people." Well, quite Voloshin semantic inversion… During these months, the poet literally reads the "History of the French Revolution" by J. Michelet, draws appropriate parallels with Russian history. September 14/27, 1905. Voloshin writes to Sabashnikova: "How beautifully it is written… For the first time, the Revolution is unfolding in front of me like this… Yesterday I read how the severed head of the Marquise de Lamballe was brought to the coiffeur – he curled it, powdered it, and it... was carried on a pike to the window of Marie Antoinette... Read about how Danton, before the execution, said to the executioner, who rudely pushed Fabre Eglantine (d'Eglantine, poet, member of the Convention – S.P.) who wanted to say goodbye to him: “Nothing. We'll kiss in the basket...” And then he added: “You will lift up my head and show it to the people. She's worth it.”… I am full of these events, but I still do not know at all how to approach them, from which side" ^{[8, p. 494]}. Reflections on the given topic will continue in 1917. They will find poetic expression in the poems about the French Revolution "Two Steps" and "Thermidor", which with the adjacent "Head of Madame de Lamballe" will make up the 2nd section of the book - "The Flames of Paris".

 As for the Russian history passing through the "steep", as Vyach would say. Ivanov, the World War and the revolution, then it is captured in the poems "Russia" (1915), "Moscow" (March 1917), "Petrograd", "Trikhiny", "Mir" (Brest), "Motherland".

So, the next round of history passes through the "time frame" of the Voloshinsky collection in 1915. ("Russia"). The poet both then and subsequently took a position "above the fray", feeling his responsibility – as a thinker, artist, humanist – for what was happening and his impotence. In contrast to the chauvinistic victory slogans that have flooded literary almanacs and journalistic collections, he makes completely opposite statements, expresses his patriotism in unconventional images:

            I love you in the face of a slave,

            When in the silence of the fields

            You 're wailing in a woman 's voice

            Over the corpses of sons...

Perhaps the poetic associations are to some extent suggested to Voloshin by Tyutchev:

            Dejected by the burden of the godmother,

            All of you, my dear land,

            In slavish form , the King of Heaven

            He went out, blessing.

The ratio of Russia humiliated, "abused" in battles with the slavish appearance of Christ finds in Voloshin a poetic development ("I love you in the face of a slave"): Russia is Christ. And the second parallel that arises later: Russia is likened to a demoniac who was healed by the Son of Man ("Deaf and dumb Russia"). Finally, in the poem "Motherland" there is a semantic synthesis:

            But you already know in enlightenment,

            What is the truth of Slavia – in humility,

            In the non-resistance of the slave…

On December 9, 1917, M.A. Voloshin wrote to A.M. Petrova: "The name "Slavs" is significant. For the West, it sounds like the name of slaves (esclavi)." Slave and Slav (sclavus) sound like homonyms in Latin, but are perceived as synonyms, "and for Germany Russia is "Slavic manure". But the inner meaning of Slavism, what it secretly carries in itself is Glory, the Word: The Right of Slavia" [2: 754]. Of course, we can talk about Voloshin's peculiar Slavophilism, we can recall the influence of R. Steiner on him, who found "special forces" in the Slavic race and saw its significant prospects in the development of mankind. But, one way or another, neither Tyutchev, who called his homeland "the land of native long-suffering", nor Voloshin, who wrote about the "slave face" of Russia, put a critical and pejorative meaning into these words. For in both cases it was the cross that was meant, worn in the name of Christ and mystically merged with his cross burden. The cross, which, according to Voloshin, took on the shoulders of "in Christ, the fool Russia".

Everything that happened during these years was clearly imprinted in the poet's memory: "February 1917 found me in Moscow. Moscow experienced the St. Petersburg events joyfully and enthusiastically. Here, with even greater enthusiasm and with greater right, the "bloodless revolution" was triumphed, as it was customary to express it in those days" [9:40]. Due to the absence of the police, "a lot of blind people gathered in Moscow from the surrounding villages, who settled down on the porches and on the steps of the Frontal Place, singing old Russian poems about the Pigeon Book and about Alexei, the man of God, in mournful voices.

A triumphant crowd with red cockades passed by without paying any attention to them. But for me, perhaps prepared by the previous one, these chants, from which the Russian antiquity breathed, sounded like spells ... red kumach spots ... seemed like blood… Russian Russian Revolution is going to be long, crazy, bloody, that we are on the threshold of a new Great Devastation of the Russian land, a new Time of Troubles" ^{[9, pp. 42-43]} And then suddenly and terribly clearly it became clear that this is just the beginning, that the Russian Revolution will be long, crazy, bloody, that we are on the threshold of a new Great Devastation of the Russian land, a new Time of Troubles" ^{[9, pp. 42-43]}.

...No candles are lit,

They don't ring for mass,

All breasts are marked in red,

And the red board splashes.

My feet squish in the mud,

Silent ... passing... waiting…

Blind people sing on the porch

About the blood, about the execution, about the trial.

It was an epiphany, the dissolution of a drop of today's day in the ocean of time. "A perspective point of view, necessary for a poetic approach, was found: this point of view was old Moscow, the spirit of Russian history. But these poems were so contrary to the general mood of those days that it was unthinkable to print or read them" ^{[9, pp. 43-44]}.

"Revolution is a violation of the highest religious principle of life, the principle of organic unity" ^{[10, p. 10]}, - wrote the philosopher S.A. Askold in the article "The religious meaning of the Russian Revolution". In his opinion, revolution is the power of plurality over state unity, in whatever form it may be expressed. In Voloshin, this multiplicity, "melting the spikes of the whole," is a multiplicity of demons. The poet applies a parable from the Gospel of Luke – about demons entering a herd of pigs - to historical and current events, bringing his own interpretation of what is happening: "The property of demons is fragmentation and multiplicity," he says in the lecture "Russia crucified" ... – Expelled from one possessed, the demon becomes a multitude, inhabits the whole herd of pigs and the flock drags the shepherds with it into the abyss" ^{[9, p. 82]}. Voloshin compares what is happening in Russia, in particular, in Petrograd, with an ominous seance, when "Rasputins, Iliodores and their relatives rushed into the emptiness of the sovereign center. The impromptu seance ended in the walls of the Winter Palace with a nationwide demonic sabbath of the seventeenth year..." ^{[9, p. 47]}, which is illustrated by the poem "Petrograd":

...Through the emptiness of the sovereign will,

Once collected by Peter,

All the undead poured into this house,

And on the gaping throne,

Above the shifting morok of the swamps

Besovsky rules the round dance…

The finale of this "sabbath" is predetermined:

...Those demons are noisy and fast:

They entered the pig herd

And they will rush into the abyss from the mountain.

However, the poet does not focus on the "outcome" of this "hopeless", seemingly "devilry", does not raise the question of "healing" (although the poem "Deaf and dumb Russia" mentions the "sword of prayers", "chopping off" this disease) – he thinks about the nature of its origin.

On December 10, 1917, the day after writing "Petrograd", the poet creates a poem "Trichins", the name of which goes back to Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment". There, on the last page, the delirium of Raskolnikov sent to Siberia is described, it is said about some unheard-of pestilence coming from the depths of Asia to Europe. As a result, everyone must die, except for a select few. It's all the fault of some trichines, microscopic creatures that inhabit people and make them possessed. Being sure of their own "truth", people start killing each other in some kind of senseless anger…

Fifty years have passed, and now the "breath of the horror of the revolution" led the poet to realize: "The prophecy has been fulfilled: the trichins / The finale of the novel seems to Voloshin "an apocalyptic vision, in which there is already everything that is happening, and a lot of things that are still destined to be fulfilled" ^{[6, p. 189]}. Is man really so bad and in his nature there are animal instincts, a passion for murder and destruction? Not at all. Following the author of "Demons", Voloshin felt that it was not the man himself who was guilty of the revolutionary bacchanalia, that some "spirits" were subjugating him. These are not even demons, but "spirits of low flight: animal spirits, idiot spirits, impostor spirits, deceivers and charlatans" ^{[9, p. 47]}. You can call them trichines, or you can call them demons, that is, evil spirits, "invisible enemies" of the human race.

According to its emotional atmosphere, the poem "The World" stands out from the works of the Kharkiv collection. There is a date under it: 23.XI.1917. Voloshin himself claimed that he wrote it on the opening day of the negotiations, i.e. – 20.I.1917. It is generally believed that the poem permeates the poet's concern for a possible turn of events, for Russia, which was put in a humiliating position. In addition, the poet was aware of Russia's responsibility to the allies, who were partly involved in the war. With bitter irony, he recalled how in March of the same year at a meeting of Moscow writers V.Y. Bryusov, offering the text of the appeal to the people, said: "We must say to France, Belgium and England: ... Don't count on our help anymore ... because we now have to protect our precious Revolution" ^{[9, p. 49]}. Voloshin argued that it wasn't just the Bolsheviks. In his opinion, the "heavy moral responsibility" for the Brest Peace and its consequences fell on the entire Russian society, including the intelligentsia, which discovered its "state groundlessness" ^{[9, pp. 48-49]}.

            However, one more, very specific and by no means indisputable aspect of this problem should be taken into account. Let 's remember the ending of the poem:

                        ...Oh, my God, open up, open up,

                        Send fire, plagues and scourges on us,

                        Germans from the west, Mongols from the east,

                        Give us into slavery again and forever,

                        To redeem, humbly and deeply

                        Judas' sin before the Last Judgment!

            Voloshin believed that a head-on collision with Germany could hardly lead to a positive outcome for Russia. It is more effective to fight the German "Leviathan" not from the outside, but from the inside. After all, in the event of an external defeat of Russia, the Slavs, "which will be inside the German Empire ... will do more to transform it than the one that will desperately and unsuccessfully ... fight it from the outside" ^{[1, p. 48]}. German imperialism should be "defused" and, accordingly, "transformed" "within two or three generations" by the Christian charge that is embedded in the Slavs" (from a letter from A.M. Petrova dated January 15, 1918).  A little earlier, on December 9, Voloshin wrote: "It seems to me quite possible to repeat the fate of Greece and Rome: that is, the complete state absorption of Russia by Germany and a new state alloy that will allow Russia, the Slavs, to subsequently survive Germany for a millennium. Perhaps this will be the promised millennial kingdom of the saints and Christ in his "glory" ^{[9, p. 754]}.

 The poems "Motherland", "Angel of Times" and "Pre-Realization" acquire a programmatic character in this regard. The first of them states,

...That the truth of Slavia is in humility,

In the non-resistance of the slave;

That the temptation is given to you severe:

Bless your shackles;

In the dungeon prostrating himself,

And the parts to receive Christ 's

From sinners and from harlots…

The second contains the instruction:

Understand the great destiny

The Slavs of the hidden fire:

The sun of tomorrow is dawning in it

And his cross is a worldwide service.

His fate leads him in a double way –

It is also in the name of his two - headed:

Let SCLAVUS be a slave, but Slavia is GLORY –

A victorious halo over the slave's head!

...In the wreckage of kingdoms, in the self-immolations of evil

The soul of the peoples expanded and grew stronger:

There is no Russia – it has burned itself,

But Slavia will shine from the ashes!

Comprehending the history of Russia in its Eurasian totality, the poet allowed the formation of Slavia, "the Slavic southern empire, into which the Balkan states and the regions of southern Russia will probably be drawn." This imaginary state will, according to Voloshin, "gravitate towards Constantinople and the Straits and strive to take the place of the Byzantine Empire" ^{[10, p. 85]}, that is, become the Third Rome. Hence the program lines from the poem "Pre–Realization", which talks about the collapse of Rome,

            …When the last light went out

            At the bottom of silence and oblivion,

            And ancient Rome disappeared in the darkness

The pre - realization has happened

World power on earth:

The eagle 's paw opened

And the world fell out. And the Pope accepted

He erected a state and a throne.

And new Rome has flourished – great

And immense, like the elements.

So the seed in order to germinate,

It should rot…

  Eastleigh, Russia,

And blossom with the kingdom of the spirit!

At the same time, Voloshin looks at what is happening through the prism of biblical truths and prophecies. But he perceives them very specifically. His faith in the fate of Russia is metaphorically expressed in the poem "The Vision of Ezekiel", which is based on the idea of the punishment that befell the people of Israel for apostasy and idolatry, and the subsequent revival of Jerusalem to a new life. The poet revealed an idea filled with the same pathos in the finale of "Crimes and Punishments" and expressed it in his early article "Prophets and Avengers": "This catastrophe is felt in Dostoevsky's prophecy: a new baptism of humanity by the fire of madness, by the fire of the Holy Spirit. Spirit… The Chiliasts of the third century have the end of the world, Dostoevsky has madness, with the hope of a new era beyond madness" ^{[6, p. 191]}.

Well, the book "Demons of the deaf and dumb" ends with the poem "Protopop Avvakum". Her hero in the finale of the poem proclaims: "Having been born, it went out, / Yes, it flared up again!" And again – hope for rebirth, again – catharsis, associations with the fate of the country arise again. "Abused and poor" Russia, Voloshin believes, has a long and painful path ahead. However, the "Spirit of History" and the "bundle of wills" will bring her fate to new frontiers, help overcome devastation and terror, dishonor and hunger. In the poem, which is not part of the collection, but organically completes its structure, the cleansing fire of tragedy is felt:

We die without dying,

    We bare the spirit to the bottom.

Wondrous miracle – it burns without burning,

    The Burning Bush!

                                               ("Burning Bush").