KOLOKOL: Spectres of the Russian Bell

346 Pages·2007·3.2 MB·English

KOLOKOL: Spectres of the
Russian Bell

Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of
the requirements of PhD (Humanities and Social Sciences)
candidature at the University of Technology, Sydney,
(2005; Revised 2006)

Jason Kaminski
Certificate of Authorship/Originality

I certify that this work has not been submitted for any degree, or as part
of the requirements for any previous degree or qualification.

I also certify that, unless cited, acknowledged or identified, all the work
and material this dissertation contains is original.

The translations of poetry presented in this dissertation are original
unless otherwise acknowledged.

Jason Kaminski
Melbourne
June, 2007
Acknowledgements

This work would not have been written were it not for the dynamic
relationship I have enjoyed with my supervisor, Noel Sanders. In
particular, our long talks over the coffee table, and while out walking
with Mr. Dog on the beach, gave me the wherewithal to get the work
done. Thanks, Noel, for giving me the occasional wake-up call too.

This work has taken up a large chunk of my time and attentions since I
became involved in it. For this reason, I would like to thank the people
who have lent their emotional and material support. These people are
my parents, my brother, and my partner, Jamie. I would like to dedicate
this thesis to my mother, who has always encouraged me to go with my
ideas.

I am indebted to many others for their friendship and encouragement. I
must make special mention of Mr. Ian Gartlan, whose magnificent library
of books on all manner of subjects, including Russian objets d’art and
psychology he kindly made available to me. Last, but certainly not least,
I would like to thank Alexander (Sasha) Sougrobov. Thanks, Sasha, for
taking the time to drink coffee and pore over the translations of poetry
we made together.

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Abstract

Kolokol: Spectres of the Russian Bell, submitted by Jason Kaminski in
fulfilment of the requirements of PhD (Humanities and Social Sciences)
candidature at the University of Technology, Sydney, is an interpretative
history of Russian bells (kolokola) and bell music (zvon).

As a cultural object and sign, the Russian bell is associated with ideas of
transcendence, and ideological and creative ‘vision.’ This interpretation of
the signification of the kolokol as a sign arises directly from the
perception that the bell is essentially a physical (anthropomorphic) body
that is capable of ‘projecting’ or ‘transcending’ itself in the form of a
spectrum.

This essential ‘spectrality’ defines a history of the Russian bell as an
instrument of magical, spiritual and religious ritual, as a cultural artefact
associated with changing ideological movements (paganism, Christianity
and communism) and as a sign represented synaesthetically in image,
sound and text. Ethnographic and campanological studies observe that
the kolokol ‘reflects Russian social history like a mirror’, representing the
‘voice of God’ or Logos as an aural or ‘singing’ icon, pointing to the
primordial origins of language.

This dissertation further investigates the idea that the kolokol acts as an
‘acoustical mirror’ and ‘ideological apparatus’: a medium or spectre
through which Russian history and culture is interpellated and reflected.
The various logical streams (storytelling, legend, script, text, song,
cultural theory, philosophy and ethnography) that contribute to this
dissertation form a textual ‘polyphony’ through which the essential
meanings and ‘personae’ of the kolokol as a cultural object are
interpreted.

The bell is regarded as presenting an enigma of signification that must
be resolved through investigation and definition. The thesis concludes
that the kolokol acts as an iconic sign of the creative ‘Word’ (Logos) and
as a symbolic sign that implies a ‘bridge’, copula or psychic ‘hook’,
articulating the relationship between the cosmos and consciousness, the
material and spiritual, the real and imaginary.

Keywords: Russia, Russian History, Russian Arts, Russian Music, Russian
Poetry, Russian Political History, Russian Orthodoxy, Russian Revolution,
Bell-founding, Bell Music, Bell-ringing, Campanology, Iconology, Kolokol,
Zvon. Word-count: 82,250 (excluding endnotes) 98,300 (including
endnotes).
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Table of Contents

Certificate of Authorship/Originality.................................................2
Acknowledgements..........................................................................3
KOLOKOL: Spectres of the Russian Bell .................................................6
Preface ..........................................................................................6
Introduction....................................................................................8
1. The Kolokol and Russian Ideology....................................................13
Early Bells and Pagan Mythology.......................................................15
Bells and the Christianisation of Rus’.................................................20
Bells in the Early Russian Chronicles..................................................24
The Mongol Yoke and the Legend of Kitezh.........................................27
Imperial Power and the Abduction of Bells..........................................34
Revolutionary Bells.........................................................................47
The Russian Revolution and the Iconoclasm of the Kolokol....................60
Bells, Utopian Visions, and the Cold War............................................74
After the Iconoclasm: The Kolokol in Russia Today..............................81
2. Cult of the Russian Bell: The Kolokol in Russian Image, Poetry and Music
......................................................................................................86
The Kolokol as an Acoustical Icon......................................................87
Kino Bells - Russian Gesamtkunstwerk...............................................99
The ‘Kolokol’ Scene in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev ....................117
The ‘Poe Cult’ and the Metallic Ages of Russian Poetry........................123
The Bell Motif in Russian Poetry......................................................132
Bells in Russian Art and Folk Music..................................................164
3. The Body and Spectre of the Kolokol ..............................................187
The Name of the Bell.....................................................................188
Inscription – Writing the Kolokol.....................................................194
The Founding and Architecture of the Kolokol ...................................210
The Materiality of the Kolokol.........................................................218
The Anthropomorphic Body of the Kolokol........................................224
The Spectrality of the Kolokol.........................................................229
The Symbology of the Bell Spectrum...............................................235
Zvon – The Music of the Kolokol......................................................240
Zvon and Repetition......................................................................256
Appendix: Transliteration of Russian................................................270
Bibliography.................................................................................271
Endnotes.....................................................................................285
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KOLOKOL: Spectres of the Russian Bell

Preface

In early 1994, I was preparing to leave Moscow after two years studying
composition at the Moscow Conservatorium with the Russian composer
Edison Denisov. I had lived in Moscow during a pivotal period in Russian
history, an historical interstice characterised by a bipolar mix of post-Soviet
and pre-capitalist culture. While it was still possible to enjoy traditional bliny
or pel’meni at a run-down soviet-style public eating hall, there was evidence
of the sudden busyness of incipient consumerism. Thousands of little kiosks
stuffed with imported junk-food and vodka honeycombed the city, and an
inchoate club scene and retail sector had, almost indetectably, begun to
service a burgeoning nouveau riche.

On one of my last days there, as I walked across Red Square, I heard the
unaccustomed sound of Russian church bells ringing. Though unfamiliar,
their sound seemed naturally Russian to me. They resonated with the colour
of Russian culture, consistent with the weight of Russian language and
history and consonant with the wide-ranging ‘spirit’ of Russia, the spirit of
dobrota (‘kindness’, ‘good-heartedness’) that was almost entirely stamped
out by the time I returned to Russia at the end of the year 2000. By then,
the people had awoken once more to the realisation that history had robbed
them in their sleep. Russian bells, in a farcical comeback, now sat alongside
matreshka dolls as Russo-iconic souvenirs miniaturised for convenient sale
to nervous tourists.

I entered the small church on the Red Square that, like most others in
Moscow, had been lying in a state of dilapidation for years. Now it was
subject to a church restoration program that would culminate in
reconstruction of the Christ our Saviour Cathedral, totally destroyed on
Stalin’s Orders in 1931. While Russia still lay in economic chaos, this virtual
cathedral amounted to an exorbitantly expensive reversal of revolutionary
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history. I stayed a while in the little church to enjoy the bells and incense
and the grainy incantation of a basso profondo priest interspersed with the
clicking sound of babushka-lips kissing effigies, when something unusual
happened. An old lady, who seemed distressed, suddenly started to shout at
me, again and again, “Spasite menia”, – “Save me!” Familiar with the
superstitious fanaticism of Russian faith, I recognised that the woman was
experiencing some form of evangelical episode. A young priest came to my
assistance, leading her away for professional salvation.

I walked from the church. The air outside was so cold that it weighed down
like a transparent monolith suspended above my head. I do not recall seeing
the bells in their tower from the square outside, but as I became surrounded
by the unrelenting repetition and dazzling chaos of their spectral noise, they
seemed to transport themselves visibly, extending out to me in a kind of
synaesthetic ecstasy, like an icon painted on frozen air. The only time I had
actually seen Russian bells up close, played by three bell ringers on a
wooden stage, was in a bizarre television documentary about Satanic
murders in a monastery which I had seen in Siberia, not long after arriving
in Russia. Shiny knives inscribed with Satanic symbols were found on the
grounds. But most amazingly, as the documentary seemed to show (in slow
motion), one of the priests, while playing the bell for the funeral of the
murder victim, had suddenly, as if by magic, flown from the platform
vertically into the air!

Whatever the truth (or lack of it) of this story, hearing the bells in ‘real life’,
perhaps associated with the ominous undertones of the TV mystery, was like
the long awaited emergence of an ancient Zarathustrian prophet from his
cave, an oracle speaking to his people. It was only after I left Russia that I
reconsidered these experiences and wondered about them. Where had the
bells been hiding before their re-appearance? What do bells signify to
Russian people? What do they ‘say’?

Most of all, what makes their sound so haunting?
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Introduction

The Russian bell, or kolokol, is one of the most striking features of Russian
life (odna iz samykh iarkikh chert russkoi zhizni); a fully self-sustained
‘language’ of Russian culture (samostoiatel’nym iazykom russkoi kul’tury)1,
as the Russian campanologist Agapkina has observed. It is a venerated
object attributed with spiritual powers, an acoustical equivalent to the
church icon. Its anthropomorphised body is a cultural monument comparable
in importance to Russia’s Orthodox cathedrals or statuesque Soviet-era
sculptures. Bells, and their pulsating music (zvon), beat at the very heart of
Russian cultural history.

The bell, as an object, and as a cultural sign and phenomenon, implies a
secret, an encoded primordial or archetypal message. Like other mysterious
objects from antiquity, it raises questions and incites curiosity. These
‘curiosities’ are not peculiar to Russian bells. Alain Corbin writes, in his
history of French bells entitled Village Bells, that bells present a ‘broad
spectrum of curiosities and expectations [and] reflect a quest for languages,
beliefs, and emotions linking bells to the primordial’.2 This idea is confirmed
by Agapkina, when she writes:

There is another aspect of bell-ringing as a concept, without which its
symbolic exemplifications would be incomplete. In language and
folklore, the peal of bells traditionally approaches an arena of
understanding and description that signifies the human voice, speech,
hailing, news and hearsay (golos, rech’, slavu, vesti i slukhi).3

One of the primary objectives of this dissertation is to interpret the
‘spectrum’ of meanings that is associated with the kolokol in language and
literature and, in doing so, to form a clearer and deeper understanding of
the enigma of its ‘primordial’ significations4.

In Russian culture, where bells occupy such an important position in the
hierarchy of cultural artefacts, the meanings associated with them are
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collectively interpreted as a sign verging on the oracular. In her study of
bells in seventeenth century Moscow, the Russian ethnomusicologist
Bondarenko states that the content and visual style of inscriptions on
Russian bells ‘reflect social changes in the community like a mirror’ (kak v
zerkale otrazhaiutsia sotsial’nye izmeneniia v obshchestve).5

This cultural ‘mirroring’ effect of Russian bells is confirmed, and extended,
by other Russian campanologists and ethnographers, who describe the
kolokol as being an aural or ‘singing’ icon. Among these, Prianishnikov writes
that Russian bells are ‘sounding icons’ (zvuchashchie ikony) that unify a
people scattered over great distances into an ‘organic social whole – a
congregation’ (organicheskoe sotsial’noe tseloe - prikhod).6 Similarly, a bell-
ringer at the Moscow Kremlin, Igor Konovalov, interviewed in 1995 by
Andrei Vorontsov, stated: ‘if an icon is prayer in colours, and the cathedral is
prayer in stone, then the kolokol is prayer in sound – a sounding icon’ (Esli
ikona – eto molitva v kraskakh, khram – molitva v kamne, to kolokol –
molitva v zvuke, ikona zvuchashchaia).7 In another article, the bell-ringer
Vladimir Mashkov similarly describes the kolokol as a ‘sonic icon’ (zvonkaia
ikona) and as ‘sonic insight’ (umozrenie v zvuke).8

Similar observations have been made by Western campanologists. Edward
Williams, author of The Bells of Russia: History and Technology (which,
though published in 1985, remains the only comprehensive ethnographic
study of Russian bells accessible to English speakers) intended to add a
second volume to that work. The sequel was to examine ‘evidence for
regarding Russian bells and bell ringing as aural icons.’9 While this work
never eventuated, Williams did publish an article entitled ‘Aural Icons of
Orthodoxy: the sonic typology of Russian bells’ in 1991, in a book titled
Christianity and the Arts in Russia. In this article, Williams ventures into an
eschatological interpretation of the iconic nature of bells, especially their
appearance (as an apocalyptic sign) in the Book of Revelations. The
following passage from a religious publication of 1850, cited by Williams,
forms the essential germ of his ‘end-of-time’ interpretation of the Russian
bell:

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In Russia our motherland, the variety of our calls to church, at first
with wooden, and then with cast iron, beams and finally with the
ringing of bells, has its own significance and deep meaning, even an
acoustical one between our time and that more distant – the past and
the future. The weak sounds of the wood and iron remind us of the
prophets’ vague, cryptic language, but the clamour and harmonious
ringing of bells is a proclamation of the Gospel, its exultation to the
ends of the universe, and reminds us of the angel’s trumpet on the
final day.10
Williams demonstrates that the kolokol acts (like the Biblical trumpet) as a
means of communicating the ‘Word of God’. Agapkina confirms this idea
when she writes that, ‘in Russian traditional culture, the peal of bells is
always taken to be the “voice of God” (glas Bozhii)’.11

Bondarenko’s characterisation of the kolokol as a medium that records and
‘reflects’ Russian cultural history, Corbin’s use of the words ‘reflect’ and
‘spectrum’ to describe the broad range of ‘primordial’ meanings presented
by bells more generally, and the designation of the kolokol as a ‘sonic icon’
by several campanologists, provides the point of departure for an
investigation into the ‘reflective’ or ‘spectral’ nature of the kolokol. In short,
the ‘spectre’ of the bell signifies the speculative world – ideology, belief, the
spiritual, otherworldliness or uncanniness, fear, dreaming, the imaginary and
the transcendent. The sound of tolling of bells is characteristically ‘haunting’.

These ‘spectral’ implications arise from the form and mechanism of the
kolokol itself. More than any other sonic object, the bell exemplifies the
discovery of a perfect potential within matter for spectral attenuation; it
brings materiality into a state of perfect resonance and sonority. It is a
mechanism that, in its tolling motion and projection of energy through a
space filled with air, sets up a movement of repetition that in turn articulates
both space and temporality. This time and space-delimiting mechanism
describes the ‘originary temporalisation of temporality’ that Jacques Derrida
refers to in his 1987 Of Spirit, as being at the ‘very horizon of the question
of Being’12 – an analogue of ‘spirituality’ in historical and existential terms.
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