DOUKHOBOR PSALMS: ADORNMENT TO THE SOUL

byMark F. Mealing

Introduction

Almost forty years ago I sat in Assembly at Victoria High School and hearda Doukhobor choir sing a Doukhobor Psalm. For the choir, the occasion was bothan exciting tour outside the Kootenays and a chance to do fence-mending in theface of the general ignorance and bias of the Anglo-Canadian community of BritishColumbia of the 1950s. For most of my schoolmates, it was a welcome chance tospend an hour outside class responsibilities. For me, it was a great question: Whatare these people singing, and why? I was so indiscreet as not to forget that question,which thus far has led to more questions and a good part of a professional life as afolklorist. Along the way, it became evident that Doukhobors have had longexperience at raising questions in other people's minds as well as in their own.In Russia or Canada, Doukhobors have always lived in two societies: their own, and the external host society with which they have commonly dwelt in moreor less tension. This tension pulls them in two directions. They need deeply to besecure, to know and have others recognize that they are right to be Doukhobors.They also need deeply to recollect that they are Doukhobors, a separate people: because others cannot perceive or admit things that Doukhobors know to be true,including the notion that God speaks within the human spirit. In fact, Doukhoborsthemselves question and disagree with each other concerning the nature of their truth, for reasons that we need not examine here. And today as always, Doukhoborsand their neighbours question where the future will find them, or if they have afuture at all.Historically, Doukhobors questioned the right of material and institutional power to go unchallenged. They have suffered and have been broken in variousways for their meddling with the Claims of that power as it roots itself in Westernsociety. The objective terms imposed upon us by that power tend to obscure ancientnames and perceptions of those forces within the human self, individual andcorporate, that crave destructive power at any price. We have learned to separateand discount most of our experience, personal and cultural, that we cannot classifyas material. Put in obsolete language, we have collectively begun to forget our souls, inside as well as outside the Doukhobor community.

40But every society, every community, still has people and things concernedin various ways with that obsolete object, the soul. Many of these - and the healing professions are only one example - may be infected with the general sterileobjectivity, a rationalism denying anything it can or will not comprehend. Artists, pushed to the dark borderlands of social meaning, struggle with the issue in other ways. Religious bodies, similarly divided, quarrel with each other like earnestmountaineers, each sure he or she has a clearer route to the summit than any oneelse. Doukhobors have experienced similar difficulties and ask comparablequestions: Is a spiritual leader necessary? Is this or that leader authentic, and when?What is right action, right belief, for the Doukhobor? If God speaks within us,exactly what are we hearing?I come to Doukhobor questions as an outsider, a stranger or perhaps a guest;and outsiders are usually in a difficult position. They are not members of thefamily, can't know its inner workings; and thus are not perceived as reliable judges.On the other hand, they at least have a different point of view, they may see thingsthe family knows too well to see. So here I am: someone who is not a Doukhobor, but who has looked long and hard at Doukhobor psalms from the other side of theexperience. And having looked, I can begin to say certain things that Doukhoborsmight not say. I can say, and have, that I find Doukhobor psalms to be beautiful, to be powerful intellectual and literary statements; to be, indeed, tools for certainkinds of healing. I now think it is necessary to say also that the psalms are treasuresfor the soul.I here approach Doukhobor psalms in a subjective way deliberately, because I have approached them only objectively in other places. As a scholar, 1am trained to discount or at least isolate my own feelings. But scholarship is a partof life, not the whole of it; and life integrates feelings with other aspects of the soul.Doukhobor psalms are addressed to those archaic objects, the soul and the spirit,which feel and know as well as believe. It is these unfashionable perspectives wemust recognize, if we are to approach these texts as a whole, though we must notneglect the rational elements. I begin the process from familiar landmarks, havingno other place from which to start. I must recognize that the speakers of the psalmsdo not begin from the same place, but they do begin from a place that is real notonly to them. I must accept such a reality if I am to hear what is being spoken.When we learn to see the world, how can we deny another clear vision?I must also admit at once to a problem Doukhobors take very seriouslyindeed, that of language. They have debated for at least forty41

years over this issue: Can one be a Doukhobor if one does not speak Russian? Canthe psalms convey their true meanings if they are not heard or read in Russian? Allthe usual, understandable arguments aside, we may presume that the fullestexperience of the psalms is best found through knowledge of the language in whichthey were composed and preserved. This being so, we should still be able to findsomething deeply present in such potent texts, even through the mask of translation. When the weaknesses of translation are exposed, so are its strengths. If all the outsider can claim is an outsider's experience, it may still have something of value to show. In dealing with these texts, I must also acknowledge with greatgratitude the assistance of several people, both within and outside the Doukhobor community, who have guided my re-workings of others' translations and my ownattempts to find English for these Russian texts, especially Mercedes Cheveldayoff,Jack McIntosh, Eli Popoff and the DSC/Saskatchewan translations of 1978.We have found so far, that Doukhobors raise in their own ways questionsabout power that are pertinent to the life of society; that they are not immune tostrife any more than is the surrounding society; and that they possess a spiritualtradition in their psalms. Before going further, it is appropriate to wrestle a bit morewith the idea of the spiritual, which I have characterized as ancient and obsolete. Of course I do not really think it is an obsolete idea, though I can regret the crusts of custom, authority and outworn opinion that conceal it. But we might come to the psalms as if we expect them to address more than aspects of history, of socialcustom and need, of literary pattern. We might expect them to address and giveform to questions and ideas that are not rational yet are also not insane. We mightexpect them to offer patterns by which we might model the connection between our feelings and our actions. We might expect them to suggest an evident connection between ourselves and whatever that very large old word, God, means. We mighteven expect them to offer images and emotionally-rich language that would not somuch describe as create a sense that we share indefinable aspects of ourselves witheach other, even with the whole world and which God.God is probably the most difficult word I've had the presumption to offer sofar, certainly a word not safely invoked by scholars outside theological faculties,and we're going to have to come to some sort of terms with it. For the sake of clarity and concord, I am going to abandon most of the traditional labels. Let us, just for now, entertain the notion that there is something that is in many waysinaccessible to our consciousness, yet so real that it can break in even upon thelimits of our logic. We should also