I got to the end of “Diary of a Russian Priest” a while back, which felt like I was losing a friend. And as far as I know there are no other writings of Fr. Elchaninov to be found — “Diary” is comprised of fragments from his diary, some letters, outlines of talks and an essay or two are all that’s left.

I felt like I could easily have been quoting things from my readings every day, but I thought that might get tiresome. However, the last essay in the book, entitled “The Devil’s Stronghold: (on pride)” had that same quality of most of his writings — frank, profound and almost shockingly familiar in both a personal and general way — and so it seems like a fitting way to end out the “Diary” quotes.

This is the first half of the essay. I had typed it in some time ago, which is a help, since I’m short of blog-time these days. But when I can I’ll give the other half. I thought it was well worth the effort.

“The Devil’s Stronghold: (on pride)”

Isaac the Syrian — who knew, as no one else, the depths of the spirit of man — wrote in his forty-first Instruction:

He who knows his own sin is higher than the man who resurrects the dead by his prayers. He who has been granted the gift of seeing himself is superior to the man who sees the angels.

The examination of the theme which we have chosen for our title leads precisely to this self-knowledge.

Pride, self-esteem, vanity, to which we may add haughtiness, arrogance, conceit — all these are various aspects of one basic phenomenon: concentration on self. Let us use this last phrase as a general term to cover all the sins we have just mentioned.

Among them all, there are two which stand out: vanity and pride. According the the Ladder, they are like a youth and a grown man, like seed and wheat, the beginning and the end.

What are the symptoms of this initial sin of vanity? An impatience of any criticism, thirst for praise, a search for easy ways, constant orientation towards other: “What will they think?” Vanity sees from afar the prospective spectator; it makes the angry gentle, the frivolous serious, the absent-minded attentive, the greedy abstinent; and so forth. All this lasts as long as there are spectators.

This very same orientation toward a spectator explains the sin of self-justification, which often creeps inadvertendtly even into our confession. “I have sinned as others do,” we say: “there have been only petty sins, I have killed nobody, I did not steal.” In the diaries of Countess Sophie Tolstoy there is the following characteristic entry: “I did not know how to educate my children (having married when still a young girl and after being locked up for eighteen years in the country), and this often tortures me.” The main words of repentance are completely obliterated by the self-justification in brackets.

The demon of vanity rejoices, writes St. John of the Ladder, when he sees our virtues increase. “When I fast, I am vain; when I hide my sacrifice and keep it secret, I am vain about my discretion. If I dress well, I am vain, but when I change into poor clothes, I am even more vain. If I speak, I am possessed by vanity; if I observe silence, I am once more given up to vanity. Whichever way we turn these thorns, their spikes will still point upwards.”

Leo Tolstoy knew well the poisonous nature of vanity. In his early diaries he harshly accuses himself of vanity. In one of his diaries of the eighteen-fifties he bitterly complains that as soon as a good feeling arises spontaneously in his soul, it is immediately followed by retrospection, by a self-examination that is full of vanity; and so the most precious movements of the soul disappear, melting like snow in the sun. They melt — in other words, they die. This means that as a result of vanity all that is best in us dies, we kill ourselves through vanity; we replace the true, simple, good life with spectres. The vain man rushes toward death and finds it.

“Rarely have I seen,” writes one of our contemporary authors, “the great silent joy of suffering pass through human souls without its repulsive fellow-traveler — a frivolous and overtalkative affectation (vanity). What is the essence of affectation? To my mind it is the incapacity to be. Truly speaking, affected people are non-existent, for they adapt themselves to the opinion of other people about them. When experiencing the greatest sufferings, affected people have an inherent tendency to show off these sufferings to others, for the eyes of others are for them what the limelight is for a theatrical setting.” (Stepun, Nikolay Pereslegin)

An increasing vanity breeds pride.

Pride is exreme self-confidence, together with the rejection of all that is not “mine.” It is “the demon’s stronghold,” a “brazen wall” between ourselves and God (Abba Pimen); a hostility to God, the beginning of all sin, it is present in every sin. For every sin is a willful abandonment to one’s passion, a conscious breaking of God’s law, defiance of God, even though “the person who is subject to pride is particularly in need of God, for men cannot save him.” (The Ladder)

From where does this passion stem? How does it start? What does it feed on? What stages does it pass through in its development? By what signs can we recognize it?

The last question is especially important, for the proud man usually does not see his sin. A certain wise starets during confession urged a brother not to be proud. The brother, blinded in his mind, replied: “Forgive me, Father, but there is no pride in me.” The wise starets then said: “My child, what better proof could you give of your pride than this answer?”

Certainly, if a man finds it difficult to ask for forgiveness, if he is touchy and suspicious, if he remembers evil and judges others, all this is undoubtedly a symptom of pride.

Symeon the new Theologian writes very well about this: “If a man suffers greatly in his heart when he is slighted or annoyed, it is clear that such a man bears the ancient serpent (pride) in his bosom. If he suffers offences in silence, he will render this serprent powerless and weak. But if he answers back with bitterness and speaks insolently, he will lend the serpent the strength to instill poison into his heart and cruelly to devour his bowels.”

In the Sermons to the Pagans of St. Athansius the Great we find the following words: “Men have fallen into self-lust, preferring contemplation of self to the contemplation of God.” In this brief definition the very essence of pride is revealed: man, for whom the center of desire was originally God, has turned away from Him and “fallen into self-lust,” desiring and loving himself more than God, preferring contemplation of the Divine.

In our life, this self-contemplation and self-lust have become our very nature and are manifested, for instance, in a powerful instinct of self-preservation, in the life of the body, as well as of the spirit.

As a malignant tumor often starts with a blow or with the continuous irritation of a certain part of the body, so the sickness of pride often starts either with a sudden trauma of the soul (for instance with a great sorrow) or with a prolonged interest in oneself, arising from success, satisfaction, the constant exercise of one’s talents.

Often such a person is what we call “temperamental”: he “lets himself go,” he is “passionate,” talented. He is a sort of spouting geyser, and by incessant activity he prevents both God and man from approaching him. He is full of himself, self-absorbed, self-entranced. He sees and feels nothing except his own burning fire, his talent which he enjoys, receiving from it complete happiness and satisfaction. One can hardly do anything with such people, until they have exhausted themselves, until the volcano is extinct. This is the danger of all gifts, of all talent. These qualities must be balanced by a full and profound spiritual life.

In the opposite condition — in the experience of grief — we find the same results: the person is “absorbed” in his grief, the surrounding world becomes dim and dark for him; he can speak and think of nothing but his sorrow; finally he lives by it, clinging to it as the only thing which remains in his life, its one and only meaning. For there are men “who have dared to find delight even in the sense of their own humiliation” (Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground).

Often this self-centeredness is developed by quiet, silent, submissive people whose personal life has been frustrated since childhood, and this “frustrated subjectivity finds compensation in an egocentric tendency” (Jung, Psychological Types), which takes the most varied forms: susceptibility, over-scrupulousness, coquettishness, the desire to attract attention even by spreading and exaggerating evil rumors about oneself, and finally a psychotic state of fixed ideas, persecution mania or megalomania (Poprishchin in Gogol’s story The Memoirs of a Madman).

So concentration on self leads man away from the world and from God; one might say that he cuts himself off from the common stem of the universe and becomes nothing but a shaving curled around empty space.