During the summer and autumn of 1919 I received two letters from G. in Ekaterinodar and Novorossiysk. ... He wrote that he had opened in Tiflis an "Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man" on a very broad program and enclosed a prospectus of this "Institute" which made me very thoughtful indeed. The prospectus began in this way:
With the permission of the Minister for National Education the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man based on G. I. G.'s system is being opened in Tiflis. The Institute accepts children and adults of both sexes. Study will take place morning and evening. The subjects of study are:
gymnastics of all kinds (rhythmical, medicinal, and others). Exercises for the
development of will, memory, attention, hearing, thinking, emotion, instinct, and so on.
To this was added that G. I. G.'s system
was already in operation in a whole series of large cities such as Bombay, Alexandria, Cabul, New York, Chicago, Christiania, Stockholm, Moscow, Essentuki, and in all departments and homes of the true international and laboring fraternities.
At the end of the prospectus in a list of "specialist teachers" of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man I found my own name as well as the names of "Mechanical Engineer" P. and still another of our company,]., who was living at that time in Novorossiysk and had no intention whatever of going to Tiflis.
G. wrote in his letter that he was preparing his ballet "The Struggle of the Magicians" and without making any reference at all to past difficulties he invited me to go and work with him in Tiflis. This was very characteristic of him. But for various reasons I could not go there. In the first place there were very great material obstacles and secondly the difficulties which had arisen in Essentuki were for me very real ones. My decision to leave G. had cost me very dear and I could not give it up so easily, the more so as all his motives were to be seen. I must confess that I was not very enthusiastic about the program of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. I realized, of course, that it meant that G. was obviously obliged to give some sort of outward form to his work having regard to outward conditions, as he had done at Essentuki, and that this outward form was somewhat in the nature of a caricature. But I also realized that behind this outward form stood the same thing as before and that this could not change. I was doubtful only of my own ability to adapt myself to this outward form. At the same time I was confident that I should soon have to meet G. again.
P. came to Ekaterinodar from Maikop and we spoke together a great deal about the system and G. P. was in a fairly negative frame of mind. But it seemed to me that my idea that it was imperative to make a distinction between the system and G. helped him to understand the position of affairs better.
I was beginning to get very interested in my groups. I saw a possibility of continuing the work. The ideas of the system found a response and obviously answered the needs of people who wanted to understand what was taking place both in them and around them. And around us was being concluded that brief little epilogue to Russian history which had frightened our friends and "allies" so much. Ahead of us everything was quite dark. I was in Rostov in the autumn and beginning of winter. There
I met another two or three of the St. Petersburg company as well as Z. who had arrived from Kiev. Z. like P. was in a very negative frame of mind in relation to all of the work. We settled down together in the same quarters and it seemed that talks with me made him revise many things and convince himself that the original valuations were right. He decided to try to get through to G. in Tiflis. But he was not fated to accomplish this. We left Rostov almost at the same time, Z. leaving one or two days after me, but he arrived in Novorossiysk already ill and in the first days of January, 1920, he died of the smallpox.
Soon afterwards I managed to leave for Constantinople.
At that time Constantinople was full of Russians. I met acquaintances from St. Petersburg and with their assistance I began to give lectures in the offices of the "Russki Miyak." I at once collected a fairly large audience mostly of young men. I continued to develop the ideas begun in Rostov and Ekaterinodar, connecting general ideas of psychology and philosophy with ideas of esotericism.
I got no further letters from G., but I was sure that he would come to Constantinople. He actually arrived in June with a fairly large company.
In former Russia, even in its distant outskirts, work had become impossible and we were gradually approaching the period which I had foreseen in St. Petersburg, that is, of working in Europe.
I was very glad to see G. and to me personally it seemed then that, in the interests of the work, all former difficulties could be set aside and that I could again work with him as in St. Petersburg. I brought G. to my lectures and handed over to him all the people who came to my lectures, particularly the small group of about thirty persons who met upstairs in the offices of the "Miyak."
G. gave to the ballet the central position of his work at that time. Besides this he wanted to organize a continuation of his Tiflis Institute in Constantinople, the principal place in which would be taken by dances and rhythmic exercises which would prepare people to take part in the ballet. According to his ideas the ballet should become a school. I worked out the scenario of the ballet for him and began to understand this idea better. The dances and all the other "numbers" of the ballet, or rather "revue," demanded a long and an entirely special preparation. The people who were being prepared for the ballet and who were taking part in it, would, in so doing, be obliged to study and to acquire control over themselves, in this way approaching the disclosure of the higher forms of consciousness. Into the ballet there entered, and as a necessary part of it, dances, exercises, and the ceremonies of various dervishes as well as many little known Eastern dances.
It was a very interesting time for me. G. often came to me in Prinkipo. We went together through the Constantinople bazaars. We went to the Mehlevi dervishes and he explained something to me that I had not been able to understand before. And this was that the whirling of the Mehlevi dervishes was an exercise for the brain based upon counting, like those exercises that he had shown to us in Essentuki. Sometimes I worked with him for entire days and nights. One such night in particular remains in my memory, when we "translated" a dervish song for "The Struggle of the Magicians." I saw G. the artist and G. the poet, whom he had so carefully hidden inside him, particularly the latter. This translation took the form of G. recalling the Persian verses, sometimes repeating them to himself in a quiet voice and then translating them for me into Russian. After a quarter of an hour, let us say, when I had completely disappeared beneath forms, symbols, and assimilations, he said: "There, now make one line out of that." I did not try to create any measure or to find a rhythm. This was quite impossible. G. continued and again after a quarter of an hour he said: "That is another line." We sat until the morning. This was in Koumbaradji Street a little below the former Russian consulate. At length the town began to wake. I had written, I think, five verses and had stopped at the last line of the fifth verse. No kind of effort could make my brain turn any more. G. laughed but he also was tired and could not go on. So the verse remained as it was, unfinished, because he never returned again to this song.
Two or three months passed by in this way. I helped G. all I could in organizing his Institute. But gradually the same difficulties arose before me as in Essentuki. So that, when the Institute was opened, I think in October, I was unable to join it. But in order not to hinder G. or to give rise to discord among those who came to my lectures, I put an end to my own lectures and ceased to visit Constantinople. A few of those who came to my lectures visited me in Prinkipo and there we continued the talks begun in Constantinople.