The music became more frightening. 'Finally it passed all limits. The notes no longer resounded in the space around them, but reverberated within each person, thundered beneath the skull, beat within the heart, seethed in the veins, deafened, squeezed, suffocated, terrified.
'Truly the artist was inspired . . .
'At last they could stand it no longer. Despairing voices began to cry for light.'
When the lights went on, the mysterious musirian was revealed, cloaked in black. From beneath his hood the skeletal face ofDeath itself leered at the audience. '"Ladies and Gentlemen," said Death. "I only played the Prelude for you. And now do you want to hear . . . the Concert?"
'That Prelude was playedin the years 1914-1918,'Lidia wrote. 'Will we still hear the Concert?'
In another, courageous article entitled 'La uojo al superhomo' ('The Way to Super-Man'), she attacked the prevalent attitude that held physical development above spiritual development. This notion had reached its extreme of depravity in Germany where, at this time, the Nazis were obsessed with German 'racial purity' and with creating a super-race through 'eugenics'. The Nuremberg Laws had been adopted in 1935, making Nazi racist doctrines the law of the Reich.
'In a magazine I read an interesting article,' Lidia wrote. 'A certain Dr Voronov wants to create a super-man. He wants to inject ten-year- old children with extracts of monkey glands. He says that the mother who will permit her child to be given that injection will be a new Eve of mankind: she will provide the beginning of a new, better human race. . .
'Serious scientists consider the idea of Voronov pertinent. And it may have important results. But will it create a super-man?
'Experiments done with sheep may show that one can perhaps improve and strengthen the human body. With the help ofhis younger brothers-in-Darwin, the monkeys, perhaps the human race will become stronger against disease and more resistant to aging. Perhaps the way shown by Voronov is the right way of physical culture.
'It may be; I don't know. But will Voronov truly create a super- man?
'If the Voronov man, stronger than the ordinary one, will use his powers to attain a depravity beyond that of ordinary man, could he be called a super-man? If he will use his intellect, as our generation has done, to create ever more perfect tools of destruction and death - shall we call him a super-man?
'No extracts, glands, injections, however effective, will make of man a super-man. That cannot be attained solely through physical culture. For that we need spiritual culture and spiritual evolution. And spiritual culture is not attained through the glands of monkeys.
'Spiritual culture is the culture ofthe heart. Mothers who desire to be new Eves of mankind! Cultivate the hearts of your children. Children's hearts are soft. Beware lest they become hard. The hearts of children are pure. Guard them from impurity. Strive that they receive those injections which are necessary for their evolution: the injections of good will and love. Nurse the hearts of your children. The hearts of mature people are often in a state ofdegeneracy. May the hearts ofyour children always remain young. The youth of the heart is true youth. It is worth much more than that youth which is artificially prolonged with the help of chimpanzees.
'Scientists of the world! If you wish to create a super-man, cultivate the hearts. Cultivate the hearts so that they will be free ofprejudices, so that they. will be filled with love, so that they will become great and encompass the whole of mankind.'
'And', Lidia concluded, 'when calumny, jealousy, hatred, conflict and war will disappear from the world, then understanding, love and peace will reign, then will the world become another world, and mankind - another mankind. And then, only then, the race of super- men will have been created.'
But as time passed, it was clear that conflict and war were not going to disappear from the world. In one of its issues La Praktiko reported an amusing anecdote about a farmer in Texas who was convinced that in two years a new world war would break out. He based his prediction on the fact that in the year 1912 one of his chickens had laid a strange, long egg shaped like a torpedo. At that time, because of the extraordinary shape of the egg, the farmer foretold that war was coming, a prediction fulfilled two years afterward, in 1914. Now another of his chickens was again laying torpedo-shaped eggs, which led him to prophesy that another great war was approaching. 'Well', commented La Praktiko, 'the state of the world is such that even without eggs and without chickens, one can easily foresee catastrophe.'
TWENTY
Now I Am Flying
Lidia was anxious to go to the United States. But would her trip ever take place? She waited for word to come from America. In November 1936, Shoghi Effendi had informed the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'fs of the United States and Canada that he had 'encouraged her to undertake this visit' and advised them 'to extend to her a hearty welcome and to make every effort to facilitate her visit to your country'. But by February 1937 Lidia had still not received an ofFicial invitation. Nevertheless, she was determined to go. She wrote Roan Orloff: 'because Shoghi EfFendi's wish is for me an order and guidance, I shall do everything possible to come to America in the autumn.'
At last the letter arrived: The National Spiritual Assembly sent Lidia 'an urgent and cordial invitation to visit America'. Lidia accepted, saying, 'I pray that Baha'u'llah may enable me to serve in America, to give His Message to some of the Esperantists and to help the Baha'i friends to know this language that has been created through the creative power of God's word.'
The National Spiritual Assembly offered to pay for her passage to America and her return voyage to Europe, but the Esperantists were asked to take responsibility for arranging her classes. The five hundred dollars that the National Assembly gave Lidia for her ship passage would not cover all her living and travel expenses while she was in the United States; all those involved expected that Lidia would charge a fee for her classes, as she had always done in Europe. She wrote that if she could be sure of having hospitality provided for her so that she did not have to stay in hotels, she would not have to charge for the lessons. But this alternative was never seriously considered. The Baha'is asked the Esperantists to arrange for her classes because at first they felt they could not charge the public for education in one of the Baha'1 religious principles. Although they later decided that it would be acceptable to charge a fee for the Esperanto lessons, the matter of arranging Lidia's classes remained with the Esperantists.
In the spring of 1937 Lidia went to Paris to give several Cseh courses. Her classes were held in an Esperantist-owned restaurant called 'The Green Star', as well as in the city hall of the ninth district. A course for teachers was held in a room at the Sorbonne. But her classes in Paris attracted only a handful of pupils. A course in Versailles met with better success. Lidia did not know it, but they were the last Esperanto courses she would ever teach in France.
Andre Gilles, then a timid eighteen-year-old, recalled sharing a table with Lidia and some other Esperantists one day at a vegetarian restaurant in Paris. But because of his shyness, he was not brave enough to speak to the famous daughter of Dr Zamenhof. He never saw her again, but in the years that followed, as a young soldier he often thought with concern about his chance table companion. After the war, he long remembered the 'peace-loving, high idealistic words of hers' which he had read on various occasions.
Marcel Delcourt recalled meeting Lidia in Paris. He was in the French Air Force stationed at Villacoublay and visited the Esperantist center on the rue Chabrol, where Esperantists gathered to socialize. He remembered that he even danced with Lidia, and she made a teasing comment on his military uniform, greeting him as 'Mr Warrior'. He hastened to correct her: he was just an ordinary 'Mr Soldier'.