Mysticism and mystics
It was “was the great fashion among poets” to make “the denizens and powers of higher worlds descend on earth and mix freely with mortals...” For instance, in France “all the notaries' clerks, and the monks in the cloisters” used to give “grand performances, dramatic plays in which long scenes were enacted by the Madonna, the angels, the saints, Christ, and even by God Himself.” In those days, “everything was very artless and primitive.” In Moscow, “during the prepetrean period,” performances of nearly the same character, “chosen especially from the Old Testament, were also in great favour.” “Apart from such plays, the world was overflooded with mystical writings” the heroes of which were “always selected from the ranks of angels, saints and other heavenly citizens answering to the devotional purposes of the age.” This imagery evokes a suffocating feeling; people described in the extract don’t have any connection with reality.
Hell
Ivan was reminded of a poem “compiled in a convent, a translation from the Greek, of course,” called “The Travels of the Mother of God among the Damned,” with “fitting illustrations and a boldness of conception inferior nowise to that of Dante.” She visited Hell in company with “the archangel Michael as her cicerone to guide her through the legions of the 'damned.'” She saw them all, and was “a witness to their multifarious tortures.” “Among the many other exceedingly remarkably varieties of torments” every category of sinners had its own. There was “one especially worthy of notice,” namely “a class of the 'damned' sentenced to gradually sink in a burning lake of brimstone and fire.” This imagery is supposed to evoke a feeling of fear.
Mercy
The Virgin was “terribly shocked,” and “falling down upon her knees in tears before the throne of God,” begged that “all” she had seen in Hell “all, all without exception” had “their sentences remitted to them.” “Her dialogue with God” was “colossally interesting.” She supplicated, she wouldn’t leave Him. God pointed “to the pierced hands and feet of her Son” and cried, “'How can I forgive His executioners?” Then the Mother of God commanded “all the saints, martyrs, angels and archangels” to prostrate themselves before “the Immutable and Changeless One” and beg Him to “change His wrath into mercy” and “forgive them all.” This imagery is supposed to illustrate compassion and love.
