I’ll start by searching for information about this book.I’ll look for more on the book’s contents and essay titles.# Adamant (Nicholas Roerich)
Adamant is a collection of artistic and philosophical essays by the Russian-born painter, writer, and cultural activist Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947). It was first issued in New York by Corona Mundi, International Art Center, and was the first volume of the American edition of Roerich’s collected works. Its introduction summarizes his message as “peace and wisdom through Beauty,” set against the vain pursuit of international peace through suppression, armament, and hate.
Author and Context
Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich was born on 9 October 1874 in Saint Petersburg and died on 13 December 1947 at Naggar in India. He is known first and foremost as a painter. He was also an archaeologist, a prolific essayist, and a founder of cultural institutions. He wrote books, poetry, and almost-daily essays on life and events, which he called Diary Leaves.
Adamant belongs to Roerich’s first American period. He arrived in the United States in 1920 for an exhibition of his works, which toured the country and was followed by a showing of his new paintings in New York. During these years he and his wife Helena, with their circle of supporters, created several institutions. Among them were Cor Ardens (“Flaming Heart”) and Corona Mundi (“Crown of the World”), both meant to unite artists around the globe in the cause of civic activism, and the Master Institute of United Arts. The book’s first-edition introduction describes the latter two as the lasting monuments of his American work: the Master Institute as a departure in the teaching of the arts promising a new unity among creative workers, and Corona Mundi as an outlet for creative artists and an intermediary between public and creator. Corona Mundi, which published Adamant, was thus the vehicle of Roerich’s own cultural program.
The book’s themes reflect the idealistic outlook Roerich promoted at the time. Its publisher describes it as a collection of artistic and philosophical essays, the keynote of which is the conquering of materialism through beauty and knowledge. The opening essay addresses itself to the ideals of nations, to which “Art and Knowledge” have been added as watchwords, and speaks to those whose hearts have not yet been stopped by “mechanical civilization.”
Publication History
The first edition appeared under the imprint of Corona Mundi in New York. Catalogue records give the date as 1922 with a copyright of 1923. WorldCat lists it as New York: Corona Mundi, 1922, [©1923]. Other references, such as the Theosophy Wiki bibliography, give 1923. A bookseller’s description of the first edition records the imprint as Corona Mundi International Art Center, notes printing by the Presse Franco-Russe in Paris, and gives a pagination ending at page 139. The library record describes it as 139 pages with a portrait, and credits introductions by Serge Whitman and M. Highlander. The original was bound in patterned purple card covers.
The Roerich Museum’s own bibliography also lists the book with a 1924 date, and a Roerich Museum catalogue advertised it among new books on Roerich’s art. That catalogue lists “Adamant by Roerich” as published by Corona Mundi in 1924.
The work was soon noticed abroad. A Japanese translation by Itsuzo Takeuchi was published in Kyoto in 1926. A review by Christian Sénéchal of the 1923 New York edition appeared in the French periodical Europe in February 1925. In later Roerich publications the book was grouped with his other works of the period. The publisher’s note to Altai-Himalaya cites “Adamant” (1923) and “Paths of Blessing” (1925) as works that acquaint readers with his consciousness in all its phases.
Its place in the American edition of Roerich’s works is clear. The publisher’s note to Realm of Light (1931) calls that book the sixth volume of the American edition and says the first volume was Adamant, followed by Altai-Himalaya, Flame in Chalice, Heart of Asia, and Shambhala.
A modern edition followed. The Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York issued a second edition in 2017. It appeared as part of the series Nicholas Roerich: Collected Writings, in a paperback of about 130 pages. A hardcover appeared in October 2017. A Kindle edition was issued as well. The museum has also placed the text online. The series was launched because many of these writings had been unavailable for decades, in the hope of expanding awareness of the range and depth of Roerich’s interests. A digitized copy of the 1922 Corona Mundi edition is also available through HathiTrust. The 2017 cover reproduces Roerich’s painting Bridge of Glory (1923).
Contents
The 2017 edition lists the following contents: an introduction to the first edition, followed by the essays “Adamant,” “Shield,” “Path of Blessing,” “Homunculus,” “Collectors,” “Helpers,” “Spectacle,” “Spiritual Garment,” “Truth,” “Rhythm of Life,” “Activity,” “Watch Towers of America,” “Beauty—The Conqueror,” “Standard of Beauty,” “Chauvinism,” “The Right of Entrance,” “New Era,” “Joy of Art,” and “The Stone Age.”
Several of these essays can be placed more precisely:
- “Adamant” is the title essay. The word, meaning an unbreakable, diamond-hard substance, became a recurring emblem in Roerich’s writing. In a later essay he described Adamant as “the hardest diamond, unbreakable, even cutting that which is itself hard.” A later collection, Beautiful Unity, also includes an essay titled “Adamant.” There he argues that modern life is filled with the animal demands of the body, and that the only way to escape its “magic circle” is through the talisman of true Knowledge and Beauty.
- “Watch Towers of America” is Roerich’s account of American cultural life. It was also printed in The American Magazine of Art in April 1923, where he wrote on the eve of his departure for the Orient. He recalled that some twenty-three years earlier he had already had faith in American art and had helped present an exhibition of American art in Russia for the first time. In the book version he surveys the range of American spiritual and intellectual life, mentioning Claude Bragdon on the fourth dimension and the color organ, and Dr. Debey on the horoscope. He concludes that intensive life with deep spiritual roots must produce a strong and varied art.
- “Collectors” takes up art patronage in Russia. It opens with the Moscow merchant Tretiakoff.
- “Beauty—The Conqueror” takes up the idea of Beauty as a victorious, transforming force. It recalls that Corona Mundi had asked Roerich for a quotation for its founding statement, and that he chose a passage from his lecture Beauty and Wisdom about humanity facing “coming events of cosmic greatness.” The phrase “Beauty the Conqueror” recurs in later Roerich writing, such as his tribute to Tagore in Himavat.
- “Joy of Art” and “The Stone Age” were reprinted in French in the 1928 Paris volume that brought together La Joie de l’Art, L’Âge de pierre, and À travers le Thibet, a connection recorded in the Roerich Museum’s bibliography.
Significance
Adamant gives the clearest early statement in English of themes that run through Roerich’s later writing: the unifying power of art, culture as a safeguard of civilization, and a spiritual idealism opposed to narrow nationalism and mechanical materialism. These ideas also underlie the Roerich Pact and his later campaigns for the protection of cultural monuments. The book was written as the Roerichs were preparing to leave for Asia. On 8 May 1923 Roerich left America for India. The 1923 essays thus mark the end of his American years and the beginning of the Central Asian expedition that dominated his later work.
The book remains in print through the Nicholas Roerich Museum, and it serves as a concise introduction to Roerich’s thought for readers who know him mainly as a painter.
