To Women (Russian: Женщинам, Zhenshchinam) is a short address by the Russian painter, writer and public figure Nicholas Roerich (Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh, 1874–1947). It was composed in the Himalayas in 1931 on the occasion of the founding of a women’s association connected with the Roerich societies. Published as a separate pamphlet in Riga, it also appears as a chapter in Roerich’s collection Realm of Light (Russian: Держава Света). The text belongs to the cycle of writings in which Roerich set out his ideas about culture, beauty and the spiritual role of womanhood.
Author and context
Nicholas Roerich, born in Saint Petersburg on October 9, 1874, and died in Naggar, India, on December 13, 1947, was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, philosopher, and public figure. With his wife Helena he was a principal articulator of the Agni Yoga teachings, and the couple took part in expeditions to remote regions of Central Asia and lobbied for ratification of the Roerich Pact, an early international treaty on the protection of cultural heritage. After leaving Russia, the Roerichs lived in Finland and the United States, and in 1923 his interest in Theosophical mysticism brought him to India, where the family eventually settled in the Himalayan foothills.
Roerich was as prolific a writer as he was a painter. The Nicholas Roerich Museum describes how he wrote many articles, books, poetry, and almost-daily essays on life and events, which he called “diary leaves”. In the early 1930s the Roerich Museum Press in New York issued a numbered series of his works in English. Realm of Light was the sixth volume of the American edition, following Adamant, Altai-Himalaya, Flame in Chalice, Heart of Asia and Shambhala. The Russian-language counterpart of Realm of Light is Держава Света, and To Women belongs to this body of work.
Origin and composition
The address was written in April 1931 and dedicated to the Women’s Union (Единение женщин) of the Roerich Society. The Russian text printed in Держава Света carries the dedication “Women (Dedicated to the Unity of Women of the Roerich Society)” and ends with the dateline “Himalayas. April, 1931”.
The initiative for a women’s union is associated with Helena Roerich. A commentary in the Russian edition notes that in March 1930 she wrote to America about the need to begin a Women’s Union. A related longer text addressed to women’s circles likewise speaks of the idea of Women’s Unity, long held by Helena Roerich and by the author himself. In her letters, Helena Roerich in turn mentions having received an “Appeal to Women” and expresses her approval of it, adding that the awakening of women was proceeding across the whole face of the planet.
The Nicholas Roerich Museum’s bibliography of his writings lists the work under its full descriptive title: Женщинам. Обращение по случаю открытия Об-ва единения женщин (“To Women: An Address on the Occasion of the Opening of the Women’s Unity Society”), Rīga: Roericha Biedrība Latvija, 1931. The Latvian Roerich Society, which issued it, was one of the Roerich organizations active in Europe at the time. The same bibliography lists a Latvian-language edition, Sievietēm, issued by the same society in 1931.
Content and themes
The central text is brief and rhetorical in character, written as a direct appeal. It opens with an affirmation of the value of woman’s heart, in Russian: the heart of a mother, the heart of a woman, is a great treasure. It then assigns women a role in the household and in the education of children. In the Russian text, women will light at every hearth a beautiful, creative and encouraging fire, will speak to children the first word about beauty, teach them the blessed hierarchy of knowledge, and tell the little ones about the creativity of thought. The address closes with a greeting and a bow to women, and with the declaration that a great and beautiful task has been entrusted to them.
Several themes that run throughout Roerich’s thought are visible in the piece:
- Beauty and culture as the foundation of renewal. Women are asked to be the first to name “Culture” and to speak of the primacy of spiritual values, in keeping with Roerich’s wider program of “Peace through Culture.”
- The hearth as a spiritual center. The domestic fire is treated as the starting point of a chain of spiritual hierarchy reaching into the cosmic. A related text of the same period speaks of a union of women that would weave shining threads from the hearth through all hierarchies into infinity.
- The Mother of the World. In the longer companion texts dedicated to the Women’s Union, the opening invocation is of the Mother of the World, a sacred concept of all ages and peoples. This figure recurs in Roerich’s paintings, and the related Madonna Oriflamma (1932) is linked to his appeal to women’s organizations.
- Balance of two principles. A companion text affirms that humanity must recognize the great cosmic law of the grandeur and balance of the two Principles as the foundation of Being, a conviction that underlies the emphasis on women’s contribution to the new era.
- The call to unite. The longer addresses distinguish the Women’s Union from women’s gatherings that have become merely conventional, merely regretting or condemning, calling instead for a union with a lively exchange of constructive possibilities.
Publication history and related texts
The brief address To Women has appeared in several forms:
- Riga pamphlet, 1931. Issued by the Latvian Roerich Society as a separate publication (Женщинам), with a Latvian version (Sievietēm) the same year.
- In Realm of Light / Держава Света. The text opens a chapter in the 1931 collection. A later Russian edition notes that Держава Света was printed according to the 1931 edition published in the USA, and it was reissued with Священный дозор in Riga by Vieda in 1992, in a joint edition with the International Centre of the Roerichs.
- English-language publication, 1933. The Museum’s bibliography records To the Woman’s Heart, New York: Woman’s Unity of Roerich Museum, 1933, a related publication issued by the women’s association attached to the Roerich Museum in New York.
The chapter in Держава Света places the short address beside longer pieces on the same subject. One is a message addressed to the women’s club federation in America (Трёхмиллионному воинству Федерации женских клубов в Америке), and another is a longer appeal that begins with the figure of the Mother of the World. These pieces developed the same ideas at greater length. They also described the practical purpose of the Women’s Unity, which was to bring women together in the Roerich societies around the cause of culture. The Держава Света chapter groups them under the heading “Преображение Жизни” (“Transformation of Life”).
Significance
To Women is a compact example of Roerich’s late writing, in which cultural and spiritual aims are addressed to a particular audience. It is among his best-known appeals to women and is often cited in discussions of the place of women in the Roerich movement. One commentator characterizes the artist’s outlook this way: he looks to idealized women as future saviors of the human race. The ideas in the address are echoed in the Roerich Museum’s Diary Leaves, where Roerich wrote that the era of womanhood has come, and woman will be the real protector and collector of the beautiful. Within the Roerich movement, the address was one of the founding texts for the women’s organizations that took shape around the Roerich Museum and the Roerich societies in the early 1930s. It continues to be reprinted in Russian-language anthologies and published online by Roerich societies and libraries.
