Metropolitan Anthony is an honorary doctor of theology from the University of Aberdeen "for preaching the word of God and the renewal of spiritual life in the country", from the Moscow Theological Academy - for a set of scientific, theological, pastoral and preaching works, and from the University of Cambridge. His first books on prayer and spiritual life were published in English in the 1960s and were translated into many languages of the world. A Russian translation of one of them, Prayer and Life, was published in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1968.

     Vladyka never writes, does not prepare his talks and speeches in advance. Everything published was originally born as a word addressed directly to the listener - not to a faceless crowd, but to each individual person, that "modern man" who experiences (often without realizing it) spiritual hunger and the need for communion with God. The publishers strove to preserve as much as possible this sound of the living word of Vladyka in the printed text.

NO NOTES[1]

     Please tell us about your childhood...

     I have very few childhood memories; For some reason, my memories do not linger. Partly because a lot of things are layered on top of one another, as on icons: behind the fifth layer it is not always possible to make out the first one; and partly because I learned very early – or was taught – that, in general, your life is of no interest; What is interesting is what you live for. And so I never tried to remember either the events or their sequence – since this has nothing to do with anything! Whether I'm right or wrong is another matter, but I was taught this way very early. And that's why I have a lot of gaps.

     I was born by chance in Lausanne, in Switzerland[2]; my maternal grandfather, Scriabin, was the Russian consul in the East, in the then Ottoman Empire, first in Turkey, in Anatolia, and then in what is now Greece. My father met this family because he was also a diplomat, he was my grandfather's secretary in Erzurum, he met my mother there, and at one time they got married. My grandfather had already retired and spent his time – 1912-1913 – in Lausanne; my father at that time was artificially appointed consul in Colombo: it was an appointment, but no one went there, because nothing happened there, and the man was used for something useful, but he was listed. And so, in order to take a break from his Colombes labors, he and my mother went to Switzerland to visit her father and my grandmother.

     My grandmother, my mother's mother, was born in Italy, in Trieste; but Trieste at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; about her father I only knew that his name was Ilya, because my grandmother was Ilyinichna; they were Italians... My grandmother's mother later became Orthodox with the name Xenia; when my grandmother got married, her mother was already a widow and went with them to Russia.

     There were three sisters; the eldest (she was later married to an Austrian) was intelligent, lively, energetic, and remained the same until a late old age; and it was sacrificial to the end. She had diabetes, and finally she had gangrene; They wanted to operate on her (she was then about eighty years old), she said "no": she would die anyway, the operation would cost money, and she could leave this money to her sister – and so she died. So it's courageous and beautiful. The younger sister was married to a Croatian and was extremely unhappy.

     My grandfather Scriabin was a Russian consul in Trieste and got acquainted with this family, and decided to marry my grandmother, much to the indignation of her family, because the elder sister had to be married first, of course, and my grandmother was the middle one. And so, at the age of seventeen, she got married. She was probably surprisingly sincere and naïve, because even at ninety-five years old she was surprisingly naïve and sincere. She, for example, could not imagine being lied to; you could tell her the most impossible thing – she looked at you with such childish, warm, trusting eyes and said: "It's true?.."

     Вы пробовали? В каких случаях? При необходимости?

     Конечно, пробовал. Без необходимости, а просто ей расскажешь что-нибудь несосветимое, чтобы рассмешить ее, как анекдот рассказывают. Она и я никогда не умели вовремя рассмеяться; когда нам рассказывали что-нибудь смешное, мы всегда сидели и думали. Когда мама нам рассказывала что-нибудь смешное, она нас сажала рядом на диван и говорила: я вам сейчас расскажу что-то смешное, когда я вам подам знак, вы смейтесь, а потом будете думать…

     Дедушка решил учить ее русскому языку; дал ей грамматику и полное собрание сочинений Тургенева и сказал: Теперь читай и учись… И бабушка действительно до конца своей жизни говорила тургеневским языком. Она никогда очень хорошо не говорила, но говорила языком Тургенева, и подбор слов был такой.

     Вы, значит, еще и итальянец?

     Очень мало, я думаю; у меня реакция такая антиитальянская, они мне по характеру совершенно не подходят. Вот страна, где я ни за что не хотел бы жить; когда я был экзархом, я ездил в Италию, и всегда с таким чувством: Боже мой! Надо в Италию!.. У меня всегда было чувство, что Италия – это опера в жизни: ничего реального. Мне не нравится итальянский язык, мне не нравится их вечная возбужденность, драматичность, так что Италия, из всех стран, которые я знаю, пожалуй – последняя, где я бы поселился.