With Gurdjieff in St. Petersburg and Paris by Anna Butkovsky-Hewitt

With Gurdjieff in St. Petersburg and Paris by Anna Butkovsky-Hewitt

St Petersburg before the Revolution - the cultural heart of Russia; a city where actors, musicians, writers, painters, artists of the Imperial Opera and Ballet rubbed shoulders in an atmosphere alive with intellectual energy; where café society reached its peak in long nights filled with social meetings and discussions, and in dawn walks homeward past the gorgeous palaces lining the Neva quay; but a city, also, where the long shadow cast by an oppressive government and the thunder heralding revolution were never far distant. This was Anna Butkovsky's life until she reached her early thirties, and it was through this life that she met and became friends with P.D. Ouspensky, and with him became one of Gurdjieff's first pupils.

With a remarkable memory for detail and a gift for evoking the atmosphere and excitement of those early days, she describes how Gurdjieff and his few pupils would meet daily at two tables in Phillipoff's Café where, over steaming cups of coffee, they would follow the great teacher's words, as he directed them along new lines of spiritual and mystical development. Eventually she and the other disciples lived communally in a house which Gurdjieff bought especially for the group.

The Revolution changed all of their lives irrevocably, as it did those of millions of other Russians, but the story does not end there. Some years later, Mrs Hewitt, as she had then become, met Gurdjieff again in Paris and resumed her studies with him. In detailing the events of this period, she offers a fascinating account of Gurdjieff's experiments with movement at the Dalcrose Institute, experiments which eventually led to performances in both Paris and New York.

Throughout her narrative she keeps the all-important ideas of the Quest and the Miraculous to the fore, as she follows the story of the small band of disciples, under the firm but kindly eye of the teacher himself. In doing this, she has also provided the reader with an unforgettable picture of the 'Event' which Gurdjieff most certainly was.

Details

• Hardcover with dust jacket (good)
• ISBN: 0710085273
• Condition: Good, pages yellowed, no notes/stamps
  
• Publisher: Routledge & Kegan Paul