The Doomed City

N.K. Roerich has two prophetic pictures of 1914, "City of the condemned" (a variant of the title "The City of the Doomed") - a giant serpent wrapped around a ring around the walls of the city, closing the entrances and exits, as if forming a magic circle of evil.   "Scream of the Serpent" - among the pointed barren rocky ridges the head of the serpent rises to the sky, he screams, as if prophesying misfortunes and misfortunes. The prophetic meaning of these paintings is not at all as clear as it seems to those who tie up their plot, with the blockade of Leningrad.   Although we do not deny this point, the meaning of this symbol is not exhausted. In order to better understand the meaning of this prophecy, let us review the presentation of a Russian legend, which a close friend and like-minded N.K. Roerich Vl. Soloviev cites in his remarkable, one of the most complex historiosophical articles "Byzantism and Russia" (1896), which has not become obsolete to this day. In it he writes about the Russian ideal of the ruler, as the personification of a formidable, all-destroying, nothing morally unconstrained force - "the ideal of the Roman Caesar, enlivened and reinforced by the influence of the nearest Horde impressions."

Nicholas Roerich known also as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh– was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, perceived by some in Russia as an enlightener, philosopher, and public figure, who in his youth was influenced by a movement in Russian society around the spiritual.   Nicholas was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices and his paintings are said to have hypnotic expression. Born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a well-to-do notary public father of Baltic German ancestry and a Russian mother, he lived in various places around the world until his death in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, India. Trained as an artist and a lawyer, his main interests were literature, philosophy, archaeology, and especially art.   Roerich was a dedicated activist for the cause of preserving art and architecture during times of war. He earned several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize long list. The so-called Roerich Pact was signed into law by the United States and most nations of the Pan-American Union in April 1935.