The Eyes Have It: Lenin’s Screwing Orbs March 25, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Eyes! Novelists are forever going on about them, even philosophers occasionally get excited about them: blue eyes are beautiful, brown eyes are sublime, Kant insists. Beach personally has never understood all the fuss: of the twenty members of his family he probably has noticed the eyes of three and knows the colour of six or seven. However, he recently came across, in Vologonov’s important biography of Lenin these two descriptions. Both suggest that Lenin had eyes that were unusual. It might be noted that there are many descriptions out there of Lenin’s eyes: they clearly made an impression on those unlucky enough to stare into them.
Ariadna Tyrkova, a Russian liberal journalist, wrote simply that ‘Lenin was an evil man. And he had the evil eyes of a wolf.’ This begs the question of whether AT had ever seen a wolf’s eyes at close quarter. However, this second superb description is much more detailed and suggests an acquaintance who really had paid special attention. The author is Aleksandr Kuprin, in many ways an admirer of Lenin: ‘He has high cheekbones and slanting eyes… I couldn’t stop looking at his eyes… they are narrow; besides which he tends to screw them up, no doubt a habit of concealing short sight, and this, and the rapid glances beneath the eyebrows, gives him an occasional squint and perhaps a look of cunning. But what surprised me most was their colour… Last summer in the Paris zoo, seeing the eyes of a lemur, I said to myself in amazement: at last I’ve found the colour of Lenin’s eyes! The only difference being that the lemur’s pupils were bigger and more restless, while Lenin’s were no more than pinpricks from which blue sparks seemed to fly.’ Not everyone noted the Lemur-like quality of Lenin’s eyes, but his habit of screwing them up was frequently recorded: Gorky records Lenin ‘looking at me with his little eyes screwed up’. This apparently came down to the failure of an ophthalmologist to diagnose short-sightedness in his youth, but no doubt added to his sinister air.
Lenin had then by all accounts unusual eyes, probably an unusually striking set of eyes, thanks perhaps partly to the rich mix of DNA running in Lenin’s veins, Asiatic (‘little Mongolian eyes’), European and Jewish, were made still more impressive by the strange ‘screwing’ motion, a result of undetected short-sightedness. Are there other historical personalities that have so impressed with their eyes: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Beach couldn’t think of a single case!
31 Mar 2014: Ed H writes in ‘I have a vague memory that Attila the Hun was supposed to have rolled his eyes in order to inspire terror in those around him. I don’t know anymore who said this about him, and Google hasn’t been able to point me to anybody older than Gibbon. Anyway, I have an even vaguer memory that descriptions of Attila were cut-and-pasted by later authors to describe later fierce dark ages rulers, resulting in an improbable number of eye-rolling rulers. It’s been a long time, though; I might be misremembering that last bit. Oh, here’s some eye-rolling! Doesn’t inspire terror though…
When Attila’s brother Bleda who ruled over a great part of the Huns had been slain by Attila’s treachery, the latter united all the people under his own rule. Gathering also a host of the other tribes which he then held under his sway he sought to subdue the foremost nations of the world—the Romans and Visigoths. His army is said to have numbered 500,000 men. He was a man born into the world to shake the nations, the scourge of all lands, who in some way terrified all mankind by the dreadful rumors noised abroad concerning him. He was haughty in his walk, rolling his eyes here and there, so that the power of his proud spirit appeared in the movement of his body. He was indeed a lover of war, yet restrained in action, mighty in counsel, gracious to suppliants and lenient to those who were once received into his protection. He was short of stature, with a broad chest and a large head: his eyes were small, his beard thin and sprinkled with gray: and he had a flat nose and a swarthy complexion showing the evidences of his origin..
And here’s Gibbon’s version: His features, according to the observation of a Gothic historian, bore the stamp of his national origin . . . a large head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short square body, of a nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form. The haughty step and demeanor of the king of the Huns expressed the consciousness of his superiority above the rest of mankind; and he had a custom of fiercely rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he inspired….He delighted in war; but, after he had ascended the throne in a mature age, his head, rather than his hand, achieved the conquest of the North; and the fame of an adventurous soldier was usefully exchanged for that of a prudent and successful general.
Tacitus from Detritus has recently done a post on politicians eyes
Three-eyed goddess writes in with the claim that Hitler had unusual eyes. That deserves a post in its own right…
