March Madness — Rasputin
Our month long look at insanity turns now to look at a figure from history who was known as The Mad Monk — Grigori Efimovich Rasputin. He’s known best for helping ease the pains of hemophillia of the Tsarist family, his huge sexual appetite and that it took him seemingly forever to die (despite being shot and poisoned, it took drowing to finally do him in).
Now, one problem with looking at an historical figure commonly known to be insane is that history is always written by the winners. In this case, the winners were the communist revolutionists of 1917, Russia. But historians of all political persuations seem to agree that he was definitely a whacknoodle, albeit a really entertaining whacknoodle.
One of Rasputin’s teachings had to do with sin. However, unlike other priests and monks that taught that you shouldn’t sin, Rasputin argued the exact opposite. If Jesus suffered and died on the cross for your sins, then you better make it worth Jesus’s time and effort. So, sin as much as possible so you really need to be forgiven.
Actually, that kinda makes sense. Perhaps that’s why he was so successful with the ladies (which really annoyed his wife). If he had a voice anywhere near as sensual as Alan Rickman’s, then it’s a wonder he had time to talk about sin at all:
As much as I love Alan Rickman, arguably the best movie Rasputin was portrayed by Tom Baker (who was actually my first crush — which shows you my taste in men). This is a compilation of scenes from 1971’s Nicholas & Alexandria:
One last note — Rasputin’s daughter Maria became a lion tamer.
March 12th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
[...] Madness: Rasputin, Pt. 2 by Rena Sherwood In the first part of our look at YouTube’s look at Rasputin (the Mad Monk of Russia — not to be confused [...]