Towards the Spiritual Convergence of America and Russia: American Mind and Russian Soul, American Individuality and Russian Community, and the Potent Alchemy of National Characteristics [Stephen Ludger Lapeyrouse] (fb2) читать постранично, страница - 2

class='book'> First Thoughts

Man has on the earth no home, — but he does have wings to heaven. ^[1]

I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty which ravished the souls of those Eastern men, and chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West also.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838. ^[2]

О Russia, in sublime premonition,

A mighty decision you ponder,

What kind of Orient do you wish to be -

The Orient of Xerxes, or that of Christ?

Vladimir S. Soloviev, 1890. ^[3]

“Russia is the only country which can and will redeem Europe — for the simple reason that toward all vital problems she assumes an attitude which is diametrically opposed to that of all European nations. Out of the depths of her unique suffering, and because of it, Russia is able to bring a deeper knowledge of mankind and of the meaning of human life to the other nations. The Russians possess the spiritual qualities required for this task, qualities that are lacking in every Western nation.

“In its present form, the problem of East and West represents, at one and the same time, the great problem of the rebirth of humanity, the possibility of regenerating the West, a reminder of the necessity of reuniting a divided mankind and the task of creating the perfect type of human being.”

Walter Schubart, 1938. ^[4]

Ex Occidente Lux — Thoughts From America’s Chrysopylae

These thoughts were written at the edge of the journey of Western Man: the geographical, historical, mental, and spiritual West of the West ^[5]. Chrysopylae, the Golden Gate, was named by the American John Charles Frémont, in 1846, as an intentional reminiscence of the Golden Horn (Chrysoceras) of Constantinople, to symbolically indicate a new passageway of the West towards the East. ^[6] Here the West faces the peoples of the Far East; not only those evoked by such names as Beijing and Tokyo, but also Nikolai N. Muravyev-Amursky’s Vladivostok, with its own Golden Horn (Zolotoy Rog) and Eastern Bosporus. ^[7] Man, leaving Europe, goes Westward and Eastward, and meets on the Pacific, the “Mediterranean of the Future” ^[8], as Alexander Herzen ‘prohetically’ named it from nineteenth-century London.

From the Golden Gate of California, the Far West faces west over the Pacific to the Far East, including Siberia. As it was spoken in an address in San Francisco, during the First World War, on August 28, 1916, by Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of California Berkeley from 1899-1919:

…Now there are many who see and know that so certain as it is that the first four centuries of the North American occupation have been shaped in terms of its place on the Atlantic facing Europe, just so certain is it that its coming life and duty is to be shapen in terms of its place on the Pacific facing Asia.

The old world consisted in substance of the Orient and Occident facing each other over the great rent at Constantinople from the Black Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. But the venture of Columbus in its final effects turned this old world inside out. The old world looked inward upon an island sea, where Europe faced Asia Minor, and the frontier citadel was Constantinople. The new world looks outward toward the great ocean, where America faces Asia, and the frontier citadel is San Francisco. ^[9]

Or, as it was written in a poem by Walt Whitman in 1860:

So as it once was, that it became proverbial, in that time when Latin was the language of the mind, to summarize the relation of East and West by the phrase Ex Oriente Lux ^[11]; so I am mindful with this essay, to contribute towards substantiation of a new relation, expressible: Ex Occidente Lux. ^[12] And though it is common, and appropriate, when speaking of the “Pacific Basin”, the “Pacific Rim”, the “Pacific Era”, and so on, to think predominately in terms of economic power and trade, international commercial and financial relationships, political and military alliances, and such; as the “light”, which towards the beginning of Western Man's history was conceived to shine from the “Ancient Near East”, was a light of divinity, spirit, philosophy and culture, so would this my essay, at its best, add some small measure of oil, such as would contribute to a similar shining here at the West’s Chrysopylae. As it is succinctly summarized in the westward-looking University of California Berkeley’s motto: Fiat Lux: Let There Be Light. ^[13] But whereas once the Light from the Ancient Near East was recognized to have devolved ultimately from God to Man; here, at “the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled”, the Light ^[14] must be borne in and by men and women of Man, upwards to God.

Spiritually, and Practically Speaking

Some, perhaps many, will find the thoughts of this essay — from the Chrysopylae of the Pacific — if interesting to historical curiosity, irrelevant or useless in regard to the practical problems of daily life, international relations, and so on. Such “philosophical speculations” may seem unreal, “idealistic” or “ethereal”, in relation to the complex, pragmatic social, political, economic realities and problems — even in regard to new possibilities and relations between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In some ways, this may be true enough. But these words were not written toward the worldly woes, or the mundane, “horizontal” ^[15] identities of the people of Russia or America. This essay was written, rather, to their inner lives of heart, soul and mind, with which they, as human beings, must existentially and spiritually face the world — with its questions of life, death, evil and suffering; God; the meaning and purpose of human existence, etc, etc,… In short, it is in regard to the internal, the inner, “vertical” life of Man that these words would have their greatest intent.

I do not anticipate that this work will gain a large agreeable acceptance; for, rightly understood, it is deeply challenging to much of that which constitutes the current common intellectual and religious life of both America and Russia. It should be more strongly of interest to earnest, independent spirits, whose sensitivity, understanding, educational and moral stance, has them profoundly disturbed and concerned with the spiritual and intellectual problems of America, Russia and Mankind. If some few hundred souls in Russia find useful meaning, helpful insight and creative stimulation; if some several scores of individuals in America find these pages enlightening and nourishing; I shall feel that this labor has been justified, fruitful and successful. May it indeed, so be.

* * *

Though this work is written to both Americans and Russians; because of the great differences which exist in these two worlds, it was necessary to write introductory chapters which are directed to each people specially. Their inclusion, in the publication of this work intended for both