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
- Автор: Lapeyrouse Stephen Ludger
- Год: 1990
- Язык: английский
- ISBN: 0-9628048-0-0
- Жанр: История
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“If my efforts in this work are adequate to the task, I wish to make substantial intellectual contributions towards a clear description of how essential and profound a spiritual, philosophical and psychological relation exists, between characteristic highest (“vertical”) conceptions and aspirations — and tasks — of Mankind in America and Russia. The hope is that such understanding could contribute, essentially, towards a clearer, creative, and mutually-beneficial spiritual orientation — in thoughtful and heartful individuals of both nationalities — which might lead to a more conscious spiritual meeting of “Russian” and “American”; and thereby, possibly, promote an alchemical blending of the American Mind and Russian Soul, American Individuality and Russian Community. Such a greater clarity towards a greater spiritual realization, and more complete wholeness, in some men and women of each country, and thereby, perhaps, in portions of Mankind as a whole.” — the Author
So spoke Rasputin from Siberia.
The interviewer categorized his thought, in her heartfully sympathetic summary, as sign of a rebirth of “Russian nationalism”, “patriotism”, and the like. And while both she and Rasputin criticized any arrogant, racist, “chauvinistic” attitude and interpretation of such ideas as he expressed; the concepts she used, in attempting to describe, to her Western audience, the thought of Rasputin, could as readily deaden as enliven them. For what Valentine Rasputin and others — both in contemporary and nineteenth century Russia — have meant — by whichever expressions or ideas essentially similar in content and meaning to “Russian Soul” — is a special, soul-filled inwardness of the human being, which is especially full in presence in the those people of Russia who bear it [80]. The interpretive concepts of the interviewer were much too secular, too aseptically intellectual; too political and sociological; too “horizontal” — in a word, too “Western”. As George Kennan wrote, in a 1968 article, “Understanding the Russians”:
Russia remains today, more than ever, an enigma for the Western world. Simple American minds imagine that this is because ‘we don’t know the truth about it’. They are wrong. It is not our lack of knowledge which causes us to be puzzled by Russia. It is that we are incapable of understanding the truth about Russia when we see it…
…Soberly viewed, there is little possibility that enough Americans will ever accomplish these philosophical evolutions to permit of any general understanding of Russia on the part of our government or our people. It would imply a measure of intellectual humility and a readiness to reserve judgment about ourselves and our institutions of which few of us would be capable. For the foreseeable future the American, individually and collectively, will continue to wander about in the maze of contradiction and the confusion which is Russia with feelings not dissimilar to those of Alice in Wonderland., and with scarcely greater effectiveness. [81]
If, indeed, the Russian Soul, like Russia, can be understood, as well as “believed in”; it is more likely rather to be embraced by such thoughts and words, feelings and literature, as could best be named religious, philosophical — spiritual. But so the Western interviewer did not speak…(or understand?, or see?)
Broadly, but truthfully — and painfully — speaking, the successful West is spiritually lost in the “horizontal” world; that world of matter and predictability, of comfort, pleasure, worry and concern, related almost exclusively to existence, experience, achievement and success in and of the mundane world. However otherworldly some ideas and ideals in the West may be — and in places, e.g. California, they can be quite fantastic-, they are seldom held with sufficient depth, integrity, strength and maturity of soul, as might allow them to truly lead a person, clearly, up and out of the “horizontal” into the “vertical”.
Contrariwise, though only briefly considered, the Russian Soul — evident in the eyes of an inspired countenance; noticeable in the enthusiasm of a voice; sensible in a person’s special presence; or in a deep, pure, human intimacy, in a conversation [82]; in an almost religious reverence towards a great symphony, от in an uncanny intuitive sense of life — is somewhat more rather like a doorway into an inner “Vertical” world. As an Italian man once remarked to me, in a conversation on this theme (in 1987) beside the pond next to Novodevichy Convent in Moscow; “I have never seen such meaningful looks in my life.” It is a soul that is, initially perhaps, uncanny to the perceptive Westerner, as if having entered a strange new world, full of novelty and mystery. Strongly manifest, it calls the Westerner to deep self-examination and self-recognition — not always of favorable sight It can, in its fullness, help bring one uncommonly near to a real, alive questioning of oneself, human relationships, and the sense, meaning and purpose of life; the enigma of suffering, die reality of death; the question of God, and similar, often secreted questions of ultimacy to the human soul. Herein, in the un western, “vertical” inwardness of the Russian Soul, are gifts and presences of the inner life, which might be offered to the needy soul and spiritual existence of the West The below, by Walter Schubart, written in his 1938 work Russia and Western Man, can be safely applied, in general, to Americans, as well as to “Europeans”:
To Russians and Europeans mutually, each represents the ‘other’ world… When a European looks at the Russians and then at himself, he must inevitably appear to himself in a new light. Hence the inestimable value of such a comparison! By comparing himself with the Russian, the European is enabled to know himself through and through…things which had hitherto seemed to be a matter of course, now appear to him as oddities. Henceforth, the obvious becomes questionable. And all at once, the European sees that things familiar to him at home might be valued differently in other parts of the world…This acquisition of entirely new possibilities, standards of value and perspectives, paves the way for a self-analysis that may penetrate to the profoundest depths, and this new insight into the roots of our nature is the essence of spiritual renewal and the secret of rebirth. This is true in the case of both individuals and nations. [83]
Such thoughts as these will be of no surprise, to those who possess a clear sense and understanding of the deeper currents of Russian and Western spiritual and intellectual history. But in the West, alas, especially here on this far Western Pacific Coast of America, the realities of such contrasting psychologies, if they are known at all, are rarely recognized with any more than some vague inarticulate sense, or, perhaps rather, “intellectually”, using that aspect of the human psyche which the westward-journeyed members of the nineteenth century Russian intelligentsia found to be so characteristic — and incomplete — of Western Man.
Certainly in America, the general intellectual and cultural life of the “melting pot”, is far from being conducive to the clarity, subtlety and sensitivity of soul, required to readily recognize the inner uniqueness of the Russian Soul. Such recognition seems, preponderantly, to depend on the degree, depth and awakeness of an individual’s world and self-awareness; their subtlety, consciousness and knowledge. As George Kennan described it:
…There will be much talk about the necessity for “understanding Russia”; but there will be no place for the American who is really willing to undertake this disturbing task. The apprehension of what is valid in the Russian world is unsettling and displeasing to the American Mind. He who would undertake this apprehension will not find his satisfaction in the achievement of anything practical for his people, still less in any official or public appreciation for his efforts. The best he can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow, and where few will consent to believe that he has been. [84]
[80] Nicolas Berdyaev: “Russia has never been able to accept humanistic culture as a whole, with its rationalistic consciousness, its formalized logic and formal law, its religious neutrality, and its secular middle-of-the-road tendency. Russia has never completely left the Middle Ages and the sacral epoch.”
“The Russian people cannot create a middle-of-the-road humanistic realm. They do not want a state based on law in the European sense of the word. They want either the kingdom of God and a brotherhood in Christ, or a comradeship in Antichrist who is the king of this world. In the Russian people there has always been a unique detachment that is unknown to the peoples of the West…The peoples of the west are chained by their very virtues to an earthly life and its blessings, while the Russian people by their virtues stand detached from this earth and direct themselves to Heaven.” Cited in V.V. Zenkovsky, Russian Thinkers and Europe (translation), p. 184.
[81] Cited in American Appraisals of Soviet Russia, 1917-1977, p. 342-343. It merits more than a little meditation, that George Kennan who vitally helped define the USA’s post-World War II idea of “containment” (“X”) of communism; freely stated, in a television interview, his deep love of Russian people and culture. He even mused on the question, as to whether, in some way or other, ‘in some other life’; he had not previously had relation to certain places in Russia, which touched his soul with such depth as to bring such wonderings.
[82] It will perhaps quickly offend those who disagree; and easily console those who concur, to bring a quote by Solzhenitsyn, on the West: “Since I came to the West, it is interesting what I have noticed…in our society the relationships between people — this may surprise you — are warmer, more sincere, more unselfish than here [in the West]…partly because everyone in the West is free to arrange his own life. And with the decline of the religious principles on which Western society was founded, this leads to intensified activity by each person in his own behalf. In their tense struggle and competition people sometimes busy themselves too much with material matters, think too much about their narrow interests than about everybody, about society.” Quotation from Dale E. Peterson, “Solzhenitsyn’s Image of America: The Survival of a Slavophile Idea”, in Massachusetts Review, Spring, 1978, p. 164.
[83] Rom Walter Schubart, Russia and Western Man, 1938, p. 35-36.
[84] From George Kennan, “Understanding the Russians”, (1969), in American Appraisals of Soviet Russia, 1917-1977, p. 344.