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
Calvin maintained that if we are to state accurately what sin does to man’s use of his native talents, we must distinguish between man’s supernatural gifts, his abilities concerning heavenly things, and his natural gifts, his abilities concerning earthly things. The supernatural gifts comprise man’s ability to know God, to worship him properly, and to obey him inwardly as well as outwardly. However, we have been stripped of these gifts. The natural gifts pertain to matters of the present life, such as government, household management, all mechanical skills, and the liberal arts. Concerning these, said Calvin, our abilities have certainly not been destroyed. [159]
Emerson could neither accept this, nor similar, modified conceptions of Man — Unitarian or otherwise — which surrounded him in the religious and intellectual life of New England. [160] His was much closer, in certain ways, to the Orthodox, rather than to the Calvinist image of Man. As was expressed in the long quote [161] in an earlier section, in Emerson’s “Address to the Divinity Class”: it was such ‘false theology’, which brought souls to the point that they “can scarcely be convinced there is in them anything divine”. As one could say it: Emerson did not accept the idea of the irreparable damage to the image of God in Man. Emerson made plain, to the Harvard Divinity School class, his thoughts of the relation of God to Man:
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul… Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his World. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, ‘I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee, when thou also thinketh as I now think’. [162]
To Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jesus Christ was not Man’s soul’s sole salvation, but an example to the “Soul” (spirit) of Man; not some distant, omnipotent, savior divinity (e.g. “Apollo”), impossibly far beyond man’s highest capacities and deepest potentials. He was a brother to man. [163] Emerson was not as enamored as Calvin as to the effects of sin. To Emerson there was no need of an intercessor between the “Soul” of Man and God — no need for a “Holy Father”, Savior, Lord, priest or pastoral authority, to guide the individual soul. That individual which is sovereign, must be the spiritual guide of their own selves:
That is always best which gives me to myself. The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself. That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. [164]
So that, indeed, Emerson’s “Divinity School Address” — which brought him, in the newspapers, accusations of “infidelity, pantheism, and atheism” — was a “Spiritual Declaration of Independence” from the overlordship of religious “forms”, doctrines, and the ‘visible’, historical Church. This is unambiguously stated in his contrast of the “Church with the Soul”. Man in America — at least in its best representatives — must not be spiritually dependent and governed; should not accept being bound by the religion of the earthly, traditional Church. Man, for Emerson, can and should realize God in himself, by himself, in America. “…God is, not was…” spoke Emerson. Hence, apotheosis is, for Emerson, the greatest possibility, the greatest potential in the inner life of Mankind — also in America. However rarely realized this may be, this was his greatest calling.
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. [165]
This summons by Emerson, to the “Soul” in the West, is deeply kin to, yet nevertheless distinct from, the spiritual tasks as seen by Kireyevsky and Khomyakov. “Deification” was the goal of all three — Kireyevsky’s “integral personality” is ultimately derived from the idea of the fallen and restored “image of God” in Man: “restoring the essential personality in its primeval indivisibility”. Yet, while all three reached back into their common spiritual heritage, towards the idea of Adam, the Primal Man, the Cosmic Anthropos, the “One Man” [166]; in order to articulate their own comprehensions of Man. Still, one can readily sense, in Emerson’s writing and thought, the broad waters of the Atlantic, as well as the lands of Europe, which lie between the sunrise lands of Occidental Man in the eastern Mediterranean, and his New World’s Massachusetts. The spiritual sources and original thoughts of “those Eastern men”, of the Ancient Near East’s lands and cultures, are much nearer to the Russians Kireyevsky and Khomyakov, not only geographically and historically, but also, of course, via the Wisdom of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. So that it seems — to this writer and others — as if, in some ways, the fogs and waters of the Atlantic Ocean, had somehow softened and diffused the articulation and expression of Emerson’s ideas-from his sunrise coast of the New World, America. America is much further spiritually West of the wisdoms of the Ancient Near East, than Russia. The Third Rome of Philotheos is in Moscow [167] not Boston.
Emerson, Kireyevsky and Holy Russia
It is interesting, that both Kireyevsky and Emerson journeyed to Europe, partly to help themselves in a time of personal trouble and pain of heart For Emerson this was due to the early death of his young (first) wife; for Kireyevsky, it was from an unsatisfactory dissolution of a first love relationship. For both men, their journey was a rich experience; though they traveled in different regions of Europe. Emerson did not visit Central Europe on this trip; rather Italy, France and England. During his ten-month journey in Europe, Emerson, like Kireyevsky, experienced much of the Old World’s depth — and dearth. He conversed, likewise, with leading personalities; in his case: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle and William Wordsworth. As Kireyevsky left Central Europe more reconciled to his own Russia, Emerson returned to America in a renewed resignation to his own life journey, in the New World.
On board a ship on the Atlantic Ocean, in September of 1833, Emerson — three years after Kireyevsky’s journey to Central Europe — was returning from his first pilgrimage there. He wrote in his private journal, during the turbulent one-month sea voyage returning to America: “Back again to myself. — A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself. He is made a law unto himself. All real good or evil that can befall him must be from himself…The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself.” [168] Two years later — with similar meaning — on March 23, 1835, Emerson wrote in his journaclass="underline" “Alone is wisdom. Alone is happiness. Society nowadays makes us low-spirited, hopeless. Alone is heaven.” [169]
[159] From The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (ed. Paul Edwards) Vol. 2, p. 8.
[160] See Note 115.
[161] See “Emerson, and Man as a Sovereign State” in main text pages 62-3.
[162] From the “Address to the Divinity Class”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 53-54.
[163] It seems likely that Emerson’s thought, here, will be as well received and popular today, as it was during his own time today. But let us nevertheless make absolutely clear the distinctions. “…I regret one thing omitted in my late Course of Lectures [another set of lectures]; that I did not state with distinctness & conspicuously the great error of modern Society in respect to religion & say, You can never come to any peace or power until you put your whole reliance in the moral constitution of man & not at all in a historical Christianity. (The unbelief of man) The Belief in Christianity that now prevails is the Unbelief of men. They will have Christ for a lord & not for a brother. Christ preache(d)s the greatness of Man but we hear only the greatness of Christ.” From The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed., Edward Waldo Emerson, 1909; vol 5, Journal С; see March 5, 1838, p. 459.
[164] From “Address to the Divinity Class”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. L. Mumford, p. 55. [A “wen” is a benign tumor on the skin.]
[165] From “Address to the Divinity Class”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 64-65. It will be — if ever — a very different America, when such an ideal, is the highest, most central and revered goal, for individuals and the society of America. Such would be a “vertical”, spiritual leadership. This would come when America is a “vertical” society, not an exclusively “horizontal” one. Such would bring about the most profound realization of the “American Dream” imaginable.
[166] There exists a vast amount of literature on this idea of Anthropos, the “Cosmic Man”, especially as a crucial component of the conception of Man in the Ancient Near East, itself the womb, the sunrise lands (orient), of the West (occident).
[167] See Note 63.
[168] Quoted in Bliss Perry, The American Mind, 1912, p. 210.
[169] Quoted in Bliss Perry, The American Mind, 1912, p. 210.