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
In ways similar to the individual, and also present in human history, a community can live with great truth, purity and nobility; or it can also degrade into some immoral, oppressive or anonymous collection. It is certainly true, that “no man is an island, entire of himself” [221]; men and women of mankind all exist, both in their inner and outer lives, as individuals, and as participants in human community. But real community, true brotherhood cannot be externally compelled, or contrived. For in this way, it would not come from the inner being of men and women of humanity, which it by nature must; but would come from outside of man, making it, in fact, in-human. Certainly wretched caricatures of true human community — external, enforced “communities” — have been required by those who rule. Nonetheless, its true realization lies only in the heart, soul and act, of men and women of Mankind. In the late 20th century, much of Mankind is now painfully less naive, as to the reality and meaning of earthly, “horizontal”, enforced communism. Questions perhaps remain, whether mankind has fully completed its experiments with “vertical”, spiritual “communism” — spiritual community.
Sovereign, spiritual individuality is the burden and challenge of those who would strive (by cultural injunction, or personal necessity) to realize this in their lives. [222] Spiritual community can also only be made actual, by those who would so strive for the “vertical”, the veridical, the spiritual in their hearts and minds, that they engage each other in true spiritual community. (The most sublime human realization here — and perhaps the highest goal and ideal of human community — is the ecclesia spiritualis in Pentecostal enthusiasm. One might describe it as “conscious sobornost”.) But would a sovereign, spiritual individuality, want to remain alone? Can a spiritual community be realized, if each member is inadequately developed as an individual?
Emerson recognized the “philadelphic” problem of the aloneness of the sovereign individual. And it is interesting to consider his thoughts towards some resolution here; especially, when, from our point of view, we consider how they relate to the spirit, soul and history of Russia. Emerson:
Tis worse, and tragic, that no man is fit for society who has fine traits…But there is no remedy that can reach the heart of the disease but either self-reliance or else a religion of love. [223]
This “tragic” aloneness of true, inner nobility, which Emerson saw, was so unbridgeable to his experience and mind, that even the Civil War in the United States — which was fought over the question of an ancient social relation of man to man — was a “relief” to Emerson.
The relief with which Emerson welcomed the [Civil] war exemplified drastically the difficulty of discovering communities worthy of transcendent men. So long as Emerson still began with the ideal of the radically free individual, only something as apocalyptic and in its own way transcendent as war, could be a satisfactory symbol of community. [224]
This indicates a virtual plea for human brotherhood. A “religion of love”, or war, were the extremes necessary, to Emerson’s mind, to bring sovereign, solitary individuals into deep, true, noble purposeful human community. But do we not hear a response in Russia, to this Emersonian “anguish” — concerning some real “philadelphia” — in that famous speech of Dostoyevsky, at the Pushkin Monument in Moscow, in 1880?
…the destiny of a Russian is unquestionably pan-European and universal. To become a true Russian, to become a Russian fully (in the end of all, I repeat), means only to become the brother of all men, to become, if you will, a universal man. All our Slavophilism and Westernism is only a great misunderstanding, even though historically necessary. To a true Russian, Europe and the destiny of all the mighty Aryan family is as dear as Russia herself, as the destiny of his own native country, because (Mir destiny is universality, won not by the sword, but by the strength of brotherhood and our fraternal aspiration to reunite mankind…And in course of time I believe that we — not we, of course, but our children to come — will all without exception understand that to be a true Russian does indeed mean to aspire finally to reconcile the contradictions of Europe, to show the end of European yearning in our Russian soul, omnihuman and all-uniting, to include with our soul by brotherly love all our brethren, and at last, it may be, to pronounce the final Word of the great general harmony, of the final brotherly love of all nations in accordance with the law of the gospel of Christ! I know, I know too well, that my words may appear ecstatic, exaggerated and fantastic. Let them be so, I do not repent having uttered them. [225]
A “fragment” by Kireyevsky — though it cannot be accepted without an inclusion of the “vertical” — addresses itself to this problem of the individuality and the community:
Each moral victory in the secret depths of a single Christian soul is a triumph for the whole Christian world; each spiritual power which has been formed within a single human being invisibly attracts to itself and advances the powers of the whole moral world. [226]
An exclusive striving for individuality, in contrast to the collective-even in the “vertical” — could lead to spiritual and psychic isolation, social malaise, anarchy of self and society. (Such an exclusive striving, in the “horizontal”, would lead, also, to the degradation of social morality and culture, and towards the hedonization of civilization.) The exclusive emphasis on the collective may — and history reveals this — lead to the desecration and deadening of the individual, as well as psychic and social totalitarianism.
The U.S A. and the U.S.S.R. (as well as all the world’s nations) face the problems and questions of the relation of the individual and the community (society); though of course they face them from differing directions. In both countries, however, the common primary direction of striving seems to be for the realization of “the good life”, of and for individual and collective man, in the earthly-“horizontal” [227]. The “vertical” by nature requires struggle, renunciation, suffering, pain and sacrifice; which — since they were, are and shall remain, unpopular pastimes — make great demands of the very best of us. The countering, contrasting, transmutation and subjugation of egoism and (forced) communism, by and for some real achievement of philadelphic relations, in America, Russia, or elsewhere, shall depend, essentially, on the willed inner life of men and women of Man, as individuals, and as members of the human community. [228]
[221] “No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.” John Donne, Devotions, Meditation 7: “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” This was cited also by President Gorbachof in his speech to the United Nations.
[222] Emerson: “See two sincere men conversing together. They deport themselves as if self-existent. Are they not for the time two Gods? For every true man is as if he should say, I speak for the Universe…” Cited in W.A. Clebsch, American Religious Thought, p. 101, [Emerson: Journals and Miscell. Notebooks: 4: 309].
[223] Cited in R. J. Wilson, “The Plight of the Transcendent Individual”, in In Quest of Community: Social Philosophy in the United States, 1860-1920, p. 13; [See Emerson’s essay “Solitude and Society”].
[224] Cited in R. J. Wilson, “The Plight of the Transcendent Individual”, in In Quest of Community: Social Philosophy in the United States, 1860-1920; p. 13.
[225] From The Pushkin Speech, June 6, 1880. See The Dream of a Queer Fellow, and The Pushkin Speech, translated by S. Koteliansky and J. Middleton Murry, p. 57-58. In The Brothers Karamazov, in the thoughts on love, by “Father Zossima” (Part Two, Book VI, 2) can be found one of the deepest literary renderings, of a superlative “religion of love” (Emerson), as conceived in the Russian Christian world.
[226] Ivan Kireyevsky, citation position uncertain.
[227] We have considered this question of the striving to achieve “the good life” in the “horizontal”, in America, in relation to the common conception of the American Dream. You might could say that America is distracted from higher “vertical” pursuits by an over-abundance of “material plenty” in the “horizontal”; whereas Russia and the USSR are, understandably fixated here, due to sparsity. Such conditions, alone, would bring about differing developments of individual and collective psychology.
[228] See Note 212.