Dedication
This essay is dedicated, with gratitude and respect, to the memory of my father Reuben Ludger Lapeyrouse (1931-1965) and grandfather: Lawrence Ludger Lapeyrouse (1898-1985)
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.
“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.”
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.
[1] This proverb was sent to me, in a German version, by a Swiss friend who lives near Domach, Switzerland. I have been unable to locate a source for it.
[2] From “Address to the Divinity Class”, in
[3] This comes from Soloviev’s poem “Ex Oriente Lux”. Translation taken from Paul M. Allen,
[4] From Walter Schubart,
That such an idea is not outdated, can be gleaned from an article of 1990 in
“…Do they [of Eastern Europe] come, as it were, like mendicants to the door, bearing only chronicles of wasted time? Or might they have, under their threadbare cloaks, some hidden treasure?
Traveling through this region over the last decade, I have found treasures: examples of great moral courage and intellectual integrity; comradeship, deep friendship, family life; time and space for serious conversation, music, literature, not disturbed by the perpetual noise of our obsessively telecommunicative world; Christian witness in its original and purest form; more broadly, qualities of relations between men and women of very different backgrounds, and once bitterly opposed faiths: an ethos of solidarity. Here the danger of sentimental idealization is acute, for the privileged visitor enjoys these benefits without paying the costs. There is no doubt that, on any quantitative or utilitarian reckoning, the costs have been higher than the benefits. Yet it would be even more wrong to pretend that these treasures were not real. They were. And for me the question of questions after 1989 is: What if any of these good things will survive liberation? Was the community only a community of fate,…” From
[5] The “West” (
[6] Frémont: “Called
The name “Chrysopylae” was given also, to human edifices — actual gates — in areas directly influenced by the Greek language and culture. In the ancient city of Constantinople, and structures in Kiev and Vladimir, there are “Golden Gates”; and probably others in areas touched by Orthodoxy or the Greek language and culture. Frémont had learned Greek and Latin as a young student, and read with enthusiasm, at least portions of the tales of Homer.
It is worth noting, that the use of the word “gold”, was of course intended, in all of these cases, to bring that to which the name was given, into association with all the mystique, majesty and power which belongs to gold. It is, as it were, a “royal” name.
[7] Vladivostok (“Rule the East”): “In the summer of 1859 the general-governor of eastern Siberia, N. N. Murav’ev examined the bay from the cape of Povorotnoi (the turning point) to the Korean border, on the ship “America”. The bay was given the name “Peter the Great”. The squadron entered the bay on the southern extremity of the large peninsula, which struck the sailors as its most beautiful characteristic. The harbor in this bay was then named Vladivostok.
On August 5th the corvette “Griden” came to Vladivostok under the command of lieutenant Egershel’d. The navigation officer of the corvette, Churkin, conducted an examination and inventory of the bay. They called the bay The Golden Horn, and the strait — the Eastern Bosporus.” Quoted from
[8] Henzen: “The Pacific Ocean is the Mediterranean of the future. In this future the role of Siberia, as a country lying between the ocean, south Asia, and Russia, is of extreme importance. It is understood that Siberia must extend down to the border of China.
The names of Muraviev, Putyatin, and their comrades are indelibly inscribed in history. They have built the pillars for a long bridge across the ocean. While in Europe somber funerals are being held and everybody has something to grieve about, they at one end, and the Americans at the other, are hammering together a new cradle!” Cited in David Dallin.
[9] Benjamin Ide Wheeler, “World Cities”, an address before the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco on August 28,1916; printed in Wheeler’s
In the US Senate in 1852, William H. Seward spoke the following: “Even the discovery of this continent [the “new world” — Amerіса] and its islands and the organization of society and government upon them, grand and important as these events have been, were but conditional, preliminary, and ancillary to the more sublime result, now in the act of consummation — the reunion of the two civilizations, which, having parted on the plains of Asia four thousand years ago, and having traveled ever afterward in opposite directions around the world, now meet again on the coasts and islands of the Pacific Ocean.” Cited in Dan E. Clark, “Manifest Destiny and the Pacific”
[10] Walt Whitman’s poem is entitled “Facing West from California’s Shores”; the remainder of this poem reads so:
[11]
Vladimir Soloviev seems to have located some relation of this expression to Xerxes; see studies of his poem “Ex Occidente Lux”(1890).
[12] The expression, of course, means “Light from the West”. (In a small biannual journal out of Great Britain:
[13] The University of California Berkeley’s motto
The University of California Berkeley was intimately related, as an “Athens of the West”, with the “mythology” of the Golden Gate and its position at the far edge of Western progress, looking across the Pacific to the lands, peoples and cultures of the Far East. “Berkeley” received its name via Frederick Billings, who knew Frémont. He described the name as having come as an “inspiration” from the famous poem by the philosopher George Berkeley, well-known for its final stanza:
[14] An examination of the origin and development of the idea of “light”, within the cultural history of Western Man, leads into very deep and essential themes; many of which are quite deeply kindred to this work — with its ultimate intent of bringing greater clarification into the mind of man, here, at this far western edge of the West, and elsewhere. The “light” needed at the far western edge of the West, is not to found in ancient sacred temples, oracular craters, or such — as was the case in the “ancient” time at the sources of Western Civilization. The light in this earthy, secular place and time, must be reborn in men and women of Man.
[15] The concept “horizontal” is used here, and throughout this work, to indicate an experience, attitude, tendency, philosophy, idea or other, which would interpret, understand, embrace or accept any and all aspects of life and world as adequately recognized by ideas and realities which are purely earthly and secular. This idea of the “horizontal” stands in contrast to that of the “vertical”; wherein is to be understood an understanding of life, world, man, and so on, which requires or includes — as an essential, vital, necessary element — an interpretation with a spiritual or religious dimension. In other words, a “vertical” interpretation requires ideas and realities which are not present in the “horizontal” world. They could be generally contrasted as “earthly” and “spiritual”. The distinction will be further clarified in the content of the essay.