A pilgrim Church
Photo: Corneliu Coposu, Romanian former political prisoner and democratic opposition leader, with Pope John Paul II
In “Saint Ursula” Church from Sibiu, Romania, a Greek-Catholic mass begins at 11.15 am. The church is quite crowded; the people take their seats humbly, still wearing their winter jackets because of the low temperature in the building. The church is rather long than wide, making the altar seem quite distant from the last rows. Two priests and a small boy helping them. A choir composed of 3-4 young women. There are very few decorations. The choir sounds very distant, while the priests seem a bit out of place. The whole arrangement looks rather provisional, hasty, modest.
But as the priest walks among the rows sanctifying the people and the objects with incense, all the people stand up from the seats and cross themselves repeatedly. Everybody is looking towards the priest as he moves farther and farther towards the last rows, while the whole scene steps more and more in the mystery of the cloud of incense. The priest is barely visible now, while the choir, as distant as it seemed, sound more like voices of the beyond, similar to the voices which saved Faust from eternal damnation. Under a cloud of modesty, you see Glory. Under the humble and provisional appearances, you see a group of humble pilgrims battered by a storm but in the light of their Shepherd. And when the priest evokes in his prayers the 20th century martyrs (“We pray for Cardinal Iuliu, for Cardinal Alexandru, for Corneliu Coposu, for Iuliu Maniu, Ion Mihalache, Vasile Lazar, for those who suffered in cell no.14 from Jilava prison”) and his voice brakes and crumbles under the weight of memory, you finally discover what your proud and full of prejudice soul did not realize in the beginning: the presence of Christ among his pilgrim Church.
Truly the Greek-Catholic Church is a pilgrim Church. For those who do not know, Saint Ursula Church is primarily a Roman-Catholic one. The Greek-Catholics are allowed to have their Mass here because… there is no other building left for them in Sibiu. There used to be one, but now it belongs to the Orthodox Church. Ah, the waves of history… such were the times!… What was to be done? Indeed. That building was confiscated in 1948 by the Communists and then offered to the Orthodox Church. Throughout the country a massive campaign of extermination was unleashed against the Greek-Catholics, with the result that most priests were killed or arrested and the properties nationalized or given “back” to the Orthodox Church.
This was to reward prepared for a Church which from the beginning, around the year 1700, was engaged in the gradual improvement of the political and social situation of the Romanians in Transylvania. Admittedly, the Austrian authorities pressed for the union with Rome in exchange for political rights, permission to be educated and to work for the imperial administration. And although they accepted what is still a problem today- papal infallibility- they did preserve the Byzantine rite. And after all, and this should be said boldly- the Pope truly was from the beginning and will continue to be the first bishop of the Church and no Orthodox denies that. What the Eastern Christians want is that he preserves an honorary role and allow for greater influence of the Synods.
But this “grave sin”, “this bowing to Pope the Antichrist, to the heretics, to Catholic propaganda in our Orthodox lands” was immediately felt as bearing that specifically Western characteristic: attention to the interval. It is no secret that in the West and the Roman-Catholic spirituality, history, this world, is engaged more fully, sometimes with responsibility, sometimes with abuse. But this category does exist, the interval is conceptualized and taken into account. So while in the Orthodox realm, the monks of Mount Athos still continued to denounce the sacking of Constantinople from 1204 (and they still do that today, a friend once said to me), while Peter the Great was enslaving the Russian Church and the Romanian Orthodox Church continued to be a passive witness to the Ottoman barbarism, the Greek-Catholics tried to move something in the realm of mentalities, society, politics, however gradually. Already in the 18th century a powerful movement of Transylvanian intellectuals initiated a complex program of rediscovering the Latin origin of the people, of articulating a Romanian identity, of establishing an Enlightenment-inspired agenda asking for modern liberties and rights.
Gradually, the attitude of Vienna changed. In 1848, the Romanians were even more favorable to imperial authority, but with equal rights, than the Hungarians who managed to alienate all their potential allies with their stupefying and arrogant nationalism. After the defeat of the Revolution, although in a time of absolute imperial rule, the Romanians managed for the first time in their history to achieve substantial political equality and proportional representation. After 1867, however, the happy times were gone and Transylvania was subjected to direct Hungarian authority, which led to the reduction of ethnic rights. Still, that Western influence was felt again, as Romanians developed more and more small businesses which led to the formation of a fairly substantial bourgeoisie. Again, a large part of the political elites which contributed to the 1918 unification were Greek-Catholic, while the population was divided in almost 50%-50% Greek-Catholics and Orthodox.
This mainly positive record was to be completely destroyed and forgotten in Communism. They intuited well that the Greek-Catholic church and political elites (mainly grouped in the National Peasants Party) were tough nut to crack and would not collaborate so easily- or at least as easily as some Orthodox hierarchs did. So extreme violence was chosen.
The attitude of some Orthodox hierarchs and believers towards the stolen properties which they refuse to return and in general, towards the existence of this Church can be explained, but hardly justified. The rejection of the Union can be discussed, but the obsession looks suspicious. That the positive, historical record of the Greek-Catholic elites is either rejected, not known or even mocked is certainly dubious. That some people dare to invoke, in response to the questions about the Communist repression and the Orthodox silence, some distant, controversial, supposed abuses comitted 300 years ago can be explained mainly through the categories of hatred and lack of information.
The argument goes like this: “Yes, but we should remember that we also suffered 300 years ago…” Even if this is confirmed by documents (and I admit that I never heard of these abuses), so what?? Is any type of evil justifiable or repaired by another evil? This stubborn, outrageous insistence on their “original sin” and the relativization (if not secret approval) of the Communist evil is stupefying. Horia-Roman Patapievici wrote once about the example of Nae Ionescu, (a hysterical fascist and anti-Semite, but “true Romanian”); Ionescu had written that Petru Maior, 18th century intellectual, that he could be named only as a “good Romanian” but not a “Romanian”. He meant that he barely acted as a good citizen, for Romanian interests and values, more like joining a cause or NGO. But to be a “Romanian” was something organic, ineffable, perennial; you can only be born a “Romanian” and not become one. And a Romanian is synonymous with being Orthodox, while poor Petru Maior was Greek-Catholic.
To this type of argument, H.-R. Patapievici replied in a cold and neutral manner that it is a manifestation of stupidity. The example of Western Ukraine is strikingly similar. Here too we have a Greek-Catholic community which is known as one of the centers of Ukrainian identity and Western values, but eternally regarded with suspicion by the millions of “saints” in the eastern regions. What these armies of “Pravoslavnic” fanatics and defenders of the “true faith” do not understand is that you cannot accuse a pro-Western agenda as not being patriotic or even Christian. On the contrary, one of the most efficient ways to prove the love of your country is exactly to wish the implementation of a free market, human rights, political plurality. These are common sense values which are the most tangible proof that one loves his community and that he is Christian (because liberal democracy has its origins in Christian values), not anti-papist, anti-capitalism, anti-EU hysteria.
Not by developing instant allergy to “Western scholasticism”, “reason without faith” or “theologians who do not live as true Orthodox Christians” is one able to make good theology; seminars and conferences go on and on with the same endless quotes like “According to the Church Father…”, while the Romanian, Ukrainian or Russian public spaces lose the world competition and descend into an eternal but proud backwardness. Rather by engaging in a dialogue with modern achievements, from the philosophical tradition to the empirical aquisitions of the social sciences can a 21st century national public space hope to make sense of our age. Not by retreating from the world and taking pride with the richness of the liturgy can the Church hope to prefigurate the Heavenly kingdom, but by being able to ensure a balance between the mystical core and the engagement with history and society.
Rome has been for the past 150 years elaborating a superb social doctrine, articulating a theology of economy, society, family, political community and above all of the personal dignity. Where is the East (I know the answer: the social doctrine is already there. According to the Church Father….) ? Where are the monasteries as centers of spirituality and culture? Where are the flexible organisations able to entertain a dialogue with the trained laity? Where are the funds for young scholars? Where are the academic exchanges, the competitive ph.d. programs? Where is history as a moral category for an Orthodox?
Where are all of you proud and full of resentment people, the silent ones, the believers of the “true faith” instead of being here, in Saint Ursula Church and see this old priest starting to cry during his sermon, as he recalls his first night spent in cell no. 14, Jilava prison, Romania?
Hoffnung
“Das Licht leuchtet in der Finsternis, die Finsternis aber hat es nicht ergriffen.” (Johannes 1, 5)
Hamlet. Regia: Radu-Alexandru Nica, Teatrul National “Radu Stanca”, Sibiu
Frumusetea e de partea celor indrazneti. Radu-Alexandru Nica preseaza tiparul lui Shakespeare (dar si al lui Olivier), arunca opera in contemporaneitate, dialogand curajos cu traditia teatrala anterioara. Hamlet devine astfel un tanar rebel, nebun, scos din cotidianul juvenil si al placerii unei iubiri pasagere si aruncat intre lumi: intre banal si extraordinar, natural si supranatural, prezent continuu si un trecut al carui sange striga dupa razbunare. Modernitatea fara orizont apare astfel ca fiind compatibila cu magicele cuvinte “Restul e tacere”. Orgoliul, dialectica razbunarii, fantasmele trecutului, inselatorii “zei” si destinul “cinic”- toate acestea raman “desertaciune”. La final, Radiohead,”Exit music (for a film)”, adica cei mai buni cronicari pop-rock ai acestei epoci.
P.S. Si iata cum modesta carticica de rugaciuni ortodoxe isi arata relevanta tainica, intr-o rugaciune catre Preasfanta Nascatoarea de Dumnezeu: “Si ma izbaveste de multe rele si aduceri aminte si naravuri si de toate faptele cele rele ma slobozeste. Ca binecuvantata esti de toate neamurile si prea cinstitul tau nume se slaveste in vecii vecilor. Amin.”
Restul e lumina.
Alexandru Macedonski, doua poezii
Vremea regretelor, a intelepciunii, a mantuirii. Prima poezie il arata pe Alexandru Macedonski asa cum era in tinerete. A doua este din anii maturitatii. Ideea acestei corespondente este a profesorilor Adrian Savoiu si Florin Ionita.
Ura
Dacă-aş fi trăsnet v-aş trăsni,
V-aş îneca dacă-aş fi apă,
Şi v-aş săpa mormântu-adânc
Dac-aş fi sapă.
Dacă-aş fi ştreang v-aş spânzura,
Dacă-aş fi spadă v-aş străpunge,
V-aş urmări dac-aş fi glonţ,
Şi v-aş ajunge.
Dar eu, deşi rămân ce sunt,
O voce-adâncă îmi murmură
Că sunt mai mult decât orice,
Căci eu, sunt ură.
Rondelul meu
Când am fost ură am fost mare,
Dar, astăzi, cu desăvârşire
Sunt mare, căci mă simt iubire,
Sunt mare, căci mă simt uitare.
Eşti mare când n-ai îndurare,
Dar te ridici mai sus de fire
Când ţi-este inima iubire,
Când ţi-este sufletul iertare.
Ştiu: toate sunt o-ndurerare,
Prin viaţă trecem în neştire,
Dar mângâierea e-n iubire,
De-ar fi restriştea cât de mare,
Şi înălţarea e-n iertare.
Ionesco
Ionesco, un classique très connu, mais peu joué
(Le Monde, 28.10.2009)
Il y a un “cas” Eugène Ionesco. Le nom de l’auteur de La Cantatrice chauve est connu dans le monde entier. Né en Roumanie, à Slatina, le 26 novembre 1909, il devrait être célébré à l’occasion du centenaire de sa naissance. La Bibliothèque nationale de France lui consacre déjà une exposition, jusqu’au 3 janvier. La Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques (SACD) confirme qu’il est “un des auteurs français les plus joués en France et dans le monde”. Et pourtant, la postérité du “transcendant satrape”, mort en mars 1994, semble moins flamboyante.
Car si Ionesco est un classique, c’est essentiellement au sens scolaire du terme : La Cantatrice chauve, La Leçon ou Rhinocéros sont toujours étudiés au lycée. Mais beaucoup moins à l’université. Ensuite, si on regarde de plus près la façon dont il est joué, il y a un gros arbre qui cache un certain désert. Cet arbre s’appelle le Théâtre de la Huchette.
La petite salle parisienne joue sans discontinuer La Cantatrice chauve et La Leçon depuis… 1957, dans la mise en scène originale de Nicolas Bataille, créée aux Noctambules en 1950. Avec les années, cette curiosité théâtrale – de nouveaux comédiens remplacent les anciens – est devenue une attraction touristique, au même titre que le Louvre ou la tour Eiffel. Evidemment, La Huchette fait grimper les statistiques.
Et puis Ionesco est souvent monté, à l’étranger comme dans l’Hexagone, par de petites troupes, à la lisière du théâtre amateur. Mais dans les grands théâtres, notamment les prestigieuses scènes publiques, Ionesco est bien peu présent, surtout depuis le début des années 1980, contrairement à son rival, Samuel Beckett, qui n’a cessé d’être joué, encore et encore.
Les exemples d’adaptation se comptent sur les doigts de la main, entre les années 1980 et le milieu des années 2000 : Jean-Luc Boutté avec Les Chaises à la Comédie-Française (1990), Jorge Lavelli et Macbett au Théâtre de la Colline (1992), Michel Bouquet jouant Le Roi se meurt (1994 et 2004).
Le premier à avoir sorti Ionesco de l’esthétique des années 1950 et 1960 dans laquelle il était embaumé, est Jean-Luc Lagarce. En 1991, il met en scène, avec un énorme succès, La Cantatrice chauve. Ce spectacle est repris, depuis 2007, un peu partout en France, avec la même réception enthousiaste – il se joue au Théâtre de l’Athénée, à Paris, du 5 au 21 novembre.
“Quand j’ai annoncé que je voulais mettre en scène Rhinocéros, je me suis heurté à des réactions d’incompréhension, voire de rejet”, raconte, pour sa part, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota. Le directeur du Théâtre de la Ville, à Paris, a été, avec cette mise en scène de 2004, l’artisan d’une redécouverte du dramaturge, qui reste peu monté par de jeunes metteurs en scène, à l’exception de Laurent Pelly.
Ce dernier explique cette désaffection par les prises de position virulentes d’Ionesco contre Bertolt Brecht. “Dans un théâtre français très brechtien, le rapport à l’imaginaire d’Ionesco a été mal compris.” L’image d’“auteur officiel”, élu à l’Académie française en 1970, ainsi que ses articles dans Le Figaro, ressentis comme réactionnaires, n’ont pas arrangé les choses.
Le metteur en scène Bernard Sobel fait partie de ces artistes qui sont “passés à côté d’Ionesco, annonce-t-il. Ce n’est pas tant son côté anti-Brecht qui me rebutait, que son côté Cioran. Il ne m’était pas très sympathique, et je n’ai pas pris la peine de lire vraiment ses pièces”.
Demarcy-Mota considère aujourd’hui Ionesco comme “un auteur gigantesque et visionnaire”. Il explique : “Il a abordé avant tout le monde des thèmes devenus cruciaux : la contamination idéologique, la violence masquée, l’effondrement du langage et la montée d’une novlangue du monde dominant, un univers sous surveillance, mené par la peur. Nombre de ses pièces sont à redécouvrir : Jeu de massacre, Tueur sans gage, Jacques ou la soumission, L’avenir est dans les oeufs…”
Ionesco bénéficie d’un autre supporteur de poids, Luc Bondy, qui a été, tout jeune, son assistant et son ami. Le grand metteur en scène suisse va monter Les Chaises, la saison prochaine, au Théâtre des Amandiers de Nanterre. “L’enfermer dans cette case de théâtre de l’absurde ne lui a pas rendu service, constate Bondy. Il n’y a rien en commun entre Beckett, Adamov et Ionesco. Mais son théâtre est d’une invention aussi importante que celui de Beckett. Il y a une dimension onirique, une façon d’utiliser la logique pour la décomposer, qui sont uniques.”
En Roumanie, où il a peu vécu, si ce n’est les décisives années de jeunesse, et d’où il s’est enfui, Ionesco n’est “ni plus ni moins monté qu’ailleurs”, confie Marie-France Ionesco, fille et ayant droit du dramaturge, tout en soulignant qu’il fait l’objet “de tentatives de récupérations officielles”. Laissons le dernier mot à Vladimir Jankélévitch. Le philosophe était un “inconditionnel” d’Ionesco : “Il déshabille l’homme, et montre ses bas instincts.” Evidemment, cela fait un peu peur.
Harvard beats Yale (GRE epic, part 2)
Allegory of Vices. Antonio Allegri, known as Corregio (Correggio, circa 1489 – Correggio, 1534)
It is cool, it is democratic and progressive, it is new cultural history, it is doing justice for the often ignored masses, it is social history (it’s society, maaan…), it is revising traditional canons, it is denouncing discourses of power, it is gender-inclusive, it discovers the beauty of pop-rock culture. New! Improved! Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
No, it’s just disgusting.
From “The New Criterion”:
October 2009
Harvard’s latest PC travesty
We admit, however, to experiencing a brief flash of empathy with Headmaster Tracy when a 1,095-page tome entitled A New Literary History of America plopped heavily on our desk. Edited by Greil Marcus (“notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary”) and Werner Sollors (a Professor of English and African American Studies at Harvard), this curious waste of wood pulp is published by Harvard University Press.
It is difficult to communicate the global awfulness of the book, the pretension mixed with smarmy demotic knowingness, the preposterous glorification of pop culture, the constant deflation of serious cultural achievement by means of sociological analysis. Perhaps the first thing that should be understood is that, despite its title, A New Literary History of America is only incidentally concerned with literature. A fair percentage of its approximately 200 chronologically arranged entries purports to deal with literary texts or figures. But the whole focus, the whole tone and gestalt, of the book is on extra-literary phenomena. An entry for 1982 is devoted to explaining how “Hip-hop travels the world”: “Perhaps hip-hop’s greatest contribution is the ease with which it inhabits contradiction.” It is hard to argue with that. The entry for “1956, April 16” dilates on the significance—Oh, what great significance it is said to possess!—of Chuck Berry’s pop song “Roll Over Beethoven.” An entry for 1970 is devoted to the porn star Linda Lovelace (she of Deep Throat). And so on. Nineteen-thirty-eight saw the introduction by Action Comics of Superman. In 1945, “Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie record together for the first time.” Another entry for 1945 is devoted to the atom bomb. The tagline: “Nobody apologized, nobody atoned.”
For the editors, the year 1969 was memorable partly because the Complete Poems of Elizabeth Bishop appeared, but mostly because “Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai massacre.” (“American crimes” is the operative phrase in that essay.) The penultimate essay, by which time we’ve reached 2005, is devoted to—Can you guess?—Hurricane Katrina. “If, for that moment,” the editors ask, “New Orleans was the nation, did the nation still exist?” Care to answer that? But the real point of that portentous non-question comes in the next sentence: “If it did, did it deserve to?” The unexpressed answer to that question, of course, is “not really.”
Not then, anyway. Not when George W. Bush, the villain of the essay, was president. But when we come to 2008, the book’s last entry, the clouds part and redemption is at hand. “Barack Obama is elected 44th President of the United States” reads the ecstatic headline. This is the apogee, the denouement, the culmination of all that A New Literary History of America has been building toward. If a book could sing, it would now burst into song. Instead, the book’s final entry consists of that headline and a series of propaganda posters by Kara Walker, an “African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity.” And that’s what this bloated travesty is really about: the left-wing politically correct worldview in which literature, in which cultural endeavor generally, exists only as a prop in a “progressive” political agenda. Harvard University Press should be ashamed.
Land of Silence and Darkness (Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit), 1971. Directed by Werner Herzog
A must-see for the sophisticated, bored, nihilist; for those too lazy to get up from the bed in the morning, for the “righteous” ones who judge people struck by fate, for those who feel that “society” does not understand them, for those who think they are born in the wrong period, region, culture or even the wrong type of universe; for the proud and beautiful, for beauty queens and those obsessed by germs and dirty people in the bus, for those who are empty of love and full of resentment.
We shall hear the angels, we shall see the whole sky all diamonds, we shall see how all earthly evil, all our sufferings, are drowned in the mercy that will fill the whole world. And our life will grow peaceful, tender, sweet as a caress. . . . In your life you haven’t known what joy was; but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait. . . . We shall rest.
(“Sonya”, final line in “Uncle Vanya”, by Anton Chekhov)
