Similarly in post-Tolstoy Russia, ethics based on this misquoted verse undermined a great deal of the nation's resolve in confronting the police state. \\'hat has followed is known all too welclass="underline" six decades of turning the other cheek transformed the face of the nation into one big bruise, so that the state today, weary of its violence, simply spits at that face. As well as at the face of the world. In other words, if you want to secularize Christianity, if you want to translate Christ's teachings into political terms, you need something more than modern political mumbo-jumbo: you need to have the original—in your mind at least if it hasn't found room in your heart. Since He was less a good man than a divine spirit, it's fatal to harp on His goodness at the expense of His metaphysics.
I must admit that I feel somewhat uneasy talking about these things: because turning or not t^^ing that other cheek is, after all, an extremely intimate affair. The encounter always occurs on a one-to-one basis. It's always your skin, your coat and cloak, and it is your limbs that wilwil have to do the walking. To advise, let alone to urge, anyone about the use of these properties is, if not entirely wrong, indecent. All I aspire to do here is to erase from your minds a cliche that harmed so many and yielded so little. I also would like to instill in you the idea that as long as you have your skin, coat, cloak, and limbs, you are not yet defeated, whatever the odds are.
There is, however, a greater reason for one to feel uneasy about discussing these matters in public; and it's not only your own natural reluctance to regard your young selves as potential victims. No, it's rather mere sobriety, which makes one anticipate among you potential villains as well, and it is a bad strategy to divulge the secrets of resistance in front of the potential enemy. What perhaps relieves one from a charge of treason or, worse still, of projecting the tactical status quo into the fuhire, is the hope that the victim will always be more inventive, more original in his thinking, more enterprising than the villain. Hence the chance that the victim may triumph.
Williams College, 1984
Flight from Byzantium
To Veronique Schiltz
1
Bearing in mind that every observation suffers from the observer's personal traits—that is, it too often reflects his psychological state rather than that of the reality under observation—I suggest that what follows be treated with a due measure of skepticism, if not with total disbelief. The only thing the observer may claim by way of justification is that he, too, possesses a modicum of reality, inferior in extent, perhaps, but conceding nothing in quality to the subject under scrutiny. A semblance of objectivity might be achieved, no doubt, by way of a complete self-awareness at the moment of observation. I do not think I am capable of this; in any event, I did not aspire to it. AH the s^e, I hope that something of the sort took place.
2
My desire to get to Istanbul was never a genuine one. I am not even sure whether such a word—"desire"—should be used here. On the other hand, it could hardly be called a mere whim or a subconscious urge. Let it be a desire, then, and let's note that it came about partly as the result of a promise I made to myself in 1972, on leaving my hometown, that of Leningrad, for good—to circumnavigate the inhabited world along the latitude and along the longitude (i.e., the Pulkovo meridian) on which Leningrad is situated. By now, the latitude has been more or less taken care of; as to the longitude, the situation is anything but satisfactory. Istanbul, though, lies only a couple of degrees west of that meridian.
The aforementioned motive is only marginally more fanciful than the serious—indeed, the chief—reason, about which I will say something a bit later, or than a handful of totally frivolous secondary or tertiary ones, which I'll broach at once, it being now or never with such trivia: (a) it was in this city that my favorite poet, Constantine Cavafy, spent three momentous years at the turn of the century; (b) I always felt, for some reason, that here, in apartments, shops, and coffeehouses, I should find intact an atmosphere that at present seems to have totally vanished everywhere else; (c) I hoped to hear in Istanbul, on the outskirts of history, that "overseas creak of a Turkish mattress" which I thought I discerned one night some twenty years ago in the Crimea; (d) I wanted to find myself addressed as "effendi"; (e)— But I"m afraid the alphabet isn't long enough to accommodate all these ridiculous notions (though perhaps it's better if you are set in motion precisely by some such nonsense, for it makes final disappointment so much easier to bear). So let us get on to the promised "chief" reason, even though to many it may seem deserving of at best the "f" in my catalogue of betises.
This "chief" reason represents the pinnacle of fanciful- ness. It has to do with the fact that several years ago, while I was talking to a friend of mine, an American Byzantinist, it occurred to me that the cross that Constantine beheld in his dream on the eve of his victory over Maxentius—the cross that bore the legend "In this sign, conqucr"—was not in fact a Christian cross but an urban one, the basic element of any Roman settlement. According to Eusebius and others, Constantine, inspired by his vision, at once set off for the East. First at Troy and then, having abruptly abandoned Troy, at Byzantium he founded the new capital of the Roman Empire—that is, the Second Rome. The consequences of this move of his were so momentous that, whether I was right or wrong, I felt an urge to see this place. After all, I spent thirty-two years in what is known as the Third Rome, about a year and a half in the First. Consequently, I needed the Second, if only for my collection.
But let us handle all this in an orderly fashion, so far as this is feasible.
3
I arrived in Istanbul, and left it, by air, having thus isolated it in my mind like some virus under a microscope. If one considers the infectious nature of any culture, the comparison does not seem irresponsible. Writing this note in the Hotel Aegean in the little place called Sounion—at the southeast corner of Attica, forty miles from Athens, where I landed four hours ago—I feel like the carrier of a specific infection, despite constant inoculations of the "classical rose" of the late Vladislav Khodasevich, to which I have subjected myself for the greater part of my life. I really do feel feverish from what I have seen; hence a certain incoherence in all that follows. I believe that my famous namesake experienced something of the sort as he strove to interpret the pharaoh's dreams—though it's one thing to bandy interpretations of sacred signs when the trail is hot (or warm, rather) and quite another a thousand and a half years later.
4
About dreams. This morning, in the wee hours, in Istanbul's Pera Palace, I, too, beheld something—something utterly monstrous. The scene was the Department of Philology of Leningrad University, and I was coming downstairs with someone I took to be Professor D. E. Maximov, except that he looked more like Lee Marvin. I can't recall what we were talking about, but that's not the point. My attention was caught by a scene of furious activity in a dark corner of the landing where the ceiling came down extremely low. I saw there three cats fighting with an enonnous rat, which quite dwarfed them. Glancing over my shoulder, I noticed one of the cats ripped apart by the rat and writhing convulsively in agony on the floor. I chose not to watch the battle's outcome—I recall only that the cat became still—and, exchanging remarks with Marvin-Maximov, I kept going down the staircase. I woke up before I reached the hall.