36
It is a monstrous idea, but not without a measure of truth. So let us try to grapple with it. At its source lies the Eastern principle of ornamentation, whose basic element is a verse from the Koran, a quotation from the Prophet: sewn, engraved, carved in stone or wood, and graphically coincident with this very process of sewing, engraving, carving if one bears in mind the Arabic form of writing. In other words, we are dealing with the decorative aspect of calligraphy, the decorative use of sentences, words, letters—with a purely visual attitude to them. Let us, disregarding here the un- acceptability of this attitude toward words (and letters, too), point out only the inevitability of a literally spatial— because conveyed by distinctly spatial means—perception of any sacred locution. Let us note the dependence of this ornament on the length of the line and on the didactic character of the locution, often ornamental enough in itself. Let us remind ourselves: the unit of Eastern ornament is the sentence, the word, the letter.
The unit—the main element—of ornamentation that arose in the West was the notch, the tally, recording the passage of days. Such ornament, in other words, is temporal. Hence its rhythm, its tendency toward symmetry, its essentially abstract character, subordinating graphic expression to a rhythmic sense. Its extreme non-antididacticism. Its persistence—by means of rhythm, or repetition—in abstracting from its unit, from that which has already been once expressed. In short, its dynamism.
I would also remark that the unit of this ornamentation— the day, or the idea of the day—absorbs into itself any experience, including that of the sacred locution. From this follows the suggestion that the natty little bordure on a Grecian urn is superior to a pattern in a carpet. Which, in turn, leads us to consider who is more the nomad, the one who wanders in space or the one who migrates in time. However overwhelming (literally, too) the notion that all is interwoven, that everything is merely a pattern in a carpet, trodden underfoot, it frankly yields to the idea that everything gets left behind—the carpet and one's own foot upon it included.
37
Oh, I foresee objections! I see an art historian or an ethnologist preparing to wage battle, figures or potsherds in his hands, over everything stated above. I can see a bespectacled someone carrying in an Indian or a Chinese vase with a meander or an epistyle just like the natty little Greek bordure and exclaiming, "Well, what about this? Isn't India (or China) the East?" Worse still, that vase or dish may turn out to be from Egypt or elsewhere in Africa, from Patagonia, or from Central America. Then out will gush a downpour of proofs and incontrovertible facts that pre- Islamic culture was figurative, that, thus, in this area the West simply lags behind the East, that ornament is by definition non-functional, and that space is greater than time. Or that I, for no doubt political reasons, am substituting anthropology for history. Something like that, or worse.
What can I say to this? And need I say anything? I'm not sure, but all the same, I will point out that if I hadn't foreseen these objections I wouldn't have taken up my pen— that space to me is, indeed, both lesser and less dear than time. Not because it is lesser but because it is a thing, while time is an idea about a thing. In choosing between a thing and an idea, the latter is always to be preferred, say I.
And I also foresee that there will be no vase, no potsherds, no dish, or bespectacled someone. That no objections will be issued, that silence will reign supreme. Less as a sign of assent than as one of indifference. So let us nastify our conclusion somewhat and add that an awareness of time is a profoundly individualistic experience. That in the course of his life every person sooner or later finds himself in the position of Robinson Crusoe, carving notches and, having counted, say, seven of them, or ten, crossing them out. Such is the origin of ornament, regardless of preceding civilizations, or of that to which this given person belongs. And these notches are a profoundly solitary activity, isolating the individual and forcing him toward an understanding, if not of his uniqueness, then at least of the autonomy of his existence in the world. That is what the basis of our civilization is, and that is what Constantine walked away from to the East. To the carpet.
38
A normal hot, dusty, perspiring summer day in Istanbul. Moreover, it is Sunday. A human herd loitering about under the vaults of the Hagia Sophia. Up there aloft, inaccessible to the sight, are mosaics representing either kings or saints. Lower down, accessible to the eye, yet not to the mind, are circular metallic-looking shields with lacelike quotations from the Prophet in gold against dark-green enamel. Monumental cameos with coiling characters, evoking shadows of Jackson Pollock or Kandinsky. And now I become aware of a slipperiness: the cathedral is sweating. Not only the floor but the marble of the walls as well. The stone is sweating. I inquire, and am told it is because of the sharp jump in temperature. I decide it is because of my presence, and leave.
39
To get a good picture of one's native realm, one needs either to get outside its walls or to spread out a map. But, as has been remarked before, who looks at maps nowadays?
If civilizations—of whatever sort they are—do indeed spread like vegetation in the opposite direction to the glacier, from south to north, where could Rus, given her geographical position, possibly tuck herself away from Byzantium? Not just Kievan Rus, but Muscovite Rus as well, and then all the rest of it between the Donets and the Urals. And one should, frankly, thank Tamerlane and Genghis Khan for retarding the process somewhat, by somewhat free-zing—or, rather, trampling—the Bowers of Byzantium. It is not true that Rus played a shielding role for Europe, preserving the West from the Mongol yoke. It was Constantinople, then still the bulwark of Christendom, that played that role. (In 1402, incidentally, a situation developed under the walls of Constantinople which pretty nearly turned into a total catastrophe for Christianity and, indeed, for the whole of the then known world: Tamerlane encountered Bajazet. Luckily, they turned their arms against each other: interracial rivalry, it would seem, made itself known. Had they joined forces against the West—that is, in the direction both were moving—we would now be looking at the map with an almond-shaped, predominantly hazel eye.)
There was nowhere for Rus to go to get away from Byzantium—any more than for the West to get away from Rome. And, just as the West in age after age became over- growi with Roman colonnades and legality, Rus happened to become the natural geographical prey of Byzantium. If in the way of the former stood the Alps, the latter was impeded only by the Black Sea—a deep but, in the final analysis, flat thing. Rus received, or took, from Byzantium hands everything: not only the Christian liturgy but also the Christian-Turkish system of statecraft (gradually more and more Turkish, less vulnerable, more militarily ideological), not to mention a significant part of its vocabulary. The only thing Byzantium shed on its way north was its remarkable heresies—its Monophysites, its Arians, its Neo- platonists, and so on—which had constituted the very essence of its literary and spiritual life. But then its northward expansion took place at a time of growing domination by the crescent, and the purely physical power of the Sublime Porte hypnotized the North in far greater measure than the theological polemics of dying-out scholiasts.