YAKOV KROTOV

February 1, 2001, 7.45 PM, Moscow

Clark, Victoria, Why Angels Fall: A Journey Through Orthodox Europe from Byzantium to Kosovo. Macmillan: London, 2000. 460 p.

Clark is a British journalist, educated in Catholic Universities, from 1990 to 1996 wrote for the Observer from Romania, Serbia and Russia from 1990 to 1996, now in London writes a book about eleventh-century Europe.

Clark states that the present border between countries of EU or NATO is the border between Roman Catholic or Protestant and Eastern Orthodox countries, The last "were shut down, disqualified on the grounds of being insufficiently democratic and economically nonviable" (7). The sole example of Greece, this "mother-church" of Eastern Orthodoxy, is enough to make this statement dubious. The typical example of reductionism in thinking. In her portrait of Greece Clark simply marks the combination of pro-European and anti-European, anti-religious and pro-religious qualities (pp. 174-5).

She doesn't try to explain how these coexist. May be she doesn't understand that the same dualism is inherent to mane Western Europeans and Americans, who tends to be Christian believers and churchgoers. Greece, Romania or any Eastern Orthodox human who is not anti-Western seems to her abnormal, a sort of missing link between human and monkey, West and East. P.e.: "The Romanians, pulled eastward by their religion and westward by their Latin language, are almost as schizophrenic a people as the Greeks." (249). I guess I will seem schizophrenic to Clark.

"East and West had evolved different ways of apprehending Man's relation with his God. Sensible and rational, the Latins believed that Man must wait until death to know if he was saved or damned. Idealistic and mystical, the Byzantines believed Man could be saved before death. By the Grace of God, Man could become God, in the sense of knowing and participation in his divine energy, while still alive." (18)

Clark ignores the universalistic character of Byzantium Christianity, although she've heard about it. Patriarch Gennadius Scholarius wrote : "I do not call myself a Hellene because I do not believe as the Hellenes believed, I might call myself a Byzantine because I was born at Byzantium. But I prefer simply to call myself a Christian" (p. 41 - from Runciman S. The Great Church in Captivity, Cambridge, 1968, p. 121, from Georgius Scholarius Gennadius, Contre les Juif, in Oevres Completes, III, 252.)

"The wider story of Eastern Orthodoxy in Europe is the story of these two unfamiliar sounding phenomena - Phyletism and Hesychasm - the one hellish in its practical consequences, the other heavenly in its ideal. The short answer to the question why angels fall, why Eastern Orthodoxy is able to reach for the angelic heights then plunge to hellish depths, is Phyletism." (42)

But neither Hesychasm nor Philetism are really common or even most typical and widespread phenomena for Eastern Orthodoxy. Byzantium was a multinational empire, and Western Europe was much more nationalistic than it. Philetism appeared only in XIX c. and was reflection of Western phenomena. Hesychasm is very local phenomena of XIV c., then artificially restored in XVIII-XIX cc. It was always marginal phenomena, and most monks ignored it. In reality, the main problem is that Church life of West and East have more in common, than differences, which are rooted outside the church in politics and deeply inside the human souls.

This is why the book is very interesting as a set of interviews, but it is absolutely wrong to seek in it inner life of Eastern Orthodoxy. Political columnist posess special circle of friends, and Clark contacted only Church nationalists. She tended to meet with anti-Westerns, who pretend to be the only representatives of Eastern Orthodoxy. Certainly, it is easier to explain, why silly and aggressive Eastern Orthodox bosses are alien to the West. But I strongly suspect that Clark will meet the same nationalism and aggressive among Western European Roman Catholic and Protestant bosses. It is senseless to study differences between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism taking interview with participant of conflict of North Ireland. Journalist is doomed to contact a dark side of life, if he/she doesn't make a special effort to look in a different direction.

�lark formulated her position beforehand: "I had been interested to find that Professor Samuel Huntington seemed to have nationalized my hunch that Orthodox countries of Europe constitute a world of their own, distinct from our western one, on account of their Orthodox culture. I had found his argument, that the wars of the near future would be fought over civilization borders rather than national, ideological or economic ones, very persuasive" (196).

Nonacademic, oversimplified theory of Huntington became the ideological basis of Clark's travel. As the result she mostly is busy with gathering facts which fit to Huntington's theory and either ignoring or misinterpreting those which contradict it. It is specially obvious in the chapter about Cyprus. Clark writes only about the dangers of Greek nationalism, ignoring the Turkish side of conflict. She approves her compatriots, "loath to loose their strategic toehold in the Middle East." (351).

Such position is certainly very one-sided and tends to ignore some very definite "Eastern-style" taste in Western political game. Clark's books tends to be one more example of the very aged but not very respectable tradition of Western enmity to the outside world. I guess this what Maggie O'Kane wanted to say when she wrote that Clark represents "the great tradition of nineteenth-century English lady travellers" (quoted on the cover of the book.) Very Victorian. I hope that this tradition will give way to more balanced and tolerant view.

Victorian is the religious position of Clark: "While I wholeheartedly believed in God, I found it hard to believe in the divinity of Christ" (65). Victorian is her her dealing with the problem of emancipation of women. She is deeply indignant that women are forbidden to enter Athos, ancient center of Eastern Orthodox monasticism, "this last bastion of masculinity in Europe." "When Greece joined the EEC in 1984 a rare exception to the rules -- a 'derogation' - was made regarding freedom of movement on Mount Athos. The exception has been challenged so far but unsuccessfully" (p. 4).

Under this conflict lies not so much the difference in view on sex as the different perception of space. For collectivictic culture of Athos "private space" is the whole island. It is a misuse of term borrowed from other culture under the pressure of external circumstances. Still, collectivist culture once was the only one, and modern idea of privacy is the result of its transformation, so the dialogue between two oppositions, old and new, is possible like the dialogue between two generations.

Clark believes that "the cleverest thing" she head from some silly Serbian bishop was "sly impugning of western man's virility". Clark asked him why are there so many more nuns than monks in the Serbian Church". He answered: "Serbs are a rather rough people. It's hard for them to do without women. Maybe in the West you have more monks" (65).

Still, Clark gives some valuable factual material about the positions of Eastern Orthodox fundamentalists. For example, Fr. Tikhon Shevkunov, the abbot of Sretensky monastery in Moscow, was more frank with her than with Russians:

"Fascism is not possible in Russia because the mentality of Russian people is absolutely non-aggressive. Germans wouldn't have gone quietly to the gulag camps in their millions like Russians did ... The gulag camps were not set up by Russians but by Jews. The Russian mentality is not capable of conceiving of any such thing! Ninety-three per cent of the early top Communists were Jews." (299).

The lines between saint and ruler, State and Church were blurred in Byzantium - 72, not precise quotation. The word "blurred" seems interesting as description of archaic "monism."

Philips, Fr. Andrew, 'Orthodox Christianity and the Old English Church', Greenprint and Design, 1996, p. 30: after the Norman invasion of 1066 many Englishmen went to Constantinople, About 1075 at least 10 000 instead of Norman yoke set sail to CP or Micklegarth, as they called it (17).