ON LAND
Of
all the four elements, the one which is important for all countries is land[1]
because a country is, after all, land. Air, water, electricity - they all shift
around from country to country. But neither can a country be removed from its
land, nor can land be removed from beneath its country, provided that the
country itself does not come to an end, as in the sad case of Atlantis.
In
America, land is the most American of all the elements. To begin with, it is
very colorful, I would even say photogenic. It could never be called “earthy”,
meaning that dismal, grey-brown shade which in Russia is ascribed to the land
and its dull reflection in people’s faces. Saltykov-Shchedrin writes in “Old
Days in Poshekhone”: “As a result of excessive work and lack of nourishment the
young women were very often unwell and everyone had a dismal, sleepy and earthy
complexion”. Instead of calling a sickly complexion “earthy” in Russia, is it
not the land itself, like Shchedrin’s young women, which is often unwell, namely
as a result of excessive work and lack of nourishment?
In
America the word “earthy”, were it to be used, would sooner mean “blazing with
color”, as the land in many places has a reddish shade. In that case one can
speak of a secret connection between the color of the land and its ancient
red-skinned population. But what is important is not its redness, but its
colorfulness as such. When you rush along the streets of New England or the
South in an automobile, sections of soil along the side of the road change
colors: now more yellow, or more red; blacker or greener. In an airplane over
the American South with its great mountains and wilderness, an altogether
incredible view can be had. There, blue, orange, emerald and lilac appear as if you were watching the
compositions of color and music [tsvetomuzikal’nye] from the Walt Disney film Fantasia. And if not emerald, even the everyday color grey,
synonymous with monotony, appears different shades for the two hours of the
flight, from pearl to matte. Did someone color the air, or place a kaleidoscope
under our eye? No, this is the simple, naked land - the soil of the American
continent.
And
not only the appearance, but the feel is also different. It does not turn to
mud, does not disolve away and even when it rains it preserves its well-fed
firmness. I have already forgotten what the tracks of my boots look like, but
in Russia they rarely escape notice, they obstinately overtake me like an
importunate detective. Everywhere, the sticky land grabs hold of your legs, but
in America boots do not leave tracks in the earth, and the land does not stick
to your boots - a reciprocal freedom, not to mention indifference.
Of
course, in America not that many people walk; more drive. And there is not much
land where people live; there is more asphalt. But even where there is land,
and where it comes into contact with shoes, it comes off all around completely
gentlemanly without any hint of shadowing, or thievery. To carry away your
homeland in the soles of one’s boots, as many emigrants fleeing Russia dreamed,
would hardly succeed in the case of America. It does not stick to the sole, you
cannot take it away as contraband under the guise of accidentally acquired mud.
One
of my first impressions of America is people’s strange relationship to space.
In Russia it is distinctly divided into high and low: everything of value, of
importance gravitates upward, and
the trifles and foul things of life are thrown down below - walking about, no
one glances down because there couldn’t be anything good there. Everyone knows
that there is mud and slush down there, and so it is necessary keep oneself
above and not press close to the land/ground and the floor so as not to sully
oneself.
In
America this squeamishness towards what is below is completely absent. With all
of their body language [pozy],
they express trust in it and in no way try to break away from or step over it.
In libraries, offices, classrooms people can quite naturally sit on the floor.
Piles of books can be placed on the floor. People leaf through them while
reclining there. The floor is equal with the wall, the table and chair, with
all other flat surfaces and together they form a space which is experienced as
a valuable homogeneity. That which is higher is not necessarily better.
Secondary books may be placed high up on shelves while the important ones lie
on the floor - the closer the handier. Space which is open on all sides can
extend out in any direction as if there were no gravity and no need to overcome
it, giving over its entire life to an obstinate vertical tendency.
And
in the human body itself there are also no distinct valuable coordinates.
Americans’ celebrated feet are continuously above their heads. They put their
feet on the table, lift them up on the backs of chairs. Teaching is done around
a table from which stick out the naked knees of American students. They stick
out over their books, over their inquiring and familiar gaze.
In
such an upsetting of high and low there is not the least moral challenge. It is
possibly just a type of gymnastics which has been implanted in the cosmic
feeling of democracy: the low is not far from the high, and having become equal
level with it. Lenin hardly would have been able to beat into Americans’ heads
his ideas about why the upper classes, who cannot, and the lower classes, who
do not want to, should change places. All these revolutionary acrobatics are
alien to the American way of thinking because values here are not arranged
vertically. Rather, they are expressed, not qualitatively, but quantitatively
so that there is a distinction between rich and poor, but no opposition.
In
Russia even an impoverished barin
preserved an air of superiority before his servant and adjusted the inclination
of his head depending on whether, standing before him, was the owner of one
hundred or one hundred and twenty souls (Gogol’s undying observation). In
America the governor goes to the same club as his driver and must ingratiate
himself a bit with the janitor so that his friends and family will vote for him
in the next election. The body politic is, in this land, arranged in the
typical pose of a yankee having lifted its feet just above its head and having
granted the “lower classes” more
quotas and privileges than the middle class. It is not surprising that an
ordinary body instinctively takes the same position in order that the head does
not tower over the extremities, but divides with them, in a familiar way, their
common interval of space.
In
Russia people are ashamed of their feet because they come in contact with the
ground, and carry with them its dust and uncleaness [nechist’]. Dropping by someone’s home, people shake off the
dust, wiping their feet with the same zeal as if they wanted to shake off the
feet themselves, to leave them with their boots in the hall. In general there
is something a little shamefull, unpleasant in feet, some sort of metaphysical
baseness. In America nobody is ashamed of their feet, and naked feet are not a
sign of shamelessness. Even in official situations, people sometimes go
barefoot; it is a matter of personal taste, and not social order.
If
a lawyer, to whom you are paying a call, exhibits before you the soles of his
patent-leather shoes, it does not mean that he is disregarding you. If a coed,
having removed her shoes, has lain down with a book on the floor of the
library, it does not mean she is enticing you. It only means that in America
there is a different conception of high and low than in Russia. They change
places just as easily as do the floor and the ceiling on a space ship, in the
homogeneous space of weightlessness.
Where
does this weightlessness come from? Perhaps it is the same force of
civilization which sends out space ships from the planet - that is what creates
islands of weightlessness here, on Earth, paving it with layers of antigravity.
Extensive fields, even lawns, twinkling bands of roads, firm asphalt, clean
sidewalks, reliable foundations of houses and wall-to-wall carpeting... The
land is wrapped up like an expensive bagatelle, so it seems, and it is lifted
slightly by its perfectly tied bow of a many-tiered crossing and is presented
as a gift. And where the land is bare and uncultivated, it is preserved namely
as a waste land and, what is more, is surrounded by a protective field.
Civilization in America is not alienated from the land, like its
counterbalance, but takes the land along with it in flight, including it in the
field of arising weightlessness.
Civilization
is antigravity. With all its plusses and minuses. There is no dreadful,
constricting force of land; and no corresponding duty to raise and straighten
oneself out, place one’s high over the low, rise up into the heights like a
prophet... Or like a leader... Or like a Vanka-Vstanka[2],
the favorite Russian cultural hero of childhood.
Transl. Thomas Dolak