Europe, mentioned by Hesiodos, is one of Oceanos and Thetis' daughters, her name meaning "the big-eyed" or "the broad-faced" – just like the Moon.1 The expression may tempt to immense digressions: one who is "big-eyed" may also have "widely open eyes", he may "see for" and moreover, he may be "of a wide horizon". The primary meaning of the word, howewer, implies etimologically the concepts of "extension", "enlargement", and "sensitivity". At the dawn of its history Europe had appeared as a seductive girl, who lets the godly passion snatch her out of her family. Beauty, curiosity, amazement, horror are all in her "big eyes". As she leaves Phoenice for Chreta on the back of a bull of her own free will – the Greeks would have called her destiny apodermic, because so is the life of a traveller induced by the tempting "foreignness" to leave his nest. The call of the distance, the attraction of the otherness is a determinative theme and organizing power of the European world. We may see from the Greek sailors to Christopher Columbus, from Magellan to Thor Heyerdahl, that one continent has always besieged all the other continents. This is something unique. Of course, we know about the nomad Asian tribes invading the Eastern-European regions, we know about "japanization" in our era and about "americanization", we know the dramatic phenomenon of immigration which makes the Europe of our days the destination of slow influx from outside. But these are such – mostly late – circumstances whose importance from the point of view of the country of departure cannot compete with the way the apodemy has formed a part of Europe from the very beginning. Moreover, they themselves belong more to Europe than to the history of the respective continent. We do not know whether there has ever been a civilizing campaign launched from Asia or Africa in the direction of The Old World. As far as we know there is no Department of Europe on the University of Benares or Calcutta', in the European capitals, on the other hand, there are Departments of Indology. Buddhism or Islam hasn't led such military activities as the Christian — mainly, the Catholic — church in the "discovered" and at the same time "conquered" lands peopled by heathens. There stood European initiatives behind the conversions to non-European religions: Albert-Eugene Puyon de Pourvourville converted to taoism without any constraint, taking up the name of Matgioi, nobody had forced René Guenon to choose Islam under the name of Abdel Wahid Yahia, in the same way as the German researcher hasn't become Lama Anagarica Govinda as a result of religious propaganda. The thirst for otherness is part of the European identity. In other words, giving up ourselves is a specific modus of being loyal to ourselves. The emblem of this paradox is: the horizon. The big chance and the greatest risk for Europe have always collided with each other along this line. For the European man the horizon has really meant a borderline: templation, experiment, the trial of initiation. As a conclusion from one of the names of the Evil – "the one who tempts your borders" (peiráson), the horizon is the limit of our efforts, mostly on the satanic border between salvation and sin.
CURIOSITAS
There are different assumptions on the reasons why the Very Christian Royal Majesties financially supported Christopher Columbus' plans: they wished to increase their colonial empire, hoped to get rich; the Indian spices may also have had attracted them or they wished to surpass the Portuguese. Last, but not least, they paraded with their mission work, the conversion of immense territories in Asia and Africa. At the end, Columbus himself had taken his Christian name seriously as beginning with 1493 he had signed his letters in the following way: "Columbus, the bearer of Christ". This is something more than the discoverer of new territories from Geneve – he wanted to be a prophet and so declares resolutely: "God has made me the herald of that new heaven and earth, which is described by Saint John in the Apocalipse."2
But that apart, the kings, just like the sailors had obeyed that strong and completely aimless urge called curiosity. It is obvious that the horizon had suggested richness and glory. The imagination and the longing may have set off to obtain them. The unimaginable, promised by the foggy distances, the absoluteness of the novelty, the mysterious unknown may have seemed more attractive than anything. Seneca thought that curiosity had been a Greek disease – graecus morbus3 –. But isn't it Greece where the later Europe has originated from? Fixing one's eyes on the horizon and not thinking of its advantages implies the uniting of the most adventurous act with the wish to contemplate – this is a way of living which effaces every difference between Ulysses and Columbus and it points to one of the distinctive features of the europeanness: the unselfish joy of searching beyond our horizon. A journey undertaken by pure curiosity seems strange to people from the Central- and Far East. Documents prove the astonishment of the Asians hearing about the European custom of travelling in the world without a definite destination. It often happened that travellers had been suspected of being spies, and they were neither soldiers, nor merchants or they didn't even have a paying profession. They were suspicious enough.4 Curiosity is a double-edged virtue. The Cristian tradition, which had persistently fought with the theme from St. Augustine to Montaigne, warns about its harmful effects of tactlessness, the pursuit of useless knowledge, the love of the eccentric and of the occult. So just like sensuality (concupiscentia) and haughtiness (superbia), curiositas may also appear in a profane, prohibited way. It was an opponent of faith, the close neighbour of the original sin. Its sly energies can overcome the theological scruple. Curiosity is par excellence a European heresy. It nourishes the instinct of travelling, the vivacity of "the West" – and it always sets new horizons. After the Cape of Good Hope came India, after India America (first North- then South-America), later on the discovery of Canada (by the French, in the 16th century), then Australia, discovered by the Dutch and the Russian discoveries on the North Sea. After all this happened, Europe had turned to discover herself with an unquenchable thirst. The 18th century brought into fashion the travels abroad, Italy being in the first place. The northern part of Europe had lived under the spell of Southern-Europe, just after World War II. Eastern Europe was attracted by the West. Beside this, the 18th century's England has passed through a period of strong interest in China (one of its consequences being the gardening art on the British Isles5). At the end of the 19th century in France the arts had shown an intense Japanese influence. The modern arts accept the African creativity and the strange forms used on the distant isles. Europe carries in itself the whole earth, the globe is getting European. The distant – as the accepted god of being-on-the-move – is never limited by the outcomes of an a abstract pursuit. It awakens curiosity mixed with horror like the cave Leonardo da Vinci discovered when he was a child. The distance attracts and holds back at the same time. This is where imaginary worlds, utopias, delusions come from. Suggesting a spatial dimension on a flat surface – this has appeared in the works of the Renaisance painters. "The thirst for space was the first" writes Max J. Friedlaandler, "the discovery of the laws of perspective only came after." In the last century Adolphe von Hildebrandt thought that the prestige of the work of art actually derives from the fact that it describes distance (Ein Stueck Naahe als Fernbild behandelt). The way we imagine transcendence appeared also with the concept of the distance. The "there" promises in a way "the other world". The seeing goes through to devotion. Travelling changes form: its name is crusade or pilgrimage. But this is not the end of the European dialogue about the horizon. The theme of the exotic, the presentiment of depths, the whole specter of possible worlds has appeared in the same way. The distance makes the immediate reality fade, enriching it with parallel (so possible, hallucinatory, imaginary) realities. Curiosity instigated by distance may be the source of conversion-transformation and of madness. Let's add to this: the experience of contemplating the horizon brings about not only "the thirst for knowledge", but also its "technological devices". The method is no other than the sectional passing of the distance separating the investigating spirit from the subject of his examination. The European way of perceiving time and the instruments of measurement, just like the devices of orientation in space, are phenomena connected to travelling.
Faust, surrounded by maps, folios and instruments or the sailor watching the starlit sky or the flight of birds are the versions of a typical figure of the European world. This figure is not always sympathetic. Curiosity may be satanic, as the discoveries have often increased the explorer's euphory at the expense of those discovered. When conquering new territories, the European man has often been the herald of foolish haughtiness, barbarically ignoring the rules of moderation. Georg Cristoph Lichtenberg rightly observed: "The encounter of Columbus with the first American was ill-fated."
APODEMY (LONGING)
The horizon – as above mentioned – has promised new knowledge to the traveller. But for many it appeared as an existential solution. Many had set off expecting something "better"; they had plans their immediate surroundings seemed to be hindering. This is the reason of the emigration. There is obviously some "curiosity" at its origin and – for example, in the case of Robinson Crusoe –, the sensibility brought about by the family. The emigrants are primarily urged by hope, by the confidence placed in the world, the "foreign countries" being imags of this promise. They also have a certain secret ambition to do more than what the home could offer. Kierkegaard has formulated the paradigm of this ambition commenting on an evangelical text – Matt. 6.24–34. – the lily of the "fields" learns from an evil bird of places where royal lilies bloom. The lily of the fields is thrown into fever: she wants to travel, to break out of her surroundings and share the life of her relatives in "the mother country". The story ends sadly: the bird listens to the "apodemic" wish of the lily, picks her up, takes her under his wings and flies to the wished-for land. But the flower withers and dies on the way.6 Many such plans have turned out a failure having been stimulated by the utopy of the foreign lands. But the lack of the "apodemic" drive, the withdrawal into the home has itself a distorting effect. Socrates himself suffered from this "disease": as he leaves Rome he appears to be a stranger in his own native town.7 The Greek text marks the urge to step across the artificial obstruction of the walls of the town, the "official" border with the word "apodemy". Socrates, as later Kant, is a person who always stays at home – with a passing Greek word: he is an "epidemic" figure; he appreciates the comforts of the home, the company of his home gods as against all kinds of adventures.
On the contrary, the apodemic chooses the gods of the world outside. In his view, he should always look for the "centre" in another place and home is where his steps lead him. Our "cosmopolitan" views have always preceded the great geographical discoveries. The Renaissance was that age, when people expressed these views with unprecedented enthusiasm, as Leon Battista Alberti put it: "They say, love your country and your parents and do everything on their behalf, at their wish. But they also say that the wide world is our country and that the wise man erects a house wherever he is. If he does so, he doesn't leave his country but chooses another one..."8
In Eastern-Europe the "proletarian internationalism" has disputed for over four decades the individual's right to have a passport – apodemy has become a pure obsession here. Having economical, political or spiritual reasons, the wish to get over "the Iron Curtain" determined not only the life of the fugitives, but the life of those who were wrestling with the fear to risk, with precaution in front of the unknown and with the dream to move freely in the "civilized countries". But in the long run the apodemy of the East – and of the "third world" – has changed the life of the hosts, as well. The western countries had to face the presence of the "foreigner", who was difficult to assimilate, and they had to live together with the "otherness". This is how the acceptance of "the other" has become the most dramatic question in our century and the trial of real liberalism. The European man has become used to, and is proud of feeling at home all over the world, he has also created a theory about this – now he faced unexpected difficulties as in the new situation he has to create a home in his own country for others. Contemplating or besieging the horizon passes him better than he being himself the "horizon", the wished-for land, the destination. "The symptoms of one-sided apodemy" – as we may call this disease Europe suffers of. She undergoes the euphory of expansion and at the same time the complex of shutting himself up. We are only standing at the beginning of this crisis caused by disproportions.
ACEDIA (TAEDIUM CORDIS) OR TRAVELLING WITHOUT ANY HORIZONS
Not all travelling is innocent. There are dark, demonic travels, which cheat the traveller out of himself. Shortly: travelling itself has its own pathology and this hasn't spared Europe. This sick version of travelling belongs to the concept of sin. The reasons for it are not the attraction of discovery or the temptation of the horizon, but the refusal of what is near, the despair caused by the immediate surroundings, disgust of oneself and of the family. Those who set off in this way do not act under the spell of a charming destination, but because they cannot bear to live in the same place any longer. This is the consequence of some "sin" the Christian European tradition has experienced and calls acedia.9 Those who fall vietim to it cannot feel happiness any longer and they lose the hope of their own salvation. They get mentally exhausted, weary of life, depressed, they are paralysed by their failure – and they think all this is caused by the place they live in. The monk will dislike his cell and his community, the layman cannot remain in his house, in his town, in his country. In such circumstances travelling seems to have remained the only solution. The traveller cherishes the illusion of leaving behind his disease, but he doesn't have a definite goal or a clear plan. He sets off to recover from the disease. What he in fact does is carrying it with himself, the disease accompanying him wherever he goes and the original crisis becomes a steady suffering. Acedia is the dubious driving force of the melancholy journey. The one who is driven by this, feels being pursued, not the excitement of the search. The horizon for him is not a stimulating temptation, not an urging challenge, but the diagram of neurosis, the frightening picture of sleepless uneasiness.
Needless to say, the utmost form of weariness of life and what follows it, the strong wish to leave everything does not occur often. But in its milder versions, in disguised form it is characteristic of the drama in the European people's lives. The travelling fever of our days is a good example of it. The tireless merchants, restless spirits, almost self-denying, always excited businessmen swarming in the big airports and hotels are but attempts of escape. It is not only vital force that burns in those who are always busy, who always suffer from lack of time, who never have a "rest", and it is not only their career they're striving for – he may as well testify mental emptiness, he may be trying to hide from himself. The spirit at the mercy of our "rushing" century loses power, his thoughts are strictly directed to his task and his sense of transendence becomes dull. Each free moment brings about boredom in him and he cannot bear to be alone. To protect himself of his own whirl, he makes a packed schedule, he chooses the continuous running and the "business trips". This is the "original" version of travelling without a horizon: this is not a dialogue with the distance, on the contrary, it is the bureaucractic repeal of a useless metaphor, the distance.
Is there a remedy to such drifting? Religious texts suggest for those who are urged by depression to leave their cells, not to start out and to resist temptation. The best way to avoid travelling without a horizon is: not to set off on the road at all. "On not having to change place or leave our house..." – there had appeared a collection under this title in the old sentences about ascesis.10 The "psychosis of being shut up" may be fought down if we resolutely make this state even worse: the hallucinatory line of the horizon is taken over by the navel, standing for the brownian dispersion of the personality. Another solution would be to accept the disease completely and to heal it with wandering. One could travel without a goal if he wishes to express symbolically the temporariness of all earthly ties by this. Accepting to be "a foreigner in life" (xeniteia), he proclaims the temporariness of all agreements, the relativeness of the home as compared to the "heavenly home". This lapse is only one of those accidents occurring in our life, the wandering is part of the human nature, the consequence and the picture of "the fall". It is not by chance, that a famous Russian religious text begins with the words: "Of God's mercy I am a man and a Christian, as a result of my acts I am a sinner, by my state I am a homeless rover from the lowest cast who ceaselessly wanders from one place to another."11
If we speculate over our present condition, we may realize that we have two essential solutions for the restlessness and bustle inside us, for the disintegrative effect of our busy days: to reconquer the contemplating motionlessness, or to experiment on a new style of travelling. The first means to rediscover the good effects of "staying at home". We have to find a way to mingle in a fair – and healthy – way the mentality of the cosmopolitan and the taste of the mother country, without letting the conceited navel-watching, comfortable idling govern us. We have to realize the advantages of staying home, the joys of life a small community can offer. If this is missing, the benefits of a larger community or the travels beyond the horizon of the familial space may become exaggerated bombasts or a matter of routine.
The other solution is more delicate and for the time being impossible. Europe would need a new mythology in order to create a new style of travelling, or at least he would need to revaluate his traditional values and basic symbols. People cannot just go on pilgrimage to a place that has remained rootless.
If neither the monk- nor the wanderer-type solution is applicable, those weary of life still have one chance: that of going home. A journey is only lucky if it returns to the point of departure. The benficial, destructive, power-stimulating, spirit-ennobling, choking or distorting European expansion needs to have an opposite direction, as well, to correct the centripetal movement. So Europe needs to get ready – and not too late – to choose from the possible directions leading towards his own horizon:
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let Maps to others, worlds on worlds have showne,
Let us possesse our world, each hath one, and is one.
(John Donne: The Good-Morrow)
Up to now we have made use of the rich odyssey of the European spirit with astonishing energy. Maybe it is time to consider Penelope's europeanness.
Notes
1. See Karl Kerényi: Die Mythologie der Griechen. In: Die Götter- und Menschheitsgeschichte. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. München, 1984. 87.
2. See Pauline Moffitt Watts: Prophecy and Discovery: On the Spiritual Origins of Cristopher Columbus' Enterprise of the Indies. In: American Historical Review. 1985. 90. 73–102.
3. See André Labhardt: Curiositas. Notes sur l'histoire d'une mot et d'une notion. In: Museum Helveticum. 1960. 17. 206–224.
4. Roland Mousnier: Le XVle et XVIle sicles. Les progres de la civilization européenne et le déclin de l'Orient (1492–1715). Paris, 1954. 556.
5. A. Reichwein: China and Europe. Intellectual and Artistic Contacts in the Eighteenth Century. New York, 1925.
6. Soren Kierkegaard: Les lis des champs et les aiseaux du ciel. Paris, Alcan. 1935. 49–53.
7. See Plato: Phaidros. 230. An elucidating commentary from Gabriel Liiceanu: Introducere în politropia omului si culturii. Buc., 1981. 153.
8. Leone Battista Alberti: Opere volgari. Bari, 1966. II. vol., 124.
9. See Jean Starobinski: Recettes éprouvées pour chasser la mélancolie. In: Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse. Paris, 1985. XXXII., and Yoes Hersant: Acedia. In: Le Débat. 1984. 29. 44–48. For the "classical" reflections on being tired of life see John Kassian (5th century B.C.)
10. Paul Evargetinos: Synagogé. Quoted by Irénée Hausherr: Hésychasme et priere. Roma, 1966. 197.
11. See Récits d'un pélerin russe, traduits et présentées par Jean Laloy. Paris, Éditions de la Baconniere. 1996. 19.