Bulgaria, My Suffering

JULIA KRISTEVA
for Lydia Uldry-Natchcva

to believe in the Christian

1. WHICH LANGUAGE?

myth of resurrection

1 haven't forgotten my mcther tongue. It comes back to me adrnit talking: with rnore and rnore difficulty, 1 hours' immerin dreams. Or when 1 hear my mcther then, after twenty-tour

when 1 listen, as through a stethoseope. to my own dual body and mind, For 1 don't dehnirively mourn the language of my childhood: that would imply decease, detachrnenr, a scar, a forcrypt, by

getting. Instead, over that underground

sion in that now distant sea, 1 find 1 can swim in it quite weil. Or again, when I'mspeaking a foreign language example Russian or English, for if I'm at a lass for a word or can't

that stagnant and decaying reservoir, I've built a new home: 1 live in it, it lives in me, and it's here that what 1 make bold to call "la vrai: vit," the true life of the rni.id and of the Hesh, unfolds. I fed the indescribable impact of the pearly mist that skims the Adantic marshes, absorbing as if inco swirls of Chinese silk the shrieks of the laughing gulls and the nonchalant maliards. Idream Apollinaire. From siesta of the of a spring when motor cars the vagueness which is my

remember the grarnmar, I clutch at the old lifebelt suddenly ' swept my way by the original source: it wasn'r so deeply buried after ali. So it's not Freneh that comes to the rescue when 1 f10under in what amounts to an artificial code, any more than when l' m suddenly too tired to add up or rnultiply properly : no, the language that rises to the surface. and shows me 1 haven't lost touch with my beginnings, is Bulgarian. And yet Bulgarian is alreadyalmost guage as far as a dead lan-

will be scented and poor horses will eat Hcwers. . own immersion in be ing, which no swift: word there emerges a sereniry an almast irnperceptible

can sum wp, for which "joy" is too ordinary and "ecstasy" too solemn, punctuated tremor tiers of my perceprions, reaches aut with Freneh words. From the rronto search for the Freneh dircetion. a bright mass of

rm

concerned. A part of me was nuns, then at the Alliance

gradualiy extinguished as I learn ed Freneh. first with the Dominican Francaise in Bulgaria, then at university. Lastly, exile turned the old corpus inte a corpse, which it replaced with another body altogether, at first rrail and arrihcial, then more and more indispensable : and now the sole surviver. my only living language. is Freneh. Yet I'm almast prepared

word; from sornewhere high up, at the sarne time but in the opposite accumulated lava, a hoard of Freneh reading and conversation, sends down a luminaus thread that may be traccd. scented aut to give life to my sereniry, In the alchemy of naming. I'm alone

122

BULGARIA,

MY

SUFFERING

with the Freneh language. To name being makes me be: and 1 live. body and so ul. in Freneh. But whenever it comes to narrative : whenever, in other words, being presents itself as a story a story perhaps abour that peady mist or those a great swell not made up malIard ducks, or of course about a dream, a passion. or a murder of words, but with its own special rnusic, (orces upon me a rnore ungainly synrax, together rnetaphors
Jn

annoy the natives. Those Whenever amphetamine frontiers the/re this anxiety of

of the counay

1 carne

from and those of the counay et, a shortness breath,

1 carne to.
ic's like an air pockthe effects of an of the

calrns down enough to explain

s

itself 1 might tell you what such crearurc are like, these unclassifiable the heartbeat of a modern

cosmopoliworld which. to survive

tans arnong whom 1 count myself. For one thing. because or in spite of the pressures of immigrarion and inrerbreeding, also personily has managed its farnous lost values, As a result of this. they a new positive artiruele that is taknihilisms. More precisely, in ing shape in opposition to national conformisms and international relation to history as told by the newspapers, nationallanguag-

wich

from the ocean deptlis my sereniry

which have

nothing

to do with Freneh clariry and politeness.

:1y

but which suffuse

with Byzanrine
against Freneh the sarne -

:ly
at
[-

unease. And then I'm trespassing

taste. Freneh taste is an act of politeness berween people who share the sarne rhetoric accumulation background of reading and of images and phrases, the sarne conversation

there are (wo ways of facing up ro Sarajevo and the Crimea. One is ro promote er is ro encourage protect migram such es and cultu res (I'il come back ro this). The othcertam species which, though monsters as ourselves, srill rare, are in the process of proliferating ; to

re

wirhin a stable society. But des pite the fact that

['ve found new life in Freneh and I've beeri my own the beat of vessels bring doing so for nearly fihy years now -

ly g
.e

Freneh memory. neuher

taste can'r always wirhstand music .coiled arcund My (wo communicating

an ancient

a sriil-vigilant

hybrid

writers who run the obvious risk of fall-

forth a strange speech. alien to itsdf. belonging here nor' there, at once foreign and inriLike the characters in mate. memory

ing between two srools. Why? In order ro engender new ererures of language and blood who are rooted in no one language and no one blood diplomats wandering a nomadic a of the dictionary. genetic negotiarors. Jews of being. who chalIenge ali true citizens in the name of humanity that will no longer sit still come in. among ali

5. '1

It

temps retrouv

whose long years of voluntary Proust of space. 1 am a rnonster freak of the forum. At the intersection

and involuntary in vasr tracts

':l :l

sees as embodied

of the crossroads,

anr' rherefore beiligerem and keep qui et.

of (wo languages and of at 1 fashion a language the srnooth

least (wo time dirnensions, references appearance

And where does suffering these noble projects? elemerit of matrierde er tongue, lose that dreams, Thracian

that sedes out fans and then inserts emo~ional inte thern, and beneath of Freneh words, as highly polished stoups. reveals glimpsicons. Weil. it does whether gianr or though

1 was expecring that quesin abandoning beehve. ones mothfor me to of my

tien, but my answer is only half ready. Theres an but if it has beeri painful

as the stone of holy-water ar east the resulting dwarf -

es of the blackened gilt of Orthodox freak is never self-sarjsfied.

the honev

I've also beeri able ro enjoy a kind of

revenge, and above ali take some pride In real iz-

JULIA

KRISTEVA

ing an ideal first cherished by my native bees, To ffy hig her than swifter, stronger! one's parents did higher, that we're will have it must It's not for nothing our children though

on the light; To which

you sornbre 1 belong.

Balkan people, compliments

transare

hxed by the indirterence reproaches : your thanks they're laughter

of the Wesi:ern world. Your are like dernands : your weep, your happy,

the heirs of the Greeks: Russian, English, Freneh at their disposal.

the whole world -

ho pes start out de pressed and falI asleep before even expressed , your songs anticipates sorrow; Although you 're not

Exile, painul

always be, is the only way left to us, since Rabelais and the fali of the Berlin Wali, of Iooking for what the Fifth Book of Pantagnd caIls the "divine
'j

you're nonrunners. always pretending dislikes latecorners.

you set our too a wodd that

soon you arrive too late, in a world too old but to be younger, For some unknown reason,

,:'Il

bettle," This vessei is never found except by selfconscious from searching, or in an exile exiling itself the exiles arrogance. and though a Freneh that of the memory, or the exile's certainrv, loss is never-endinp,

t"l

The

or none~ you think the world owes you a li"Ing: you want everyrhing, but you also wanr to doze, to laze, to avoid the issue, to beat about the bush and cheat, and rnaybe sornetimes to death, though hurt suffering.
2. ERRORS OF TASTE

transplant still-warrn

has given language and body new life, corpse of my matemal

I go on listening to anorher pulse what I might call my mcther as one talks of one's mcther speak deliberately untary or unconscious

work yourselves rnv

why on earth should you: You

or native rnernory, or native tongue. I than involwords and of and is lucky because, hever-

me, mes stmblablts, mes jrires. Bulgaria.

of maternal.rather memo'y,

ing at the edge both of musical inexpressible the biological enough remernbrance srill-vocai throbs Gregonan childlike ities : lators

Let's look at it ariether artitude.

way" If 1 put myself in of rnv at

urges, ne ar both the meaning exisrence my imagination

your place, 1 se e \"ery clearly the arrogance home to deal with the reality there words, as we alI know, to perform em from my own, though way round. thoughts imply curtain, democracy Your problem it operates

But it is up to those who have, sta::d

to be able to conjure up in Freneh. is a of suffenn"g. Bulgaria, my suffering. memory. a warrn, and news with inan-

in other the rnposthe other inte

It isn't me, it's my matemal in time with

sibl. And, after ali, your task isn't so very differis to cransplanr

corpse. a body within my body, that intra-scunds

iterns ; wirh stiffed leves ar:l open conflicrs; with chant and commercial affectio[;s puzzled and awfl economic, slogans; mob and violence : arnbirious devoid of

your native Language (which immediacely implies and lives) words (which thoughts for more and than immediatelv which b;" a other and lives ) from a century without

wirh political, with

and ideological

you've beeri scparated

for fifty years by an iron se parared. too, anv pol-

citizens

brutes : with prorireers and slackers : wirh specuin a huny; with individualists cither shame or object to catch up withour and with alI of you how; you.

srill in its infancy nationalism

by an oppositional

icy

but resistance

to Islam, and by a religion thar Ages has beeri faithfUl co

who 've beeri left behind by history but are trying quite knowing invisible and undes.rable Bulgarians, a white blor

ever since the Middle its own medievalism. 1 shouldn'r

like to be in your shoes.

12

BULGARIA,

MY

SUFFERING

wouldn't argue with anyone who aceused me of having run away from just this problem. They started Nathalie by translating Shakespeare and Kristeva Dostoevsky, then went on to Faulkner, Beckett, Srraute. Barthes, Foucault, (not much of her), and others too numerous to , mention. But they realzed there weren't enough words available, so they crammed in thinkers inte that modest language of sensitve peasancs and naive a who Ie arserial of roorless and insipid borrowings. The syntax became unwieldy, but the thought didn'c B.ow more freely; and what did they do but transpose papers reputed this esperanto for polyglot academics into the columns of newsto be "liberal," "culrured," and any good unless it's be ing "open" to curside inB.uence? What else can you do when nothing's "opened" to outside inB.uence? And that brings

mearit "the pleasures of the soul" as we experience thern in tbougbt and fee/ing. The Encyclopedia icself contains some celebrated articles on taste by Voltaire and Montesquieu, who reflected on the univers al laws governing its formation (based on the universality of human nature and on a shared history), and on the permissibility were bound of j; individual lapses or departures from the norm. to take a new

The Encyclopedists

stance: taste, for thern, is a rhetoric of recognition. It is necessary that l recognize myself. that you recognize yourself. and that we recognize (Church or (the ourselves either in some authority

rnonarchy, preferably both); or in an elite taken to represent the esseace of that authority court at Versailles); or in some individual value, derived from Christianity, that manifescs icself in the form of extreme spiriruality ity). Taste is the rhetoric or intense passensulby sion (Universal Reason or enlightened

us to the inextricable confusion presented by the press since the fali of the Ber/in Wall: On the one hand we have the insults of louts using the language of outs, to label as louts others equally Ioutish, but alI cornpletely devoid of the piquant audacity of the Surrealists: on the other hand we have the foreign words, scarcely even modified by a suffix, which dazzle a parvenu when he sees thern wrirten in Cyri.llic, but, to put it mildly, arouse pity in a stat eless person like me, and give a headache to what's said to be an only meder-

of a recognition

which the ego, centred on Authoriry, the clan, or an individual hypostasis. finds in the other the sarne language as he finds in himself accommodate Taste can difference berween the ego and the

other. if. and only if. that difference blends and for me harmony is like a pleasant B.avourwith the reievant Authoriry, elan, or individual, whereupon language. Taste is polite because it is addressed to one's own kind: those who share the same authority, the same elan, the same personal Bruyere, Svign, and Saint-Simon define taste Encyclopedists, values, La didn't need to the stanthe posthe two principles share the same

arely cultured public. Thus, on one side, a Hood

of rnore or less scatological outbursts (in the name of Sade and Rabelais, ler's at least have a lircle sryle !), and, on the other, the affectariens of the pricicuses ridicufts (in the name of Molire and his Diafoirus, a bit of misanthropy it strike you as ururnportant?

it went wirhont saying. But the testing to destruetien

!). On

all

sides, errors of taste. That is the question. Does Don't be in too much of a hurry, In the eighteenth century, the Freneh ralked a lot abour raste. By taste they

dards of the Ancim Rigirru, considered

sibility of a new kind of taste, one that adrnitted the notion of liberty and even allowed for the aberration of passion. These prerevolutionaries

!25

JULIA

KRISTEVA

were among

the most civilized people: the Wesr in the baptisrery at St. court-

polireness.

the/re

an mront.

Such errors of taste or

has ever known. Nearer to our own day, Proust, after losing his footing Mark's and stumbling in the Guermantes'

reveal the barbarity

of a whole society.

"Ilpyrocr-ra
or much more

q:,aJIHqeCKHll .D:I1CKYPC," ponderously: "OcBeH

more simply, "ToH ce rpH)f(H aa CBOll HMHP;)K:' TOBa, 3HaeHKH TB"bpp;e nope acropas ra Ha pe aoJllOuHHTe, T"b)!(HaTa HCTHHa, 'le Te H311)Kp;aT CBoHTe p;eua, p;eMOKpaTH'iHHTe H360pn 6n Tp1l6BaJlO na 6"bAaT H3BeCTHa TIPEBEHUI15I, cpencrso aa crrapaae Ha peBOJlIOUHlITa c Hauie ro yxac'r ae B TlIX npeK"bCBaHe Ha yxcacs-

yard, set hirnse!f up as the explorer of errors of 'taste, laughing at the whole concept for the sake of literacure. the only authortry capable of preserving it. But things are different
1 i,

that still seemed barbarism

now, when

is crumbling

and the Mafia vies with free enterexists. In the absence of who, when is

i!l i I

"

prise. There is no authoriry, and netther community nor the individual these three references, the intellectual, inevitably one now,

naura-ra aps axa

uaoae a ornrr" -

c HCTOpHqeCKHlI peBOJlIOthis sort of thing rnakes me alternatives. although means and

all is said and done, is a creator of language,

fee! sick. 1 won't suggest

OUCKypC

left liable to errors of tasre. And no

is the same thing as pe, be rendered

lLI,/UOJ/C

like Proust,

be!ieves

in

literacure

otipas, npeocmaea. or apmuua, and npeeeuuun

might as etssnpensirncmeuc, soiptca. npe-oca as npeonasua

enough to laugh at this state of affairs and press on. No one, or very few. I'd like to stress this apparently mlght have larnented vailing in the black marker: pensions ; the dustbins
vice versa,

minor point. 1 prices pre-

Stop it! Please! [nvent words if :'ou like, but not words empty of the ideas you lack. Cut out sentences thoughts plicities, thcse culture based on foreign . synrax. express ing understand. try to irnitate to a baroque. Change your simthe old rudirnenrary you don'r but don't

the exorbitant

the miserly old-age

and flies in onee-sc-eleari

So fia ; the merging of soeialists with liberals. and which blurs everyrhing and makes all irnpossibie. But I'd rarher concentrate decision

tu ne : stop mumbling who belong

the tricks of sophisticated about. Don't in

on taste. If we begin

with small things,

we'l

which you know nothing as you are. Have

meet with larger ones on our way. I'm not at ali sure that if I were in your position I'd have been able to discover some authoriry, community, or person, and consequenrly would have from some kind of taste. But I certainly

irnitare other people at ali: they're just as difficult and unstable yourse!f: stock. In theorv I'm not against neologisms, so long so as they arise from an attempt shaped unique. thern carefully to at new thinking; produce confidence no graft will ever take on too weak a

tried to avoid words that didn't ernanate an individual courteous tion from others Without politeness.

the authoriry of a group, or from the charisma of enough to seek recogniwith the same words are no concerned

long as comm uni ti es of men and wornen have something based on the memory of their own lanBut I can't see

that concern,

guage and on suitable discussion. any of these communiries see this That's linguisric memory

more than odd foreign neologisms stuck at random tn sand not quick but dead '-- snobbish nonsense; high-sounding foolishness. Without

or invennons : I can'r or rhcse dcbates.

what makes me suffer. Pe~hJ.f's irs only

[26

BULGARIA,

MY

SUFFERING

I blindness; perhaps, being so far away, I don'r would be a Buc baric side co it, in countries Orthodox neofascism me ponder. 1 don'c belreve there is such a thing as an overali "popular psychology." I believe in the uni queNor do 1 hold religion behave. 1 in areas ness of the individual. alone responsible szeeped in folklore true of is a supreme that profess the

li

know what's realiy going on. That

faith. Of this kind of disaster, Serbian example. And ic make

5

lesser evil, and if such is the case lapologize.

I,
I

if my suffering is justified, the errors of taste thar cause it are coneiusive proof of the surrender and subrrnssion ,world order human of a nation (one of many) co a new that would like co see the whole

race as a single person. Whac am 1 say-

for the way people and paganism, concemporary religious ourlook,

ing? As a single computer.

know it's of relauvely litele imporranec

GOD DIE FOR

and this is generations. shaped by or

3.

WHEN THE

DIO

especially

BALKANS

?
You suffer from indi-

Even so, a persons

You suffer from chaos, vandalism. violence, You suffer from lack of authority, corruption, indifference combined from lack of initiative, from general with unprecedented from the arrogance -of the Mafia

and in cum shaping history, does, among otherfactors, affect him or her, whether chological consciously not. It also exerts a major influence on the psyberween thern-

buck which the peeples of the Europe

vidual brutaliry,

we hope to urure pass back and forth thern, in the form of conflices manifesting stubborn Thanks incornprehension faich and

and the shady schernes of the nouveaux riches. It's hard for the Wesc to imagine your suffering, your humiliacion. 1 hesitate to say 1 share chem: it's too easy co do that from a distance. But ler's say 1 do suffer because of the enorrnous task that faces us ali, wherher here or there, in the coming years: the task of thinking, why? Why is everyching Needless will 1 repeat responsbiliry like this? And then the task

selves at worst as wars of religion and at best as and incornpatibiliry, experience its latenr co my father, 1 was able co encounter

the Orthodox

power of resiscance. 1 love its sensualiry, its myscery, and the remeteness that makes us sense in world. it's not a perhaps and and its licurgy the joys and sorrows of another Ic also imbues us with the feeIing rational certainry this world. True, it's only an impression. an illusion, auspicious!

of finding out how co put it behind us. co say, 1 don'r know the answer. Nor what you know already about the of Communism or the shortcomin Bulgaria's early days: ever from the Turks in 1875, ic has of European

that we are not really of

but how happy, how liberating 1 won't make a value judgmem of another. condirioned

ings of democracy since its liberacion suffered from

praise the "virrues"

of one branch of Christian-

the repercussions

ity as againsc the "shorrcornings" and limitarions of someone

ru
by

diplomacy and the effects of two world wars. On a rnore personal level; and since I'm talking about language, there's the question of mental artitudes. rnunist And I. like many other observers, note bloc seerns rnorc hopeless. prospccrs and perhaps with fewer a; more bar-

simply try co tell you how 1 see the advancages Orthodoxy, and co examine the extent of his or the moral crisis. harboured rnore two tendencies marked ever

her ability to confront branch of Christianity which have ban

char the moral crisis afRicting the former Comshort-term

Even before the schism of 1054, the Orthodox growing

12?

__________

._.

__

_.-._--"':'.2.13lii.lZ
I i

fiit

JULIA

KRISTEYA

smce, national

and

which

are reflecred (Russian,

in the vanous Bulgarian,

a different way: for Orrhodox Ghost proceeds

believers, the Holy from the Farher and "and" puts of equaliry,

churches

Greek,

from the Farher tbrougb the Son WhiIe the Catholic

If
I

and so on). The two tendenries instrurnentalisarion and mysticism. By instrumentalisarion Ch~rch's dependence self-effacement This derves dependence which from

I refer to are

(Flr

Flium);

for Catholics,

the Son (Filioqut)' power, a shadowing that

II

I mean, first of ali, the

on political degenerated inro

Farher and Son on a footing the autonomy the individual Western Orthodox

foreof

acc aur anc rep

IOn

and independence opens

has ofren the

(that of the Son just as much as which and suggests the way to the but personalisrn), a pieasurable

or even ourright

subservence. principle

of the believer, individualisrn "through"

1111:

Byzantine

II

according

to which a patriarch holds his territory

trea sam an
1:

:Ill

by virtue of a saular act dererrnined by the prevailing policicai climate (whereas Rome clairned ro rule by diviru law): the basileus or Byzantine emperor Church religious intervenes in the affairs of the Church and in rerum the and there social stability a Christian and chooses the patriarch, "For

pernicious annihilation. The omrupotent authoriry alienable:

of the Farher is inis both deiry and is

the Farher. artt-anarkos,

T
cour cella hirns unfa: abscc tualis deligi splm h,sych,; of ili, not p.: scieric Living mgencl heart c thing God," logical Apophas: theology, God. t"eion, G partlClp unobjec Becau religiow
1

and source. The Son is his servant, a colleague who nses above his servieude becornes caught and ("through") divine. At once subordmate the up in an exquisire offering and god-

works to maintain conservatism.

like, the Son (and

exaltation

believer with hm)

logic of submission the joys an dialeetic

can be no church without an ernperor": sinister ring when one thinks the Orthodox

this dic-

tum of the patriarch Anthony (1391-1397) has a---of the political have eritered culrnithe aliegiances churches

sorrows and, on a

involved in the master-slave

more personal

plane, in male hornosexualiry, of the Son, religion descends sublunary world where Platoa f7..<manand social have not of or a "advantag-

into and the am of servilry they have perforrned in the rwentierh century. This' siruation nares in an identification of the Church with the Ages produced

Moreover; as a result of the exalted and exalting subordmarion nom the supertor nism located progranune. es" of

nation which in the Middle and Simeon alphabet), stran~ reductive appraising churches nineteenrh

God ro beceme Russian

young Slav states (as seen in the ives of Boris and the invention of the Cyrillic for the current and now is responsble

theologians through

shrunk nom stresslng the humamstic Orthcdoxy: celcbrares the Trinity Orthodoxy

ics docrrine

osmosis bawar:

rtligion and nationalism. The by historians played by the in the with ali

and the collabo-rative role of the Son, a "God-humaniry"

and explosive effects of this mixture the "liberating century: role"

may well have beeri underestirnated against the Turkish

"God-universe"

(Solovyo.v); some comrnentators

(Fyodorov).

even go so far as to say that "the T riniry is our social progranune" But we mustn't rejoice roo soon at this humanization of the divine. If it's true that human values are corruptible and subject of the value represem ro perversion. supreme value the ultima te doesn'r (God) the reduction

occupation

the sarne effects,

their fundamentalist

dangers, can be seen ali too 1 also mean as in Catholicism. cerram but in

clearly in the tragedy of Yugoslavia today. By instrurnentalisacion aspects of the Orthodox Orthodox Christianity Triniry. Cod is triple in

co human

trap of nihi/ism?

For the instrumcntaiisation

of th,

BULGARIA.

MY

SUFFERING

diviru in tk buman results in the lowering. devalua-

tk stron~st fonn

of

nihilism known ro Western cul-

rion. and -even aboliton of the idea! itself ther aftirrrurion according authority

of

ture. "1 arn God who is not so:' The meet ing point .of the absolute juxrapositions philosophical counrerpart suecumbeci Mount mighr and nothingness. The ontodesire for total power and total poverty. These chaUenge Western theology. They might, in certam historical and circurnstances, ro the charrns act as a salutary of the monks of Ir ro it. It's easy ro see why Heidegger do es not invali-

God hmself (God is neither this nor thar, neinor negation, nor even "God;' of spirirual ro Gregory of P~);

(excepr thar which is instirutional): of thought. The Orthodox religfrom the outser : ir

and also of the do!, the idea, itself and so of representation, ion is a negarive theology sarne. God is not dead This reduction counterbalanced

treats absence of God and the unknowable as the he irnplodes into rnan, an inaccessible microrheos and microcosm. of the divine ro the human is by mysticism. Mari, who at once

Achos. But Orrhodoxy

dare onto-theology: On the one hand. pincer movernent

it merely skirts arcund Orrhodoxy,

and immobilizes its agencs. caught in a berween instrumentalisarion has shown

collaborates with God and lowers Him, rnakes hmself divine by artaining direct access to the unfathornable: absconditus," cualise. ddights. This Orthodox mystery has man is a "Homo endless indehnable. irnpossible ro concepproduced

and mysticism, provicles the paranoid and rnasochistic sarisfactions kov, The Orthodox not encounter that Dostoevsky in his nihilisric characters, especially Raskelni-

T riniry's "unmoving mction except through action:

of love" (as Maxim the Confessor caUed ir) canhistory individual terrorisrn terrotism sharters the conrernplarion delighrs. while stare for inability ro verbalize

There is, for exarnple, the cult of silmcc:

spiritual excellence is silent (as was shown by the

h'Sychasts. the quietists of Mount Athos): the cult

of atfection (katanyxis). which welcomes but does not judge. There is also the unihcation of conscience and heart in the 10'" of b,auty (philocallit). Living diviniry, like a sea of light, rnaruests itself in gent/auss. yielding icself not ro argumcnt bur ro heart or feeling. Isaac of Syna's "feeling of everything in God" becomes a cult of the "feeling of God," Apopoasis rejecting words and deparring from the logical path of Catholic and Protestanr theology. is the culminating point of this "'gatiw of and the
Ih,ology, which derries aU conceprual dehnition

in which cur "microrheos" compensares

and lack of educarion and opportuniry, On the other hand. the symbiosis of the T nniry in Orthodoxy dead" impossible. While ro prodaim rnakes Nierzsche's "God is How can He be dead, when into "me"; "God is dead" is probablv dangerous and

"1" arn He. and He has vanished crazy as an idea, it is certainly

perhaps impossible as an act; yet ir has preQccupied the West. stealthily, ever since its Greek. biblical. and evangelical since the nineteenth origins, more openly cenrury. The phrase itself

God. Neither tion, God participared. unobjecrivisable

value nor concepr nor representathe .. unfathomable mystery,

is the inaccessible 'participaror

address es the Ideal, the possibiliry that man may have Values; but it is also imp lied in Europe's Catholic and Protestant from Nietzsche past. The philosophers. who have studied ro Heidegger.

Because of the obvious benehts of this kind of religious experience, I run the risk of promoring

the current crisis have envisaged a transmutalioll cf

i."?

JULIA

KRISTEVA

va'lufs carried Procestannsm

out via the autonomous

Subject.

tionships pleasure.

with original

Being, knowledge, tradition

and

But not an abo/ition of vals: a/tog!th(1: was a response ro a phase of this in the sixteenrh century, but of the West as a asceticism, .crisis that occurred

We of the Orthodox victonous nihilism. be, it leaves us defenceless porary history, if indeed "public layabours," ues have been imploding out, transcendence. goes on, -

are heirs to a as that may

But delightfl

it derved from the rationalism urging Protestant man

in the face of conternit doesn't rum us into years, valcancelledin us, and we at once

who le, and saw pmstination as a kind of unease towards methodicallabour, pressed Protestant professional success, and scicapitalism. The

For rwo thousand

entific research. All these were signs of election. into service by rising ethic, even in its narrowest Puritan

lament and enjoy this imrnanenrized, outside history history Corrununism Iuck, though

We have piac ed ourselves an act of excessive virtue, But and after the digression of

version, was a result of individual it was often based on rejection attempt

auconorny, and on, not an

of the mystery of

which was in a way a piece of it spared us history ourselves -

the T rinity, It is an improvernent God). The secular, Masonic, gates of Protesrantism atternpr to abolish it. The Nierzschean

a cosrly one, because

to destroy, the urge towards the Ideal (or and esoteric surroagainst any are based on the preserva-

the necessity of questioning

now calls to us. But do we really want to rejoin it? As nihilists, we feel we have beeri "had." That is the cause of my suffering, and I can't see any way our, Bulgaria, my suffering. Don'r think I'm not serious, and don'r say I've said what I haven't said. No, It's too late point in your converting to Protestantism. the awful truth to Catholicism no or even

tion of Value, and are vehemendy

revolt followed a cornpletely the sources of will, posstrata

differenc path: it aimed at examining of the Ideal and its underlying sible relationships "superman,"

desire, and power in order ro reveal other it should be stressed,

Just the sarne, let's face up to that in the world of advanced

between Being and man. The is by no

capitalism which you'd like to join, God is dead, And ler's try neither to ignore nor to exploit this world. Let's nerther hurl ourselves greedily on its untenable values nor decry them. Rarher let us take part in their transmutation. We might be gin with quite simple things, By setting ourselves pher texts the philosophers, ine ourselves: to read, for example, writers after in general. our to deciTo comthe Greeks, the Bible, the Gospels, We might also exarnown autonorny, Try out of the why

means a "public layabour": he is, rarher. a "subversion" of rnan, a rebel excavating the archaeology ofhis Orthodox tical sentanves autonorny, own essence, rnan instrumentalised He and myscannot measure up to these two repreof moderniry, the hardworking lacks the asceric the bookin sobriery,

ish virrue of the Protestanr, spirit of enterprise).

seeking salvation

the wrirten word ( the Bible) and in the city (the He also has the philosophical distance of the fanatical, Nietzschean, dissociating hirnself from God and spending nearly three cerituries refming the emblems of the Ego Cogito in order to envisage differenc rela'. I

ment, discuss, understand. look desires, and dignity; lyzed, take a course

have ourselves psychoanaof psychorherapy, the asceticism

.,:;./
'.

.'

some religious experiences,

Prot~stanes, the pleasure of the Catholics -

no

BULGARIA,

MY SUFFERING

not

others,

too?

Or go back to Orthodoxy, for

unfarniliar, Thomas

though

their crisis

15

ori a much

escape from its snares. make its demands community

smaller scale, SO there is no direct link between Manns journal and my own notes. Except perhaps that both texts are wrirten from a position at once within and without, and both express anxiery at an upheavaI whose ravages hit us plainly and head-on, but whose consequences remain hidden in the future.

rnore concrete and rnore effective.

Redisoover a sense of values ; e.xpress thern, transform thern, leave thern open,. never stop renevaring thern ... It's going to take a long, long time. Bulgaria, my suffering. My arrerition has beeri called to a well-known text by Thomas Mann: a journal he kept during the Nazi regime, when he was living in exile, It's called "Gerrnany, My Suffering." Mann sees the tragedy of his country from both within and withour, and while he condemns the shame of Hitlerism he is also aware of the furve complicity the majority of Germans fele for the man Reich they didn't hesitate to call their "brother Hitler:' The violence and barbarity of the Third has nothing Empire in common with the collapse of

Translaudjrom tbc Frmcb by Barbara Bray

rnorals and politics in the forrner Communist a collapse with which the Western dernocracies, shaken by so many scandals, are not

KRISTEVA is professor at the Universir de Paris VII. An intemationally known psychoanalyst and criric, she is the chief proponent of "semanalyse," a term she eoined to name the discipline blending serniorics with psychoanalysis. Her many book include Bkk Sun, Strang= to Ournlws, and NCVoJ Malad~s of tlx ScuL BARBARA BRA Y was bom in London and edueated at Cambridge University. She has lived for the past thirry years in Paris as a freelanee writer, ericic, and translarcr. JULIA

..

. -,

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