A European was created by mountains and forests.
The nature prompted that the existence must aspire discretion, variety and formality of perfection. A mountainous-sylvan landscape had been a visual embodiment of the above mentioned notions. It trained the sensual co-existence with the Stone and Plant.
Wandering prophets, knights, acrobats and merchants − this lively-flowing ferment of Old World's postmen − measured their everyday pathway by overcome mountains and overpassed forest footpaths. The scenery demanded attentiveness. In the steppes they wouldn't be able to walk that long.
Sinking into wild woods of the Black forest somewhere near Tysmenytsya, for example, a strolling solitary man might never emerge out of them. Or emerge, say, as far as the southern German Schwarzenwald (which, after all, bares the same name when translated from German: the Black forest). The Old Europe has been completely covered by a forest, a receptacle of sanctuaries and nightmares. And that, by no means, saved the Europe. Nomads of the Great Steppe could quite positively be frightened by this ocean.
Limitation of the scenery made one love every inch of land. When you have at your disposal the Great Nothing, i.e. a bare level ground, upon which you may ride a horse for even ten weeks and nothing can ever change, then you begin believing in vanity of vanities, in worthlessness of all your efforts, and in a complete human incapability. Then there remains the only thing: to rush ahead, wildly whistling, in a some-hundred-of-thousand throng of likely deprived of personality individuals, to burn and destroy, to offer bloody sacrifice to your unintelligible gods. And be scattered with the ashes over the devastated level ground − who cares?
Yet when you have green slopes and valleys, you start to believe in continuity. There appears awareness of home. It is so and only so, it is here.
A European was created by heredity.
You come into the world surrounded by towers and gardens, which are innumerable centuries old. You are virtually incapable to do harm here − might you even desire to do it very much. And though this architecture is spied from the landscape, all its creators are known by names. It is the victory over the vanity of vanities; these coordinates of stability and progress signify certain absolute values, among which is a personality, particular, unique and unrepeatable.
© Yury Andrukhovych.1996.
