25th September - 10th October 1996

True works of art exude the power of sieving spiritual sediments from sensorial sights. I have never felt this irresistible emanation as I did at the height of the Second World War when mothers and children were dying all over Europe undergoes of bombs and  innocent hostages were pointlessly executed. Alone in the Sistine Chapel amidst such rampant horror, I felt the soothing exorcism of some unearthly spirituality. And so, from time to time, I do to this day. Which does not mean that I am prone to put on equal footing Michelangelo and any puny peddler of counterfeit mysticism. Geniuses are geniuses and village idiots are village idiots. And it takes someone even more idiotic to take them seriously.

As I rarely indulge in such outbursts, some readers may be disconcerted in realising that we are about to embark on the eulogy of a Cathedral and a Crucifixion exhibited in it's transept. They need not worry unduly. It is no secret that for all my unconventional beliefs and disbelieves I deeply revere matters mythical and mystical provided they are impeccably ethical. Besides, it is not the first time that I turn my attention to Westminster Cathedral. Though catholic, it particularly appeals to my Orthodox East European sensitivity because its weighty mass evokes the majestic outline of the Byzantine Saint Sophia in Constantinople and the ornamentation of its facade is reminiscent of the Saint Synode in Sofia and many a lay building in Moscow. Today this ecumenical affinity is greatly enhanced because the sculpture shown in this Cathedral is the work of Doru Marculescu, Romanian and therefore Orthodox.

Because of its East European pedigree, the Crucifixion on show in Westminster Cathedral would be conventionally expected to bear some resemblance to the calligraphically painted monastery Churches in Sucevita and Moldovita and their almost Bach-like vertical rhythms. This is not the case.But then, this extraordinary Crucifix does not try to echo the heavy rectangular verticality of the Bulgarian Churches in Sozopol and Nessebur on the Black See Coast.

Marculescu' s startling work does not display a single right angle, nor does it enshrine a rigid self-standing vertical. It is circular, not unlike the thrunk of a some centuries-old tree (sacred?), bent but not uprooted by wild storms and hales. Corrugated and contorted, its circular surface is reminiscent of boiling magma from which strive to disentangle themselves, semi-decomposed human faces disorderly piled up, as we see them only in the rare icons of the Forty Holy Martyrs. It is even deliberately hard, if not altogether impossible to identify the effigy of Christ, who by His death is to conquer Death itself. We witness, stunned, the human agony of the Son of Man.

It has undoubtedly taken a long file of heresies to arrive at such an eloquently poignant image of today' s tormented mankind, thrown at the mercy of the Apocalyptic Beast; of rampant Evil more powerful than timid Good. But had not a similar world-view been propounded on both sides of the Danube by the Bogomils, Balkan off-spring of the Iranian Manicheans? In order to salvage the dignity of Christ in whom they deeply believed, did they not have to demote him to the rank of God's Second born Son, the first - and hence equal if not more powerful Son of God - had to be Satan.

And would we be in the wrong to submit that today's true Christian believers are compelled by the ways of the world to live in a forest of such Bogomil-Manichean Crucifixions? And is this not the " foresta oscura "- the Dark Nightwood mentioned already in the second line of Dante' s Divina Comedia-intuition and premonition of all past, present and future Martyrdoms?

But who or what would give us an inkling how are we to reach our private public Purgatories when today's Heresy surges forward as the most convincing confirmation of Orthodoxy while canonical Orthodoxy is turning into its own blasphemous denial? With each passing day it becomes mercilessly clearer that we can hardly expect to be enlightened by quarrelsome Councils or Synods. In this blind alley, Marculescu' s Crucifixion may well have a salutary impact.

The spasmodic magma of Marculescu' s Crucifixion may perhaps urges us to reach by our own means and along our own ways, the profound awareness that each of us harbours deep in his heart, the power to bring about his personal Hypostasis - blend of the contradictory impulses to Good and Evil that make us what we are and show us what we may become.

In the wake of Jung's trust in the ultimate dominion of a distinct collective subconscious, Constantin Brancusi had mirrored the spiritual substance of his homeland in the weighty stone seats in Tirgu-Jiu evoking the eloquent silences of the Hysichasts, Ovidiu Maitec had amalgamated the wings of the mythical bird of Destiny - the Maiastra - with the mystical Portals of the solemn Orthodox Altars. Now is the turn of Doru Marculescu to intertwine the redemption of the Cross with the damnation of Hell.