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| Spring 2009 CommentsLife On Venus: Europe’s Last ManThere are are not many moments in history when it is possible to worry that the world has become too happy for its own good. One such moment came in Europe during the late nineteenth century, when the Napoleonic Wars had receded into the distance and the First World War was still hidden over the horizon. For a brief period, it became possible to believe that the West was headed for a condition of permanent peace; that technology, democracy, and globalization were driving a virtuous circle that no atavistic violence could disrupt ... Full text articleChapeau for Mr Kirsch' brilliant article and clairvoyance. The 'mental malaise' in Europe, as filtering into politics and - especially! - culture, is not only a fatigue from WW II and the primitive hedonism resulting from the sixties 'revolution'. It is also something which may be, for Americans, difficult to understand because they do not have that particulair historic experience. America is built by immigrants having cut their roots and focussing almost exclusively upon shaping a future. Europe is an old and sophisticated culture as Indian, Chinese and Islamic cultures are; such a culture creates a collective cultural identity which goes very deep and connects with the primal instinctive drives. Modernity in all its forms threatens this identity because of modernity's materialism, one-sided rationalism and spiritual denial. It is THIS which undermines energy and creates a conflict on a profound level, as could be simplified in the feeling of: "I do not belong in this world, I am nothing, all that is of value to me seems to be meaningless." It is THIS feeling which underlies the struggles of non-European, old cultures with modernity, it is THIS tension between a spiritual cultural identity and the modern world which fuels extremism and the typical brand of envy and hatred towards the West. In short, Europeans suffer (deep down) from the same problems as mentioned other old cultures, while America does not have them, being too young and too diverse, culturally speaking. The 'modern world' has been shaped, in the last century, mainly by America, also because of this inner freedom. A mental solution of European malaise may be a revival of the best of its cultural past and try to make a workable combination with the best of modernity, something you can sense the Chinese, Japanese and Indians are doing. I'm convinced Adam Kirsch overestimates the three novelists under discussion. Nevertheless, I'm glad he does, because Mr Kirsch, as a result, has written such an entertaining and brilliant piece. Bravo! Mr. Kirsch's marriage of literary analysis and the state of European society is intriguing and stimulating. He would do well to extend his analysis to Iain Banks's 'Culture' novels. The Culture is an analogue for Europe today, and the novel 'Player of Games' presents a fascinating clash of civilisations encounter. Science fiction, it seems, can just as competently chart the undercurrents as well as supposedly serious fiction. This is an excellent perspective on what Europe has become. I would like to recommend Jonathan Littell's controversial but very profound novel "The Kindly Ones" for interested readers to explore how Europe became burdened by its history. Many civilizations have perished robbed of its "will to live" and its growing decadence within. Europe seems at the verge of this cyclical historical trough. Eventually a new civilization will emerge in its place. This is not a new phenomenon at all. Eventually civilizations armed with energy (read “chaos”) will displace the ones that have become too passive. This seems to be where Europe is headed to. The barbarians at the gates, unidentified by Adam Kirsch, threatening an enervated Europe were presciently described by Hillaire Belloc prior to World War 2. Lamenting the decline of Christianity as a sustaining moral force, he noted that Moslems still had a powerful religious culture. Their current materialistic inferiority to Europe was not necessarily a permanent state of affairs, and if they once caught up to modern technology they were bound to pose a serious threat to Western superiority. According to Belloc, the ultimate Moslem aim was to destroy Christianity, and in fact the West itself, an aim likely to be achieved as a result of Western spiritual disintegration. "Three more different writers could hardly be invented," writes Adam Kirsch. Well, one can certainly find some similarities. In particular, all three writers are mainly popular in the UK, that well-known dissident European state. McEwan is English. Sebald, though known in Germany, is known as an outsider - and in the Mediterranean his name hardly registers. Houellbecq sells more books in English translation than he does in France. The equivalent would be taking three Seattle-based writers and claiming that from an examination of their works one could deduce the anomie pervading all of America, from Hawaii to Arkansas. What you have here is a good summary of what the British intelligensia think of Europe. Given that Britain is the most profoundly Eurosceptic of all European nations, it is unsurprising that a picture emerges that is unflattering to the EU "superstate". Next time, Mr Kirsch might consider looking at several of the 26 other nations that make up the EU - compare Drago Jančar, Peter Handke, Maro Douka, say, and see how utterly different their conception of Europe is from the rather shallow view put forward in this article. What a contrived analysis. Europe, from Kiev to Kilkenny 'captured' in a reading of three novels: each of a somewhat arch bent. Where is this 'Europe' that Americans talk of? Have the universities of the USA turned out two generations of arts graduates who see it only as the living embodiment of 'Britain - Imperial Decline 1914-1964' or 'The French Novel 1945-2000 - An Exercise in Introspection?' (Two semesters each)? Or is this piece simply in a long tradition? In another age Mr Kirsch could have had a walk on part in a Henry James novel, musing on the merely apparent confidence of his European hosts. This is an interesting article on what's happening in Europe. I feel the same is also happening in the United States. Mediocrity is becoming widespread in America and has led me to read such books as Fukuyama's End of History. |  Submit Your Comment |
