My favourite books and tragedy in the dark heart of Europe

In response to one of those recent Facebook 'challenges', I forced myself to come up with a list of my '10 favourite books', which I posted on my timeline as follows (chronological order of publishing):

Du Côté de Chez Swann (Marcel Proust, 1912, fr)

Os Sonâmbulos (Die Schlafwandler, Herman Broch, 1930-32, de)

Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945, uk)

Nineteen-eighty four (George Orwell, 1948, uk)

Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 1954, uk)

The Complete Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis, 1950-56, uk)

Le Maître et Marguerite ( Мастер и Маргарита, Mikhail Boulgakov, 1941/1966, ru)

La Peste (Albert Camus, 1947, fr)

Le Hussard sur le Toit (Jean Giono, 1951, fr)

Le Rivage des Syrtes (Julien Graq, 1951, fr)

In doing so, I realised I had roughly presented a geographical mapping of the reflexive aspect of my cultural roots: an aspect seeped most of all in the tragic foci of European history of the XXth Century - WWI and WWII, social revolution and totalitarianism, colonialism, epidemics, and the decay of the leisured ruling classes.

I was not surprised at the weight of English, a language I learnt as a child in England, but I was surprised at the importance of French (sur quoi j'en parlerai un peu plus en bas), which I only started reading some years later. A Russian and a German novel - both rooted in the social-political convulsions of the early XXth Century - round up the top 10. 

When enlarging this list, I came across the fact that most of my preferences reflect a cultural idea of Europe, which extends beyond the European peninsula Eastward across the vast steppes of Siberia and westward across the Atlantic to the Americas. I also noticed that Southern Europe and Latin America were grossly underrepresented (to my shame). To clarify my preferences, I then stacked them up in additional, obsessively neat piles of 10, representing different traditions I was interested in. Thus:

English - British Isles 

If I had not so neatly stacked these in piles of 10, this particular list would have been longer than any of the others, and would include many more genre books from, e.g. historical naval fiction, boys adventure stories, theatre, and poetry. As it is, what it includes moves from romantic, through the tragedy of war and the nightmare of totalitarianism, to fantasy and the limits of Western influence in the 3rd World. Hamlet is a strange bedfellow to these other titles as the only play. But it has an intensely deserved berth in my heart for both content and prose, and its influence (i.e. in the dark, brooding introspection and constant struggle with conscience and inner passions) can be felt both on the books in this next 10 list, and in European and human culture more generally.

Hamlet (William Shakespeare, 1603)

Wuthering Heights (Emily Brönte, 1847)

Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886)

The Jungle Book (Rudyard Kipling, 1894)

Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad, 1899)

Death to the French (CS Forester, 1934)

Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)

The Sword of Honour (Evelyn Waugh, 1952-61)

The Lord of the Rings (J. R.R. Tolkien, 1954-55)

The Comedians (Graham Greene, 1966)

English – America and elsewhere 

In contrast, this one would not have been much longer - unfortunately. Why do I find these important enough to put here? America represents an extension of Europe - in language certainly, but not only. In both its advances and its failings it pushes, pulls, and changes Europe. It is often brutal in its authenticity. Roy is here as a non-American outlier - and her prose sometimes feels more French in its intricacy (see below).

Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman, 1855)

The Red Badge of Courage (Stephen Crane, 1895)

USA (John dos Passos, 1930-36)

Delta de Vénus (Delta of Venus, Anaïs Nin, 1940s/1977)
The Naked and the Dead (Norman Mailer, 1948)

The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway, 1952)

Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov, 1955)

The Thin Red Line (James Jones, 1961)

Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt, 1996)

The God of Small Things (Arhundati Roy, 1997)

Français

La langue francaise, si proche du Portugais et pourtant si 'autre', me permet d'éprouver les sentiments ainsi que de m'exprimer d'une manière plus authentique parfois même que l'anglais; la litterature francaise du XXème Siècle me bouleverse avec sa richesse de subtilités de sonorité, imaginaire, et emotion. La lecture se fait surtout en plaisir, volupté, et epanouissement. Et, pourtant, les grands thèmes sont tous lá et donnent un poids de sérieux à l'ensemble. Partout la grande question posé par Camus à l'âme de l'individu occidental: solitaire, ou solidaire?

Viagem ao Centro da Terra (Voyage au Centre de la Terre, Jules Verne, 1864)

Vol de Nuit (Antoine de Sainte-Éxupery, 1931)

Le Chant du Monde (Jean Giono, 1934)

Le Silence de la Mer (Jean Bruller, ‘Vercors’, 1942)

L’Étranger (Albert Camus, 1942)

Citadelle (Antoine de Sainte-Éxupery, 1948)

L’Oeuvre au Noir (Marguerite Yourcenar, 1951)

L'Exil et le Royaume (Albert Camus, 1957)
Hiroshima mon Amour : Scenario et dialogues (Marguerite Duras, 1960)

Les Centurions (Jean Lartéguy, 1963)

Others  / Autres  / Outras

Includes, to my shame, only a couple of Portuguese books, amongst a larger sprinkling of Russians and Germans. Among these are some of the most outstanding analyses of social and political relations between the XIXth and XXth century. Add the roots of European culture in Greece, and its extensions into Africa, and these 10 round off a vision of Europe that moves onwards and outwards relentlessly.

Antigona (Sófocles, 441BC, gr)

First Love (Первая любовь,, Ivan Turgenev, 1860, ru)

La Guerre et la Paix (Война и миръ, Léon Tolstoy, 1869, ru)

O Primo Bazílio (Eça de Queiroz, 1878, pt)

Os Maias (Eça de Queiroz, 1888, pt)

O Processo (Der Prozess, Franz Kafka, 1915/1925, de)

A Montanha Mágica (Der Zauberberg, Thomas Mann, 1924, de)

The Man without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Robert Musil, 1930-43, de)

Une Journée d’Ivan Dessinovitch (Оди́н день Ива́на Дени́совича, Alexandre Soljenitsine, 1962)

Terra Sonâmbula (Mia Couto, 1992, mz)

Nonfiction

From travelogues to scientific books, this one includes anything that is not fiction. From paleoanthropology and culture, politics, social and psychological theory - from the objectively theoretical to the subjectively empirical - with a home in my heart.

Du dandysme et de George Brummel (Jules Barbey D’Aurevilly, 1845)

La Revolution Trahie (Преданная революция, Léon Trotsky, 1936)

Hommage to Catalonia (George Orwell, 1938)

When the Going was Good (Evelyn Waugh, 1946)

Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robber’s Cave Experiment (Muzafer Sherif et al, 1961)

Nations and Nationalism (Ernest Gellner, 1983)

Time within Time: The Diaries (Martyrolog, Andrey Tarkovsky, 1986)

Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self Categorization Theory (John Turner et al, 1986)

Structures of social life: The four elementary forms of human relations (Alan Fiske, 1991)

Origins Reconsidered (Richard Leakey & Roger Lewin, 1992)

Hoping that the Union Jack stays united

Against most of my friends' tendencies, in particular those on the political Left, I am hoping for a 'no' vote from Scotland in the referendum on independence. For three reasons:

First, and although I am sensitive to the 'Scotland is more progressive than England and is being held back by England's dominance of the UK', I believe that Scotland is actually a nice leftist counterweight within the UK to neoliberal England, dominated by London with its financial services-heavy economic culture.

Second, because despite a strong unique Scottish identity, there is also a British identity within which this is embedded, and radical changes to national identity of this sort can be incredibly destabilizing - and before all my leftist friends start thinking 'great!' I would like to remind them that the sort of instability I'm thinking of can easily go in directions they would not like at all (think EDL rather than greens or socialists).

Third, I confess that Britishness is a sort of latent identity in myself too, most expressed through a literature that is British rather than specifically English, Scottish, or Irish (yes, I know the Irish have at least partly their own state, but circumstances there are other): think Waugh, Orwell, Swift, Joyce, and Stevenson... But also in many other ways in which the British are generically British (the awful food, the great pop music, the soggy ground and soggy carpets everywhere, driving on the left, loutishness and drunk sex, honesty and outrage, insularity and hipness). Come on guys, please stay together - think of how much effort it would take to change all our stereotypes!

Fourth (seriously, guys...): have you thought this over? What do you really want to do with your institutions? Monarchy, yes or no? And if no, would you allow auntie Lizzie as a foreign sovereign to keep her security arrangements at Balmoral? Pound, yes or no? If yes, would you accept that you wouldn't have any influence over the monetary policy of your own currency (think Eurozone; read Krugman)? And have you anticipated the problems that EU countries like Spain create within the EU for you as new members, or even block your membership (less likely)?

One more hour to go and we'll see. In the meantime, for all you Scots out there, a nail-biter I'm sure. Whatever you decide, please take into account the other side's view, and I love you lads and lassies anyways.

PS Thinking of you with fond memories of a soggy, windy, Glasgow winter 2003-04

In the flow of history

A friend posted something on Facebook a few hours ago that expressed something very similar to my own existential feelings on our perception of the flow of history, a perception that is heightened on days such as today. Here is my translation, with his revision and permission (the title above is mine):

"A glance at today’s newspapers recalls the times when, at school, we were asked to bring old newspapers, with History written on their pages. Among the news that became history, there was other news that, seen from that present time, was so innocuous as to appear ridiculous. And, so I thought, how could anyone be interested in such issues when there were so many matters of greater importance for people to be worried about and interested in? Those were, after all, historic times that people were living in…
Today, I understand it much better. One only has to read today’s newspapers. Whether on the European Parliamentary and Ukrainian presidential elections, the Brussels shooting with possible anti-semitic undertones, the abstention rates, the 10^th Champions League victory by Real Madrid, the Thai junta’s arrests of academics and closure of the senate, the shenanigans of banks or the dozens of examples of how austerity is affecting not only services, but the whole glue of our society, and in this case the lives of firemen who do not have adequate protection equipment to fight fires. What will happen to Palito?* What will become of Boko Haram in twenty years? What will become of Benfica a year from now? What will become of the young girls pushed into child prostitution when the World Cup in Brazil is over, and the tourists and construction workers disappear? What will become of Brazil? Why is there no room for manoeuvre in the budget for anything except for espionage and warfare?

Why do today’s newspapers recall so much yesteryear’s newspapers? Why do we remain neck-deep in propaganda? Why are we not aware of the mistakes we keep on repeating?"

Alexandre de Sousa Carvalho

*translation note: a convicted murderer on the run in Portugal

Let us linger no more

A few weeks ago, in the morning, between sleeping and waking, the word ‘Lingering’ lingered for a few moments before my eyes, flashing pale blue as if written in neon. Whether it was the last flicker of a dream or an isolated image, I cannot tell. And as I lingered in slumber, my mind reached out, as minds do in such moments, for the meaning it had tried to form. On waking a few moments later, the first images that passed through my mind were the soft rustling of leaves on treetops in the Spring breeze; then, of the way the slow timing of nature is captured in art and film and, finally, it dawned on me that to linger, in general, was in the current Zeitgeist.

An inescapable feeling gripped me that we have, as a species, if not lost, then at least misplaced the thrust and desire for progress, for betterment as a species and civilization. Human civilization seems to no longer be optimistically designing the road it wants to travel, unsure of how to apply technological progress to social change, and bewildered by the environmental constraints on growth. Those who think of this at all usually fall back on tired world-views charged with nostalgic clichés and identities: on the selfish borders of the nation, the petty victim-blaming of neo-liberalism, or the failed ideals of revolution. Others, uninspired by mankind, fall back on the unquestioned authority of religious text to guide their lives. It is a dull species that faces its future thus.

Today, however, I woke up with a spark of hope. I know there is another way. There is something, however little, that I can do today. I can walk up to a ballot box and choose to choose. It is my vote, and with it, it is my responsibility. And it does not end today – it is my responsibility, as a European, to continue to fight for a better future every day. To get involved, to question what must be questioned, to argue and to listen, to continuously participate in a society that must will itself to do better and to be better, if it does not wish to in the long run either wither away or implode. 

3 razões para votar LIVRE e eleger Rui Tavares

1. A democratização do sistema partidário português (democracia participativa, deliberativa, e aberta, com primárias abertas para escolha de candidatos) e, mas genericamente, do sistema político português e do sistema político europeu
2. Uma ideia positiva para a construção Europeia, uma ideia optimista e integradora, que não segue o consenso austeritário, e que não abdica dos valores de esquerda, de democracia, de liberdade, e de solidariedade; uma ideia que acredita na sua realização à escala europeia; e um candidato que formula de forma muito clara essa ideia (Rui Tavares, no livro A ironia do projeto europeu).
3. Um olhar virado não para as batalhas e aspirações do passado, mas sim para os desafios do presente e do futuro (políticos, tecnológicos, económicos, ambientais, societais), um olhar realista e racional, mas não fatalista. Um olhar simultaneamente científico e criativo, virado para a construção democrática de uma sociedade melhor.
E estas três razões são, no fundo, uma só: a política é um processo aberto aos cidadãos, que responsabiliza os cidadãos pelo seu futuro num mundo cada vez mais integrado à escala global, onde nós como protagonistas já não poderemos ser apenas portugueses, franceses, alemães, etc, mas de europeus.

LIVRE na Europa

Em Dezembro passado aderi a um novo partido político, o LIVRE, e apoio-o nas próximas eleições europeias. É a primeira vez que me inscrevo num partido. Fi-lo espontaneamente algumas semanas antes da Assembleia Constituinte, em Dezembro passado, por três razões essenciais: um, porque pela primeira vez senti alguma consonância politico-ideológica com um partido político português; dois, pela urgência dos problemas que se colocam hoje à sociedade portuguesa, à sociedade Europeia em geral, e mais globalmente à humanidade; finalmente, três, porque o formato de partido político do LIVRE responde à necessidade de participação democrática que os partidos tradicionais – inclusive os de Esquerda – inibem pelo seu funcionamento elitista.

Um, há muito tempo que o deslize do PS para a Direita e o entrincheiramento do Bloco de Esquerda contra o capitalismo de qualquer estirpe têm aberto no espaço político português um vazio de representação na Esquerda não revolucionária; e há certamente uma grande massa do eleitorado português que se situa nesse quadrante, no qual me incluo. Para além disso, nunca houvera uma representação séria da sensibilidade ecologista – que me é especialmente cara – em Portugal (para além das ONGs, de um ou outro deputado, e do PEV como anexo do PCP).

Dois, os problemas urgentes que se colocam hoje a Portugal, à Europa, e ao mundo como um todo, interpelam de forma muito particular estes espaços políticos da esquerda e da ecologia. Da esquerda, porque a erosão dos ganhos sociais e económicos do modelo social europeu (e, mesmo, de um modelo fordista semi-redistributivo americano) tornou-se uma derrocada com a afirmação da lógica da austeridade como resposta dominante à crise financeira dos últimos 5 ou 6 anos. Da ecologia, porque os limites ecológicos da sustentabilidade global das sociedades humanas se estão a tornar cada vez mais evidentes – a todos os níveis.

Três, o formato político actual das democracias liberais, inclusive o funcionamento interno dos partidos políticos, fica aquém do potencial instalado de democraticidade nessas sociedades, dado o estado actual de evolução tecnológica, científica e educativa. O aprofundamento da participação democrática tanto nos processos internos dos partidos como nos processos de decisão do Estado não é apenas um valor ou um objectivo desejável. Pelo contrário, é uma necessidade cada vez mais urgente precisamente porque as elites políticas e económicas têm-se revelado desinteressadas e incapazes de enfrentar os problemas mais graves das nossas sociedades. Elas carecem da participação aberta dos cidadãos nos processos de decisão transparentes (pelo brainstorming, pelo debate público prévio, pelos orçamentos participativos, etc) para partilharem a responsabilidade dessas decisões, para emendarem erros, e para fundarem os consensos que tão alto apregoam. O que o LIVRE propõe (e me levou a aderir ao partido) é esse espaço de debate aberto e transparente (a Ágora pública, o espaço de racionalidade plural de Habermas, todas as propostas sujeitas à contestação) até ao limite de todas as reuniões políticas serem à porta aberta e com livestream, e de as listas de candidatos a eleições, quer sejam locais, nacionais, ou europeias, estarem sujeitas a primárias abertas.

Não sei ainda que implantação o LIVRE poderá vir a ter na sociedade portuguesa, nem que força motriz poderá incutir à sua mudança política e social, nem que papel poderá vir a ter no terreno de luta europeu, que é neste momento o terreno das decisões fundamentais (e isto depende em grande parte da capacidade do partido de mobilizar um eleitorado natural nas próximas eleições europeias). O LIVRE ainda está em formação, e não tem respostas pret-à-pôrter a todas as questões que enfrenta. Mas o método que o partido propõe interpela a sociedade civil, sobretudo à esquerda, a intervir, a debater, a contradizer as suas posições, a apresentar alternativas, e tudo isso em espaço aberto. Será, no mínimo, pedagógico.

O LIVRE realizou hoje as suas primeiras primárias abertas, para escolha da ordem da lista de candidatos às eleições europeias. Votei no Teatro Rápido, em Lisboa. O site do LIVRE, com informações, programas, contactos, etc., encontra-se em livrept.net

Prologue

Europe is my cradle, my culture, and my home. From the bright shores of Portugal where I was born to the green fields of England, from the teeming crossroads of the Brabant to the dark wooded slopes of Franconia, through railroad and airport and autobahn, this is my land and this is my people, among whom I have lived and who have made me who I am.

The destiny of Europeans has been forged together, in steel and struggle and bloodbath, in faith and doubt and knowledge, in terror and trust and trysting. They have turned out towards the World, and then back inward towards themselves. They have turned against each other and then come together, but are still uneasy about it, all too ready to misunderstand each other, scapegoat each other, and fall back onto provincial selfishness when things do not go according to plan.

That is thus where we now stand, and this is how I place myself: on the inter-europe-express; on the lines of interconnection in European culture and political history, between here and there, between past, present, and future, between languages and ideological perspectives, between diverse memories and diverse visions; between the different dimensions of Europe that have been and that are yet to emerge.

Europe as a culture is a bit like Europe as a place: a tenuous peninsula, anchored in the large inert landmass of its past, its complex infrastructures and ideologies, and its fears, but pointing out boldly to a liquid ocean of freedom, progressive discovery, and solidarity. I am aware of how optimistic the latter sounds. But it is exactly in times of crisis, when the bounds of policy are the too-tight boundaries of imagination, that to inhale optimistically, even with short inebriating bursts of poetry, is most needed, in order to exhale solutions out of walls of the box.

This is the aim of this blog.

note: intereuropexpress is multilingual and posts may appear in several different languages

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