The Idea of Europe in World Literature from the Eastern and Western Peripheries

The Idea of Europe in World Literature from the Eastern and Western Peripheries Submitted by Barbara Alexandra Marshall to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in March 2018 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………….. 1 2 Abstract While a vast range of works have been written on European identity from historical, cultural, political, sociological, and economic points of view, I am attempting to turn the discourse around and investigate the complex notion of European identity that forms the basis of personal, collective and societal identities represented in literature and a European space imagined and depicted differently by various writers. My thesis explores the diverse interpretations of Europe by creating and investigating a literary dialogue between some works in Hungarian and British contemporary literature and so, in a generalized sense, in some aspects between the Eastern and Western peripheries of Europe. The literary interpretation of Europe and European identity is a neglected research area, just as is the literary dialogue between the Western and the Eastern parts of the European Union. Due to this lack of exemplary methodological routes, the thesis’s comparative nature and the fact that it deals with the cultural positions and literary capitals of two very unequal countries, the methodological background is provided by world literary approaches. Widening the time-scale from the most recent works to ones published in the 1990’s and some even before the fall of the Iron Curtain presented the opportunity for analysing the dynamic character of British and Hungarian perceptions and the changing focus on prevalent themes. Imre Kertész (1929-2016) was primarily concerned by the formulation and articulation of new ethical and philosophical values for Europe emerging on the ethical zero ground of the Holocaust and focused on a detached, theoretical observation of the individual. Brian Aldiss (1925-2017) was more interested in the active and often contradictory aspects of identity and the practical moral dilemmas after the Wars in twentieth-century Europe. Marina Lewycka’s (1946-) novels deal with the European aspects of migration concerning the different generations and the gender dimensions of the Europe concept. László Végel (1941-) writes about the utopia of Europe as a multi- ethnic unity and explores the minority identity in relation to the migrant existence. Tim Parks (1954-) approaches the issues of fate and destiny, and their relevance to European politics and personal choices, while also investigating the possibility of 3 linguistic schizophrenia. Gábor Németh’s (1956-) novels investigate the symbolism inherent in European Jewish identity and cosmopolitanism and the current attitudes on populism and anti-immigration. The perspective and the focus from which the novels are analysed have been influenced by present events, and the political, social and cultural atmosphere of both countries and the EU. I have been trying to spot signs which might have forecast the disillusionment and hostility felt towards the European dream by the majority of both populations. The disappointment over the dissolving vision of a united Europe has emerged as an overall theme connecting the writers’ works; however, the pressing want of free-spirits, the Nietzschean Good Europeans, has also been persistent. 4 Table of Contents 1. Introduction – A European identity? 7 2. Chapter 1 – Problems without a solution: Methodology in World 27 Literature 3. Chapter 2 – The Ethical Zero Ground for Europe 51 4. Chapter 3 – The Same Old Questions 87 5. Chapter 4 – From the Periphery of the Periphery 123 6. Chapter 5 – A Woman Bestseller on the Migration in Europe 147 7. Chapter 6 – Europe as a Destiny 187 8. Chapter 7 – Migration 211 9. Chapter 8 – Conclusion 231 10. Bibliography 244 5 6 Introduction A European Identity? While a vast range of works have been published on European identity discussing it from several: historical, cultural, political, sociological, economic points of view, I am attempting to turn the discourse around and investigate the complex notion of European identity that forms the basis of personal, collective and societal identities represented in literature and a European space imagined and depicted differently by various writers. As the novels are working with intricate systems of allusions to European identity it is important to realise that the majority of the works engaged with this theme conflate, using Gerard Delanty’s terms, individual, collective (it ‘is not simply the aggregation of individual identities, but the self-understanding of a particular group’), and societal identities (‘broad cultural categories […] which include within them more concrete collective identities’), (Delanty, ‘Is There’ 76). Delanty in his article ‘Is There a European Identity?’ identifies four aspects of identity: first, the constructed nature of identity, which ‘arises only in relation to social action’ and changes in the course of time (76). Second, that ‘identity is not an idea or a cultural given, but a mode of self-understanding that is expressed by people’s ongoing narratives’ (76). Third, ‘identity is based on a difference and thus exists in a relational context’ and the fourth is the multiple identities aspect, when these identities coexist ‘in varying degrees of tension with each other’ (77). Regenia Gagnier in her book Individualism, Decadence and Globalization (2010) acknowledged ‘recent concern with the European Union, currently constituted as a market’ about the want of an “identity” or, using Stefan Elbe’s observation in Europe: A Nietzschean Perspective (2003), about the absence of a ‘unifying vision’1 (Gagnier 137). Elbe gives a convincing overview of the manifestations of the European identity crisis pronounced and proclaimed in political, social and academic circles. He, however, by exploring Friedrich Nietzsche’s investigation of European nihilism, its consequences and a possible response to it, attempts to render the contemporary debate on the European idea 1 Elbe gives an overview of its contemporary manifestation in political, social and academic circles. 7 ‘intelligible within the larger context of European secularization’ (Elbe 38). He argues that ‘it is not only the particular Christian or scientific worldview that loses its ground following the ‘death of God’, but the entire 2,000-year-old practice of endowing existence with a greater sense of meaning by determining the overall truth of existence’ (38-39). He observes that as the meaningful collective existence of Europeans ceased to ‘reside in the progressive unfolding of world history, as the Cold War ideologies had promised’ and Europe ‘conceived primarily as a common economic market’ does not seem to satisfy people’s innate need for meaning’, Europeans are confronted again with the questions occupying Nietzsche (41, 62). Nietzsche devised the term ‘incomplete nihilism’ to refer to those modern responses to nihilism that merely seek ‘to replace the worship of the old God with the worship of more secular idols and ideologies’ and in which ‘the will to truth of Europe’s Christian-Platonic heritage remains operational’ (42-43). In Nietzsche’s view, the appeal of modern nationalism is another form of incomplete nihilism, moreover, as Elbe points out, ‘the European Union harbours the great danger of simply replicating the specific logic of nationalism […] albeit on a much larger scale’ (70). He argues that ‘the majority of support historically achieved by the political project of Europe was based on a strategy of incomplete nihilism, on projecting a particular, fixed, and benign idea of Europe – the European Union as the culmination of Europe’s common cultural heritage, and as a protracted zone of peace and unity’ (72-73). While Nietzsche saw himself ‘as being greatly indebted’ to European culture, he equally realised that ‘the deeper implications of the advent of European nihilism had called into question the intellectual credibility of much of this cultural heritage’ and necessitated ‘the critical reappraisal of some of its key concepts’ (73). This concern resonates with Imre Kertész’s argument, discussed in Chapter 2, that the formulation and articulation of new ethical and philosophical values are vital for Europe emerging on the ethical ground zero of the Holocaust. Nietzsche, in Elbe’s interpretation, would argue that ‘attempts to articulate a more animating conception of Europe along traditional lines, as well as the copious references to the ‘crisis of meaning’ witnessed in the post-Cold War era, only preserve this traditional language of ascetic ideals, and draw much of the debate onto this terrain’ (Elbe 112). In contrast, Nietzsche introduced the concept of the ‘active’ nihilism of the ‘good Europeans’, ‘free spirits’ with a deep intellectual 8 freedom, who would ‘view the absence of a more meaningful idea of Europe not as a reason for despair, but rather as the moment of an immense re-enchantment of European existence’ (113). As a result of rejecting Europe as a traditional notion of identity Gagnier also explores the Nietzschean

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