Abstract
European Studies
As Europe keeps being assailed by crisis after crisis, be they financial, political or humanitarian, the very concept of Europe seems under mounting threat. Especially with the return of extreme forms of nationalism driving new forms of populist agitation, the idea of a growing and increasingly transnational Europe cannot be taken for granted anymore, as if people had forgotten, or never really even considered, that as Habermas once put it, what distinguishes Europe and its achievements ‘is the lasting memory of nationalist excess and moral abyss’ (New Left Review 11, 2001: 23). Culture alone will never be able to replace either the failure of political imagination we are living through, or the open and vicious attempts at dismantling the very institutions that can function as guarantors for what one still regards as chiefly European achievements: reason and the rule of law. Yet culture in general, and literature in particular, ultimately represent a last line of resistance against advancing illiberalism and a major platform to uphold the common, even when disputed, ideals that form any kind of European identity. In this context Walter Cohen’s book is a forceful intervention that leaves no room for doubts about the importance of European literature and the need to understand its works in a framework that – without ever forgetting the peculiarities of the different European nations across time – rightfully strives for a wider panorama. This is a tour de force, in more than one sense, that attempts – successfully, I would argue – to bring about fundamental changes in the way that literary study still is, for the most part, organized.
There are many surprising elements to this latest book by a distinguished scholar and comparatist: one is certainly the sheer scope of the endeavour, especially given that for some time now it has become current to have literary histories, usually restricted to a nation, written by a team of scholars. To attempt to write single-handedly a literary history not just of a nation or region, but of a continent such as Europe, is in itself a daunting task. Furthermore, and that too could be seen as a surprise, Cohen does not treat European literature in splendid isolation, but insists on reading it always in comparison to other literatures. And, although not unwieldy, this is a fairly extended work, not a simple summary, and much less a quick whisk through the established canon. A lifetime of extensive and wide reading, coupled with a fine and sharp critical judgement, go into the making of a book that is certain to remain without match for a while. The very structure of the book, though, might also elicit some surprise. Instead of dividing up the work into national areas, or genres, or main historical periods, or famous authors, Cohen provides a grid mixing temporal and generic elements to organize the book. Its four main parts are roughly chronological: ‘Antiquity’, ‘The Vernacular: From the Middle Ages to Early Modernity’, ‘Early Modernity’ and ‘Modernity’. It is noteworthy that a large part of the book focuses on pre-modern literature, even if, given Cohen’s previous work on the Renaissance and Shakespeare, that could be expected. Within those four parts, however, readers can find a diverse structure that ranges from, say, the ‘Medieval Lyric’ to ‘The Representation of Empire in the Renaissance’ to ‘Jewish and Modernist Fiction’ and ‘World Literature and Contemporary Fiction’. Traditionalists might bemoan what might seem, at first, an aleatory and idiosyncratic choice. Yet it turns out to be a flexible and apt way to navigate through the changes in literary, social and political systems that together represent European literature. Doing away with a reliance on the ‘national’ as a category both frees up the author to try a different assemblage of the various elements constitutive of European literature and allows him to operate on a level that effectively transcends the national. Given the overriding force of nationalism from the nineteenth century onwards, and the ways in which literature both put itself at the service of ideology and was co-opted by it, the difficulty of what Cohen attempts in this ground-breaking study cannot be underestimated.
The force with which the literary and the national have combined to form our identities is, in part, the subject of Marijan Dović and Jón Karl Helgason’s study of National Poets, Cultural Saints. Their study, while still drawing somewhat from an older tradition of imagology, is closely aligned with current developments into cultural memory studies and a focus on ‘national’ celebrations of famous authors and their after-lives. The book thus fits very well into the series published by Brill on the ‘National Cultivation of Culture’. At first glance one could think that both books would stand on opposite corners of the European literary board, Cohen magisterially drawing wide comparisons across space and time in search for a European unity in diversity, while Dović and Helgason excavate, with comparable zeal, the recesses of the national as embodied specifically in two authors, the Slovenian France Prešeren (1800–40), and the Icelandic Jónas Hallgrimsson (1807–45), their imbrication in the nationalist agendas of their respective times and countries, and especially the use made of their figures afterwards.
A few points stand out in this study: the fact that it is co-written, the choice of two notable writers from the European periphery, and the profusion of images that are key to get a proper sense of the work of remembrance and canonization at stake. It is divided into two parts: one more general and covering theoretical and methodological issues aptly titled ‘Towards a Theory of Cultural Sainthood’; whereas the second, ‘National Poets from the European Periphery’, makes clear how the writers studied, however emblematic of the processes analysed, are anything but central in the European imagination. There is much to learn and enjoy in this study as the authors make their arguments convincingly and clearly. The religious analogy, though not new, is clearly evident and Dović and Helgason do well in linking their own individual interests with a wider concern with such processes at European level. A crucial question that could have merited more attention concerns the ways in which, in spite of their own merit and respective national cult, both poets studied never made it into a larger European consciousness. Dović and Helgason are aware of this and mention it specifically in their ‘Epilogue’ as a possible area for further study: ‘Unlike Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, or Andersen, they were never consecrated by the “Holy Synod” of world literature’ (p. 202).
It is perhaps yet another of Cohen’s merits that his study of European Literature actually ends with a consideration of ‘World Literature and Contemporary Fiction’. Rather than an easy attempt to quickly jump on the bandwagon of a current emphasis on ‘World Literature’, Cohen’s book puts the study of European Literature squarely at the centre of World Literature: ‘In Europe the rise of the written vernacular, defended by Dante, is reinterpreted five hundred years later by Goethe through the category of world literature’ (p. 443). There is much in Cohen’s study with which one may argue of course. Some will find that his attention to social and political issues, the insistence on understanding European literature in flux and engaged in intense dialogue with others, his attention to canonical and non-canonical writers, as well as his view of the significance of empire in the development of modern European literature, risk diffusion. Some might find that his understanding of World Literature could have benefited from a stronger articulation of it with modernity, empire and capitalism. However, any such objections should be swept away when confronted with the magnitude of Cohen’s study. Monumental and erudite without ever becoming precious or obscure, firmly grounded historically but completely enmeshed in theoretical discussions, Cohen’s book will stand the test of time like the works of the great critics he lists at the end: Lukács, Curtius, Auerbach, Spitzer, Adorno and a few others. As a great study of European literature, it could not have come at a better or more appropriate time, as such wide vision is much in demand for a reconceptualization of Europe turned imperative. For the present it makes for engaging, provocative and pleasurable reading, as much as it also points the way forward.