Geography and Fragility

Abstract

This article introduces the topic and offers an overview of the issue. The author argues that despite the dismantling of the Iron Curtain in 1989 there is still a gap of indifference (which sometimes translates into suspicion and misunderstanding) that separates Western from Eastern Europe when it comes to the exchange of ideas and the dissemination of knowledge. While East European intellectuals most often feed themselves on West European authors, intellectual fashions and cultural products, their Western counterparts pay comparatively little attention to what comes, intellectually, from the East – as though the traffic of ideas between Eastern and Western Europe is only one way. On closer inspection, however, this may be due in part to a sense of existential fragility, insecurity and dislocation that characterizes the “East European mind” itself. The author traces briefly this characteristic in the works and opinions of such authors as Czesław Miłosz, Arthur Koestler, Milan Kundera, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Mircea Eliade.

Notes

1. Defining East-Central Europe has never been easy and there is already a growing and lively literature on it. For the sake of simplicity, throughout this Editorial Introduction I will use “Eastern Europe” broadly, as meaning those European countries that used to belong to the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union (the Warsaw Pact countries, but also the countries that used to be part of Yugoslavia) and that are today either current or prospective members of the European Union. At the same time, there is something “open” about the definition of Eastern Europe: sometimes even countries such as Georgia are considered East European. I have tried to preserve this openness.

2. Miłosz 2.

3. The “Orientalization” of Eastern Europe is a fascinating topic, which unfortunately falls outside the scope of this essay. Since the literature on this subject is huge, I will just indicate some of the most recent contributions: Bjelić and Savić; Kovacevic; Todorova; and Wolff.

4. Miłosz 162.

5. Koestler 131.

6. Miłosz 257.

7. Havel, To the Castle and Back 99.

8. Ibid. 118.

9. Stok 141.

10. Ibid.

11. Eliade 151.

12. Ibid.

13. For a comparative treatment of the notion of “terror of history” in Eliade and Kieslowski, see my essay “Transcendence and History in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blind Chance.”

14. Kundera 34; my emphasis.

15. Zarifopol-Johnston 60.

16. Kundera 36.

17. Havel, The Art of the Impossible 17.

18. Ibid.

19. Miłosz 300.