The Great Challenge for Cultures

Latin, Germanic, and Slavic peoples have converged in Udine for centuries

Europe begins here, in the quiet twilight of Palazzo Antonini, headquarters of the University of Udine. Austrian, Hungarian, Slovenian, Croat students exchange notes and textbooks with their Italian colleagues, and together they discuss, joke or listen to music sitting on the benches of the willow park beyond the grand Renaissance atrium. Italian is their lingua franca; at times even Friulian, a dialect that has given and received thoughts, words and idioms across the old border.
Europe begins where, until a few years ago, there were bars, wary custom officers and strict policemen. Between the borders there was a "no man's land" that kept the bordering peoples even farther apart, and dangerous, narrow paths that only illegal immigrants dared to tread, often leaving their lives and hopes at the foot of a cliff. Not anymore.
My car runs fast along the highway leading from Udine to Vienna. A sign reads "Austria Km. 5", and I automatically pat my passport in an inside pocket of my jacket. Five kilometres down the road, however, nobody is there to ask for it, nor after 10, or after 15. Just another road sign in German, giving directions for Villach. That's how I entered Austria, without noticing it. This, too, is Europe.
Frontier posts and customs offices have disappeared from the borders of 15 countries, faded into history; next year, that number will climb to 25: from Malta to Belgium, Greece to Portugal, France, Hungary, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and of course Italy. Listing them all would be too long. We can simply talk of an immense territory spanning from Spain to the Urals and from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. A nation of over 450 million people, who frequently fought on opposing sides in the wars of the past, but who always found in their common roots a way to reopen dialogue when the guns finally fell silent.
This new nation now has other elements of cohesion: the euro, which replaced the old currencies, and some unique institutions that are a remarkable innovation on the past two centuries. The challenge is to wipe out the divisions of the past in the name of a shared future, under a new name - European Union - and a flag: 12 gold stars on a blue field. Twelve because "this is the number of perfection and completeness," reads the heraldic report.
Our report on the new Europe begins in Friuli. This is no casual choice. Over this border territory the three souls of the Old Continent (Latin, Germanic and Slavic) met and often clashed. Ancient souls, yet able to renew themselves to generate the newest ideas. Later on we shall see how this works. For the moment, let's just say that the member states have delegated a part of their sovereignty to common institutions that represent simultaneously the interests of the Union, of its member states and of its citizens. This is accomplished through the so-called "institutional triangle": the Commission, caring for Union interests; the Council, representing the state governments; and the Parliament, elected by universal suffrage.
I can see young students swarming out of the university halls of Palazzo Antonini in Udine. They are the modern face of Europe. Here they study engineering, medicine, law, economics, mathematics, sciences, languages and literatures, just like their ancestors who came here from Slovenia and Austria for trading, or from here went to Vienna or Ljubljana to build beautiful palaces.
Some went as far as St. Petersburg and helped shape Peter the Great's imperial urban planning dream. These youngsters are unaware - or possibly all too aware - of holding the newest Europe in their hands, as young as them and at as ancient as their souls. I smile, remembering the annoyed contempt displayed by George W. Bush when he called "Old Europe" the countries that opposed the war of conquest he waged on Iraq. Maybe the eggheads at the Pentagon or at the State Department hadn't managed to explain to him that within a couple decades (or possibly less) his Almighty America will have to reckon with the Old World, which renewed itself by updating the democracy it invented over 2,000 years ago.
Friuli, we said. Europe's three souls have been at home here ever since the Patriarchy of Aquileia became a cultural, as well as political and economic powerhouse. It proudly confronted the Most Serene Republic of Venice, and its territories extended from the Adriatic coast to Klagenfurt, in Austria, and Ljubljana, in Slovenia. Long before the year 1000 Friuli began to take the shape of a state entity. It had a well-defined territory, a language (a mixture of Latin, Celtic, Germanic and Slovenian), and a people.
Soon thereafter, it had a Parliament as well, representing the nobility, the clergy, and the merchant class. Elsewhere, it took the French Revolution to drag institutions into the modern age.
Some 20 years ago, Friuli was the logistical and cultural staging area for my travels on the other side of the Iron Curtain: I wanted to find out whether, and eventually how much, Soviet dominance had widened the gap between Eastern and Western Europe. In the end, it turned out that this hadn't happened.
While strolling along the Danube to avoid curious ears, Istvan Dozai, an intellectual turned politician, told me that Budapest had kept the most European value: doubt. "This is an act of courage, as well as of faith," he told me, "because we are forced to live in a regime of ideological certitude." Gyorgy Szabo, a poet, explained to me why poetry books were best sellers in Hungary: "Because poetry is a prophecy that has given up the future. We now need prophets, not people's commissars."
In Prague I found the spirit of Central Europe. The Soviet tanks of 1968 had not managed to wipe it out, nor had the jailhouse normalization that followed the invasion. On one particular night, a guy approached me in the big St. Wenceslas Square, where the clock runs counter-clockwise. He spoke a splendid Italian, and I told him so. "Your Dante," he replied, "spoke it better yet." He had approached me, he said, because he wanted to thank me. "What for?" I asked him. "I wish to thank you for all the things Italy has taught us across the centuries: to be citizens, not subjects. In France they learnt it with the Revolution, while you already were citizens in the 14th century, in Florence."
Out of the shadows, two police officers suddenly appeared. They grabbed him and took him away. While he was being carried away, he shouted towards me: "They want me to be a subject and to submit, that's why they send me to jail. But I shall remain a citizen!"
East Berlin; Temesvar and Arad in Ceausescu's Romania; Vienna, at the time an outpost towards the unknown; and then Paris; Madrid; Brussels; Gand, where Charles V the Holy Roman Emperor was born; and Amsterdam. I learned about new countries, but everywhere I found those three souls of Europe - Latin, Germanic, and Slavic - which I had met in the streets of Udine, in the villages of Carnia, among the magnificent ruins of Aquileia, amid the Lombard quiet of Cividale.
"Here, you find more than the three souls of Europe," says Gianfranco Ellero, Friulian intellectual and historian. "You also find their natural borders: the Italian, the Austrian, and the Slovenian one. The Three Borders Peak is located here, between the Carnian and Julian Alps, but the specific groups frequently crossed those borders and constantly exchanged experiences, words, and culture."
Can you offer us an example, Professor?
"Let's take gubana, a cake typical of the Natisone valleys, made of dried fruits and spices enclosed in pastry that is rolled in a doughnut shape. The word gubana is neither Friulian nor Latin: it's Slavic. It comes from the verb gubati, meaning to roll. However, there is more than linguistic loans here. As far back as the 1400s, there were so many Germans and Slovenians in Udine that they established and supported two brotherhoods: Holy Trinity of the Germans and St. Jerome of the Slovenians. A European vision was shown by Marco d'Aviano, who saved Vienna from the Turks, and Nicolo Pacassi from Gorizia, who built Schonbrunn Castle, the luxurious residence of Hapsburg emperors. To say nothing of Basilio Brollo from Gemona, who authored the first Chinese-Latin dictionary; of Giacomo Ceconi, builder of roads, bridges, and railways, dubbed a count by Emperor Franz Josef; of Giulio Quaglio who painted frescoes in churches and palaces in Udine, Ljubljana, Graz, Salzburg, Padua, and Gorizia. Or painter Afro, Pier Paolo Pasolini, photographer Tina Modotti. The list would go on and on. These aren't local heroes, they are people who achieved Europe-wide fame, because Friuli has always been a region of Europe, long before Europe took its current shape."
What sort of European awareness is there in today's Friuli?
"I'll only give you a few significant examples: Udine has been twinned with six other European cities, and three of its most important boulevards are named after the fathers of the new Europe: De Gasperi, Adenauer, and Schumann. In case anyone still doubted this city's authentic European vocation, I can add that we have a United Europe Avenue."
In your opinion, is the 25-state European Union final, or can there be further geographic and political adjustments?
"A 25-state Union is an extremely remarkable achievement, not only because of the quality of the 25, but also because they identified what could bring them together and overcame what divided them until recently: think of the Iron Curtain and the two suicidal wars of the 20th century. Rather than new adhesions, I think new clusters will arise, following the historical regions. Such as Friuli and Slovenia, which maintained a surprising dialogue even while separated by the Iron Curtain. Friuli and Slovenia were both part of the Patriarchy of Aquileia for centuries, so they constitute historically a region, and I wouldn't find surprising if they achieved some form of closer integration within the European Union. Historical regions are the pride of Europe; the advent of the States could compress but not cancel them."
Will European culture stem the tide of U.S. culture?
"Yes, it will, provided that Europeans rid themselves of the World War II syndrome, the debt of gratitude they feel towards Americans. The latter have great merits: they not only freed Europe from Fascism and Nazism, but also defended it from Stalin after WWII and during the Cold War. These merits must be acknowledged, but after half a century the debt has expired, don't you think?"
So, does this mean that Europeans can now raise their voices?
"No, because raising one's voice serves no useful purpose, and because one cannot ignore such a big political, economic, and democratic reality as the USA. But if Europeans get rid of this syndrome, they can discuss with the United States on a par, and this will also benefit Washington, which will learn to have partners and not only counterparts. Clearly, the first step for a new dialogue, not just with the USA but with the world, is the creation of structures entitled to open it. I refer to the creation of a joint foreign policy, which was needed in 1991 during Gulf War I and is now indispensable. Anyway, this is already on the agenda."
This in regards to the political standpoint. What about culture?
"Well, from this standpoint Europeans must become aware of their cultural superiority. This has nothing to do with nationalism, trust me. Can you name any other nation where history was so marked by culturally unifying events? Only Europe, and this became a collective patrimony. Think of the significance of the Roman Empire, Christianity and the Papacy, and also the Protestant Reform; and of the sciences, arts and letters. Humanism, Renaissance, Baroque, Enlightenment were not local movements, they were European ones. If one can find them in Italy and in France, in Spain and in Germany, in Slovenia, in the Netherlands, in Hungary, that means that they spoke a universal language, and are therefore a shared patrimony. Strengthened by this awareness, and not hampered by the World War II syndrome, we can talk to the United States on an equal footing."

This is Part Two of the series The Newest Europe

Publication Date: 2003-06-22
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2870