Philippe Daverio: let’s talk about Europe
I know that talking about Europe today is a bit going off the trend. However, when I first happened to talk about Europe, I delved into the texts of Duns Scotus, a 14th-century Scottish philosopher turned Franciscan, who, known as Doctor Angelicus, came from England and taught in Paris and then went to Cologne. When I first dealt with Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth-century theologian, I found that he had set out on foot across Europe up and down and went to Paris to do the “confutatio” and then to Cologne to do the “lectio.” Like Albert of Ockam, English medieval philosopher, who had gone down from Ockam to Paris, then to the South and then left to die in Munich having sanctioned our fortune, our function and the whole intellectual world.
To them it seemed natural to talk about Europe. Europe was born and survived among intellectuals like Wolfang Goethe, Gioacchino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi. Europe very often died in the general states of armies. Yet they already had Europe.
Sometimes it occurs to me that there was more Europe before the First World War. Of course, it was for a small part of society, perhaps for one percent of the inhabitants of the Old Continent. That one percent had the habit of speaking two or three languages without having to be ashamed, they also spoke some dialects for fun, they had very articulate libraries and relatives everywhere, sometimes even mistresses or lovers.
That European world disappeared in the 20th century and has been forgotten. It is that world, however, that still remains alive. When Charlemagne — making a bit of trouble and even a bit of a massacre — ran up and down between Aachen and Rome, when the politics of thought carried the great clerics wandering from one university seat to another: that was Europe.
On August 21, 1849, the first, real, European uproar was the Revolution of ’48, the one that set fire to Paris like Milan, Milan like Brescia, like Dresden, like Vienna, like Poland, like Naples, like Palermo. It was the first time we were united by a revolutionary afflatus. Victor Hugo wrote a text that should be republished in several languages: “One day will come Russia, France, Italy, Germany, you all nations of the continent, without losing your distinct qualities and your glorious individuality, will merge closely into a higher unity and constitute yourselves in the European fraternity.” We were then in 1849: long road, however excellent seed.
We thought then of emancipation, we thought then of labor, we thought then of Europe.
It was the first time we were united by a revolutionary breath. Perhaps it is time to become romantic again.
From the lectio magistralis, University of Bergamo, September 2016.
– Philippe Daverio
“That European world disappeared in the 20th century and has been forgotten. It is that world, however, that still remains alive. When Charlemagne – making a bit of trouble and even a bit of a massacre – was running up and down between Aachen and Rome, when the politics of thought brought great clerics wandering from one university seat to another: it was Europa.”
