A propos of nothing much at all

[fpb]

I will justify these aphorisms if challenged, but -

America is a principle.
France is a conflict.
Germany is tragedy.
Italy is a struggle against overwhelming odds, occasionally punctuated by bursts of Homeric laughter.
Russia is a siege - as seen from inside the besieged camp.
But Britain is a person, and could never be anything except an individual.

Comments

[filialucis]

*throws down gauntlet because it would be a shame not to make you expand on that little lot*

[fpb.livejournal.com]

America does not exist because of a native unity - although of course it is united by the English language and overall Western identity. It exists because of a certain set of values, set out by Jefferson and by Paine, in whose name the War of Independence was fought.

France embodies conflict in itself. Its one triumphant contemporary myth, Asterix, incarnates it in the continuous and irresoluble conflict between the overwhelming organizing power of the State, incarnate as Caesar, and the irreducible, obstreperous, rowdy independence of the French individual, Asterix. The fact that the State in question is supposedly Roman means less than nothing - from Charlemagne to Napoleon, no country ever identified as strongly as France with the ancient Empire, certainly not Italy.

Germany is tragedy not only because of the horrors of twentieth-century history. Certainly the most significant and powerful works of art to come from modern Germany, from Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus to Margarethe von Trotha's The Age of Lead, to Kenna Hijja's wonderful fanfics - and I am not joking in placing KH in that kind of company - are intensely, unbrokenly tragic. But I think that one important feature is: Germany, as a dimension, is further from the daily and domestic reality of German citizens than any other European country. It is well known that when a German is asked, where do you come from, s/he will reply: I am a Berliner, a Swabian, a Saxon. S/he will identify his/her daily existence, not with the country, but with the region. And it follows that Germany is almost by definition, almost by destiny, a place of high and awful and abstract things, a place of the spirit - not a home where to rest and relax. Germans at home are not German, they are Bavarian or Hessisch or Pfalzers. It is only when the mind turns to the higher areas of politics and sociology, that it starts to take in Germany.

Italy has to be united to exist at all, and at the same time union is incredibly difficult. The country has less natural resources, except for food, than any other European country, and is widely divided in geographical, economic, cultural terms. Even to travel from Milan to Naples is no joke. So there are always overwhelming odds to struggle against - whether it is to uproot the Mafia or to keep up with more fortunate economies or simply to administer such a nightmare of a country. At the same time, we have three thousand years of history behind us, and if they have taught us anything, it is a sense of humour. Much of our best and most successful writing, from Guareschi to Dario Fo - and unlike Germany - is humorous. (And let me tell you, I have never known anyone like us Italians for practical jokes.)

Russia has no natural borders and has always had to either expand or be invaded. That conditions all its psychology, in particular its constant need for one authority - which President Putin is successfully fulfilling now, whatever his objectionable features from the point of view of us secure Westerners. Russians only feel safe when they know that the centre is strong and ready to react.

Britain is historically a mass of contradiction - a country which rejected Catholicism without absorbing Protestantism, a kingdom dominated by a republican aristocracy, a land of freedom without a constitution, a land of ancient laws which repeatedly broke its own laws, and last but hardly least the union of four nations that hate each other - that it can only be understood by being experienced. It is a person because only a person can incarnate so many contradictions without being torn apart. And more than any other of these countries, it is a domestic reality - it lives best, and is most clearly understood, exactly at that level where Germany hardly has any existence at all.

[notebuyer.livejournal.com]

BRAVO!

Best thumbnail description I've seen in a while.

Further in Germany: only there is high culture so without place: even the novels of personal experience tend not to identify the place (the sorrows of werther take place at WHICH school?) but the feelings, in the hopes of making contact in the abstract, with the thought that "if I show you an orderly thing, you'll approve because it's orderly, regardless of content." (And, perhaps, part of the reason my great-grandfather ran away from Bremen in the first place.)

[thegameiam.livejournal.com]

very nicely said.

Out of curiousity.

[peterchayward.livejournal.com]

What's Australia?

Re: Out of curiousity.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am not quite sure. But I think it is a country full of people who are not wholly sure whether they are the offspring of the black sheep of English aristocracy or of transported Irish bandits. All the Australians I ever met had instinctive good manners, but a very macho self-image.