Glorious, Accursed Europe

6. Old Europe or New Europe?

– 100 – Old EuropE or New EuropE? One of the spectacles which the next century will invite us to witness is the decision regarding the fate of the European Jews. Friedrich nietzsche, The Dawn of Day1 In his novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The man without attributes),2 the Austrian writer Robert Musil wrote that at the beginning of the twentieth century—that magical date—some Jews clung to the old, while others pinned their hopes on the new. The internal crises that rocked European nations after World War I prompted fears not only that Europe would remain unstable, but that forces of destruction continued to lurk beneath the surface, increasing in power and momentum, and apt to explode in violence. Apprehension and misgivings about the future once again gave rise to a torrent of apocalyptic prophecies regarding the inevitable decline and fall of European civilization.3 The most famous of these prophetic works was Oswald Spengler’s monumental Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The decline of the West), which was published in installments beginning in late 1917 and ending in 1922.4 It is important to note that in addition to the morphological, deterministic schema promoted by Spengler and others, a contrasting outlook developed that might be called relativistic. This outlook did not support the idea of redeeming the Occident through a return to the Orient, nor did it believe in European values such as Occidental rationalism—rather, it claimed the existence of multiple modernities. In other words, it was not a Eurocentric perception of universal history and did not observe the world outside of Europe as a projection of the European self-image.5 In any case, Spengler and his notion of decline created many responses and numerous imitators. One of the oddest, the bizarre Jewish American publisher and poet Samuel Roth, published a poem in 1919 titled “Europe: A Book for America,” in which he attempted to bare Europe’s “true face,” Old Europe or New Europe? 101 hidden behind the facade of progress. Roth maintained that Europe was spiritual heir to the licentious and morally bankrupt classical world, and that there was no possibility that the 1919 Treaty of Versailles could establish stability on that quarrelsome continent. In his poem, an ailing Europe, having satisfied its brutish desires, calls for a doctor who might bring it relief: Europe, After you have made the rounds of your cruelest lusts, and spat out a million devils You make a wry face And clamor for a doctor. Europe, let me be your doctor! With hammer let me break open those iron jaws and pour a pail of your bitterest spleen down your throat. O, I know a way to make eunuchs of the most terrible men; For twelve months I would like to feed you on a diet of dung. You are a sick, sick Europe. You need medicine. Let me be your doctor!6 between the wars: the pendulum of expectations In Europe itself, World War I was depicted as both a purifying and a refining experience—one of destruction and reconstruction—and as a testament to the irreversible decline of European culture.7 In his poem Mefisto,8 Uri Zvi Greenberg—influenced by Spengler or by Upadek cywilizacji zachodniej (The decline of the West, 1921), a book by the Polish sociologist Florian Znaniecki, and certainly by his own experiences in the Austro-Hungarian military as an army medic at the front—depicted Europe as a continent “given to evil.”9 A sick continent, it had sold its soul to the devil and unleashed all the forces of evil and destruction that had been buried within. Still, this dismal picture did not dominate the mood of the day, just as images of destruction had not dominated the end of the previous century . At least during the 1920s, it was generally believed that the crises Europe endured after the war were simply the pangs of rebirth; Europe, still licking its wounds, had learned its lesson and would not permit a new 102 glorious, accursed europe general war to break out. This optimism translated into plans to establish a new Europe and to implement the idea of a federative Europe—an idea whose seeds first appeared, as we have seen, in the fourteenth century, and whose embers again began to glow in the seventeenth century. The general consensus was that Europe, now mature and experienced, would become a continent free...