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"Literature in Europe," Vassiliki Kolocotroni


Literature and the Construction of Europe

In "Literature in Europe," Vassiliki Kolocotroni explores the evolution of European modernism not as a stable canon, but as a "contested, perennially crisis-ridden" space defined by shifting borders, intellectual migrations, and a persistent tension between tradition and radical rupture. The text traces how literary figures of the early twentieth century grappled with the "diminution of capital"—both economic and intellectual—and sought to redefine the "European mind" in the wake of global conflict.

The Geopolitics of Tradition

The construction of a "European" literature often began with strident ideological claims regarding tradition and power. T.S. Eliot, writing in 1919, posited that a literature is only significant when it is a "part of History," which he equated strictly with the history of Europe. Eliot viewed the literary landscape as a "fierce and fatal... struggle for existence," where powerful metropolitan capitals naturally absorb "drifting shreds of force" from the provinces. This centripetal tendency was echoed by Paul Valéry, who noted that while "everything has come to Europe," the post-WWI era had brought a "spiritual crisis" where civilizations finally realized they were mortal. In contrast to these defensive stances, Joseph Conrad offered a more cynical view, debunking the idea of a peaceful federalist Europe and describing instead an "armed and trading continent" driven by "economical contests for life and death".

Symbolism and the Language of Rupture

Amidst this geopolitical tension, the Symbolist movement sought to "spiritualise literature" by transcending the "commercial interest in reality". Led by Stéphane Mallarmé, Symbolism advocated for a "new vocabulary" of "unpolluted words" that favored suggestion and "universal musicality" over objective description. This aesthetic shift toward "Transposition"—the turning of speech into song—heralded the "disappearance of the poet as a speaking subject". While the cognate Decadent movement, featuring figures like Baudelaire and Wilde, focused on disrupting the boundaries between nature and artifice, Symbolism established a "vocabulary of rupture" that became the impetus for various European modernisms.

The Fragmented Self and the Avant-Garde

Modernism further distinguished itself through a radical exploration of interiority and the "deformation" of the subject. Arthur Rimbaud’s declaration that "I is someone else" set the stage for a view of the self as a site of struggle and experiment. This fragmentation was manifested in diverse ways: from Virginia Woolf’s "kaleidoscopic rendition of fluid subjectivities" to Fernando Pessoa’s invention of seventy-odd "heteronyms". Concurrently, the European avant-gardes—including Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism—launched a "vanguard assault" on the old "mental Europe". These movements harnessed the energies of "irrationality, sexuality, the machine, and speed" to generate new forms, such as the "transrational language" (Zaum) of Russian futurists or the "automatic writing" of the French surrealists.

The Underground History and the Final Silence

As the century progressed, literature increasingly delved into what Adorno and Horkheimer called Europe’s "underground history"—the distorted fate of human instincts and passions. Influenced by Freud’s discovery of the unconscious, writers like Franz Kafka captured a sense of "radical alienation" and "graphic mutation into inhumanity". Meanwhile, Thomas Mann’s work was "energized by the spectre of fascism," offering parodic parables of crowd manipulation and the "hypnotizing effects" of rhetoric.

The narrative of European literature in this period concludes with a "terminal crisis of the human spirit" during the Second World War. Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil (1945), written in exile after his time in a concentration camp, serves as a poignant emblem of this era. By imagining the Roman poet’s decision to burn the Aeneid—the epic of European origins—Broch’s work reflects a "melancholic and final" struggle for a "homecoming into the human".

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