Outside Umberto Eco's
office window in Milan looms the intimidating mass of Sforzesco castle,
a reminder, with its towers and blackbirds, of various continental
wars. Here once stood the 14th-century Castrum Portae Jovis – the Porta
di Giove fortress – which was destroyed by the short-lived Aurea
Republic of 1447. Between these walls, Leonardo Da Vinci and Donato
Bramante once laboured; these very buttresses were conquered by
Napoleon. And just beyond the moat – an area now invaded by tourists who
have come to visit Michelangelo's La Pietà Rondanini – Marshall
Radetzky's Austrian troops bombed the rioting city in 1848.
"When
it comes to the debt crisis," says Eco, "and I'm speaking as someone who
doesn't understand anything about the economy, we must remember that it
is culture, not war, that cements our [European] identity. The French,
the Italians, the Germans, the Spanish and the English have spent
centuries killing each other. Today, we've been at peace for 70 years
and no one realises how amazing that is any more. Indeed, the very idea
of a war between Spain and France, or Italy and Germany, provokes
hilarity. The United States needed a civil war to unite properly. I hope
that culture and the [European] market will do the same for us."
Eco
sips his coffee, preferring suitably postmodern Nespresso capsules,
whereas his German wife, Renate Ramge Eco, defends the traditional
Italian coffee pot, the moka. He has just returned to Milan from Paris,
where the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, conferred on him the rank
of commander, the third rank of the Legion of Honour.
"Those were
the hours of France's battle for the AAA rating, but Sarkozy still
didn't want to miss it – great. I must admit it was also a moving
experience when I was conferred the Dodecaneso Cross in Greece: they
hand them out right inside Patmos cave, where St John wrote the
Apocalypse," says the writer, with a laugh.
"One of the advantages of living in Europe
is that I get birthday greetings from the German president, Wulff, and
the Spanish prime minister, Rajoy, neither of whom I know. After being
at each other's throats for years in fratricidal wars, we're now all
culturally European."
Asked to describe European identity in 2012,
Eco says it is widespread but "shallow". "I am using an English word
that is not the same as the Italian word superficiale, but which is somewhere between 'surface' and 'deep'. We must change this, before the crisis strips it [Europe] of everything.
"The
university exchange programme Erasmus is barely mentioned in the
business sections of newspapers, yet Erasmus has created the first
generation of young Europeans. I call it a sexual revolution: a young
Catalan man meets a Flemish girl – they fall in love, they get married
and they become European, as do their children. The Erasmus idea should
be compulsory – not just for students, but also for taxi drivers,
plumbers and other workers. By this, I mean they need to spend time in
other countries within the European Union; they should integrate."
It's
an attractive idea, and yet pride in Europe appears to be giving way to
populism and hostility within the union. "That's why I said that our
[European] identity is 'shallow'. The founding fathers of Europe –
Adenauer, De Gasperi and Monnet – may have travelled less. De Gasperi
spoke only German because he was born within the Austro-Hungarian empire
and didn't have access to the internet to read the foreign press. Their
Europe reacted to war and they shared resources to build peace. Now we
must work towards building a more profound identity.
"When I
proposed at a meeting of EU mayors the idea of also introducing Erasmus
for craftsmen and professionals, a Welsh mayor said: 'My citizens would
never accept this!' And when I spoke about this a few days ago on
English television, I was slapped down by the anchorman, who was worried
about the euro crisis, about a supranational Europe and about the
technical governments of Papademos in Greece and Monti in Italy who were
not 'elected', and are therefore 'undemocratic'.
"How should I
have responded? By saying that ours is a government approved by
parliament and proposed by a president elected by parliament? By saying
that in all democracies there are unelected institutions, such as the
Queen of England, and the American supreme court, but that no one
defines them as non-democratic?"
Even before the debt crisis,
Europe's weak identity – as diagnosed by Eco – was apparant. "[For
instance,] when the constitution was rejected in a referendum. The
document had been written by politicians; it was impossible for any
educated man to participate in the process and it was never discussed
with voters. It was also evident when euro banknotes were designed
without the usual faces of important men and women – instead, there were
just frigid landscapes, as in a De Chirico landscape. Or does the
problem [of European identity] go back to God - the fact that the United
States becomes ever more religious as Europe becomes even less
religious?
"That's the way it is. Back when Pope Wojtyla was still
alive, there was much discussion on whether they should accept the
European constitution and the continent's Christian roots. Secular
people predominated and they did nothing about it. The church protested.
There was however a third way, more difficult, but one that would give
us strength today.
And that would have been to speak of the
constitution of all our roots – the Greek-Roman, the Judaic and the
Christian. In our past, we have both Venus and the crucifix, the Bible
and Nordic mythology, which we remember with Christmas trees, or with
the many festivals of St Lucy, St Nicolas and Santa Claus. Europe is a
continent that was able to fuse many identities, and yet not confuse
them.
That is precisely how I see its future. As for religion: be
careful. Many people who no longer go to church end up falling prey to
supersitition. And many who are non-practising still carry around a
little saint card with a picture of Padre Pio in their wallets!"
Father
of semiology, scholar of mass culture, author of essays for the elite
and global bestsellers – from The Name of the Rose to The Prague
Cemetery, Eco has just turned 80. Whenever he gets tired climbing a
flight of stairs, he jokes: "Eh, my friend, we're not 70 any more!"
He
is no pessimist: "With all of its defects, the global market makes war
less likely, even between the USA and China. Europe will never be the
United States of Europe, a single country with a common language like
the USA – where for a long time English was threatened to be overtaken
by German, now overtaken by Spanish.
"We have too many languages
and cultures, indeed, the idea of an unique [European] newspaper is for
now just a utopia. The web, meanwhile, makes us bump into one another;
we may not read Russian but we come across Russian websites and we are
made aware of others.
"I still think that there is no longer a
disparity between Lisbon and Warsaw, just as there is no disparity
between San Francisco and New York. We will remain a federation, but
indissoluble."
So whose faces should we print on our banknotes, to
remind the world that we are not merely 'shallow' Europeans, but
profound? "Perhaps not politicians or the leaders who have divided us –
not Cavour or Radetzky, but men of culture who have united us, from
Dante to Shakespeare, from Balzac to Rossellini.
"And since Pierre
Bayard is right, we know there are books we have yet to read that will
help us reflect on cultures different from our own. Little by little:
that is how our European identity will become more profound."
Guardian
