In Search of European Roots, The Forgotten Cement of European Unity: The Literary Canon

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"In Search of European Roots, The Forgotten Cement of European Unity: The Literary Canon
Gaither Stewart

From Tom Paine's Corner

Franz Kafka wrote what could be a writer’s credo: “It’s not laziness, bad will, awkwardness that causes me to fail in everything, but the lack of ground under my feet, of air, of law. My task is to create these things.”

(Rome) The reach and the role of literature in the unity of a Europe forever in search of its common roots is perhaps a uniquely European phenomenon. For while politics and economic issues have always divided these diverse peoples, cultured Europeans spread over the lands and seas from Finland to Sicily, from Wales to Poland, are unconsciously linked by the fine thread of their common literature. Though like everywhere the young generation, swept up in new technologies, neglects the master writers, until recently no cultured European had not read Dostoevsky and the other greats of European literature. Today, on trains and subways of Rome and Paris, Berlin and London, many read them still."