If we could learn to appreciate our common cultural heritage more, we might learn to love our European neighbours better, argues Enda O'Doherty
AS IRELAND STAGGERS to the polls on Thursday, exhausted by months of Lisbon argy-bargy, one thing at least has become clear. These periodic referendums on Europe do not merely bewilder and alienate large sections of the electorate; they also increasingly have the potential to sow wild panic among our political class, both domestic and in Brussels.
The concentration of passion and conviction evident on the No side is familiar from earlier referendums, though this time there has also been a noticeable widening of their coalition.
On the Yes side, the main political parties have dutifully mobilised and competent authorities have patiently - and sometimes not so patiently - dismissed the "misrepresentations and scaremongering" of their opponents, while affirming once again that "Europe has been good for Ireland".
Yet there is a creeping suspicion that the mantra of "Ireland in Europe", for so long ready money here, might be losing some of its effectiveness. (Yes campaigners, you will notice, like to speak of "Europe", while No campaigners prefer "Brussels".) The central positive "affective charge" of the EU and its forerunners has always been its association with peace and prosperity.
Indeed, the story of Jean Monnet and his 1950s project of welding together the economies of France and Germany, thus making conflict between them unthinkable, serves as the EU's foundation myth. The resonance of this myth has arguably weakened, however, as memories of the second World War have faded.
For a few years in the 1990s the idealism could be somewhat refurbished, as membership was offered, and finally granted, to the formerly oppressed nations of central and eastern Europe. But now that elan is behind us, there is little enthusiasm for further expansion and there is a host of mundane practical problems to deal with.
If the original EEC (European Economic Community) was of necessity based on a primarily economic rationality and the understandable desire to establish a zone in which peace, prosperity and certain minimum standards of social provision would be guaranteed, there is also another, complementary, way of thinking about Europe, and one that long predates Monnet, that of the continent as a cultural unity.
"A day will come," wrote Victor Hugo in 1849, "when war will seem as absurd and impossible between Paris and London, between St Petersburg and Berlin as between Rouen and Amiens or Boston and Philadelphia. A day will come when you, France, you Russia, you Italy, you England, you Germany . . . will dissolve yourselves into a higher unit and constitute the European fraternity."
These noble sentiments, widely shared at the time, were derived not just from an aversion to war but from the belief that there existed a common European culture above and beyond national differences, a shared inheritance based first on Christian belief, then Enlightenment values and, later still, on boundless faith in science and progress.
In our own time, national political leaders, and even Brussels commissioners, have been known, when a grand and solemn occasion seems to require it, to make pious reference to this cultural superstructure, normally through a rhetorical invocation of its most obvious icons - the Europe of Dante, Shakespeare and Flaubert, of Michelangelo and Beethoven.
In the mouths of these practical and down-to-earth men, however, such words often sound a little awkward, like a father of the bride paying tribute to relations of the groom he has never actually met.
THE EU FIRST acquired a competence in cultural matters in 1993, with the Maastricht Treaty. But it is a circumscribed competence, which largely limits the Union to "promoting co-operation between the cultural operators of the different [ States]" or "complementing their activities . . . while respecting their national and regional diversity, with a view to highlighting the shared cultural heritage".
Perhaps what lies behind these "hands-off" clauses is a fear that the European Commission might wish to meddle in areas where it has no business, seeking to straighten out the kinks in our national cultures in the same way that it famously (though, alas, apocryphally) planned to straighten our bananas.
Could there even be, in some obscure office in the Berlaymont building, a small team of officials working away quietly on the formulation of a hybrid "Euroculture" with which, in due course, we will be force-fed?
The most cursory perusal of the web pages of the EU's Directorate-General for Education and Culture should quickly reassure the fearful: here you will find no grand vision, no big ideas, no definition of what culture might be, and no apparent strategy to promote it (save that expressed in the baffling institutional newspeak of "stakeholders", "structured dialogues", "mainstreaming" and, of course, our old friend, "best practice").
But what exactly is this shared cultural heritage of which they speak (and which they are treaty-bound to "highlight")? On some levels it is palpable enough: there is, say, Gothic or baroque architecture, expressionism in painting, the orchestral music tradition (originally an Italian-German fusion but later an all-European phenomenon).
On a more problematic, but arguably even more vital level, there is literature (accessible in translation), film (comprehensible with subtitles), philosophy and political thought, and discourse about all these things and others.
Conversation is not an optional add-on to culture; it is the essence of culture. If we actually share a cultural heritage, as opposed to merely having access to it as individuals, how are we to talk about it? How do we enjoy it, discuss it, dissect it as Irish people, French, Spanish, Germans, Latvians? And how do we do this together?
Thierry Chervel is the joint founder of the website perlentaucher.de, and of its English language companion, signandsight.com, which publishes online summaries and full texts of some of the best articles from the cultural pages of the German and international press.Having recently lost one of his main domestic sources of funding, he turned to the EU for help.
Surely a publication which, in an exemplary fashion, facilitates discussion on matters of common European concern would be worthy of support from an organisation which aims to foster a sense of "Europeanness"? Alas, no.
"With the EU we had very confusing experiences," Chervel says. "On a personal level, EU politicians are very open and try sincerely to be helpful. It was no problem to meet deputies and even commissioners.
"But it is nearly impossible to apply for a grant. You have to have several European partners to start with, you have to bring in money yourself and the application procedure is so complicated that it takes months of work. Only really specialised agencies have a chance of success . . . Sometimes I ask myself whether we shouldn't have looked for money in the US."
The European Commission recently announced that, in response to a perceived information gap, it would be making more news about the Commission's work and, in particular, more speeches by commissioners, available to media organisations.
An "information gap" certainly exists, and an even more serious, and widening, "sympathy gap".
But perhaps the commissioners have the wrong end of the stick and it is not more Brussels we need, but more Europe.
As successive tests of public opinion in several countries confirm, scepticism about some aspects of the Union's development is growing, indeed emerging in new forms and with new concerns.
A FOCUS ON the cultural dimension cannot of itself solve what are essentially political problems. But the sense of belonging which culture provides, a sense that Europe, in all its variation and complexity, is something which we both know about and care for, might at least help foster a willingness to face and solve those problems.
Maastricht is not just the name of another treaty we have not read; it is also one of the most architecturally beautiful and engaging towns in Europe.
Perhaps if "Brussels" could find an effective and imaginative way to enhance our actually rather dim appreciation of who our European neighbours and partners are, we might all love it a little more.
Enda O'Doherty is an Irish Times journalist and joint editor of the Dublin Review of Books (www.drb.ie)
