(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Patrik Ourednik:
Europeana. The history of the twentieth century in brief.
The Book Friend Publishing, 2015
The history of Europe is cruel. We have read and learned about this at school. In Norway we have experienced five years of German occupation which brought us into the unreal horrors of the Second World War. In my father's bookshelf, books from the war took up most of the shelves. Grini, Milorg, Max Manus and Sønsteby are all icons in our lives, but also Quisling and Rinnan, who contributed to the wounds and pain many still live with. Most of us have a close or acquaintance who fought, fell or was only affected by the war. One thing all Dad's books had in common: They took the war very seriously. It does not Europeana: The history of the twentieth century in brief. For on the continent, 'war' is not the same as ours. The war is the most cruel, the one that had the highest death toll and affected the most civilians, even though it did not have Hitler's unmistakable ethnic hatred of Jews and all without our Aryan ancestry: World War I.
As if that is not enough: Most people in Europe have not only experienced World War I and World War II. They have lived with authoritarian political systems that cast people into prison, torture and kill arbitrarily. This is how most of Europe kept going for well over forty years after the end of World War II. Until quite recently. Therefore, the countries have also resolutely, with broad political support, made sure to join Western democratic organizations where respect for freedom and human rights is embodied in supranational legally binding cooperation.
Seductive original and with a little touch of bohemian humor. Slightly blown, we are taken to places and situations that we have either forgotten or ignored. Europeana, The history of the twentieth century in brief shows how brutality and devilry over time can lead to an almost nonchalant instructive enumeration of vulgar and brutal banalities. Here Jewish extermination, torture and war brutality are mixed with materialism, TV, sex and religion. In one and the same breath, over 128 pages, without a single chapter, our judgment between right and wrong is slowly but surely whispered out. Seductively original, but perhaps a little blasé, we are taken to places and situations we have either forgotten or ignored. For those who have stopped smoking cannabis, this must be the closest the literature comes to the state of intoxication. I myself heard Jan Erik Vold's characteristic voice say into my head – while I recognized myself in Milan Kundera's Czech post-war period. So just sit back now – imagine that you have taken a deep breath, while closing your eyes and hearing Jan Erik Vold whisper in your ear: "Europeans also wanted to be politically correct, but not so much sexually correct, to seduce women had a long and rich tradition especially in Latin countries, while those in America were more puritanical. The average age in democratic countries was higher than in the communist ones, because people went to the doctor more often and ate fresh vegetables, etc., and in communist countries they smoked more, because they did not fully understand the point of living healthy and achieving high life expectancy. "
Or: "Sex became very important in Europe in the twentieth century, more important than religion and almost as important as money, and everyone wanted to have sex in different ways, and some men started rubbing their genitals with cocaine for the erection to last longer, even though cocaine was banned in every way. And after World War II, movie scenes began to appear where the main characters had sex, which in our past was considered inappropriate, since many people still believed in Godfather, and a sexual intercourse was usually only hinted at by a movie clip showing a bed or a clock or the sky, or all of a sudden everything went black. And women wanted orgasms all the time, and men got nervous about it and had problems with the erection and tried various aphrodisiacs and went to psychoanalysis. ”
It is perhaps Europe's constant violent conflicts that make us numb.
It works. It annoys. The reader is seduced. But then we are suddenly thrown out of drugs and sex. As if the author is getting a bad conscience. The world consists of so much more and the anti-imperialist breast milk kicks in: “And in 1919, the US government banned the sale and consumption of alcohol, and in 1921 the government introduced immigration quotas that lowered the number of Irish and Italian immigrants by 85 percent. And in 1914, American psychiatrists recommended that alcoholics should be sterilized as soon as possible in order to maintain a healthy and full society. The Americans were proud that in the United States they could live a healthy and full life, while in Europe they smoked and drank alcohol and breathed in polluted air. And in the year 2000, the Americans in Alabama repealed a law that forbade marriage between blacks and whites. "
As in Kundera's famous unbearable ease, we are taken into a state of unconsciousness where we are served almost schizophrenic statements without any connection whatsoever. And we think – this writer is either intoxicated, shit crazy or just a child of so much accumulated oppression and suffering that he is unable to distinguish between good and bad, evil and hurt, or wrong and dangerous. We understand why communism was rooted in Europe – and we understand how damaging it was to the values of society and the fate of the individual. When, for the second time, the author explains to us the origins of the memorial of unknown soldiers, it begins to dawn on us that it is perhaps Europe's constant violent conflicts that make us numb. It testifies that history can do more harm than a violent video game ever powers because it is built on reality. Examples of severed fingers and headless soldiers eventually give us hope for a rational understanding of history. The book basically has very little hope that it is possible to reunite east and west after the ravages of fascism and communism.
Whoever manages to keep his head called will be left with an artistic masterpiece where the brutality of our last hundred years of history is told in a vivid and original way. Well helped by key words in the margin, we see a context where war, torture and love form the backdrop to civilization and the total collapse of rationality. You world how happy I was when it was all over.
Qurednik was just in Oslo.
Frisvold is a former leader of the European Movement. paal.frisvold@gknordic.com
