中欧的悲剧
米兰·昆德拉 /文
陈通造 /译
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1956年11月，匈牙利新闻通讯社的社长在他的办公室被炮火夷为平地的前一刻，向全世界发出了一道电讯，那是一条绝望的消息，宣告俄国人对布达佩斯的攻势开始了。这条快讯以这样一些话结束：“我们将为匈牙利和欧洲而死。”
这个句子什么意思？它当然指的是俄国人的坦克正兵临匈牙利，从而也就威胁着欧洲本身。但是在何种意义上欧洲处于危险之中？莫非俄国人的坦克将要穿过匈牙利的边界进入西方？不。匈牙利新闻通讯社社长的意思是说，俄国人正在进攻匈牙利，而这也就是在进攻欧洲本身。为了使匈牙利能够继续是匈牙利人的匈牙利，继续是欧洲的匈牙利，他已经准备好赴死。
尽管句意似乎是清楚的，但这个句子仍旧令人生疑。实际上，在法国，在美国，人们通常认为在入侵期间陷入危险之中的既不是匈牙利，也不是欧洲，而只是一个政权。人们绝不会说匈牙利本身受到了威胁；更不会有人理解为什么一个匈牙利人在生死存亡之际会提到欧洲。当索尔仁尼琴谴责共产主义的压迫之时，他可曾将欧洲奉为一个值得以死趋附的根本价值？
不。“为祖国和欧洲而死”——这是一个在莫斯科或列宁格勒不可想象的说法；这样的说法只能在布达佩斯或华沙才会出现。
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对一个匈牙利人，一个捷克人，一个波兰人来说，欧洲究竟意味着什么？在一千年的时间里，他们的国家是欧洲的组成部分，一个以罗马基督教为根源的欧洲。他们参与了欧洲历史的每一个时期。对他们来说，“欧洲”这个词并不代表一个地理现象，而是一个与“西方”这个词同义的精神观念。当匈牙利不再是欧洲的之时——也就是，它不再是西方的之时——它就被人从自己的命运之中驱逐了，就被逐出了自身的历史：它失去了其认同（identity）的本质。
“地理的欧洲”（从大西洋延伸到乌拉尔山脉）总是被分成各自发展的两半：一半与古罗马和天主教会联系在一起，另一半则与拜占庭和东正教紧密相关。1945年之后，两个欧洲的边界向西移动了几百公里，若干始终自认为属于西方的民族陡然发现自身处于东方。[1]
结果，战后的欧洲发展出了三种基本处境：西欧、东欧，以及最为复杂的中欧：文化上属于西方而政治上属于东方。
我所谓中欧的矛盾之处可以帮助我们理解为什么在过去三十五年间欧洲的戏剧性事件都集中在那里：1956年的匈牙利起义以及随后的血腥屠杀；1968年的布拉格之春与捷克斯洛伐克被占领；波兰人在1956年、1968年、1970年，以及最近的起义。就戏剧性的程度和历史的影响而言，在整个“地理的欧洲”发生的事情，不论是在西欧还是东欧，都没法与在中欧的前赴后继的反叛相提并论。每一次反叛都得到了几乎全部人民的支持。而每一次，每一个政权如果得不到俄国的支持，就连三个小时都支撑不到。可以这么说，我们不能再将发生于布拉格或华沙的事情当成是东欧的，苏联的，共产主义的；这是西方的事情——一个被绑架、被放逐、被洗脑，但是仍旧坚持捍卫自身之认同的西方。
一群人民和一个文明的认同反映在并集中于由心灵所创造的事物之中，在于所谓“文化”。倘若这一认同濒临毁灭，文化生命就会相应地变得更富有强度，更为重要，直到文化本身成为了团结所有人的活的价值。这就是为什么在中欧的每一次起义中，集体的文化记忆与当代的创造性的努力扮演着如此巨大、如此决定性的角色——其程度远甚于任何其他欧洲的人民起义。[2]
正是匈牙利的作家们，一个以浪漫主义诗人裴多菲的名字命名的群体，致力于开展强有力的批判，最终引起了1956年的大爆发。在1968年之前的几年中，正是戏剧、电影、文学和哲学最终引发了布拉格之春的解放。正是最伟大的波兰浪漫主义诗人密茨凯维奇的一部戏剧被禁演触发了波兰学生在1968年的著名反叛。这种在文化与生活，创造性的成就与大众的参与之间的幸福联姻一直使中欧的一场又一场反叛带有一种难以企及的美，这种美总是令那些经历了这些时期的人魂牵梦萦。
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有的人可能会说：我们同意中欧国家正在捍卫它们受到威胁的认同，但是它们的处境并不是独特的。俄罗斯也处在相似的境遇中。它也将失去自身的认同。实际上，不是俄国，而是共产主义正在剥夺各民族的本质，而这就使俄罗斯人民首当其冲。没错，在苏联帝国中，俄语确实正压迫着其他民族的语言，但是并不是俄罗斯人想要将其他人“俄罗斯化”；这是因为苏联官僚体制——极度非民族、反民族、超民族——需要一个工具来统合其国家。
我理解这个逻辑。我也理解一些俄罗斯人的处境，他们深怕他们所挚爱的祖国与可憎的共产主义混为一谈。
但是，我们也很有必要试着去理解波兰人，他们的祖国除了在两次世界大战之间的一小段时间之外，一直被俄国奴役了两个世纪，也一直被迫“俄罗斯化”，他们已经到了忍无可忍的地步。
在中欧，西方的东部边界，所有人一直对俄国的武力特别敏感。非独波兰人如此。伟大的历史学家，捷克十九世纪最为杰出的政治人物弗兰基谢克·帕拉茨基（František Palacky）在一封写给法兰克福革命议会的著名信件中为哈布斯堡王朝的长期存在做辩解，他认为这是抵挡俄国的唯一屏障，抵挡“一股如今已然成为庞然大物的力量，这股力量已非任何西方国家所能匹敌。”帕拉茨基就俄罗斯的帝国野心做出警示，它渴望成为一个“普世的君主国家”，这就意味它试图支配全世界。“一个普世的俄罗斯君主国，”帕拉茨基写道，“将会成为一场巨大的且难以尽述的灾难，一场无法估量的无尽灾难。”
照帕拉茨基的说法，中欧应该成为平等民族的大家庭，相互尊重，共同防卫一个强大的统一国家，其中每一个民族也将培养各自的特性。这个梦想尽管从未充分实现，却仍旧强大而富有影响力。中欧渴望凝聚起欧洲本身的一切文化多样性，成为一个小的原型欧洲，一个简化的欧洲模范，由怀抱如下准则的民族所构成：最小的地方之中的最大多样性。如此一来，面对一个建立在相反原则（最大空间中的最小多样性）之上的俄罗斯，中欧又怎么可能不深感惊恐？
实际上，最与中欧及其对多样性的热情格格不入的正是俄罗斯：统一、标准化、集中化，志在将帝国中的每个民族（乌克兰人、白俄罗斯人、亚美尼亚人、拉脱维亚人、立陶宛人，等等）都转化为单一的俄罗斯人民（或者用如今这个语言普遍神秘化的时代的用词，转变为“单一的苏维埃人民”。[3]
那么，问题又来了：共产主义到底是俄罗斯历史的否定还是其实现？
当然，共产主义既是其否定（比如否定其宗教性），同时又是其实现（实现其集中化的偏好及其帝国之梦）。
从俄罗斯内部去看，第一个方面（非连续性的方面）是更为显著的。而从被奴役的国家的视角去看，第二个方面，连续性的方面，则更为惊人。[4]
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但是，我将俄罗斯与西方文明截然对立起来，这是不是太过绝对了？欧洲尽管被分成了东西两半，难道它不还是一个根植于古希腊和犹太-基督思想的单一实体吗？
当然。而且，在整个十九世纪期间，俄罗斯都深受欧洲吸引，越来越趋向欧洲。而且，这种着迷是相互的。里尔克认为俄罗斯是他的精神祖国，而且没有人可以逃脱伟大的俄国小说的影响，这些小说仍旧是共同的欧洲文化遗产的主要部分。
是的，所有这些都是真实的；两个欧洲之间的文化姻缘始终是一段无可忘却的记忆。[5]但是，同样真实的是，俄国共产主义极大地唤醒了俄罗斯古老的反西方执念，并使其野蛮地冲击西方。不过，俄罗斯并不是我的主题，我也不想在其巨大的复杂性之上多费时间，对此我也算不上特别有见地。我只想在此重申一点：在西方的东部边界上，俄罗斯不应被视为另一个欧洲力量，而应视为一个独特的文明，一个不同的文明。
在他的《故土》（Native Realm）一书中，切斯瓦夫·米沃什谈到了这样一个现象：在十六和十七世纪，波兰人对在遥远边界上的俄罗斯人发动了战争，“没有人对俄罗斯人特别感兴趣……波兰人发现在东边只有一大片空白，正是这种体验造成了波兰人对俄罗斯的看法，那是一个位于‘那里’，位于世界之外的所在。”[6]
卡齐米日·布兰迪斯（Kazimierz Brandys）在他的《华沙日记》中回忆了一个波兰作家与俄国诗人安娜·阿赫马托娃会面的有趣故事。这个波兰人抱怨他所有的书都被禁了。
她打断他，说道：“你有没有入过狱？”
“没有。”
“那你有没有至少被开除出作协？”
“没有。”
“那么你到底在抱怨什么？”阿赫马托娃是真的有些困惑。
布兰迪斯这样评说道：
阿赫马托娃说的正是典型的俄国式的安慰。对他们来说，比起俄罗斯的命运，没什么事情是真的可怕的。但这些安慰对我们来说毫无意义。俄罗斯的命运并不是我们意识的一部分；它与我们格格不入；我们对它并不负有责任。它重压在我们头上，但却不是我们的遗产。这也是我对俄国文学的反应。它令我惊恐。即便是如今我也还是对果戈里的某些故事以及萨尔蒂科夫-谢德林写的所有东西都深感惊恐。我宁愿从来不曾知道他们的世界，不曾知道有这个世界存在。
当然，布兰迪斯对果戈里的评价并没有否认其作品作为艺术的价值，相反，这不过是表达了其艺术所唤起的世界的恐怖之处。倘若我们已经远离了这个世界，那它就会令我们着迷；而一旦它与我们近在咫尺，它就会展现出可怕的陌生性。我不知道它是不是比我们的世界更糟糕，但我确实知道它是不同的：俄罗斯知道灾难的另一个（更巨大的）层面，知道空间（一个如此巨大以至于吞噬一切民族的空间）的另一种形象，知道另外一种时间意识（缓慢而有耐心），知道另外一种笑、活与死的方式。
这就是为什么中欧国家感到1945年之后它们命运之中发生的改变并不仅是政治浩劫：这也是对它们文明的冲击。它们所做的抵抗的深层意义就是一种为保存自身认同的斗争——或者，换一种说法，就是为了保存它们的西方性。[7]
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已经没有人再对俄国的卫星国抱有幻想。但是，我们忘记了它们真正的悲剧所在：这些国家从西方的地图中消失了。为什么这种消失仍旧无人注目？我们可以将起因归结到中欧本身之上。
波兰人、捷克人、斯洛伐克人、匈牙利人的历史一直都是纷乱而破碎的。它们立国的传统相比更大的西方民族而言来得淡薄而且缺少连续性。夹在日耳曼人和俄罗斯人之间，中欧的民族始终为了生存和保存自己的语言而费尽力气。因为它们从未完全被整合进西方的意识之中，所以他们仍旧是西方最不为人知且最脆弱的部分，而且更进一步深藏于由它们的奇特而且极少有人通晓的语言所构成的帷幕背后。
奥地利帝国曾经很有机会使中欧变成一个强大的统一国家。但是，可叹的是，奥地利人却在一种傲慢的泛日耳曼民族主义与他们自身的中欧使命之间分裂了。他们未能成功构建一个平等民族的联邦，而这一失败成为了整个欧洲的不幸命运。深怀不满的其他中欧民族在1918年将它们的帝国四分五裂，它们未曾想到这个帝国尽管有种种不当之处，却是无可取代的。从而，第一次世界大战之后，中欧就被转变为一个由弱小国家构成的地区，它们的脆弱先是使希特勒的征服得逞，最终又使斯大林在此大获全胜。可能正是出于这个原因，在欧洲人的记忆中，这些国家似乎总是危险的麻烦之源。
而且，坦率地说，我认为中欧所犯下的错误要归咎于我所谓“斯拉夫世界的意识形态”。我特意说“意识形态”，因为它不过是十九世纪发明出来的政治神秘化的产物。捷克人（罔顾他们最为可敬的几位领导者的警告）热衷于幼稚地炫耀他们的“斯拉夫意识形态”，来对抗德意志的咄咄逼人。另一方面，俄罗斯人乐于利用这一意识形态来为他们的帝国野心辩护。“俄国人喜欢把一切俄罗斯的东西打上斯拉夫的标签，如此一来，他们之后就能将一切斯拉夫的东西都打上俄罗斯的标签，”伟大的捷克作家卡雷尔·哈夫利切克（ Karel Havlicek）在1844年这样说到，他力图警告他的同胞对俄罗斯表现出的那种愚蠢而无知的热情。无知是因为捷克人一千多年来从未与俄罗斯有过直接接触。尽管双方有着语言上的亲缘，捷克人和俄罗斯人从未分享一个共同的世界：既没有一个共同的历史，也没有一个共同的文化。而波兰人与俄罗斯人之间的关系更是只有你死我活的斗争。
约瑟夫·康拉德始终反感人们因他的波兰出身而乐于打在他和他的书上面的“斯拉夫精神”这个标签，而在六十年前他就这样写道：“没有什么东西会比波兰人的品性——对于道德约束抱有一种骑士般的热忱，而且极度尊重个人权利——与文学世界中的所谓‘斯拉夫精神’更为扞格不入了。”（我太能理解他了！我也对那种时常加在我身上的“斯拉夫精神”——对幽暗深度的膜拜、喧闹而空洞的情绪——一无所知。）[8]
不过，一个斯拉夫世界的观念是世界史中的老生常谈。因而，欧洲自1945年之后的两分——这种两分使得这个所谓的斯拉夫世界统一了起来（包括可怜的匈牙利人和罗马尼亚人，他们的语言当然不是斯拉夫的，但是这点小事何足挂齿？）——几乎像是一个自然而然的解决办法。
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所以西方未能注意到中欧的消失，这是不是中欧自身的过错？
不全是。本世纪之初，中欧尽管在政治上虚弱不堪，却是一个伟大的文化中心，可能是最伟大的中心。而且，诚然维也纳——弗洛伊德和马勒的城市——的重要性如今已得到广泛认可，但其重要性和独创性只有以其他一道参与了中欧文化并做出创造性贡献的国家和城市为背景才能真正体现出来。勋伯格创立了十二音体系，而二十世纪最伟大的音乐家之一，匈牙利人贝拉·巴托克发掘出了以调性原则为依据的音乐最后的独创的可能性。布拉格则有着卡夫卡和哈谢克这样足以与维也纳人穆齐尔和布洛赫匹敌的伟大小说家。1918年之后，非德语国家的文化活力甚至更趋强势，布拉格为世界贡献了结构主义的布拉格语言学派。[9]而在波兰，维尔托德·贡布罗维奇、布鲁诺·舒尔茨、斯坦尼斯拉夫·维特凯维奇这个伟大的三位一体预示着1950年代的现代主义，特别是所谓荒诞戏剧。
一个问题就来了：这场创造性的大爆发只是一种地理上的偶然吗？或者说这根源于一个悠久的传统，一个共享的过去？或者，换一种说法：中欧是否以自身的历史形成了一个真正的文化构造？而如果这样一个构造真的存在，那它能否从地理上得到界定？它的边界是什么？
试图准确划定其边界是毫无意义。中欧并不是一个国家：它是一个文化，或者说一种命运。它的边界是想象的，而且必须在每一个历史境况中不断刻画。
举例来说，早在十四世纪中期，位于布拉格的查理大学就已经聚拢了来自捷克、奥地利、巴伐利亚、萨克逊、波兰、立陶宛、匈牙利和罗马尼亚的知识分子（教授与学生），孕育着多民族共同体的萌芽，在其中每一个民族都将获得拥有各自语言的权利：事实上，正是在这个大学（宗教改革家扬·胡斯曾做过该校校长）的间接影响下，第一部匈牙利语和罗马尼亚语《圣经》的翻译工作开始进行。
很多事情接踵而至：胡斯革命；在威名远扬的马加什一世治下的匈牙利文艺复兴；联合了波西米亚、匈牙利和奥地利这三个独立国家的哈布斯堡王朝的出现；与土耳其人的战争；十七世纪的反宗教改革。就在此时，中欧文化的特质突然之间呈现于喷涌而出的巴洛克艺术之中，这是一个统合了从萨尔茨堡到维尔纽斯的广大区域的现象。在欧洲的地图上，巴洛克的中欧（以非理性的主宰，以及视觉艺术和音乐的主导为特征）成为了古典主义的法兰西（以理性的主宰，以及文学和哲学的主导为特征）的对立面。人们可以从巴洛克时期找到中欧音乐的诸多源头，之后，从海顿到勋伯格，从李斯特到巴托克，这里浓缩着所有欧洲音乐的发展。
在十九世纪，波兰人、匈牙利人、捷克人、斯洛伐克人、克罗地亚人、斯洛文尼亚人、罗马尼亚人、犹太人，这些原先隔绝的、自立的、闭塞的民族相互间发生着争斗，但是它们都面临同样艰巨的生存经验：一个民族要在存在还是不存在之间做出抉择；或者，换种说法，要在保持本真的民族生活与被同化进一个更大的民族之间做出抉择。即便是奥地利人这样一个在帝国之中占据主导的民族也难逃这样的抉择：他们不得不在奥地利认同与融入一个更大的日耳曼认同之间做出抉择。犹太人也无法逃避这一难题。为了拒绝同化，锡安主义也诞生于中欧，其选择的道路也类似于其他中欧民族。
二十世纪见证了另外一些情形：奥地利帝国的崩溃，俄国人的兼并，中欧旷日持久的反叛，一场场反叛都不过是为一个未知的解决方案而进行的豪赌。
因而，中欧不能以政治边界来划定，这些边界并非真实，往往是侵略、征服和占领所强加的。中欧更应该由这些伟大的共同处境所界定，这些处境重新聚集着不同的人民，依据想象以及不断变动的边境重新组合，栖身其间的人们拥有相似的记忆，相似的问题与冲突，相似的共同传统。
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弗洛伊德的父母来自波兰，而青年弗洛伊德则在摩拉维亚度过童年，也就是当今的捷克斯洛伐克。胡塞尔与马勒也在那里度过了童年。维也纳小说家约瑟夫·罗斯祖籍波兰。伟大的捷克诗人泽耶尔（Julius Zeyer）出生于一个布拉格的德语家庭；他自己选择成为捷克人。赫尔曼·卡夫卡的母语是捷克语，而他的儿子弗兰兹选择了德语。1956年匈牙利革命的主角之一，作家提波尔·戴瑞（Tibor Déry）来自一个说德语的匈牙利家庭，而我亲爱的朋友，杰出的小说家丹尼洛·契斯（Danilo Kis）是一个说匈牙利语的南斯拉夫人。每个国家最具代表性的人物都有着怎样一种纠缠的民族命运啊！
而且，所有我刚提到的这些人都是犹太人。实际上，世界上没有哪个地方比这里更为深刻地受到了犹太天才们的影响。天地为客四海为家（Aliens everywhereand everywhere at home），超乎民族之争，犹太人在二十世纪是最主要的世界主义者，是中欧的整合因素：他们是中欧的思想粘合剂、是其精神的浓缩，是其精神统一性的创造者。这就是为什么我热爱犹太遗产，并且以绝大的热情和乡愁归附于它，就仿佛这是我自己的文化遗产。
但是，一个小民族是什么？我要提出我自己的定义：小民族就是其生存本身随时可能成为问题的民族；一个小民族会消失，而它有这种自知。一个法兰西人、俄罗斯人，或是一个英格兰人，都不会曾想过自身民族的存续问题。他的圣歌之中只会谈到伟大与永恒。但是波兰人的圣歌却是以这样的诗句开始的：“波兰仍未灭亡……”
中欧作为小民族的大家庭有着自身的世界观，这个观点以一种对历史的极度不信任为根据。历史，那个黑格尔和马克思的神祇，那个审判我们并决定我们命运的理性化身，那是征服者的历史。中欧人民不是征服者。他们与欧洲历史密不可分；他们无法存在于欧洲历史之外；但是他们代表了这个历史的错误一面；他们是这个历史的受害者和局外人。正是这种醒悟的历史观成为了中欧文化、智慧，以及那种嘲弄伟大和光荣的“不严肃的精神”的源泉。“永远不要忘记，只有通过反对大写的历史本身我们才能抵抗我们今日的历史。”我想要将维尔托德·贡布罗维奇的这句话镌刻在中欧入口的大门上。
因而，正是在这个由“仍未灭亡”的小民族组成的区域，欧洲的脆弱性比在任何其他地方都显得清楚。实际上，在我们这个强大的力量总是趋于集中到少数几个大国手中的现代世界，所有的欧洲民族都有变成小民族并共同经受这种命运的风险。在这个意义上，中欧的命运预示欧洲总体的命运，而中欧的文化就具有了极大的相关性。[10]
只要读一读最伟大的中欧小说就够了：在赫尔曼·布洛赫的《梦游者》中，历史呈现为各种价值逐渐堕落的过程；穆齐尔的《没有个性的人》刻画了一个没有意识到末日将至的欣快症一般的社会；在哈谢克的《好兵帅克》中，装成傻子成了保有自由的最后一个办法。[11]本世纪的所有伟大的中欧艺术作品，甚至直到今天，都可以被理解为对于欧洲人可能面临的终结所做的漫长沉思。
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今天，除了小小的奥地利因为偶然而保持独立之外，整个中欧被俄罗斯所征服，而奥地利也已失去了其中欧处境，失去了大部分独特性和重要性。对全部西方文明来说，中欧文化家园的消失当然是本世纪最为重大的事件之一。所以，我要重复我的问题：这件事怎么会在不知不觉中发生了？
答案很简单：欧洲未曾注意到其文化家园的消失正是因为欧洲不再将自身的统一性理解为一种文化统一性。
实际上，欧洲的统一性以什么为依据？
在中世纪，它以一个共享的宗教为根据。在现时代，在这个中世纪的上帝变成了隐匿之神的时代，宗教退位给了文化，文化成了欧洲人用来理解自身、定义自身、确证自身为欧洲的最高价值的表达。
如今看来，我们这个世纪的另一个变化正在发生，其重要性不亚于中世纪与现时代的分隔。就像很久以前上帝退位给了文化，如今轮到文化退位了。
但是，退位给什么，给谁？什么样的最高价值的领域将会统合欧洲？技术的伟业？市场？大众媒体？（伟大的诗人会不会被伟大的记者所取代？）[12]或者是被政治取而代之？但是是何种政治？右派还是左派？还有没有一个超乎左派和右派愚蠢的马基雅维利主义的共享的理想？会是宽容，尊重他人的信仰和观念，这样一条原则吗？但是，如果这种宽容不再保护一种丰富的创造性或一系列强劲有力的思想，那它岂不是会变得空洞而无用？或者，我们是不是应该把文化的退位理解为一种解救，我们是不是应该满怀狂喜地放弃自己？或者，隐匿的神会不会回归，填满空洞的空间并揭示自身？我不知道。我对此一无所知。我想我只知道文化已经退位。
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弗朗兹·韦费尔（Franz Werfel）人生中的第一个三分之一在布拉格度过，第二个三分之一在维亚纳，最后三分之一成了一个移民，先是在法国，然后在美国——这是一个典型的中欧人的人生历程。1937年，他和他的妻子，也就是著名的阿尔玛，马勒的遗孀，一起在巴黎。他应国联的“思想合作组织”之邀，参加一个关于“文学的未来”的会议。会议期间，韦费尔采取的立场不仅反对希特勒主义，而且也反对总体上的极权主义的威胁，反对意识形态上和新闻工作中那种极有可能会摧毁文化的无知。他以一个在他看来可以阻止这个可怕进程的提议来结束他的发言：建立一个诗人和思想家的世界学院(Weltakademie derDichter und Denker)。这个学院的成员绝不以其国籍为依据。成员的遴选应该只以其作品的价值为准。由世界上最伟大的作者组成，数量应该二十五到五十之间。这个学院的任务，不被政治和宣传所累，将是“应对世界的政治化和野蛮化。”
这个提议不单是被否决了，更受到了公开嘲笑。当然，它是幼稚的。幼稚得可怕。在一个绝对政治化的世界，艺术家和思想家早就已经无可改变地有所“担当”，已经介入政治，在这个世界中，这样一个独立的学院怎么可能建得起来？高贵的心灵聚在一起难道不会反而有一种喜剧的效果？
然而，这个幼稚的提议却令我深受感动，因为它揭示了在一个被剥除了价值的世界中，再次找到一种道德权威性的迫切需要。它揭示了那种想要听到文化的声音，听到诗人和思想家的声音的痛苦渴望。[13]
这个故事在我的心里与另外一段记忆混合在一起：一日早晨，警察在将我一位朋友（一个著名的捷克哲学家）的公寓弄得一片狼藉之后，没收了他上千页的哲学手稿。之后不久，我们穿行在布拉格的街道上。我们从他住的城堡山走向康帕半岛，我们穿过了曼斯桥。他想要拿所有这些事情开个玩笑：警察要怎么来破译他那种颇为晦涩的哲学黑话？但是没有什么玩笑可以抚慰他的痛苦，可以补偿这些手稿所代表的十几年工作的损失——因为他未曾留有备份。
我们讨论了向国外寄一封公开信，从而使手稿这件事成为国际丑闻的可能性。我们很清楚，他不能把信寄给政府机构或是政客，只能寄给某个超乎政治的人，某个捍卫无可置疑的价值的人，某个在欧洲得到普遍认可的人。换句话说，得是一个伟大的文化人物。但是，这个人是谁？
突然间，我们明白了这个人物并不存在。可以肯定，有一些伟大的画家、剧作家和音乐家，但是他们都不再占据一个卓越的社会位置，可以作为全欧洲认可的精神代表，提供道德权威。文化不再是一个创立最高价值的领域。
我们走到了我那时住的旧城广场，我们感到一种巨大的孤独，一种空虚，这是一个文化缓慢从欧洲退出而留下的空虚。[14]
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中欧国家所能记得的对于西方的最后亲身经验是1918年到1938年这段时期。它们的西方图景是往昔的西方，是一个文化尚未完全退位的西方。
记住这一点，我想要强调一个重要的条件：中欧的一场又一场反叛并不是由新闻、广播或电视，也就是说不是由“媒体”所支撑的。它们是由小说、诗歌、戏剧、电影、史书、文学评论、通俗喜剧和滑稽戏、哲学讨论，也就是文化，所准备、塑造和实现的。[15]大众媒体——对法国人和美国人来说，大众媒体已经与所谓西方同义——在这些反叛中并没有起到什么作用，因为新闻和电视完全在国家的控制之下。
这就是为什么俄国人一占领捷克斯洛伐克就竭尽全力摧毁捷克文化。[16]这种摧毁具有三个意义：首先，它摧毁了反对派的中心；其次，它摧毁了这个民族的认同，使其更易于被俄罗斯文明所吞并；再次，它粗暴地终结了现时代，这个文化仍旧代表了最高价值的实现的时代。
第三个结果在我看来是最重要的。实际上，极权主义的俄罗斯文明正是对现代西方的彻底否定，这个西方在四个世纪之前，在现时代的伊始被创造了出来，这个现时代则建立在思想的至上性和勇于质疑的个人的基础之上，建立在表达了其独特性的艺术创造之上。俄国人的入侵使捷克斯洛伐克落入一个“后文化”时代，使其在俄国人的军队和无处不在的国家电视面前一无所有，没有招架之力。
俄国人对布拉格的入侵就意味着上述这个三重悲剧性事件，就在我对此震撼未已之时，我到了法国，向我的法国朋友解释在入侵之后发生的文化浩劫：“想象一下！所有的文学和文化评论刊物都被封禁了！无一例外！即便是在二战纳粹占领期间都没有过这样的事情。”
然后，我的朋友们以一种我稍后才明白的尴尬看着我。当捷克斯洛伐克的所有评论刊物都被封禁了时，整个民族都知道，都陷入了一种痛苦的状态。[17]如果法国或英国的所有评论刊物都消失了，没有人会去注意，甚至连编辑都不会留意。在巴黎，即便是最富有教养的场合，人们在晚餐聚会时会讨论电视节目，而不是评论。因为，文化已经退位了。文化的消失，我们在布拉格体会到的是浩劫、震惊、悲剧，而在巴黎，这被理解为平常而琐碎的事情，毫不显眼，算不上一个事件。
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在奥地利帝国毁灭之后，中欧失去了屏障。那么，在奥斯维辛将犹太民族从其地图上抹除之后，它是否已失去了自己的灵魂？在1945年被人从欧洲分裂出去之后，中欧还存在吗？
是的，它的创造力和它不断的反叛意味着它“仍未灭亡”。但是，如果活着意味着存在于那些我们所爱的人眼中，那么中欧已经不存在。更准确地说：在它所挚爱的欧洲的眼里，中欧不过是苏维埃帝国的一部分，仅此而已，仅此而已。
这有什么可惊奇的？就其政治体系而言，中欧是东方；就其文化历史而言，它是西方。但是，因为欧洲本身正处在丧失自身文化认同的过程中，所以它所理解的中欧只不过是一个政权；换种说法，它只把中欧看成东欧。
因而，中欧不仅应该与它那咄咄逼人的近邻做斗争，还要与时间的微妙而无情的压力做斗争——时间已经抛下了文化的时代。这就是为什么中欧的反叛有一种保守性，近乎一种时代错置：这些反叛绝望地试图重建过去，文化的过去，现时代的过去。只有在那样一个时代，只有在一个保有文化之维的世界，中欧才能继续捍卫它的认同，继续成其所是。
因而，对中欧而言，真正的悲剧不是俄罗斯，而是欧洲：这个欧洲所代表的价值如此巨大，以至于匈牙利新闻通讯社的社长已经准备好为之赴死。在铁幕的后面，他未曾想过时代已经变了，在欧洲，欧洲已经不再被体会为一种价值。他未曾想到，他用电讯传到他那平原辽阔的祖国的边境之外的语句会显得过时，不再被人理解。
注释
[1] 在战后倾尽全力建立极权主义政权的中欧共产党难辞其咎。但是他们如果没有了俄罗斯的推动、武力威胁和国家势力也无法成功。就在二战胜利之后，中欧共产党人认为不是他们，而是苏联，才是自己国家的主人，从此之后，中欧政权和政党的缓慢溃烂就开始了。
[2]对外在观察者来说，这个悖论很难理解，1945年之后的时期对中欧来说既是悲剧性的，也是其文化史上的伟大时期。不论是流亡写作（贡布罗维奇、米沃什），还是以地下的创造活动的形式进行（1968年之后的捷克斯洛伐克），或是在舆论压力之下得到当局的容忍，不管是在这几种处境中哪一种之中，这一时期诞生于中欧的电影、小说、戏剧和哲学作品往往能够到达欧洲文化的最高峰。
[3] 最大的欧洲民族之一（将近四千万乌克兰人）正在缓慢消失。而这个惊人的，近乎难以置信的事情就在这个世界未曾察觉的情况下发生着。
[4] 莱泽克·科拉科夫斯基（Leszek Kolakowski ）写道(Zeszytyliteracke, no. 2, Paris, 1983): "尽管我和索尔仁尼琴一样相信苏维埃体系在压迫性上已经超越了沙皇制……我并不会进而将这个体制理想化，我的祖先曾在极端恶劣的条件下与这个体制做斗争，他们死在这个体制下，或是遭受酷刑，或是饱受羞辱……我认为索尔仁尼琴有一种将沙皇制理想化的倾向，这个倾向是我所不能接受的，我肯定，也是任何其他波兰人所不能接受的。”
[5] 俄罗斯与西方之间最美好的结盟是斯特拉文斯基的作品，总结了整个一千年的西方音乐史，而与此同时在音乐想象力上仍是高度俄罗斯的。另一个出色的联姻在中欧享有盛名，出现于一个大亲俄分子，雅纳切克的两部杰出的歌剧，一部改编自奥斯特洛夫斯基（Katya Kabanova ，1921），另一部，也是我极为钦佩的，改编自陀思妥耶夫斯基（《死屋手记》，1928）。但是，这些歌剧不仅从未在俄罗斯登上舞台，而且它们的存在更是不为人知，这是一个征象。共产主义俄国拒斥与西方的不当联姻。
[6]米沃什的《被禁锢的心灵》（1953）和《故土》（1959）都很重要。
[7]“中”这个词包含着一种危险：它使人想到在俄罗斯和西方之间的桥梁。捷克斯洛伐克的开国总统马萨里克（T.G. Masaryk）早在1895年就谈到过这种观念：“人们常说捷克人的使命是在东西之间担任调解中介的角色。这个观念毫无意义。捷克人并不与东方接壤（他们四周是德意志人和波兰人，也就是西方），而且也不需要什么调停人。俄罗斯人已经比我们和日耳曼人和法国人更为靠近，有更为直接的接触，而西方民族要从俄罗斯人那里学的一切都是直接学到的，不用中介。”
[8]有一本有趣的小书叫作《如何做一个外国人》，在这本书里，作者在题为“精神与含蓄”的一章中谈到了“斯拉夫精神”：“最糟糕的一类精神是伟大的斯拉夫精神。遭受其苦的人往往是非常深刻的思想家。他们可能会说这样的话：‘有时我很高兴，有时我很悲伤。你能解释一下为什么会这样吗？’（你不能，所以别试）或者他们会说：‘我如此玄奥……我有时只愿我在别处，不在我在的地方。’或是‘当我夜里在树林中，从一棵树跳到另一棵树时，我时常想到，生活是如此奇特。’”是谁如此大胆，敢拿伟大的斯拉夫精神逗笑？当然，作者是乔治·麦克斯(George Mikes)，祖籍匈牙利。只有在中欧，斯拉夫精神才显得可笑。
[9] 结构主义思想1920年代末开始于布拉格的语言学圈子之中。这个圈子由捷克、俄罗斯、德国和波兰的学者组成。1930年代，在这个非常世界主义的环境中，穆卡洛夫斯基创立了他的结构主义美学。布拉格结构主义根源于十九世纪的捷克形式主义。（形式主义倾向在中欧比在别的地方都要强，在我看来，这要归功于音乐的主导地位，从而“音乐学”就占据了主导，而音乐学从本质上说就是“形式主义”的。）在俄国形式主义的激发之下，穆卡洛夫斯基超越了其片面性。结构主义者是布拉格先锋派诗人和画家的同道，这预示着三十年之后在法国的相似的结盟。结构主义者以其影响力保卫了先锋艺术，使其不受那种与现代艺术形影不离的狭隘意识形态化解读所害。
[10]中欧文化问题在一份由密歇根大学出版的重要期刊中得到了审视：《汇流：中欧文化年鉴》Cross Currents: AYearbook of Central European Culture.
[11] 随着像卡夫卡、哈谢克、布洛赫和穆齐尔这样的作家而来的是一种新的后普鲁斯特，后乔伊斯小说美学出现于中欧。布洛赫是我个人最为瞩目的一位。这位维也纳小说家，本世纪最伟大的小说家被重新发现，可谓正当其时。
[12]如果说新闻业曾是文化的附属，那如今已反转过来，文化要向新闻业摇尾乞怜；这是一个被新闻业所主宰的世界。大众媒体决定着谁可以被知道，到何种程度，依据何种解释。作家不再直接回应公众；他必须通过半透明的大众媒体这个障碍与公众交流。
[13]韦费尔的讲话绝非幼稚，而且也未曾失去其相关性。它使我想到了另一个讲话，是穆齐尔1935年向巴黎的文化保卫大会所宣读的。就像韦费尔一样，穆齐尔既从法西斯主义那里，也从共产主义那里看到了危险。在他看来，保卫文化并不意味着使文化担当一场政治斗争（这是当时所有人的想法），相反，这意味着保卫文化，使其免受政治化（politicization）的无思想性之害。但是，作家们认识到在这个由技术和大众媒体构成的现代世界，文化的前景并不光明。穆齐尔和韦费尔的见解在巴黎无人问津。不过，从我所耳闻的政治和文化讨论来说，我几乎没什么可以加到他们所提出的见解之上。
[14] 最终，经过一番犹豫，他把信寄了出去，寄给了萨特。是的，他是最后一个伟大的世界性文化人物，另一方面，在我看来，正是他关于“介入”的理论为文化这种自主的、特殊的、不可化约的力量的退位提供了理论基础。不论他以前是怎样一个人，他确实迅速地在Le Monde上发表了一个声明以回应我朋友的信。如果没有这个干预，我怀疑警察不会最终把手稿（在将近一年之后）还给这位哲学家。在萨特下葬那一天，关于我的布拉格朋友的记忆回到我的心中：现在，他的信再也不会有一个收信人。
[15]我所指的评论是不由新闻人而由文化人（作家、艺术评论家、学者、哲学家、音乐家）所经营的期刊（月刊、双周刊或周刊）；他们处理的是文化问题，并从文化的角度评论社会事件。在十九世纪和二十世纪的欧洲与俄罗斯，所有重要的思想运动都是围绕这样的评论杂志形成的。德国的浪漫主义音乐家聚集在罗伯特·舒曼创办的Neue Zeitschrift für Musik周围。俄国文学如果没有Sovremennik或Viesy这样的评论杂志就是不可想象的，正如法国文学要仰赖Nouvelle RevueFrançaise或Les Temps Modernes。所有的维也纳文化活动都以卡尔·克劳斯（Karl Kraus）主编的Die Fackel 为中心。贡布罗维奇整部日记都发表在波兰评论杂志Kultura. Etc.上，等等。这种评论杂志从西方公共生活中的消失，或者是它们彻底边缘化这个事实，在我看来，都是“文化正在退位”的迹象。
[16]五万人（特别是知识分子）被迫失业。一万两千多人移民。将近两百个捷克和斯洛伐克作家被禁止发表。他们的书被从所有公共图书馆下架，他们的名字被从历史课本中抹除。一百五十五个捷克历史学家被解雇。单是布拉格大学的教员就有五十个被开除。（在奥匈帝国最黑暗的时期，1848年革命之后，两个捷克教授被赶出大学，那可是当时的大丑闻！）所有文学和文化杂志都被封禁。伟大的捷克电影，伟大的捷克戏剧不复存在。
[17] 由捷克作家联盟每周发行的Literarni noviny（《文学杂志》）有三十万份的发行量（在一个一千万人口的国度）。正是这份出版物经过若干年之后开辟了通往布拉格之春的道路，之后成为布拉格之春的一个平台。它并不像《时代》这样在全欧洲和美国发布的周刊。不，它是真正的文学杂志：在里边可以找到长长的艺术编年，书评。关于历史、社会学和政治的文章不是由记者，而是由作家、历史学家和哲学家所写的。我不知道本世纪还有哪份单一的欧洲周刊曾扮演了如此重要的历史角色，并且扮演得这么好。捷克文学月刊的发行量从一万份到四万份不等，它们的水准也是高得惊人，尽管面临着审察。在波兰，评论杂志具有可以相媲美的重要性；如今在那里有成百上千份地下杂志。
译自：Milan Kundera,"The Tragedy of Central Europe ," New York Review of Books Volume 31,Number 7 · April 26, 1984, translated from the French by Edmund White.
The Tragedy of Central Europe | by Milan Kundera | The New York Review of Books
1.
In November 1956, the director of the Hungarian News Agency, shortly before his office was flattened by artillery fire, sent a telex to the entire world with a desperate message announcing that the Russian attack against Budapest had begun. The dispatch ended with these words: “We are going to die for Hungary and for Europe.”
What did this sentence mean? It certainly meant that the Russian tanks were endangering Hungary and with it Europe itself. But in what sense was Europe in danger? Were the Russian tanks about to push past the Hungarian borders and into the West? No. The director of the Hungarian News Agency meant that the Russians, in attacking Hungary, were attacking Europe itself. He was ready to die so that Hungary might remain Hungary and European.
Even if the sense of the sentence seems clear, it continues to intrigue us. Actually, in France, in America, one is accustomed to thinking that what was at stake during the invasion was neither Hungary nor Europe but a political regime. One would never have said that Hungary as such had been threatened; still less would one ever understand why a Hungarian, faced with his own death, addressed Europe. When Solzhenitsyn denounces communist oppression, does he invoke Europe as a fundamental value worth dying for?
No. “To die for one’s country and for Europe”—that is a phrase that could not be thought in Moscow or Leningrad; it is precisely the phrase that could be thought in Budapest or Warsaw.
2.
In fact, what does Europe mean to a Hungarian, a Czech, a Pole? For a thousand years their nations have belonged to the part of Europe rooted in Roman Christianity. They have participated in every period of its history. For them, the word “Europe” does not represent a phenomenon of geography but a spiritual notion synonymous with the word “West.” The moment Hungary is no longer European—that is, no longer Western—it is driven from its own destiny, beyond its own history: it loses the essence of its identity.
“Geographic Europe” (extending from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains) was always divided into two halves which evolved separately: one tied to ancient Rome and the Catholic Church, the other anchored in Byzantium and the Orthodox Church. After 1945, the border between the two Europes shifted several hundred kilometers to the west, and several nations that had always considered themselves to be Western woke up to discover that they were now in the East.1
As a result, three fundamental situations developed in Europe after the war: that of Western Europe, that of Eastern Europe, and, most complicated, that of the part of Europe situated geographically in the center—culturally in the West and politically in the East.
The contradictions of the Europe I call Central help us to understand why during the last thirty-five years the drama of Europe has been concentrated there: the great Hungarian revolt in 1956 and the bloody massacre that followed; the Prague Spring and the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968; the Polish revolts of 1956, 1968, 1970, and of recent years. In dramatic content and historical impact, nothing that has occurred in “geographic Europe,” in the West or the East, can be compared with the succession of revolts in Central Europe. Every single one was supported by almost the entire population. And, in every case, each regime could not have defended itself for more than three hours if it had not been backed by Russia. That said, we can no longer consider what took place in Prague or Warsaw in its essence as a drama of Eastern Europe, of the Soviet bloc, of communism; it is a drama of the West—a West that, kidnapped, displaced, and brainwashed, nevertheless insists on defending its identity.
The identity of a people and of a civilization is reflected and concentrated in what has been created by the mind—in what is known as “culture.” If this identity is threatened with extinction, cultural life grows correspondingly more intense, more important, until culture itself becomes the living value around which all people rally. That is why, in each of the revolts in Central Europe, the collective cultural memory and the contemporary creative effort assumed roles so great and so decisive—far greater and far more decisive than they have been in any other European mass revolt.2
It was Hungarian writers, in a group named after the Romantic poet Sándor Petöfi, who undertook the powerful critique that led the way to the explosion of 1956. It was the theater, the films, the literature and philosophy that, in the years before 1968, led ultimately to the emancipation of the Prague Spring. And it was the banning of a play by Adam Mickiewicz, the greatest Polish Romantic poet, that triggered the famous revolt of Polish students in 1968. This happy marriage of culture and life, of creative achievement and popular participation, has marked the revolts of Central Europe with an inimitable beauty that will always cast a spell over those who lived through those times.
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3.
One could say: We’ll admit that Central European countries are defending their threatened identity, but their situation is not unique. Russia is in a similar situation. It, too, is about to lose its identity. In fact, it’s not Russia but communism that deprives nations of their essence, and which, moreover, made the Russian people its first victim. True, the Russian language is suffocating the languages of the other nations in the Soviet empire, but it’s not because the Russians themselves want to “Russianize” the others; it’s because the Soviet bureaucracy—deeply a-national, antinational, supranational—needs a tool to unify its state.
I understand the logic. I also understand the predicament of the Russians who fear that their beloved homeland will be confused with detested communism.
But it is also necessary to understand the Pole, whose homeland, except for a brief period between the two world wars, has been subjugated by Russia for two centuries and has been, throughout, subject to a “Russianization”—the pressure to conform to being Russian—as patient as it has been implacable.
In Central Europe, the eastern border of the West, everyone has always been particularly sensitive to the dangers of Russian might. And it’s not just the Poles. Frantisek Palacky, the great historian and the figure most representative of Czech politics in the nineteenth century, wrote in 1848 a famous letter to the revolutionary parliament of Frankfurt in which he justified the continued existence of the Hapsburg Empire as the only possible rampart against Russia, against “this power which, having already reached an enormous size today, is now augmenting its force beyond the reach of any Western country.” Palacky warned of Russia’s imperial ambitions; it aspired to become a “universal monarchy,” which means it sought world domination. “A Russian universal monarchy,” Palacky wrote, “would be an immense and indescribable disaster, an immeasurable and limitless disaster.”
Central Europe, according to Palacky, ought to be a family of equal nations, each of which—treating the others with mutual respect and secure in the protection of a strong, unified state—would also cultivate its own individuality. And this dream, although never fully realized, would remain powerful and influential. Central Europe longed to be a condensed version of Europe itself in all its cultural variety, a small arch-European Europe, a reduced model of Europe made up of nations conceived according to one rule: the greatest variety within the smallest space. How could Central Europe not be horrified facing a Russia founded on the opposite principle: the smallest variety within the greatest space?
Indeed, nothing could be more foreign to Central Europe and its passion for variety than Russia: uniform, standardizing, centralizing, determined to transform every nation of its empire (the Ukrainians, the Belorussians, the Armenians, the Latvians, the Lithuanians, and others) into a single Russian people (or, as is more commonly expressed in this age of generalized verbal mystification, into a “single Soviet people”).3
And so, again: is communism the negation of Russian history or its fulfillment?
Certainly it is both its negation (the negation, for example, of its religiosity) and its fulfillment (the fulfillment of its centralizing tendencies and its imperial dreams).
Seen from within Russia, this first aspect—the aspect of its discontinuity—is the more striking. From the point of view of the enslaved countries, the second aspect—that of its continuity—is felt more powerfully.4
4.
But am I being too absolute in contrasting Russia and Western civilization? Isn’t Europe, though divided into east and west, still a single entity anchored in ancient Greece and Judeo-Christian thought?
Of course. Moreover, during the entire nineteenth century, Russia, attracted to Europe, drew closer to it. And the fascination was reciprocated. Rilke claimed that Russia was his spiritual homeland, and no one has escaped the impact of the great Russian novels, which remain an integral part of the common European cultural legacy.
Yes, all this is true; the cultural betrothal between the two Europes remains a great and unforgettable memory.5 But it is no less true that Russian communism vigorously reawakened Russia’s old anti-Western obsessions and turned it brutally against Europe.
But Russia isn’t my subject and I don’t want to wander into its immense complexities, about which I’m not especially knowledgeable. I want simply to make this point once more: on the eastern border of the West—more than anywhere else—Russia is seen not just as one more European power but as a singular civilization, an other civilization.
In his book Native Realm, Czeslaw Milosz speaks of the phenomenon: in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Poles waged war against the Russians “along distant borders. No one was especially interested in the Russians…. It was this experience, when the Poles found only a big void to the east, that engendered the Polish concept of a Russia situated ‘out there’—outside the world.”6
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Kazimierz Brandys, in his Warsaw Diary, recalls the interesting story of a Polish writer’s meeting with the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. The Pole was complaining: his works—all of them—had been banned.
She interrupted: “Have you been imprisoned?”
“No.”
“Have you at least been expelled from the Writers’ Union?”
“No.”
“Then what exactly are you complaining about?” Akhmatova was genuinely puzzled.
Brandys observes:
Those are typical Russian consolations. Nothing seems horrible to them, compared to the fate of Russia. But these consolations make no sense to us. The fate of Russia is not part of our consciousness; it’s foreign to us; we’re not responsible for it. It weighs on us, but it’s not our heritage. That was also my response to Russian literature. It scared me. Even today I’m still horrified by certain stories by Gogol and by everything Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote. I would have preferred not to have known their world, not to have known it even existed.
Brandys’s remarks on Gogol do not, of course, deny the value of his work as art; rather they express the horror of the world his art evokes. It is a world that—provided we are removed from it—fascinates and attracts us; the moment it closes around us, though, it reveals its terrifying foreignness. I don’t know if it is worse than ours, but I do know it is different: Russia knows another (greater) dimension of disaster, another image of space (a space so immense entire nations are swallowed up in it), another sense of time (slow and patient), another way of laughing, living, and dying.
This is why the countries in Central Europe feel that the change in their destiny that occurred after 1945 is not merely a political catastrophe: it is also an attack on their civilization. The deep meaning of their resistance is the struggle to preserve their identity—or, to put it another way, to preserve their Westernness.7
5.
There are no longer any illusions about the regimes of Russia’s satellite countries. But what we forget is their essential tragedy: these countries have vanished from the map of the West.
Why has this disappearance remained invisible? We can locate the cause in Central Europe itself.
The history of the Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Hungarians has been turbulent and fragmented. Their traditions of statehood have been weaker and less continuous than those of the larger European nations. Boxed in by the Germans on one side and the Russians on the other, the nations of Central Europe have used up their strength in the struggle to survive and to preserve their languages. Since they have never been entirely integrated into the consciousness of Europe, they have remained the least known and the most fragile part of the West—hidden, even further, by the curtain of their strange and scarcely accessible languages.
The Austrian empire had the great opportunity of making Central Europe into a strong, unified state. But the Austrians, alas, were divided between an arrogant Pan-German nationalism and their own Central European mission. They did not succeed in building a federation of equal nations, and their failure has been the misfortune of the whole of Europe. Dissatisfied, the other nations of Central Europe blew apart their empire in 1918, without realizing that, in spite of its inadequacies, it was irreplaceable. After the First World War, Central Europe was therefore transformed into a region of small, weak states, whose vulnerability ensured first Hitler’s conquest and ultimately Stalin’s triumph. Perhaps for this reason, in the European memory these countries always seem to be the source of dangerous trouble.
And, to be frank, I feel that the error made by Central Europe was owing to what I call the “ideology of the Slavic world.” I say “ideology” advisedly, for it is only a piece of political mystification invented in the nineteenth century. The Czechs (in spite of the severe warnings of their most respected leaders) loved to brandish naively their “Slavic ideology” as a defense against German aggressiveness. The Russians, on the other hand, enjoyed making use of it to justify their own imperial ambitions. “The Russians like to label everything Russian as Slavic, so that later they can label everything Slavic as Russian,” the great Czech writer Karel Havlicek declared in 1844, trying to warn his compatriots against their silly and ignorant enthusiasm for Russia. It was ignorant because the Czechs, for a thousand years, have never had any direct contact with Russia. In spite of their linguistic kinship, the Czechs and the Russians have never shared a common world: neither a common history nor a common culture. The relationship between the Poles and the Russians, though, has never been anything less than a struggle of life and death.
Joseph Conrad was always irritated by the label “Slavic soul” that people loved to slap on him and his books because of his Polish origins, and, about sixty years ago, he wrote that “nothing could be more alien to what is called in the literary world the ‘Slavic spirit’ than the Polish temperament with its chivalric devotion to moral constraints and its exaggerated respect for individual rights.” (How well I understand him! I, too, know of nothing more ridiculous than this cult of obscure depths, this noisy and empty sentimentality of the “Slavic soul” that is attributed to me from time to time!)8
Nevertheless, the idea of a Slavic world is a commonplace of world historiography. The division of Europe after 1945—which united this supposed Slavic world (including the poor Hungarians and Rumanians whose language is not, of course, Slavic—but why bother over trifles?)—has therefore seemed almost like a natural solution.
6.
So is it the fault of Central Europe that the West hasn’t even noticed its disappearance?
Not entirely. At the beginning of our century, Central Europe was, despite its political weakness, a great cultural center, perhaps the greatest. And, admittedly, while the importance of Vienna, the city of Freud and Mahler, is readily acknowledged today, its importance and originality make little sense unless they are seen against the background of the other countries and cities that together participated in, and contributed creatively to, the culture of Central Europe. If the school of Schönberg founded the twelve-tone system, the Hungarian Béla Bartók, one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century, knew how to discover the last original possibility in music based on the tonal principle. With the work of Kafka and Hasek, Prague created the great counterpart in the novel to the work of the Viennese Musil and Broch. The cultural dynamism of the non-German-speaking countries was intensified even more after 1918, when Prague offered the world the innovations of structuralism and the Prague Linguistic Circle.9 And in Poland the great trinity of Witold Gombrowicz, Bruno Schulz, and Stanislas Witkiewicz anticipated the European modernism of the 1950s, notably the so-called theater of the absurd.
A question arises: was this entire creative explosion just a coincidence of geography? Or was it rooted in a long tradition, a shared past? Or, to put it another way: does Central Europe constitute a true cultural configuration with its own history? And if such a configuration exists, can it be defined geographically? What are its borders?
It would be senseless to try to draw its borders exactly. Central Europe is not a state: it is a culture or a fate. Its borders are imaginary and must be drawn and redrawn with each new historical situation.
For example, by the middle of the fourteenth century, Charles University in Prague had already brought together intellectuals (professors and students) who were Czech, Austrian, Bavarian, Saxon, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, and Rumanian with the germ of the idea of a multinational community in which each nation would have the right of its own language: indeed, it was under the indirect influence of this university (at which the religious reformer Jan Huss was once rector) that the first Hungarian and Rumanian translations of the Bible were undertaken.
Other situations followed: the Hussite revolution; the Hungarian Renaissance during the time of Mathias Korvin with its international influence; the advent of the Hapsburg Empire as the union of three independent states—Bohemia, Hungary, and Austria; the wars against the Turks; the Counter-Reformation of the seventeenth century. At this time the specific nature of Central European culture appeared suddenly in an extraordinary explosion of baroque art, a phenomenon that unified this vast region, from Salzburg to Wilno. On the map of Europe, baroque Central Europe (characterized by the predominance of the irrational and the dominant position of the visual arts and especially of music) became the opposite pole of classical France (characterized by the predominance of the rational and the dominant position of literature and philosophy). It is in the baroque period that one finds the origins of the extraordinary development of Central European music, which, from Haydn to Schönberg, from Liszt to Bartók, condensed within itself the evolution of all European music.
In the nineteenth century, the national struggles (of the Poles, the Hungarians, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Croats, the Slovenes, the Rumanians, the Jews) brought into opposition nations that—insulated, egotistic, closed-off—had nevertheless lived through the same great existential experience: the experience of a nation that chooses between its existence and its nonexistence; or, to put it another way, between retaining its authentic national life and being assimilated into a larger nation. Not even the Austrians, though belonging to the dominant nation of the empire, avoided the necessity of facing this choice: they had to choose between their Austrian identity and being submerged by the larger German one. Nor could the Jews escape this question. By refusing assimilation, Zionism, also born in Central Europe, chose the same path as the other Central European nations.
The twentieth century has witnessed other situations: the collapse of the Austrian empire, Russian annexation, and the long period of Central European revolts, which are only an immense bet staked on an unknown solution.
Central Europe therefore cannot be defined and determined by political frontiers (which are inauthentic, always imposed by invasions, conquests, and occupations), but by the great common situations that reassemble peoples, regroup them in ever new ways along the imaginary and ever-changing boundaries that mark a realm inhabited by the same memories, the same problems and conflicts, the same common tradition.
7.
Sigmund Freud’s parents came from Poland, but young Sigmund spent his childhood in Moravia, in present-day Czechoslovakia. Edmund Husserl and Gustav Mahler also spent their childhoods there. The Viennese novelist Joseph Roth had his roots in Poland. The great Czech poet Julius Zeyer was born in Prague to a German-speaking family; it was his own choice to become Czech. The mother tongue of Hermann Kafka, on the other hand, was Czech, while his son Franz took up German. The key figure in the Hungarian revolt of 1956, the writer Tibor Déry, came from a German-Hungarian family, and my dear friend Danilo Kis, the excellent novelist, is Hungario-Yugoslav. What a tangle of national destinies among even the most representative figures of each country!
And all of the names I’ve just mentioned are those of Jews. Indeed, no other part of the world has been so deeply marked by the influence of Jewish genius. Aliens everywhere and everywhere at home, lifted above national quarrels, the Jews in the twentieth century were the principal cosmopolitan, integrating element in Central Europe: they were its intellectual cement, a condensed version of its spirit, creators of its spiritual unity. That’s why I love the Jewish heritage and cling to it with as much passion and nostalgia as though it were my own.
Another thing makes the Jewish people so precious to me: in their destiny the fate of Central Europe seems to be concentrated, reflected, and to have found its symbolic image. What is Central Europe? An uncertain zone of small nations between Russia and Germany. I underscore the words: small nation. Indeed, what are the Jews if not a small nation, the small nation par excellence? The only one of all the small nations of all time which has survived empires and the devastating march of History.
But what is a small nation? I offer you my definition: the small nation is one whose very existence may be put in question at any moment; a small nation can disappear and it knows it. A French, a Russian, or an English man is not used to asking questions about the very survival of his nation. His anthems speak only of grandeur and eternity. The Polish anthem, however, starts with the verse: “Poland has not yet perished….”
Central Europe as a family of small nations has its own vision of the world, a vision based on a deep distrust of history. History, that goddess of Hegel and Marx, that incarnation of reason that judges us and arbitrates our fate—that is the history of conquerors. The people of Central Europe are not conquerors. They cannot be separated from European history; they cannot exist outside it; but they represent the wrong side of this history; they are its victims and outsiders. It’s this disabused view of history that is the source of their culture, of their wisdom, of the “nonserious spirit” that mocks grandeur and glory. “Never forget that only in opposing History as such can we resist the history of our own day.” I would love to engrave this sentence by Witold Gombrowicz above the entry gate to Central Europe.
Thus it was in this region of small nations who have “not yet perished” that Europe’s vulnerability, all of Europe’s vulnerability, was more clearly visible before anywhere else. Actually, in our modern world where power has a tendency to become more and more concentrated in the hands of a few big countries, all European nations run the risk of becoming small nations and of sharing their fate. In this sense the destiny of Central Europe anticipates the destiny of Europe in general, and its culture assumes an enormous relevance.10
It’s enough to read the greatest Central European novels: in Hermann Broch’s The Sleepwalkers, History appears as a process of gradual degradation of values; Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities paints a euphoric society which doesn’t realize that tomorrow it will disappear; in Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Schweik, pretending to be an idiot becomes the last possible method for preserving one’s freedom; the novelistic visions of Kafka speak to us of a world without memory, of a world that comes after historic time.11 All of this century’s great Central European works of art, even up to our own day, can be understood as long meditations on the possible end of European humanity.
8.
Today, all of Central Europe has been subjugated by Russia with the exception of little Austria, which, more by chance than necessity, has retained its independence, but ripped out of its Central European setting, it has lost most of its individual character and all of its importance. The disappearance of the cultural home of Central Europe was certainly one of the greatest events of the century for all of Western civilization. So, I repeat my question: how could it possibly have gone unnoticed and unnamed?
The answer is simple: Europe hasn’t noticed the disappearance of its cultural home because Europe no longer perceives its unity as a cultural unity.
In fact, what is European unity based on?
In the Middle Ages, it was based on a shared religion. In the modern era, in which the medieval God has been changed into a Deus absconditus, religion bowed out, giving way to culture, which became the expression of the supreme values by which European humanity understood itself, defined itself, identified itself as European.
Now it seems that another change is taking place in our century, as important as the one that divided the Middle Ages from the modern era. Just as God long ago gave way to culture, culture in turn is giving way.
But to what and to whom? What realm of supreme values will be capable of uniting Europe? Technical feats? The marketplace? The mass media? (Will the great poet be replaced by the great journalist?)12 Or by politics? But by which politics? The right or the left? Is there a discernible shared ideal that still exists above this Manichaeanism of the left and the right that is as stupid as it is insurmountable? Will it be the principle of tolerance, respect for the beliefs and ideas of other people? But won’t this tolerance become empty and useless if it no longer protects a rich creativity or a strong set of ideas? Or should we understand the abdication of culture as a sort of deliverance, to which we should ecstatically abandon ourselves? Or will the Deus absconditus return to fill the empty space and reveal himself? I don’t know, I know nothing about it. I think I know only that culture has bowed out.
9.
Franz Werfel spent the first third of his life in Prague, the second third in Vienna, and the last third as an emigrant, first in France, then in America—there you have a typically Central European biography. In 1937 he was in Paris with his wife, the famous Alma, Mahler’s widow; he’d been invited there by the Organization for Intellectual Cooperation within the League of Nations to a conference on “The Future of Literature.” During the conference Werfel took a stand not only against Hitlerism but also against the totalitarian threat in general, the ideological and journalistic mindlessness of our times that was on the verge of destroying culture. He ended his speech with a proposal that he thought might arrest this demonic process: to found a World Academy of Poets and Thinkers (Weltakademie der Dichter und Denker). In no circumstance should the members be named by their states. The selection of members should be dependent only on the value of their work. The number of members, made up of the greatest writers in the world, should be between twenty-four and forty. The task of this academy, free of politics and propaganda, would be to “confront the politicization and barbarization of the world.”
Not only was this proposal rejected, it was openly ridiculed. Of course, it was naive. Terribly naive. In a world absolutely politicized, in which artists and thinkers were already irremediably “committed,” already politically engagé, how could such an independent academy possibly be created? Wouldn’t it have the rather comic aspect of an assembly of noble souls?
However, this naive proposal strikes me as moving, because it reveals the desperate need to find once again a moral authority in a world stripped of values. It reveals the anguished desire to hear the inaudible voice of culture, the voice of the Dichter und Denker. 13
This story is mixed up in my mind with the memory of a morning when the police, after making a mess of the apartment of one of my friends, a famous Czech philosopher, confiscated a thousand pages of his philosophic manuscript. Shortly after we were walking through the streets of Prague. We walked down from the Castle hill, where he lived, toward the peninsula of Kampa; we crossed the Manes Bridge. He was trying to make a joke of it all: how were the police going to decipher his philosophical lingo, which was rather hermetic? But no joke could soothe his anguish, could make up for the loss of ten years’ work that this manuscript represented—for he did not have another copy.
We talked about the possibility of sending an open letter abroad in order to turn this confiscation into an international scandal. It was perfectly clear to us that he shouldn’t address the letter to an institution or a statesman but only to some figure above politics, someone who stood for an unquestionable moral value, someone universally acknowledged in Europe. In other words, a great cultural figure. But who was this person?
Suddenly we understood that this figure did not exist. To be sure, there were great painters, playwrights, and musicians, but they no longer held a privileged place in society as moral authorities that Europe would acknowledge as its spiritual representatives. Culture no longer existed as a realm in which supreme values were enacted.
We walked toward the square in the old city near which I was then living, and we felt an immense loneliness, a void, the void in the European space from which culture was slowly withdrawing.14
10.
The last direct personal experience of the West that Central European countries remember is the period from 1918 to 1938. Their picture of the West, then, is of the West in the past, of a West in which culture had not yet entirely bowed out.
With this in mind, I want to stress a significant circumstance: the Central European revolts were not nourished by the newspapers, radio, or television—that is, by the “media.” They were prepared, shaped, realized by novels, poetry, theater, cinema, historiography, literary reviews, popular comedy and cabaret, philosophical discussions—that is, by culture.15 The mass media—which, for the French and Americans, are indistinguishable from whatever the West today is meant to be—played no part in these revolts (since the press and television were completely under state control).
That’s why, when the Russians occupied Czechoslovakia, they did everything possible to destroy Czech culture.16 This destruction had three meanings: first, it destroyed the center of the opposition; second, it undermined the identity of the nation, enabling it to be more easily swallowed up by Russian civilization; third, it put a violent end to the modern era, the era in which culture still represented the realization of supreme values.
This third consequence seems to me the most important. In effect, totalitarian Russian civilization is the radical negation of the modern West, the West created four centuries ago at the dawn of the modern era: the era founded on the authority of the thinking, doubting individual, and on an artistic creation that expressed his uniqueness. The Russian invasion has thrown Czechoslovakia into a “postcultural” era and left it defenseless and naked before the Russian army and the omnipresent state television.
While still shaken by this triply tragic event which the invasion of Prague represented, I arrived in France and tried to explain to French friends the massacre of culture that had taken place after the invasion: “Try to imagine! All of the literary and cultural reviews were liquidated! Every one, without exception! That never happened before in Czech history, not even under the Nazi occupation during the war.”
Then my friends would look at me indulgently with an embarrassment that I understood only later. When all the reviews in Czechoslovakia were liquidated, the entire nation knew it, and was in a state of anguish because of the immense impact of the event.17 If all the reviews in France or England disappeared, no one would notice it, not even their editors. In Paris, even in a completely cultivated milieu, during dinner parties people discuss television programs, not reviews. For culture has already bowed out. Its disappearance, which we experienced in Prague as a catastrophe, a shock, a tragedy, is perceived in Paris as something banal and insignificant, scarcely visible, a non-event.
11.
After the destruction of the Austrian empire, Central Europe lost its ramparts. Didn’t it lose its soul after Auschwitz, which swept the Jewish nation off its map? And after having been torn away from Europe in 1945, does Central Europe still exist?
Yes, its creativity and its revolts suggest that it has “not yet perished.” But if to live means to exist in the eyes of those we love, then Central Europe no longer exists. More precisely: in the eyes of its beloved Europe, Central Europe is just a part of the Soviet empire and nothing more, nothing more.
And why should this surprise us? By virtue of its political system, Central Europe is the East; by virtue of its cultural history, it is the West. But since Europe itself is in the process of losing its own cultural identity, it perceives in Central Europe nothing but a political regime; put another way, it sees in Central Europe only Eastern Europe.
Central Europe, therefore, should fight not only against its big oppressive neighbor but also against the subtle, relentless pressure of time, which is leaving the era of culture in its wake. That’s why in Central European revolts there is something conservative, nearly anachronistic: they are desperately trying to restore the past, the past of culture, the past of the modern era. It is only in that period, only in a world that maintains a cultural dimension, that Central Europe can still defend its identity, still be seen for what it is.
The real tragedy for Central Europe, then, is not Russia but Europe: this Europe that represented a value so great that the director of the Hungarian News Agency was ready to die for it, and for which he did indeed die. Behind the iron curtain, he did not suspect that the times had changed and that in Europe itself Europe was no longer experienced as a value. He did not suspect that the sentence he was sending by telex beyond the borders of his flat country would seem outmoded and would not be understood.
Translated from the French by Edmund White
