European identity

The first Vincent lecture by Jean-Claude Trichet,President of the European Central Bank,delivered at the Vincent van Gogh bi-annual Award for contemporary Art in EuropeMaastricht, 10 September 2004

Thank you for inviting me to speak today. I was delighted to receive your invitation, for a number of reasons. First of all, I appreciate Vincent Van Gogh enormously: his painting, his aspirations and his huge artistic talent. As you know, we French are great admirers of Flemish and Dutch painters, and apparently during the magnificent Vermeer exhibition that recently took place in The Hague, there were as many French visitors as Dutch!

I would like to take this opportunity to talk about Europe’s identity, and discuss my deeply held belief in the richness and diversity of European culture, along with its unity and universality. The work of Vincent Van Gogh is an ideal starting point for such a discussion.

When I think of Vincent Van Gogh, I think mostly of the richness of his artistic talent, his ceaseless creativity tempered by his critical eye, and his life’s journey, which was quintessentially European. In the space of a decade, Vincent Van Gogh produced 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings. He was very critical of his own art, and constantly refined his works. Many of these – those we refer to as his ‘studies’ and admire unreservedly alongside the rest of his work – were considered by Van Gogh as mere exercises in preparation for his paintings proper. This shows the great demands he placed on himself, his desire to study a wide variety of views, perspectives and different successive lights as the basis for each finished painting.

Vincent Van Gogh thought constantly about the unity of his work.

"Ik ga dus door als een onwetende", he wrote in a letter to his brother Theo in August 1883, "maar die dat éne weet: in enige jaren moet ik een zeker werk afdoen [...]. De wereld gaat mij slechts in zover aan, dat ik als ’t ware een zekere schuld en plicht heb [...] uit dankbaarheid een zeker souvenir te laten in de vorm van teken- of schilderwerk [...] waarin men een oprecht menselijk gevoel uit." And he added: "[...] ik voor mij mijn studies niet op zichzelf beschouw, doch altijd de gedachte heb aan het werk in zijn geheel."^[1]

Our fellow European Van Gogh sought his own unity from among his many sources and personal experiences and the diversity of the work of painters he admired. He lived in at least 12 different European cities in four different countries, including Zundert, Auvers, The Hague, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and Arles. He spoke three languages, mainly using Dutch, of course, and French. In Paris, where he stayed between March 1886 and February 1888, he was part of an extraordinarily exciting and international group of artists and met Signac, Pissarro, Seurat, Gauguin and Guillaumin. In Europe, every major movement involves cross-fertilisation, multicultural enrichment and the acknowledgement of its various sources of inspiration.

It is no coincidence that the Vincent Van Gogh prize has been awarded to Pawel Althamer, whose personal qualities reflect some of Van Gogh’s main teachings, and whose remarkable work illustrates the richness and creativity of our continent. I am impressed by the number of countries in which Pawel Althamer has lived and in which his work has been shown. As well as Poland, these include Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and, beyond Europe, the United States.

Pawel Althamer forms part of a long tradition of eminent Polish figures who have been highly influential across Europe. I am thinking in particular of Marie Curie and Frédéric Chopin, who were at home in Warsaw, Paris and throughout Europe, and who made such a contribution to Europe and the whole world.

All the European Union’s 25 nationalities are represented within the European Central Bank, and the ECB intends to acknowledge fully and promote the contribution made by all of Europe’s national cultures to Europe’s cultural identity.

Each year, we organise Cultural Days, focusing on an individual country. Our 2004 Cultural Days start next Thursday, 16 September, and as a happy coincidence, Poland is this year’s theme. We are organising a wide range of events that will enable some remarkable Polish artists to show their work. You are cordially invited to join us in Frankfurt to attend these events, which will take place between 16 September and 15 October.

There is no better illustration of Europe’s deep-rooted cultural identity than the expressions of mutual influence and admiration between artists in different countries, which create a kind of pan-European artistic and literary framework, a single architecture spanning all national cultures and languages.

In Dichtung und Wahrheit, Goethe wrote that “Und so wirkte in unserer Straßburger Sozietät Shakespeare, übersetzt und im Original, stückweise und im ganzen, stellen- und auszugsweise, dergestalt, daß, wie man bibelfeste Männer hat, wir uns nach und nach in Shakespeare befestigten, die Tugenden und Mängel seiner Zeit, mit denen er uns bekannt macht, in unseren Gesprächen nachbildeten […] Ein freudiges Bekennen, daß etwas Höheres über mir schwebe, war ansteckend für meine Freunde, die sich alle dieser Sinnesart hingaben.”^[2]

Goethe translated Voltaire’s Mahomet and Tancrède. He also translated Diderot’s Le neveu de Rameau, about which he wrote that “Die Bombe dieses Gesprächs platzt gerade in der Mitte der französischen Literatur”^[3] in a letter to Schiller, who had sent Goethe a copy of Diderot’s text. Because of Goethe, Le neveu de Rameau became famous in Germany before France!

The publication of Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther was a turning point in the history of European literature. All writers in all languages have been influenced by this text, which was extraordinarily brave at the time. In later life, even Goethe himself would be challenged by the sentiments of the young writer he used to be.

In my view, another striking reference to this European literary framework based on admiration for writers in all countries and languages can be found in the first sentence of Chateaubriand’s draft speech to the Académie française, which encountered the censorship of Napoleon Bonaparte: “Lorsque Milton publia le Paradis perdu, aucune voix ne s’éleva dans les trois royaumes de la Grande Bretagne pour louer un ouvrage qui est un des plus beaux monuments de l’esprit humain. L’Homère anglais mourut oublié, et ses contemporains laissèrent à l’avenir le soin d’immortaliser le chantre d’Eden.”^[4]

Although not all of us are necessarily aware of it, all Europeans exist in a unique cultural atmosphere that is jointly influenced and inspired by the poetry of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Baudelaire among many others. An atmosphere that is also shaped jointly by the thoughts of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Erasmus, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Kant, Kierkegaard.

Another of Europe’s wonders is the way in which metaphors have spread throughout the continent, across centuries, cultures and languages. As an example, take these words of Simonides of Ceos, the Greek poet who invented the “art of memory”: “For the soldiers who died at Thermopylae […] hymns rather than tears, odes rather than wailing: a monument that neither rust nor devouring time can destroy.”

This metaphor of the poem as an ‘indestructible monument’ was later used by Horace in his Odes: “I have completed a monument more lasting than bronze and far higher than that royal pile of Pyramids, which the gnawing rain […] cannot destroy, nor the chain of countless years and the flight of time.” The metaphor was also used by Ovid, Boccacio, Ronsard and du Bellay’s Les antiquités de Rome, which was translated by Spenser as The Ruins of Rome, and which inspired Shakespeare to write in his magnificent Sonnet 55: “Not marble nor the gilded monuments / Of Princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme”. This beautiful sonnet deals with the immortality of the love object, of the feelings inspired by the love object and of the poem’s very text. Its central metaphor dates back two thousand years to Simonides, and has journeyed over time and across the frontiers of the Greek, Latin, Italian, French and English languages. There is no better illustration of the countless connections that form the very fabric of European culture. This ‘indestructible monument’ made of words, which spans time and space from Simonides to du Bellay and Shakespeare, represents Europe’s cultural unity.

This European unity is based essentially on the recognition of cultural and linguistic diversity. I know of few writers who have conveyed this unity more effectively than your Dutch compatriot Cees Nooteboom. De ontvoering van Europa includes a wonderful meditation on Europe’s cultural unity and diversity: “If I am European – and I hope I am starting to get there after almost sixty years of determined effort – this surely means that Europe’s multiculturalism profoundly influences my Dutch identity.”

This is what being European is all about. We must fully assume our national cultural identity, not only because it is the very first base on which to develop our own intellect and sensitivity, but also because Europe’s rich diversity, its cultural variety and its national roots are what make it unique. It is this huge cultural diversity that gives Europeans their European identity. European-ness means being unable to understand fully my own country’s literature and poetry – Montaigne, Chateaubriand, Baudelaire and Mallarmé – without understanding Dante and Boccaccio, Cervantes and Saint John of the Cross, Shakespeare and Sterne, Goethe and Heine. European-ness means that I share with all other Europeans the same basic sources of cultural modernity, despite the fact that they come from vastly differing backgrounds. This means that I live in a modern literary atmosphere that is influenced directly and indirectly by Kafka, Joyce and Proust. As José Ortega y Gasset wrote in his Revolt of the Masses in 1930, “Si hoy hiciésemos balance de nuestro contenido mental –opiniones, normas, deseos, presunciones– notaríamos que la mayor parte de todo eso no viene al francés de su Francia, ni al español de su España, sino del fondo común europeo.^[5]

Writing about the unity of Europe, the historian Braudel mentioned what he termed the “unités brilliantes” (“bright unities”), distinguishing them from the “unités aléatoires” (“uncertain unities”). The unités brilliantes, cover all fields of artistic and intellectual endeavour, not only poetry, literature and philosophy but also music, painting, sculpture and architecture. It is no coincidence that the Governing Council of the European Central Bank chose the theme of European architectural styles to illustrate the banknotes of our single currency, the euro. It is amazing to see how widely these styles have been used throughout Europe, leading to countless buildings, churches and monuments in the Roman, Gothic, baroque and classical traditions. These architectural styles were born in very different areas of Europe, and demonstrate Europe’s cultural richness. They also provide a powerful illustration of this unique concept of unity within diversity, which is the central trait of our continent.

However, Europe’s unity does not mean confinement, introspection or isolation in a “fortress”. I firmly believe that we cannot understand the idea of Europe without understanding its fundamental desire for universality. Europe has been built gradually on the basis of a sincere and deep-seated acknowledgement of diversity, and it is precisely because of this that it aspires to form the basis of a larger and more universal whole. I quote from the visionary lecture given by Husserl in Vienna in 1935, a terrible period during which intellect was in danger throughout Europe due to the rise of totalitarianism:

“Ich meine natürlich die geistige Gestalt Europas. Es ist nun nicht mehr ein Nebeneinander verschiedener, nur durch Handel- und Machtkämpfe sich beeinflussender Nationen, sondern: Ein neuer, von Philosophie und ihren Sonderwissenschaften herstammender Geist freier Kritik und Normierung auf unendliche Aufgaben hin durchherrscht das Menschentum, schafft neue, unendliche Ideale! Es sind solche für die einzelnen Menschen in ihren Nationen, solche für die Nationen selbst. Aber schließlich sind es auch unendliche Ideale für die sich ausbreitende Synthese der Nationen, in welcher jede dieser Nationen gerade dadurch, daß sie ihre eigene ideale Aufgabe im Geiste der Unendlichkeit anstrebt, ihr Bestes den mitvereinten Nationen schenkt.”^[6]

At the European Central Bank, we have a profound sense of this European identity, which has three crucial elements: diversity, unity and universality.

The first of these, diversity, is reflected, as I have already mentioned, by the fact that 25 nationalities are represented within the ECB, forming a single group and making a major contribution to our shared success. Together, we all fulfil our role of guiding Europe’s monetary team, the Eurosystem, consisting of the ECB and the 12 euro area national central banks, each with their own culture, language and history. And together with the 25 national central banks we make up the European System of Central Banks. We embrace this enriching diversity, which forms an integral part of our identity.

The second element, unity, results from our key responsibility as guardians of Europe’s single currency. Economic and Monetary Union is a magnificent project that forms the basis of Europe’s prosperity and shared stability. The single currency is an emblem of Europe’s unity. The Governing Council of the ECB has made sure that all euro banknotes are exactly the same throughout the euro area, and that they portray the architectural styles that are another powerful symbol of this unity.

The third element, universality, comes from the fact that we are not inward-looking, but totally open to the world and in close contact with all our colleagues in other continents. We aim to play as active a role as possible in the international financial institutions and informal groups in which we take part, particularly the G7, G10 and G20. We set great store by our discussions with central banks in other continents, and particularly our meetings with central banks in Asia, Latin America and the Mediterranean region. Through Economic and Monetary Union, based on the free will of Member States, we are setting an example for today’s globalised and rapidly unifying world. We are also very keen to assist institutions that are observing the ECB and wanting to know what lessons they can draw from Europe’s unique experiences.

I would like to end by quoting Renan, who defined the identity of a nation: “Dans le passé un héritage de gloire et de regrets à partager; dans l’avenir un même programme à réaliser.”^[7] Europe has more than its fair share of past glory and regrets and possesses both great diversity and a deep cultural unity. This “même programme à réaliser” – in which the European Central Bank and all the Eurosystem’s national central banks, among others, are active participants – currently forms a central part in Europe’s identity, which we intend to work hard to build in future.