Abstract

For European dialogue, in particular if literature is to assist in it, mutual curiosity is necessary. And a joint struggle against oblivion. Ignorance and oblivion make people overconfident and arrogant. Literature can contribute much more to European dialogue than interests can. It can contribute a sensitivity to weakness, to being different, and it can contribute memory. Memory is the operative word here. Only those who think they are building the world anew try to avoid it. Or to fake it. Or to simply forget about it. It would not bode well for a common future European life if what Irène Némirovsky wrote apropos of Paris were to come true: “Everything becomes forgotten in Europe.”