Europe in Love. Love in Europe: Imagination and Politics Between the Wars.

Schade, Rosemarie ; Colwill, Elizabeth

Europe in Love. Love in Europe: Imagination and Politics Between the Wars, by Luisa Passerini. New York, New York University Press, 1999. viii, 358pp. $38.50 U.S. (cloth).

Passerini's well-written and erudite work of cultural and intellectual history deals with questions of European identity, unity, and the emotional basis of the idea of a unified Europe as it was expressed mainly between the two world wars. Her approach is to engage in a multi-leveled set of discourses in which these themes are reworked through different perspectives and genres. For example, central to her project is her discussion of courtly love, especially as it had been developed by C.S. Lewis in his popular and critically acclaimed The Allegory of Love, which was first published in 1936. The sense of courtly love as a unique European achievement and hence a key element in establishing European cultural identity was widely discussed in the interwar period. Also important in her analysis of the approaches to the themes which flourished in the 1930s in speculation about the creation of a European sense of unity and identity was the work of the Catholic historian Christopher Dawson. Dawson shared in and helped shape discourses around religion, sexuality, love, and the notion of European unity; these themes intersected with secular approaches to the same topics and provide a dense tapestry of the same or similar themes taken up in different ways by different authors. The constructs of the Provencal tradition of courtly love around which an important part of European identity through love was shaped are approached through diverse thinkers and political leaders, and then redefined through contemporary travel literature about Provence which plays on these ideas as well.

Passerini's work is based on a large variety of sources, from largely forgotten pan-Europe activists such as Dmitirije Mitrinovic, through well-known psychologists such as Adler, Jung, and Freud, fascists such as Sir Oswald Mosley, the anthropologist/novelist Robert Briffault, and numerous other novelists, artists, activists, and writers. Many of her subjects were attracted to esoteric ideas, and there is a tremendous overlap between different circles of intellectuals and artists of the period with interests in the themes she has set for herself. There is, in addition to her explication of the relevant ideas of these activists and thinkers, also an attempt to trace recurrent myths (such as Europa and the Bull) through different forms of artistic expression. The book is rich in allusion and analysis, and makes varied connections between ideas of European unity and the emotional and cultural fabric within which these took shape. Whether fascist or communist (she generally excludes most overt political discussion of European unity), the answers all shared in a mythical unity which deemed Europe as something in contrast to Asia and to America. Her interests never stray far from cultural concerns; although political figures such as Winston Churchill and Sir Oswald Mosley are occasionally cited, and institutions such as the League of Nations appear in the discussion of European unity (as for example, in 1929, when Premier Aristide Briand proposed a federal bond between the peoples of Europe at a League of Nations Assembly); however, such figures and mainstream political institutions appear only when the terms of the debate shed light on cultural attitudes which go far beyond the political discussion.

Passererini has a fine intellectual intuition for the idealism and hopes of the interwar years, and has captured a sense of the widespread loss of faith in political solutions to issues framed in other dimensions of human activity among educated Europeans. Surprisingly, she does not dwell on the shadows cast by the depression and the aftermath of the First World War; the former may be due to the fact that most of her subjects were comfortably off, and the latter because this is a theme on which many other good works of cultural and intellectual history have already dealt with.

Most of Passerini's subjects were British, or spent time in Britain, or interacted with the British-speaking intellectual world in significant ways. This raises the issue of the long-standing tensions between European and British identity; never easy, these tensions are perhaps best played out in the correspondence between an upper middle-class British woman married to a German aristocrat. While this intimate note can show the connectedness between personal and political (in the broadest sense) issues, many other discussions also touch on the special status of Britain to the continent. National stereotypes, the continued existence and perceived economic advantages of a British empire, and the popular sense of a special closeness of British to American culture due to language makes this a particularly fruitful arena in which to examine ideas of emotion, unity, and identity in the discourse of national/European identity.

The book ends with an epilogue which is both a touching tribute to, and an appreciation of, the life of Frank Thompson. Thompson embodied a sense of "Europeaness" in its broadest and most generous terms. He deeply explored notions of love, Europe, and identity, and was a polyglot who insisted that linguistic proficiency was the key to overcoming misunderstandings and ignorance. His Europe was "not only a Europe of the mind but very much a Europe of the heart" (Passerini, p. 312), still unrealized in his lifetime, but perhaps realizable in part in the future if politics and love, reason and emotion, could find some reconciliation.

The book will appeal to specialists in the cultural, aesthetic, and intellectual history of the era, as well as anyone more generally interested in questions of possible bases for European integration which go beyond political and institutional forms. It is timely in the sense that in the last decade the re-unification of Germany has raised issues of European integration and identity to a new level of urgency. Bureaucrats in Brussels might do well to ponder earlier attempts at political and economic integration which failed to take into consideration the connections between emotion and politics.

Passerini's book is a clearly-written, accessible work of deep scholarly investigation and imagination. It is also pleasing in design and contains several colour plates of art discussed in the text. If I have a quibble, it is that the social and political context within which her protagonists operate has been so very lightly sketched in, if it has been sketched in at all. This makes the book less useful for a reader, for example, who has not already accumulated a great deal of other historical background within which these artists, activists, and thinkers were situated. It also raises uncomfortable theoretical questions about the relationship between politics, social forces, and ideas, especially ideas as subjective and contested as love and identities.

The endnotes, sources and references testify to the author's wide and deep reading in archives across Europe and in the United States. The book is well worth the price, and guaranteed to renew one's interest in the passions, loves, hopes dreams, and emotional worlds of the men and women reconstructed in this book.

Rosemarie Schade

Concordia University