Westward Hoe or Half-Way Between Eastern and Western Europe

Summary

This is a discussion of Volume I (“Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries”) of the History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, a four volume synthetic enterprise in the framework of the Literary History Project of the AILC/ ICLA. The editors, Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer, rightly claim that the work helps lay the spiritual foundations of European integration. “East-Central Europe” seems to be the most acceptable term to define a part of Europe exposed for centuries to German and Russian hegemonic threats. Today there is a chance for regional rapprochement and it is a primary task to defeat nationalism with national myths and “great narratives” as its main spiritual ammunition. Their criticism is, however, not an international, but a strictly national affair, a self-addressing dialogue. The method of “temporal nodes”, applied as a structural principle by the editors, may help unveil “great narratives”, as the reader, faced with a kaleidoscopic arrangement of “micro-histories”, is provoked to discover realistic and meaningful correspondences.