Where is Europe?

Is this a silly question?  It certainly seems silly.  Of course, we all know where Europe is.  But do we really?

To know where Europe is one has to know where its borders are.  And what are Europe’s borders?  Well, it’s all water, isn’t it?  The Artic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, The Caspian…But what about the islands?  Is Greenland part of Europe?,  Well it’s part of Denmark, isn’t it, even if it is closer to the Western Hemisphere.  And what about Malta in the Mediterranean?  For centuries, it was considered a part of Africa but now it is a member of the EU.  And what about Cyprus?  Its closest neighbors are Turkey and Syria but it is considered part of Europe even if it is to the east of Anatolia which isn’t.  (Not such a long time ago, Milan Kundera complained that Prague was considered to be in Eastern Europe while Vienna was in Central Europe—an absurdity if one actually looks at the map.)

Things get really complicated when we go to Russia.  The Greeks and the Romans thought that the border between Europe and Asia was the river Don. More recently, the Ural mountains were considered to be the boundary between Europe and Asia, between European Russia and Siberia.  How about the Caucasus?  The geographers apply the notion of the watershed and rule that Georgia and Azerbaijan have small parts that are in Europe and Armenia (tough luck) s all in Asia.  And we haven’t even talked about Kazakhstan…

These are the judgments of maps and professional cartographers.  What about ordinary people?  When Russian noblemen in XIX century (such as those that populate “The Estate of Wormwood and Honey”) talked about visiting Berlin or Paris or Vienna, they talked about “going to Europe.”  And when Peter the Great, established St. Petersburg on the Baltic and moved Russia’s capital there, it was widely understood that “Pétersbourg est la fenêtre, par laquelle la Russie regarde en Europe.” (as quoted by Pushkin in “The Bronze Horseman.”)

Conventions used for the boundary between Europe and Asia during the 18th and 19th centuries. The red line shows the modern convention, in use since ca. 1850.

  Europe

  Asia

  historically placed in either continent, with the red line denoting the most common current boundary.

Does Handwriting Matter?

Does handwriting matter?  Philip Hensker thinks it does.  It’s more intimate, he says.  And it shows our personality.  And after accounting for such important part of our lives, it is disappearing.

I, for one, side with Hensker’s Ph. D. supervisor who, upon being presented with a handwritten thesis, returned it unread.  He was a reader and for us readers, handwriting isn’t such a great deal.

Actually, it wasn’t such a great deal for me as a writer either--from the very early stages.  When I was in grade school, my handwriting skills lagged and things haven’t improved much since.  Though, with laptops replacing typewriters everywhere, at least I am not punished anymore for having bad handwriting.

Schools in Poland had double desks and of course from the first grade, boys sat with boys and girls sat with girls. Except when a boy was being punished and the most diabolical punishment was to make him sit next to a girl. Other boys would pounce on such an opportunity to mock--being called “King of Women” was a great insult. (Nobody seemed to care how girls felt about being made an instrument of punishment).  Having to sit next to a girl was reserved for the misdemeanor of having a messy handwriting. With girls being in general neater than boys, the idea was that a boy, by sitting next to a girl, might absorb somehow, perhaps by sheer proximity, the virtues of good penmanship. 

In practice, the teacher would demand that all pupils open on their desks their notebooks with written work.  She would walk up and down the classroom between the rows of desks and look for what she could criticize.  She would  often stop at my desk and mock my very poor handwriting by comparing it to that of the girl sitting next to me saying something like: “How come you can’t do it if she can.  Look, look how neat her pages are.  And yours?  Ink spots, crippled letters, writing that doesn’t follow the lines on the pages.  Terrible.”

I used to hate that girl with all my heart.  I am ashamed to remember my happiness years later when were had to take exams that would steer us to either academic high schools or vocational schools, I learned that the girl flunked out and wouldn’t continue like most of us. 

“The Odyssey” in a Lvov Prison

Following the outbreak of WW2, which closely followed the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Red Army occupied eastern Poland, including the city of Lvov. And following that, a lot of people started getting arrested.

Thus it came to be that a Polish intellectual found himself in a Lvov prison cell filled beyond capacity with Ukrainians, mostly nationalists and simple criminals. The first thing that happened to him was that he was robbed of his middle-class clothes. The second thing that happened was that he was approached by the leader of the Ukrainians who, pointing out to his compatriots who were fighting among themselves, said that the fighting would only get worse unless the Pole would tell them a story.

The Pole thought for a moment and then started on a tale of “events of long ago, when ataman (Ukrainian military leader) Odys, left his island of Ithaka and went to fight a war against a mighty enemy city in Turkey called Troy.” 

The tale lasted for a few days and kept peace in the cell. When it ended, the Ukrainians’ leader consulted with his group and approached the Pole again. He was to tell his tale again but this time without mistakes. In particular, in the second telling, it should be made clear that ataman Odys was Ukrainian all along, and also, that there should be included some thieving Russians among the suitors who were trying to fuck Penelope. The Pole complied without qualms.

The Brigidki Prison in Lvov (a former nunnery)