European Identity In Paul Valéry's The Crisis Of The Mind

Like all social identities, there is no fixed European identity. Today we have overcome the monolithic conception of it in favour of a more postmodern definition, understanding it as something fluid or constantly in the process of becoming. Ideas of Europe and about Europe are in close relationship with the historical context and as such they ought to be studied, so that a diachronic understanding can facilitate a synchronic analysis. Paul Valéry’s essay “The Crisis of the Mind” fits well in this framework: the crisis is a crisis of conscience, it’s the awareness that the understanding of the world that once was is no more. Thus, it is an important example of a turning point in the history and evolution of Europe’s identity (or at least of

It is a text of great passion and recurrent obscurity, in line with Paul Valéry’s poetic style. It’s a cry of modernity against modernity, hypercritical of contemporary times and naturally partial, often irrational and not analytical in the least and this also because it is not meant to be a rational analysis. It starts with heavy words, dense of meaning, and opens up the reader’s eyes to a world in decline, a world that is witnessing the imminent death of an epoch. The “long nineteenth century” was Europe’s peak, the moment when Europe’s “pre-eminence in all fields” expressed itself to a higher level, when Europe was leading world history, in a positivistic conception of it. The Great War had the ignominious task of waking Europe and the rest of the world up from the dream of progress. The exceptionality of Europe is not only questioned, but defied, invalidated, on a geopolitical level as much as a more substantial, cultural

As the title suggest, the author’s essential concern has to do with the crisis of the European mind. The very first words of the text, “We later civilisations”, encapsulate this identity. First of all they show that a common identity, to a certain degree, is in fact conceived: that we, so strongly put at the beginning, is a statement, a word of inclusion, that relies on the following word for validation. Later declares that this common identity is deeply rooted in the past, “so ancient that we rarely go back so far”, giving to it historical authority. Lastly, civilisations is a clear proclamation of what that we, i.e. Europe, means, what it should be and what it is not living up to. Valéry’s Europe is very clearly the champion of civilisation, or at least it had appeared to be before the War signed the turning point for modernity, for the illusion of universal values advocated since the French Revolution, for progress, for the concept of civilisation