Europe is a shape-shifter. Something that can't be relied upon
from region to region, decade to decade. Half idea, half
all-too-lived reality, it's alive with the tensions of that
contradiction. Europe, named for a symbolic act of violence,
nationalised L'Arte della Guerra but internationalised the art of
roman courtois. Invented Equal Temperament and the Rubik Cube,
discovered patisserie and Protestantism. It is a place, or series
of places, perhaps above all identifiable by that lack - of
cultural, religious, linguistic or political coherence - which is
both the best and worst of its legacy.
Constantly negotiating the complexities of difference, the
nations and cultural groups of patchwork Europe live out
transitions both painful and popular. As if to be European is to
live transition, to experience identity not as automatic but as
something achieved through a series of accommodations. As if to be
European is to be in perpetual motion. A non-European might say,
We're on the road to no-where. But the secret of perpetuum mobile
is oscillation, a movement to and fro. Like a train running in
both directions: bridging distance, hyphenating difference.
The most famous European rail-route, the Orient Express, tracks
a spinal cord across the continent: Paris - Vienna - Budapest -
Bucharest - Istanbul. Istanbul - Bucharest - Budapest - Vienna -
Paris, with connections to every European capital en route. And
Orient Express names a kind of history too. In the Anglophone
world it's a metonym for an early-twentieth century glamour of
Central European culture, conspicuous consumption, illicit
elegance.
This Orient Express, the one you hold in your hands, is in
motion too. Though lacking a dining car and Wagon Lit, it's ready
to ferry readers and writers to and fro across the changing map of
Enlargement Europe. The lingua franca of Europe after communism,
the new Latin, is English. And so, for reasons of transparency,
that is the language of Orient Express. But as Europe shifts on
her axis again, the critical mass of the E.U. Enlargement
Countries is what engenders this shift. And resists the forces of
globalisation by its insistence on the particular, on the
coloured-in detail of what is characteristic.
The extraordinary literary, imaginative and intellectual
richnesses of Enlargement Europe are no secret, but Anglophone
insularity has sometimes stubbed its toe on the need for
translation. Europe's very linguistic variety, too, can hinder
literary communication within region. OE hopes to make the journey
a little easier. And what an itinerary it is!
Fiona
Sampson, Editor
