[lit-ideas] Immigrants to the New and Old Worlds
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 09:02:51 -0800
[From Claire Berlinski's Menace in Europe, page 82]
"Not long ago, I discussed the difference between immigrants to the New and
Old Worlds in an exchange of letters with the Brazilian poet Nelson Ascher.
His response perfectly captures my sense of this:
'Can it perhaps be that American assimilationist traditions and American
sexual practices are two sides of the same coin on which E Pluribus Unum is
written? Choosing America usually implied accepting Rilke's dictum "You
must change your life," didn't it? It used to be a decision to become
someone else, even to change names: a break with the old countries. It
seems most Muslims who went to Europe didn't really want to become something
else, nor did the Europeans want them to become Europeans: That wasn't
written on their mutual social contract. If America is the land of second
and third opportunities, where people can reinvent themselves professionally
and in other ways many times throughout their lives, intermarriage and
divorce are so many other possibilities in this process. You move to
another state, change professions, remarry, convert to another faith, leave
the Democrats and start voting Republican, trade the New York Times, say,
for the Washington Post, make or lose money. That's not how things happen
in Europe, is it? My dad was Born Ferenc Ascher, but for almost 50 years
now he has been Francisco. People came to Brazil in order to forget, to
erase the past, to get out of history (we have geography, no history).
Thus, possibly, many Muslims who opt for the U.S. do it because they are
tired of being Muslims and want to keep in the long run, at best, only some
culinary habits. Not so in Europe. Half a century ago the Europeans might
have convinced their recently arrived Muslims to do the same, but that
simply wasn't the European way, not since the times when the newly arrived
barbarians converted to Christianity in order to become Europeans. Western
Europe didn't really want to incorporate the 1 percent of Jews who dressed
in the same way as they did, spoke their languages, looked like them and
were proud to be Britons, Frenchmen, Germans. How can it cope with 10
percent of Muslims who do not even want to assimilate anymore? Sometimes I
think that maybe contemporary Europe has a problem on its hands.'"
Lawrence
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