Looking Back

A cloudy, January day welcomed me to Prague four months ago. Yawning and bleary-eyed, I made my way through the sterile white passages of Ruzyne Airport to baggage claim and then out into the crisp air. I checked my cell phone; it was a bit past midnight, which meant it was really a bit past six in the morning, but either way I felt strange and disoriented. I hopped in a taxi, told the driver, “Hotel Savoy, Keplerova 6,” to which he replied with a sardonic nod, and we made our way out onto the highway. The hotel was located in Hradcany, near Prague Castle, which meant we drove a fairly straight line due east into Prague. As we reached the outer part of the city, the sun began to rise slowly over the rows of little red rooftops stacked on top of each other in the distance, and little pools of light began to collect on the metal facings of the apartment buildings beside the road. In spite of the fatigue and the nauseous numbness emanating from my stomach, I stared intently out the window at the lonely sidewalk pedestrians, many with heads tucked and coats wrapped tightly to block out the cold. I half expected them to gaze back at me.

We pulled up to the hotel and I paid the driver. I dropped off my bags, and then, in an attempt to beat the jet lag, began walking. I walked down Uvoz Street to the beginning of Nerudova, where a couple of street sweepers were just beginning their work. Their jovial talk, which was just pleasant sound since I could not understand it, was all that was audible besides my shoes on the cobblestones. I walked around another corner, past a post-card kiosk that an elderly woman was just opening, and I stopped at the top of a rather steep hill to look upon the city for the first time.

I kept expecting to be somehow shocked by what I saw, to feel as though I had landed on an alien planet and nothing was familiar or relatable. I kept expecting to feel terribly out of place, to have to call up my parents and tell them I had never felt so far from home. The reality was very different. I felt at home in Prague almost from the very beginning. I cannot say exactly why, just as I cannot say exactly why I came to Prague, and just as I cannot say exactly why my conception of Prague has changed so much over the past four months. When you travel to a new place, one very different from your home, it is hard to know whether it is changing around you or whether you are changing within it. The street blocks, the people, the décor and the vistas all remain roughly the same, although they change with the seasons, but something intangible in the character of the place takes a new shape. I suppose it is rather like getting to know a person, in that once you truly know them, you can hardly recall your initial impression of them.

To be fair, though, my first memories of the city are very vivid and will be with me for a long time. I remember getting off the 5 tram at Dlouha on a bitter Saturday in January, walking past the rows of shops, chic restaurants and trendy lounges, and then arriving suddenly at the mouth of Old Town Square, which seemed too picturesque to be real. I remember how that walk became my daily habit, my prelude to each day. I remember walking down the tight alleyways of Karlova to Charles Bridge. I remember stopping there for a moment between a street artist and an accordion player, resting my arms on the wall and looking out on the Vltava gleaming in the early moments of twilight. I remember walking along the boardwalk in Vysehrad with a couple of friends and pausing under a bridge to watch a couple of kids feeding ducks. I remember wending my way up the pebble path of Petrin Hill and falling asleep in the grass with the sprawling view of the city planted beneath my eyelids, and thinking of Tereza in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being: “On her way up, she paused several times to look back: below her she saw the towers and bridges, the saints were shaking their fists and lifting their stone eyes to the clouds. It was the most beautiful city in the world.”

Perhaps it is not just the city that has changed; perhaps it is me as well. When I first arrived here I was a tourist – still unaware of the people, the culture, still unsure of how I would fit in, still inclined, like most voyeuristic tourists, to concentrate on the city’s grandeur rather than hunting for odd remnants of its past and unheralded elements of its present. Most importantly, when I arrived here, I had not yet begun to associate the city with the four months of my life that was to ensue – a period filled with excitement, stress, contentment, curiosity, fulfillment and longing. Now I can pause, look back and remember, and I am certain my changing impression consists in this: if at first Prague seemed merely a blank slate, a new destination, it is now, in every way I can possibly think, a place I call home.

Exile as Emancipation: The Existential Journey of Karl Rossmann in Kafka’s Amerika

There is something essentially modern about exile. The loneliness, the disconnection from one’s self and others, the strangeness and uncertainty are all conditions that have been described as elements of social alienation, which in turn has been described as an indelible feature of modern society. But exile is also a prompt: it forces an immediate conflict between the individual and the new alien context that the individual must negotiate on his own. In Amerika, Kafka laments this conflict, sympathizing as usual with the individual. His contention is that while modernity purports to support the individual by providing greater order, in reality it obliterates his identity and renders him insignificant. Modernity grants power to the collective by reducing the ability of the individual to make sense of himself, and exile is thus as much an external condition imposed on the individual as a force that operates inwardly on his mind; it limits his choices but illuminates truths about his circumstances. Amerika works carefully through this notion – that exile thrusts the individual into the harshness and confusion of modernity, but in doing so also sets him free. In a strange way, Amerika is thus also about coming of age: if coming-of-age is the individual’s confrontation with maturity, exile is the individual’s confrontation with modernity, and both can be seen as processes that grant freedom through pain. Thus, exile, which is conceived as punishment, becomes in the end a force of emancipation; the individual learns to be content by bucking modernity’s rules and instead simply existing.

Kafka’s hero, Karl Rossmann, is, in one sense, not an unusual exile – he is sent off to the new world for an act of sexual iniquity. In this first detail that we learn about Karl there is a subtle hint of his eventual emancipation: the young traveler is going off to America to live a life free of stigma, to start anew. But Karl is also an atypical exile; Kafka suggests that Karl feels no particular guilt about his wrongdoing and thus is not seeking any redemptive path in America. This sets up a neatly existential and anti-modern premise: if Karl is not burdened by guilt and not seeking redemption, he is going to America for the simple purpose of continuing his existence there, but he is nevertheless going against his will. Indeed, Karl seems unaware of his reasons for going to the new world and expresses no preconceived ideas about what America might offer him. If Kafka were giving us a standard redemption story, we might see Karl in the opening scenes gazing upon the glorious sights of his new existence (that for many immigrants have offered hope) and connecting them back to his transgression. But Kafka’s story is not about redemption and Karl’s lot is not good or bad but neutral. His fate, and in fact his existence, are not based on repenting for his wrongdoings, so his ongoing encounter with the eccentric does not have to fit into any soul-fulfilling redemption process.

Before even leaving the embarkation docks, Karl has two strange, if not ominous, encounters that reaffirm this. The first is with the shocking image of the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of America’s invitation to freedom and opportunity. Rather than holding a torch, Kafka describes the statue as wielding a sword, almost as if in intimidation: “The arm with the sword rose up as if newly stretched aloft, and round the figure blew the free winds of heaven” (12). Kafka’s distortion of this seminal American symbol is perhaps a way of saying that modernity is menacing, full of illusions (the sword and the torch are mistakable for each other), and full of false guarantees. Like the double edge of the sword, America presents not only shining new opportunities for wealth and self-fulfillment; it also portends, by virtue of its very freedom, an equal amount of potential for impoverishment and ultimate despair. Kafka thus reveals his critical stance toward the society the statue represents.

Karl, however, enters New York harbor prepared for what lies ahead; he is carrying a black suitcase, an old army chest and he is fully expecting prejudice and hostility, for “in this country sympathy was something you could not hope for” (37). This attitude permits him to show little concern for the inauspicious image of Liberty, and in fact, Karl’s enduring temperament is affirmed by the ship captain: “We do everything possible to make conditions tolerable, far more, for instance, than the American lines do, but to turn such a passage into a pleasure is more than we’ve been able to manage yet” (29-30).

The captain’s advice, which is parceled off in detached assurances resembling modern corporate speak, sets the tone for many of Karl’s later experiences. In this particular instance, the captain sees the lad as little more than a customer to whom the guarantees of good service – and better service than the competition – must be made. There is nothing human about this interaction – rather, the captain spouts the tired and lofty morals of the society which, by virtue of his high station, he represents. However, Karl, unlike many a young traveler, sees through the bland vapidity of the captain’s words. His impartial approach to new people and his natural predisposition for phasing out impersonal trivialities free him of the bureaucratic rubbish. But he nonetheless falls into conversations like this – in which someone attempts to sell him something without any regard for his pressing circumstances – time and again, begging us to probe further into his character.

Another such instance is in the second of Karl’s ominous encounters: his sudden, almost inexplicable, discovery of his uncle, Senator Jakob. Karl is able to take temporary asylum with the man, and for a while the frantic pace of the new world seems to subside. Under the guidance of the Senator, Karl learns of the awe and confusion that often paralyze the newcomer. His uncle tells him, in words echoing the captain’s, to train carefully and to choose a profession wisely, so as not to be overwhelmed by his new experience. As fuel for this point, Karl notices almost right away that “the solitary indulgence of idly gazing at the busy life of New York was permissible in anyone traveling for pleasure…but for one who intended to remain in the states it was sheer ruination” (38-9). Karl perceives (rightly) that modernity looks upon training and working as institutional obligations that define individuals (as such, Karl is, from the point-of-view of folks like his uncle, in need of some redefining). The character of Uncle Jakob is in fact a chance for Kafka to bemoan this perennial desire of modernity not to cultivate the individual but to shape him into a functionalist stereotype. Uncle Jakob is also a main perpetrator of this evil. He is a senator – a man who, like the captain, has found a niche in modern society and has taken it as his duty to warn the young and wayward, like Karl, of the dangers of complacent reflection and the merits of rank-and-file advancement. Kafka obviously has disdain for this perpetual achievement-based moral order; if one is constantly discouraged from taking in one’s surroundings in an appreciating and appraising manner, then one can never really learn anything. But alas, it is a trademark view of modernity that simple contentment is a vice while self-serving ambition is an asset. Adding to this, Uncle Jakob presents to Karl the cautionary image of the east end of New York, “where it was said that several families lived in one little room and the home of a whole family consisted of one corner where the children clustered round their parents” (71).

Kafka thus establishes the tension between postmodern existentialism, which Karl embodies, and devout modernism, which the older folk like his uncle and the ship captain embody. Kafka instantiates this same tension in the relationships between Karl and his many acquaintances. The hero’s confrontation with the many restrictions of the American melting-pot society begins almost immediately after leaving his uncle and carries throughout the novel. Because of his temperamental advantages and good fortune, Karl appears to have something of an easy ride: after being taken in by his wealthy uncle, he visits a lavish “country house near New York,” enjoys the company of several attractive women, is able to find work at a time of grossly high unemployment and is, in the end, accepted into a company which promises him a secure career in the country’s heartland. Each of these situations has a darker side to it, though. Karl’s uncle, as we have seen, soon abandons him, Klara appears to be more of a tease than a genuine romantic interest, Robinson and Delamarche try to exploit him and steal his belongings on several occasions, and consistently, the work that he obtains is dehumanizing and promises no advancement. In addition, the frenzied atmosphere in the last chapter of the novel evokes more menacing, uncertainty and unnamed dread in Karl’s future in the open country than optimism or security.

Kafka uses these characters and situations to illustrate the fleeting charms of modernity, all the while standing firmly by his protagonist; for all his mishaps and accidental encounters – with the stoker, with Robinson and Delamarche, at the Hotel Occidental – Karl displays no greater virtue than that of patience. He has been shunned from an old world which is embarrassed and ashamed of him and thrown into the new world to forge an identity without the malady of his former sin. But once there, Karl is more of an agent for Kafka’s vision of the new world as a place that disorients the individual under the façade of promises to save him.

We see this more clearly in an episode toward the end of the book. Karl regains consciousness in the early morning in the apartment after a serious fight with Robinson and Delamarche. He wanders out onto the balcony and makes the acquaintance of a student busy at study. Karl discovers the student works at Montly’s department store by day and studies and goes to school by night. When Karl asks the student when he sleeps, the student replies, “‘Oh sleep!’…‘I’ll get some sleep when I’m finished with my studies. I keep myself going on black coffee. A fine thing black coffee.’ ‘I don’t like black coffee,’ said Karl. ‘I don’t either,’ said the student laughing. ‘But what could I do without it? If it weren’t for black coffee Montly wouldn’t keep me for a minute…I’ve never dared to risk stopping the coffee-drinking…’” (267).

Why does Karl engage in this bizarre conversation having just regained consciousness after having it beaten out of him? Kafka uses this scene to reinforce the irony of Karl’s situation and to illustrate the absurdity of the entire predicament, to which Karl once again submits. Not only is this a strange conversation to have on one’s balcony at three in the morning, but it is especially incongruous with the seriousness of Karl’s current predicament. We see another example of this when Karl goes to work as a lift operator at the Hotel Occidental. He tends to overact the part in this job, mollifying hotel guests and employers almost to the point of farcicality. Here, as Kafka builds the plot with impromptu distractions and more strange characters, it becomes nearly impossible for Karl to maintain a sober fix on his personal objectives.

This is Kafka’s take on the emancipation of the individual under the dire circumstances of modernity. If the individual cannot achieve happiness by reaching a high station in society, then base-level contentment can be achieved by floating from situation to situation without trying too hard to establish order. One of Karl’s main assets, in fact, is that he never questions the absurdity of any situation. He never wonders why he is where he is, why he’s doing what he’s doing, no matter how outlandish. To him, each scene is an episode standing freely in time, unconnected from the one before and the one after. Whereas others around him fall into despair from trying to rationalize irrational experiences – or from failing in their attempts to take advantage of a bureaucratic system that they don’t really understand – Karl’s saving grace is his complete intellectual and emotional detachment from what goes on around him. In some extent, he seems simply not to care.

Given these revelations, it must occur to us to classify the sort of emancipation that Karl is undergoing and what features of his personality and his surroundings make it possible. As we have seen, Karl is a smart young man – both self-aware and modest – and so we must ask whether his detachment is a natural propensity or a conscious choice. These are two conflicting currents of Karl’s character that, most likely, Kafka uses intentionally to keep us from fully deciphering him. Karl says, “‘You mustn’t think that I’m in a position yet to earn my living decently…I’m afraid my education has been too impractical for that’” (78). He goes on to say, “‘If a boy can go on studying, finish his school course and enter the University, then, probably, it all straightens out in the long run and he finishes up with a proper education that lets him do something an gives him the confidence to set about earning a living’” (79).

If we choose to focus on Karl’s boyish optimism, then we must count him as a victim of modernity, for it is in this context that time and again he falls victim to absurd and unforeseen situations. The optimism is absurd in itself, fashioned as a sustaining illusion. In some capacity, Kafka wants us to consider his hero a victim, a casualty of modernity, and so he sustains in Karl’s character this element of unrewarded optimism. However, if we look a little deeper at Karl’s humorous nature – his manner of coping with the conditions at the Hotel Occidental, his discussion with the coffee-drinking student, his relationship with Robinson and Delamarche, his encounter with Brunelda – an existential attitude of Karl’s at once displays itself in full color. This is a trait, perhaps learned, that enables Karl to systematically defuse the confusion, unfairness and impersonality of modernity. He is neither invested in what happens to the people around him nor in the fruits of ambition extolled by his uncle and many superiors. Thus, his existence among those who justify getting ahead by taking advantage of others (only to be taken advantage of in return) is to him pathetic and humorous. His behavior in the aforementioned situations and his eager acceptance of the job with “The Nature Theater of Oklahoma” are thus rightly seen as acts of calculated existential ridicule – he is making fun of those who buy into the false promises of modernity.

There are two important similarities between “The Nature Theater of Oklahoma” and the episodes already discussed. The first is size (the theater is enormous) and the second is shadiness (Kafka never tells us exactly what the new employees will be doing in Oklahoma). Considering such circumstances, Karl’s eager acceptance of the job suggests that he has totally embraced an existential mentality towards his own fate – he has given up on advancing in society and resigned instead to circulating about it. In this last section of the novel, Kafka’s voice comes through most clearly. Since we can only regard the novel’s ending as Karl’s willing disappearance into the untamed wilds of America, Kafka concludes in a tone of sober apprehension that because it demands so much sacrifice from the individual, modernity cannot really serve the individual. Karl’s relocation to Oklahoma is the final step in his emancipation – a veritable fulfillment of postmodern existential rebellion. This is precisely because he does not enter into the soul-selling contract that modernity offers; he does not expect modernity to help him advance. By remaining unconcerned and impartial, Karl submits to the inevitability of absurdity and chance and thus procures his own long-awaited contentment in America.

Kafka Exile Redux

Here’s an essay I recently wrote on Kafka’s Amerika:

There is something essentially modern about exile. In an instant, home and safety are relegated to sorrowful memory and identity and human connection lose their meaning. Exile is also a prompt – it forces an immediate conflict between the individual and modernity which the individual must negotiate on his own. In Amerika, Kafka explores exile and laments this conflict, siding as usual with the individual. His view on the matter seems to be that while modernity claims to support the individual by providing greater order, in reality it obliterates his identity and renders him insignificant. Modernity grants power to the collective in this way by reducing the ability of the individual to make sense of his lot, and exile is thus as much an external condition imposed on the individual as a force that operates inwardly on his mind; it limits his choices but illuminates truths about his circumstances. Amerika rests on this prospect – that exile thrusts the individual into the harshness and confusion of modernity, but in doing so also sets him free. We can thus see an interesting parallel between Kafka’s exile and another common literary theme: coming-of-age. If coming-of-age is the individual’s confrontation with maturity, exile is the individual’s confrontation with modernity, and both can be seen as processes that grant freedom through tribulation. Thus, exile, which is conceived as punishment, becomes in the end a force of emancipation; the individual learns to be content by bucking modernity’s rules and instead simply existing.

Kafka’s hero, Karl Rossmann, is a typical exile – sent off to the new world for an act of sexual iniquity. In this first detail that Kafka offers us there is a hint of Karl’s possible emancipation: the young traveler is going off to America to live a life free of stigma, to start anew. But Karl is at the same time an atypical exile; Kafka suggests to us that Karl feels no particular guilt about his wrongdoing and thus is not seeking any redemptive path in America. We can immediately recognize this as existential and therefore anti-modern: if Karl is not burdened by guilt and not seeking redemption, he is going to America for the simple purpose of continuing his existence there.

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Europe’s Pursuit of a Common Energy and the Challenges of the 2004 Enlargement

Since its inception the European Union has made several attempts to formulate a common energy policy for Europe, thus far achieving only partial success. Two of the founding European organizations – the European Coal and Steel Community and EURATOM – were designed to regulate energy in a supranational manner, so in theory the EU has possessed the institutional and legislative framework for a common energy policy since its beginning. However, the organizational failures of pre-2004 Europe were severe enough to prevent a full framework from emerging. Most commentators have pinned these failures to apprehensions among the member states: reluctance to pool sovereignty in a supranational body, unwillingness to relinquish extensive direct and indirect controls over national energy enterprises, and so on. These apprehensions have proven difficult to shake even to the present day. According to Janne Haaland Matlary, part of the problem has been that in energy policy there are clear and deep-rooted structural interests that thwart cooperation; a country that is, for instance, “primarily an energy importer has different interests from a country which is an exporter,” and these orientations are difficult to manipulate in the negotiation process (259).

Yet the expectation that a combination of factors would motivate the convergence of member states’ energy policies has always been highly plausible. Economic liberalization, the increasingly integrated European economy, the shared challenges of the environment and international competition, and even the increased activism of the Commission in areas which impinged upon the energy sector brought about a de facto convergence of national energy policies some two decades ago, creating the basis for a genuine and codified European energy policy. Additionally, the European institutions have taken steps to bring energy policy into compliance by “specifying and enforcing the legal obligations on service providers under primary law” (Cameron 4). As of the Commission’s issuance in March 2006 of a ‘Green Paper’ listing a number of options to achieve “sustainable, competitive and secure” energy supplies in the EU, Europe finally has a written basis for a common energy policy and a growing consensus on how to implement it (ec.europa.eu). Subsequent consultations have helped to advance and expedite this new energy policy, increasing the probability of its eventual success. But two vital questions remain, which I will explore in this article. First, what circumstances – internal and external, economic and political – precipitated the widespread agreement that Europe needed a common energy policy so soon after the ‘big-bang enlargement’ of 2004, and second, how has Europe’s approach to Russia – its largest and most problematic supplier – and to energy in general changed since 2004?

Prior to 2004, the shift toward a European energy policy advanced in an incremental and need-based manner. This fact indicates that the orientation of official energy policies and the balance of other policies affecting the energy sector have shifted considerably over the decades. For much of the post-war period, there was an emphasis on fostering national energy resources and facilitating the transition to a more diverse energy balance, based largely on fears about energy security (particularly since the oil crises of the 1970s). The other strand of emergent policy was also strategic, but in a broader sense, it involved the use of the energy sector to fulfill wider economic objectives such as the development of new technologies, control of balance of payments and inflation, and the pursuit of social welfare. In that period, the energy supply industries were important mechanisms for pursuing these objectives and governments were able to exert influence through outright ownership or the allocation of special privileges within energy markets, such as the granting of exclusive rights or monopoly franchises. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, “attempts to develop policies for energy industries were ignored or rejected by member states who sought to retain control over the energy sector” (McGowan 14). Even the 1973 international oil crises could not catalyze a common policy, despite the fact that most EU member states were heavily dependent on imported energy supplies.

In the early 1980s, the UK started to privatize national energy enterprises and the various industries with which those enterprises conducted commerce. This began a debate in Europe about whether free-market economic principles necessarily required each country to be responsible for its own energy demands and whether energy was really as national a concern as it had been regarded in the past. The clear alternative, demonstrated on a microcosmic level by the UK’s privatization scheme, was to subsume member states’ energy needs in the free market and regulate them through common European policy. In the 1980s, discussion over this prospect reached heated levels in France, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries; there was an “emerging ‘paradigm shift’ in thinking about the state’s role in the traditionally public sectors of the economy” (Matlary 258).

Taking a step back, this shift may have had its roots in the oil crisis of the early 1970s. Though largely another instance of the community failing to harmonize procedure, the European Commission, in the wake of the crisis, attempted a new approach to the supervision of energy supply and demand. This involved the setting of target objectives – namely, the “reduction of energy imports as a proportion of total energy needs and the improvement in energy intensities” (McGowan 14). In these cases, however, the main concern was to change the structure of energy balances rather the structure of energy markets. By the mid 1980s, therefore, the Commission had succeeded in establishing a place in energy policymaking, but it was far from central vis-à-vis the policy agendas of member states, consisting instead of information-gathering and target-setting. While these activities did not necessarily constitute a comprehensive community energy policy, they formed the pragmatic basis for a larger regulatory role of the Commission in energy policy.

Despite this new institutional stance and regulatory ability of the Commission, the oil crisis had mixed results on energy imports in Europe. Peter D. Cameron finds that “on the positive side, there was reduced dependency on imported fuels, especially nuclear energy” and on the negative side, “government-inspired investment in new power plant capacity proved in a number of cases to have been very costly and unnecessary” (12). These problems were for the most part pacified by the ratification of the Single European Act, however. The act, which was originally intended to quell discontent in the community over the lack of institutionalized free trade between member states, ended up also prompting greater energy policy activism from the Commission. That dynamism was most clearly seen in two areas that were impinging upon national policy agendas – market liberalization and environmental protection. These proved to be areas to which the policy techniques of the Commission and the competences and commitments of the member governments were well suited. Thus the Commission was able to inhabit an ever-lofty role in policy advisement and economic regulation, including the energy sector.

The Single European Act also implicitly introduced a new power-bargaining compromise between the Commission and the member states regarding energy: while member states still reserved the right to veto any energy proposal made by the Commission, proposals about the internal energy market were henceforth to be decided by majority vote. This stipulation put the agenda-setting power firmly in the Commission’s hands, since it could sculpt proposals to fit the context of the internal energy market and had ample recourse to the European Court of Justice to debate those proposals with the member states. Matlary argues that in the period since the formal initiation of the internal energy market in 1988, “the Commission service responsible for competition has been active in applying the competition rules to the energy sector, hitherto relatively free from such interference” (261). Altogether, the 1980s ushered in an unprecedented emphasis on privatization in previously public sectors and interest grew in appraising the potential benefits of deregulation. From the 1988 policy negotiations, the Commission apparently gained authorization to develop an internal energy market that would fit the general single-market model. However, there was no real permission given to the Commission to establish a common energy policy that would cover some of the more pressing issues felt by the member states, such as security of imported supplies. The purpose of the internal market, rather, was to create common-market rules for the transportation, sale and other elements of trade in energy products, not to establish security, quality, production or emission benchmarks.

The issue of a functional internal energy market thus remained unsolved by the late 1980s despite the many efforts of the Commission (which in some cases involved finagling with the European Court of Justice to “establish a formal competence for a common energy policy in the Treaty on the European Union”) (Matlary 263). In the early 1990s, the Commission presented directives on price transparency, electricity transit, gas transit and plans to monitor large investments in the energy sector in an attempt to institute common European procedure in these areas. These directives did not have any major impact on the sector and were soon to be followed by additional legislation, which was “intended to herald a new phase in the energy liberalization” and coordination process (Boisseleau 2). The ensuing directives that the Commission issued on electricity and gas, however, left the member states with almost unrestricted choice for implementation, which quickly proved to undermine the harmonization that the directives had specifically envisioned. Moreover, these proposals met with varying degrees of resistance. The proposal for electricity transit was adopted with relative ease, but the transit question for gas proved far more difficult, requiring several negotiations and reformulations during a two-year period before being adopted in October 1990.

As the internal energy market expanded its sphere of influence, it became apparent that supply security would need firm policies at the European level. This notion developed out of the logic that in a more liberalized market, the importer would become more vulnerable to an interruption of supply, especially since state actors had formally relinquished the authority to secure supply for a market that extended beyond national borders (Matlary 268). This growing separation of powers highlighted what was an uncomfortable but necessary new reality for many of the member states; the more internationalized the energy market became in terms of common rules, the less control their national governments could exercise. Thus, it was imperative that the EU intervene with specific policy measures to tend to problems that the market could not resolve on its own. The common energy policy remained an important item on the Commission’s agenda during the early 1990s – in an attempt to establish a more coherent and far-reaching energy policy by the end of the decade, the Commission published a Green Paper in 1995 entitled “For a European Union Energy Policy,” which set out goals for energy imports and consumption and made a case for the delegation of greater responsibility to the EU with regard to changes that had occurred in the legal, institutional and economic environment of the EU (Cole 128). These changes included the Single Market, which had been significantly altered in function between its establishment in 1988 and 1993, and the increasing concern about energy in the EU due to environmental protection objectives (arising from growing energy consumption), and to “geographical changes affecting supplies to the EU from third countries” (Cole 128).

Throughout the remainder of the 1990s, the EU’s focus was firmly centered on bolstering the internal energy market (which required convincing the member states that it would work), harmonizing it with new environmental and economic objectives, and developing a common energy policy based on the internal market. As this work was being hashed out, both in court procedures and in committee meetings, another incentive for developing a strong common energy policy with an environmental element emerged. In the late 1990s, the Commission began to conduct accession negotiations with many of the formerly-communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. By 1997, allocation of aid funds to the area was already being connected to environmental measures that the EU had strived to include in the design of the common energy policy. Rather quickly, the quandary of this region became apparent to the EU, which Matlary neatly sums up as, “how to achieve economic growth without taxing the environment unduly” (269). In short, Europe generally perceived at the start of these accession talks that the influence of EU policy in this region could be critical and much would depend on the linkages between an intra-EU common policy and the projection of that policy eastward.

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe indeed posed a basic policy challenge to Europe at their accession in 2004. Not only were they less developed economically, more agrarian-based and thus more in need of a network of energy importers with capital and wherewithal at their disposal, but several of them had formerly relied on the Soviet Union for all of their energy demands. Particularly the latter issue sent Europe into a tailspin of territorial concerns, but more importantly, the problem of satisfying the energy needs of the new member states underscored the new reality of the common energy policy; whereas before Europe had treated the common energy policy as a positive but optional reform of the energy-importing framework, now there was no doubt that it was a basic prerequisite for expansion. In addition, these new, prospective member states were visibly lagging in environmental protection standards, which had to be fixed expediently. The Commission’s 2006 Green Paper, entitled “A European Strategy for Sustainable, Competitive and Secure Energy,” was meant to finally tackle these looming environmental and energy questions and, in so doing, pave the way for the smooth accession of the new states. The background to this action plan was, of course, the stark presence of new challenges: how to ensure an energy policy that would be flexible enough to respond to the global environment while ensuring a stable regulatory framework that would infuse the market with sufficient trust and confidence; how to achieve climate change and carbon reduction goals; how to ensure security of supply against a backdrop of potential instability and political manipulation in some key supplier countries; and how to deliver competitive energy prices.

The Green Paper’s largely positive reception in Europe might be attributed to its modesty and methodology; it was careful to enumerate Europe’s many yet unresolved energy problems and pragmatic in laying out steps for addressing those problems. The Paper acknowledged, for instance, that “Europe has not yet developed fully competitive internal energy markets” and “only when such markets exist will EU citizens and businesses enjoy all the benefits of security of supply and lower prices” (ec.europa.eu). To solve this, the Paper proposed that “interconnections should be developed, effective legislative and regulatory frameworks must be in place…and competition rules need to be rigorously enforced” (ec.europa.eu). To a similar end, one of the crucial provisions in the Green Paper was for a regular EU Strategic Energy Review, covering the issues identified in the Green Paper and constituting a flexible action plan on European Energy. Most of the member states were quick to consent to this recommendation at the 2006 Spring meeting of the European Council and requested that the Commission present an ‘Energy Action Plan’ for debate at the 2007 Spring meeting of the European Council (www.berr.gov.uk). Accordingly, in January 2007, the Commission published its first Strategic Energy Review along with a number of supporting documents underpinning some of the proposals in the review.

The major initiatives of the common energy policy, as laid out in the 2006 Green Paper and followed up in the Commission’s “Energy for a Changing World” in January 2007, concerned completing the internal energy market, increasing solidarity among EU member states, diversifying the EU’s energy supply, addressing global warming, and formulating an energy technology plan and a common external energy policy (EurActiv.com). These are necessary and commendable action plans and will likely produce successful results in the years to come, but it is vital to take stock of their close connection to the concerns introduced by the eastern and central countries that the EU admitted in 2004. In the action plans, particularly the call for greater solidarity among the member states with respect to energy demands and diversification of energy supply, it is easy to notice a strong declaration of energy sovereignty and self-sufficiency – the kind which world superpowers have been known to enjoy for the past century or so. In enhancing the harmony between member states with regard to the international market’s most important commodity – rather than leaving each state to satisfy its own demands – Europe has increased its market strength and independence vis-à-vis its problematic suppliers (Russia and the Middle East) and its competitors (the U.S., China and Japan, to name a few).

There is still a lot of work to be done in designing a common external energy policy that works, though. In a September 2007 article, Dieter Helm writes, “Meeting the external challenge posed by Russia requires a major re-orientation of EU energy policy, and a robust approach to security of supply” (2). Largely, the realization of the necessity of such a re-orientation is a phenomenon of post-enlargement Europe. As a smaller supranational organization juggling the varying demands of its member states, not only in the energy market but elsewhere, Europe did not used to have such an urgent need for coordination. Now, with more members, more varying energy needs, and a more expensive and unstable energy market than ever before, coordination is a must for Europe.

But the EU’s intensive focus on a common internal policy over the past two years may be seen as a cover for the fact that it has no answer for the more imperative energy question of how to deal with its problematic Russian suppliers. In fact, the EU and Gazprom have been trying since 2004 to outduel each other on the energy market: the EU’s attempts to strengthen its bargaining power by consolidating member states’ needs is analogous to Gazprom’s attempts to strengthen its bargaining power by nationalizing its reserves, monopolizing pipelines and undermining free-market competitors in the Caspian (Helm 1-2). In other words, the EU has been taking steps to drive prices down while Gazprom has been taking steps to drive prices up, but the two sides have not been negotiating with each other. Once again we see Matlary’s ‘structural interests’ at work hindering the ability of Europe to promote its own welfare. Only this time, the tension is not between member states but between Europe and its supplier. The result of this situation, for the short term at least, is a market impasse with a slight advantage to Gazprom.

What can be said in praise of the EU is that after the 2004 enlargement, it wasted no time in sitting down to seriously contemplate the pressing energy-environment challenges posed by the new member states. The circumstances requiring it to do so were clear: energy supplies growing more expensive and less secure in the world and environmental protection and anti-global warming measures becoming necessities. Above all, Europe has realized since the enlargement that it can no longer bear to be dependent on a dubious Russian supply (especially with the increased demands of the new member states); it must diversify and expand its supply source. Europe’s sincere attempts to coordinate and unify itself can be seen as steps toward that goal. The vastly increased size of the EU, in short, demands a common energy policy that coordinates energy imports and provides for the sharing of resources and technology in a way that maximizes energy potential. These measures are now being incrementally implemented as the necessary support infrastructure expands. The extent to which they achieve the stated aims of the 2006 Green Paper and subsequent addendums will influence the ability of Europe to function effectively in an increasingly precarious energy market in the coming years. 

 

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Boisseleau, Francois, and Martha M. Roggenkamp. Regulation of Power Exchanges in Europe. Antwerp, Oxford: Intersentia Nv, 2005.

Cameron, Peter D. Competition in Energy Markets: Law and Regulation in the European Union. Ed. Michael Brothwood. Oxford, New York: Oxford UP, 2002.

Cole, John, and Francis Cole. A Geography of the European Union. London: Routledge, 1997.

“EU Considers Common Energy Policy Amid National Sovereignty Concerns.” EurActiv.com. 29 June 2007. 26 Apr. 2008 <file:///C:/Users/Jasper/Desktop/CENEU%20-%20Sources%20for%20Final%20Paper/Euractiv.htm>.

Green Paper: A European Strategy for Sustainable, Competitive and Secure Energy. European Commission. Brussels, 2006. 25 Apr. 2008 <http://ec.europa.eu/energy/green-paper-energy/doc/2006_03_08_gp_document_en.pdf&gt;.

Helm, Dieter. The Russian Dimension and Europe’s External Energy Policy. University of Oxford. Oxford, 2007. 3 May 2008 <http://www.dieterhelm.co.uk/publications/Russian_dimension.pdf&gt;.

Matlary, Janne Haaland. “Energy Policy: From a National to a European Framework?” Policy-Making in the European Union. 5th ed. Ed. Helen Wallace and William Wallace. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. 257-277.

McGowan, Francis. European Energy Policies in a Changing Environment. New York: Springer Books, 1996.

Kundera and I Contemplate the Novel

“Great novels are always just a little bit more intelligent than their authors.” -Milan Kundera (The Art of a Novel)

The novel is at once an outward search and an inward expression, a medium for imagination and a means for interpretation. These dueling components form the basis for a discussion between the author and the reader, which spreads out over the pages and makes the story real, makes it matter. The world of the novelist is also a medium used to construct an entire world through the evocative use of language, symbol and metaphor. It is a platter of imagined worldly reality boiled down into fragments of human truth, tied together by the string of conflict and bound by the four fenceposts of a plot. This is what allows the reader to understand the story, to grasp its invented details, to bridge the ravines of imagination and sympathize with characters that are not real but bear the palpable flesh of truth. The world of the author’s, therefore, can be neither arbitrary nor insular because it must have the capacity to teach the reader about his own world – about how human beings behave and why. But it must also give the reader a glimpse into the mind of the author, and this is perhaps just as precious a form of insight. That the novelist may be a distinctly perceptive observer seems self-evident in most great novels, but how can we as readers really understand this? How can a writer of fiction, a writer who imagines people, places and events that are not real, tell us about our own world or the circumstances of our own reality?

This question points to an even more difficult and basic question: why do we read novels, why are we attracted to the interpretive reconstruction of the universe by people seeking to identify and explain to themselves the mysteries of their own existence? The answer must be equally basic: reading a novel is fun, reading a great novel is great fun. The novelist’s intelligence is mostly irrelevant to us. It is only important that he is just intelligent, adept, and passionate enough to make the experience of reading his work valuable. Reading a novel, then, is valuable if it improves our understanding of ourselves and does so in a way that reading is not a chore. If the novel brings us along for a ride, gives us small gifts along the way, and makes us never want to stop reading, it is valuable. A great novelist does this by appealing to our hearts, by hitting the spots where our mind and emotional sense are weak and prone to erupt, by drawing out our innermost sympathies and tapping the crevices that are filled with imaginative sensation. The author mines these reactions out of us like ore, and once we have felt them, we need more, like a drug.

The novelist teaches the reader by first constructing a captivating tale and then lacing it with irresistible molecules of truth. The reader ends up engaging in the novel and respecting its author once he has felt the awe of this involuntary eruption within him. Words build feeling and feeling builds human connection. This powerful bond between the reader and the characters of the story, this investment of the reader in what becomes of those characters, is what motivates the reader to learn and take in more. In this way, the reader can start to see the novelist’s characters and himself in the same light, both the collective products of smaller truths, gathered together in meaningful order.

The novelist’s intelligence is measured by the novel’s ability to interest and teach the reader. If we accept this, then the novel can be said to surpass the novelist in intelligence if it reveals to the reader the thoughts, feelings, desires, fears and mysteries that lie in the novelist’s head that he is not aware he is communicating. Writing is a process that operates on two levels: the conscious and the subliminal, and great novels reveal to the reader through clear, conscious prose the profound messages of the subliminal. The author intends his words to mean one thing, and quite often, the reader interprets them in a slightly different way, expanding the novel’s meaning infinitely. Only in great novels, in which the author leads the reader down a path but does not force his own interpretation, does this sort of openness emerge. This allows the novel to truly belong to the reader, just as it belongs to the writer. If the reader can make an interpretation that makes sense to him, then he has made it his. This means that in the author’s attempt to write the story of his own experience, he has fashioned the tools for the author to imagine the story based on his own experience. It is this ability of a great novel to evoke feelings that bind experience to truth, and to make statements more varied, nuanced, sensitive, appealing and enthralling than the author ever intended, that makes it just a little bit more intelligent than its author.