"A faraway country of which we know little" (Milan Kundera, Le Rideau -The Curtain, p.47). The faraway country was Czechoslovakia and Lord Arthur Neville Chamberlain described it that way in 1938 when, after negotiations with Hitler, he agreed that Britain will not intervene when Germany will invade the Czechs a few days later." In Munich", writes Kundera, ""in the Autumn of 1938, the big four, Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain, negotiated the destiny of a small country to which they have denied even the right to talk".
I am born and raised in another small and even more "faraway country" called Romania, of which most inhabitants of big countries would know basically nothing if it wasn't for "Dracula" and Nadia Comaneci. Its discreet existence is probably why my country has been also submitted to several territorial surgeries, following the agreements of the big economical powers. Ribentropp-Molotov Pact and the Yalta Conference are just two examples in which the life course of Grandpa Ioan and Grandma Sofia, and consequently the life of my parents and mine, were determined by discussions where no Romanians were ever invited. We found things out indirectly, little by little, when we realized that those daring to talk against Stalin or Ceausescu were going somewhere without coming back...
Because I grew up on a continent where you can drive through several countries in a a matter of hours (this idea seems to be very popular amongst the US citizens, who often book European "vacations" called "12 Countries in 12 Days"), I am particularly appreciative of multiculturalism and cultural identity - and to be clear and specific, by multiculturalism I understand something much more than people of various cultures eating under the roof of the same McDonald's. As a US resident since 2000, to this day I still have the feeling of being trapped knowing that I live in a country that "does not end", even if I fly for six hours. And I still remember my astonishment and disappointment when, upon landing in Hawaii for the first time, besides the ubiquitous Walgreen's, Costco and Safeway, I found the same plain, basic geometry architecture forming the classic American Shopping Center: a huge square surface that serves as a parking lot, delimited by a sort of long barracks with flat roof, divided into segments representing stores and businesses. I am definitely not what people call "a sports guy", and baseball (as well as American football) seems to me like a coffee from a diner: a diluted liquid of uncertain origin, an infinite (four of five hours of the same game, that's a lot of advertising to watch!..) sequence of coitus interuptus, bits of excitement that do not really ever culminate.
However, I felt some hope a few years ago, when I heard about the Baseball World Series - I always liked to watch the football World Cup, or the Olympics, it reinforces in me a special sense of belonging seeing countries from all continents competing together. Finally, I thought, an international competition, a world one actually, wow! I didn't even know baseball is so popular around the world! Well, it isn't. It turns out that the baseball "World Championship Series" involves teams from only one country: United States of America. When your country is so big that, in order to go from one coast to another, you need to spend six hours eating Airline Pretzel Mix and drinking Coca Cola, then I guess you can also call your baseball team "World Champions", even if in fact your country, from the whole world, was the only participant in the championship. "Provincialism", writes Kundera, "is the incapacity (or the refuse) to envision your own culture in the large context". Using literature as an example, he goes on and specifies that:
Conversely:
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Small nations are reticent to the large context for just the opposite reasons: they have a high esteem for the world culture, but that appears to them like something strange, a sky high above their head, faraway, inaccessible, an ideal reality with which their national literature has little in common. The small nation has inbred in its writer the conviction that he belongs only to itself. |
In a process that was the opposite of Romania's territorial amputation, the United States tripled its size by annexation of Texas, then by taking California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico, and then by buying the Province of Louisiana from France and Alaska from Russia. The subsequent US presidents were amongst the ones writing the invitations for all the big nations gatherings, where the destiny of countries like Czechoslovakia and Romania were discussed in absentia.
As about sports, the opinions seem to be divided. Which one doe it seem more provincial to you: 90 minutes of soccer in an intercontinental World Cup, or five hours of baseball in a local World Series?
As about sports, the opinions seem to be divided. Which one doe it seem more provincial to you: 90 minutes of soccer in an intercontinental World Cup, or five hours of baseball in a local World Series?