In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

274 CODES
waiter will thank you. Everything is on such a clear financial basis in
France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated
[as in Spain] by becoming your friend for any obscure reason"
(Hemingway, 243). During a Mediterranean cruise in late April and early
May, Harry Graf Kessler, a wealthy and sophisticated advocate for German
culture, fills his diary with lengthy descriptions of Spanish coastal
cities (Kessler, 476), whereas French and Italian towns are mentioned
only briefly, because they belong to that cultural realm of the Center with
which Kessler is already familiar. As a reaction to Spain's status of
eccentricity, Kessler's diary helps one understand why Miguel de Unamuno's
notion of the "Europeanization of Spain" and the "Hispanization
of Europe" receives such enormous international interest and approval
(Curtius, 226-227).
In contrast to the Periphery of the map, France, England, Germany,
Italy, northern Europe, and most of eastern Europe are neither symbols
of the future nor remnants of the past. They are Authenticity and Artificiality,
individualism and collectivism. They are the present and the
Center; their politics constantly receive worldwide attention; and their
cultures have become a norm for thousands of American tourists. But if
the Center is everything, then nothing specific can be said or written
about it. It is neutral. For many Germans, such neutrality is becoming
an authentic ideal. It generates a concern with the impression German
tourists may give while traveling abroad: "If excessive laughter and
unnecessary noise are already an embarrassment at home, they come
across as an imposition or even as a provocation abroad. The German
traveler cannot be cautious enough. Nothing has contributed more to
the negative image of Germans abroad than their inclination either to
constantly disparage the charms of the foreign country in comparison to
the advantages of Germany, or to uncritically praise the virtues of the
host country" (Thierfelder, 523).
Center and Periphery merge with and complement each other when
they confirm the distance that separates them. French and Spanish politicians
are probably serious when, on the occasion of a bilateral treaty
signed in July, they refer to their military rule in Morocco as "splendid
civilizing labor" (Garcia-Nieto, 146). Ramon Franco bases his pioneering
airplane flight from Spain to Buenos Aires on very similar premises,
thus indirectly perpetuating Spain's colonial role vis-a-vis Argentina-an
attitude that he does not seem to perceive as contradicting Spain's eccen-