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CHAPTER 3

THE TALE OF SEDUCTIVE EUROPA

As the “White Paper on a European Communication Policy” demands, European institutions all need to have a “human face,” not just to demonstrate that they possess a “clear public identity” but also to strike a chord with citizens and to make sure that they are perceived as personally relevant. In 2012 Europa became the “new face of the euro.” The portrait of the mythological princess was incorporated into some of the security features of the new series of euro banknotes, a series that, not surprisingly, was baptized as the “Europa series.” At first sight this choice could appear to be a response to the Commission’s continuously repeated call that invited every EU institution to cease to be faceless. But is that all? Is it just one of the profane political measures serving simple “community goals?”

The ECB seems ready to attribute the characteristics of an animate being to an inanimate object, to personify the euro, to symbolize it, to make sure that the currency has both a public and a private function. Personification is part of the rich legacy of ancient Greece—a “strange disposition of Greek thought to turn concepts into gods and gods into concepts” (Gombrich 1971: 248). According to Gombrich we are perfectly accustomed to and even renounce asking questions about the

extraordinary predominantly feminine population which greets us from the porches of cathedrals, crowds around our public monuments, marks our coins and our banknotes, and turns up in our cartoons and our posters. (1971: 247)

Yet for us it is worth reflecting on the considerations and fantasies underlying the decision to ornament the new euro series with the portrait of Europa. Could we see in it an attempt to transform once and for all the euro’s humble story into a numinous tale? The image of the Phoenician princess has been traveling for various centuries through different territories, adorning everyday objects such as plates, medals, mirrors, stamps, and coins. Could it be that her voyage, ensured by the circulation of the European common currency, has several mysterious elements, conundrums difficult to decipher?

As Roland Barthes points out, myths represent a “type of speech,” a system of communication, a message that includes not just written but also visual discourse, not just modes of writing or of representations but also photography, cinema, reporting, sport, shows, and publicity (1972: 109, 110). While EU officials have offered several different verbal narratives about the origins and the rebirth of the “European family,” the ECB president chose the Europa myth and provided a visual (and partly verbal) and somewhat artistic representation of the paradise dream.

Before becoming a geographical expression, a political concept, a cultural identity, an economic fortress, a paradise dream, or a sui generis organization, Europe was a beautiful Phoenician princess, the daughter of king Agenor and the sister of Cadmos, whose story, in Moschus’s interpretation (1912), starts with a dream. Numerous versions of Europa’s story exist; the one written by this Alexandrian bucolic poet in the second century BC is interesting for at least two reasons. In recent studies the prevalent idea is that the name of the Phoenician princess and that of the continent were independent in origin. Moschus, however, is one of the few who identified Europa both with the maiden and with the continent. Furthermore, he opened his tale with a dream-image, which may remind us that at the core of the European civilization lies a myth, a collective dream.

Europa on the eve of her rapture dreamed that two lands, in the form of two women, were fighting for her possession. One looked familiar, the other, a stranger. Although the former (the native Asia) claimed that she was her nursing and nourishing mother, the maiden felt more attracted by the foreigner and more willing to submit to her violent advances. Once awake, the vision remained in her imagination. Feeling frightened by the obscurity of the dream, she wished to know which god had sent her forth such phantoms, what the meaning of the dream was, and, in particular, who the unknown woman represented: “how did desire possess my heart for her, and how gladly likewise did she take me to her arms and look upon me as I had been her child!” (Moschus 1912: [1]). In Moschus’s story we then see Europa gathering wildflowers in a seaside meadow with her companions. All of a sudden, she catches sight of a beautiful, unusually gentle white bull—Zeus in disguise—whose fragrance is more pleasurable than that of the flowers. It is worth quoting how the strong sensuality of the magic encounter is described (the image chosen by Draghi seems to capture exactly these moments of seduction):

There went he then and stood afore the spotless may Europa, and for to cast his spell upon her began to lick her pretty neck. Whereat she fell to touching and toying, and did wipe gently away the foam that was thick upon his mouth, till at last there went a kiss from a maid unto a bull. Then he lowed, and so moving-softly you would deem it was the sweet cry of the flute of Mygdony, and kneeling at Europa’s feet, turned about his head and beckoned her with a look to his great wide back. (Moschus 1912: [89])

Attracted irresistibly by the bull, the Phoenician princess climbs upon its back. At that moment, the bull jumps into the sea, determined to carry the maiden across the sea from Tyre to the island of Crete. During the journey, nereids rise from the water and become her companions while Tritons with their long taper shells sound the marriage-music. Once she is far from the land of her fathers and cannot see any more the shore, but only the endless sky and sea, she starts to feel that her sea voyage is being guided by a divinity. The bull reveals to her that in Crete she will celebrate her wedding with Zeus and give birth to famous children who shall all be kings. When they arrive at their destination the animal unveils his true identity, and “upon a bed made him of the Seasons [unloosens] her maiden girdle” and transforms the virgin into his bride, and the mother of his children.

Concerned about Europa’s disappearance, Agenor sends his sons Cadmus, Cilix, and Phoenix to find their sister and bring her back home. Cadmus decides to follow an Oracle of Delphi who orders him to embark on a different journey: to follow the cow that he meets on his voyage and found a city upon the spot where it lies down. Instead of finding his sister he creates the Greek city of Thebes and becomes its first king. Europa gives birth to Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon; she becomes the first queen of Crete by marrying Asterion, who rears her children. Minos marries Pasiphae and receives a bull from Poseidon for sacrifice. Enchanted by the bull’s beauty, he decides to keep it and sacrifice another. As a redress for Minos’s betrayal, the god of the sea makes Pasiphae fall in love with the bull, have sexual intercourse with it, and bear the monstrous Minotauros (a man with a bull’s head). Minotauros lives in the Labyrinthos and is fed on human flesh. After the conquest of Athens by Minos the Athenians are compelled to send their children to feed the monster until Theseus comes with them, and with the help of Ariadne, kills it and escapes.

The myth of Europa evokes the stories of figures of the female Greek pantheon who abandon their virginal state by leaving their own land, and through the humiliation of abduction become wives and mothers. Unlike many other women who had had the misfortune of meeting Zeus, Europa’s case is special: while Medea and Elena accept the journey for love of a man consciously, she seems to follow her deep (unconscious) inner impulses. Furthermore, in acquiring regal power and dignity, even the love of a god, not only will she not be killed like many of Zeus’s other lovers, but she will continue to live happily with a regal husband. The story of the Phoenician princess and Zeus represents a foundation myth par excellence—it narrates the foundation of the Cretan dynasty by Minos, the creation of the city of Thebes in Boeotia by Cadmus, the foundation of Phoenicia by Phoenix, and, in Asia Minor, the naming of the land where Cilix settled after the unsuccessful search for Europa, Cilicia. It is a cosmogony myth that unites land, sea, sky, continents, and people and comprises the human, the vegetable, the animal, the male and the female, the conscious and the unconscious (Passerini 2002a: 20).

The story of Europa has had an immense impact on the history of the idea of Europe, becoming “one of the most perennially popular illustrated tales of all time” (Wintle 2004: 13). Since ancient times the Europa myth has been widely represented in fine and applied art. Though it was pushed to the background in the Middle Ages, it regained its popularity during the Renaissance and has maintained its attractive power ever since. The myth has always been used to provide artistic expressions of passion, eroticism, and rivalry (between the Greeks and Persians, between true Europe and Nazi regimes, etc.), but also to define and raise awareness of the qualities and characteristics that have been imputed to the continent of Europe. For Wintle, the reasons why artists throughout centuries have appreciated and used the story lie in the following: its potential for humor; its “suitability” as a subject for decorative purposes; its potential for portraying aesthetic beauty, nobility, and queenliness; its dramatic qualities and sense of kinetic energy, rapid speed, and energetic travel that Europeans could and can enjoy; its treatment of romance and sensuality; its role as a symbol of power (2004: 12, 22, 28).

The tale became a highly charged political symbol for the European Community as well. In the post–World War II period the Phoenician heroine reappeared as the symbolic icon of the noble, united, reinvigorated part of the continent. In political discourse she became the allegory of soft power while the bull more often than not assumed the sinister connotations of the enemy that jeopardized Europe’s future peace, prosperity, and unity. Sometimes inclusionist, sometimes exclusionist interpretations came to the fore: the myth was used to acknowledge Europe’s wider, non-European roots (the Phoenician princess herself is from Asia Minor and is only carried to Europe by the bull), to argue that European citizens were not necessarily European, or to recognize the dark side of European civilization (in the myth Europa is a progenitor of the minotaur, just like European history produced its own monstrosities). When a more rigid interpretation prevailed, queenliness and uniqueness were emphasized; the phantoms of the past and the present were eliminated.

According to Ian Manners (2010) there are at least three different ways of representing this myth in terms of global Europa: the “rape of Europa,” the “seduction of Europa,” and the “transition of Europa.” The version of the “rape of Europa,” in which the bull symbolizes violence, oppression, and the destructive forces of nationalism and Nazism, provides a foundational story of how European integration contributed to defeat extremism, nationalism, and authoritarianism. In the story of the “seduction of Europa” the role of the bull is played by the United States of America, representing the liberator and the savior, the mythical hero who, as a result of his legendary accomplishments, conquers the heart of the princess and marries her. This is the foundational story of a special relationship, the matrimony of a couple where America helped his spouse overcome trauma in order to forget the devastating past and move toward a bright future. Manners interprets the myth of the “transition of Europa” following Judith Barringer (1991), who depicts Europa’s journey as a metaphorical passage, a “critical life transition” both from maiden to woman and from life to death to rebirth (Barringer, 1991: 662, 666). In this sense, Europe’s journey in the 1930s and 1940s could be read in relation to the metamorphosis of the Phoenician princess and seen as a transitional period in which the Europe of nationalism dies and a postnational Europe that is ready to face the challenges of the twenty-first century is reborn (Manners 2010: 69–70).

Every artistic representation of the myth of Europa is unique in terms of time, space, artist, audience, and the spirit of the era. Europa results as an interpreter of a series of affections that vary from surprise to trepidation, fear to sensual abandon. The fact that privileged moments from the mythological narrative vary in accentuation and interpretation as well is not surprising if one considers the communicative effectiveness of the syntactic structure (Cerulo 1993). Syntactic structure that orders and organizes, combines or repeats the various elements of a symbolic construction (in our case the different components of the Europa myth) may emphasize one element over another. While retaining the elements, it can change the symbol’s message, effectiveness, and emotional appeal. To sketch the allegory for a project of peace, prosperity, and unity, EU institutions have frequently revisited the myth’s syntactic structure. The decision to choose an ancient Greek portrayal out of the several artistic representations of the tale to ornament the new euro banknotes reveals what the privileged moments of the story are for the European Central Bank and anticipates how it will seek to use this artistic representation of the myth for its political agenda.

A glance at the new euro banknotes brings us back to antiquity and reinforces the narrative, according to which an umbilical cord links the European Union to ancient Greece. Mario Draghi perhaps shares Husserl’s view that

spiritually Europe has a birthplace. By this I do not mean a geographical place, in some one land, though this too is true. I refer, rather, to a spiritual birthplace in a nation or in certain men or groups of men belonging to this nation. It is the ancient Greek nation in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. In it there grows up a new kind of attitude of individuals toward their environing world. … In the emergence of philosophy in this sense, a sense, that is, which includes all sciences, I see—no matter how paradoxical this may seem—the original phenomenon of spiritual Europe. (Husserl 1965: 158–59)

He might agree with Vaclav Havel, for whom the large set of values at the bases of the European Union has a clear moral foundation and obvious metaphysical roots in antiquity (1994). This choice, this “preference for the primitive,” may have something to do with what the art historian Ernst Gombrich called “Cicero’s Law”:

How much more brilliant, as a rule, in beauty and variety of colouring are new pictures compared to the old ones. But though they captivate us at first sight the pleasure does not last, while the very roughness and crudity of old paintings maintains their hold on us. (Cicero, Dc Oratore III. xxv. 98; cited by Gombrich 2002: 7)

The prophets of palingenetic ultra-Europeanism (quite similar to premodern communities) believe that the power of their community lies in its (imagined) origins. The origin myth, the Europa narrative of the foundation of the Cretan civilization, this image of primordial paradise, assumes outmost importance and regressus ad originem, the restoration of the period of pristine harmony, becomes a key concern for European myth entrepreneurs advocating “rebirth” and “new beginning.” The European Central Bank arrived at the conclusion that it was not enough to bring Europe back to the post–World War II period, when Europe’s “founding fathers” laid down the foundations of today’s European Union; a return to the sacred origins was needed in order to transform the Eurozone into a sacred space, an absolute fixed point in the global chaos, the point of departure for constructing a new cosmion.

Antiquity “imparts dignity”; old words and images give our discourse “an air of sanctity and majesty” (Quintilian VIII, iii, 24; cited by Gombrich 1966: 35); they can project us into another (sacred) world. If, as Anthony Cohen asserts, “mythological distance lends enchantment to an otherwise murky contemporary view” (1985: 99), the Europa myth may be seen as a tool to inject sanctity into a profane political project.