LOVE THAT UNITES

written by KARLO NANUT

Along the border that once separated two worlds, today there are two cities that are increasingly learning to speak the same language: the language of proximity. Gorizia and Nova Gorica are not just two cities along the border. They are two halves of a story that history has violently divided, and people are slowly and persistently rebuilding it today, even though this path will take quite a long time and will require a lot of effort. Behind them there is no longer the Iron Curtain, there is no longer that border that once determined where you can and cannot go. But history remains. It is visible in the streets, in the squares, in the architecture, in the memories of older generations and also in the language. But it is precisely history, which once created the distance, that today gives their proximity a special value. Gorizia and Nova Gorica are unusually close, one can cross the border in a few minutes and pass from one city to another almost imperceptibly. But more important than the distance in kilometers is what has happened in people’s minds in recent years; the border is no longer primarily a line on a map, it becomes a memory. The love between the two cities is not a love without wounds, it is a love that was born out of a painful history and therefore knows very well how valuable meeting and cooperation are. Especially for the younger generations, the border is no longer a wall, but more and more a place of encounter. Today, the people of both cities move freely and go “across the border” for coffee, lunch, shopping, walking, cultural events or just for socializing. Young people grow up with a different sense of border than their parents and grandparents had. This is perhaps the beauty of both cities: their future is not only built by major political projects and European programmes, but by everyday actions: by attending a joint event, by making friends, by greeting each other in both languages. I often see that there is doubt, a lack of clarity, as to what bilingualism represents. Bilingualism along the border is not in the fact that both nations have a complete command of two languages. It is a “passive” bilingualism, where everyone should speak in their mother tongue, listen to and understand their interlocutor in a different language. However, I think there are still obstacles here. I would not want something else to be hidden behind the resistance, behind the doubt towards the language of one’s neighbour. Some Italians may see the Slovenian language as the “language of barbarians” (as Benito Mussolini put it), while some Slovenians may see in Italian the language of the colonizer. Gorizia and Nova Gorica could become the example of the Europe we want: a Europe in which history is not erased but transcended, a Europe in which different languages do not mean foreignness or a wound anymore, but a memory of a time when freedom was less self-evident. “Love does not boast, it does not need big words, it does not mean bad, it does not rejoice in injustice, but it rejoices in the truth,” the Bible says. Love lives on in daily encounters in the streets, squares and cafes. It lives in bilingualism in joint projects and in young people, in spirit and body, who think less and less about which side the borders are on. Among the books I read this summer is the work of the famous Austrian writer Robert Musil Der Mann ohne Eingenschaft (A Man Without Qualities), which gave me the inspiration for an article in which I see the connection between the novel and the importance of the two cities, Gorizia and Nova Gorica, the European Capital of Culture. In Musil’s novel, which represents the synthesis and realization of the utopia of essayistic writing, the world, which was primarily the Habsburg world, collapsed because of its own misunderstood genius. At the heart of the novel is “Parallelaktion”, a kind of our EGTC GO, in which in 1913 the political circles of Vienna are looking for a leading idea and preparing all possible projects and planning activities for the Emperor’s anniversary in 1918. The parallel action was to take place according to four themes: the glorification of peace, the Austro-Hungarian state as a multinational monarchy, the monarchy as an economic superpower and the monarchy as a cultural superpower. They planned 1918 as the year of harmony of these four principles. With irony, Musil reveals all the absurdity of this project. All their efforts will prove to be in vain, because with the war, Austria-Hungary, which Musil calls Kakania in the novel, will fail. Let us hope that our efforts to unite Gorizia and Nova Gorica will not turn out to be nothing either, and that we will not have to express ourselves as Musil: “In fact, we have experienced nothing, we have not changed at all, we have seen a lot, but we have not noticed anything.” What is surprising about Musil’s lines is that nothing substantial has changed, despite the great geopolitical upheavals brought about by the conflict. In World War I, soldiers returning from war zones were speechless, unable to combine scattered experiences into a clear vision. The catastrophe of the war taught them nothing.