Europe Poem by gershon hepner

Peninsula on the Eurasian continent,
not separated by the Himalayas
from Asia as is India, Europe is a tent
that sets no boundaries for its betrayers.

Perry Anderson, in “Kemalism” (LRB, September 11,2008) cites J. G. A. Pollock, who wrote in 1991:

The greatest single truth to declare itself in the wake of 1989 is that the frontiers of ‘Europe’ towards the east are everywhere open and indeterminate. ‘Europe’, as it can now be seen, is not a continent-as in the ancient geographers’ dram-but a subcontinent: a peninsula of the European landmass, like India being inhabited by a highly distinctive chain of interacting cultures, but unlike it lacking a clearly marked geophysical frontier. Instead of Afghanistan and the Himalayas, there are vast level areas through which conventional ‘Europe’ shades into conventional ‘Asia’, and few would recognize the Ural mountains if they ever reached them.

9/13/08