From the Latin "in the middle of the lands", the Mediterranean evokes classicism, cross-pollination, and blue skies onto which to project a desire: to manage to capture the features of a common identity. If the historian's gaze seems to deny the idea of Mediterranean-ness, it is the Muses who are drawn to it. The melancholy, reflective vein of the songs evoked by Turkish musician Zülfü Livaneli, the proverbial conviviality and celebration of leisure praised by Matteo Nucci are viewed with a mixture of fascination and censure by Protestant-rooted countries. The nobility of the Greek profile of homo mediterraneus can in an instant become a contemptuous caricature, synonymous with laziness and cultural backwardness. However one chooses to define it, the Mediterranean appears to be in crisis: neglected by the European Union, which looks at the North African and Levantine coasts only as a threat and an energy resource, it is the crossroads of one of the greatest migrations in history. While every year hundreds of millions of vacationers swarm to its shores, hundreds of thousands of people undertake a dramatic reverse journey to flee wars, persecution, and poverty. The liquid road, as Homer called it, is increasingly militarized, trafficked, and polluted, as well as overheated and overfished. Seen from the North African coasts, rather than a Mare nostrum it seems like a wall dividing the Arab world from the European one, a source of division rather than a crossing of cultures. It would be wiser to celebrate its variety rather than seek a fleeting common identity, but perhaps Mediterranean-ness is nothing more than a feeling, and as such it does not want to hear reason. Despite everything, it remains fascinating, reassuring, and comforting. On its shores, modernity does not fully take root, time flows differently, and peoples speak to one another more than elsewhere. And what if homo mediterraneus is still to come?
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From the Latin "in the middle of the lands", the Mediterranean evokes classicism, cross-pollination, and blue skies onto which to project a desire: to manage to capture the features of a common identity. If the historian's gaze seems to deny the idea of Mediterranean-ness, it is the Muses who are drawn to it. The melancholy, reflective vein of the songs evoked by Turkish musician Zülfü Livaneli, the proverbial conviviality and celebration of leisure praised by Matteo Nucci are viewed with a mixture of fascination and censure by Protestant-rooted countries. The nobility of the Greek profile of homo mediterraneus can in an instant become a contemptuous caricature, synonymous with laziness and cultural backwardness. However one chooses to define it, the Mediterranean appears to be in crisis: neglected by the European Union, which looks at the North African and Levantine coasts only as a threat and an energy resource, it is the crossroads of one of the greatest migrations in history. While every year hundreds of millions of vacationers swarm to its shores, hundreds of thousands of people undertake a dramatic reverse journey to flee wars, persecution, and poverty. The liquid road, as Homer called it, is increasingly militarized, trafficked, and polluted, as well as overheated and overfished. Seen from the North African coasts, rather than a Mare nostrum it seems like a wall dividing the Arab world from the European one, a source of division rather than a crossing of cultures. It would be wiser to celebrate its variety rather than seek a fleeting common identity, but perhaps Mediterranean-ness is nothing more than a feeling, and as such it does not want to hear reason. Despite everything, it remains fascinating, reassuring, and comforting. On its shores, modernity does not fully take root, time flows differently, and peoples speak to one another more than elsewhere. And what if homo mediterraneus is still to come?
