© ddatch54, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0“Din and Cocktails,” west side of Detroit, 2014.
"We modern civilizations have learned to recognize that we are mortal like the others. We had heard tell of whole worlds vanished, of empires foundered ... sunk to the inexplorable depths of the centuries with their gods and laws, their academies and their pure and applied sciences, their grammars, dictionaries, classics ... their critics and the critics of their critics.... We could not count them. But these wrecks, after all, were of no concern of ours."
That is Paul Valéry, the modernist poet, essayist and Academician, writing in April 1919. The Great War was but a few months over.
Europe understood, if subliminally at that moment, that the world order of which it had been the center had shattered like glass. Or — better put — that Europe had shattered it."Everything came to Europe, and from Europe everything has come. Or almost everything," Valéry wrote. "Now, the present situation permits of this capital question: Will Europe retain its leadership in all activities? Will Europe become
what she is in reality: that is, a little cape of the Asiatic continent?" [Emphasis the author's.]
Comment: U.S. News profiles Durr: And from the Cherry Hill Courier-Post: