This article was first published by The Slovak Spectator on January 24, 2005. It has been updated to be relevant today.
One of the foreign media’s favourite questions to ask Slovaks in 2004 was: “How does it feel to be in the European Union?”
It’s an enigmatic question, to say the least, and for a long time I believed no satisfactory answer existed. But that changed a few weeks ago, when a Slovak told me over steaming mulled wine: “Well, it doesn’t really change anything, except that now I feel strange when I hear the Ode to Joy [the EU anthem]. Actually, when I hear it, I want to jump up and impale myself on the orchestra.”
Did my acquaintance bear any ill will towards the EU or the ideal of unity among humankind when he said this? No – he was simply expressing himself with typical dark Slovak humour, a humour so dark it can be difficult to read at all.
Ode to Joy, a poem by Schiller set to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, carries what the EU’s Europa website calls “an idealistic vision of the human race becoming brothers”. The anthem demands that drooping spirits stand to attention when it strikes up in full swing. “By killing myself on the orchestra, I would become one with the music,” my companion added cheerfully.
The rest of the conversation went like this: only when you are unsatisfied do you have the drive to achieve something, and the projects or goals you accomplish (in this case splniť) bring you pleasure.
Happiness, on the other hand, comes from satisfaction and the absence of worry. In this state you stagnate – or, to put it in the Slovak way, you become a knedloš, a doughy dumpling that swells to fill its mould.
