The Lost Life by Steven Carroll Page A

Hitler, she muses, wants the whole of the Rhineland — all Catherine wants is a room. Surely that isn’t too much to ask of the world.

    For what seems to Daniel to be at least the hundredth time, he is explaining to his father just why he is going to Europe when he really ought to be going to work. Scooting off to France, his father calls it. And why? There are schools here he could be teaching at, earning his keep. Life isn’t one big stunt, or doesn’t he know that? His father’s hair falls across his forehead as he glances up, his lean frame hunched over the table and a look in his eyes of both irritation and pride as he gazes upon his son. Yes,Daniel does know that. But as much as he has explained that his field of study is the French Revolution and that the logical place to go to further his studies is France (not to mention the fact that he has no desire to teach in schools anyway), he knows this isn’t the full picture.
    The fact is that Daniel, as much as having fallen in love with Catherine, has also fallen in love with new ideas. And Europe. The two have become intertwined. Unlike so many of those around him at university who look with suspicion and distrust on any thinking that comes out of Europe (with all its fancy notions and equally fancy talk), Daniel likes many of these thinkers. He feels, and has felt for some time, like someone who is groping towards a way of looking at History and Literature and the world around him that doesn’t yet exist; a way of looking at the world that doesn’t ignore the everyday life of ordinary people and all the things that they do that occupy their time, but that don’t count as something serious or worthy enough of study. Not, at least, to the likes of Miss Hale and her friend. It might come as a surprise to his father or Catherine’s mother or the butcher down the road that the films they watch in the towns nearby or in the town hallon weekends, and which give them a few hours of escape, pleasure or fun, might one day be worthy of serious attention. But it would not surprise Daniel. And he has got it into his head that this thing he feels he is groping towards is over there somewhere. Europe. Not here . That whatever lies scrambled in his brain will become unscrambled there. But he keeps it quiet. And so, if he doesn’t mention this to his father, it is not that he is being deliberately deceitful (although Daniel has done some crazy things, he has never lied to his father), it is simply that he doesn’t yet understand this impulse to go there. He just knows he has to. He has not given his father the full picture because he can’t.
    So where does this impulse to leave come from? The desire for fun? Adventure? Yes, but of a particular kind. If you like, the serious fun of grand ideas. And it is not because ideas of moment and immediacy might shake things up and change the world to greater or lesser degrees. It is the sheer excitement of ideas themselves. The thrill of understanding them. Especially new ideas. New ideas take you somewhere, and you don’t need mountaineering boots to get there. Just a room and books and a place that shares your excitement.
    It was the informal talks of a German scholar visiting the university (whose talks seemed to have come along at just the right time, as these things so often do) that caught his interest. When the German talked (and again Daniel hadn’t let on to his fellow students that he liked what he heard — because they didn’t), he caught glimpses of new ways of thinking, exciting ones — and so, for this reason, Daniel has been seized by the idea of Europe and what they’re thinking over there. He may call himself a Marxist, but the Marxism of fellow students, who see literature only in terms of serving a cause, is not for Daniel. Indeed, one of those fellow students who listened to the German scholar (a Mr Adorno, who has fled the Nazis) called his ideas ‘subtle’. And ‘subtle’ was used as a criticism, almost