The 10th world congress of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas opened last Monday with a keynote address by Prof. Enrique Banus of Navarra University.

Prof. Banus said that although Europe was often portrayed as being in a state of crisis in 20th century literature, there had been a perceptible change after 1989.

He painted a rather bleak and disquieting literary perception of Europeanness. Answering questions from the floor, Professor Banus said that personally he was an optimist, but perception tends to be different from reality. He said that the fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in a new hope which, as Pope John Paul II had said, is what Europe desperately needed.

Prof. Henry Frendo who opened the session asked for a minute’s silence in memory of the late Prof. Sascha Talmor, a founding pioneer of the society and its journal History of European Ideas, the forerunner of what is now The European Legacy.

Prof. Frendo said this was one of Malta’s largest and most significant humanities-centred encounters since the late Professor Guze’ Aquilina’s Arabo-Berber congress at the University in 1972.

The university’s new Rector, Professor Juanito Camilleri, stressed the values of research as well as Malta’s special interest in Europe, including its Mediterranean dimension.

The conference will end on Saturday morning with a speech on language and the scientific imagination, delivered by the society’s president, Prof. Ezra Talmor.