ABSTRACT
Grasping the role of archetypal evocations in politics is a helpful exercise noticing how each generation seems to get stuck in some primal political scene, after which it is boxed in, incapable of renewed attention. The categories within which events are apprehended seem to have been fixed once and for all by the generations who went through the successive European wars or revolutions. Those generations were crippled psychically, never outgrowing their single frame of reference: the pattern of alliances, the stock characterisations. Practical statesmen well know that nothing stays put, but they must condescend to the old linguistic identifications to get through with business. The archetypes that rule political life change slowly along the millennia. It is of paramount importance to realise this if one is to understand the workings of archetypes in general. European history is a fugue built on a handful of mythical themes.
