Finally I have finished this beast which was over 1100 pages. An effort it did take but I really enjoyed reading this book. Is this my favourite book of all time? No! But I still loved it. It’s such an experience that someone from England comes to the Balkans with an open mind. Does west have flaws in her writing? Sure, she has a bias towards Serbs which is very evident. She has some odd takes on other cultures in the Balkans. But what makes the so interesting that it’s more than a travel book, it’s mixed with the rich history of each nation. This book is a treasure chest for anyone interested in learning about Balkan history. I highly recommend it if you have an interest in history specifically in Balkan history.

I have wanted to read this book for a long time and am glad I finally took the time to read it. I enjoyed everything about it-the beautiful writing, the descriptions of the land, the people, the art & architecture, history, & religion. This book is so much more than a travelogue and gives one insight into the history & politics of Eastern Europe right up to the present time.

This book was grueling to get through. It is just so, so long. And as a travelogue it doesn't have a driving plot or a lot of character development. It is often descriptions of Serbian cities and Bosnian countryside. And lots and lots of history, often with mysterious sources and a lot of 1939 commentary. And yet it was often incredibly enjoyable to read. The writing was at times fantastic and the wealth of what I was learning was overwhelming. Would I read it again? Never. Am I glad I read it? Yes. Did I skim/skip some parts? Also yes.

I think the only way to the read this book is with a book club. It would definitely not have happened without some form of accountability and pressure to keep reading.

Phenomenal. Sometimes rambling. Problematic in small bits. Above all, a breath-taking condensing of experiences in Yugoslavia along with a history of its peoples and some socio-political essaying. One of the smaller qualms with this one is chapter sizes/paragraph breaks/spacing. THIS BOOK IS DENSE. And amazing. But sometimes it's tricky to pick this one up for only a few minutes----make time for this book, and it will prove immensely satisfying.

Well, it's been several months, and I haven't been able to come up with a review that can sum up this overwhelmingly insightful, powerful, and complicated (and yes sometimes problematic) reading experience. But I did take notes as I read, mostly for myself. So what follows isn't a review per se, but more of a bunch of cobbled together impressions and quotes. (For more quotes, please check out all the status updates below this review). Hopefully these notes will be useful to someone else also.

My Notes

Prologue The first chapter (Prologue) is essential in terms of background information and history that leads up to the region, including the preconditions of WWI. Very interesting stuff, will pay off to spend extra time understanding this (and maybe reading other accounts of these same events). Her opinionated, thoughtful and very personal interpretation of history is so much more engaging than any history text, although a bit hard to follow at times (she doesn't always explain everything).

Croats vs. Serbs:

A Croat is a Catholic member and a Serb an Orthodox member of a Slav people that lies widely distributed south of the Danube, between the Adriatic and Bulgaria, and north of the Greek mountains. A Serbian is a subject of the kingdom of Serbia, and might be a Croat, just as a Croatian-born inhabitant of the old Austrian province of Croatia might be a Serb. p. 13

Pascal:

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this." In these words he writes the sole prescription for a distinguished humanity. We must learn to know the nature of the advantage which the universe has over us (p.22)

Chapter 1 traveling on train with Germans, who she characterizes as well-meaning and friendly but steeped in a very peculiar type of self-absorbed bureaucratic malaise and misery of their more-than-well-off lives. It seems a particularly significant portrait given that this book was written between WWI and WWII and the spirit of Nazi Germany was in the air at the time, and to see every day Germans and how they reacted or lived within this system. Also it is a nice contrast between these western cultures of Germany/Austria and the Slavs that we will meet later, who have much less but enjoy their lives much more (and are way more passionate/engaged with life)

(she does seem to characterize / stereotype entire peoples, which is one of the things that bothered me off and on about this book. I talked to a Croatian recently who had a bad opinion of this book because he felt that she had exoticized them into types.)

Part 2: Croatia

Constantine, age 46, is a Serb, Jew (although I don't understand how he can be both Serb (Orthodox) and Jew), poet and gov. official from Serbia, talks a lot, fat, Heine-like (need to read some about Heine), pro-Yugoslavia (but takes it for granted, he thinks Y is needed to maintain themselves against Central Europe), his parents fled from Poland.

Valetta, age 26, is a lecturer in mathematics, and a Croat from Dalmatia (Southern Croatia). Described as "archaic" and statue-esque, very likeable and charming, but can also be severe and martyr-ical with the right causes, he is Anti-Yugoslavian (sees it as an unjust authority) and pro-autonomous Croatia

Marko Gregorievitch, age 56, is tall, gloomy, and Pluto-like. Fought against Hungarians for Croat-rights. Pro-Yugoslavia, and thinks Y represents defiance to Austro-Hungarian Empire. He's super fervent about his beliefs and about Y, and has fought for the cause.

A (IRL!) friend who happens to be reading this at the same time as me (I agree with her): "interesting [that] she's able to connect her sense of the present with the past as if both are unfolding together" ... "history takes on personal relevance... and so does gender relations!"

Yellatchitch: Croat patriot, led victory against Hungarians, in twisted history betw. Croatia and Hungary (p 48 on) Hungarians defeated by Turks, Croatia alone, becomes idiotically loyal to Austria/Hapsburgs: "between Austrian tyranny and Turkish raids, the Croats lived submissively" -- Maria Theresa (a Hapbsurg) "put Croatia under [Hungary] as a slave state"...led to crisis of 1848... Croats asked Austria for divorce from Hungary, and to name Yellachitch as Ban of Croatia (approved only grudgingly and because of circumstance) .. Yella led his men to defeat Hungarian army that was "hurrying to Austria to aid the Viennese revolutionaries against the Habsburgs" ... "Yella and the Croats had saved the Austrian Empire. They got exactly nothing for this service, except this statue..." p 54

Part 3: Dalmatia

We leave the 3 friends, what's left is Rebecca and her husband going to coastal town after coastal town and sharing their history and her impressions. But I miss the friend's arguments, as they pull things together more, make the politics more real in their passionate convictions. They do meet up with some of Rebecca's previous friends, a professor and a Philip, who have interesting things to say also.

Dalmatia is southern part of Croatia, barren because of conquest, incompetence, and misgovernment. Page 119: man from Dalmatia illustrates how everyone is not merely a personality, but a personality molded by long political history; the man's rage against being charged mere pennies more is a byproduct of his entire region's history

The husband: it amuses me to think of the factuality of the husband. As this is a compilation of several trips, we already know she's not keeping exactly to the facts of her travels. I wonder if what he says in this book is made up, as a device for her to express her own thoughts. Husband as device, as a way of reversing sexist tropes. That said, she makes him say very interesting and insightful things.

Part 4: Expedition

Tsavtat (Cavtat, Croatia): Cadmus vs. Pan, talks about literature and art as if it were the strange fruit of knowledge. Interesting descripton of landscape:

and where there were some square yards of level ground there were thick-trunked patriarchal planes, with branches enough to cover an army of concubines. The sea looked poverty-stricken, because, being here without islands, it had no share in this feast served up by the rising sap. p 251

On Cadmus's metamorphoses:

"It is an apt symbol of the numbness that comes on the broken-hearted. They become wise; they find comfort in old companionship; but they lose the old human anatomy, the sensations no longer follow the paths of the nerves, the muscles no longer offer their multifold reaction to the behests of the brain, there is no longer a stout fortress of bones, there is nothing but a long, sliding, writhing sorrow. But what happened to Cadmus was perhaps partly contrived by the presiding deity of the coast, for he was the arch-enemy of Pan, since he invented letters. He made humankind eat of the tree of knowledge; he made joy and sorrow dangerous because he furnished the means of commemorating them, that is to say of analysing them, of being appalled by them. p. 252

Perast (Montenegro) & the next few chapters, some beautiful tiny islands: https://goo.gl/maps/C9b9Z

Swabian: a German belonging to one of those families which were settled by Maria Theresa on the lands round the Danube between Budapest and Belgrade, because they had gone out of cultivation during the Turkish occupation and had to be recolonized. p 262

Really great part about how religious faith plays a role in a people's power of governance on p. 268.

Part 5: Herzogovina

Trebinye: story of Jeanne Merkus, who seems to have led a martyr's life only to be forgotten, according to West.

"The Republic" refers to Dubrovnik, I think, they were in the middle of Russian and France forces. They never lost their independence, but had to sacrifice for it. 283-etc.

Mostar: the cover image described as Stari most bridge, in a Muslim city called Mostar p288

Sometimes I think Rebecca West is a little harsh towards the Turks and the Muslims. Granted she's also harsh towards the Germans and Austrians, maybe because all of these empires tried to take over the Balkans. But I suspect she may also be biased because she's of the West and she talks of Muslims sometimes in an unfair light.

order and disorder in Muslim culture, p 288-9

muslim dress & women's dresses p 290-2

Part 6: Bosnia

The following 3 chapters take the cake so far for the most interesting and well written history account I've ever read:

Sarajevo V - about Franz and Sophie's assassination, and the many details that led up to its unlikely result, both from Franz's side and from Princip Gavrilo's side

Sarajevo VI - about Franz and Sophie's burial and Serbia's innocence in the plot

Sarajevo VII - about the conspirators' fate -- in prison, tortured, death, etc.

379-380:

This was a Slav, this is what it is to be a Slav. He was offering himself wholly to his sorrow, he was learning the meaning of death and was not refusing any part of the knowledge; for he knew that experience is the cross man must take up and carry. Not for anything would he have chosen to feel one shade less pain; and if it had been joy he was feeling, he would have permitted himself to feel all possible delight. He knew only that in suffering or rejoicing he must not lose that control of the body which enabled him to be a good soldier and to defend himself and his people, so that they would endure experience along their own path and acquire their own revelation of the universe.

There is no other way of living which promises that man shall ever understand his destiny better than he does, and live less familiarly with evil. Yet to numberless people all over Europe, to numberless people in Great Britain, this man would be loathsome as a leper. It is not pleasant to feel pain, it is the act of a madman to bare the breast to agony. It is not pleasant to admit that we know almost nothing, so little that, for lack of knowledge, our actions are wild and foolish. It is not pleasant to be bound to the task of learning all our days, to be under the obligation to go on learning even though it involves making acquaintance with pain, although we know that we must die still in ignorance. To do these things it is necessary to have faith in what is entirely hidden and unknown, to cast away all the acquisitions and certainties which would ensure a comfortable existence lest they should impede us on a journey which may never be accomplished, which never even offers comfort. Therefore the multitudes in Europe who are not hungry for truth would say: 'Let us kill these Slavs with their dedication to insanity, let us enslave them lest they make all wealth worthless and introduce us at the end to God, who may not be pleasant to meet.'

p. 381 -- not understanding this part wholly, but her writing is just phenomenal that I don't care:

But the deed as Princip conceived it never took place. It was entangled from its first minute with another deed, a murder which seems to have been fully conceived by none at all, but which had a terrible existence as a fantasy, because it was dreamed of by men whose whole claim to respect rested on their realistic quality, and who abandoned all restraint when they strayed into the sphere of fantasy. Of these two deeds there was made one so potent that it killed its millions and left all living things in our civilization to some degree disabled. I write of a mystery. For that is the way the deed appears to me, and to all Westerners. But to those who look at it on the soil where it was committed, and to the lands east of that, it seems a holy act of liberation; and among such people are those whom the West would have to admit are wise and civilized.

This event, this Sarajevo attentat, was in these inconsistencies an apt symbol of life: which is loose and purposeless, which weaves a close pattern and doggedly pursues its ends, which is unpredictable and illogical, which follows a straight line from cause to effect, which is bad, which is good. It shows that human will can do anything, it shows that accident does everything. It shows that man throws away his peace for a vain cause if he insists on acquiring knowledge, for the more one knows about the attentat the more incomprehensible it becomes. It shows also that moreal judgment sets itself an impossible task. The soul should choose life. But when the Bosnians chose life, and murdered Franz Ferdinand, they chose death for the French and Germans and English, and if the French and Germans and English had been able to choose life they would have chosen death for the Bosnians. The sum will not add up. It is madness to rack our brains over this sum. But there is nothing else we can do except try to add up this sum. We are nothing but arithmetical functions which exist for that purpose ... We went out by the new grave where the young officer was trying to add up the sum in the Slav way. A sudden burst of sunshine made the candle-flames sadder than darkness. He swayed so far forward that he had to stay himself by clutching at the cross. His discipline raised him and set him swinging back to his heels again.

Considering the DENSE-ness of her writing here, this 1200 page book is filled with maybe 3000 pages of good material. Probably the only other book I felt this way about is Man Without Qualities. And like that book, this is a book to live with day in and day out for months, savoring it at every stop light and lunch break, marking up its pages, having a conversation with it, my copy is so ruined but so loved, I have torn it into 3 parts just so I can carry it around with me everywhere, but also surprising in that a compact unit of bound paper can give me so much joy that every time I need to I can dip into it for humor and wisdom and knowledge and imagination and soul-enlargement.

Part ?: Serbia

Serbian history is very complicated!

Lineage, looks something like this? (at least the ones she mentions a lot:

* Stephen Dushan (1331–1355) aka "Stefan Uroš IV Dušan" - "the mighty" succeeded by son, Stephen (the weak) who wasn't a great ruler
* Tsar Lazar (reigned from 1373–1389) led battle of Kosovo, major for Serbian history
* Stefan (son of Lazar)

Foreign rule (Austrian & Hungarian rulers go here). Afterwards, Karageorge (Karađorđe) and Obrenovitch families rule Serbia in a back and forth fashion almost. See Wikipedia for full back and forth, but here are the ones mentioned in the book most often and as most important?

* Karađorđe Petrović - 1804-1813 - leader of first uprising
* Aleksandar Karađorđević - 1806-1885
* Prince Michael Obrenovitch (Mihailo Obrenović III) - 1860-1868
* his son: Milan Obrenevitch - 1868-1889 (listed on wiki as both Milan Obrenović IV and Milan I / Prince and King respectively) - secret convention with Austria (married Natalia)
* his son: Alexander I (1889-1903) married Queen Draga
* Peter Karadorde - 1903-1918 -

Other vocabulary:

* Skupshtina (Skupština) is a Serbian and Croatian word for assembly, referring to Parliament.
* Haiduk (Hajduk) - most commonly referring to outlaws, brigands, highwaymen or freedom fighters in Southeastern Europe, and parts of Central and Eastern Europe

Part ??: Macedonia

This part was less history, and more about Constantine and Gerda. And going places, meeting people, seeing things, etc. more in the present. Gerda turns out to be the villain here. The last chapter "St. George's Eve: II" is far and away the best chapter in this section. It talks about this rite of fertility that has been done for many hundreds maybe thousands of years at this rock. There are sacrifices of chickens and black lambs. This is source of the book title.

She talks about how the barren come there in all sincerity and belief, and how their love of life is perverted by the ones who perpetuate this myth so that they can perform a senseless act of violence in the name of something positive. She then spins out a long metaphor about how this is the same lie that is told in Christianity, that Christ had to die for our sins, a totally fabricated story that defies the logic of goodness. When she started talking about Paul I was afraid she would buy into all the [b:Zealot: lies about Paul|17568801|Zealot The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth|Reza Aslan|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1367929567s/17568801.jpg|24258336], but she exposed Paul for who he is.

"If one drops in a piece of suffering, a blessing pops out at once. If one squares death by offering him a sacrifice, one will be allowed some share in life for which one has hungered. Thus those who had a letch for violence could gratify it and at the same time gain authority over those who loved peace and life." p 826

"All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing. ... and because we are infatuated with this idea of sacrifice, of shedding innocent blood to secure innocent advantages, we found nothing better to do with this passport to deliverance than destroy [Jesus]." 827

"It is not possible to kill goodness. There is always more of it, it does not take flight from our accursed earth, it perpetually asks us to take what we need from it." 827

"It is not to the credit of mankind that the supreme work of art produced by Western civilization should do nothing more than embody obsession with this rock and revolt against it. Since we have travelled thus far from the speechless and thoughtless roots of our stock we should have travelled further. There must be something vile in us to make us linger, age after age, in this insanitary spot." 830

Part??: Old Serbia

About the history of Kossovo and the battles lost there.

Constantine starts acting crabby, probably taking on internally the role of Gerda.

They visit some mines & monasteries.

The gray falcon gets introduced, which is a continuation of the concept of the Black Lamb. Around page 913. it comes from a poem about a gray falcon that carries a message in its beak. And can be summed up as: "They want to be right, not to do right [...] The friends of liberty have indeed no ground whatsoever for regarding themselves as in any way superior to their opponents, since they are in effect on their side in wishing defeat and not victory for their own principles." It's a crushing indictment on those rather selfish self-righteous people (Bernie Brothers?)

We meet Gospodin Mac & his wife.

A highlight: the idea of "heroism" of the Montenegrin people, and the chauffeur who tried to kill them rather than admit to the world that he got lost.

Epilogue

(ran out of space... review continues in comments below...)

DNF. This turns out not to say much about the Balkans at all, but is mostly the authors musings and judgments on other people. The writing is too arch, too self-aware. If the author doesn't fascinate you, and she does not fascinate me, then the book itself is dreary.