Possibly the most complete travel account ever written of a single trip through Eastern Europe. Dame Rebecca writes with great passion and understanding of the people, history and the anguish facing the Yugoslavs with the coming of the Hitlerzeit.
Filled with unforgettable characters, all the more remarkable because they are not characters, but actual people. It shows a lost way of a slower paced life in the very end of the 30s as the Yugoslav prepares for another round of warfare and ethnic tensions not merely under the surface as Croats/Serbs/Bosnians/Catholics/Orthodox/Muslims/Jews all attempt to make a go of their new state.

This book is a long, complex, deeply ambiguous, genre-straddling magnum opus that is, at least to my mind, highly resistant to easy classification. Because of that, I almost don't know how to begin reviewing it.

This book seems to inspire somewhat of a love/hate relationship among readers. On one hand, the author's vivid and excellent writing combined with her tendency to go off on long, involved tangents related to history, art history, religious history, etc., make the book unique. On the other hand, it can't be denied that the book is not exactly objective.

I think the thing that needs to be kept in mind with this book is that it is not objective history. It's what might be a called a historical travelogue - while this book is in some ways about the history of the former Yugoslavia, this book is more profoundly about what it is that Rebecca West found in pre-WW2 Yugoslavia. A large part of what called to her in Yugoslavia, what made her fall in love with Yugoslavia, was the history - or at least her interpretation thereof. I think "interpretation" is really the key word here - this book is a deeply personal interpretation of the history of the West Balkans that reflects both a great degree of historical knowledge and a lack of desire to be a historian.

I think this book is wonderful and unique -- but anyone who confuses this book with an objective historical resource is grievously wrong. The compelling nature of Rebecca West's writing naturally gets readers interested in the region - but the necessary next step is to channel that interest into more serious readings about the history of the former Yugoslavia. This was Robert Kaplan's mistake, to be sure, and he should have known better. The closest analogy I can think of is perhaps taking Tocqueville for a textbook of American history. Tocqueville, though, was more actively objective in his approach to America than West was towards the former Yugoslavia. Ultimately though, I think the lack of objectivity doesn't make the book any less worthwhile - it just means that readers need to be aware of what this book is and what it isn't.

(A) ( )

http://www.crummy.com/rachel/2006/07/... ( )

I give it four stars because it's enthralling and well written; I have to add that her pro-Serbian bias makes the book useless as any kind of objective analysis and pernicious in its influence on policymakers (either directly or through her disciple Robert Kaplan). ( )

Rebecca West’s epic-sized tome, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, has been ingenuously described as a travelogue. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon does center on her extended journey through Yugoslavia in the late 1930s; however the work is a travelogue only in the same sense that Wagner’s Ring Cycle is a nice ditty.
West used the journey as a framework upon which she hung her penetrating, salient observations about the culture and society. Furthermore, West offered huge chunks of history and socio-economic-religious insights all related with unwavering perception. Nor did her departures from the strict narration of the travel experience leave the reader wondering or confused. Her flights into ancient Roman history, medieval dynastic intrigues, 600 year old battle formations, or twentieth century political juntas always related to and supported her immediate point. West arranged her material geographically and delivered her servings of history as they related to her travels; chronology took the hind post.
West skillfully constructed brilliant sentences and wove them into practically perfect paragraphs. Her polished prose initially charmed; however, after many hundreds of pages, the incessant similes, metaphors and imagery became overwhelming and cloying. Yet, by the end, the sheer power of her ability to make intelligent observations and phrase them well outweighs all reservations. There was never a sense that she was not fully in control and keenly conscious of both style and content. In an era preceding the photojournalist, West captured vivid images with her words, when she offered such descriptions as:
She did not look like one fat woman, she looked like a cluster of beautiful women loosely attached to a common centre, and she was multiplied again by her excess of widow’s weeds, which were enough for the bereaved of a small town.

Recurring themes emerged as West unfolded her experiences. One theme was that external forces have repeatedly influenced the Balkan peoples. Aside from the many centuries of explicit control by Romans, Byzantines, Turks, Austrians or Hungarians, West found even more insidious the pressure and influence exerted on the Balkans by Germany, Great Britain and Russia. While Byzantines, Turks and even Austrians at least enjoyed the flimsy excuse of geo-graphical proximity, shared borders, and the need for common defense, Britain, France, Russia and Germany had no legitimate business there and were clearly meddling. West showed that the lure of Balkan lands as buffer zones or coun-ter-balances to other territories repeatedly proved irresistible to the larger powers. West suggested that the interference of external powers have seldom been motivated by or the cause of lasting benefit for the Balkan people.
Another theme West built upon was the concept of sacrifice, particularly self-sacrifice. West came to see this theme pervading the main Balkan experience. She observed an ancient folk ceremonial slaughter of lambs, which was enacted as a peasants’ fertility ritual. The sight of the innocent lambs’ throats being cut unleashed a flood of bitterness from West regarding the role of religion in people’s everyday lives and the vast amount of superstition that still engulfs people. She found the ritual barbaric and brutal; the cruelty and ignorance she observed somewhat tarnished her high opinion of the Slavs. Subsequently, while touring Kossovo, West heard a poem dear to the hearts of Serbians about the grey falcon, representing Elijah, who offered spiritual salvation at the price of worldly destruction. The poem triggered an epiphany in West whereby she came to view the story as a symbol of Yugoslavia, the Balkans and much of Western liberalism as well. The poem related how a Serbian prince chose moral salvation over yielding to the expedient yet immoral act. Since it was barbaric to slaughter the lambs and commit such an abhorrent act, it therefore remained to place one’s self in the position of the more or less willing victim. This notion dis-turbed West almost as much as the savage slaughter of the lambs.
Eventually West achieved some synthesis of these troubling themes. In the book’s epilogue, written a few years after her journey and in the height of World War II, she observed that to fight, even with the full knowledge that one is likely to be defeated, is not the same thing as stepping into the role of the sacrificial lamb. She noted that Yugoslavia had just stood up to the Nazi army; although it was overpowered, the action did not smack of submission and sacrifice, rather of gallantry, bravery and resistance. ( )