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Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia
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Part travelogue, part history, part love letter on a thousand-page scale, Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a genre-bending masterwork written in elegant prose. But what makes it so unlikely to be confused with any other book of history, politics, or culture--with, in fact, any other book--is its unashamed depth of feeling: think The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire crossed with Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. West visited Yugoslavia for the first time in 1936. What she saw there affected her so much that she had to return--partly, she writes, because it most resembled "the country I have always seen between sleeping and waking," and partly because "it was like picking up a strand of wool that would lead me out of a labyrinth in which, to my surprise, I had found myself immured." Black Lamb is the chronicle of her travels, but above all it is West following that strand of wool: through countless historical digressions; through winding narratives of battles, slavery, and assassinations; through Shakespeare and Augustine and into the very heart of human frailty.
West wrote on the brink of World War II, when she was "already convinced of the inevitability of the second Anglo-German war." The resulting book is colored by that impending conflict, and by West's search for universals amid the complex particulars of Balkan history. In the end, she saw the region's doom--and our own--in a double infatuation with sacrifice, the "black lamb and grey falcon" of her title. It's the story of Abraham and Isaac without the last-minute reprieve: those who hate are all too ready to martyr the innocent in order to procure their own advantage, and the innocent themselves are all too eager to be martyred. To West, in 1941, "the whole world is a vast Kossovo, an abominable blood-logged plain." Unfortunately, little has happened since then to prove her wrong. --Mary Park -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Pressestimmen
A masterpiece . . . as astonishing in its range, in the subtlety and power of its judgment, as it is brilliant in expression. (The Times, London)
Surely one of the great books of our century. (Diana Trilling)
Rebecca West’s magnum opus . . . one of the great books of our time. (Clifton Fadiman, The New Yorker)
Surely one of the great books of our century. (Diana Trilling)
Rebecca West’s magnum opus . . . one of the great books of our time. (Clifton Fadiman, The New Yorker)
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Buchdeckel | Copyright | Inhaltsverzeichnis | Auszug | Stichwortverzeichnis
Buchdeckel | Copyright | Inhaltsverzeichnis | Auszug | Stichwortverzeichnis
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Format:Taschenbuch
Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A journey through Yugoslavia calls to mind traveler epics of candid observation through past centuries in Europe, Russia, and the Americas. Many pages are devoted to death by details, but the total canvas is a rich, detailed one of a region buffeted by the crosswinds of history. It provides an excellent foil to works such as Huntington's Clash of Civilizations and Fukuyama's End of History.
Traveling by car, train and foot through many a spot that would not show up even in a Michelin guide, Mrs West paints a detailed picture of the (now former) Yugoslavia. The Austrians, Hungarians, Turks and Italians do not come off well under her historical microscope. With perhaps a bit of traditional British dislike for Napoleon, Mrs West reserves some of her harshest criticisms for Marshal Marmont and his cynical rule in Dalmatia.
Written as a traveling journal in the late 1930's, the book is free of much of the angst ridden writing of today on this region. West has no clear political agenda to advance in this book; rather, she lays out a series of experiences, analyzes them, and provides them to the reader for consideration. With the advantage of hindsight, many of her ethnological observations are uncanny, especially the role that the Serbs and Croats would play in the 1940's and again in the 1990's.
Her understanding, and further exploration, of the depth of religious current swirling in the valleys and plains of the Balkans is impressive. Although she appears somewhat cynical about the true depth of feeling in many instances, she nonetheless accords the importance of religion, and what I would call the "cult of martyrology" its due respect in this turbulent historical region.
For someone looking for a quick, executive summary type read on the Balkans, this is not it. For someone who knows how to speed read, and extract nuggets of wisdom and keen observation, this book is a must read for the Balkans.
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Format:Taschenbuch
Or in this case, "Too many words." Among serious books this is the most needlessly verbose and narcissistic I've ever read (exclusive of anything by Proust.) It must be largely fictional since West purportedly repeats verbatim many extremely lengthy and involved conversations and disputes that would only be capable of capture by a tape recorder--and she didn't have one. It is entirely pro-Slavic and tediously anti-German. To West, Gavrilo Pricip is a hero and the Archduke Francis merely a foreign agitator. She includes a vast array of detailed historical anecdotes but leaves one doubtful of her accuracy. She is apparently unaware, for instance, (perhaps deliberately) that the Albanians are not Slavs, that their ancestors were the ancient Illyrians, and that their roots in the Balkans go back to at least 2000 B.C. Some claim to admire her writing style; I found it excessively wordy and personalized.
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Format:Taschenbuch
One has to stand in awe before this enormous (ll40 pages) masterpiece of literary travel writing, even with its prejudice and poetry and occasional unkindness. Ms West and her husband and Constantine (he of the stubby fingers and wicked keyboard technique who tells unbelievable stories and opines on every imaginable topic) travel through Yugoslavia at the time Hitler is gaining power in Germany and the Habsburg Empire is just a dirty memory. Constantine is a Serb utterly devoted to the continued existence of the Yugoslav state but he's married to a dreadful hausfrau who despises anything that is not German and especially Slavs. She thus makes her own life miserable and does a number on the lives of everyone else. The book offers rich descriptions of all the states that make up (or made up)Yugoslavia, including religious and social customs, the mental and emotional tendencies of the people (sometimes depending on which outside influences -- Turkish, Austrian -- have impacted them most decisively). Montenegran men come in for high praise because because of their physical beauty and the presumed ease with which they could inseminate any woman. The book is a masterwork of richly textured Enlgish prose done in long, elegant, sometimes convoluted sentence that are a delight to read and may remind some readers of Proust. St. Paul and St. Augustine come in for the mistreatment they so richly deserve (the author traces several questionable religious practices she encounters to ideas found in their writings). This is a work for reasonably well educated adults, so anyone approaching it in search of accurate factual history is making a mistake. But nor will it mislead anyone on matters of historical fact.
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Biased, long-winded, only sometimes helpful
It amazes me that "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" is still being read by people to inform themselves about the former Yugoslavia. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 5. Juli 2000 von Edward Bosnar
A lot of history, a lot of sociology, and a lot of opinions
As an intelligence officer in the US Army who was stationed near Zivinice recently, I have been inclined to keep up on Yugoslavian politics and to educate myself on its history. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 14. März 2000 veröffentlicht
Well written, but biased historical fiction.
I purchased BL&GF a week ago to read about the former Yugoslavia. I can understand that after the first Great War there was plenty anti German sentiment to go around. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 23. Februar 2000 von Michigan Resident
Long and difficult, but worth it
I have read the book, and the reviews to date. I agree that the book was too wordy. West seems to indulge all too much in stream of conscious writing. Lesen Sie weiter...
Veröffentlicht am 2. Januar 2000 von Zachariah Allen
Today's enemy, tomorrow's friend...
...I initially was not so moved to write this review of Ms. West's remarkable work. What has inspired in me the need, though, was the reading of her being persistently condemned... Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 17. September 1999 veröffentlicht
Unfashionably blunt
Today's reviewers skewer West because she had a Serbian guide, because she was a tourist, ad nauseum. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 10. August 1999 veröffentlicht
A treasure trove of history, geography, politics, & humanity
Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, written 2 years before Hitler began changing the face of Europe, is both the record of a journey through the Balkans with her husband... Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 15. Juli 1999 veröffentlicht
Not a good source of History.......
During her travels through Yugoslavia Rebecca West was mostly accompanied by Constantine, a Serbian Government Official, most of her explanation of historical events are actualy... Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 18. Juni 1999 veröffentlicht
A British Tourist's View of Yugoslavia
Rebecca West spent 6 weeks as a tourist in Yugoslavia, and somehow ended up as the most frequently quoted writer about the area. Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 1. Mai 1999 veröffentlicht
Delightful reading but narrow history
Ms West was a great storyteller and she shines in this book. The problem I find is that she, like Rousseau,loved the primitive,hated the empires and glorified ethnicity and... Lesen Sie weiter...
Am 20. April 1999 veröffentlicht
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