Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Rebecca West wrote her massive, 1,200-page book Black Lamb and Grey Falcon following her 1937 travels through Yugoslavia.  She comments at one point that her book was so long that no one would ever read it.  She was very wrong, but -- during the four weeks I nibbled away at it -- I sympathized with her concern.

West had visited Yugoslavia briefly the preceding year, and was fascinated by the country and its people.  She returned in 1937 with her husband for a tour of the entire country, visiting historical sites and talking to local people from all social strata.  But the book is so different from the typical travelogue that it is difficult to describe.

First of all, it is indeed a travelogue.  The couple travel by train from Budapest to Zagreb, where she meets three locals, people she had met the year before.  Most important of these was a Serbian poet and government official named Constantine, an erudite and highly eccentric fellow, who accompanies them during most of their tour, at times joined by his ethnically German  wife Gerda, an abrasive woman described as representing every known bad stereotype of German nationality.  They visit, in order, Croatia, Dalmatia, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, "Old Serbia" (essentially, Kosovo), and Montenegro.

(NOTE:  This post should be read in conjunction with my essay on March 28, based on my reading of the first quarter of the book, and describing their travels in Croatia and Dalmatia.)

Second, West seems to have had an excellent art education, and describes with strong conviction her opinions on the examples of Slavic art and architecture that they see.

Third, West has a strong bias in favor of the Slavic peoples.  While freely discussing weaknesses found in their character, she is attracted by what she sees as their speculative, mystical, and emotional nature.

In the West conversation is regarded as a means of either passing the time agreeably or exchanging useful information; among the Slavs it is thought to be disgraceful, when a number of people are together, that they should not pool their experience and thus travel further towards the redemption of the world.

This nature leads Slavs to seek ultimate meanings in all that happens to them, in contrast to their far more superficial and materialistic tormentors, the Germanic peoples, and specifically the Austrians. She also finds lingering signs of Manicheism in the Slavic people -- an acceptance of realms of good and evil, dark and light, existing side by side on earth -- an attitude that had been stamped out as heretical in Western Christianity.

  She detests the Austrians, and, by extension, the Germans, and the Austrian's former imperial partners, the Hungarians.  She is more or less contemptuous of the Italians, who have harassed the Slavs over the centuries, especially the Slavs in the coastal states of Dalmatia and Montenegro.  She has a different form of contempt, mixed with some admiration, for the Ottoman Turks.  She considers them cruel and bloodthirsty, far more competent in battle than in government.  In fact, she finds the Turks incompetent in governing all non-Turkish territories that they administered.  She admires to some degree, however, their architecture, their love of nature, and their incorporation of natural features and simplicity in their houses and other architecture.

Fourth, she is a feminist, but a feminist somewhat different from those of today.  She believes that men and women have different spheres of activity in life (and different gender-related weaknesses), and that each excels within his or her own sphere.  She believes that one of a woman's natural duties is to help a man be more like a man.  As a corollary, she admires Serbian men for their strength and masculinity, compared with the softer men of Croatia and Slovenia who spent too many years prospering under Austrian rule.

Fifth -- and something that I didn't appreciate until more than half way through the book -- she is a philosopher.  Although a non-practicing Anglican, she is strongly attracted to Eastern Orthodoxy, and especially to the Serbian Orthodox church.  She notes that Catholicism, and most Protestant churches, build churches designed to lead worshipers' thoughts to God through light and openness -- e.g., Gothic architecture.  She is more impressed by the darkness of Orthodox churches, especially in Serbian regions where the churches seem almost underground.  The congregation stands in the dark, while the priests conduct the service at an altar hidden behind a screen, the iconostasis.  At certain points during the service, the door in the screen opens and a priest emerges, giving the congregation a glimpse of the dazzling light and ornamentation hidden behind the screen -- an intimation of the realm of heaven viewed from the darkness of earth.  She finds this approach impressive, one that encourages mysticism. She returns to this point repeatedly.

The congregation had realized what people in the West usually do not know: that the state of mind suitable for conducting the practical affairs of daily life is not suitable for discovering the ultimate meaning of life. They were allowing themselves to become drunken with exaltation in order that they should receive more knowledge than they could learn by reason; and the Church which was dispensing this supernatural knowledge was not falling into the damnable heresy of pretending that this knowledge is final, that all is now known.

West has come to believe that humans have within them both a love of life and a love of death, and part of the challenge facing each of us is to choose "life."  The "grey falcon" of the title refers to a traditional poem based on the disastrous Battle of Kosovo in 1389, by which the Turks finally defeated the Serbs under Prince Lazar, and ruled over them for the next 550 years.  The poem recounts Elijah, in the form of a grey falcon, appearing to Lazar before the battle, offering him the choice between an earthly kingdom and victory in the battle, or a heavenly kingdom but a loss to the Turks.  Lazar chooses the heavenly kingdom, and his soldiers go into battle, fighting valiantly to the death, but knowing in their hearts that they were destined to lose.

West will have nothing to do with Lazar's choice, or with the poem's suggestion that such a choice is ever necessary.

In a lengthy 1941 epilogue, she brings the world up to date from 1937.  Yugoslavia was the only nation to refuse the Nazis' demands, with full knowledge that their country would thereby be devastated.  And it was.  But they made the right choice under their 17-year-old king, West observes, resisting as long as possible -- making the opposite choice from that made by Prince Lazar.

She contrasts Yugoslavia to Britain and France -- up until Churchill unexpectedly became prime minister -- which had been strangely inert while Germany gobbled up the nations of Europe, one by one.  Even when it was obvious that German planes would eventually be attacking England, no one did anything -- no increase in airplane production, no attempt at defense.  (I recall John Kennedy's senior thesis at Harvard, "Why England Slept.")  It was as though, like Prince Lazar, the ruling circles in both England and France had chosen a "heavenly kingdom" rather than fighting -- like "men," she no doubt thought -- in order to save freedom, or to die trying.

Again and again peoples have had the chance to live and show what would happen if human life were irrigated by continual happiness; and they have preferred to blow up the canals and perish of drought. They listen to the evil counsel of the grey falcon. They let their throats be cut as if they were black lambs. The mystery of Kossovo was behind this hill. It is behind all our lives.

These are highlights that I recall.  The book is so long, her travels are recounted in such detail, her thoughts are so wide-ranging, her likes and dislikes are so firmly stated, that I can only give a taste of the reading experience.

Yugoslavia now, of course, is broken up into seven independent countries.  How would West feel about it?  She strongly supported Slav unity.  How would she feel about these new Slav states joining the European Union?  She hated the idea of empires, even her own nation's British empire, because they cobbled together disparate nationalities under one leader, rather than allowing each nationality to rule itself, to live out its own history and destiny.  She was a nationalist and not an internationalist. 

But the EU isn't an empire, and its members retain their individual characteristics -- so far as possible in an age of homogenization that she would have found incredible.  I like to believe that the EU's success to date in maintaining peace within Europe would have persuaded her that a different time in history has accomplished her ultimate hopes and objectives, but in an unforeseen manner.

Do you like history?  Do you like travel?  Do you like to ponder the imperatives of life itself?  I can't recommend this book strongly enough.