of home, of the village you grew up in. Foreignness is a problem for the conqueror: it undermines his identity. Tiny Slovenia turned out to be too big for Greater Serbia. What could the Serbs do in this tidy, well-ordered land like some Hapsburg dream of the empire's mission to civilize? War must have a common language, some shared meaning, and bloody deeds are like all deeds, in that they cannot exist in a vacuum.
"I do not wish to defend the Balkan peoples, but neither do I wish to ignore their merits. The love of devastation, of internal disorder, the world like a brothel in flames, the sardonic view of cataclysms both past and future, the sourness, the sweet inactivity of those who cannot sleep or those who murder ... They alone, the primitives of Europe, give Europe the fillip she needs, but she invariably considers it the ultimate humiliation. Because if the Southeast were nothing but an abomination, why should she feel, abandoning it and turning to these lands, as if she were fallingâhowever magnificent the fallâinto desert?"
At 8:15 I sat over my empty cup and ruminated on these words of Emil Cioran. And tried to situate the southeast and the Balkans.
I took home promotional material from some roadside inn near the Croatian border. The colorful brochure contained, in addition to ads for pubs, hotels, and camping grounds, a small map of Europe. Spain had its Madrid, France its Paris, Switzerland Zurich, Austria Vienna, and so on. But to the east and south of Prague and Budapest lay a terra incognita: countries without capitals, and some countries weren't even there. No Slovakia. Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus all evaporated in the dried-up sea of old empire. Yet the map was quite new, because the borders of the post-Yugoslav nations were clearly marked. The only city that had been preserved in the enigmatic southeast was Athens, apparently old enough to assume the role of fossil. Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade, Warsaw, and Bratislava were gone, swallowed by a primordial void that one could point to but not name or describe. Which made sense, because what could come from that region other than inchoateness and weather reports? Names organized nothing, having no fixed, established, verifiable meaning.
It was late afternoon when I crossed the border at HodoÅ¡. The winter light gave objects an extra sharpness. The customs officer asked me how many dinars I had, though for more than ten years now purchases had been made only in tolars. He took a second look in my trunk, said "Hvala," then I was driving between the rotten yellow hills of Prekmurje. At that time of the year, you always see more, because the bare landscape collects what has been dropped by human beings and reveals the vulnerability of matter left to itself. This time, however, nothing of the sort: the country seemed completely finished, done with care, polished. I could find no cracks in the scenery that imagination might slip into. Nothing here recalled the places from which I had come. Everything was secondhand yet at the same time respectably new. As far as the eye could see, no sign of decay or growth or ostentation. Sturdy gray walls, gabled roofs, dead gardens, and vineyards left for the winter in the best conditionâyou took it all in at a glance, but nothing claimed your attention. This country was made in imitation of the perfect country. Stuck in the corner of Europe, between Germanic Austria, Romance Italy, Finno-Ugric Hungary, and Slavic Croatia, it endured by mimicking a universal ideal. As I was getting ready to come here, my acquaintances said, "Go, it's one of the prettiest spots on the Continent." Immediately pleasing to the eye. Nothing superfluous anywhere. Quiet villages lay at the bottom of valleys. White churches on hilltops stood watch over such good fortune. In the towns, a Hapsburg Baroque drew refined shapes against a dark sky. Murska Sobota, Ljutomir, Ptuj, Majsperk, Rogatec, RogaÅ¡ka Slatina. I couldn't stop,
"I do not wish to defend the Balkan peoples, but neither do I wish to ignore their merits. The love of devastation, of internal disorder, the world like a brothel in flames, the sardonic view of cataclysms both past and future, the sourness, the sweet inactivity of those who cannot sleep or those who murder ... They alone, the primitives of Europe, give Europe the fillip she needs, but she invariably considers it the ultimate humiliation. Because if the Southeast were nothing but an abomination, why should she feel, abandoning it and turning to these lands, as if she were fallingâhowever magnificent the fallâinto desert?"
At 8:15 I sat over my empty cup and ruminated on these words of Emil Cioran. And tried to situate the southeast and the Balkans.
I took home promotional material from some roadside inn near the Croatian border. The colorful brochure contained, in addition to ads for pubs, hotels, and camping grounds, a small map of Europe. Spain had its Madrid, France its Paris, Switzerland Zurich, Austria Vienna, and so on. But to the east and south of Prague and Budapest lay a terra incognita: countries without capitals, and some countries weren't even there. No Slovakia. Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus all evaporated in the dried-up sea of old empire. Yet the map was quite new, because the borders of the post-Yugoslav nations were clearly marked. The only city that had been preserved in the enigmatic southeast was Athens, apparently old enough to assume the role of fossil. Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade, Warsaw, and Bratislava were gone, swallowed by a primordial void that one could point to but not name or describe. Which made sense, because what could come from that region other than inchoateness and weather reports? Names organized nothing, having no fixed, established, verifiable meaning.
It was late afternoon when I crossed the border at HodoÅ¡. The winter light gave objects an extra sharpness. The customs officer asked me how many dinars I had, though for more than ten years now purchases had been made only in tolars. He took a second look in my trunk, said "Hvala," then I was driving between the rotten yellow hills of Prekmurje. At that time of the year, you always see more, because the bare landscape collects what has been dropped by human beings and reveals the vulnerability of matter left to itself. This time, however, nothing of the sort: the country seemed completely finished, done with care, polished. I could find no cracks in the scenery that imagination might slip into. Nothing here recalled the places from which I had come. Everything was secondhand yet at the same time respectably new. As far as the eye could see, no sign of decay or growth or ostentation. Sturdy gray walls, gabled roofs, dead gardens, and vineyards left for the winter in the best conditionâyou took it all in at a glance, but nothing claimed your attention. This country was made in imitation of the perfect country. Stuck in the corner of Europe, between Germanic Austria, Romance Italy, Finno-Ugric Hungary, and Slavic Croatia, it endured by mimicking a universal ideal. As I was getting ready to come here, my acquaintances said, "Go, it's one of the prettiest spots on the Continent." Immediately pleasing to the eye. Nothing superfluous anywhere. Quiet villages lay at the bottom of valleys. White churches on hilltops stood watch over such good fortune. In the towns, a Hapsburg Baroque drew refined shapes against a dark sky. Murska Sobota, Ljutomir, Ptuj, Majsperk, Rogatec, RogaÅ¡ka Slatina. I couldn't stop,
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