Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History by Robert D. Kaplan

Eye-opening political history of Southeastern Europe

Robert D. Kaplan is an American journalist who writes on foreign affairs. In his book Balkan Ghosts, first published in 1993, Kaplan relates his experiences working and traveling in Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece, and the former Yugoslavia. Kaplan wrote Balkan Ghosts after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the Bosnian War. The 2005 ebook contains some supplemental material that Kaplan wrote more recently, but the book is largely about the state of the Balkans circa 1990.

To fully understand the state of affairs in the 1990s, however, Kaplan looks much farther back in history, sometimes as far as the Middle Ages, and provides a quite comprehensive overview of the 19th and 20th century history of the region. This historical background goes far in explaining how the Balkans ended up at the end of the 20th century. This region didn’t just become an explosive powder keg in the 1990s. The fire of sectarian hatred and violence has been simmering for centuries. It is common knowledge that World War I started with the Balkans (a Serbian assassin). Kaplan also makes the case that the Balkans influenced the origins of Nazism and World War II. His examination of recent dictators in Serbia, Romania, Greece, and elsewhere should serve as a cautionary tale of where America might be headed if we continue to dispense with our constitutional system of checks and balances.

Though Balkan Ghosts is advertised as a travel memoir, the bulk of the book is really history rather than travel writing. A travel writer would try to convince you to visit these places. As a journalist, Kaplan seems set on convincing you to stay away from them. He does want you to understand them, however, and does a very good job of helping you do so. Kaplan is a journalist and a war correspondent with the knowledge base of a geographer in Balkan Studies. His look at these Balkan nations is deeper than what you’d get in say, National Geographic, which would give you an inkling of the political climate, war trauma, and societal woes interspersed with scenes of hopeful resilience like a wedding ceremony or a newly opened museum. Kaplan, on the other hand, takes a more journalistic “if it bleeds, it leads” view that writing about anything other than politics and war would be frivolous. With the exception of visits to a few medieval monasteries, the text focuses almost entirely on ethnic violence, fascism, anti-Semitism, genocide, torture, and other atrocities. His perspective on the Balkans is more real and visceral than what you’d get in any popular media venue. Kaplan has almost nothing good to say about Romania, which from his account sounds like a horror show. He expresses a bit more warmth for Bulgaria and Greece.

In addition to his own observations and research, Kaplan gives the reader a literature review into the Western writers who traveled the region before him. In particular, he frequently makes reference to John Reed’s The War in Eastern Europe (1916) and Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), and even delves as far back as Byzantine historians Procopius (AD 500-565) and Michael Psellus (c. 1018-c. 1096). While you feel like you’re getting a pretty thorough study of the Balkans from Kaplan, he also makes you want to seek out some of these earlier writings on the region.

This region of the world is not covered much in the American news media or our modern history books. Understanding the Balkans, however, is necessary to forming a compete picture of European history in recent centuries. Those looking for a travel memoir of the region might be disappointed in Kaplan’s approach to the subject, but those looking for an education in world history and politics will find Balkan Ghosts to be an eye-opening and rewarding read.  

Rhinoceros and Other Plays by Eugène Ionesco

Theatre of the absurd

Eugène Ionesco (1909-1994) was a Romanian-French playwright. Though born in Romania and fluent in both languages, he wrote his plays in the French language. Rhinoceros, written in 1959, is his best known work. Regarded as an important work in the history of avant-garde drama, it has seen repeated stage productions since its publication up to the present day. The first English language production, staged in London in 1960, was produced by Orson Welles and featured Laurence Olivier in the starring role. That amounts to a very distinguished pedigree for a literary work that must have come across as an outrageously goofy night at the theatre.

The curtain opens on a street scene with a grocery and a cafe. Two friends, Jean and Bérenger, meet at the cafe. They make an odd couple of the neat vs. slovenly type. Bérenger drinks too much, and Jean scolds him for it. A few residents of the neighborhood also gather outdoors. Occasionally someone pokes their head out of a window to deliver a line. All seems a typically normal day until someone spots a rhinoceros charging through the streets. Though some words of shock are expressed, for the most part the cast takes the unusual event surprisingly in stride. Things escalate quickly, however, with a second rhinoceros sighting. Some witnesses attest that this is not the same rhino as previously, but rather a whole other animal. Arguments ensue over whether there was one rhino or two, whether the rhino or rhinos had one horn or two, and which characteristic applies to African or Asiatic rhinoceroses. At first, the rhinoceroses are merely mentioned as offstage happenings, but soon rhinoceros heads begin to appear around the theatre.

The most surprising thing about Rhinoceros is that it was written in 1959 because it reads like a work of the Dadaist movement of the 1920s. Though Rhinoceros is hailed by theatre historians as a groundbreaking classic, the imagery and humor don’t seem very cutting edge for the late 1950s. Ionesco’s style of playwriting is sometimes referred to as Theatre of the Absurd, a label that aptly applies to Rhinoceros, yet underneath the absurdity is a meaningful message. Rhinoceros is a clever statement on the temptations and perils of conformity, one that could apply to everything from fashion to fascism. It was Ionesco’s intention to satirize the latter evil, which gives the work some of its historical gravitas and elevates it above mere silly farce. Even so, Rhinoceros feels like a joke that has been dragged out a bit too long, particularly in its third act, somewhat like a comedy sketch that has been stretched into a feature film.

The Grove Press in New York published an English translation of the play in 1960 in a book entitled Rhinoceros and Other Plays. This volume also includes two one-act plays by Ionesco: The Leader (1953) and The Future is in Eggs, or It Takes All Sorts to Make a World (1957). These two comical dramas are even sillier than their better-known cousin. In both cases, the brevity of the one-act format only allows for the development and punchline of a single joke. In The Leader, a few adoring fans await the arrival of the unseen “Leader,” whose ludicrous off-stage activities are described by an announcer. In The Future is in Eggs, two newlyweds are surrounded by their parents and grandparents, who insistently encourage them to reproduce. Each play may have inspired a few chuckles when presented on stage, but lacking the metaphorical depth of Rhinoceros, both are likely to be forgotten soon after the closing curtain.

Stories in this collection

Rhinoceros 

The Leader 

The Future is in Eggs, or It All Sorts to Make a World

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