My latest little project is to read up on the fascinating Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh, whose life story combines my interests in Irish history and disability. I have ordered all three available biographies second hand, but was delighted to discover that the one book which he himself actually wrote is available in its entirety, complete with colour prints based on photographs which he took, online via Google Books.
The Cruise of the R.Y.S. Eva is a travelogue of a shooting cruise which lasted just under six months, from October 1862 to April 1863, taking Kavanagh and his wife and friends to Corfu and the surrounding coastline. (No mention is made of Kavanagh's children, though we know from other sources that at least two and probably four had been born since his marriage in 1855. Presumably they were left behind in Ireland.) It was an interesting time to visit politically; King Otho of Greece had just been overthrown, and the British government had promised to hand over Corfu (and the other Ionian Islands, under British rule since 1815) to the new Greek king, George of Denmark. Kavanagh was there in the last few months of the British presence, and makes it clear that he deeply regrets the decision:
( patronising colonialism )One senses that he may have had some other, larger British-ruled island in mind apart from Corfu.
But excursions into politics are rare (having said which, Kavanagh got elected MP for Wexford only a couple of years later). Mostly the book is about the technicalities of crewing a yacht from Ireland to Albania, and then shooting lots and lots of animals when they got there. (The final death toll, proudly printed on the last page, is "Pigs 10; Snipe 45; Deer 6; Plover 6; Jackalls [sic] 6; Pigeons 24; Hares 4; Swan 1; Geese 13; Bittern 1; Duck 54; Sea Pheasant 7; Widgeon 152; Bargander [?] 3; Teal 102; Grebe Duck 4; Woodcock 203.") Lots of discussion of the locals and their quaint habits, and of the ecology of the shoreline. They ranged quite a long way both north and south, but Corfu was their base.
Kavanagh was only in his early 30s at this point, but had already had an adventurous life, which he occasionally reminisces about. I found this passage about his famous trip of ten years previously particularly interesting for its ( echoes of Hopkirk's The Great Game )
The striking thing about the whole book is that Kavanagh was sufficiently confident in his personal security to go wandering around the frontier between a fading Ottoman empire, an evacuating British protectorate, and a Greek kingdom recovering from revolution, with his wife and various retainers. The worst hassle he reports experiencing is when he is taking photographs of the local women, and has to get their husbands to stop them raiding his darkroom materials. Perhaps there are bits of the story he didn't tell. (He himself starts and finishes with the yacht; his wife and the other women come to the Mediterranean by train and commercial steamer.)
And there is no mention at any point of his disabilities. (The closest we get, perhaps, is in the incident of the women and the photographic stuff, where it is clear that he is unable himself to take physical measures to stop them.) As a narrative on its own merits, The Cruise of the R.Y.S. Eva is not especially remarkable; but in context it is extraordinary.
It was my third time in Podgorica (formerly known as Titograd), but the first time that I was there in charge of my own agenda, as it were (my first visit in January 2002 was organised by the government, and my second in July 2006 by my field staff, back in the days when I had field staff). Our hotel was in the rather small Ottoman part of the city, near the clock tower and the mosques. Our business was all in the more modern district, which is a big rectilinear grid straddling the Morača river; it is oddly confusing, with both me and my colleague getting disoriented by the similar-looking streets. The shopping and restaurant section, along with some official buildings, takes up the southeastern half of the grid, on the eastern side of the river; the other half has some more official buildings along the far edge but is mainly occupied by the Morača gorge. The centre of Podgorica is buzzing, as you would expect of the capital of a newly independent country; the Balkan cafe culture is alive and well. No difficulty finding food or drink until well into the night.
It was my second time in Albania, after a conference there in April 2005. First time round I had rather bad luck with the food, but no complaints at all this time: our hotel was the International, on Scanderbeg Square, with breakfast and dinner on the balcony overlooking the monumental architecture (with the significant advantage that you cannot actually see the International Hotel itself). The sound of the muezzin comes at regular intervals from the Et'hem Bey mosque (though apparently this is pretty cosmetic, as nobody actually worships there, and the call to dawn prayers did not wake us as it usually does in Muslim countries - I suspect it doesn't in fact happen). Tirana is rather brimming with self-confidence; the Albanian economy has been growing massively, they just got invited to join NATO, and the nasty infighting which has characterised the political scene since the fall of Communism has died down, at least for the time being.
We drove between the two capitals, a distance of 160 km / 100 miles, the same as between Dublin and Belfast. The road on the Albanian side is very good from Shkodër down to Tirana, which is basically the southern two thirds of the route. In Tirana itself it is pretty bad - massive roadworks, which presumably will lead to some improvement. From Shkodër to Podgorica it is surprisingly empty of traffic for a major route between the capitals of two neighbouring countries. On our way down, we found ourselves negotiating with pigs and sheep that had wandered onto it. On the way back up again, in an even more graphic indicator of the traffic levels, we saw a tortoise crossing the road with no apparent concern (though how one could tell if a tortoise was worried, I am not sure). On the Montenegrin side in particular it is really twisty and narrow. Apparently there are plans to upgrade it over the next couple of years.
The Montenegrin coast is lovely as ever. I flew in on a direct flight from Brussels to Tivat airport, rented the car there and drove up to Podgorica; and dropped down to the coast again yesterday to see a friend who was staying there. It's much cheaper than the Croatian coast, and still relatively unspoilt. I found it very interesting, though, that the coastline was festooned with posters inviting you to buy your Montenegrin dream home - in Russian. I was told that 18% of foreign investment in Montenegro is from Russia, compared with 52% from the EU; I wonder how that compares with other countries?
Anyway, back home safely. Off to Belfast for 24 hours tomorrow; will be glad when this run of travel is over.
A short but really gripping novel exploring the death of the designated Successor to Albania's Communist ruler (referred to as the Guide); did he shoot himself, or was he murdered? The event referred to is clearly the mysterious death of Mehmet Shehu in December 1981, though Kadarë has changed or invented a lot of the details - it was Shehu's son, not his daughter, who had entered a politically unwise engagement; the date of death was the 17th not the 14th; the party session at which he was denounced was the previous month not the previous day. This is beside the point anyway; Kadarë's point is about the damage the regime did to itself and to its people, and he tells the story from several points of view, including the foreign intelligence analysts trying to understand what had happened, the Successor's daughter (a particularly good passage), the architect who designed his building, and the interior minister suspected of the crime, if crime there was. There is also a fantasy element, of ghosts and mediums, which adds to the sense of layers of reality. A fascinating book.
I've read a few Kadarë books - most recently, The General of the Dead Army - and happened to see this one at Vienna Airport on my way through to Moldova on Thursday. It is short but very deep: the tale of two ethnographers visiting Albania in the 1930s during the rule of King Zog, to record ancient epic poetry (the H in the title stands for Homer). The two ethnographers are supposed to be Irish, but might as well be Japanese for the purposes of the story: the novel is about Albania, not about Ireland. (Perhaps it was in part a response to Andrić's foreigners encountering Bosnia in The Days of the Consuls?)
But it's also about the construction of truth, how stories are told, especially when the state tries to regulate knowledge and information. Although the patriotic version of Albanian history - 1878, 1913 - is the only one told here, one senses that Kadarë himself doesn't completely buy it, and subverts it in the way he tells the story. In the meantime people escape as best they can, the rather ethereal epic poetry souight by the Irishmen in contrast with the erotic dreams of the governor's wife. A really good book, strongly recommended.
So, a colleague mentioned to me casually that actress Sandra Bullock is half Albanian.( Are you sure? )
Happy birthday, Sandra! She is 41 today.
I know this area quite well, and in fact the large pool of water in the middle of the picture (the source of the Black Drim river) and the monastery complex to the west (left) of it are firmly in Macedonia, having apparently been given to the King of Yugoslavia by King Zog of Albania some time in the 1920s. So the yellow line is off by about 700 metres, I think.
So the lesson is, don't plan delicate details of international diplomacy with Google Maps. But do use it and say, Wow!
( Wow! )
Things are different here in a lot of ways - our conference is on general security issues, and one voice from the audience yesterday asked about the war in Iraq - did the panel share the questioner's concern that Albania might not have enough troops deployed there? (Luckily this was not the panel that I was on.) I asked an EU representative to explain their visa policy, and he gave a pretty poor answer. I also managed some historical research.
Last night I almost missed dinner - we were supposed to go to the former residence of the late dictator, Enver Hoxha, for a reception, but couldn't find it and arrived half an hour late; the host of the reception then pulled me aside for a 20-minute chat and by the time he'd finished the food was all gone! But we found a small restaurant with a small meal in the end. Insubstantial, but also cheap.
Conference over, weather not too bad, I think I'll sit by the pool.
Last night, someone else (a Euronet/Wanadoo customer who left no other clue to his or her identity) replied to the previous comment, saying, "Why is it a "joke organisation"? Because it reports findings you disagree with? How very democratic of you."
( Yes, it is. )
Later edit: more links on this. First from The Exile, not normally a pro-Russian source, though it spends most of its time attacking the Guardian; second, an amusing debate on WikiPedia; third, John Rosenthal argues that the BHHRG's lack of credibility shouldn't stop us asking questions about Ukraine.
But he gets two other aspects of the story exactly right. One is the difficulty of the Wanderer, who actually knows the region, in communicating what he knows about it to the Merchant, who does not. The unfortunate Merchant retreats further and further into incomprehension, as the Wanderer burbles on about the wild places he has been. It's a scene I've seen (and, alas, perhaps participated in) all too often.
And the second point, oddly enough, is his vision of future history: "the Albanians, of course, we shall have with us still, a troubled Moslem pool left by the receding wave of Islam in Europe"; and his fear, which is my hope, that the Balkans will become boring: "Socialist Congress at Uskub, election riot at Monastir, great dock strike at Salonika, visit of the Y.M.C.A. to Varna" - Uskub is now Skopje, where yesterday I met with two leading members of the Social Democratic Union; Monastir is Bitola, where a friend of mine is a leading Liberal activist (and yesterday there was an election riot just down the road in Ohrid); Salonica is Thessaloniki, hub of northern Greece's industrial politics; and Varna is indeed a centre for Bulgarian tourism (also the home town of our former au pair and my Bulgarian MP friend). The more the Balkans head that way, the better for all of us.
The Cupboard Of The Yesterdays
"War is a cruelly destructive thing," said the Wanderer, dropping his newspaper to the floor and staring reflectively into space.
"Ah, yes, indeed," said the Merchant, responding readily to what seemed like a safe platitude; "when one thinks of the loss of life and limb, the desolated homesteads, the ruined --"
"I wasn't thinking of anything of the sort," said the Wanderer; "I was thinking of the tendency that modern war has to destroy and banish the very elements of picturesqueness and excitement that are its chief excuse and charm. It is like a fire that flares up brilliantly for a while and then leaves everything blacker and bleaker than before. After every important war in South-East Europe in recent times there has been a shrinking of the area of chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of the area of chronically disturbed territory, a stiffening of frontier lines, an intrusion of civilised monotony. And imagine what may happen at the conclusion of this war if the Turk should really be driven out of Europe."
"Well, it would be a gain to the cause of good government, I suppose," said the Merchant.
"But have you counted the loss?" said the other. "The Balkans have long been the last surviving shred of happy hunting-ground for the adventurous, a playground for passions that are fast becoming atrophied for want of exercise. In old bygone days we had the wars in the Low Countries always at our doors, as it were; there was no need to go far afield into malaria-stricken wilds if one wanted a life of boot and saddle and licence to kill and be killed. Those who wished to see life had a decent opportunity for seeing death at the same time."
"It is scarcely right to talk of killing and bloodshed in that way," said the Merchant reprovingly; "one must remember that all men are brothers."
"One must also remember that a large percentage of them are younger brothers; instead of going into bankruptcy, which is the usual tendency of the younger brother nowadays, they gave their families a fair chance of going into mourning. Every bullet finds a billet, according to a rather optimistic proverb, and you must admit that nowadays it is becoming increasingly difficult to find billets for a lot of young gentlemen who would have adorned, and probably thoroughly enjoyed, one of the old-time happy-go-lucky wars. But that is not exactly the burden of my complaint. The Balkan lands are especially interesting to us in these rapidly-moving days because they afford us the last remaining glimpse of a vanishing period of European history. When I was a child one of the earliest events of the outside world that forced itself coherently under my notice was a war in the Balkans; I remember a sunburnt, soldierly man putting little pin-flags in a war-map, red flags for the Turkish forces and yellow flags for the Russians. It seemed a magical region, with its mountain passes and frozen rivers and grim battlefields, its drifting snows, and prowling wolves; there was a great stretch of water that bore the sinister but engaging name of the Black Sea -- nothing that I ever learned before or after in a geography lesson made the same impression on me as that strangenamed inland sea, and I don't think its magic has ever faded out of my imagination. And there was a battle called Plevna that went on and on with varying fortunes for what seemed like a great part of a lifetime; I remember the day of wrath and mourning when the little red flag had to be taken away from Plevna -- like other maturer judges, I was backing the wrong horse, at any rate the losing horse. And now to-day we are putting little pin-flags again into maps of the Balkan region, and the passions are being turned loose once more in their playground."
"The war will be localised," said the Merchant vaguely; "at least every one hopes so."
"It couldn't wish for a better locality," said the Wanderer; "there is a charm about those countries that you find nowhere else in Europe, the charm of uncertainty and landslide, and the little dramatic happenings that make all the difference between the ordinary and the desirable."
"Life is held very cheap in those parts," said the Merchant.
"To a certain extent, yes," said the Wanderer. "I remember a man at Sofia who used to teach me Bulgarian in a rather inefficient manner, interspersed with a lot of quite wearisome gossip. I never knew what his personal history was, but that was only because I didn't listen; he told it to me many times. After I left Bulgaria he used to send me Sofia newspapers from time to time. I felt that he would be rather tiresome if I ever went there again. And then I heard afterwards that some men came in one day from Heaven knows where, just as things do happen in the Balkans, and murdered him in the open street, and went away as quietly as they had come. You will not understand it, but to me there was something rather piquant in the idea of such a thing happening to such a man; after his dullness and his long-winded small-talk it seemed a sort of brilliant esprit d'escalier on his part to meet with an end of such ruthlessly planned and executed violence."
The Merchant shook his head; the piquancy of the incident was not within striking distance of his comprehension.
"I should have been shocked at hearing such a thing about any one I had known," he said.
"The present war," continued his companion, without stopping to discuss two hopelessly divergent points of view, "may be the beginning of the end of much that has hitherto survived the resistless creeping-in of civilisation. If the Balkan lands are to be finally parcelled out between the competing Christian Kingdoms and the haphazard rule of the Turk banished to beyond the Sea of Marmora, the old order, or disorder if you like, will have received its death-blow. Something of its spirit will linger perhaps for a while in the old charmed regions where it bore sway; the Greek villagers will doubtless be restless and turbulent and unhappy where the Bulgars rule, and the Bulgars will certainly be restless and turbulent and unhappy under Greek administration, and the rival flocks of the Exarchate and Patriarchate will make themselves intensely disagreeable to one another wherever the opportunity offers; the habits of a lifetime, of several lifetimes, are not laid aside all at once. And the Albanians, of course, we shall have with us still, a troubled Moslem pool left by the receding wave of Islam in Europe. But the old atmosphere will have changed, the glamour will have gone; the dust of formality and bureaucratic neatness will slowly settle down over the time-honoured landmarks; the Sanjak of Novi Bazar, the Muerzsteg Agreement, the Komitadje bands, the Vilayet of Adrianople, all those familiar outlandish names and things and places, that we have known so long as part and parcel of the Balkan Question, will have passed away into the cupboard of yesterdays, as completely as the Hansa League and the wars of the Guises.
"They were the heritage that history handed down to us, spoiled and diminished no doubt, in comparison with yet earlier days that we never knew, but still something to thrill and enliven one little corner of our Continent, something to help us to conjure up in our imagination the days when the Turk was thundering at the gates of Vienna. And what shall we have to hand down to our children? Think of what their news from the Balkans will be in the course of another ten or fifteen years. Socialist Congress at Uskub, election riot at Monastir, great dock strike at Salonika, visit of the Y.M.C.A. to Varna. Varna -- on the coast of that enchanted sea! They will drive out to some suburb to tea, and write home about it as the Bexhill of the East.
"War is a wickedly destructive thing."
"Still, you must admit --" began the Merchant. But the Wanderer was not in the mood to admit anything. He rose impatiently and walked to where the tape-machine was busy with the news from Adrianople.
2) The Myth of Greater Albania, by Paulin Kola - Not a bad historical account of Albania's policies towards Kosovo in the twentieth century. It hadn't struck me before that both King Zog and Enver Hoxha were basically installed as rulers of Albania through force of arms with Serbian help, and though both went through their ups and downs with Belgrade subsequently, neither ever really challenged the 1912 borders. Unnervingly the book switches to the first person for one particular diplomatic episode where the author was (at least by his own account) the main player.
I raised this with an Albanian diplomat at a reception we were both at last night. He teased me by asking when I would next visit Albania. I told him I hadn't been to Albania for over 36 years. He asked how I could write about Albania without having ever been there. I replied, "The last thing I wrote about Albania was the story of how you didn't become President." We clinked our wine glasses together.
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