The tragedy of Yugoslavia
To the Editors:
I am greatly troubled by Richard Tillinghast’s article “Rebecca West and the Tragedy of Yugoslavia” in your June 1992 issue.
I have traveled widely in former Yugoslavia in pursuit of my journalistic and scholarly goals, and have read and reread Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which is the basic topic of Tillinghast’s essay. It is a brilliant book, a celebration of Serbian culture, which is indeed very attractive—warm, folkloric, picturesque, rural, and vigorous. It is clear from Tillinghast’s article that he shares West’s admiration for the Serbs and for Serbian nationalism.
But Serbian history and Serbian extremist claims are not all there is to Balkan history, and with regard to the cultural achievements and historical drama experienced by the other Balkan peoples, neither West nor Tillinghast is fair. For example, Tillinghast quotes West in making an intellectually disreputable contrast between “the medieval, Slavic, Orthodox strain represented by the Serbs” and “the Austrian-influenced Roman Catholic culture of the Croats and Slovenes.” The presumption that only the Orthodox cultures are truly Slav, thereby excluding the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, etc., as well as the Slovenes and Croats, is grossly false and could only be accepted by foreign intellectuals with no real knowledge of Slavic languages and culture.
Croatian liturgical prose represents one of the earliest and most important Slavic literary resources.
Croatian liturgical prose represents one of the earliest and most important Slavic literary resources. Indeed, the