Changing focus

I've been in an alternate universe for the last six weeks. I've been crazed with the effort of trying to finish up a number of projects before I leave for Croatia on Sunday. I've also been strangely apprehensive about that trip, resulting in some oddly obsessive behavior. I finally declared a vacation from all things Croatian until tomorrow, when I pack and discover that I really don't have enough luggage space for a month's worth of clothing, medications, toiletries, etc. Thank heavens for the Kindle; that takes care of my leisure reading material!

I hope to blog from Zadar and Osijek and Zagreb, but it probably won't be about writing. I have as my inspiration the travel journal/political screed that Rebecca West wrote during her travels in that part of the world in the 1930s, BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON. That book is remarkable for its length (1100 pages!), its penetrating observations that are filtered through West's particular world view, and its rather florid prose. Here is a representative passage. She was in the hospital recovering from an appendectomy when sh heard that the King of Yugoslavia had been assassinated. She asks the nurse to switch on the telephone so she can call her husband. "A most terrible thing has happened. The King of Yugoslavia has been assassinated."

"Oh, dear, she replied. "Did you know him?" "No," I said. "Then why," she asked, "do you think it's so terrible?"

West goes on: Her question made me remember that the word "idiot" comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: they are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature.

West made plans immediately to travel through what was then Yugoslavia with her husband. She was convinced that understanding that part of Europe was essential to understanding her own future as an Englishwoman. She was, of course, very much a creature of her time and place -- as we all were. It will be interesting to see how my experiences and observations differ from hers. I hope that I am neither an idiot nor a lunatic...