THE GREAT CAULDRON
A History of Southeastern Eu rope
marie- janine calic
Translated by Elizabeth Janik
harvard university press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2019
Copyright © 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
First published in German as Südosteuropa, © Verlag C.H. Beck oHG, Mü nchen 2016
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer ic a
First printing
Cover image: Andrea (Michieli) Vicentino, detail of The Crusaders Conquering the City of Zara in 1202. Palazzo Ducale, Venice, Italy / Cameraphoto Arte Venezia / Bridgeman Images
Cover design: Annamarie McMahon Why
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Calic, Marie-Janine, author. | Janik, Elizabeth, translator.
Title: The g reat cauldron : a history of southeastern Eu rope / Marie-Janine Calic; translated by Elizabeth Janik.
Other titles: Südosteuropa. Eng lish
Description: Cambridge, Mas sac hu setts : Harvard University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018043583 | ISBN 9780674983922 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Balkan Peninsula— H istory. | History, Ancient.
Classification: LCC DR37 .C3513 2019 | DDC 949.6— dc23
LC rec ord available at https://lccn loc gov/2018043583
the gr eat cauldron
NIEDERLANDE
Amsterdam
Köln
Southeastern Europe in 2018
FINLAND
Oslo
NORWAY SWEDEN
DENMARK
Stockholm
Baltic Sea
Copenhagen
Gdansk´
Hamburg
Berlin
Prague
Straßburg
Saint Petersburg
Helsinki
Tallinn
ESTONIA
RUSSIA LATVIA
Moscow
Riga
LITHUANIA
Vilnius
RUSSIA
Kaliningrad Warsaw
Minsk
BELARUS
POLAND
CZECH REP.
Vienna Bratislava
GERMANY HUNGARY
Munich
Bern Bologna
Milan
Nordsee Mediterranean Sea
Rhine Elbe Oder Dniester Bug
Kiev
Chernobyl
UKRAINE
Kursk
Budapest
Corsica
Sardinia
Tunis
TUNISIA
AUSTRIA ROMANIA
SLOVENIA
Venice
CROATIA SLOVAKIA
Zagreb
BOSNIAHERZEG.
Split Mostar
ITALY
Rome
Adriatic
Palermo
Novi Sad
Belgrade
Sarajevo Prishtina
Podgorica
Tirana
Bucharest
Chisinau ˘ ‚
Dnieper Danube Danube Bug
BULGARIA
Sofia
MACEDONIA SERBIA MOLDOVA
Odessa
Crimea
Black Sea
Istanbul
Skopje
ALBANIA
Naples 1 2
GREECE
Thessaloniki
TURKEY
Athens
Sicily
MALTA
Crete
Rhodes
KOSOVO MONTENEGRO 2 1
300200100 km 0
Introduction
All power f ul empires are alike; e very poor land is poor in its own way. The Romans and Byzantines, followed by the Venetians, Habsburgs, and Ottomans, dominated and shaped southeastern Eu rope for centuries in imperial style. The peoples of southeastern Eu rope have many shared experiences, and even today their fates remain closely intertwined. Nevertheless, Albanians, South Slavs, Romanians, and Greeks responded quite differently to foreign domination. Southeastern Eu rope has maintained a unique sociocultural diversity, and a common identity remains elusive.
This book reinterprets the evolution of southeastern Eu rope from the perspective of transcultural relations and global history. It explores the interrelationship between southeastern Eu rope and distant continents and cultures, as well as how border-transcending processes and interactions were perceived, shaped, and socially constructed. Relationships of exchange between people, ideas, and t hings played a much larger role in the past than familiar historical narratives and repre sent at ions have often depicted. An understanding of t hese historical relationships offers insight into the many facets of globalization.
Many scholars of southeastern Eu rope have focused on the development of nations and nation-states. For most people today, nations represent a primary source of shared identity. However, before the nineteenth century— a nd to some degree, even in the twentieth c entury— t hings were different. Most southeastern Europea ns still lived in great multiethnic,
multireligious, and multicultural empires— conglomerates of loosely connected territories populated by members of di fferent faiths with very different ways of life. Social groups, milieus, and networks had not yet grown into nations. Some histories have assumed the establishment of the nation-state to be the logical culmination of a supposedly linear proc ess. Broader Eu ropean and global proc esses, and experiences that are common to more than one region, have too easily slipped from view.
Other scholars have viewed southeastern Eu rope as a distinct historical region, defined by certain internal structural characteristics like geography, demography, economics, culture, or even mentality. Because the West generally serves as the model and standard in a worldwide proc ess of modernization, other countries and regions can suffer in comparison— t hrough the apparent absence of a Renaissance or Enlightenment, for example, or simply in socioeconomic backwardness. This interpretive approach tends toward Eurocentrism: proc esses that transcend borders are too often presented only in terms of the transfer and diffusion of Western ideas and inventions. Phenomena that do not fit within the framework of Western modernity can disappear from sight. Moreover, it can be difficult to understand the connections and interrelationships between countries, regions, and continents in southeastern Eu rope if too much emphasis is placed on spatial bound a ries. The frequent shifting of borders, the fluidity of border regions, and the massive movement of peoples defies such analysis.
Approaching the history of southeastern Eu rope through imperial studies, by contrast, brings us to literat ure that views the region from the perspective of the great imperial centers. Sources from Venice, Istanbul, or Vienna tended to gloss over the harsher realities of the periphery. From these sources, we learn most about how the empires saw themselves— namely, as good and just hegemons—rather than how relations between the metropolises and provinces actually functioned, how people in the regions experienced imperial authority, or how certain centrifugal dynamics emerged. Hence, the myth arose that multiethnic empires promoted a greater degree of tolerance than nation-states did. The bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia rekindled this nostalgia for empire and narrowed perspectives on southeastern Eu rope to investigations of nationalism and violence. Neither nation, region, nor empire dominates this narrative. Rather, I focus on translocal, transregional, and transnational relationships of exchange. Trends in the study of history have challenged the traditional conception of space as a receptacle of culture, social formation, and
identity, thereby exposing supposedly objective characteristics of space as a cultural construct. Inspired by the groundbreaking works of Edward Said and Maria Todorova, numerous scholars have subsequently investigated how Western travelers, writers, and scholars conceptualized and imagined “the Balkans” from the eighteenth c entury on. Their work shows how romantic ideals and scholarly prejudices about supposedly essential spatial characteristics continue to shape perceptions and discussions about southeastern Eu rope into the present day.1
The new global history and research on translocality and transnationalism have encouraged scholars to look beyond the paradigm of nationstates, thereby touching off a veritable historiographical revolution. 2 Investigating relationships of exchange has taken precedence over the search for internal explanations, and synchronous developments and global constellations are now more likely to be studied than linear proc esses. Borders of historical regions are now considered as contact zones and transitional spaces. These approaches have become so influential that we can now speak of a “new consensus” in the study of history, one that identifies interactions between societ ies as a driving force of change.3 As Christopher Bayly concludes, “all local, national, or regional histories must, in impor tant ways, therefore, be global histories.” 4
There are advantages in telling the history of southeastern Eu rope from the unfamiliar perspective of worldwide interdependence. Many phenomena cannot be fully understood when considered solely within a regional or national framework, particularly in an age of increasing global connections. By focusing on interactions, interrelationships, and experiences that transcend borders, a new, multifaceted picture of southeastern Europe can emerge, in contradiction to the popu lar images and stereot ypes of a backward and violence-ridden “Eu ropean other.” In a global context, what was once thought to be exceptional becomes the regional expression of overarching proc esses. This book describes and explains the dark sides of history, too, but offers a more complete picture by including intellectual, scholarly, and cultural achievements, proposals for politic al reform, and not least, the agency of historical actors. These emphases necessarily lead to new questions and topics of study. How did proc esses that transcend borders, including globalization in the narrower sense, manifest themselves in southeastern Eu rope? Who and what promoted integration and exchange? How did the region fit within the structures of the world economy, and what were the pol itic al and cultural consequences of the
world growing closer? How strong were the forces of re sist ance, and how influential were t hose who shunned entanglement in overarching relationships?
Defining “southeastern Eu rope” is an insuperable task. It is difficult enough to determine the territorial bounda ries of “Europe,” as its meaning and significance can be understood in so many di fferent ways. Likewise, there are opposing views as to precisely which countries and regions ought to be considered part of southeastern Eu rope. Definitions abound, but no bounda ries are entirely persuasive, whether geographic or political, cultural or historic. Some historians argue that southeastern Eu rope should include only t hose areas once under Byzantine or Ottoman influence. They exclude the former Habsburg territories, which structurally resembled the lands of central Europe. Their argument is not unreasonable, but the borders of the great empires changed constantly over the centuries, and many regions shifted back and forth between the spheres of influence. Thus, anyone writing a history of southeastern Europe ultimately must make a pragmatic decision as to which countries w ill be covered and which w ill not. This book includes the historic regions that became part of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, and Greece in the twentieth c entury. All of t hese territories look back to a formative, though not exclusive, Byzantine and Ottoman heritage. Hungary, which is also sometimes considered part of southeastern Eu rope, fits better structurally and historically within the group of central (eastern) Eu ropean states that includes today’s Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia. Strictly speaking, Slovenia, Croatia, and Transylvania also belong to this group b ecause of their predominantly Western Christian and Habsburg influences. However, b ecause of their ethnic makeup and recent political history, they are very closely linked with parts of southeastern Eu rope once associated with the Eastern church and Ottoman Empire. Categorically excluding them from the narrative would lead to omissions. In any event, this troublesome question about what to include or exclude becomes less urgent if by analyzing transnational processes and worldwide connections, southeastern Eu rope is treated as part of a larger, perhaps even global, whole. Southeastern Eu rope appears here as a hub of transregional connections that are themselves the product of social practices and worldviews that change over time. Thus, bound a ries in this history sometimes shift, depending upon the chosen time frame and the par t icu lar issues u nder discussion.
The words we choose for this region must also be considered carefully. Should one speak only of “southeastern Eu rope,” or is “the Balkans” also acceptable? In the region itself, t here is a clear distaste for the Balkan label because of the many negative stereot ypes it invokes. The concept of “Balkanization”— shorthand for politic al fragmentation and irrational, internecine warfare— developed alongside the Ottoman Empire’s violent separation from its southeastern Eu rop ean periphery in the nineteenth century, and the term is still used today. By 1900, scholars from the region were already pleading on behalf of “southeastern Eu rope,” a less burdened term that indicated common cultural ties and political cooperation. Shortly thereafter, this term was tainted by the National Socialists, who used “southeastern space” (Südostraum) to describe the area they sought to reorg a n ize along racial lines and exploit econom ically. So “southeastern Eu rope” is likewise freighted with negative connotations, although t hese are often unconscious. No neutral identification for the region exists, thus I have used both “southeastern Europe” and “Balkans” to refer to the same region, although “Balkans” tends to refer to the area that was u nder Ottoman influence.5
How can the history of southeastern Eu rope be written from the perspective of global connections? This book is informed by four overarching sets of questions and objectives.
First, I seek to place events, processes, and experiences within their global contexts. From this perspective, for example, we can see how the warriors who fought the Turks in the fifteenth century depended upon the emerging merchant capitalism of the Mediterranean world. We can also see how strongly the scholars and rebels of the nineteenth c entury were influenced by the global age of revolutions, and how politic al Islam could spread to the Balkans in the twentieth c entury.
A second objective is to reconstruct global interrelationships and interactions in space and time as concretely as possible. This involves familiar topics of study like trade, migration, and the history of empires, as well as proc esses that have been less widely investigated, such as the dissemination of knowledge and global challenges like human trafficking, epidemics, and humanitarian disasters. Relational narratives inspired by global history tend to focus on particularly mobile groups such as travelers, pilgrims, and traders. Transimperial and transcultural subjects and mediators, such as scholars, emigrants, and interpreters, also figure prominently.
Sites of trade, port cities, and even monasteries receive special attention as the hubs of boundary-crossing networks and proc esses of exchange.
As a third consideration, I investigate the position that southeastern Europe assumed in the emerging global connections—f rom a politic al, economic, and cultural perspective. This involves tracing the evolution of the world economy, and asking when and why the lands of southeastern Europe fell victim to the “great divergence.”6 Why, a fter a certain point, were they unable to expand their wealth as dramatically as the West? What potential for change did the Balkan societ ies possess, and how did cultural resources affect their participation in the modern globalized world? Why have persistent socioeconomic disparities not yet been overcome?
Finally, I examine differing views of the world and how they changed over time. When, and through whom, did attitudes toward global connections develop? How was globality experienced, interpreted, explained, and discursively constructed—in di fferent historical eras, and in di fferent cultural contexts and spaces? And how did global connections influence selfperception and politic al action?
While this book seeks to adopt a global historical perspective, it is likewise intended as a broad overview of southeastern Eu rope. Thoroughly depicting all parts of southeastern Eu rope would be impossible in one volume, thus the narrative draws upon representative examples in order to make sense of its im mense subject matter and to highlight broad trends. To provide space for microhistory as well as macro-level proc esses, I punctuate the chronological and systematic narrative with sections that depict a specific place in a certain key year. These sections are historical interjections, intended to capture the various perspectives of the past. Using a magnifying glass, we can reconstruct how contemporaries experienced history, as well as how specific internal and external conditions influenced their thoughts and actions—as in Istanbul in 1683, Plovdiv in 1876, and Sarajevo in 1984. How did historical changes manifest themselves in a par t icu l ar time and place? What did the p eople who lived then and t here understand about the world? How did certain groups and individuals come in contact with others? These magnified snapshots illuminate sociocultural diversity and historical change.
Global history becomes more vivid when it is approached as a story of human lives.7 Biographies of men and women who typified the lifestyle and spirit of their times are included here as a means of introducing readers to contemporaries’ habitus and ways of thinking. We w ill meet, among
others, an Albanian astronomer, a Croatian bishop, a Greek revolutionary, a Bulgarian trader, a Romanian foreign minister, and a female Serbian entrepreneur—representatives of very di fferent life experiences and intellectual horizons. Above all, t hese biographies demonstrate that humans everywhere have always considered alternative courses of action; without their curiosity, courage, and desire for adventure the course of history would be very di fferent. In this book I emphasize how historical developments have been strongly informed by open-endedness and contingency. Here and elsewhere, the supposedly decisive historical power of culture and structure is revealed to be a myth.
The book covers an expansive time frame, from late antiquity to the present day. It is impossible to speak of a single, interrelated world before the European voyages of discovery around 1500, when the first signs of “archaic globalization,” followed by “proto-g lobalization,” developed.8 However, already in ancient and medieval times t here were spaces of intensive communication with the external world, and mobile groups that promoted cultural contacts and interacted across great distances. World economies that linked far-flung territories, and a “hierarchy of compartmentalized ‘worlds,’ ” were already developing in this early period.9 But only in the second half of the nineteenth c entury can we speak of globalization in the stricter sense of an integrated world economy. It was likewise in this era that transnationalism— engagement across borders for universal causes— g ained its first foothold.10 Nevertheless, we should be wary of a linear narrative of steadily increasing global integration. Phases of more intensive exchange have alternated with phases of disengagement and isolation. Moreover, even as the world grew together, new kinds of fragmentation emerged. Politic al, economic, and cultural globalization have rarely proceeded in unison. Finally, some regions and social groups avoided t hese overarching proc esses altogether, or at least remained unaware of them.
A book of this chronological depth and thematic breadth cannot cover all topics of interest, nor can it acknowledge all relevant scholarly controversies and secondary literat ure, thus annotation has been kept to a minimum in the interest of the general reader. Adopting broad brushstrokes necessarily means that some intere st ing details must be omitted.11 In this book I do not seek to test or apply one of the numerous theories and definitions of globalization and globality. Some historians, economists, and politic al scientists, for example, have drawn general conclusions about “world systems” and unequal relationships between world powers and their former
colonies. Others have either emphasized a general pattern of “modernization,” or, on the contrary, challenged the idea that all industrial societ ies would converge. Instead, they put forward the concept of “multiple modernities” as well as “entangled” and “global” modernities in order to adequately describe the contemporary world. Additional impulses for global history have come from research on empires, and on how imperial control was effected or failed. Last but not least, impor t ant contributions have emerged from the broad field of postcolonial studies, which concentrates on cultural relations between former colonizers and the colonized. Such approaches offer impor t ant impulses and insights for historical analysis, but they certainly cannot provide a general explanatory framework for all of the di fferent, and sometimes contradictory, phenomena and proc esses that occurred over the course of so many centuries. Although no general theory is tested in this book, by the end it w ill be possible to draw some fundamental conclusions regarding the history of southeastern Eu rope.
Southeastern Europe before 1500
In the beginning , t here was Alexander the Great. No other leader, no other commander has so sparked the imagination of his successors to a similar degree. The history, life experiences, and even the f uture of the Greeks, Slavs, Turks, Romanians, and Albanians became projections of his magnificent deeds: war and conquest, empire and wealth, power and glory. Hellenes and Romans, Byzantine emperors and Ottoman sultans, Albanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Romanian princes and opponents of the Turks, even Greek and Turkish revolutionaries and modern statesmen— a ll have hoped to inherit the mantle of the storied Macedonian hero of war. For centuries, t hose in power restyled Alexander’s marvelous, idealized image so that it might better fit themselves. Today, both Greece and the Republic of Macedonia see themselves as the successor of Alexander’s ancient empire, which has been the source of bitter politic al dispute.1 Groups and societ ies that have for centuries been threatened or dominated by outsiders yearn to have had a glorious history in the distant past, a desire that corresponds to the degree of uncertainty they feel in the present. The ancient era is a reliable standby in the Balkan peoples’ repertoire of identity construction, so it is surprising that most recent surveys of southeastern Eu ropean history do not cover this period.2 Scholarly research has refuted mythic interpretations of national history, along with the familiar depiction of perpetually barbaric Balkans as the European other. When viewed in the distant mirror of ancient and medieval historical times,
southeastern Europe becomes an integral part of a continent that was formatively shaped by Greco-Roman and Christian tradition.
Southeastern Eu rope and Its Inhabitants
“Of all the lands in Eu rope, our knowledge of [Eu ropean] Turkey alone is still very incomplete or deficient,” wrote the geographer Ami Boué in 1840. The few of his contemporaries who had ventured to travel t here painted an alarming picture. They were not interested “in freeing the Eu ropean public from the falsehood . . . t hat the place was teeming with bands of robbers and murderers.”3 Boué was the first Western scholar to travel to the interior of the Balkan Peninsula with the aim of depicting every corner.4 The result was an impressively rich and detailed geographic and ethnographic work, an introduction to the region and its inhabitants for Western readers.
Before the nineteenth c entury, when scholars discovered the independent value of all folk cultures through Romanticism, only archaeologists were interested in southeastern Europe. Because of ancient Greece, the area was referred to as the “Hellenic,” “Greek,” “Byzantine,” “Illyrian,” or “Moesian” Peninsula. The local cultures were not a source of much interest for the Ottomans, either. The Orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall commented that “the Turks do not recognize Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Dobruja, etc. as geographic categories,” but instead were familiar only with Ottoman administrative units.5 They simply called their Eu ropean possessions “Rumelia,” meaning the “land of the Romans,” which they had taken from Byzantium.6
Only over the course of the nineteenth century did the southeastern European peninsula receive the name “Balkan.” At the time, it was common practice to name regions a fter prominent geographic features.7 Because geographers wrongly envisioned the Balkan Mountains as a range that connected the Black Sea with the Alps, separating southeastern Eu rope from the rest of the continent (similar to the way that the Pyrenees demarcated the Iberian Peninsula), the name “Balkan Peninsula” took hold. Classically trained Europeans had previously called these mountains by the ancient name “Haemus.” There was a Balkan mountain range in Bulgaria, although its length and location did not correspond to widespread conceptions. Ami Boué, who discovered the error, preferred to speak of “Eu ropean Turkey.” But the more the borders of the Ottoman Empire receded over the course
of the nineteenth c entury, the more popu lar the “Balkan” label became, referring not only to the broad geographic region but also to its notoriously turbulent politic al conditions and endemic violence. In 1917 a standard history of the Eastern Question explained that “the name generally given to that segment is ‘the Balkan Peninsula’ or simply, ‘the Balkans.’ ”8
Because no natu ral barriers exist between southeastern Europe and the rest of the continent, it has participated in supraregional processes and interactions since ancient times. Exchange with other lands and regions was encouraged by its geographic openness toward central Eu rope and proximity to the Mediterranean and Black Seas, its function as a bridge between two continents and, above all, the human drive to explore. Individual travelers and entire populations moved along the great roads that connected distant regions, giving rise to a diverse and constantly changing ethnographic map. Migrations brought di fferent tribes and cultures into contact with one another, communities disbanded and reconvened, names were passed down or disappeared. Conversions and assimilations, both religious and cultural, created hybrid or even completely new identities. These processes of exchange continue today. Peoples, languages, and cultures are constantly evolving; they are not materially, spatially, or temporally fixed.
Nevertheless, the question of ethnogenesis is uniquely contentious. Since the Renaissance, and particularly during the age of nationalism, scholars looked to antiquity as the cradle of European civilization, seeking their own cultural origins in the distant past. They searched for ancient continuities in ancestry, history, language, and customs, in order to prove a timeless existence that could outlast the Ottoman era. Teleological narratives emerged, describing how developments in the ancient past necessarily led to the founding of a nation-state. Conceptions of a supposedly timeless national existence remain popu lar today, even though contemporary scholarship has corrected many of t hese cherished myths.9
If we wanted to identify the individual historical layers of ethnogenesis up through the Ottoman era, they might roughly correspond to the following scheme. The oldest substrate of today’s population would be the Indo-European peoples, who migrated to southeastern Eu rope over very long periods of time, beginning around 3000 bce. These peoples were the source of many different ancient Balkan tribes and cultures. A fter the third century bce , when the Imperium Romanum expanded into southeastern Eu rope, the tribes assimilated with colonists from Italy and other parts of the empire. Between the fifth and ninth centuries, they were joined by
migrants from several di fferent language families: Slavs, Turkic ProtoBulgars, and Finno-Ugric Magyars. In addition, nomadic tribes such as the Goths, Avars, Huns, and other steppe peoples left traces behind as they passed through the region. The Indo-European Roma came to southeastern Eu rope from northwestern India beginning in the eleventh c entury, “Saxons” from Germany in the thirteenth c entury, and Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula beginning at the end of the fifteenth c entury. Migration, expulsion, colonization, and assimilation have continuously reshaped the ethnocultural landscape in later eras as well.
According to current research, although many uncertainties remain, the Balkan Peninsula was populated by different tribes throughout the ancient period. Which groups survived the passage of time and which parts of their cultures were passed down to others remain subjects of debate. Because written records from the period are rare, scholars have had to rely on more ambiguous archaeological, linguistic, or epigraphic sources and artifacts. It seems clear, however, that mostly Greek-speaking groups lived south of an invisible border that ran toward Constantinople through Albania, Macedonia, and Thrace. North of this line were the tribes that have become known as Illyrians, Thracians, and Dacians. All belonged to the IndoEuropean language family; excavations show that their cultures were highly developed.
Some of the oldest settlements in southeastern Eu rope are found on the Greek peninsula. In the ninth c entury bce, a system of autonomous, culturally and politic ally sophisticated Greek city-states emerged u nder the influence of the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and others. The Greeks dominated the eastern Mediterranean Sea in the Classical period. To secure additional economic opportunities, they founded colonies throughout the entire Mediterranean region and along the Black Sea, as well as in Anatolia and northern Africa. These included Byzantium, Korkyra (Corfu), Odessos (Varna), Melaina Korkyra (Kor č ula), Pharos (Hvar), and Issa (Vis). From the islands along the Adriatic coast, Greek traders penetrated deep into the interior of the Balkan Peninsula, selling goods such as pottery and purchasing amber, salt, and metals in return.10
To the north of the fragmented world of the Greek city-states, the kingdom of Macedonia rose to prominence in the fourth century bce. Most likely, the Macedonians were originally Greeks, although they later assimilated with Illyrian, Thracian, and other tribes. Philip II established a centralized imperial authority before he and his son Alexander conquered
Greece, Egypt, and the Persian Empire. The gigantic Macedonian Empire fell apart a fter Alexander’s death, but his legendary victories would become an aspirational example for many rulers, in southeastern Europe and beyond. As the Slavs began to settle in Macedonia in the sixth century ce, the Greek identity of the area waned u ntil only its name remained. The identification as “Macedonian” became part of the Slavic idiom.11 The complex proc ess of amalgamation continues to be the source of bitter controversies today. Greek historiography is premised on a continuity between the Greeks and Macedonians, whereas Macedonian historians emphasize the role of early (not Greek) inhabitants who assimilated with the Slavs.12 Both interpretations arise from constructions of history that have been colored by nationalism and a certain disinterest in empirical evidence. Since the dissolution of Yugoslavia, a political battle has raged between Skopje and Athens over who can rightfully claim the name “Macedonia” and the symbols from the time of Philip II and Alexander.13
But back to the past. The Illyrians settled farther west—in northern Greece, Albania, and the territory that later became Yugoslavia. They separated into many di fferent tribes and cultures. In addition to the “real Illyrians,” t hese included the Dalmatae, Liburnians, Iapodes, and Pannonians. The Illyrians lived in pile dwellings and sustained themselves through agriculture, fishing, and piracy. Today t here is no known text that was written in an Illyrian script. Our knowledge about the Illyrians derives primarily from their coins and burials. They were apparently well versed in shipbuilding, geography, navigation, meteorology, and astronomy. In the third c entury bce, an Illyrian kingdom thrived u nder the reign of King Agron. Pirates from the kingdom created uncertainty throughout the Mediterranean, which irritated the Greeks as well as the Romans.14 During the Renaissance a theory arose that the Slavs were descendants of this ancient tribe. In 1525 the Dominican Vinko Pribojević from Hvar described the Illyrians as ancestors of the Croats and all other Slavs in his work On the Origins and History of the Slavs. His thesis was repeated by the religious scholars Mauro Orbini and Juraj Kri ž anić in the seventeenth century, and it became the founding idea of the pan-Slav movement, which reached its pinnacle in the nineteenth c entury.15
Thracians inhabited territory that now belongs to Bulgaria and eastern Macedonia; the Dacians lived to the north, in present-d ay Romania. It is possible that in ancient times they formed a single people— but that, like so much else, is a point of contention.16 In the first c entury bce, King
Burebista created a power f ul Dacian empire, including Getae and Thracians, in the Danube- Carpathian region. Today, nationally minded Romanians still consider this the first Romanian empire. Excavations have revealed evidence of sophisticated tools and building methods, as well as coins, pottery, and valuable handicrafts. B ecause of their riches, the Dacians maintained close trade relations with the Greeks and Romans.17
At the end of the third c entury bce, the Romans began to overtake the Balkan Peninsula. It took several centuries before they had subdued all of Illyria, Macedonia, Greece, and fi nally, Dacia, around 100 ce. Illyricum, as the Romans called southeastern Eu rope, was divided into provinces and incorporated within the Imperium Romanum. As in all their newly acquired territories, the conquerors began a systematic policy of Romanization.18
The Romans uprooted and enslaved the native population, destroyed their cities, and brought in colonists from the Latin West and Asia Minor, heightening the intermingling between many di fferent populations. They constructed fortresses and military bases, and they built streets, ports, mines, and border fortifications called limes. Romanization proceeded from the cities, which coalesced around military camps like Singidunum (Belgrade) and veterans’ settlements like Scupi (Skopje). Traders, craftsmen, and soldiers introduced Roman culture and traditions, and Latin became the region’s common language. Colonists brought oil lamps and medical instruments from northern Italy, glass and mirrors from the Rhineland, and jewelry and cosmetics from the Orient. They built baths, theaters, and temples in the Roman style, as well as forums and basilicas, market halls and aqueducts.19 Roman rule functioned as did every other colonial regime, with precious resources such as salt, iron, copper, lead, silver, and gold— along with wool, lumber, and other provisions— brought from the outlying provinces to the imperial center.20
Latin influences spread fastest along the Dalmatian coast, beginning in the first c entury ce , whereas the older cultures were more enduring in Bosnia, Croatia, Slavonia, Pannonia, and Dacia. These lands were Romanized only in the second and third centuries ce. Structures that still exist today recall the era of Roman rule—including the arena in Pula and Diocletian’s palace in Split, and archaeological sites like Gamzigrad (in present-day Serbia), Ratiaria (Bulgaria), and Stobi (Macedonia).21 Latin language and Roman culture reshaped older ways of life, although excavations show that older languages, names, gods, and rites did in part survive
the Roman occupation.22 Latin influence was weakest in the southern, Greek-speaking regions of the Balkan Peninsula. Roman colonization here was sparse, thus allowing Hellenistic culture, Greek language, and urban living patterns to remain in place.
As Goth invaders increasingly threatened the Imperium Romanum in the third c entury, the Romans had to give up their Dacian province so that the Danube became the empire’s external border. A topic of debate is whether the Romanized Dacian population remained in Dacia a fter the Romans retreated (as many Romanian historians assert) or the original inhabitants left the province alongside their occupiers and returned at a later time (as Hungarian research proposes). The broader question is whether or not Romanian settlements have been a permanent presence in the region, which would suggest a Daco-Romanian continuity from the ancient to the modern eras. Based on place names and archaeological evidence such as funerary objects, tools, and jewelry, it seems plausible that some of the original Dacian inhabitants upheld their own traditions, and that t hese traditions in turn informed the new Latin-speaking culture brought by Romanization. This does not, however, demonstrate linear continuity.23 For example, archaeological excavations of a necropolis in Brateiu indicate the coexistence of Roman and Dacian traditions; funerary objects such as coins, glass, pottery, and weapons were Dacian, whereas the burial ritual was Roman. Through the migrations that occurred in subsequent centuries, additional population groups such as the Slavs likewise contributed to DacoRomanic culture and language. Historical sources typically spoke of Vlachs before the name “Romanians” first appeared in the ninth and tenth centuries.24
Still other Romanic peoples, collectively referred to as Vlachs or Aromanians, lived south of the Danube, particularly in Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania, and Greece. Nomadic shepherds and the Latinized urban population spoke dialects that were related to, but distinct from, Romanian: Aromanian, Istro-Romanian, and Megleno-Romanian. These groups may have broken away from the Daco-R omanic culture north of the Danube or they could have been Romanized farther south. L ater, nomadic shepherds who spoke Slavic, Albanian, or Greek dialects were also called Vlachs. Some eventually settled in one place. Thus, “Vlach” can be an ethnic or socioprofessional identification.25
Similar to the Daco-Romanian and Illyrian-Slavic continuities, an assumed Illyrian-A lbanian continuity is also controversial. Its advocates are
nationally minded Albanians who consider the Dardanians, native to the territory of Kosovo, to be part of the Illyrians. Albanian belongs to the Indo-European language family, but it is not closely related to any other branch, even if it does share many idioms (for example, with Romanian). Linguists believe that the Albanian language existed long before the Romans expanded their empire, and it continued to thrive in certain mountainous regions despite Roman rule. It might have evolved from Illyrian, Thracian, or another ancient Balkan idiom, but t here is no consensus here, either. Today, Albanian is divided into two dialects: Gheg is spoken in northern Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia, and Tosk is prominent in southern Albania, Greece, and Italy.26
It has not been conclusively determined whether today’s Albanians descended from the Illyrians or from the Thracians or another ancient Balkan people. Their ancestors might have migrated from elsewhere, but evidence is insufficient to prove any of the numerous theories of origin. The Albanians are first mentioned in written sources from the eleventh c entury; however, sources written by Albanians themselves do not appear u ntil the sixteenth c entury. The priest Gjon Buzuku, who lived in Rome, wrote the first Albanian-language book in 1555. In the Middle Ages, Albanians called themselves “Arvanites” or “Arbarë sh,” which possibly derived from the ancient Albanoi tribe, although the precise origins of the name are unknown. The name “Shqiptar,” which is still used by Albanians today, did not take hold u ntil around the year 1700.27
The Goths came to southeastern Eu rope in the late ancient period. The Romans drove them out of Dacia in the third c entury, but their periodic incursions into the region continued u ntil the fifth c entury. They pushed into Macedonia, Thrace, Greece, and Asia Minor, and they even laid siege to Thessaloniki and Byzantium. An anonymous medieval chronicle asserted that the Goths were ancestors of the invading Slavs, and that they had originally come from Scandinavia before migrating to eastern and southeastern Eu rope. Around 1600, Mauro Orbini, a Benedictine monk from Dubrovnik, took up the somewhat improbable thesis in his famous work The Kingdom of the Slavs. His thesis has been periodically cited ever since, although never proven.28
The Goths eventually moved on toward Italy, but nomads on horseback from the steppes of central Asia appeared soon thereafter— fi rst the Huns and Avars, followed by the Slavs and Proto-Bulgars. The “barbarian” onslaught fi n ally obliterated the Roman defense system in southeastern
Eu rope in the seventh c entury. The Avars settled in the Carpathian Basin, where they established a khaganate that lasted more than two hundred years and dominated much of southeastern Europe. It was powerf ul enough to demand tribute from the Byzantine and Frankish Empires. The Avars laid siege to Thessaloniki and Byzantium before Charlemagne crushed the empire at the beginning of the ninth c entury.
As allies of the Avars, Slavic tribes also crossed the Danube. They fought in the Avar army and built streets, bridges, and fortresses that later became permanent settlements. The precise relationship between the two tribal groups can only be speculated on. Contemporary observers saw the Avars and Slavs as separate peoples who worked cooperatively.29 A Roman commander had little good to say about the Slavic arrivals: “They live far apart from one another, in miserable huts, frequently changing their place of residence. When they go to battle, it is usually on foot. They only carry shields and lances; they do not wear armor. Some do not even own a shirt or a cloak, but just wear breeches covering their loins, and they attack their opponents in this way.”30 Byzantium seemed powerless to oppose the Slavic conquest, as noted by John of Ephesus: “They [the Slavs] overran all of Greece, the area around Thessaloniki, and all of Thrace, conquering many cities and forts. They devastated and set them ablaze, they took prisoners, and became masters of the land. They established their dominion without the slightest fear, as if the land were their own.”31
Because archaeological evidence and historical documents are lacking, the original homeland of the Slavs is unknown. It must have been somewhere in eastern Europe, probably within Ukrainian territory. The many hypotheses about their name may have derived from the Slavic words for glory (slava), word or language (slovo), or swamp (slova).32 Ancient sources describe two main tribal groups that came to Byzantium: the Slaveni and the Antes. Historians later surmised that the Croats and Serbs evolved from the Slaveni and that the Bulgarians and Slavic Macedonians came from the Antes.33
Beginning around 580, the Slavic tribes settled in large numbers on the Balkan Peninsula, intermingling with the existing population. They settled throughout most of Greece, Macedonia, Thessaly, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia, and Dalmatia, and then moved farther into Croatia and Slovenia. One c entury later, the Byzantine emperor Justinian II encouraged Slavic free peasants and soldiers to settle within his imperial territory.34
In one way or another, the older population— descendants of the Illyrians, Romans, Goths, Avars, and others— w as mostly absorbed by the
Slavs; ancient and migrant cultures combined to form a new habitus, which contemporary observers identified as “Slavic.”35 The mostly egalitarian social order of the Slavic warrior-peasants made it easy to integrate other population groups. Only in the South did the Greek language hold strong. Slavs who settled t here became Hellenized, in part through a systematic policy that was initiated by Byzantium two centuries later. Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer, a nineteenth-c entury historian and Orientalist from Munich, went so far as to say that “not a single drop of old Hellenic blood flows undiluted within the veins of the modern Greeks.”36 That was, however, an oversimplification of a highly complex historical proc ess.
Historical sources identified the Slavic settlements collectively as the “Slavinia” or “Sclavinia”—regions within the territory of Byzantium, but where imperial authority had no real influence. At first the tribes possessed no fixed territory and had hardly any internal orga n izational structure beyond a chief and an assembly. The tribes were made up of clans or lineages, which were themselves made up of brotherhoods and individual families. The idea of a common ancestry fostered solidarity, a feature that the tribes shared with the Roman gens, the Albanian fis, and the Scottish clan. As necessary, closer family ties could be consolidated not only through kinship but also through ritual brotherhood and adoptive sponsorship.37 The tribes only gradually took possession of fixed territories, where they adopted simple methods of farming and raised c attle. The multiple-family household called the zadruga, which nineteenth-century observers took to be an ancient Slavic institution, probably developed at a later time.38
At first, only one name was used to identify all the Slavs. “Croats” and “Serbs” began to be recognized as independent groups only around 630. Since the Croats’ own name for themselves (Hrvati) is not a Slavic word, many di ff erent origin theories have been proposed, although none have been proven definitively. The name may have come from Ira nian nomads, who first encountered the Slavs in the steppe regions to the east. The name “Serb” comes from the Slavic word root “srb,” which is common to many Slavic languages, originally meaning “relative” or “ally.” In any case, it has been clearly shown that the Serbs and Croats share the same group of Slavic ancestors who migrated together to southeastern Eu rope before ultimately settling in di fferent areas. Both peoples were first mentioned by name in ninth-century historical sources.39
Around the same time, Turkic-speaking Proto-Bulgars migrated to the Danube and Balkan region. A fter 680, they established a well- organized
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F . 41.
abandoned compasses, square, and drawingpen in despair, if Eugène had not been at hand to set him right again.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CRITIC.
It was the end of November, and the weather had hitherto allowed our builders to make use of every day. The autumn sun was favourable to the enterprise, and at several points the house was reaching the height of the window-heads of the ground floor. Nevertheless it required all M. de Gandelau’s determination to prevent the works from being suspended. By degrees the ground was deserted by the able-bodied workmen, who were being called away to the army. Those who remained had their attention distracted, and were not making the best use of their time. It was becoming difficult to get the hauling done, all the horses and carts being pressed into the service of the country. The province was furrowed in every direction by the tracks of regiments making for the Loire. Many hours were spent in talk; and every one was anxiously expecting news of the war, which assumed an increasingly gloomy aspect. However, Orleans had been re-occupied by the French troops, and all hope did not seem lost. Paris was resisting. In the meantime an addition was made to the circle at M. de Gandelau’s château in the person of a friend of the family, who, having had his property occupied and injured by the Germans, had been obliged to abandon it for fear of worse, and came to pay a visit to M. de Gandelau on his way to the west of France, where he had relations. He was a man of about fifty or sixty years of age, tall, and of frigid aspect, though a perpetual smile seemed stereotyped on his face. He might have been taken for a diplomatist of the old stamp.
The new-comer had read and travelled much, knew a little of everything, was a member of several learned societies, and his opinion carried a certain weight with it in his département. He had been a candidate for the legislature; had embarked in manufacturing speculations, in which he had lost a good deal of money; then in agricultural enterprises, but as they threatened to ingulf the remainder of his fortune, he ultimately rested content with the theoretical side of things, and with publishing pamphlets on
questions of all kinds, printed at his own expense, and lavishly circulated. Every one of these brochures professed to give a simple solution of all the difficulties in question, whether in the domain of politics, science, manufactures, commerce, and even art. Building had been one of his hobbies; but as architects appeared to him unpractical, extravagant, and imbued with prejudices, he had taken the sole direction of his building operations, making his own bargains, treating directly with the contractors, giving the plans, and superintending the work. This whim had been a very costly one, and one fine morning his building fell to pieces. As he had no more faith in engineers than in architects, he had determined to lay out roads on his estate, and have them made according to a system of his own. His attempts in this line had not been more successful than those in building. The roads persisted in being impracticable. But M. Durosay (that was the gentleman’s name) was one of those persons whom experience—even though acquired at their own expense— teaches but little. In other respects he was a worthy man; he was extremely polite and obliging—generous even—especially towards those who had the art of flattering his whims, and who, through interest or conviction, gave him credit for being an infallible judge in matters of all kinds.
If any one had come to consult him on any subject at the moment he was about to step into a railway carriage, he would have let the train go rather than not give a formal judgment, with reasons in full. It must be observed, however, that he judged everything by an à priori system, and would listen with only partial attention to the particular reasons that tended to modify its application to the case in question. On the other hand, he would allow his positions to be discussed, and did not manifest the least impatience if his opinion was not shared by others. He was fond of repeating this aphorism: “Light emanates from the shock of conflicting ideas;”—but with the understanding that he always played the part of the producer, never that of the recipient.
A short time after his arrival, and when the gloomy subjects of conversation which were the order of the day had been exhausted, they began to talk about Paul’s house (as it was the custom at the
château to call it). M. Durosay asked to see the designs. “Building and I are old acquaintances; I know something about it,” said he.
Eugène could not repress a smile; but the speaker took no notice of it, his mishaps as a builder having left no painful recollections in his mind.
“Capital!” said M. Durosay, when they had explained the plans to him, and he had examined them. “I have seen houses in Belgium something like this. There are very good ideas here; it will be a very pleasant habitation if our friends the Prussians let you finish it.... Will you allow me to make one or two remarks about it?”
“Certainly.”
“Not that I presume for a moment to suggest any change in these plans, which appear to me admirable.... But I have had the opportunity of a wide field of observation and comparison.... Well, then, to tell you frankly my first impression, this seems to me to have rather the character of a town-house, what we call a hôtel, than a country-house.... You will excuse my saying so, will you not?... I do not understand a country-house thus shut in: I should like to see a portico round it, or at least a wide veranda;—windows opening out— a more decided reflex of exterior life.”
“But, my dear friend,” said M. de Gandelau, “I expect that my children will come and spend a good part of the year here; it is no object with them to have one of those habitations in which people reside only for the two or three summer months, and where they entertain the idlers of the city; they want a good house, which will perfectly exclude wind and wet, where they can live comfortably at every season of the year.”
“Certainly—a very proper consideration; but what do you think of those North Italian villas, where the climate is pretty severe in winter and spring, but which are not the less charming with their porticos, terraces, wide open entrance-halls, and their balconies looking out over the country? All these habitations have a dignified aspect; they ennoble life, we may say, and enlarge those narrow ideas to which our age is only too prone.... And then, does it not seem to you that
there is a too manifest want of symmetry, at least in one of the façades? Doesn’t this make the house look a little like those edifices which have been built piecemeal, with a view to satisfy successive requirements—in short, is there not a want of that unity which ought to be found in every work of art?”
“But it is not a work of art that I wish to leave my daughter; it is a good house—convenient and substantial.”
“Very good. But you will allow that if we can secure both kinds of excellence, so much the better. For a person of such extreme refinement and so charming in every respect as your daughter, it is but proper that a habitation should be provided reflecting in its exterior the charms and graces of its occupant. It would be a pleasure to you, in visiting Madame Marie, to see in the distance her little family grouped around her under a portico of delicate architecture, or under a loggia.... But this seems to me more like the house of some grave Flemish alderman. In these gables there is a kind of severity which——”
“Come, come, my dear friend, gables are not severe; they are gables—that’s all.”
“But indeed these gables with their high roofs have a severe aspect, which by no means agrees with the idea one forms of a house built for pleasure.”
“But it is not a house built for pleasure; it is a house built for people who are going to live in it, not for summer loungers—especially as we never have such people in our neighbourhood.”
“Still, however, I should have liked to give a warmth to these fronts (which have a somewhat frigid aspect) by light and airy projections, and a covered gallery, with a terrace over it.”
“Warmth? warmth? Why instead of that, you would give us the rheumatism with your galleries. They may do very well at Nice or Mentone, but they are not to be thought of in our part of the country. We want the sun upon the walls of our habitations, while your porticos are like mushroom-houses.”
“I see, my dear friend,” resumed M. Durosay, after a pause, “that you keep to your taste for what you call the practical side of things. Yet see what a good opportunity you have of giving your daughter one of those dwellings which, while satisfying the material requirements of life, would possess that perfume of art which is too rarely found in our country districts. A little exterior elegance is a powerful charm which leaves an indelible trace in the mind. It is thus that the Italians preserve the poetry of the brilliant eras of their civilization. They are willing, at need, to sacrifice something of what we call ‘comfort’—the material conveniences of life—to keep up among them the noble traditions of high art.”
“I do not know what the traditions of high art are, or whether those traditions preserve us from rain, wind, and sun; but I must confess that your Italian villas in the environs of Verona and Venice appear very dull and gloomy with their colonnades and closed shutters. I have never had the wish to visit them, for I imagine one would be very uncomfortable in them. If they build them so with a view to offer tourists models of architecture, all well and good; but I make no pretensions to amuse or interest tourists, and my daughter shares my ideas in the matter.”
“Perhaps ... but just now your daughter is travelling in Italy; she is going to sojourn on the shores of the Bosporus; who knows whether on her return here she would not be charmed to meet a kind of souvenir of the impressions she will not fail to have experienced there, and whether the surprise you have in store for her would not be still more delightful if you tried in some measure to revive those impressions? What do you think of it, Mr. Architect?”
“As for myself,” said Eugène, “I am listening, and cannot but be delighted to hear you discourse so ably on our art.”
“I may take it for granted, then, that you share my opinion, and that you would be inclined to give this habitation, which you have so skilfully arranged, some of those external charms in which perhaps it is now deficient.”
“I cannot say that I should. M. de Gandelau, with his usual courtesy, has left us quite at liberty, and has simply stated the limit of
expense to which he is prepared to go. As regards other considerations, our programme having been agreed upon, we have not been restricted to an excessive severity of style, nor forbidden the adoption of what you consider the exterior charms of a dwellinghouse.”
“Well; although my friend with his practical mind does not appear sensible to these charms, do not you, as an artist, think it desirable to add something to these fronts, which are perhaps a little severe in aspect, and which certainly with the help of your talent you could render less cold? You know Italy; you have visited Pompeii: do you not find in the architecture of those countries abundant suggestions from which inspiration may be drawn—charming models, in fact?”
“Yes; I have visited Italy and France, but I must confess that I have never been struck by the architectural works of those countries, except so far as they preserved the imprint of the manners and customs of those whose genius produced them. You mention Pompeii. That which has vividly affected me in the remains of this little provincial town of Italy is precisely this characteristic. Its small dwellings exactly suited the habits of antiquity, the time when they were erected, and the climate of the district. But from the study of these habitations I infer that since we do not live on the shores of the Gulf of Naples, and have customs very different from those which suited the Pompeians, our dwellings ought not in any way to suggest the peculiarities of theirs; that while, for example, it may have been very agreeable to them to sup in an open triclinium, sheltered from the wind by a velum, we cannot arrange dining-rooms after this model in the Département de l’Indre; and that though it might have been a luxury to them to sleep in a room whose area was only five or six square yards and the door of which, left open, introduced you to a court surrounded by a portico, this would be very inconvenient here, as we should run great risk of catching cold if we left the door open, or of being suffocated if we shut it.”
“But as you have mentioned ancient dwellings, allow me to remark that those of Pompeii, even the most luxurious, do not exhibit externally any of those magnificent features which you seem to admire. The ancients reserved for the interior such luxury as they
affected, and it does not appear that they troubled themselves to display anything of it to the passers-by. I have not a very clear idea of what their villas,—their country-houses,—may have been; but everything leads me to believe, as far as we can judge from the remains preserved to us, that in them nothing was sacrificed to that distinctively modern vanity which aims to make an external display of architectural forms to strike the vulgar.
“I believe that those country palaces of Northern Italy with which you have been so deeply smitten, are rather products of vanity than abodes adapted to the habits of those who have erected them; in fact, they have scarcely been inhabited, and the dilapidated condition in which you see them does not date from yesterday. Erected to satisfy vanity and the desire to make a show, they lasted as habitations only as long as works due to vanity are accustomed to last—that is, for a few years of the life of an individual; after which they were abandoned.”
“You call vanity,” replied M. Durosay, “what I think to be love of art —the desire to exhibit a work of art.”
“Probably we shall never agree upon that point,” answered Eugène. “I think that art—in architecture at least—consists in being truthful and simple. You see in it only a form that charms or repels you: I look for something else; or rather I consider first whether this form is really the expression of a requirement—whether a reason can be given for its existence; and it charms me only so far as this condition is fulfilled, according to my judgment.”
“You consider a barn, therefore, a work of art?”
“Certainly; if it is constructed so as to afford a suitable shelter for what it is intended to hold, it is, in my view, more admirable than an inconvenient palace, though decorated with colonnades and pediments.”
“You ought to go to America.”
“Perhaps it would be wise to do so, if I knew that its people tried to build simply in accordance with the tastes and requirements of the inmates. But in America, as everywhere else now-a-days, they make
pretensions to style, and copy what they believe to be the beautiful par excellence; that is, they follow, without discrimination, traditions whose origin and principle they do not care to investigate.”
“Come,” said M. de Gandelau, who found the discussion rather tedious, “we have travelled a good way from Paul’s house; but to satisfy you, when you come and see my daughter in her new dwelling, we will have a pasteboard portico put up in front of one of the façades, and under the shade some Berri maidens dressed up as Venetians, and some gentlemen in scarlet robes playing on the guitar and the bassoon. It is getting late, and time to go to bed.”
CHAPTER XVII.
PAUL INQUIRES WHAT ARCHITECTURE IS.
Eugène expected Paul to return to the discussion of the previous evening, and in fact, when they were going early in the morning to visit the works, Paul did not fail to throw out hints about it. But he did not know how to give his curiosity a definite shape. His cousin would not help him, but wished to give him full leisure to bring his ideas to a focus.
“Is M. Durosay a judge of architecture?” said Paul, at last.
“Well, he talks about it like a person who has some acquaintance with the art.”
“But yet you did not seem disposed to accede to what he asked.”
“What did he ask?”
“Why——you know very well what I mean——. He would have liked Marie’s house to be——more——.”
“More what?”
“More——less severe; that it should have a portico and a loggia. What is a loggia?”
“It is a wide covered balcony, most frequently closed on the two sides, but opening in front—whether on the ground floor or the upper stories—to the high road or the country.”
“And why should not a loggia be added to Marie’s house?”
“We might make one, or several.”
“Well, then?”
“Why then it must be placed in front of one of the apartments—the drawing-room, for example, on the ground floor, in the middle of the garden front, or if on the first floor, in front of the best bedroom.”
“And would not that have a good effect?”
“Perhaps it might: but the apartment next to it, opening upon this loggia, would be dark and gloomy, as the windows would be shaded by its ceiling.”
“Ah! yes, that is true; but in fact we have loggias at the end of the drawing-room, the billiard-room, and the dining-room.”
“Yes; only they are closed, instead of being open towards the outside, and these apartments gain in area through them. These loggias are therefore recesses—what they formerly called ‘bays.’ We have thus all the advantages of a loggia without the inconveniences which in our climate it would entail.”
“Why did you not say so to M. Durosay?”
“He could see it well enough; there was no need to mention it to him.”
“He would have liked a portico, too.”
“For what purpose?”
“I do not know——. He said it would be pretty—that my sister and her children would form a group under it, and that this would have a pretty effect at a distance.”
“And would it be very agreeable to your sister to produce ‘a very pretty effect’ at a distance?”
“Oh, I don’t think she would care about it.”
“But who are we building the house for?”
“Why, for my sister.”
“Not for strolling idlers, therefore. But the portico in question would have the same inconveniences as the loggias; it would make the apartments opening under the arcades or colonnades dark and gloomy. Since then, in our country we spend more of our time in rooms than under porticos, we should have to pay rather dearly for the pleasure of forming groups for the gratification of passing strangers.”
“Doubtless we should. Besides, in front of the billiard-room we have a conservatory, with steps down to the garden, which may serve for a portico without darkening the room, as it will be glazed.”
“Certainly.”
“Perhaps M. Durosay did not observe this.”
“Oh! I daresay he did; but it has nothing imposing about it. He would have liked a real covered portico, in the style of the Italian porticos.”
“He seems to be very fond of Italian architecture.”
“Which?”
“Why, that he was talking about.”
“But there are many kinds of architecture in Italy, belonging to different ages and latitudes, and varying with the habits of the peoples who inhabit the peninsula.”
“You did not call his attention to that.”
“He must have known it.”
“I see that you don’t think M. Durosay earnest in his opinions.”
“M. Durosay is an excellent man; his opinions are sincere, and therefore I regard them as serious; but he and I look at things from a different point of view. He judges questions of art as a man of the world, on a ground of sentiment, while I think we artists ought to decide them by reasoning. Sentiment does not reason; it is like faith; so it is impossible for us to understand one another, since we speak a different language.”
Paul’s views on the subject were as yet far from clear. Hitherto he had thought that architecture could be learned as we learn grammar and spelling; and here was his cousin telling him that it found expression in several languages, one of which might be known, while the other remained quite unintelligible. He could not understand what reasoning could have to do with a matter entirely relating to form and appearance; yet he did not even know how to put questions to his cousin on the subject with a view to gaining light
upon it. He was going along, therefore, with his head bent, striking down with his stick the withered thistles that encumbered the side of the path—Eugène, on his side, not seeming desirous of breaking the silence. They arrived thus at the works; they were almost deserted.
“It froze last night,” said Branchu; “and it’s going to be a hard frost.”
“Well, you must cover the stone-work with litter or straw, and we shall have to stop. Put some scaffold planks on the walls, the straw over them, and slabs with stones at intervals. Take care that the planks project beyond the faces of the walls. If you have not straw enough, put soil on the slabs, or turf clods. As to the cellar vaults, spread a good layer of mould over them, and contrive some openings in the haunches, so that the rain or melted snow may run off. Come, set to work! Let all this be arranged for and finished tomorrow evening; then we will stop till the end of the cold weather.”
“So much the better,” said Master Branchu, “for all the young fellows are gone, and none but poor creatures are left at the works.”
“This suspension of the building,” said Eugène, when they were returning to the château, “will permit us to work out the details of construction without having to hurry over them.”
“Yes,” replied Paul; “but I should much like to know how you set about it when you have to draw one of the details.”
“You must have learnt that in the two months we have been doing this sort of work.”
“Not quite; I perceive that you say what you intend, and that what you intend shows itself drawn on paper; now, I have tried to do the same, but though I knew well what I intended, I could bring nothing to paper; or if I did draw anything, it made me forget what I had in my mind. Yet, surely, for everything one wants to do in architecture, there must be a method, a process, a—what should I call it?—a recipe.”
“Ah! now I see what you mean. But you must perceive, my young cousin, that people often fancy they understand and intend, while they really do not always know what they intend, and do not clearly
understand the question in hand. All this morning, for instance, you have been revolving in your mind this question which you have only just put to me; and I have wished to give you leisure to present it in a definite form—to do which your brain has been obliged to work. Now, thanks to the effort you have made, you will comprehend the answer I am able to give you better. You remember those two lines of Boileau’s—
“Ce que l’on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement, Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément,”
and which are applicable to all the arts. The great thing is to habituate one’s self to clear conceptions. Unfortunately we learn to form phrases before we learn to reason, and try to express an idea before it is completely elaborated in the brain. Then we fancy we can supply what is incomplete in this idea by a happy combination of words. In architecture we think of forms that have seemed attractive, before knowing whether they will be exactly appropriate to what reason and the rigorous observance of the necessities of construction, or the requirements of the case, demand. In a speech, the vulgar are readily seduced by a brilliant phrase, and perceive only too late the intellectual void which this seductive form conceals. Similarly, in architecture, the vulgar are seduced by a picturesque aspect and an attractive form, and have to pay the penalty of their error in the defects of the building. M. Durosay, in his admiration for certain forms that had charmed him as a tourist, has not thought of asking himself whether these externals were in harmony with the requirements to be satisfied, and what the structure itself demanded; the turn of the phrase has arrested his attention, and he has not inquired whether there was a clearly developed idea behind it. We might, therefore, have argued together in this way for days, without hope of convincing one another—he being entirely occupied with the form or fashion of the phrase, and not troubling himself as to whether this form has a signification—whether this phrase expresses a clear idea. All depends on this, my dear Paul, and, in my judgment, our country, which is so near the verge of absolute ruin, will not recover itself until it learns to reflect before it speaks. We build immense
edifices, costing fabulous sums, yet we have no clear idea as to what they shall contain. Or rather, we think only of making the casing, and leave it an open question whether we shall use it for such or such a purpose. And I would have you observe that this unfortunate habit prevails not with regard to public buildings only. How many respectable men there are who, like M. Durosay, in proposing to build a house for themselves, first determine to erect a chalet, or an Italian villa, or an English cottage, according to the fancy of the moment, and make it quite a secondary question whether life will be comfortable in the case they are going to put up! Consequently you will see Italian villas in the north of France and Swiss chalets at Nice. Learn to reason, to observe before you proceed to act, and you will be a good barrister, a good physician, a good soldier, a good architect. If nature has endowed you with genius, so much the better; it will supply a noble complement to your faculties; but if you have not gained the habit of reasoning, genius will be of no use to you, or rather, it cannot develop itself. Now, to learn to reason, you must labour much and labour long, and not allow yourself to be led astray by appearances, however attractive. Unfortunately, our education and instruction in France lead us to content ourselves with mere appearances, and to rely on traditions which are regarded as articles of faith, and which consequently may not be discussed. You will find M. Durosay’s portico confronting you everywhere. The army, the government, literature, politics, and the arts have their portico, which you must adopt, whatever has to be done or wherever an entrance has to be provided; unless you have sufficient energy, power for work, independence of character, practical knowledge, persistent determination, and the authority which that alone can secure, to say:—I will adopt your portico only as far as I think it advantageous to make use of it. But to return to your question as to whether any definite prescriptions or rules of procedure can be given in architecture, I reply that there are practical rules of procedure suitable to construction; but as the materials and the means of execution vary continually, any such rules ought to be modified by these variations. In architecture there is a method to be followed in all cases that present themselves, but there are no definite prescriptions or rules of procedure. This method is none
other than the application of your reasoning faculty to all particular cases; for what is desirable in one set of circumstances is not so in another. It is therefore on the observation of these circumstances— of facts, customs, climate, and hygienic conditions—that your reason must rely before forming the conception of your work. And when this operation is complete, and all is properly arranged in your mind, then you will be able to put on paper without hesitation the result of this intellectual labour.”
“I think I apprehend your meaning; but how must I begin?”
“By acquiring the habit of observing everything, and reflecting on everything you see, hear, or read. When you have a ditch before you that you want to cross, do you not ask yourself whether your legs will carry you to the other side? do you not know, as the result of previous observation, whether you can jump the ditch or not, and do you not decide accordingly? You do not ask yourself before jumping whether Achilles or Roland was alleged by the poets to have leaped much wider spaces. It is yourself, your own strength, that you consult —not that of heroes—on pain of tumbling into the water. Exactly in the same way, if you have to build a house for a person you know, you first remind yourself that a house is made for people to live in; then you represent to yourself the habits of the owner, you calculate the number of apartments he requires, and what relations they will have to each other. You know whether he lives alone, or entertains much company; whether he will live in the house at such or such a season; whether he affects luxury or lives quietly; whether he has many servants, or employs only one, &c.: and when you have thoroughly considered all these essential conditions, you will try to put on paper the result of these observations. But if the first thing you think of is putting this person and his family in a house like those of Pompeii, or in a feudal château, it is a thousand to one that you will build him an uncomfortable habitation—that you will be obliged to sacrifice the convenience of its arrangements in order to assign them a place in a building that belongs to a period and a civilization differing from our own civilization and times.”
“I can quite understand that, but still we can learn how to make a door, a window, or a staircase.”
“That is to say, it is possible to explain how people in former times set to work to make a door, a staircase, or a floor; but it is not proposed, nor ought it to be proposed, in teaching you the methods employed by our predecessors, to oblige you to do exactly what they did, since you perhaps possess materials which they did not, and your customs differ from theirs. The instructions given you run thus, —at least they ought to run thus: ‘These are the results of the experience acquired during past ages; make these your startingpoint; do as your predecessors have done; use your reasoning faculty in applying the knowledge that has been acquired, but in obedience to the requirements of the present. You ought not to be ignorant of what has been done before you,—it is an accumulation for the common good, a possession secured to mankind. You ought to be acquainted with its existence and value; but, as a partner in its advantages, add your store of intelligence; make a step in advance, do not retrograde.’ But observe: there is only one means of preventing retrogression in architecture, and that is making art the faithful expression of the requirements of the time in which we live,— making the building a casing suited to that which it is destined to contain.”
“And is not this always done?”
“Not exactly. We are something like persons who have inherited from their ancestors a costly stock of furniture,—a venerable and venerated heirloom—who keep and make use of this furniture, though it is inconvenient to them, and no longer suits the habits of the times; who have even gone so far as to appoint a guardian for this old lumber, who is enjoined not to allow it to be modified. If therefore you, the master of the house, want to change the covering of this furniture, or send some of the articles themselves, which are more inconvenient than useful, to the lumber-room, the guardian you pay and lodge assumes a dignified air, and declares that the function with which you have invested him, and which he makes a point of strictly discharging, forbids him to allow these modifications or suppressions; that his honour is concerned in not allowing these relics to suffer injury or change, since he is commissioned to
preserve them For the sake of peace, you continue to make use of this intolerable furniture, and you retain its guardian.”
“I do not quite understand you.”
“By and by you will. But observe, I have given you fair warning. If you go into some old mansion crammed with antiquated furniture, take care not to criticise it; for though the host and hostess may content themselves with smiling, the guardian of those curiosities will take good care that you never set foot in that house again.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
THEORETICAL STUDIES.
The cold and the state of the times prevented the works from being continued. The winter might be a long one. Eugène and Paul prepared themselves, therefore, to employ this compulsory leisure to advantage. It was decided between them that they should not merely draw out the details necessary for finishing the works, but that Eugène should take advantage of these winter days to enlighten Paul on many points respecting which, as clerk-of-works, he was deficient.
Paul took an increasing interest in this employment. Hitherto the execution had immediately followed the labours of the study, and example and practice came to ratify theory; but he was quite aware that all his attention and desire to follow the lead of his chief were not sufficient, and that at each step he found himself confronted by a difficulty. The further the work advanced, the more utterly incapable did he feel himself. He set to work, therefore, with a hearty desire to learn; indeed, so much the more eagerly as all that surrounded him assumed a more and more gloomy and desolate aspect. Paul had never spent a winter in the country, although he used to come home to the Christmas festivities; the few days spent at his father’s château had passed away so quickly, that he had not time to consider how things looked out of doors. Besides, the house was full of guests at that time; the presence of his elder sister gave it animation; everything had a holiday aspect. But the scene was quite changed at the beginning of December, 1870; the neighbouring villages were deserted, or occupied only for a few hours by troops illclad, dying of hunger, generally going to fight without enthusiasm, and leaving the exhausted and the sick in the cottages. Then would come long lines of carriages that looked like so many funeral processions.
The snow was beginning to cover the fields and to muffle distant sounds. Seldom did any of the peasants come to the château. The
postman still paid his regular visits, but the letters and newspapers he brought tended only to depress the spirits of the inmates. Sometimes they gave shelter to members of the Garde Mobile, or to soldiers of the line; but all were dumb: the officers themselves would ask to be allowed to rest in their rooms under pretext of fatigue, rather than go down to the drawing-room. M. de Gandelau, up early in the morning, in spite of his gout, seemed to be omnipresent; he was to be found everywhere, among the farms and at the neighbouring town, facilitating the transport of munitions of war, organizing hospitals, supplying provisions and lightening the difficulties imposed by routine. “Set Paul to work, my friend,” he said to Eugène every evening; “that is all the demand I make on your friendship. I feel it is a considerable one, but grant it, I entreat you.”
In fact, the greater part of the day was passed in studying some question relating to building; then the architect and his clerk-of-works would go and take a walk before the evening, during which Eugène did not fail to start some interesting topic. The country and natural phenomena were the habitual subjects of these conversations; and thus Paul was learning to observe and reflect, and it became every day clearer to him how much knowledge must be acquired to accomplish a task of even limited scope. His cousin did not fail to reiterate the sentiment: “The more you know the more you will feel your want of knowledge; and the highest acquisition in science is the conviction that we know nothing.”
“What good is it to learn, then?” rejoined Paul, one day.
“That we may become modest; that we may occupy life with something better than those things to which vanity prompts us; that we may make ourselves of some little use to our fellows, without exacting gratitude from them.”
Eugène made Paul draw a good deal, and always from nature, or from drawings executed while he was present, for he had not brought with him any specimens of architectural design. Besides this, Paul made a fair copy of memoranda relating to the parts of the house already erected. Thus he gained a complete acquaintance with the structure of every part of the stone-work.
