The Balkans, which in Turkish means “mountains,” run roughly from the Danube to the Dardanelles, from Istria to Istanbul, and is a term for the little lands of Hungary, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and part of Turkey, although neither Hungarian nor Greek welcomes inclusion in the label. It is, or was, a gay peninsula filled with sprightly people who ate peppered foods, drank strong liquors, wore flamboyant clothes, loved and murdered easily and had a splendid talent for starting wars. Less imaginative westerners looked down on them with secret envy, sniffing at their royalty, scoffing at their pretensions, and fearing their savage terrorists. Karl Marx called them “ethnic trash.” I, as a footloose youngster in my twenties, adored them.

—C. L. SULZBERGER, A Long Row of Candles

 

I hate the corpses of empires, they stink as nothing else.

—REBECCA WEST, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon