Balkan Ghosts

And Greece’s political behavior in the region, despite a democratic tradition going back to antiquity, appeared no more reasonable than that of its neighbors to its north, whose democratic tradition was generally nonexistent.

Conflicting ethnic histories, inflamed by the living death of Communism, had made the Balkan sky so foul that now, sadly, a storm was required to clear it.

But clear it it would.

I sensed an overwhelming

Had the poison of eastern despotism and decline, seeping from Byzantium, to the Sultan’s Palace, to the Kremlin, finally expended itself

Although Brodsky did not carry the comparison further, the parallels between the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the decline of the Soviet Empire were indeed striking.

BULGARISTAN, 18 KILOMETERS.

YUNANISTAN (GREECE), 5 KILOMETERS

Papandreou was the most original of Balkan ghosts, a man of our own times who moved in the depths of the darkest past: more baffling than Cardinal Stepinac, Gotse Delchev, or King Carol.

knew that Greeks possessed philotimo, an untranslatable word implying self-honor,

It was the way of the Oriental potentate: How dare this man insult me by offering me a part of what is already mine by right

politics in Greece is erotic. It is probably no accident that so many of the Greek words dealing with political power are feminine: kyvernisi (“government”), eklogi (“election”), ideologia (“ideology”), poreia (“protest march”), eksoussia (“authority”), tromokratia (“terrorism”)

Greeks are married to the East. The West is our mistress only. Like any mistress, the West excites and fascinates us, but our relationship with it is episodic and superficial.”

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