There is no eastern Europe

There is no Eastern Europe.

I’ve been thinking about that statement, made by J, one of the colleagues I have met during my sojourn here. He’s another expat living and teaching Canadian literature at a nearby university. We talked about my surprise at the response I have received both by naming “the Balkans” here in the title of my blog and when I understood that to Croats, Croatia is in central Europe, not eastern Europe. Of course, the Balkans is a geographical term, but its connotations are that “Balkans” are peasants, brutes, primitive peoples. It’s heard as derogatory (and I’ve apologized for using it). The question of who is an eastern European is more complicated, it seems. Where is eastern Europe? I really don’t know.

One of the many gifts I have recently received is a book by Rebecca West called Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. It’s a BIG book (1,150 pages of small print in the edition I have), a travel saga, written in the 1940s by an astonishingly literate and skilled author who became curious about Yugoslavia (as it was then) and took two trips t/here. I’m learning a lot about the complexities of the histories of this region. The first part of West’s book is about Croatia, and I’m struck by how many of her observations then match with mine now. The market, for instance, where people still sell things under red and white umbrellas. In the 1940s the women selling produce are described by West as “peasants [who] stood square on their feet, and amazed us by their faces, which are as mobile and sensitive as if they were the most cultivated townspeople.” Of course, both women and men sell stuff at the Dolac market. Yesterday when I said “dovidjenja/goodbye” to the woman who sold me wild asparagus she giggled at my formality—or perhaps my bad accent! Rebecca West goes on to describe what the women who sold at the market wore: two aprons wrapped around the body, one covering the front; the other covering the back (I’ve worn two hospital gowns that way). Today the women wear completely ordinary modern clothing, but the point of the description of the clothing was this:

They gave the sense of the very opposite of what we mean by the word ‘peasant’ when we use it in a derogatory sense, thinking women made doltish by repeated pregnancies and a lifetime spent in the service of oafs in the villages that swim in mud to the thresholds every winter. This costume was evolved by women who could stride alone if they were eight months gone with child, and who would dance in the mud if they felt like it, no matter what any oaf said. This statue of a “peasant” market woman stands at the top of the steps that lead to the market.

I think I know what she means.

The history of this place is all about other countries, other empires, invading and controlling them, while there is a continuing sense of national identity that unites the regions and invites shows of patriotism. One evening in Osijek I went to a café for a last glass of wine before retiring for the night in the student residence at the university where I was lodged (rather than a hotel). There was a private party going on. Students. One of them was graduating and the friends were celebrating. One guy had a guitar and everyone was singing—loudly, and, clearly, everyone involved knew all the words of the songs. I asked someone what the people were singing and the answer was “old Croatian songs.” If I understood the guy I was talking to correctly, they were old pop songs from 30 years ago, but they were sung with such gusto! This was no karaoke. Describing the singing at an Easter Sunday Mass, Rebecca West writes this: “Western church music is almost commonly petitioning and infantile, a sentiment cozening for remedy against sickness or misfortune, combined with a masochistic enjoyment in the malady, but this singing spoke of health and fullness.” That’s what I heard in that Osijek café bar. Health and fullness. In the main square in Zagreb on Saturdays a man sings what sound to me like folk songs. This evening there is a concert of traditional Croatian choral music. Men and boys wear the colours of the national sports teams. Croatian identity is affirmed over and over again.

But is no one in this region from eastern Europe? Is that connotation of “east” too attached to threatening Turks and colonizing Hungarians? What about Serbians? Please tell me how you identify with respect to the muddled histories and cultures (because it’s not about geography) of Europe. Hvala.