Elegy for Kosovo / KOSOVO: War and Revenge / Virtual War / Kosovo: A Short History
Kadare, Ismail & Judah, Tim & Ignatieff, Michael & Malcolm, Noel
the not entirely convincing explanation weight of its dead fixations and throws hold out the most ancient questions of is that she has embraced commercial art off the lead of its prose, one...
...That tions ends with the death of the visionary the neck up...
...broader European integration and a The magnificent chapter describing postwar professional comeback seem Adie's final creation provides a stylis- Elegy for Kosovo doomed...
...But Kermode does not take tance), and Women in Black in Serbia, such a question as rhetorical at all...
...Judah is especially good on the First Place, Theology First Place, Spirituality Third Place, History gradual disillusion with Rugova's strat- 1-57075-311-3 paper $24.00 1.57075.245-1 paper $13.00 1-57075-282-6 paper $20.00 egy: the growth of a sense among Kosovar Albanians that "his idea that they Catholic Book Award Pax Christi Award would be rewarded for their 'good behavior' by Western countries had been just plain wrong...
...The char- locked away nowhere, victim of the acters' statements about art-one says, world's shared failure, begging for Valerie Sayers, professor of English at the "Art is not capable of teaching"-are something to read...
...there is at least one sen- forces at the legendary Battle of Kosovo...
...If we are to reclaim - -I intoxicating verse...
...0 cialism of the gallery scene...
...The account of his incarcera- Tim Judah turies-old enmity has now been rention is one of the bravest pieces of writ- Yale University Press, $16.99,288 pp...
...For Commonweal 38 September 8, 2000...
...tic and thematic link to the story of Ismail Kadare Performing at the castle of a northern Taimur Martin, who, of course, also re- translated by Peter Constantine nobleman, Gjorg and Vladan infuriate sides in the Mideast, where he has been Arcade, $17-95,121 pp...
...in international politics-we shall need I remember once leaving the theater to display more imagination and resolve after a production of All's Well That Ends than we have done since the agreement Well with a friend who asked me, with ending the conflict in Kosovo a year ago a kind of stunned awe, "How does he June...
...He sounds some nec- how Shakespeare will be performed in essary warning bells about the risks in- the next century, much the way A.C...
...Judah's treatment of the daily reality of repression and systematic humanrights violations experienced by Kosovar Albanians throughout this period is notably evenhanded...
...Adie begins her virtual POSTBELLUM reality experiments borrowing from paintings by Rousseau and van Gogh, and finally reproduces the interior of French and German lands in search of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the great safety and purpose, their attempts at basilica-turned-mosque...
...His QD www.orbisbooks.com discussion of the politicization of the Commonweal 3 7 September 8, 2000 of the international community...
...0 Michael Ignatieff, arguably the most in Kosovo set up by the International visible "public intellectual" writing and Rescue Committee-which are too often Brian D. Phillips is campaign coordinator broadcasting in Britain today, is also overlooked...
...NATO intervention of 1999, what, if any, alone, to be abandoned, to abandon, to evidence do we have that the peoples of imagine and to represent God: "You Kosovo have begun to "sing of other turn in the entranceway of illusion, gap- things...
...But that Shakespeare wrote ridicule and neglect...
...As one exasperated lisreader who abides with Martin in his Virtual War tener puts it, "It is true that there is dissolitary cell will emerge spent and shak- Kosovo and Beyond sension everywhere, but dissension like en...
...Their epic journey follows the sigence in a town like Mitrovica-would Martin's narrative asserts, "On every defeat of the massed Christian armies seem to confirm the pessimism of Gjorg urgent page, in every book born of of southeastern Europe by the Ottoman and Vladan's critics...
...herent in the West's capacity to wage a Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy influkind of remote-control warfare where the Edward T. Oakes enced so many directors in the first half consent and engagement of its citizens of the past century, or Jan Kott's Shakebecome at best marginal considerations he theater critic Kenneth speare, Our Contemporary influenced later for those in command...
...Kadare's transcendent vision is do it...
...Judah recounts how the Kosovar Albanian population rallied 'round the rather curious figure of Ibrahim Rugova and organized itself into a passive resistance movement after the suspension of Kosovo's autonomous status within Yugoslavia in rich and illuminating detail...
...This is one of those University of Notre Dame, is the author of five didactic and heavy-handed, but Adie's books born of urgent need, the need to novels, including Brain Fever (Doubleday...
...Ignatieff's Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond cannot match the narrative sweep of Judah's chronological study, but his questioning of the implications NEVER AT A LOSS FOR WORDS for Western democracies of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention and the new clinical warfare, where victors can ing for that happy medium, in either emerge without having sustained a single performance or in criticism, that forecasualty, is no less fervent and necessary...
...He travmoral consequences of the NATO inter- ten more closely and add our own sup- els frequently to the Balkans...
...space to the appalling crimes committed Tim Judah, a journalist and essayist Judah's portrait of the ill-fated Ram- by Milosevic's forces and their local alwhose incisive coverage of the wars in bouillet negotiations immediately prior lies, he chooses to view the events of the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s to the start of the air strikes against the March June 1999 as a series of sometimes has rightly earned him a place in the Milosevic regime is especially sobering...
...What is to prevent moral abstrac- wrights, what a director needs is just on every dimension of Shakespeare's tions like human rights from inducing this kind of "neck-up" actor, and never achievement except his poetry...
...However, a crop of human need...
...creations allow for a much more expansive exploration of what it means to copy and to represent, what it means to live inside art...
...a ish conquest...
...No one would dare that debased word in the new century- to deny that obvious fact, but who bothif we are to discover a fresh vocabulary ers to notice it anymore...
...While his digest of nearly six hundred years of Kosovar history cannot com- Congratulations pare with the extended exploration of Serb and Albanian fact and fiction in to Our Newest Award Winners Noel Malcolm's Kosovo: A Short History, the strength of Judah's book lies in Catholic Book Award Catholic Book Award Catholic Book Award his expert grasp of developments during the period following Milosevic's swift ascent to power during the late 1980s...
...might even present a turning point in democratic control...
...For high- from the neck up...
...must face up to the unintended effects of "the finest actor on earth, Seen in retrospect, and especially with moralizing the use of violence...
...stakes grew higher throughout the past war itself, Judah's judgment is comThe most useful of these latest analy- decade is one of his most significant con- mendable...
...merge, the dark of two worlds plowed Noel Malcolm Just over one year after the end of the by meditations on what it means to be HarperCollins, $16.99, 494 pp...
...At least with some play- fessor's scriptorium, concentration falls name...
...the not entirely convincing explanation weight of its dead fixations and throws hold out the most ancient questions of is that she has embraced commercial art off the lead of its prose, one sentence existence alongside the most contemin order to get away from the commer- that remembers the prisoner in his cell, porary visions of reality...
...history in the region, or have we sucThat's what we've called it forever, and Brian O. Phillips ceeded only in adding new verses to the it's so cheap, so self-promoting, to in- familiar, deadly ballads of ethnic and revent new vocabulary for every god- t the heart of his masterful ligious division...
...For God's sake, call it God...
...The tensions within and among the var- misperceptions on all sides, rather than as Judah's Kosovo: War and Revenge pro- ious delegations, the high comedy of the a narrative of unqualified success and vides an accessible overview of the po- living and dining arrangements in the unambiguous moral victory on the part litical struggles that culminated in the outbreak of armed conflict early in 1998...
...one's next-door neighbors, his settings As she expires, she repeats the word wondrously exotic: all this comes across "Europe" to herself, "as if she were try- with delightful vitality in the best proing to seize this word transformed by ductions...
...This remark was Kermode's book in hand, it does seem flown abstractions carry an inherent jus- meant as a put-down, but I never took it odd that, both on stage and in the protification of everything done in their that way...
...The author's account of the unlikely emergence of the Kosovo Liberation Army and its rupture of the long, uneasy standoff between Serbs and Albanians makes for gripping reading...
...isolation and Adie's moral crisis are set Henry Holt, $23, 246 pp...
...These could be the music of for the Europe Program at the International much preoccupied with the political and the future, if only we are prepared to lis- Secretariat of Amnesty International...
...His question was rhetorical, mirrored in scores of civil and commu- meant only to express his wonder, not nity initiatives in the region-among just at the unusual story, but more at them the remarkable Zemlja Djece (Land "I never liked his comedies...
...He is careful to point out, for example, that while the Third Place, Pastoral Ministry 1.57075.243.5 paper $22.00 Serbian response to an increasing pat- 1-57075-250-8 paper $14.00 tern of attacks on police and other agents of the regime was indefensibly exces- At your bookseller or direct sive, those targeted by the Serb author- ORBIS BOOKS ities during these years were frequently 30 Years of Books that Matter 1-800-258-5838 engaged in a campaign of violence...
...While rightly giving ample ses of the Kosovo conflict comes from tributions to contemporary debate...
...The emotional realities of Martin's Michael Ignatieff yours is really unique in the world...
...Recurrent violent atdamned thing, at this late a date...
...Their recital dreading and longing for his story to War and Revenge appears even more absurd as this cencontinue...
...Were the brutal events of last ing down the airplane aisle, and you year the catalyst for a decisive break with make it out...
...other aspect of Shakespeare is studied defining all human-rights violators as The distinguished literary critic Frank almost to death," Kermode says, "but barbarians, legitimizes barbarism...
...and the network of local youth centers porting voices to the chorus...
...As he argues, Tynan once famously de- directors Peter Brook and Joseph Papp "those who supported the war in Kosovo scribed John Gielgud as in the second half...
...new books considering the historical tence, one where the author is bigger As Gjorg, an Albanian, and Vladan, a background of the 1998-99 war in Kosothan the writer, one that sheds the Serb, wander out of the Balkans into vo and sifting the political fallout from Commonweal 36 September 8, 2000 the NATO action also leaves one won- discourse of human rights in Kosovo chateau near Paris, and the drama of posdering whether the international com- (and the impact of this phenomenon on sibilities glimpsed and shattered are all munity's catalogue of best-loved tunes the international community) as the retold with considerable skill...
...After I overcame the redundant minstrels have no repermy initial distaste for the Martin narra- toire beyond the old songs of mutual tive, I found myself simultaneously Kosoro hatred and martial exploits...
...quite extraordinary miscalculations and front rank of Balkan commentators...
...For those who are look- Shakespeare's plots are absorbing, his old lady who had urged Gjorg and characters often more memorable than Vladan to learn to sing bold new songs...
...the cataract of language on display that of Children) in Bosnia, Otpor (Resis- His tragedies are great...
...Every an absolutist frame of mind which, in more so than with Shakespeare...
...Elegy for Kosovo, the Alban- tacks and campaigns of intimidation Whether or not Powers achieves a A ian fabulist Ismail Kadare against minority populations designed Theory of Everything, he comes very places the poignant tale of to create an exclusively Albanian Kosoclose to putting into practice a Theory two fourteenth-century minstrels joined vo-as well as continued Serbian intranof Everything a Novel Can Achieve...
...So effectively has the self-interrogation on issues around the Frank Kertnode author established his case that his book notion of wars for human rights and their Farrar, 5traus and Giroux, $30,324 pp...
...in flight...
...dered irrelevant in the wake of the Turking Powers has committed to paper...
...Kosovo telling them bluntly, "You must sing of The motifs of both stories intersect and A Short History other things...
...More helpfully, one gentlewoman seeks off and deepened, moreover, by the re- to spur Gjorg and Vladan on to a new markable balance Powers strikes, ulti- and more inclusive cultural vision, mately, between structure and content...
...Kermode has just written a book for the fact that he was a poet has somehow One of Kadare's three enigmatic fic- those who like their Shakespeare "from dropped out of consideration...
...evening...
...vention...
...About the is not in similar need of refreshment...
...grounds not the actor nor the critic but As an ardent supporter of the NATO Shakespeare's the playwright's language, this book will intervention, Ignatieff conducts a lively Language come as a relief...
...their hosts when it becomes clear that imprisoned for years...
Vol. 127 • September 2000 • No. 15
