ADRIATIC: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age, by Robert D. Kaplan
One can learn much from this idiosyncratic book, although only a little about the Adriatic. As Robert D. Kaplan, the author of several books on international affairs, tells it, “Adriatic” is “not military strategy, political science, original archival history, conventional long-form journalism, traditional travel writing, memoir or literary criticism. After all, what does the poetry of Ezra Pound have to do with the current position of the West and Russia in Montenegro?” A good question — although one left unanswered. Instead, Kaplan offers the reader a diverse collection of observations, ruminations, narrations and occasional incriminations clustered around a travelogue through cities on or near the eponymous sea.
The journey begins in Rimini, where a piazza and a church offer Kaplan an opportunity to meditate on Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, Pound, T.S. Eliot, Henri Pirenne and others. It then moves on to Ravenna and Venice. The Italian chapters have a decidedly different feel from those that follow on Slovakia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania and Greece. Kaplan portrays himself as an elder traveler, shuttling between Italian tourist sites with a cargo of well-worn books. “Truly, I travel in order to read. I cannot do one without the other. The weight of clothes in my gear is constraining, the weight of books liberating.”
Weather, landscapes, train rides — all are an invitation for Kaplan to plumb his extensive bibliography of poetry, literature and history. These expositions reveal a wisdom and uncertainty produced by a lifetime of both practical and book learning. It is a wonder to follow Kaplan’s ever-shifting train of thought as it moves from, say, Boccaccio to Claudio Magris to James Joyce to “The Arabian Nights” against a backdrop of poplars, monuments and cafes. He also makes a point of visiting Italian graves — the Byzantine philosopher Gemistos Plethon in Rimini, Theodoric and Dante in Ravenna, Pound and Joseph Brodsky in Venice, and the site of a Nazi death camp in Trieste.
It is at Trieste that the book changes direction. “I quietly decide that being a well-read and intelligent tourist is not enough; I must talk to people.” In practice, this means that Kaplan interviews a series of journalists, politicians, authors, academics and others across the Adriatic Balkans. “I am becoming less of a traveler and more of a journalist as I head south.” The literary asides are not banished in the lands of the former Yugoslavia, but they do make way for the voices of this contested area, still haunted by the specters of Tito, the Hapsburgs and the Soviets.
The Grand Canal in VeniceCredit…Getty Images
Speaking of specters, the second half of this work evokes the spirit of Kaplan’s famous “Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History” (1993), which covered much of the same geography. “Balkan Ghosts” received a great deal of acclaim worldwide but was less warmly received by professional historians. Among the latter, Kaplan singles out Noel Malcolm, who “wrote a devastatingly harsh review” because “Balkan Ghosts” “did not come remotely close to meeting Malcolm’s standards of objectivity and research.” But “my initial rage over the review gave way over time to a deliberate resolve to learn from such criticism.” Elsewhere, he writes: “I silently determined to henceforth explore also the best works of academia, in both history and political science.” True to his word, Kaplan employs Malcolm’s own scholarly study of the Bruni and Bruti families of the 16th century (“Agents of Empire”).
But if many academic historians have been critical of Kaplan, he exhibits nothing but admiration for the best of them. “How I regret not continuing my education beyond college and toward a Ph.D. … I would have wanted to dig deep and narrowly like an archaeologist, in order to illuminate something both profound and panoramic.” The historical scope of Kaplan’s canvas is vast, yet he works hard to bring to it the fruits of modern historical scholarship. That is rare among popular authors, and deserves much praise.
In my view, as an academic and a specialist on medieval and early modern Venice, Kaplan has gone a long way toward achieving his goal. Academic history is hard — often written in precise and specialized terms for other historians. Undaunted, Kaplan brings to his reader (in digestible forms) scholars like Peter Brown, Norman Davies, Deborah Deliyannis, Peter Frankopan, Judith Herrin, Frederic Lane, Philip Mansel, Francis Oakley, Chris Wickham and others. They enrich his narrative and enliven his descriptions.
And yet. Kaplan’s personal affinity for the Balkans produces a noticeable blind spot when it comes to Venice. With few exceptions, all the destinations in this book were once part of Venice’s maritime empire. Venetian architecture, especially in Dalmatia and Corfu, is described yet its implications are not. While Kaplan is certainly correct that “the bulk of output in the humanities is notoriously spoiled by jargon,” there remains a prodigious amount of serious modern scholarship on Venice and its Stato da Mar. It is unconsidered here. Instead, Kaplan relies on older works by Mary McCarthy, John Julius Norwich and Jan Morris. Had he, during his sojourn in Venice, peeked into the State Archives at the Frari or the Marciana Library on the Piazzetta San Marco, Kaplan would have discovered a hive of international scholars digging into the fascinating and complex history of this unique republic. Without those insights, Kaplan’s medieval Venetians are flat, lifeless and too easily defined. “Pragmatism, of both the ruthless and the enlightened variety, was the guiding spirit of medieval Venice.” Really? Can any people, particularly one as diverse as the Venetians, be so summarily dismissed? Realism, Kaplan reports, “was the one true religion of Venice.” Why then did they build over a hundred churches and monasteries? This is one part of the famous “anti-myth” of Venice, that the conniving Venetians were a nation of Shylocks ever demanding their pound of flesh.
Kaplan does not go that far, as his approach to Venice and its empire is generally one of benign indifference. And to be sure, apart from this mild oversight, he has written an excellent exploration of the Adriatic’s intriguing geographic and intellectual landscapes.
ADRIATIC: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age, by Robert D. Kaplan | 340 pp. | Random House | $28.99
Thomas F. Madden is a professor of history and the director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University. He is the author of “Venice: A New History.”
