Robert D. Kaplan - Adriatic : A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age

Copyright 2022 by Robert D. Kaplan

Map copyright 2022 by David Lindroth Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

R andom H ouse and the H ouse colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Brief portions of this work were originally published in Mediterranean Winter by Robert Kaplan (New York: Random House, 2004).

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Carcanet Press Limited: Excerpts from The Bust of Tiberius from Collected Poems in English by Joseph Brodsky, edited by Ann Kjellberg, translated by Anthony Hecht, copyright 2000 by the Estate of Joseph Brodsky. Rights in the United Kingdom are controlled by Carcanet Press Limited. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Carcanet Press Limited, Manchester, UK. All rights reserved.

Indiana University Press: Excerpts from The Divine Comedy, Volume I: Inferno by Dante Alighieri, translated by Mark Musa, copyright 1971 by Indiana University Press; excerpts from The Divine Comedy, Volume II: Purgatory by Dante Alighieri, translated by Mark Musa, copyright 1981 by Mark Musa; excerpts from The Divine Comedy, Volume III: Paradise by Dante Alighieri, translated by Mark Musa, copyright 1984 by Mark Musa. Reprinted with permission of Indiana University Press.

New Directions Publishing Corporation and Faber and Faber Ltd.: Excerpts from Canto I, Canto IX, and Canto XVII from The Cantos of Ezra Pound by Ezra Pound, copyright 1934 by Ezra Pound; excerpts from Canto LII and Canto LXV from The Cantos of Ezra Pound by Ezra Pound, copyright 1940 by Ezra Pound; excerpt from Canto LXXXI from The Cantos of Ezra Pound by Ezra Pound, copyright 1948 by Ezra Pound. Print rights throughout the United Kingdom excluding Canada are controlled by Faber and Faber Ltd. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation and Faber and Faber Ltd.

Princeton University Press: Mythistorema from Collected Poems by George Seferis, translated, edited, and introduced by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, copyright 1995 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center.

Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC: Excerpts from The First Elegy and The Sixth Elegy from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke, edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell, copyright 1982 by Stephen Mitchell. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Kaplan, Robert D., author.

Title: Adriatic : a concert of civilizations at the end of the modern age / Robert D. Kaplan. Other titles: Concert of civilizations at the end of the modern age Description: New York : Random House, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021020803 (print) | LCCN 2021020804 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399591044 (hardback) | ISBN 9780399591068 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Kaplan, Robert D.TravelAdriatic Sea Region. | Adriatic Sea RegionDescription and travel. | Adriatic Sea RegionHistory. | Adriatic Sea RegionIn literature. Classification: LCC D971 .K37 2022 (print) | LCC D971 (ebook) | DDC 909/.098224dc23

Ebook ISBN9780399591068

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020803

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020804

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Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Pete Garceau

Art direction: Carlos Beltrn

Cover images: Etehem Bey mosque wall painting/ Alamy; map, spine background/Getty Images

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Here I am at the station from which I left on my first journey, it has remained as it was then, without any change. All the lives that I could have led begin here.

Italo Calvino, If on a Winters Night a Traveler (1979)

But how can you look at something and set your own ego aside? Whose eyes are doing the looking?

Italo Calvino, Mr. Palomar (1983)

Europe is too large and too nebulous a concept around which to forge any convincing human community. And it is not psychologically realistic to posit, along lines favored by the German writer Jrgen Habermas, a local and supranational duality of communities around which allegiances may form, prudently shorn of the dangerous emphasis on identity associated with the historical national unit. It does not work. Europe is more than a geographical notion but less than an answer.

Tony Judt, A Grand Illusion? (1996)