what is Serbian literature?
Serbian literature is major literature in the Balkans; at least during my Polish years, I used to constantly stumble over it; it was abundantly translated into Polish, for a reason that was not quite clear to me bulging importantly in the narrow horizons of our world.
Its medieval beginnings are rooted in the Old Church Slavonic written culture. The oldest Serbian texts date back to the 10th and 11th centuries. The 12th century brought about the figure of Saint Sava, known as the Enlightener, mainly because of his contribution to law-giving and autocephalous Church organisation. The best-known post-medieval phenomenon is Serbian epic poetry, created anonymously and transmitted orally between the 14th and the 19th century. It used to be performed with the accompaniment of a gusle, a single-strained musical instrument. They speak of the Battle of Kosovo, the legendary hero Marko Kraljević, various hajduks, and uskoks. This kind of oral literature was alive during the Ottoman occupation of Serbia.
On the other hand, also the traditions of print, dating back to the 15th century, were maintained, although several Serbian printing houses were operating from Venice during the Ottoman period. The Baroque was a rich period in Serbian cultural history, marked by intense exchange with Russia that counterbalanced Turkish influence.
Modern Serbian literature started with the independence from the Ottoman Empire, building a new national spirit upon the forms and motives of oral epic poetry. One of the most famous examples of this new poetry was The Mountain Wreath (1847), written by the vladika of Montenegro, Petar II, known as Njegoš (Његош). Another conspicuous figure of the epoch was the philologist and linguist Vuk Karadžić, responsible for the modern codification of the Serbian language.
Also, other 19th-century currents, such as Realism, were productive in Serbia, which offered a panoply of picturesque topics with its rural and urban populations. One of the most famous novels of the period is Nečista krv (Impure blood) by Bora Stanković. Localised in the city of Vranje, it thematises southern Serbia and its Christian-Muslim duality at the turbulent time of Balkan Wars. It is essentially a drama of a female figure, Sophka, from an impoverished Turkish family, who is married off to the family of the gazda Marko. Abused in more than one way, she gives birth to sickly children, the result of her "impure blood". Progressively, she merges into alcoholism and indifference, till the symbolic final moment of her old age, when she removes the cold ashes of her fireplace.
The first decades of the 20th century brought about the movement of Moderna, searching its synthonisation with European currents. It produced remarkable poetry, including the ode Plava grobnica (The Sea Tomb), by Milutin Bojić, dedicated to the Serbian soldiers of the ww1, buried on the Greek island of Vido.
Finally, the most illustrious name related to 20th-century Serbian literature is that of Ivo Andrić, the Nobel Prize in 1961. Yet another internationally reputed author is Danilo Kiš.
Its medieval beginnings are rooted in the Old Church Slavonic written culture. The oldest Serbian texts date back to the 10th and 11th centuries. The 12th century brought about the figure of Saint Sava, known as the Enlightener, mainly because of his contribution to law-giving and autocephalous Church organisation. The best-known post-medieval phenomenon is Serbian epic poetry, created anonymously and transmitted orally between the 14th and the 19th century. It used to be performed with the accompaniment of a gusle, a single-strained musical instrument. They speak of the Battle of Kosovo, the legendary hero Marko Kraljević, various hajduks, and uskoks. This kind of oral literature was alive during the Ottoman occupation of Serbia.
On the other hand, also the traditions of print, dating back to the 15th century, were maintained, although several Serbian printing houses were operating from Venice during the Ottoman period. The Baroque was a rich period in Serbian cultural history, marked by intense exchange with Russia that counterbalanced Turkish influence.
Modern Serbian literature started with the independence from the Ottoman Empire, building a new national spirit upon the forms and motives of oral epic poetry. One of the most famous examples of this new poetry was The Mountain Wreath (1847), written by the vladika of Montenegro, Petar II, known as Njegoš (Његош). Another conspicuous figure of the epoch was the philologist and linguist Vuk Karadžić, responsible for the modern codification of the Serbian language.
Also, other 19th-century currents, such as Realism, were productive in Serbia, which offered a panoply of picturesque topics with its rural and urban populations. One of the most famous novels of the period is Nečista krv (Impure blood) by Bora Stanković. Localised in the city of Vranje, it thematises southern Serbia and its Christian-Muslim duality at the turbulent time of Balkan Wars. It is essentially a drama of a female figure, Sophka, from an impoverished Turkish family, who is married off to the family of the gazda Marko. Abused in more than one way, she gives birth to sickly children, the result of her "impure blood". Progressively, she merges into alcoholism and indifference, till the symbolic final moment of her old age, when she removes the cold ashes of her fireplace.
The first decades of the 20th century brought about the movement of Moderna, searching its synthonisation with European currents. It produced remarkable poetry, including the ode Plava grobnica (The Sea Tomb), by Milutin Bojić, dedicated to the Serbian soldiers of the ww1, buried on the Greek island of Vido.
Finally, the most illustrious name related to 20th-century Serbian literature is that of Ivo Andrić, the Nobel Prize in 1961. Yet another internationally reputed author is Danilo Kiš.
I have readMarija Knežević, Uličarke (2007)
David Albahari, Ludwig (2007) Ivo Andrić, Na Drini ćuprija (1945) |
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I have written... nothing ...
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liberty
(a dead preservative)
I read Uličarke, by Marija Knežević, from a handsome volume published in Gdańsk on the occasion of literary competition for the title of "European Liberty Poet". It's not an excellent poetry, nothing truly memorable. It is a female poetry, "regularly trained | to remain in the shadow of men". She speaks of sex workers, offering reliable service, since women in general are made for all kinds of ancillary works. She speaks of women humiliated, shamed, even on their way to the nearest grocery store. Paradoxically, street is not a familiar universe for the street woman (uličarka); she is an eternal foreigner, trans-culturally and trans-historically.
I'm not sure if Knežević actually speaks a lot about freedom. I would say that she rather disserts on female condition in which liberty is not available, or just as available as a fancy vacation trip paid in 12 instalments - a journey that ceases, of course, to be a fancy, and is transformed into a liability, a burden.
Women like those she speaks about, East-European teachers and sex workers, don't have enough money. Their services are never well paid. They are never valorised, not even by their own children. Sometimes they try to fathom the depth of their non-existence, and are surprised. Eventually, they could expect love: longing and fidelity of a dog. They plant flowers. Sometimes, there is one (only one) dead preservative that falls on the floor near their slippers.
Marija Knežević, Ulicznice, trans. into Polish by Dorota Jovanka Ćirlić, Gdański: słowo/obraz terytoria, 2009.
Kraków, 27.08.2021.
I'm not sure if Knežević actually speaks a lot about freedom. I would say that she rather disserts on female condition in which liberty is not available, or just as available as a fancy vacation trip paid in 12 instalments - a journey that ceases, of course, to be a fancy, and is transformed into a liability, a burden.
Women like those she speaks about, East-European teachers and sex workers, don't have enough money. Their services are never well paid. They are never valorised, not even by their own children. Sometimes they try to fathom the depth of their non-existence, and are surprised. Eventually, they could expect love: longing and fidelity of a dog. They plant flowers. Sometimes, there is one (only one) dead preservative that falls on the floor near their slippers.
Marija Knežević, Ulicznice, trans. into Polish by Dorota Jovanka Ćirlić, Gdański: słowo/obraz terytoria, 2009.
Kraków, 27.08.2021.
copyright
(the part of the place)
Belgrade, two friends, one of them, Ludwig, is a famous writer, another just S., someone who cleans: the flat and the texts. It is S. who gets the idea of a great novel, it is Ludwig who writes it. To whom does the novel belong? Ludwig takes full possession of it, shamelessly.
The years go by. S. returns to the case after a long time; he has never truly left that case, that situation, that understanding of himself conditioned by Ludwig. All those years, he lived in hate, in abjection he felt at any mention of Ludwig, bound to him by his anger. Not only his mind, but also his body participates in that peculiar enslavement, trying in vain to expulse the content of the empty stomach, of the intestines where Ludwig is no more, and yet present, and yet haunting. Ludwig crushed him like a road roller, with total indifference, with unperturbed innocence of his grandeur; S. cannot forget. It is not even the question of fault and forgiveness. He simply cannot forget. He is a prisoner of a situation where Ludwig is no more. What prevents him from getting rid of him is his sheer absence.
As I think about it, the psychological state described in this novel is a common one; it seems very familiar to me. I faced the same difficulty of getting rid of an absent lover in my youth. It was so difficult, because he was no more; I couldn't smash him, I couldn't shout my grievance straight in his face. Of course, Ludwig and S. were not lovers; the whole problem is about something more important, a great idea, unrecognised authorship. This is something that adds quite a novel, much more original dimension. S. is a man to whom a great idea comes just once in his lifetime. The contrary of prolific, multifarious geniuses, lets say Leonardo da Vinci, to whom great ideas come over and over again, so numerous and varied they can hardly squeeze them in their lifetime. Conversely, the lifetime of S. is void. That makes the stolen good even more precious.
But what is the idea of an unwritten novel? What is the status of a non-text, in the limbo of sheer intuition? Perhaps this is also an important question. Where are the unwritten books? Are these ideas "in the air", a common property of the time, of an epoch? S. claims having arrived before Ludwig at a given place, at a point in literary history (of Serbia), namely the point in which its former provincialism is about to cease. S. was there first, but Ludwig articulated the message of that peculiar point. He wrote the text that was lying there, waiting to be written. Another man could have done it. Is it like this?
Many people say it is like this with scientific discoveries. Sometimes the state-of-the-art comes so close to a given breakthrough point that it is not clear who will be the first to step on the threshold. Two or more people can make the same discovery almost at the same time, independently from one another; there are many cases like this. But also in literature? Two or more people writing the same novel that simply had to be written at a given moment?
Maybe S. has no right whatsoever to claim any degree of co-authorship in Ludwig's text. Perhaps it is only an illusion of agency, of creative power he does not possess. The rumination process, described in full detail by Albahari, may belong to the very condition of sterility, of that essential, inalienable void that seems to characterise S.
Does this S., at a given moment, stand for Serbia? A sterile country where writers are no more (just like Albahari himself, who chose to live in Canada); shamelessly, they are ready to deny its participation in whatever they write, they refuse to recognise the part of the place.
David Albahari, Ludwig, Beograd, Stubovi kulture, 2007.
Kraków, 27.08.2021.
The years go by. S. returns to the case after a long time; he has never truly left that case, that situation, that understanding of himself conditioned by Ludwig. All those years, he lived in hate, in abjection he felt at any mention of Ludwig, bound to him by his anger. Not only his mind, but also his body participates in that peculiar enslavement, trying in vain to expulse the content of the empty stomach, of the intestines where Ludwig is no more, and yet present, and yet haunting. Ludwig crushed him like a road roller, with total indifference, with unperturbed innocence of his grandeur; S. cannot forget. It is not even the question of fault and forgiveness. He simply cannot forget. He is a prisoner of a situation where Ludwig is no more. What prevents him from getting rid of him is his sheer absence.
As I think about it, the psychological state described in this novel is a common one; it seems very familiar to me. I faced the same difficulty of getting rid of an absent lover in my youth. It was so difficult, because he was no more; I couldn't smash him, I couldn't shout my grievance straight in his face. Of course, Ludwig and S. were not lovers; the whole problem is about something more important, a great idea, unrecognised authorship. This is something that adds quite a novel, much more original dimension. S. is a man to whom a great idea comes just once in his lifetime. The contrary of prolific, multifarious geniuses, lets say Leonardo da Vinci, to whom great ideas come over and over again, so numerous and varied they can hardly squeeze them in their lifetime. Conversely, the lifetime of S. is void. That makes the stolen good even more precious.
But what is the idea of an unwritten novel? What is the status of a non-text, in the limbo of sheer intuition? Perhaps this is also an important question. Where are the unwritten books? Are these ideas "in the air", a common property of the time, of an epoch? S. claims having arrived before Ludwig at a given place, at a point in literary history (of Serbia), namely the point in which its former provincialism is about to cease. S. was there first, but Ludwig articulated the message of that peculiar point. He wrote the text that was lying there, waiting to be written. Another man could have done it. Is it like this?
Many people say it is like this with scientific discoveries. Sometimes the state-of-the-art comes so close to a given breakthrough point that it is not clear who will be the first to step on the threshold. Two or more people can make the same discovery almost at the same time, independently from one another; there are many cases like this. But also in literature? Two or more people writing the same novel that simply had to be written at a given moment?
Maybe S. has no right whatsoever to claim any degree of co-authorship in Ludwig's text. Perhaps it is only an illusion of agency, of creative power he does not possess. The rumination process, described in full detail by Albahari, may belong to the very condition of sterility, of that essential, inalienable void that seems to characterise S.
Does this S., at a given moment, stand for Serbia? A sterile country where writers are no more (just like Albahari himself, who chose to live in Canada); shamelessly, they are ready to deny its participation in whatever they write, they refuse to recognise the part of the place.
David Albahari, Ludwig, Beograd, Stubovi kulture, 2007.
Kraków, 27.08.2021.
my travels in search of Serbia
Belgrade
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5.06.2016
During my first trip to Serbia, two years ago, I left the country with a singular sensation of meaninglessness. Thus I was glad to come again, and I came well-intentioned, prepared to buy and read books, and to understand. And yet the singular sensation of meaninglessness persisted, as I struggled to decipher the Cyrillic across a tiny exposition dedicated to Vuk Karadžić (not a single world in English) and all-too-humble ceramic and carpet patterns in the ethnographic museum. Perhaps I needed to come to Belgrade to discover things about Europe, and what sort of European I am. Not a minor, peripheral one, but a massive, unforgiving representative of that major Europe, the hard-working, the efficient, the all-too-wise, all-too-well-informed; the bearer of distinction of Europe against the Orientals. With those habitable boats distributed between Danube and Sava, Belgrade makes anyone think about Amsterdam. But I've been granted the occasion of experiencing an afternoon in one of those boats at New Belgrade's shore. The analogy makes the difference even more striking, since I can't imagine the Dutch spending their entire Saturday staring onto Amstel, smoking and fantasising vaguely about catapulting pigs into mosques... Serbian people revolt against the idea of a new waterfront that supposedly is to be built by unnamed Emirati investors. For sure they have their reasons, unfathomable to me, as I've only seen the shining surface of the elegant advertisements haunting me since the airport. They wouldn't be keen, I presume, to jeopardize the absolute peace of their smoking and staring. There were insects in the hostel where I stayed, rated 8.3 on the Booking.com. In the botanical garden, right on the opposite side of the street, one of the employees noticed me taking photos of plants with such a professional interest that she asked if I was a botanist. Serbian people revolt, she complained, perhaps in guise of excuse for the poverty of the collection, against them buying expensive plants for the garden. And for sure, among the botanical gardens of the world, this one was among the most modest, although not as shabby as I expected: their unique glass-house had been freshly renovated with a generous EU support, as the starry sky at the entrance announced. In the hostel where I stayed the cockroaches were in blossom, as did numerous linden trees, pervading all the city with an enchanted fragrance. |
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Novi Sad
A dismal city, still in a state of disrepair at the time of my first visit to Serbia in 2013; ruins and reminders of a melancholic beauty.
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Đavolja Varoš
A peculiar rock formation, part of the Radan Mountain. Similar to the famous Cappadocian landscape, but on much smaller scale.
Palić lake & resort
Palić is a dreamy and silent 19th century resort, with its specific atmosphere very well preserved. Kind of melancholic sanctuary of the Balkans of other times, miraculously preserved in a forgotten margin of History.
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