IN THE WAKE OF THE BALKAN MYTH

Also by David A. Norris

TEACH YOURSELF SERBO-CROAT

THE NOVELS OF MILOS CRNJANSKI: An Approach through Time

In the Wake of the Balkan Myth Questions of Identity and Modernity

David A. Norris Senior Lecturer Department of Slal'onic Studie.l' Uni1•er.1'ity of Nottin~ham

ISBN 978-1-349-99983-5 DOI 10.1057/9780230286535

ISBN 978-0-230-28653-5 (eBook)

First published in Great Britain 1999 by

MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-333-75168-8

First published in the United States of America 1999 by

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

ISBN 978-0-312-22175-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Norris, David A. In the wake of the Balkan myth : questions of identity and modernity I David A. Norris. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-22175-1 (cloth) I. National characteristics, Balkan-Historiography. 2. Balkan Peninsula-History-I 9th century-Historiography. 3. Balkan Peninsula-History-20th century-Historiography. 4. Yugoslav literature-20th century-History and criticism. 5. Yugoslav War, 1991-1995-Literature and the war. I. Title. DR24.5.N67 1999 949.6'0072-dc21 99-11217

CIP

© David A. Norris 1999

Reprint of the original edition 1999

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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.

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Contents

List of Maps and Plates

Preface

Acknowledgements

Pronunciation Guide

1 Constructing the Balkans A Very Balkan Tale From a Geographic Term to a Cultural Sign

2 Textual Representations Establishing Ambiguities The Noble Savage Twentieth-Century Representations The Anxiety Effect

3 The Balkans Talk Back The Drama of Human Misunderstanding? Milos Crnjanski: The Poetics of Exile lvo Andric: The Silence of the East Slobodan Selenic: Cultural Difference Inside and

VII

Vlll

xi

XII

1 1 4

15 15 23 32 38

46 46 49 59

Outside 68

4 Modernity: Urban Culture and the Balkans 80 City Literature in the West 80 Urban Culture in the Balkans 88 Belgrade 96 Urban Anxieties 103

5 Representations of City Life 108 Borisav Stankovic: The Death of the Oriental City 109 The Rise and Fall of Metropolitan Literature 119 Svetlana Velmar-Jankovic: Belgrade Re-Presented 126

6 Discourses of Identity and Modernity in Times of Crisis 136 Vladimir Arsenijevic: War by TV 137

v

VI

Notes

Contents

Slobodan Selenic: The Primal Struggle Emir Kusturica: The Great Betrayal

Bibliography

Index

144 154

164

173

178

List of Maps and Plates

Map 1. The Balkans xm Map 2. The Centre of Modern Belgrade: Sketch map XIV

Chapter 4: Plates

Plate 1. Toma Vucic Perisic, between 1850 and 1856 Plate 2. Prince Mihailo Obrenovic, about 1859 Plate 3. The River Bank of the Sava in Belgrade, 1876 Plate 4. A Belgrade Summer Tram, between 1900 and 1910 Plate 5. Teferic (Turkish term for outing in the country),

about 1880 Plate 6. A Family Outing to Soko Banja, 1908 Plate 7. A Girl from Nis, about 1880 Plate 8. Ana Marinkovic, 1906

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Preface

A great deal of attention has been paid to the Balkans and specifi­cally to the areas affected by the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Much of the analysis has concerned the history, politics and sociology of the region in an attempt to elucidate and explain how a country could disappear and produce the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Second World War. This book takes a sidelong look at the region from a different perspective. The different historical experi­ences of the Balkans, particularly the many centuries of Ottoman occupation, have produced fears and anxieties which are specific to the region by their extremity but not unknown elsewhere. These underlying cultural differences are inscribed in fictional narratives by writers and film-makers from the region. The narratives play out and expose these fears and anxieties over a broad range of themes and symbolic representations. In this book, I focus on issues concerning identity in terms of Balkan and non-Balkan cultures, and continue by examining questions of modernity and the ever­present dread of primitivism which is highlighted in certain types of narratives.

I begin by following the emergence and development of the term 'Balkan' itself, along with the culturally charged cognate terms of 'Balkanize' and 'Balkanization'. It soon becomes apparent that the geographic referent in this case is much smaller than Europe's south­eastern peninsula. In Chapter 2 I examine textual representations by British travel-writers, journalists, poets and others who have written about the region. There is a consistent pattern of recording certain types of portraits and reflections which tend to show the peoples of the Balkans as noble savages. Such signs are never far removed from the related signs of barbaric primitivism and severely limit the scope for cultural dialogue. In Chapter 3, having looked at the Balkans from outside, we turn to look at the issue of negative ima­gery from the perspective of Balkan authors. The views expressed abroad are internalized and expressed in narratives about the clash of two worlds where cultural differences and prejudices are high­lighted. There are four novels by three different authors discussed in this context who variously present the problem of a minor cul­ture facing a special form of cultural colonialism.

Vlll

Preface lX

The subject matter for Chapter 4 begins from the premise that negative imagery produced in the West denies Balkan identities access to the European sphere of modernity. The quintessential image of modernity is the city and many aspects of English and Western literature in general have been closely linked to urban environments. However, urbanization in the Balkans with its his­tory of sudden discontinuities has produced a more extreme representation of city life. In Chapter 5 I examine a number of novels and stories which show images from an Ottoman urban en­vironment and from the metropolitan life of Belgrade. Much of the literature is burdened by the city as an expression of civiliza­tion which is under constant threat from more primitive forces outside. The threat is translated into moments of great crisis when all that is valued is lost and destroyed. In the last chapter, the moment of crisis under examination concerns responses to the re­cent conflicts in former Yugoslavia in literature and on film. Some writers try to make sense out of events by trying to connect them with others in the past, while others focus on incomprehension and the unreality of the war. They represent the most extreme narra­tives trying to give form to a critical moment and as such rework issues addressed earlier in relation to questions of identity and modernity in the Balkans. The structure of the book begins and ends with the wars in former Yugoslavia, and therefore sources for detailed analysis are taken from that region. This area, as discussed in Chapter 1, is at the heart of what constitutes the cultural sign of the Balkans.

I owe the initiative for this book to my wife, Vladislava Ribnikar, when she remarked one day, 'Why don't you write a book about foreigners' views on the Balkans?' As is often the case with such research, the focus of the finished product has shifted and falls more on Balkan responses to those views. I am grateful for her help at each stage of the enterprise. She has read and commented on various versions of the manuscript as I worked it through from a few rough ideas into a more coherent whole. My students of Balkan cultural studies, literature and history have been another important source of encouragement, debating ideas and discussing material which I introduced into our classes both with me and one another. They would ask the kind of awkward questions which made me discard some claims and clarify others. I also wish to extend my thanks to Dr E. D. Goy and Mr Dusan Puvacic who read the final manuscript and made valuable comments on matters both of

X Preface

style and substance. I have used published translations of the texts in English where they exist. Other translations are my own. Of course, I am entirely responsible for any errors or inaccuracies in the book.

David A. Norris

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the publishing house Prosveta for permission to use the photographs found at the end of Chapter 4. They origi­nally appeared in Milanka Todic's book on the history of Serbian photography, Istorija srpske fotografije (1839-1940), published by Prosveta and the Museum of Applied Art in Belgrade, 1993. I also wish to extend my thanks to the National Museum in Belgrade for their permission to reproduce the portrait of Prince Milos of Ser­bia on the book cover.

XI

Pronunciation Guide

It is standard practice to use the original spelling of place names and other proper nouns in reference to the areas of the Balkans covered by Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro. The language spoken there was, until recently, considered to be one linguistic entity with the hybrid title of Serbo-Croat. After the wars in the region which occurred in the first half of the 1990s and the conse­quent desire of the warring parties to see themselves and to persuade others that they are different cultural units and independent politi­cal states it has become commonplace to recognize Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian as separate languages. Whichever practice is accepted the rules for pronunciation are the same and spelling is by and large phonetic. Most letters of the alphabet(s) can be recognized from English. The ones to watch for are: c always pronounced like ts in cats c like the ch in church c similar to c but softer like the t in tune dz like the j in judge dj similar to dz but softer like the d in dew h always pronounced in the throat as ch in Scottish loch j always pronounced as y in yes r is always trilled as common in languages such as Spanish (not

in the throat as in French). s like the sh in show i like the s in pleasure Vowel sounds are pure and tend to be short, eg a is pronounced more as in northern English bath.

Xll

Map 1. The Balkans

DANUBE

Map 2. The Centre of Modem Belgrade