Bosnia: A Cultural History by Ivan s> Lovrenović (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 739 Rakhmaninov'sinterviewsand letters;Rakhmaninovand his contemporaries; Rakhmaninov's performing art; reviews and discussions of performances, books, music editions and recordings;and, finally, miscellaneous books and articles. The discography aims at completeness, although not all the recordings listed are still available. To indicate the scale, there are I6I recordingsof the Second Piano Concerto, before arrangementsare takeninto account. Finally,there are three appendices:Rakhmaninov'sworksby performance medium;his recordedrepertoire;and a listof abbreviationsand acronyms. Robert Cunningham has performed his task with great care and good judgement (forexample in the annotations to the bibliographicalitems). The price of thisvolume may discouragemany of the composer'snon-professional admirers,but it certainlydeservesa place in the librariesof all universitiesand colleges of music. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN University College London Lovrenovic, Ivan. Bosnia.A Cultural Historj.New YorkUniversity Press,New York, 2001. 254 PP. Maps. Illustrations.Chronology. Glossary. Bibliography .Index. $32.50. OF all the many books on Bosnia publishedover the last ten years, this is one of the most balanced and certainly the most positive that I have read. Ivan Lovrenovic is one of Bosnia's most prominent intellectual figures. Formerly editor of the literary magazine Odjekand currently editor-in-chief of the Svjetlost publishing company, he has published numerous poems, novels, essaysand screenplays. Originally published in Zagreb in I998 as Unutarnja zemlja.kratki pregled kulturne pov?jesti Bosnei Hercegovine, the work gives a comprehensive account of the cultural development of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Paleolithic times until the present day. It is well illustrated with maps, clearly showing the changing shape of the territoryover time, and with excellent photographs of artefactsand buildings. It is symptomaticof the book's tone that the pictures of buildingsdestroyedin the I992-I 995 war such as the National Library in Sarajevo, the Ferhadija Mosque in Banja Luka or the Old Bridge in Mostar carry no caption even to indicate their loss, still less to attribute blame. The implication is that everyone knows how these buildings were destroyed,it servesno usefulpurpose to underlineit here. On the contrary,it is to be hoped that they will all be rebuilt (work is well advanced on the Library and the Bridge, and recent persistent endeavours to lay the foundations for a new FerhadijaMosque will eventually succeed) and once again, in the future, as in this book, they may serve to illustratethe richness and diversityof the cultureof Bosnia and Herzegovina. The early chapters of the book: 'From Paleolithic Times to the Illyrian Tribal Leagues', 'AncientIllyricum', 'The Early Slav Centuries'give a broad account of available information. From the first,Lovrenovic's basic thesis is clearly stated: 'The overriding characteristic of medieval Bosnia [. . .] was 740 SEER, 8o, 4, 2002 stubbornly to preserve archaic forms of social life and nurture a specific cultural tradition' (pp. 39-40). The author describes a constant process of interactionbetween the indigenous inhabitantsand newcomers. The chapter on 'The Middle Ages' describes the parallel influences of Byzantine and Serbian art from the east and West European Romanesque and Gothic transmitted through the Croatian coastal towns side by side with native traditions:stecak tombstones, manuscriptilluminationand fine craftsmanship. Lovrenovicpays particularattention to the importanceof the founding of the Bosnian Franciscan Vicariate in I340. As soon as possible, the original missionarieswere replaced by people born in Bosnia who continued to play an exceptionallyimportantrole in the culturallife of the territory.The author traces earlier theories about the Bosnian Church, arriving at the firm conclusion that there is no evidence for it having been founded on heretical, Bogomil, ideas, but that it seems to have largelyfollowed the general code of the Catholic Church. A briefchaptertraces'ACenturyand a Half of Turkish Conquest', before focusing on 'FourCenturiesof TurkishRule'. This chapter stressesthe stabilityof the firstyearsof Ottoman rule, describingthe situation of the peasants, for example, as farmore favourablethan in WesternEurope. The case Lovrenovicmakesfor the variousincentives for conversion to Islam in this early period is convincing. He concludes that 'in religious terms the Bosnians who at the end of the fifteenth century and during the sixteenth converted to Islam were doubtless overwhelmingly Catholics, with a small number of Orthodox on the easternbordersof both Bosnia and Herzegovina' (p. 93). The chapterdescribesin detailthe decline of the Ottoman administration in Bosnia and the steady...