Calling on the Edge of Time: History in Serbian Prose And Oral Tradition

Abstract

Calling on the Edge of Time:History in Serbian Prose And Oral Tradition* Vladimir Zorić The three texts gathered in this issue of Serbian Studies were initially presented at the ASEEES Convention in Los Angeles, November 2010, at the panel entitled "The Muse of History in Serbian Prose." No proposition is more evident than the one that Clio, the muse of history, has been in the center of vivid interest and, at the same time, indefatigable poetic experimentation of many Serbian writers. However, by a conspicuous subterfuge, Clio's countenance has been emerging in different guises, depending on the mood and the chosen instrument of her siblings, the literary muses beholding her. The same holds true of the texts presented here: not only are they concerned with different facets of the past, but they also seem to dwell in different discursive worlds. In particular, Adrijana Marcetic, in her insightful essay on Pavić's The Dictionary of the Khazars, explores the rectangular avenues of narratological inquiry1. In a probing analysis of the legend of Prince Lazar's choice, Aleksandar Pavlović traces the formulaic routes of oral tradition2. In his acclaimed novel Tesla, a Portrait Among the Masks, Vladimir Pištalo follows the forking paths of narrative fiction3. Precisely because these texts open such wide and diverse vistas, they are best introduced in their intersection points. [End Page 51] The first of these crossroads is an underlying yet unsaid premise of all three texts and is, therefore, worth being phrased explicitly. In their attempt to grasp what is irretrievable, the works under consideration stand like a Colossus of Rhodes: one foot in history, the other in fiction. Their historical foothold means that they project imaginative worlds which are, just like the world we live in, marked by intrinsic instability and changeability. This change, the sense of which escapes us, is brought by the ongoing interaction between human designs and deeds. One may agree with, or for that matter dispute the thesis that the world changed less from Plato to Tesla than from Tesla to the present day. Nevertheless, we know that a momentous and irreversible change occurred and the same applies to the disappearance of the Khazars from the world's political map as well as to the Battle of Kosovo. In other words, we cannot reach a consensus on the historical impact of these events; yet, we can hardly doubt their historical quality. Nonetheless, despite this historical focus, one could hardly deny that there is something insidiously apocalyptic in the design of each of the three works. To live and act in a world of change—be it a factual or fictional world—means being exposed to a never-ending challenge. The heroes of The Dictionary of the Khazars, The Downfall of the Serbian Empire, and Tesla, a Portrait Among the Masks try to put an end to history and bring the human world to a blissful point of resolution where no change will be needed or desired. The legend of Prince Lazar's choice is about an all-out abandonment of the historical world and instantaneous migration to a heavenly kingdom. The legend of the Khazar Kagan's dream problem, painstakingly addressed by Christian, Islamic, and Judaic sages, is essentially about the quest for salvation through a major and institutionalized monotheistic religion. His bid for conversion is not about a pragmatic orientation in the historical world; quite the contrary, it is about discovering the right, redemptive meaning. The son of an Orthodox priest from Lika, Nikola Tesla, never relinquished the apocalyptic yearnings of his youth and remained an avid reader of the Book of Revelation until his most productive period in North America. However, his apocalyptic enterprise required no involvement of God: it was all about human self-redemption through the faculty of invention. In this way, the three narratives neatly illustrate the range of the apocalyptic thought: from the direct implication of divine agency, to salvation through an institutional religion and its interpretative grid, to the rising power of the man of the future who can do it all by himself. In this order of consideration, the apocalyptic thought appears to be emptied from any specifically...