Abstract
This article examines Daša Drndić's April in Berlin (April u Berlinu, 2007), alongside the author’s other Holocaust novels, as literary responses to historical revisionism and outright denialism of the Holocaust in Croatia, which had emerged into the political and cultural mainstream during the War of Independence (1991-1995) and has persisted into the post-war period. Since the historical legacy of the Fascist NDH in Croatia has been de-traumatized, it no longer represents a crisis of historical consciousness, which would entail a confrontation with the violent past as well as a painful transformation of national identity and the political space in which this identity is articulated. In contrast to de-traumatization, as an ethnocentric strategy that normalizes the nation’s fascist crimes, Drndić’s novels stage a shocking confrontation with the shards of the violent past. Through both their innovative graphic layout and interdiscursive textuality—which combines historiographical narration with avant-garde fictional and artistic devices, words with image—Drndić’s novels function as literary archives and monuments, and archives as monuments, intended to disturb, disrupt, and jolt the reader into awareness of traumatic history, laying bare the ideological mechanisms of political control and bringing the bodies of victims to our doorstep.
Highlights
This paper examines Daša Drndić’s April in Berlin (April u Berlinu, 2007), alongside the author’s other Holocaust novels, as a literary response to historical revisionism and outright denialism of the Holocaust in Croatia, which had entered the political and cultural mainstream during the War of Independence (1991-1995) and has persisted into the post-war period
Since the historical legacy of NDH in Croatia has been de-traumatized, it no longer represents a crisis of historical consciousness, which would entail a confrontation with the violent past as well as a painful transformation of national identity and the political space in which this identity is articulated
3 The reviewers have tended to underscore Drndić’s similarity to Sebald, both in terms of their obsessive return to the theme of the Holocaust, as well as in their inclusion of the deranged History caught up with me, always and every where, during the entirety of my stay in Berlin, screaming: Listen! Look! Like steam, History seethed from the lawns around the Wannsee lake, from paved avenues, from monumental constructions, from luxurious department stores, at exhibitions, like velvet ribbons it danced in the breath of my conversation partners, it injected its deathly stench under my skin, and wrapped in a nefarious black cape, much like a giant vampire-bat which frantically flutters its membranous wings, it twisted reality into a vortex of terror, darkening Berlin sky.[4]
Summary
Daša Drndić’s ninth novel, April in Berlin (April u Berlinu, 2007) opens with a citation from T.S. Translated from the Croatian into numerous European languages, including English, Drndić’s experimental and imposing novels on the theme of Nazism have received almost universal critical acclaim, with the critics commending both the author’s righteous anger, impressive erudition, and her bleak vision of history. While Drndić’s characteristically “continental gloom” resonates with the loss of the belief in the automatic and guaranteed historical progress on the other side of the Atlantic, the reviewers have either glossed over the more local Croatian and postYugoslav context in which these novels appeared or have ignored it entirely.[9]
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