Yugoslav Camp Literature: Rediscovering the Ghost of a Nation's Past-Present-Future

Abstract

They [prison and camp authorities] wanted to lower men to the animal level. And they succeeded. There, I realized that life should not be lived for its own sake. Life should be lived for the sake of a goal, faith, freedom, and truth.Radoslav Kostić-Katunac, Look, Lord, To the Other Side: Yugoslavia's GulagAleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn has immortalized Soviet camp literature. In contrast, Yugoslav prison and camp literature is virtually unknown. Yet, if literature indeed mirrors the human soul and even a nation's conscience—as Solzhenitsyn intimates— then it may also convey the human experience across time and space, language and culture. The question arises: Is camp and prison literature merely a sigh of wronged souls or is it a literary genre in its own right? If it is a genre, is it accessible at all to those not initiated in the Sisyphus-like context of human suffering etched into the world's Gulag archipelagos of prisons and forced labor camps? Let us assume for the sake of argument that it is, indeed, accessible to outsiders. The question still remains: Why bother with prison or camp literature— those heavy sighs of distraught creatures—rhyme or not? The answer is that if we forget camp literature, we might forget our own selves.