Serbian Prose Research Articles

IDIOLEKT DOBRILA NENADIĆA U KONTEKSTU NOVIJIH LINGVOSTILISTIČKIH ISTRAŽIVANjA SRPSKE PROZE

On the corpus of 18 linguistic papers dealing with certain aspects of the language and style of Nenadić’s novels, the present study reviews the achievements of linguistic research on the language and style of Nenadić’s novels. An attempt is made to propose a concept for the linguistic and stylistic description and interpretation of Nenadić’s idiolect, referencing to the previous results, and in the context of recent linguistic and stylistic research of Serbian prose. Since, from the thematic aspect, the works of this writer relate to Serbian medieval his- tory, Serbian modern history, as well as the life in today’s Serbian small towns, it is expected that the writer use different linguistic and stylistic resources, in accordance with the theme of the novel. Thus, harmonisation of the linguistic and stylistic description and interpretation of Nenadić’s prose with the theoretical-methodological concept of integral stylistics was per- formed in the current paper.

IDEOLOŠKI RASPONI SAVREMENIH PRIČA O KOSOVU

This paper examines the ideological ranges of contemporary stories about Kosovo, as reflections on the social, political, and cultural background in which they arise, as well as the processes of establishing or abandoning the dominant identity matrices, based on the Kosovo myth. As Kosovo is our great story, the constitutive narrative of our national being, but also of Serbian literary-historical consciousness, it proved necessary to shed light on how contemporary Serbian prose reflects this narrative, but also to elucidate the diachronic perspective, which gives ideologies a mythical or symbolic dimension. The five authors and texts I am analyzing are Branislav Janković, “Nightingale the Chicken” (Slavuj-pile), Muharem Bazdulj “From Prizren the tame place” (Iz Prizrena mjesta pitomoga), Dejan Stojiljković, “No cour- age” (Nema hrabrosti), Vesna Kapor “What would you like to remember” (Čega bi voleo da se sećaš) and Ana Radmilović “Kosovo - three hundred miracles” (Kosovo – trista čuda). Among the selected contemporary stories, a range from establishing and empowering to challenging the dominant ideological discourse on Kosovo and its mythology is noticeable. The common intention is to constitute “small” stories by referring to a “private” view of Kosovo resulting from a fragmentation of the world image, and hence deconstruction or rethinking inherited identities based on new policies and ideological constructs represented in our era, which produce internal dissonance in the text itself.

SLIKA ŠUMADIJE U SRPSKOJ KNjIŽEVNOSTI NA KRAJU 19. I POČETKOM 20. VEKA

This research highlighted the space as an ambience that reflected the destiny of literary heroes and types of narrative consciousness. Šumadija’s villages and mountains in Milan Milićević’s stories stood out as humanized spaces of human will and imagination, Prince Miloš’s political power and community creative power, as spaces that participated in crea- tion a future Serbian cultural and historical identity. In Radoje Domanović’s rural tales, the narrative oscillation between idyllic and anti-utopian Šumadija revealed the narrator’s desire for vanished past and childhood. In Svetolik Ranković’s novels, the mountain was doubly marked, as a scene of real bandit events and as an ontological space of dreamed freedom, which mediated a literary turn in the experience of space – from mythopoetic to historical and psychophysiological perception of space. Since Čačak and Belgrade, as toponyms of psycho- physiological spatio-temporal intersection, expressed the irreconcilability of the heroes’ travel lines, Milutin Uskoković’s narrative in the novel Čedomir Ilić outlined a deep break in being and traces of homelessness within the modern subject. Šumadija became a point of discomfort and strangeness that needed to be overcome. Directing the interpretation towards the literary representation of Šumadija in Serbian prose of the late nineteenth and early-twentieth cen- turies, we noticed that the geographical and political-historical center of Serbian people did not coincide with Serbian literature and cultural topography: the center imaginatively eluded.

ДО ПИТАННЯ ІСТОРІЇ ПЕРЕКЛАДІВ СЕРБСЬКОЇ ПРОЗИ В УКРАЇНІ: ДІАХРОНІЧНИЙ АСПЕКТ

The research is dedicated to the coverage of a diachronic aspect’s adoption of Serbian prose in the Ukrainian literature, especially the establishment and development of translation as one of the main forms of Serbian-Ukrainian cultural exchange. The beginning of interrelation between Serbian and Ukrainian culture comes into the circle of the researcher’s attention, and in this context – the beginning of Ukrainian writer’s translation practice, the first translations of Serbian prose are investigated. The special emphasis in the article is made on the Serbian translation works in the period from the 60s of the 19th century to the end of the 80s of the 20th century. This period of time is characterized by the works of V. Đorđević, L. Lazarević, O. Voinović, N. Marinković, V. Marinović, D. Kalić, B. Nušić, I. Andrić, B. Čopić, R. Domanović, S. Sremec, E. Koš, M. Kapor, M. Selimović. The dynamics of determinatives that influenced the translation works of Serbian fiction are investigated: from the effect of ideological criteria at the beginning of the 20th century in the conditions of created USSR to poetical, substantial and esthetical factors in the 70s-80s of the 20th century. The fiction of Serbian writers that was translated during this long-lasting period because of Pleiades of Ukrainian translators’ highly-professional work became a full-sized part of the Ukrainian literature process and got further literature understanding in the works of Ukrainian Slavicists.

Ženski princip i pitanje univerzalne krivice u romanu "Petruša i Miluša" Petra Sarića

The main characteristic of the novel Petruša i Miluša by Petar Sarić is an elaborate narrative scheme in the form of two voices, mother's and daughter's, two stories that flow and intertwine, and build a third-a story about a story. With this novel and its specific structure, Sarić, on one hand, continued the formal refinement that begun in his previous novels. On the other hand-on the issue of basic poetic-philosophical assumption connected to the question of personal and general (metaphysical) human guilt-he went further concerning both his creative work and the entire Serbian prose with similar thematic preoccupations. The Dionysian principle is represented by the imperatives of the body, the laws of blood, and Petruša's instinctive reaction, through her unrestrained nature that, at the same time, strives for self-renewal and self-destruction. It is a form of the female principle-creative and destructive at the same time, dark, chthonic as opposed to Miluša's Apollonian orientation, worshiping of light, and her mental illumination. Petruša i Miluša is not a model of a family novel (although it can be assumed). Still, in Sarić's novel, the family is just a focus into which the courses of overall existence converge and in which things are condensed and reflected by their true dimensions. This fact is not at all surprising bearing in mind his previous novels (Sutra stiže Gospodar, and especially Dečak iz Lastve), Sarić has already proved himself as a writer who searches for the deepest secrets of human nature, introducing a reader to the dark realm of the human soul, which is shaped according to his artistic creation and creative intuition.

Usud lepe tuđinke u banjanskom univerzumu - lik Sare u romanu Petra Sarića

The subject of the analysis is the character of Sarah in the novel of the same name by Petar Saric, focusing on her strangeness and fatal beauty, inseparable from her beautiful soul. The character of a foreign woman in the patriarchal community of Banjane invokes other fatal foreigners in Serbian literature, and throughout the research seeks to place Saric's heroine in the wider context of female characters of Serbian prose. The elements of the erotic in her character are in contact with the sacred, and in examining her influence on others as particularly significant, the experience of the numinous emerges. The aim of the paper is to examine how Sarah's character goes beyond the usual features of female characters in patriarchal settings, and at what moments she remains within the given limits. Based on this, research tries to give Sarah's specific characteristics which make her one of the most complex characters in Saric's prose.

Paranoidna psihoza u patrijarhalnoj kulturi - jedan razoren um Lazara Komarčića

In the novel Jedan razoren um (A Devastated Mind) (1893) Lazar Komarčić, by using himself of the motive of duplicate, enters a Serbian prose the description of paranoid psychosis. Due to twin's similarity of the two protagonists Steva and Velja, it comes out first Velja's shaky feeling of identity which activates defence mechanisms characteristic for paranoid psychosis: splitting of the self and projected identification. Komarčić despite the sudden disease outbreak with the protagonist, managed to display consistently a paranoid progression: from suspicion to the mystery of pursuit, paranoid delusion which is obviously in contradiction with the facts. The psychotic cleavage of hero is considered in the context of mental disease representation in patriarchal milieu, and in this context Velja's paranoid psychosis is manifested as the solution in the situation in which the rejection of values imposed by the closed ones would be equalized with the break of the important cultural prohibition. On the other hand, Steva is to be found between two simultaneous but contradictional requests which the culture throws it out in front of him: from one side, there is the necessity of entrepreneurial activity which would enable friend's treatment in the beginning, and from another side, the necessity of silence, which means the protection of Velja's reputation as long as possible. Culture, that, lakanovski said, symbolic order of the great other, is the assigned space in which the rule of silence was written on something which disturbed it. Komančić's novel testifies on the pattern masculinity in culture change: from heroic masculinity saturated with national feeling, which is personified by the generations of grandfathers and fathers toward reflexive, melancholic intellectual of civic type, which is personified by Steva and Velja, the second one without necessary mental force to resist the cultural pressure, and first of all the one which acts from inside, form hero's being itself shaped by the culture.

Post-Yugoslav Serbian Literature and Its Roots in the Social and Political Changes

Post-Yugoslav literature and culture came out of the stylistic formations of Yugoslav modernism and postmodernism, in the context of European cultural discourse. Yugoslav literature, which spans the existence of “two” Yugoslavias, the “first” Yugoslavia (1928–1941) and the “second” socialist Yugoslavia (1945–1990), is the foundation of various national literary and cultural paradigms, which shared the same or similar historical, philosophical and aesthetic roots. These were fed, on the one hand, by a phenomenological understanding of the world, language, style and culture, and on the other, by an acceptance of or resistance to the socialist realist aesthetics and ideological values of socialist Yugoslav society. In selected examples of contemporary Serbian prose, the author explores the social context, which has shaped contemporary Serbian literature, focusing on its roots in Serbian and Yugoslav 20th century (post)modernism.

(Anty)bohaterowie? Niepełnosprawność w wybranych utworach powojennej prozy serbskiej

(Anti)protagonists? Disability in the postwar Serbian proseThe Author made an attempt to the analysis of chosen works written by three Serbian writers: Ivo Andrić (The Bridge on the Drina), Miodrag Bulatović (The Red Rooster Flies Heavenwards) and Danilo Kiš (Garden, Ashes). Her purpose is to answer the question which is focused on the category of the antiprotagonist in the context of the disability studies. The Author is focused on the similarities in representations of the disability in the postwar Serbian prose. She shows also the necesserity of the connection between the disability studies and other research perspectives. Keywords: disability, feminist criticism, madness, Serbian literature, Yugoslavia

Dominacija modernog u umetničkoj slici gradskog života srpske proze 19. Veka

Dominacija modernog u umetničkoj slici gradskog života srpske proze 19. Veka

Crnjanski’s New Textuality: The Poetic Play Mask (1918)

This essay is about the emergence of a new sensibility and a new textuality in Serbian Modernism/postmodernism, constituted by the poetic and prose works of Miloš Crnjanksi amongst other. A survey of earlier, 19th century Serbian prose and drama, demonstrates that the Modernist/postmodern poetics had its antecedents in the works of Jovan Sterija Popović and Đorđe Marković Koder, which demonstrates the continuity of Serbian literature through the all the phases inherent in European (French) literatures of the 19th and 20th century. Crnjanski’s early poetic play Mask is analysed through the sensibility of a new “world malaise” and the poetic principle of “Sumatraism” which make up Crnjanksi’s “Nihilism.” This is decoded as a sensibility close to the Absurd, which has consequences for the structure of Crnjanski’s subsequent works as well as for the development of Yugolsav/Serbian Modernism/postmodernism.

Raslojavanje života (roman Sara Petra Sarića)

Novel Sara of Petar Sarić consists of two parts; in it are processed or present two wars, two major wars in the region of Montenegro and Herzegovina, the First and Second World War. However, it is more novel about divisions within the family and the man himself, (and infamous assault of godfather Luka on Sarah also and his murder are in that function), in the first part; and on the divisions among the people, in general, in the second part of the novel. The second part is, in fact, the image layering of life, not a symbolic one, full of hope, faith, reliance, rather than a concrete, real life, that life which is transformed into a fear of life. Separate, poetical, part of the novel, is his main character, Sara. It is no coincidence that her name novel entitled. Because she is one of most beautiful characters in the newer Serbian prose. Speech about the Sara precedes speech about her book. The book is Sara, Sara's book! Possession of book is her main feature of the exterior. Sara comes out from the Book and disappears in the book. Self contained and independent, therefore doomed to conflict with the environment. Loyal to husband and family, loyal to the truth and for justice, she ,,not hurt anything and anyone, no one is standing in the way, to anyone not wroth, nor has anyone looked wrong.' At the same time, the strange beauty, beauty that could not fit into some sort of scheme, one particular image or idea of beauty that again and again renewed, changed, remaining distant, and unmet. Strange goodness, marvelous beauty, she suffered unusual way; her life was transformed into continuous abstinence, repression, in anxiety and fear. In a word: in martirizam! Finally, in order to safe­guard children, sacrificed herself. Novel is a strong critique of society which is not able to recognize the beauty / goodness!.

The Barbarian Nurseries by Héctor Tobar

award, NIN. Its excellent translation into English, by Bogdan Rakić and John Jeffries, is part of the Serbian Prose in Translation series, a joint project of the Serbian Ministry of Culture and Geopoetika Publishing in Belgrade, whose goal is “to promote Serbian literature to the world.” Tasić lives in Canada—where he has been teaching math at a university for the last two decades. Though he participates in Serbian culture from a distance, his prose surely contributes to the recognition of contemporary Serbian literature. Damjana Mraović-O’Hare Case Western Reserve University Héctor Tobar. The Barbarian Nurseries . New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux . 2011. isbn 9780374108991 The Barbarian Nurseries is the Great American Novel for our “messy and complicated present.” The TorresThompson household lives in a fabulous hilltop home with an ocean view on Paseo Linda Bonita in Laguna Rancho Estates in Orange County, California. Scott, a programmer who lives in the shadow of his own faded glory as a start-up wizard, has invested very badly. Maureen is a creative and driven mother who spares no expense in providing for her children and outfitting her home. Their three children have every imaginable book, toy, game, and advantage. Araceli, the aloof housekeeper and cook who has worked for the family for four years and lives in the guesthouse, is thrust into serving as nanny when Scott dismisses the other Mexican employees because of finances. The novel revolves around three events. First, the installation of an elaborate garden emblematizes the excesses of affluence and is the catalyst for a brutal argument between Scott and Maureen. Next, the couple ’s separate clandestine flights during the Fourth of July weekend (Scott to a coworker’s apartment, Maureen with the baby to a spa in the high desert) leave behind the boys and Araceli, who eventually undertake a forty-eight-hour quest for the boys’ grandfather on public transportation to Los Angeles. Finally, a media and law-enforcement circus ensues as both Araceli and the Torres-Thompsons attempt to come to terms privately with the repercussions of their respective missteps and the public expectations that have been placed upon them. A vast cast of minor characters contributes to the novel’s impressive sprawl. From a twenty-something Chicano studies enthusiast and other committed pro-immigrant activists, angry anti-immigrant protesters, the unctuous Mexican consul in Santa Ana, and a famous Mexico City talkshow host to the players in the criminal -justice system who are motivated variously by hidden agendas, pseudo -psychological misconceptions, or genuine altruism—Tobar not only further showcases his deep understanding of southern California but also either critiques or pokes goodnatured fun at the human comedy. Language also assumes an important role. The “odd, bilingual concoction ”oftheTorres-Thompsonsurname, the Mexican grandfather’s refusal to speak Spanish, the indocumentada who does not speak Spanish very well, and the Spanish left untranslated all highlight linguistic complexities in a multicultural society. The double meaning Mỹ Viê ⋅ t Michele Janette, ed. University of Hawai`i Press This diverse collection presents Vietnamese American literature in English from 1962 to the present. Memoirs in the form of poetry, fiction, and drama explore a variety of perspectives toward both Vietnam and the United States. A helpful introduction contextualizes the selections through a concise history of Vietnam. Joan Margarit Strangely Happy Anna Crowe, tr. Bloodaxe Books Architect by trade and poet by passion, Catalonian author Joan Margarit responds to sorrow, self-doubt, and grief in these verses selected from two earlier collections. His work magnifies a human spirit that thrives despite despair, strife, and war. july– august 2012 65 Nota Bene 66 World Literature Today reviews in the title is especially pointed: nurseries refers to both gardening and childcare, two jobs typically done by Latino immigrants in southern California . Above all, Tobar creates a poetic refrain by repeating “Lupe, María, and Soledad” when he assumes his authorial voice to address the broader social, economic, and interpersonal issues regarding the Latin American women who cook, clean, and care for children. At once quintessentially southern Californian and wholly universal, and with a kaleidoscopic attention to cultural detail reminiscent of Culture Clash and of Jonathan Franzen, The Barbarian Nurseries calls to mind...

The Metaphysical Fantasias of Zoran Živković

SPECIAL SECTION Behind a story read, a taletold, something elseissaidaswell, like a nagging voice half heard amid a conversation. Wehave the certainty that this voice isimportant, a necessity, andyet wecannot exactly make itout. - Alberto Manguel, BlackWater: TheAnthology ofFantastic Literature A patient has recall "Virus nothing is told 451/' of by whose their hisdoctor lives sufferers but that have can he has "Virus451/'whosesufferers can recallnothing oftheir livesbuthave photographic memoriesof everybook they haveeverread.Anelderly recluse whocollects photographs of himself he has takenonce a month foryearsdiscovers thathisimagehas beguntofadefrom eachphoto.Theteacher of a freestyle drawing classforautistic children onedayplaysfor hisclassa recording ofChopin 'sSecondPianoConcerto, whereupon one of his wards does something impossible for anyhumantodo. Suchis everyday lifeinthe worldsofSerbian fantasist Zoran2ivkovic. Perhaps becausehisfirst novel,TheFourth Circle(1993),incorporates devicesassociated with sciencefiction (aliens,artificial intelligence , parallelworlds), 2ivkovicis often misconstrued as a "science-fiction writer" - a label he aggressively disavows. And rightly so. 2ivkovicdoes notwritesciencefiction. Even whenheappropriates science-fictional conceits, hedoesnotusethem as sfwriters do. Neither does he writefantasy. His story worldsare not thoseof faerie - Oz, Narnia, MiddleEarth; they arefamiliar worlds ofeveryday .Nordoes he write horror. Thefrisson of supernatural fearis as alientohisaesthetic as explicit sexandgraphic physical violence. 2ivkovic belongstono genre. He writes a modern form oftheancient storytelling mode of the fantastic, whichhe calls "fantastika" and whichhe elucidates in theinterview that appearsinWLTonline. Lacedwith postmodern play, surrealjuxtapositions, and (especially) absurdist humor, his storiesmix,in varying proportions, themundane andtheMarvelous. 2ivkovic'sfiction issuesfrom thecentral andeastern European tradition ofmetaphysical fantasy; inourinterview, henumbered among hisliterary influences NikolaiGogol,E. T. A. Hoffmann, MikhailBulgakov, Stanistaw Lem, KarelCapek,Umberto Eco,and Russiansymbolist Valerie Bryusov. Inthisrespect, ifinfew others, hisworkfollows longstanding trends in Serbian prose. The supernatural and themystical have figuredprominently in written Serbianliterature from thefirst Christian religious and monastic worksofthetwelfth century. During thelong"Turkish night" ofdomination bythe Ottoman Empire (1478-1878), written literature all butvanished.Butfiction and poetry persistedin oral epic poems,legends,folktales, andparables. Following Serbian independence, written literature returned - primarily, realistic accounts ofpeasantlivesin smallvillages.By thelateeighteenth century, however, Serbian proponents ofEuropeanmodernism beganto challenge ruralrealists - first in poetry, then, after World WarI,inprose. By1948, theyearof2ivkovic's birth, many Serbian writers hadmovedtoward moremodern ,oftenexperimental formsthatincluded innovativeuses of the fantastic. Notwithstandingthe continuedimportance of real26 1 World Literature Today istssuchas 1961Nobel LaureateIvo Andric (1892-1975)and regionalists such as Janko Veselinovic (1862-1905), postwarSerbianliterature aboundswithwriters suchas Danilo Ki§ (1935-89), MiloradPavic(1929-2009), and BorislavPekic(1930-92),whose worksoften combine realism withthefantastic, sometimes usingtactics ofpostmodernism. Anyone wantingan overview ofcontemporary Serbianfictionshouldseekouttheinvaluable anthology ThePrince ofFire , editedbyRadmilaJ.Gorup andNadezdaObradovic (1998). Evenreaders familiar withthesmallfractionofSerbian literature available intranslation willfindZivkovic's workatypical, foritinno way alludesto Serbia,itsculture, or itstortured history. Hiswork islargely indeterminate geographically, historically, culturally, politically , eventemporally. Whilemany stories containmarkers tosometimeperiod - computers, horse-drawn carriages, anancient monastery veryfewcontaindatesor allusionsto events that wouldsituate them moreprecisely. v Zivkovic's dreamlike fictions reduction aredistinguished ofstory toessentials. bytheir dreamlike reduction ofstory toessentials. Witha fewverbalbrushstrokes Zivkovic rendersimmediate settings so theycomealivein ourimagination. Butthat'sall we get."Compartments " (2004)openswitha manrushing to catch a train abouttoleavethestation. Inwhat city isthestation? Inwhatcountry? Whatisthe train's destination? Whyis he taking thistrip? Whendoesthestory takeplace?We'renottold. As Zivkovicrenderssetting, so does he rendercharacter. About the protagonist of "Compartments" welearn only that heispolite, amiable, and unflappable - traits he willneed in orderto cope withthebizarreencounters thatawaithimaboardthetrain. Whatis his profession, his background, his name?We're nottoldbecausewe don'tneedtoknow. Elisionof the extraneous is essentialto Zivkovic'sart.His stories'lackofperipheral context, theirspatial and temporalindeterminacy , makesthemaccessible to anyreader, anytime, anywhere.By omitting characters' nationalities, backgrounds, cultural, political, andsocialcontexts butvividly rendering their innerlives,Zivkovicconnects thepersonal meticulously individuated people - totheuniversal - commonalities his charactersshare withallhumans. Zivkovicpopulateshis worldsnot with superheroes, serialkillers, masterminds, orevil villainsbut withordinary, ifofteneccentric, humanbeingswhose quotidianrealitiesare as familiar as yoursormine.Theirimmediate environs are citystreets, coffee shops,bookshops ,antiquestores, hospitals, libraries . . . eachvivified withprecise details. True,readersmayfindit hardto identify withMissTamara,a lifelong readerwho one day decides,on thebasisofno evidence whatsoever, thatto read even one sentence in anybook in herlibrary will resultin her instant death;orwiththenameless bibliophile in "NobleLibrary," a story intheaward-winningTheLibrary (2002), whowageswarwitha miraculously empowered paperbackthat,for all his increasingly hysterical efforts, persistently reappearsin his fastidiously arranged bookshelf. But anyonecan empathizewith themiddle-aged undertaker in Hidden Camera (2003).A slaveto routine and ritual, he daily dealswiththedeadbutneverengagestheliving .His mostintimate relationship is withhis fish, withwhomheshares"nothing morethan reciprocated indifference." Thenone day,on impulse, hegiveshimself overtounseenforces thatguidehimthrough a heroicstruggle to...

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

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...

The Slave Girl and Other Stories About Women (review)

Reviewed by: The Slave Girl and Other Stories About Women Vasa Mihailovich Ivo Andrić . The Slave Girl and Other Stories About Women. Edited by Radmila Gorup. Budapest: Central European Press, 2009, 539 pages. The works of the best Serbian prose writer and Nobel Prize winner, Ivo Andrić, have been translated into English many times. This latest collection contains translations of his 22 stories dealing with women. Several have been translated before, but most of them appear here for the first time. Moreover, this is the first time that his stories about women appear together in one collection. The book was edited by Radmila Gorup, professor of Slavistics at Columbia University. Translators hail from Serbia and former Yugoslavia, as well as from all over the world: John K. Cox, Celia Hawkesworth, Biljana Obradović and John Gery, Marijeta Božović, Milo Yelesiyevich, Henry R. Cooper, Bogdan Rakić, Drenka Willen, Joseph Hitrec, Michael Scammell, Kosara Gavrilović, Ellen Elias-Bursac, Radmila Gorup, Daniel J. Gerstle, Savka Gajic, and Natalia Ermolaev. All deserve to be named here because it is their expertise, as well as that of the editor, that does justice to Andrić's excellence in writing short stories and to the value of this endeavor. Addtionally, Zoran Milutinović has written a large, expertly presented introduction. Almost all of Andrić's stories deal with basic human relationships such as love, jealousy, suffering, evil, hatred, desire for betterment, loneliness, guilt-feelings, fear, and so forth. As such they reach the pinnacle of story telling. "The Pasha's Concubine" ("Mara milosnica"), for example, shows subservience and helplessness of a woman, whose life depends on others, mostly males. "Anika's Times" ("Anikina vremena") illustrates a male's desire for conquest of a village beauty, an obsession that leads to collective destruction. In the story "Thirst" ("Žedj"), a police commander captures an outlaw but refuses to quench his thirst all night, while his own wife suffers because she cannot help him. "Love in the kasba" ("Ljubav u kasabi") presents a man [End Page 109] who cannot fulfill his love in a provincial town (for Andrić a symbol of alienation), which destroys both him and others. "Ćorkan and the German Tightrope Walker" ("Ćorkan i Švabica") depicts the split personality in human beings-on the one hand the unseemly look of Corkan inducing derision by others, and on the other hand he is a dreamer and idealist capable of dreaming about beautiful women. Not all of Andrić's stories are morbid and hopeless, even though he primarily depicts the hard life in his native Bosnia, which has made him world famous. His short story writing is considered to be the highest in Serbian literature. Andrić's style is not the easiest to translate, on account of his originality, but the translations here are excellent, with some variation in quality. Hopefully, this collection will persuade publishers to present all of Andrić in English translation. Vasa Mihailovich University of North Carolina vamih@aol.com Copyright © 2011 Serbian Studies

Neorealism in Serbian Prose of the 1990s: Its Development and Transformations

Neorealism in Serbian Prose of the 1990s: Its Development and Transformations

Narrators and their stories

The paper deals with narrative techniques in Djura Jaksic's story One night that takes the exclusive place in narrative corpus of this great poet of Serbian romanticism as well as in Serbian prose in XIX century. The narrative technique known as skaz and the procedure of his shaping in the narrative structure are specially analyzed. The interpretation of narrative mechanisms expectation - realization, which was developed in the tradition of folk narrative, underlines the symbolic function of the elements from folklore legend in formatting the narrative structure and the narrator.