Voices in the Shadows: Women and Verbal Art in Serbia and Bosnia

Voices in the Shadows

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Voices in the Shadows Women and VerbalArt in Serbia and Bosnia

Celia Hawkesworth

Published by Central European University Press Oktdber 6. utca 12 H-1051 Budapest Hungary 400 West 5gth Street

NewYork, NY 10019

USA

0 2000 by Glia Hdwkeworth

Distributed by Plymbridge Distributors Ltd., Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PZ United Kingdom

All rights reserved. No part OF this publicationmay be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted, in any Form or by any means, withoutthe permission of the Publisher.

ISBN 9G3-911662-9 Cloth

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book is available upon request

Printed in Hungary by Akademiai Nyomda

Contents Introduction I 1. Cultural Baggage I 7 2. Women’s Contribution to the Oral Tradition33 3. Women’s Voicesin the Middle Ages 63

4. The Nineteenth Century 89

5. The Turn of the Century:New Opportunities: 1900-1914 I23 6. Between the Two World Wars: Modernization 159

7. The SecondYugoslavia: 1945-1991 195 8. Women’s Writing in Bosnia Herzegovina243

Conclusion 267 Bibliography 2 73 Index 279

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The rise of the Ottoman Empire The Yugoslav lands on the eve of the First World War T h e Yugoslav

successorstates

A Cairn (Gomila)

34

Peasant woman fromnear BihaC, Bosnia

43

The first woman nationalgush player in Yugoslavia

52

The curtain embroidered by Jefimija for Hilandar Monastery

78

The inscription on the small icon given to Despotica Jelena’s son

81

WOMAN, monthly magazine for women, edited by Milica J d i C Tomid. YearI, 1April 1911, no. 4.

131

Cover of Srphinju, the almanac publishedin Sarajevo, 1913

133

The Charitable Society of Serbian Women in Irig (1913)

152

Bosnian woman:Mrs Julka Srdid-PopoviC

249

Peasant girl,Bosnia

253

Milica StojadinoviCSrpkinja, Isidora Sekulid

266

Anica Savid-Rebac, Ksenija Atanasijevid Jelena Dimitrijevit, DesankaMaksimovid Svetlana Velmar-JankoviC, Alma Lazarevska

I am indebted to the British Academy and the British Council for the financial support which enabled me to undertake study trips to the region, and to the Director and Council of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies for granting me a period of study leaveso that I could concentrate on my research. I wish to acknowledge the friendlyassistance I always encountered in the libraries in which I worked, in Belgrade, Sarajevo, and Zagreb. I am grateful to numerous colleagues, both in the UK and in or from the former Yugoslav lands for all their advice and suggestions. These are too many to list by name, but they include ZagaGavriloviC in Birmingham, Slobodanka PekoviC, Vladeta Jankovid, Nada MiloSeviC-Djordjevid and Zlatan DoriC in Belgrade, and Sena Mujid and Ferida DurakoviC in Sarajevo. I would also like to mention Dr Wendy Bracewell and Dusan h v a t i C in London who, in addition to giving me many invaluable suggestions, have both consistently brightened my professional life; Professor Zdenko LeSiC,who has been a vital source of ideas and information, and an unfailing support; SvetlanaVelmar-Jankovid, and whose generous encouragement I haveespeciallyvalued; Dr HatidZa Krnjevid, whose penetrating understandingof both Bosnia and Serbia and professional commitment to scholarship have been an inspiration to me. Above all, I would like to mention Jasmina and Biljana LukiC who, with exceptional generosity and warmth, let me share not only their knowledge and experience, but their Belgrade home and a little of the lives of Luka and Jelena. Finally, of course, I would like to thank my own family, who havebeen cheerfully tolerant of my preoccupation with this task.

For Christy and Sophie

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While the Central European countries have become steadily more familiar since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, to most West Europeans the South-East remains one of the least known areas of the continent. Where the ‘Balkans’ do have a presence in the Western imagination, the word may be said generallyto have negative associations. The whole question of the manner in which the Balkans have been perceived in the West has been comprehensively discussed by the Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova, who analyzes how opinions were formed, particularly by travelers from the West, in various historical periods.1The concept of ‘Balkanization’ hai entered the English language,with alienating associations of conflict and fragmentation, and is widelyapplied to the most disparate situations, from major political events to the trivial organization of local structures. At the same time, the Balkans have held a special fascinationfor many individuals over the centuries, as an area of often rugged beauty, with a bewildering mixture of inhabitants, whose ways of life are at once familiar and yet refreshingly different. Specialists in the region are familiar with works concerned with political and ecclesiastical history, studies of Byzantium and the Orthodox Church, of Turkey-in-Europe and ‘the Eastern Question’, and works about the Second World War and about the twentiethcentury experience of Communist Party rule. At the other end of the scale, there are the abundant accounts of travelers to these ‘exotic’ lands from the seventeenth century onwards. There have also been studies of basic indigenous social structures, of traditional culture, and of the effects of Ottoman rule. The Central Balkan lands constitutingthe country which came into being in 1918 as ‘The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes’, and was later known as Yugoslavia, have been covered by scholars with particular thoroughness, and, indeed, it is part of this area that is the focus of the present study. There is a substantialbody of works ,. 1

devoted to the Yugoslav experiment, and a large and growing number analyzing the country’s violent disintegration. However,the position of women in the Yugoslav lands has only recently become a focus of attention. The present study is an attempt to draw together elements of the experience of Iife in these lands from the point of view of women as it is expressed in works of the imagination, by giving an overview of the development of literary culture through the voices and from the perspectiveofwomen.Such an undertaking represents an innovation also in respect of the cultural history produced in the region itself, from which, until recently, women have been strikinglyabsent,women’swritinghaving been underrepresented in traditional anthologies and literaryhistory. By bringing women into the foreground and looking at their achievements in literary culture in a new perspective, this study seeksto contribute to the process of restoring women to the cultural history of the lands where they too have lived. There is an additional dimension to the work in view of the present disastrous consequences of emphasizing ‘heroic’ patriarchal culturalvalues in the Central Balkans,it seeks to look into the shadows in order to examine the extent to which there may exist an alternative tradition.The aim of this investigation isnot to suggest that such an alternative outlook is exclusivelythe province of women: on the one hand, acceptance of a mythic version of history constrains the entire population and, on the other, women have often been as eager as men to promote heroic values. But an obvious effect of these dominant values has been to reinforce gender stereotypes in which men play the active role of defending the homeland, while women are confined to the passive, private sphere, as nurturing-and often bereft-wives and, above all, mothers.

Scope of the Volume and Brief Historical Survey In order to give coherence to the volume, I have focused on one language group, speakers of the language still most simply referred to as Serbo-Croat. Since the break-up ofYugoslavia this term has been used mainly by people outside the territory; in the respective 2

states the language is known as ‘Serbian’, ‘Croatian’, or ‘Bosnian’. (As this book goes to press, dictionaries of ‘Montenegrin’ have also begun to appear.) In addition, I have chosen to concentrate on one set of historical and cultural circumstances: the influences of Byzantine culture and the Orthodox Church, on the one hand, and of Ottoman rule, on the other. Before the Slavs arrived in the Balkan peninsula the dominant culture in the area was that of the Roman Empire, with a complex system of urban settlements, communications, exploitation of natural resources, and trade routes. The sixthcentury Slav invaders virtually obliterated Roman civilization.* For the first several hundred years after their arrival in the Balkans, the Slavslived according to their traditional tribal customs and pagan beliefs. It was only in the Middle Ages, after embryonic states had begun to settle into stable structures with some degree of political and social organization, that a need was felt for the cohesive influence of European Christian civilization. When this happened, there weretwo distinctpotentialcenters:Rome and Byzantium. The emerging Slav states vacillated between the two, according to their perceived interests. Eventually, geography and the declining power of the Byzantine Empirein the West resulted in the gravitation of the Western areas towards Rome, and the increasing importance to the emerging states in the South-East of Byzantium, Constantinople or ‘The Imperial City’ (‘Tsarigrad’). By the time this process was complete, the Western Slavs had taken the name of the dominant tribe, the Croats, whilethe name of the Serb tribe had spread to the majority of the Slav groups in the South-East. The original provenance of the Balkan Slavs is obscure. There are many conflicting theories. But it is clearat least that the racial origins of all the Slav tribes which eventually settledin the Balkan peninsula are the same. There was thus no initial objective difference between the original Slav peoples who later came to be known by different names. Allof them underwent similar processes of absorption of indigenous groups, suchas the Celts and the Illyrians, and of earlier or subsequent settlers, that is, Avars,Saxons,Franks,Vlachs, and others. Later, the particular admixture of,for example, Italians, Austrians, and Hungarians along the Dalmatian coast and in the North3

West, and of Turks, Greeks, and Albanians in the lands under Ottoman occupation, resulted in different prevailing combinations. But the Balkan peninsula, like the British Isles, is essentially characterized by an inextricable racial mixture of peoples. The distinctions which in the end came to identify the BalkanSlavs as Slovenes, Croats,Serbs,Bosnians,Macedonians,Montenegrins,Bulgarians, and so on, are, then, the result not of race, but of religious and cultural allegiance, and historical circumstance. Perhaps the crucial aspect ofthe historical experience of the whole region is its nature as a border-land, with shifting frontiers, forming, over the centuries, various configurationsfor varying lengths of time. As throughout Europe, the driving force behind the formation of kingdoms of Varying ethnic mixtures at different times between the ninth and fourteenth centuries was territorial expansion and comjostling between mercial gain.The result was a kaleidoscope of states, several powers, subject to the fluctuating influence of the Roman CatholicWest-notablyHungary and Venice-andByzantium,with numerous smaller fiefdoms of varying size and importance. With the penetration of the Ottoman Turks into the peninsula, a relatively

4

stable structure was established in the southern and central territories, with periods of internal unrest and constant friction along its borders. As Ottoman power began to wane, the influence of the Habsburg Monarchy increased from the late sixteenth century onwards among the Serbs living in the Habsburg lands, and after 1878 in Bosnia. Until the end of the fourteenth century, the circumstances of life for the ordinary population of the region were broadly similar to those elsewhere in feudal Europe. But when the Ottoman Turks occupied the territories, they replaced the existing state structures with their ownnetworkoflocal landholders and provincial governors. While this ruling structure was, on the whole, benign, leaving the villages with considerable autonomy inrunning their own affairs, the development of the social and cultural lifeof the indigenous population was seriously affected, being left in the hands of representatives of the different religious groups whose own level of education was, on the whole, minimal. In predominantly Christian areas trade and urban activity were dominated by foreigners, mainly Greeks and offlcials of the Ottoman Empire. Even in Bosnia, where there evolved a large population of local Slav converts to Islam, the general educational and cultural level ofthe great majority remainedlow. It should also be stressed that, as a result of successivewars between the great powers in the region, in which the local population was inevitably caught up, the moreprosperous and mobile localtraders-the people with the most education, in other words-were those who tended to find rehge in neighboring countries, seeking greater stability and escaping reprisals. This mobility makes it hard to assess the quality of life in the towns which were most affected by the fluctuations of their inhabitants. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly the case that the majority of the population of the whole region was largely confined to the countryside, where educational possibilities were minimal.As a result, the traditional social structures of village life hardly changed for 400 years. While urban life developed rapidlyin the course of the twentieth century, the largely static state of the countryside meant that an increasingly sharp divide developed betweenthe people in the towns and those in the villages, one which has endured to thisday. 5

The scope of the present work is confined to the territories which are known today as Serbia and Montenegro (the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as this book goes to press),and Bosnia Herzegovina. For a number of reasons, the Serb population is given the fullest treatment: on the one hand, a large-scale migration at the end of the seventeenth century led to the growth of a prosperous community in southern Hungary, where conditionsfor the development of culture quickly evolved in the context of the Habsburg Monarchy. In Serbia itself, an independent kingdom was established in the nineteenth century, and educational and cultural institutions were able to develop rapidly from the middle of the century onwards. The rugged mountainous territory of Montenegro, which was never completely subject to Ottoman rule, and where a tiny kingdom was founded in 1850, remained largely inaccessible to educational and culhlral influences from the West, apart from the small communities in the coastal towns, notably Kotor, which came underVenetian influence, and the miniature capital, Cetinje, perched high in the mountains. This predominantly tribal society was deeply traditional,and the lives of the inhabitants, particularly the women-in the inland areas at least-remained largely unchanged fromthe Middle Ages until recent times.3 The lands which constitute present-day Bosnia Herzegovina have had a complex history: having been an independent kingdom from the twelfthcentury, threatened continually by the kingsof Hungary, Bosnia became the western limit of the Ottoman Empire, forming the border with the Habsburg lands. The population consisted of adherents of the two Christian churches, Catholic and Orthodox, and a large group of local Muslims. It was extremely unstable as a result of the constant friction between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires,whichcausedwavesof refigees from different ethnic groups tomove in and out of the territory at intervals overthe centuries. The catastrophic wars at the end of the twentieth century in the lands that were Yugoslavia offera painful illustrationof the instability of life in this region. The ruthless struggle for power through the control of territory which they represent is a vivid reminder of the violence of European life beforethe present pattern of nation-states 6

The Yugoslav landson the eve of the First World War

The Yugoslav successorstates SLOVENIA

t

N

"

CROATIA

h >.

FEDERAL REPUBLIC

OF YUGoSLAVIA SERBIA

REPUBLIC OF

7

began to settle. The Yugoslav wars of the 1990s have reflected on a shockingscale the frequent movementsof population that have characterized much of Balkan history, bringing home to us the misery and suffering entailed by such violent upheavals. The particular effects of war on women, subjected over the centuries to rape by invading armies, in addition to all the other hardships of struggling to sustain the life of their families, has been an important theme in studies of women’shi~tory.~

Main Cultural Influences and the Role of Women The Slav tribes brought with them to the Balkans established beliefs and customs. Gradually, their gods were adapted to the new Christian ideas, but the old ways survived in many forms with remarkable tenacity. To a considerable extent, the Slavs resisted Roman civil law and continued to regulatefamily and community relations according the to their ancient ideas ofjustice. As is the case with all pagan gods, Slavgodswere not grand forces directing the universe, balancing absolute categoriesof good and evil, but figures evolved from natural at phenomena perceived as significant. The Slavs’godswereclose hand, intimately present in all aspects of daily life: in the fields, the home, and the family. One study of ancient beliefs among the Slavs in the Central Balkans, by Natko Nodilo, suggests that they are particularly inclined to preserve such popular belief^.^ A feature of religious life in the region which Nodilo sees as having had a particular influence on the survival of ancient belief was Bogomilism, the Christian heresy that took root particularly in Bosnia, surviving as a widespread phenomenon until the end of the fifteenth century: for example,insomeareas-notablyHerzegovina and Montenegro-the names of the ancient Slav gods have survived in personal names and the names of traditional heroes. Nodilo cites the exampleof the close relationship between the gods and heroes of classical Greece, concluding that this tendency among the Balkan Slavs preceded the domination of Christianity and Islam. He divides historical popular culture into two main phases: first, up to the fifteenth century, when 8

the variouspeoples had their own localrulers, and second, the period of Ottoman rule. In this second phase,the local rulerstended to be replaced in the popular imagination by highwaymen whose activities undermined Turkish administration and commerce, and from that time on the Slav gods were transformed into heroes. Ancient layers of popular belief may also be traced in traditional songs and stories, in which patterns of behavior and the characteristics of particular gods are transferred to the portrayal of individual heroes. These songs and stories are woven into every aspect of life in the Balkan villages,forming an intricate web of great cohesive power. Cultural activity among the small educated elite in the medieval states in the region varied in intensity, depending on political circumstances. In the Serbian states, in particular, the influence of Byzantium was strong: between the mid-twelfth and late fourteenth centuries, these states were sufficiently stable and prosperous for large numbers of monasteries and churches to be built, richly decorated withmagnificentfrescoes. A substantialbodyofwriting was produced within the context of the administrative needs of church and state, including biographies of the rulers, reinforcing the main Nemanjid dynasty, which dominated Serbian medieval history. On the basis of these documents, treaties, trade agreements, letters, and so on, it is possible to buildup a detailed pictureof the lives of the ruling class, in which individual women played an important part. The last vestiges of an independent Serbian state disappeared in 1459. After that, monks continued to copy documents and so preserve a degree of literacy among an element of the population, but it was not until the great migration of 1690 into Habsburg lands north of the Danube that the conditions began to be createdfor the renewal of cultural activity. The focal point of Serbian intellectual life shifted to Belgrade in the course of the nineteenth century as educational and cultural institutions were gradually established there. By the end of the century, many young men-and a handful of women-were traveling to foreign universities to study and returning with a new, European outlook. In the twentieth century, cultural trends echoed those of the rest of Europe. In Bosnia Herzegovina, under Ottoman rule, the cultural life of the educated elite in the sixteenth and sev9

enteenth centuries was carried on in Turkish, Arabic, and Persian. From the middle of the seventeenth century, writing in these oriental languagesgave way to the new trend of writing in the vernacular, although the Arabic script was retained until the end of the nineteenth century. Thisliterature was known as alhamijado, a corruption of an Arabic term meaning ‘foreign’. While the development of written vernacular literature was interrupted by the Ottoman occupation, an oral tradition flourished throughout the territories under consideration. The contribution of women to this dimension of the region’s culture is great and this will be the first focusof the present study. Afterthat, it traces the written literature produced by women, from the first modest beginnings in the Middle Ages and the early nineteenth century to the turn of the century, when women were able to draw on the energy and experience of a broad international women’s movement. The period up to the Second WorldWar was a time of energetic intellectual activity for educated women throughout the Yugoslav lands.However, the achievements of this generation were largely overlooked in official socialist cultural and literary history. Afterthe Second World War,in Yugoslavia as in most of Eastern Europe, we are confronted by a paradox: the prevailing ideologyheld that the ‘woman question’ had been solved with the establishment of a socialist government and that it was therefore inappropriate to explore the position of women in social, intellectual,and cultlu-al life. And yet, as has been discussed in manystudies ofwomen in the socialistsocieties of Eastern Europe, the fact remained that women were still marginalized, saddled with the ‘double burden’ of employment and domestic work, their position in practice often being less favorable than that of many women in the period between the wars. It was not until the 1970s that women were again able to question the marginal role to which their creativity had been consigned, and it is possible to trace the beginnings of a new, alternative, consciously ‘women’s’ voice in literature.

10

Women at theMargins of History and Culture In order to begin to understand the particular nature of women’s experience in this part of southeastern Europe, and to establish a frame of reference for the individual topics of this study, we need to bear in mind the general socialand cultural contextof women’s lives in the region. There are three main componentsin the cultural heritage of the Balkan lands: the influence of the Orthodox Christian Church, with its Byzantine background; the presence of Islam in the particular form it took in the Balkans; and the basic social structure of the zadmga-the patriarchal extended family farm, which set the basic pattern of life in most of the countryside, at least until the Second World War. The general tenets of Christianity and Islam in relation to women are too familiar to be repeated here. The zudruga has been extensively studiedby sociologists and anthropologists. Forour present purposes, it is enough to say that it varied in size from two or three families (the head of the family and his son/sons with their wives and children) to a maximum of20 couples. The basic principle was that, while the male members never left the common home, women entered by marriage, and were thus disadvantaged from the outset by their lack of blood-ties tothe family unit. The organization of the household was hierarchical, with every member having a definite rank, determined by age and sex, “the sex criterion being stronger than the age criterion: all males were superior to any of the womenfolk, particularly in regions with a fighting tradition”.6 The word of the head of the family was law, although it was possible for him to be removed if he proved unequal to the task. The duties of the appointed ‘top7 woman-usually the head’s wife-were to make clothes for herself, her husband and children, and any widows in the household, to distribute tasks among the other women, and to ensure that all the needs of the household and workers in the fields were met.’ Several studies of the system focus on the mechanisms for reinforcing the domination of the male-oriented group over its female members: for example, in public the man must be seen to assert his authority by walking in front of his wife, or riding the only donkey while the women carry heavy loads.* Other symbolic mecha1 1

nisms of this kind include seating arrangements on ceremonial occasions, and the frequent custom of the women of the household kissing the men’s hands or, insome places, washingtheir feet.9 I suggest that, whatever the private reality for individuals at various times, all these cultural influences have tended to reinforce an unstated but pervasive public perception of women’s inferiority:underlying the three elementsalready mentioned, the womenof the southern Slav lands share the common Judeo-Christian heritage of European women which has been thoroughly exploredin numerous studies of women’s history published since the 1970s. There is widespread agreement that the views of women in European culture which have dominated its history are largely negative, and that they have hardly changed since the days of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews. In common with other historical and cultural surveys, this study finds initial justification for this view of the roles of Orthodox Christianity and Islam in the Balkans in the fact that accounts of their history typically do notmention women,not even as a category, let alone as individuals who have playeda rolein the development of the region’s religious life. Women in the region may thus be regarded, as has been documented in so many other historical and cultural works, as having slipped out of history, living somehow outside the world of masculine achievements. That women have been systematically neglected in the presentation of the history of this area was highlighted in an important article published in 1989, written by the Croatian feminist historian Lydia Sklevicky, and memorably entitled ‘More Horses than Women’. The pressing issue it raised was that: “If generations of women and men are socialized through their processof education to believe that there were no women in the history of their nation(s), they are socialized in the myth of aZZ$mm’ve patriarchy.”’O Through her work in reassessing conventional accounts of women’s rolesin the history of the Central Balkans, Sklevicky contributed greatly to building confidence among younger scholars,and thus giving momentum to a new focus on women in their work. Nevertheless, the process of establishing women’s studies on a secure footingin southeastern Europe has so far proved di€€kult. This is the result of a widespread tendency, 12

among educated men and women alike,to dismiss a focuson women as a laughable irrelevance. The word ‘feminist’ remains highly p r o b lematic, even at the end of the 1990s. Funds for gender-based researchwerethus hard to come by,even beforeviolentconflict erupted in the Yugoslav lands. Nevertheless, easy access to information about feminist movements and theory in various Western societies,combinedwith the activitiesof the feminist groups founded since the late 1970s in the main urban centers of former Yugoslavia, and of a few individual journalistsand academics, began graduallyto influence younger generations of women scholars. In the course of the 199Os, despite the war, women’s studies courses were set up at the Graduate School of the Humanities in Ljubljana, and as extracurricular subjects at the universities of Belgrade and Zagreb. Such courses were given a new urgency by the recognition that the ‘new democracies’ created in East and Central Europe since the collapse ofCommunismhaveapredominantly‘maleface’:womenhave tended once again to be marginalized in these transformations, at the same time as losing some of their basic human rights. In addition, most strikingly in the area under consideration, the economic and political crisis accompanying the period of transition has been marked by a deep-seated nationalism which tends to foster ideas of women as reproductive instruments for providing the nation with sons. The present work seeks to make a contribution to the growth of gender studies in southeast Europe. It does not, of course, pretend to provide a definitive account of women’s contribution to verbal art in these lands, but it offers a framework for further study. The general approach adopted draws on some of the main achievements of women’s studies, particularly in the Anglo-American tradition. But it is hoped that the survey will also attract the more general reader, interested in broad questions of the construction of gender, and of social and national identities. By highlighting the existence of a neglected alternative tradition, to some extent counterbalancing the prevailingpatriarchal, aggressive ethos currently dominating the region, I believe that this study can contribute also to strengthening the platform of all those, women and men, who do not subscribe to 13

the dominant values of the region in the late twentieth century, but who feel that theyhave no legitimate or audible voice. Women’s groups were particularly prominent in anti-war campaigning throughout the former Yugoslav lands, endeavoring to maintain links across the boundariescreated by the variousnationalistprojects. One interesting instance of such links is a volume of letters between a group of four women, based in Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Berlin and, later, Paris, exchanged by fax from the beginning of June 1991 to the end of November 1992.” The collection is a particularly eloquent expression of the unbelief, resistance, and refusal to be included in the nationalist projects responsible for the war experienced by large numbers of people on all sides throughout the h o s the centers tilities. It describesprotestcampaignsinitiatedinall where the writers found themselves at various stages, practical measures to counteract the restrictions on movement and communication, and, above all, a spirit of defiance and the will to overcome all obstacles put in their way. It is to be hoped that, by highlighting such cooperative values, this bookmay offer the general reading public a different image of the region to that which has dominated the media in the last decade ofthe twentieth century. I have mentioned the important role of the oral tradition throughout this region. As we shall see in more detail inthe chapter dealing with oral tradition, since the majorcollectionsweremade in the nineteenth century, this tradition has been classified according to a broad division into the epic or ‘heroic’ and the lyric mode. Since the beginning of the process of liberation from Ottoman rule, the epic songs, sung predominantly by men and concerned, at least ostensibly,withhistoricalevents,have been privileged over the timeless, more private concernsof.the lyric songs.As women’s creativitytends to be associated with this lyric mode, it is inevitable that it too should continue to be marginalized,in the same way that women have been in the culture taken as a whole, until such time asit is accepted that the epic and .the lyric can. coexist peacefully as a necessary dialogue between two basic world-views, and, above all, when it is recognized that neither mode should be exclusively associated with one gender or the other. I believe that just such an apprehension lies at the heart 14

of a remarkablework by the Serbian poet Desanka MaksimoviC which appeared in 1964.12 Having begun to write in 1919, she was the first woman poet to gain wide acceptance in Serbian literature, and she did so largely by writing verse generally perceived as expressing a recognizably ‘female’ point of view. This volumeis unlike the rest of her work in that it confronts the dominant mode directly, not as a clash of perceptions but, as she puts it explicitly in her subtitle, as a dialogue, a ‘Conversation’ withthe Law Code compiled by the fourteenth-century Serbian ruler Tsar DuSan. MaksimoviC took DuSan’s Code as her starting point in writing what amounts to her own very personal bookof laws, seeking not justice but forgiveness and understanding for many human weaknesses,injustices, and sins. In the context of the mainstream tradition of Serbian literature, dominated by the male voice, this work seems to me to have the same startling quality as some of the brief articulations of a female perception that break suddenly into some of the traditional epic songs known to have been sung by women. The present study seeks to bring such perceptions out of the shadows and to give them a new centrality, complementing the dominant tone.Prompted by Article 10 in Dugan’s Law Code, ‘On Heretics’-“And should aman be found to be a heretic, living among Christians, let him be branded on the cheek and exiled, and should anyone hide him, let him too be branded”MaksimoviC wrote the following poem, which may be read as a commentary upon all absolutist ideologicalsystems: For Heresy

I seek understanding for the heresy that is spreading in the territoriesof Your kingdom that fromit dates the world’sbeginning, for the heretic who states that before his birth there wereno fires or volcanoes, no moonlight, or sunlight, no woods scattered with frost, no snow, that the riversof history began but yesterdayto foam and roar. 15

For the nobles who insist that therewas no gently before their time, nor golden chalices, nor monasteries. For all whoare short-sighted and narrow-minded. For the young who think that mankind and thebeauty whichtheir eyes behold began only when they cameto the world, that no oneever loved like them, that thegreat festival of human life began onlywith their arrival. For everyone’s childish and heretical thoughts.13

Notes 1 Todorova, Imagining theBalkans. 2 Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth,22. 3 See Milich, A Stranger ’S Supper. 4 See particularly war as a recurrent theme in Anderson and Zinsser, A History of Their Own; Vickers, Women and War. 5 Nodilo, Stara vjeraU Srba i Hrvata. 6 Erlich, Family in Transition, 32. 7 Rihtman-Augustin, Struktura tradicijskog mSQenja; Todorova, ‘Myth-making in European Family History’, 39-76. 8 Erlich, 236. 9 Denich, ‘Sex and Powerin the Balkans’, 252-53. 10 ‘More Horses Than Women’,68-75,69. 11 IvekoviC, JovanoviC, Krese, and LaziC, Briefe von Frauen iiber Krieg und Nationalismus. 12 MaksimoviC, ISeek Clemency, 7-38. 13 Ibid., 16.

16

You should nottrust a woman, a snake, or a cat, even when they are dead.’ Women and land can never be kept. Never lend your wife, your gun, or your horseto anyone.2 A house does notrest on the earth, buton woman. If I’m going to hell, I’d prefer to go on a young filly rather than an old mare.3

One useful gauge of prevailing attitudes in a culture is provided by proverbs. The first strikingfeature of the collections of proverbs consulted for the purposes of this study is the fact that they tend to contain a separate category labeled ‘Women’. This endorses the widely acknowledgedobservationunderlyingmuch recent research into women’s historythat, while men areseen as defined by class, occupation, nation, or historical era, “women have traditionallybeen viewed first as women, a separate category of beingn.4 It is an equally common observation that this perception is in marked contrast to the reality of women’sown experience of their individuality. Against the background of the social and cultural history briefly outlined in the Introduction, this chapter aims to consider in more detail the particular nature of the public perception of women in the region and women’s own acceptance of the role assigned to them. Having surveyed in broad outline the region’s history,I want now to turn to the meaning that has been given to that history and its implications for women. It should be stressedat the outset that, among the various cultural groups in the region, one set of meanings-that pertaining to the Serbs, which also includes the Montenegrins-has been elaborated more extensively than any other. This is because of the particular circumstances of Serbian history touchedon in the Introduction. As the Serbs tend to see their history as forming the clearest pattern, it 17

is this pattern which will be considered in most detail. The implications for neighboring groups of so developed a sense of identity are obvious and an awareness of its assumptions is therefore equally important for understanding their situation.

The Emergence of a Serbian National Identity AU peoples depend for their sense of identity on their interpretation of the particular story they tell as their ‘history’. In every culture elaborate systems are developed to process historical information, to form it into a pattern, and to interpret events to fit this pattern. The political vacuum left among the indigenous populations by the Ottoman administration between the late fourteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the Balkans offered fertile ground for the elaboration of a sense of identity, which crystallized in the course of the nineteenth century. Its main characteristic, emphasized in the circumstances of resistance toOttoman rule at that time, was the stress on a sense of difference from the alien rulers and their supporters, an insistence on Christianity rather than Islam, a spirit of defiance, and a sense of the intrinsic value of the indigenous culture. Serbian history was seen to fall into a pattern with three main phases: the glorious days of the great medieval kingdom; the catastrophe of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, which marked the beginning of Turkish oppression; and the long centuries ‘under the yoke’, characterized by resistance and ultimate liberation. The whole Kosovo myth which has evolved in connection with this interpretation of history is an exceptionally potent force in the region and is therefore worth dwelling on in more detail. Little is known of the battle itself, but the first reports suggested that its outcome was not decisive. However, it was guaranteed significance because both the Serbian ruler, Prince Lazar, and the Turkish sultan, Murad, were killed. From the outset, sermons, eulogies, and hagiographic writings of the time reflected a common purpose: to counteract the prevailing pessimism followingthe death of Lazar and to offer somehope to the Serbian people. Thismeant that the battle 18

itself and the death of the ruler had to be interpreted in such a way as to reflect a pattern of martyrdom as redemption and a guarantee of ultimate, eternal victory. So concerned are the earliest accounts with strengthening the cult of Lazar that they do not mention the death of Murad. In his study of the Kosovo myth? Thomas Emmert suggests that the change came as more than 300,000 Serbs moved into the mountains in the decade following the fall of Constantinople in 1453: “The figure of Murad’s assassin found a home in the culture of the exile, where his courageousdeed could inspire respect and enthusiasm for continued resistance to the Turk. In this culturethe patriarchal Serbian village-the epic tradition developed its own periodization of history. Everything revolvedaround the great events which were seen to be important turning points in the life of the nation. In this traditionKosovo became a crucialturning point in the popular consciousness and served as the dramatic watershed between independence and servitude.”6All the components of the myth were present in the history of the Slavs published byMavro Orbini in 1601.’ This work played an important role in the spreading of the myth: a version ofit was translated into Serbo-Croat and published in St Petersburg in1722from where it reached the Serbian population in southern Hungary and eventually all other parts of the Central Balkans.Thisversionincludedalsoscenes and personalities not found in Orbini’s original, but which were familiar to the author of the Serbo-Croat version fromthe popular oral tradition. From this accountof the evolution of the story, it is clear that, since the facts of the battle itself were recorded only in sketchy and conflicting reports, from the very beginning the way the story was told was shaped by a need to interpret such facts as were known. Its function was to satisfy a number of different needs-social, cultural, and emotional-at once shared with the rest of the community and individual. Over time, the songs associated with the Battle of Kosovo began to gather around a set of ideas or imaginativekernels. The prominence of one or other of these ideas fluctuated according to the perceived needs of the community, as interpreted by the individual singer. The oral epic songsin general-and those about the Battle of Kosovo in particular-have been eloquently described by Svetozar 19

KoljeviC as providing the Serbs with both a way of %oming to terms with history and a means of getting out of it”.8 To have transformed defeat into a source of pride and dignity is a triumph of the human spirit, an extraordinary achievement.And undoubtedly it has served the Serbs well whenever great demands have been made on themone might mention their resistance to the Habsburg armies in the First World War and to the Axis powers in the Second. This fact offers some insight into the prominence that this group of songs has had over all the other cycles of songs in the Serbo-Croat oral narrative tradition. Theother cycleshave functions ofvariouskindsaesthetic,moral,comic,dramatic, or generallyentertaining-but none of them has proved as effective as the songs associated with Kosovo in engendering a sense of patriotic allegiance, of commitment to a national cause. The first important aspect of the myth is that it makes the battle the decisive one in the popular consciousness, marking the downfall of the Serbian Empire, the definitive defeat of the Serbs. And yet this catastrophe, this definitive defeat, has been transformed into a triumph, a cause for celebrations on a massive scale to mark its 600th anniversary in 1989. The idea of Kosovo has become deeply rooted at the center of many Serbs’ sense of identity and self-esteem, having a significance beyond the reach of reason. There would seem to be two key factors: one is the notion of the participation of a Cllristian God in the outcome of the battle. The defeat is presented as God’s judgment on the self-seeking, fractious local lords whohad so weakened the Serbian stateby their own quarrels before the battle that defeat was inevitable. In addition, many key aspects of Christian belief havebeen woven into the story, such as the idea of Judas-like betrayal by a nobleman close to the Prince which sent the innocent Serbian ruler to inevitable death, the image of the Last Supper on the eve of the battle. These associations add depth to the myth. But arguably the crucial factor, which can be grasped and appropriated by every individual, is the central idea of confronting overwhelming odds,the notion of willing sacrificefor an ideal, the idea of choice. The quintessential expression of this central idea comes in a song entitled ‘The Downfall of the Serbian Empire’. In this song the Serbian Prince Lazar is visited on the eve of 20

the battle by a messenger from Godand asked to make a choice between the Kingdomof Earth and the Kingdom of Heaven. If he chooses the Kingdom of Earth, he will win the battle, the Turks will be slain, and all the Christians will survive. If, on the other hand, he chooses the Kingdom of Heaven-symbolizing the enduring values of justice and righteousness-although he and all his men will be killed, in dying they will earn eternal life. The irrationality of Lazar’s inevitable choice has an extraordinarily compelling power: the sense of inner pride and dignity, the expansion of the spirit it offers cannot be argued away, denied, or contradicted. The elaboration of the myth was an integral part of the struggle for liberation from Ottoman rule and the emergence of the independent states of Serbia and Montenegro inthe nineteenth century. What is important is that the universal values contained in the ‘Kosovo idea’ were appropriated as specific to the Serbian nation, and that its heroic, epic ideals became the core of the Serbs’ sense of national identity. The process of adopting the mythic version of their past as the national history was made the more straightfonvard in that the populations of these territories were largely homogeneous: the classicworkof nineteenth-centurySerbian literature, The Mountain Wreath by the Montenegrin prince-bishop Petar Petrovit-NjegoS, offers a vivid account of prevailing attitudes to local converts to Islam, suggesting in powerful verse that only their elimination can guarantee the survival of the Montenegrin people. The virtual absence of any physical trace of Ottoman rule in the territories that made up the states of Serbia and Montenegro in the second half of the nineteenth century is striking. In such a context it was possible for the mythic version of Serbian history described aboveto become rapidly established as the single truth, and invested, in addition, with a compelling moral dimension: any questioning of its truth was seen as tantamount to a betrayal of the most sacred national values. One crucial factor should beborne in mind in discussing this process:the men who led the uprisings in Serbia and became the leaders of the new state were themselves villagers, whose education and cultural experience were, initially at least, largely confined to the oral tradition. Thus, for example, the first nineteenth-century Serbian ruler, 21

Milos ObrenoviC, was illiterate and, while efforts weremade to introduce as rapidly as possible politicaland cultural institutions basedon those of the Habsburg lands,the general level of education available to the majority of the population until the end of the century was extremely low. The situation in Montenegro was still more extreme: there the mountainous terrain continued to prevent the develop ment of more than a few small urban centers, and the culture of the population at large remained deeplyrooted in traditionalvalues well into the twentieth century. In such circumstances,the cultural frame of reference which became identified withthe independent states of Serbia and Montenegro was coherent and cohesive. The situation of the mixed population of Bosnia Herzegovina had always been more complex, and when the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy took over administration ofthe temtory in 1878, and the centuries of Ottoman rule there came effectively toan end, the population had to adapt. Catholics tended naturally to look to their immediate neighbor, Catholic Croatia, for their cultural models, while the Orthodox population looked to Serbia. The Muslim inhabitants were left to come to terms with their specifk situation, onlygradually evolving a sense oftheir own identity and pride in their Islamic heritage. Needless to say, this heritage was at the very least problematic in a culture dominated by ideas of liberation from alien,Islamic rule. Speaking the same language as their Catholic and Orthodox fellowcountrymen .and cut off from the cultural centers of Islam, they too tended to look to their immediate neighbors, the Serbs and Croats, for their educational and cultural models.

Women and Language One characteristic feature of women’s heritage in these lands is reflected in the fact that in Slavonic languages, asin ancient Greek and Hebrew, the word for ‘woman’ is the same as the word for ‘wife’. It is worth observing that on the eve of the United Nations Conference on Women held in Beijing in AugustSeptember 1995, one commentator observed that the explanation for the feminist movementin the 22

Westwas the fact that there were not enough available husbands. Had there been enough men for them to many, ran the argument, Western women would have been content to be ‘wives’ and had no need to be ‘women’.9 When one reflects that it is not possible even to make this reactionarystatement in Serbo-Croat, because ‘women’ are simply assumed to be ‘wives’ and haveao acknowledged role in society if they are not, it is easy to understand something of the role of language and unspoken attitudes in determining cultural percep tions. It is precisely the assumptions which are contained in language and give meaning to experience which are the focus of this study. Since Foucault, the relationship between power and language has acquired,a central place in contemporarythought. Feminist thinkers have also devoted much attention to the question of language in relation to the subordination of women. A characteristic formulation is that of Deborah Cameron: “The problem is that men control the processes by which meanings are encoded in language and therefore language represents only male experience, excluding ‘female’ meanings.”1° Recent work in countering the essentialism of some feminist approaches of the 1970s has found the consideration of particular points of convergence and divergencewithFoucaultparticularly fruitful in reaching a less simplified view of women’s situation, chiefly by focusing on specific circumstances.llIn this section I explore the particular way in which I believe attitudes to women wereencoded in the Serbo-Croatian language at the time it was standardized in the nineteenth century. As far as the position of women is concerned in all these territories,the impact of the new circumstances of emerging nationhood is crucial. We have seen that their role at the center of the home was clearly defined within the framework of the traditional social structures which provided the basic organization of life for the majority of the population from the MiddleAgesonwards.While they were undoubtedly viewed as inferior to men, women were invested with a positive value in traditional society which recognized the interdependence of women and men and in which the concept of motherhood was particularly powerful. The survival of traditional village communities well into the twentieth century and the collections of oral traditional culture offer abundant material for observa23

tion of the norms of behavior established for both women and men, which were fixed through ritual and custom and through the songs that accompanied all social activities. The growth of nationalism in the nineteenth century modified these traditional patterns by offering men new opportunities for action and investing such public activity with new value. Women’s central role in the private sphere then acquired different associations, the concept of motherhood now assuming crucial significancefor the future of the nation. Inorder to explore the question of the expression ofpower through language in relation to the region under discussion, we need to consider the particular circumstances in which the SerboCroat language was established as a creative medium in the nineteenth century. The codifkation of the language was carried out in the first half of the century by both Croats and Serbs, who signed a joint agreement on the standardization of their common languagein Vienna in 1850. The essential work was done in Serbia by a man of peasant origin, Vuk StefanoviC KaradZiC, whobased his grammarand dictionary systematically and exclusively on the language of the villages. It is important to bear in mind that it was just at this time (the first half of the nineteenth century) that the Serbs were engaged in an-ultimately successful-struggle for liberation from Ottoman rule. This context was bound to be reflected in language use, particularly in viewof the Romantic insistence on the importance of the language of the ‘common people’and the fact that the standardization was based on the language of the vigorous oral traditional literature: stories,proverbs,spells,riddles, and, aboveall,song. As we have seen, the tradition of singing in this regionis divided into lyric songs, usually sung bywomen-and therefore alsoclassifiedas‘women’s’ songs-and narrative, epic or ‘heroic’ songs, sung on the wholeby men. Given the circumstances outlined above, both historical and cultural, it was inevitable that a special valueshould be placed on the ‘heroic’ songswhich became suchan active agent in emphasizing the virtues of resistanceto the Ottoman Turks,faith in the Christian cause, and the inevitabilityof ultimate liberation. By contrast, the ‘women’s’ songs, concerned with more universal, enduring values, are timeless and notsusceptible toenlistment in a patriotic cause. 24

The lyric songs accompany all aspectsof the life cycle, on the individual and communal level: from births, deaths, and family relationships, to seasonal work on the land and all aspects of local ritual. Theyprovide the essentialaesthetic experience of the villagers throughout their lifetime. In the second half of the century, writers in the new standard language, with all its potent associations with village life, used the verse forms and diction of the lyric songs to express some of the concerns of European Romanticism. At this time, therefore, the lyric mode, with its insistence on personal, private experience, may be seen to have coexisted on equal terms with the values of the epic, creating a favorable environment for the development of rich and varied poetry concerned with a wide range of to in themes. By contrast, when the first women writers began appear Serbia in the nineteenth century, they tended to favor rousing, patrioticverse, far removedfrom traditional timelessritual and responses to everyday experience. In the circumstances in which they were writing, seeking to participate fully in the historical moment, such women tended to avoid modes of expression which could be associated with a ‘feminine’ perspective. These women had absorbed the dominant ethos so completely that concern with the world of their personal emotions seemed trivial, unworthy of their new sense of their own dignity. We may therefore conclude that by the time the oral tradition began to fade out in the face of increased opportunities for education and the growth of towns, the scope for the creative use of language for women was limited. While it was acceptable for male Romantic poets to use lyric forms,for a long time women poets tended to be treated differently: if they wrote directly about their own emotions, their work was immediately labeled ‘feminine’, with all the negative connotations of a culture in which ‘manly’ qualities wereparticularlyprized.Considerableenergy and timewererequired to reestablish a literary vehicle for a distinct women’s voice, one whichcouldexpressindividualfemale experience, unconstrained by public expectations. One of the aims of the current study is to examine the extent to which, in the context of a dominant nationalist ideology, women have been ‘trapped’ in a fundamentally male perception of their 25

history, culture, and identity. I suggest that, while the tradition of oral lyric song had existed until the nineteenth century side-by-side with the epic, after that time,althoughaspects of itsstylewere adopted by individual poets, the oral lyric tradition itself tended to be marginalized and seen as inferior. I believe that this came about’ because of the particular circumstances of nineteenth-century nation-building in southeast Europe, in which the epic tradition-and ‘historical’ songs in particular-were favored. Once the concern with the private realm of experience had been appropriated by individuals who molded it to express their own individual personalities, the anonymous collective voiceof women as a countemeight to the epic, heroic mode began increasingly to beseen as of interest only to ethnographers and folklore specialists, and as no longer capable of informing mainstream culture. For all these reasons,the associations of phrases such as ‘feminine style’ and ‘female voice’ were therefore loaded with meaning when they were applied, almost inevitably, to each new woman writer to achieve public recognition, well into the twentieth century. It is my contention that the mythic interpretation of history, while imposing constraints’on all membersof society in the region, constituted a particularburden for women. The nature of that burden may be observed in the case of the first significant Serbian woman writer of modern times, Milica Stojadinovid. Whenshe began to writein the early nineteenth century, she had evidently completely internalized the role laid downfor her as a Serbianwoman. Indeed, she was seen as such an embodiment ofthis role that the word for ‘a Serbian woman’-‘S@&$z’-withwhich she signed her first published poems soon became inextricablyattached to her name, and she is known in literary history as Milica StojadinovidSrpkinja. In my opinion, there is little doubt that her most important work is the diary she wrotein 1854 which also includes some letters to friends and fellow writers.As we shall see in greater detail in Chapter 4, the diary and letters are written in a fresh, lively, and at times witty style which suggests a real literary talent. It is therefore greatly to be regretted that Stojadinovid did not take this aspectof her work more seriously;no doubt she saw it as the musings of a ‘mere woman’ and believed that her true voca26

tion and duty were to write rousing but mediocre patriotic verse.Her wholehearted acceptanceof her role as ‘a Serbian woman’as defined in the prevailing culture therefore had the effect of suppressing her real talent and confining her to the margins of literary history. The publicly accepted model of womanhood, as it was understood and accepted by Stojadinovid, is clearly expressed in a survey of the history of Serbian women published in the first issue of a magazine called Serbian Woman which appeared in Sarajevo in 1912. The author is a certain Olga Kernid-PeleS from Trebinje in Herzegovina. I quote almost the complete text becauseit seems to me to encapsulate the interpretation of Serbianhistory and women’s role in it which I am seekingto describe:

Serbian Woman From time immemorial,the Balkan lands have been bathed in blood. Their position as a peninsula betweentwo large, different worlds, between twocontradictory cultures, has made them an eternal battlefield, wherethe sound of clashing weapons and shattered lances never ceased. The shores of the peninsula were plundered by pirates. Its soil rang with the hoofbeats of Alexander the Great’s Bucephalus,it was trampled by the armies of Xerxes, Pompey’s legions celebrated their victories there. Throughout human history, the Balkan peninsula was the stageofendless bloody changes, stormy games of fate and great strugglesfor hegemony. The battlefield of east and west. With the sixth century, it became the condition of life of our Serbian history; it became the center of our homeland. The plow started to furrow through the exhausted, bloodsoaked fields, white flocks to graze in the fresh green meadows, and the sound of the shepherd’s flute began toecho over it,together with rich songs from young girls’ throats. That was the time when the peace-loving Slav peoples mowed south, under pressure fromthe Mongol hordes, seekingpeacefd, happy harbors, a fruitfill, fertile homeland.And the warlike agitation ceased immediately,for the Slavs sought with song and muhappiness in labor, tothe sound of the pale and the sic, withthe plow and hoe. Gentleand peaceful, they wishedto live in peace withall their neighbors. They greeted all guestswith bread and salt, no matter who they were. The Serbs were of that blood, thattribe, and at the end of the sixth and bepart of the Balkan peninsula... ginning of the seventh century they covered a large

kzvdn~m,~*

27

And just as the whole Slav nation was clearly differentiated from the Latin, Germanic and Asiatic peoples, so the Serbs as a tribe stood out among the other Slavs. Peace-loving, but decisive, ambitious and self-willed, the Serb cared above all for his honor, lovingjustice and truth. He was unused and unwilling to be enslaved; nor did he show himself to others otherwise from what he was. Honest, sincere, reliable, faithful to hisfriends, for whom he would spill his own blood. Ever vengeful to his enemy, he was also magnanimous and patient. For honor and liberty, hisown life was never too high a price to pay. Family life was sacred to the Serb, his wife was his support, his honor, and in this the Serb competed with the powerful Roman, for the Romans werethe first and only people in their day to care for the family and give women an honorable place in the family and society. In the tradition of Serbian history, Serbian womanwas thus always an important member of the family, and in this way she had significant influence also on public life. The Serbian people were not able to lead their lives in their homeland in natural unconcern for the rest of the great world. They too had to raise their heads from the plow, to rouse themselves fromtheir pastoral peace and defend their borders, to stop their enemies from ravaging and burning their hearths. The power and might of the Arabs swept through Europe. The Balkans were the fint victim, and the Serbs the only bulwark. At arms, dayand night, with no pause or rest. In blood and slaughter, they struggled, fought, suffered for the holy crossand golden liberty. They rose to eagles’ heights, theygrew and advanced to the extent of mighty DuSan’s empire. Then at Kosovo they broke their spears and buried freedom for many long years, bowing their heads beneath a foreign yoke. But again their strength grew, they shook themselves, and rose to wear a royal crown! A l l of that entailed great sacrifice, violent, bloody battle. The whole history of the Serbs is written in blood, but in it there are also golden words, and those golden words in Serbian history are the shining names of Serbian women. In earlier times, Serbian women were peacefill, they wrote their love of their homeland and their shepherd’s life with their embroidery needles in the living patterns of their traditional motifs. By the hearth, beside the cradle, a woman was the happy spirit of her home. The people sang about her in their songs and swore byher name. Andwhen the bloodytimes of battle and slaughter came, the woman steppedout of her familycircle. She accompanied the armies to battle, tended their wounds, fed the wounded heroes with white bread and gave them red wine to drink. The people immortalized her in the song about the Maid of K O S O V O . ~ ~ 28

Mothers would see their sons off to battle with song, encouraging them, emboldening them, bequeathing us the eternal symbol of the Mother of the JugviCi,14 and beside her then as today there were countless others. And how wisely and thoughtfully did Serbian women wear the royal crown and help the armies under their rule-we have examples in Queen Milica, the Lady Rosanda,and Princess Jerina.15 And how ready were Serbian women to sacrifice themselvesfor the sake ofthe homeland may be seen in the example of lovely Mara, the daughter of Prince Lazar, whomarried Bajazit, the son of her people’s enemy... And when the Serbian people, in the darkness of their enslavement, took to the green hills to avenge their honor as highwaymen, then too Serbian women played their part. They wouldclothe and equip the men, bring them food, hide them in the woods, say nothing and in their homes nourish their hawks of sons, their doves of daughters and runtheir houses as though they weremen ... Our traditional songs bear living witness to the way Serbian woman loved in the confines of her home, her family, among her kin and friends ... And in our modern, enlightened times, Serbianwoman has remained true to the people’s traditions, stepping out beside her people, caring for their honor, loving her homeland. Many a Serbian woman has earned her people’s gratitude through the gifts of her mind and heart, her generous hand, with bequests and by the pen. Today too they stand in the first ranks in the cultured world. In science, in art, in carrying out important callings, youwill find Serbian women ready, conscious and agile, so that the world must admire them. And here is this first issue of a journal plucked from the heart of Serbian woman, her first hot tear illuminated by her quick mind, her first thought filled with the fire of warm love of her homeland, her first wish imbued with living hope, it is being dispatched to all the cherished regions of the brotherly Serbian nation, to bear witness that in the future also Serbian woman will step out in honor and pride, caring for her faith,loving her people, and that, by her hearth, by the cradle, with her spindle and cooking pot, with her book and pen, she will know how to protect her honor, nurture her strength, character, the pure, fresh lifeof workand sacrifice for the sake ofher Serbian people. ‘Serbian Woman’,therefore, go forth with the sacred, great idea of enlightening and strengthening in the first place the Serbian family, and then Serbian s ~ . ciety and thehomeland, all imbued with holy faith in God and hopein a happy, enlightened, industrious future, and from you, dear people, Serbian women shall hope for love and response.16

It should be borne in mind that this text was written at the time of the Balkan Wars, whenit was natural enough that the prowess of the 29

Serbian people as warriors should bestressed and the accepted, ‘processed’ account of their history foregrounded. Nevertheless, as a piece of writing which is essentially a statement of pride in therole of women in both history and contemporary achievements, the extent to which its author accepts the secondary, supportive role assigned them is revealing. One curious detail is perhaps particularly worthy of attention: in the short paragraph describing the “modern, enlightened times”, the author uses the phrase “stepping out beside her people”,” as though women were not in fact an integral part of the people, but somehow outsidethem, playing a secondary, supportive role. Is this not a true reflection of the way in which women in this culture, as in so many others, are also perceived to be outside history?Where named individualcharacters are known and mentioned, as in this text, they occur in a limited number of clearly defined roles, and, strikingly, several ofthe named ‘individuals’ in such accounts are in fact fictitious figures from the oral epic tradition. What is of particular interest, I believe, is the discrepancy between the realachievements, the educational, cultural, and intellectual status of women of the generation of the author of this text and her acceptance of the mythic account of her people’s history. This discrepancy vividly illustrates both the pervasive power ofsuch interpretations and my contention in this study that it has represented a special burden for women in their search to find their own voice to express their own personal experience. What is more striking stillis that after all the advances of the interwar period, when a considerable number ofwomenachieved a prominent position in the intellectual lifeof their country, they were still unable to exert any influence on the accepted, generalized account of their role: it remained possible for them simply to be absorbed into it. An illustration of this is provided by the following brief statement, an account of the contribution of women to Serbian literary culture, which appeared in an anthology of Serbian women poetspublished in 1972. The volume was dedicated toIsidora SekuliC, one of the few women writers ofthe period between the two world wars to be acknowledged in the literary canon. The volume opens with some tributes to SekuliCby six established writers and 30

critics, including the novelist and academician Dobrica cosid, who was president of Yugoslavia (1993-94) at the height of nationalist fervor and theBosnian war: In our history, in our collective inheritance and memory, the hero-woman has stood firm; the woman who has identified her destiny with that of our fatherland ... The arches of our history have stretched from the Mother of the JugoviCi to the exploits of women revolutionaries and Partisan heroes, from the nun Jefimijal* to Isidora SekuliC, from the young GojkoviC girl19 to our contemporaries-in the span of these arches, Isidora SekuliC has a place visible from afar: she has entered our culture in her ownway, honorably, enduringly.20

When we come to consider the work of Isidora SekuliC in Chapter 6 it will become clear that there is nothing in her writing, or in her own intellectual status or interests-those of a sophisticated individual widely read in many different cultures-to justify the extraordinary juxtaposition of her name with those of fictitious characters from the oral tradition. As it could not have occurred to cosid to make such an analogy between Sekulid's contemporary male writers and even the greatest of the legendary heroes, I believe that the degree of conformity to a pre-ordained pattern expected of women was far greater than for their male compatriots and that it constituted the trap or burden I am seeking to describe. As we look at the specific achievements of women in the area of verbal art in these lands, I believe that we shall find a range of experience and its expressionthat is altogether richer, more individual, and more original than is suggested by the pervasive perception articulated by Dobrica cosid.

Notes 1 VukoviC, Nar0dn.i obifaji, vemanja i poslovice kod Srba, 272. 2 StojiEiC, Sjaj rargovora. Leksikon Srpskih narodnilt izreka, 185. 3 VukanoviC, S@& narodnx? poslouice,66-68. 4 Anderson and Zinsser, A Histoty of T1m.rOrun, m. 5 Emmert, Serbian Golgotha: Kosovo, 1389. 31

6 Emmert, 82. 7 Orbini, I1 Regno degli Shvi. 8 KoljeviC, TIEE@ in tlw Making, 320. 9 Quoted in Z ~ E Guurdian ( A q p t 1995). 10 Cameron, Fernininn and Ling7dstic T h q , 116. 11 McNay, Fmuault and Fmnin.ism 12Traditional musical instruments. 13A character from the epic songs connected with the Battle of Kosovo. See Chap ter 2. 14 As above. 15Medieval historical figures. See Chapter 3. 16 KerniC-PeleS, 13. 17 'Uznarod' in the original. 18 One of the few women in medieval Serbiato have written poetic texts. SeeChap ter 3. 19 Another character from the oral tradition. 20 RadovanoviC, Antobgija slpskilr psnikinja od Jefimije do danas. See Chapter 7.

32

A lovely young lassie once asked Of the blacksmith in her home town: "I beg you, withall your great skill To forge me ahero of gold." When I was a maidin my mother's house, I lived like ahen fed on corn! But when I married my sweetheart, The very first morning he cursed me! The second day his mother reproached me: "If you weregood, you wouldnot have come!" The third day I left hishouse, And found for myself another!

This chapter is concerned with two main areas of interest: the portrayal of women's roles in the oral traditional literature, and what may be concluded about the contribution of individual women singers to the tradition. The corpus for the first part of the investigation is provided by the shorter lyric songs, whose singers are generally unknown and which, in any case,do not vary greatly fromone singer to another. By contrast, the second section will focus on the somewhat longer ballads and those epic songs known to have been recorded from particular women singers. It was clear as soon as systematic collections of songs began to be made that they fell into two broad categories: first, songs sung, generally in groups, to accompany different activities and aspects of village life, and second, those sung by known singers to an attentive audience and taking the form of stories. As we have seen, because the songs in the first group tend to be sung by women and those in the second are, in the main, concerned with heroic actions, the initial distinction made by Vuk KaradZiC-the most important collector 33

in the nineteenth century-was between ‘women’s songs’ and ‘heroic songs’. This terminological imbalanceis both interesting and typical: there is a pervasive sensein which the things that women do and sing about are perceived asqualitatively different from the ‘action’of men. The categories were later redefined as ‘lyric’ and ‘epic’, which are more neutral terms, but something of the underlying distinction remains, and with it the relative valuethat tends to be associated with each genre. The vast body of short lyric songs fulfills severalfunctions in village life: a first group marks the seasons of the year and associated rituals-songs greeting the arrival of spring, rain songs, carnival songs, and so on, and their Christian adaptations, suchas Easter songs and Christmascarols;asecond group consistsofsongs to accompany communal tasks, such as harvesting or spinning; finally, athird group

A Cairn (Gomila)

34

is made up of songs marking the crucial stages in individual liveswedding songs, lullabiesand laments, toasts,and songs to accompany dancing. In all categories, some of the songs contain echoes of ancient pagan ritual and mythological beings; these traces of many different layers of belief give them a particular resonance. They may thus be regarded as reflecting an inclusive attitude to historical experience, a means by which the community may recall its past and keep elements of it alive. Where events brought frequent, abrupt interruptions to a steady historical development, the traditional oral literature absorbed the new with the old, preserving layers ofthe past in increasingly mysterious, barely decipherable codes which hint at other experiences, other levels of existence. The same is true of the epic songs, but since it is of their nature to describe extraordinary events, these longer songs are less part of the fabric of everyday life than the lyric songs. There is an additional distinction to be made, betweenthe shorter lyric songs and the longer narrative songs sungby women, first identified in the nineteenth century as ‘in-between songs’ or ‘songs on the borderline’, and later as ‘ballads’ and ‘romances’. This will be discussed in more detailbelow.

Lyric Songs Being so much a part of daily life, the shorter lyric songs have a common purpose: to strengthen the bonds of family and village life, to root individuals firmly in the community. In so doing, they establish clear guidelines of acceptable behavior and warn against deviations. Their material tends to be generalized, and where characters are named they are given typical names, which do not refer to a specific individual,or else characters are simply identified by their function in the community, as ‘youth’, ‘maiden’, ‘mother-in-law’, and so on. The ballads and epic songs, on the other hand, describe unusual destinies: they are tales of individuals who have in one way or another stepped outside social normsand so earned a place in the collectivememory. In keeping withthis distinction, the shorter lyric 35

songs are less subject to change. Thisis in part because their brevity makes them more easily memorized and reproduced, but also because in many cases their ritual function requires that they retain exactly the same form. Theymay indeed be considered ‘communal’ in origin, because their original composers have been obscured by the passage of time and they have acquired their established form through centuries-long use by innumerable performers, manyof whom are, in any case, groups. It is partly for this reason that the short lyricsongshave been accorded far less scholarly attention than the longer forms. Once their function in the village year has been described and some attention given to the time, place, and manner of their collection, scholars have not seen much more to analyze. The scant attention they have received contrasts strikingly with that givento the epic songs, for which the bibliography of both local and foreign works is substantial.’ Two scholars in particular have contributed to an understanding of the nature and function of the lyric songs: Vladan NediC and, more recently, HatidZa KmjeviC, who has taken on the task of highlighting the imbalance which characterizes scholarly attention in respect of the lyric and epic songs. NediC was the editor of the standard anthology of lyric songs, and he introduced a precise system of categorization into their discussion. The first group he identifies contains songs which convey “a pagansense of life”, and includes ritual songs accompanying the seasons, the largest number being sungin spring and summer, when there were numerous rituals associated withthe phases of the moon (often connected with the appearance of particular flowers). There is a separate category of ‘devout’ songs,in which NediC includes both mythological and Christian content, a group of ‘work songs’, andthe most numerous category-love songs. The last category he identifies is ofparticular interest for our purposes: his ‘family songs’group includes two sub-groups: ‘soldiers’ songs’and songs about men who have had to go far away to find work. These two groups highlight one way in which the destiny of men in the villages is differentiated from that of women: as with the heroic songs,theydescribe a lifeof ‘action’, to which the women’s only possible response is to lament 36

the men’s departure and anxiously to await their return. It is worth noting that, while the hardships entailed by this ‘male’ destiny have often been highlighted, the potential pain of the woman’s position has not been given much attention: it is the inevitable fate of young girls who marry that theywillmove, often considerable distances, away from their families, and of mothers that they will have to watch their daughters leave. Whilethere are many songs which describe the misery of a young girl being married against her will, such destinies are so commonplace that NediC evidently did not feel it appropriate to accord them a special category. HatidZa KrnjeviC, whoseimportant work in endeavoring to give the lyric songs more prominence was begun in the 1980s, stresses the intrinsic significance of the lyric tradition in the contrast it offers to complement the epic: Should the role that lyric folk song plays in our lives, in the broadest sense, be overlooked? After all, it is an organic part of human life, an art form that accompanies human actions from birth till death, from lullabies to lamentations. Oral lyric song contains the reality of everyday life and work, an entire galaxy outside the interests of epic singers. It also touches deeper layers of the human psyche: it has given form to man’s primevalfear and impotence in the face of the miracle of the elemental energy of nature, and the mystery of the cycle of birth and death. Lyric songs do not speak of the glory of epic heroes from the past, they mold the inner life of human emotions and situations, both permanent and significant for all people and through all times. Lyric song is a form of the single universal language of humankind-as Erich Fromm defined the forgotten language of symbols ... What would our oral tradition be like if it contained only the monotonous sound of heroic hyperbole of the epic songs without the soft lyric melody that sings of both the beauty and the tragedy of man’s short stay on earth? Heroic times are the past, the lyric is alwaysthe present.3

This statement goes to the heart of our concerns in this book, notably the way in which the lyric songs have been marginalized precisely because they deal with the everyday, whereas their role in giving meaning to the everyday should be both celebrated for the aesthetic dimension it thereby introduces and analyzed to reveal the nature of that meaning. It is precisely the distinction that KrnjeviC 37

makes between the respective roles of the ‘heroic’ and ‘lyric’ forms that is the main concern of the present study. The portrayal of family relationships in South Slav oral poetry-with particular emphasis on the position of women-is dealt with in a valuable work by Elka Agoston-Nikolova.* It represents a new approach to a familiar body of songs,5 which is both refreshing and illuminating. Much of Agoston-Nikolova’s attention is devoted to what she sees as the inherent conflict characterizing the place of the woman within the patriarchal family: “on the one hand, she is an outsider, coming from another family or clan, on the other hand, she embodies the reproductive life-giving force that keeps the family together. ,She is inferior to men in physicalprowess,yet superior when in touch with the mystery of life. She is at once weak and strong, simple and mysteriously complicated.”6 “Women are of primary importance as both subject and object-the life force ensuring reproductiveness of the clan and at the same time the valued As Agoston-Nikolova sees it, the main conobject of posse~sion.”~ flict stems from the fact that the woman is ‘foreign’-her loyalty to the family has to be proved. Women coming from outside are a potentially disruptive element in that they may cause tension between family members,particularly brothers. She draws attention to the hierarchical structure of norms in South Slav culture, where kinship ties are the foundation of the unity of the family and ‘the folk’. Blood-ties represent the strongest bond: “wives, no matter how loyal to the family, are placed on a lower level than other female family members”.8 As if this were not enough to make the new wife’s position difficult, there is in addition a prevailing belief in South Slav culture-expressed in many of the traditional proverbs-that women are not to be trusted; they are seen as easily beguiled and intrinsically deceitful. Agoston-Nikolova stresses the central role of women in Balkan Slav oral traditional poetry, but suggests that they tend to appear in one of two conflicting roles: the mother who sacrifices herself for her child or the treacherous wifewhobetrays her husband. AgostonNikolova points to an important early example of the double standard still familiar in our ownday:“Whyis it that throughout the 38

patriarchal culture represented in Balkan Slav oral narrative poetry, women transgress codes and are therefore severely punished, while the male heroes are never punished for their amoral behavior but are gently set ~traight?”~ Agoston-Nikolova considers various family relationships as they are presented in the songs, focusing on the mother as the central figure in the lyric songs of the Balkan Slavs. She stresses that the mother’s ties withher daughter are particularly close:the degree of the sorrow of parting from a mother on marriage may be gauged from the fact that lament songs sung at funerals often form part of the wedding ceremony, too. Another important relationship is that of brother and sister, which offers scope for emphasizing the primacy of blood-ties, the security of the clan againstintruders from outside. There is an important sense in which the lyric songs may be described as ‘active’, in their role in shaping an ideal orderly structure of life, and in their function as a wayof rethinking and recreating reality. As we have seen, this function has been discussed in relation to the epic songs by Svetozar Koljevid,lo and described as “a way of coming to termswith history”:the epic songsmay offer a way of corning to terms with the major events of history, but it is the lyric songs which deal with the enduring effects of those eventson the daily lives of ordinary people. As such they provide the essential context for absorbing the more dramatic themes. I should now like toturn to my own investigation of the lyric songs for the purposes of this study and to describe my main findings. In the context of the familiar roles imposed on women by patriarchal societies in general-and by the zudrzlgu system in particular-I was looking for evidence of conformity to those modelsand possible deviations from them. The overwhelming sense I derive from a thorough reading of the lyric songs collected by Vuk KaradZid is of the constraints ofeverydaylife and the various means devised by the imagination for escaping them.” The most radical forms of outlet are, for men, heroic action and, for women, magic. Apart from those extremes, it is striking that the great majority of the songs deal with love, set in the period betweenadolescence and marriagewhen there isstillscope for dreaming. Altogether, the uncertainty sur39

rounding love and marriage, the possibility of choice,introduces an element which contrasts withthe stability of family life. Several songs describe a young woman exercising real choice, which it is hard to imagine ever being possible in real life: for example, ‘Girl for Sale’ tells of a girl who rejects all her wealthy would-be purchasersin favor of a clean-shaven, comely youth with nothing to offer apart from a green apple.l2 Dreamsare within the reach of all young people,but in reality choice is strictly limited by parental will: many of the songs, including some ofthe finest ballads, describethe tragic end of lovers whose parents have selected a spousefor them who is not the choice of their heart. It is striking that the opposition comes almost invariably from mothers, whose role is central in the wholetradition, whereas fathers play very little part-male characters have numerous roles in the tradition: they can be kings, knights, warriors, heroes, faithful servants, master-builders, outlawsand bandits, and brothers, but they are rarely seen as fathers. Female characters, on the other hand, are generally designated by their relationship to a man: as sister, wife, sweetheart, daughter, and, above all,mother. The emphasis on this unsettling stagein the lives of young people, as they prepare to change their status from offspring to parents of the next generation, serves to highlight the stability of the family unit as a factor of control in an individual’s life.The desirability of such stability isunquestioned, but thereis sufficient evidencein the songs of individual unhappiness within the family to suggestthat the reality was often far from the harmonious picture presented by the tradition as a whole. Thus, some songs describebad relations between sisters,the torment of marriage to a drunkard, betrayal by a brother or aunt, and,worst of all, a faithlessmother. It is certain that one of the main, if unconscious, aims ofthe tradition is cohesive: by emphasizing the value of communal life and action, it strengthens the bonds on which the social structure depends. The songs depict an intricate web of social norms and expectations, operating on many different levels of experience and covering all aspects of the life of the community. The image conveyed by the songs, particularly those sung on occasions of collective endeavorwhether to accompany work or to mark the seasons of the year-is 40

thus one of harmony, of a community sensitive to and in tune with both its individual members and the natural world. But the unspoken obverse of this picture is the implication of constraint: an individual seeking tofollow her or his own path is inevitably seen as o p posed to the community and therefore a threat. As Agoston-Nikolova stresses in her study, the arrival of an ‘outsider’ in the form of a new bride introduces just such an element of threat: she must be controlled and absorbed into the existing community as rapidly as possible so that the threat of disruption may be neutralized. Once she has been absorbed into the patriarchal family, or when she reaches a certain age within it, the young woman may express her individuality through her ability to perform the role allotted to her. And there is scope in the world ofjoint endeavor even for the expression of superiority: in several songs, young men and women are shownworking together, with the girls outdoingthe boys. A typical example is ‘A lad and lass compete in harvesting’, in which the young man cuts 23 stooks of corn and the young woman 24. At dinner, the young man drinks 23 glasses of wine, the girl 24. “When in the morning the white day dawned,/The lad lay, unable to stir or raisehis head,/while the lasswassewing fine embroidery.”13 Such prowess, however, does not afford the young woman any real advantage and she is obliged to rely on her wit, as shown by another song in the same group,14 in which the boy promises the girl a flock of sheep if she outdoes him, while if he wins the girl herself will be his prize.The girl cuts 303 stooks to the boy’s 202, but when she asks for her sheep, he replies that she has nowhere tokeep them. The girl respondsrealistically-in keeping with the words of an English folksong, “my faceis my fortune, sir, she said”-that she has a green meadow in her fine hair, water in the clear springs of her black eyes, and shade enough under her eyebrows. The woman is, in other words, left to relyon her appearance, her guile, and her intelligence rather than on the acquisition of material possessions. Many of the shorter lyric songs offer examples of women’s limited opportunities for the expression of individuality. For the most part, however, they emphasize the homogeneity of the group, its collective function. 41

42

The main paths open to individualsfor the expression of their free will, as illustrated in the lyric songs, are heroism, magic, and love. This last category includes unsentimental sex-there is a substantial body of erotic song in the tradition. These songs are generally described as ‘women’s songs’, asfor example the volume of translations Red Kn,igltt.15Much has been made of the role of the women singers of such songs in subverting socialnorms-while the songs themselves are certainly subversive,it is more likely that they were composedby male singers as a kind of wish-fulfillment, depicting the way they would have likedthe village womento sing. In this scheme, storiesof heroism and magic are clearly outsidethe realm of the everyday; they express what may be seen as archetypes of qualities to which ordinary mortalsmay only aspire. The question of the supernatural femalecharacter-the vila or ‘nymph’ inthe South Slav oral tradition-is a particularly fascinating one. Since there is no equivalent male spirit, it would seem that the vila came into being to express what may be termed a ‘female’ principle in South Slav culture which acts as a counterbalance to the emphasis on the archetypal ‘manly’ virtues of heroism and physical prowess. One of the most intriguing aspects of the phenomenon is the fact that, while real women were confined to tightly controlled roles, with very limited freedom of action, the vila, embodying the unrestrained female spirit, hasabsolutepower.But, of course,sheexistsonly in the imagination. Another-unanswerable-question is that of the origin of the songs: who composed these stories of unlimited female power? Can they be interpreted as either an instinctive desire for balance, evenhandedness, or even vengeance?Or are they simply an acknowledgment of the fearsome power of sexuality and, by extension, of women? In the shorter lyric songsthe power of the vila is frequently enlisted for some quite innocent purpose: the song ‘The vila’s blood-sister’ describes a young girl granted exceptional beauty by a vila, who crowswith delight ather handiwork.16 The notion of ‘bloodsisterhood’ isitself an interesting concept: the idea of ‘bloodbrotherhood’ among men is widespread in South Slav culturegenerallyto guarantee support in dangerous exploits-but‘blood43

sisterhood’ betweenpowerless women would be of less obvious benefit to either party. Except,that is, when it enables an earthly being to tap into the potency of a magical one. This song also seems to suggest that some women’s beauty isexperienced as so powerful, indeed dangerous, as to be supernatural. In another song, ‘The maid and the vila’,’’ a young girl is concerned about her sweetheart who is out in the rain in his fine clothes, but the vila stretches a silk tent over him to protect him. Thisis a rare example of an ordinary girlfinding an ally in a cause in which she would otherwise be powerless. Several songsembody extreme instances ofwish-fulfillment,suchas ‘The Sun’s sisterand the tyrant pasha’,’* in which the pasha sends for the strange girlwhosemagicalbeauty he has heard about, but she thwarts him by summoning three thunderbolts from her sister, the Sun, her cousin, the Moon, and her blood-sister, the Morning Star. Sometimes the girls have no magical power as such, but are seen to be in league with natural forces, such as thunderbolts, in a way that implies that women have mysterious otherworldly connections. On the other hand,a wily man can use the excuse of the vila’s power to explain his idleness: ‘The bitten shepherd’ cannot guard his sheep because he has been bitten by a vila, abetted by his mother and his aunt, with both of whom she is-naturally, due to her female naturein league.19 Apart from the exceptional case of the vila, the world of women evoked in these songs is generally one of strictly dictated behavioral norms. The young girl has no appreciable status in her own home and little scope for her energies, other than to help around the house and property. Some songs eloquently evoke this boredom, in which the girl dreams of independence and economic power. There are hints that it may have been possible for some to acquire at least the elements ofliteracy: in one song, a lover of manyyearsannounces that he is to marryanother because she is taller and prettier and has all sortsof skills; however,she cannot read, so he asks his old love to come and help her learn! There is a dubious moral message in this song, as the long-standing mistress has four illegitimate sons. Does this mean that learning-that is, stepping outside strict behavioral norms-is equated with loose living? Until marriage, the young 44

girl is more or less a commodity, to be offered to the most appropriate suitor, often an older man. The bride’s role is essentially to bear sons and keep house, and she is often the target of her husband’s irrational humors. This pattern is constant across the social hierarchy, as may be seen in onesong which consists of a conversation between two apparently privileged women comparing their essentially similar experiences: their lords may kiss them when they will, but they mayjust as readily strike them.The most terrible curse that can be pronounced on a woman is one that also sums up her social position: may she not bear a male child and, if she does, may he go to war and only his horse return. Many songs itemize the functions a wife is expected to fulfill-providing a dowry for the benefit of the whole household; bringing water and wine to her husband as he works; or holding his horse as he prepares to depart for battle. One song offers an extreme account of a woman’s common fate: in ‘A husband more compelling than a mother’FOthe young wife has been separated from her mother for nine years and finally sets out to visit her. On the way, the news is brought to her of the death of one of her two daughters, then that of her two sons, and, finally, of her husband. She returns home, where she dies of grief, without ever having seen her mother. This song encapsulates a woman’s torn allegiance between the home of her childhood and her new family, and her utter dependence on others for her happiness. A gentler evocation of woman’slot is reflected in a song advising people not to give flowers to married women because they have no time to care for themonly young maidens will be able to put them in water. Hard as a woman’s life may be, however, the songs are far from painting a relentlessly dark picture. On the contrary, there are many whichdepict happiness in marriage, sexual fulfillment,and contentment, even as an abducted bride. All in all, these lyric songs of varying length offer a remarkably complex and many-faceted account of village life and interpersonal relationships which constantly slips through the web of social conventions and constraints to give a sense of individual personalities and destinies. Many short songs are, in effect, little ballads, which together cover a vast range of themes and emotions. 45

Ballads and Romances The large group of longer narrativesongsgenerallydescribed as ballads and romancesdeservesspecial attention. While the same basicstorymay be played out by characters with different names from song to song, they are nevertheless about named individuals whose destinies are unusual and memorable and felt to be worthy of beingimmortalized through song. Manyof the balladswererecorded in Bosnia Herzegovina and have a Muslim frame of reference. But while such songs originated in a Muslim context, they have been absorbed by the wider Bosnian population. Among the mixed population ofthis region there may thus be seen tohave been a sense of sharing in a commonculture. It was one of the songs in this category, ‘The Wife of Hasan-Aga’ (Hmunuginicu), that first caught the imagination of Europe, initiating a sustainedinterest in the oral traditional poetry of the South Slavs. It is therefore of considerable interest that, with some notable exceptions, these songs are notgiven greater prominence in anthologies and studies of the tradition. Why is it that songs concerned with action, withhistoricalevents, and their interpretation shouldreceive so much more attention than songs which may be equallydramatic, but whose focus is the tensions and conflicts in relations between individuals? Answering this question is one of the main concerns of this study. The reaction of mid-nineteenth century Western Europe to the South Slav songs is instructive. The first prominent figure to respond to the publication of the ballad ‘The Wife of Hasan-Aga’ was Goethe, and the attention of such an outstanding poet did much to stimulate widespread interest in the tradition. But several commentators confirm that it was the lyric songsand ballads which appealed toGoethe, and notthe songs of ‘heroic’ action. There is little doubt that more hasbeen written about ‘The Wife of Hasan-Aga’ than about any other song in the South Slav oral tradition: there have been articles in many languagesand a whole volume of essays has been compiled to cast light on this song, which is short and has an incomplete, fragmentary quality.21 There are many reasons for the enduring interest the song has stimulated,one of which 46

is precisely its sketchy, unfinishednature, which allows scope for the listener’s imagination.The central conflict in the song is provided by the relations between a husband and wife and the constraints set upon their spontaneous affection by socialcustom. As Hasan lies wounded in his tent near the battlefield, he is tended by his mother and sister. Buthe wants his wife,although he knows that the customof his society willnot permit a woman unrelated by blood publicly to visit a man in such circumstances. Irrationally, but deeply hurt by her failure to attend him, Hasan sends word to his wife that he is divorcing her and that he should not find her at home on his return. His wife has no say in the matter and, despite her pleas, her brother arranges another marriage for her and comes to take her away. As she passes Hasan’s house on her way to the wedding, her children come running out and ask her in. It is when she sees her baby that her heart breaks and she dieson the doorstep of what had been her home. The song suggests,rather than describes, a deep bond between two individuals,whose spontaneous expression is curtailed by the demands of social custom and as such it identifies an enduring tension between society and the individual. Furthermore, there is an understated dimension of social history in that Hasan and his wife come from different social strata, with the wife belonging to a somewhat higher level-thismayalso account for the speed withwhich her brother arranges the second, more advantageous, match for his sister. In addition-andmostimportantly-itevokes the potential for catastrophe inherent in such human qualities as pride and defiance, attributes whichmay be deemed ‘heroic’ in another context, but which are misplaced in interpersonal relationships. This is, of course, the kind of tension that lies at the heart of much classical tragedy. The song may thus be seen to offer a dense texture with resonance on several different levels of human experience. It has lent itself to expansion and adaptation into different media, suchas drama, and it could well form the basis for elaboration into a novel. This raises a central question of this study, that of the status of the ‘heroic mode’ on a scale of values as they are reflected in the most complex and potentially subtle literary form,the novel. Tales of heroic deeds have their place in fiction, of course. But it is arguably the pages describ47

ing intricate human relationships in Tolstoy’s War and Peace that lodge in the imagination, rather than the accounts of battlefield action. I want to suggest that this difference of emphasis is also reflected in the contrasting ‘heroic songs’ and ‘lyric ballads’. The otherballad that has secured a privileged placein anthologies and school textbooks is ‘Omer and Merima’-here again, the names of the protagonists bear witness to its Muslim origin-an archetypal tale of thwarted love and ensuing tragedy which hasbecome a standard theme in West European culture. There are many songs with similar subjects in the South Slav tradition. Generally speaking, in these songs the focus is on the young couple and their personal tragedy, so that the reasons for their being denied permission to marry are not emphasized there is rarely an objective barrier suchas a family feud of the ‘Romeo and Juliet’ type, or different ethnicity, although this does occur. As a rule, the obstacle is simply that the bride preferred by the groom’s parents can offer a more substantial dowry. The songs focus initiallyon the young man, sincehe and his family are the active agents in the drama. Objection to the marriage of the young man’s choice is then embodied in the mother, who is the appropriate channel of communication for such domestic matters. In the majority of songs, the young man declares his firm attachment the to girl of his choice, no matter how superiorinbeauty,height, and wealthhis mother’s choice may be, maintaining thathis determination to follow his heart is unassailable. One can imagine at this point that had the father been the one to try to impose his will on a stubborn son the outcome might be quite different, with the son continuing to assert himself and defy his father. As it is, however, the mother is able to wield an irresistible weapon by reminding her son of his duty to the one who gave him life and fed him withthe milk of her breast. Faced with this agonizing conflict of loyalties, the son must acknowledgethe imperative of the ultimateblood-tie and the superior force of his mother’s claim. He therefore agrees the to marriage of her choice, but once he has fulfilled his obligation by going through with the ceremony, he once more feels free to follow the dictates of his own heart, either killing himself or dying of grief. His death is followed by that of his true love and the strength of their affection is acknowledged 48

by nature as the plants growing on their respective graves entwine. The different ethos characterizing ‘heroic songs’and ‘lyric ballads’ is starkly revealed by the fact that in the former, when a son is faced with the choice of responding to his mother’s private plea for him to stay by her side rather than go to battle, where he is sure to perish, and of acceding tothe public demand for obedience to his country’s call to arms,the mother’s claim hasno force. In addition to the songs’ function as effective vehicles of communal bonding and determinants of behavioral norms they have another, purely aesthetic, purpose in the life of the village. In this dimension, a particularly important part is played by flowers, which also symbolize the close bond between human life and the natural world. The sense of an aesthetic dimensionis cultivated, above allby women, in all aspects of the life of the village-particularly in the intricate embroidery that decorates the traditional costume-and traditional singing is a vital part of this. One othergroup of songs deservesattention: these are songs which developed on the basis of the lyric tradition but in an urban environment, particularly in BosniaHerzegovina.Althoughtheyhave lost their association with women’s singing, they should be mentioned as they were originally part of that tradition. They are of particular interest, however, because, in the different cultural environment ofBosnia Herzegovina, their intense lyricism does not necessarily mean that theycarry connotations of ‘femininity’. These songs are known as smdalinke, from the Arabic word suzuda (black, black bile) bywayof the Turkish smdu (love). The word acquired a final ‘h’ in Serbo-Croat and the concept ‘sevdah’ became part of the culture, particularly in those areas where the Turkish presence lasted longest and where there was a significant localMuslim population. The word is hard to define precisely, containing as it does both the pleasurable idea oflove and the experience of ‘black’ melancholy often associated with it. The literary historian Muhsin RizviC describes it in thefollowing terms: “Our ‘smdah‘ is in fact as passionate and painful as it is melancholic, sweet longing ... when the pain of love can no longer be borne and is lost in an ecstasyof emotional intoxication which borders on dying; pain be49

cause love has no possibility of being satisfied and fulfilled, or because of obstacles of an individual, social, family, traditional or simply emotional and psychological nature.”22Originating in Eastern melodies and singing techniques, and then adapted by local singers, it evolved into the refined expression of a special blend of ‘orientalSlav swdah’ which the Serbian critic SkerliC considers one of the greatest creations in the lang~age.2~ The form has been the subject of considerable attention and critical interest, both within the region and abroad. In his introduction to the work of Muslim writers in Bosnia Herzegovina, Muhsin R i z v i C gives a lengthy bibliography of studies published between1927 and 1970. RizviC defines the content of these songs as having something in common with the ballad form and suggests that they could be described as “the emotion left behind” after the event which is the subject of the ballad.24 It has been defined by another scholar as “a love poem in its content, lyric in its essence ... As a characteristic of its ethical code, Islam involved a regulated distance between a man and a woman, and at just the age when passion,the longing for theproximity of a dear face, is at itsmostpowerful ... instead of profane contact, which was made virtually impossible, and which would have dampened both the rapture and the longing at the outset, love seeks a subtler expression, and eros speaks through the lines of the s e v d a l i n k ~ . ”The ~ ~ urban context of the songs is clear from the frequent references to windows, beneath whichyoungwomen may glimpse their sweethearts, or whereyoung men come to sigh. KrnjeviC describes the songs as “patriarchal ‘women’s’songs intended for a narrow, intimate circle”,26while RizviC comments: “The ‘swdalinka’ lived as a popular song in Muslim families, where it was sung every day, because its performance needed no instrumental accompaniment nor a particular audience.”2’ KrnjeviCsuggests that the songs gradually extended their scope to include references to events and changes of general significance for the community, and the majority are connected with Sarajevo, singing of the fate of the city-wars, plague, fire, or floods-and of influential families. She stresses the importance of the musical phrasing which determines the effect of the songs.2* 50

Individual Women Singers A significant, but at first overlooked aspect of traditional singing is the contribution of gifted individual singers. While the origins of most shorter lyric songs, romances, and ballads are unknown, the names of singers of severalepic songs havebeen recorded. While the great majority of these are men, some of the best-known songsin the tradition were sungby women singers.The remainder of this chapter considers the particular contribution of these singers. Their work provides a link between the so-called ‘little’ and ‘great’ traditions, between traditional oral literature and written forms.There is always a danger in discussions of this kind of thinking of the oral tradition primarily as something which precedes written forms. Although in one sense it is true, given that it offered the first manifestation of verbal art in an illiterate culture, it is also true that thegreat majority of the songs in the South Slav tradition were collected in the course of the nineteenth century, hundreds of years after writing became widespread. The interaction between oral and written forms is hard to trace, but it is certain at least that traditional singers had been regularly exposed to written forms, such as the liturgy. The point I wish to make is that a reading of these songs, which have of course reached us bywayof the printed page, should not be colored by a tendency to think of traditional oral literature as ‘primitive’ in contrast with written literature. In the nature of things, it is more bound by convention: the songs followa particular pattern and are built up through a system of standard formulae. Whenthe singers themselves are asked to describe how they composetheir songs, theywill usually say that they simply repeat them as they themselvesheard them. Nevertheless, there is scope within this convention for considerable sophistication, for the expression of a particular perspective, a sudden turn of phrase which is the individual singer’s personalcontribution to the tradition. Where such felicitous phrasingis deemed successful by its audience, it tends to becomefured and, inits turn, to affect the aesthetic sensibilityof those who hear it. The great nineteenthcentury collector Vuk KaradZiC grew up with the traditional singing in his villagehome and had a remarkably refined aesthetic sense. He 51

' 1 ' 1first ~ woman national gr~sleplayerin Yugoslavia

would travel miles in search of a better version of a particular song, or in pursuit of a particular singer with a reputation for especially fine singing. Severalof these singers were women. I want now to consider some of their best-known songs, with the intention of trying to establish whether it may be said that the concerns of women singers differ significantly from those of their male counterparts. Men constituted the great majority of the singers of epic songs: while many people sang songsin the course of their daily lives, those who made their living from singing were exceptional and, to some extent, stood outside society. Many singers-like Homer-were blind, as singing provided a livelihood for people who could not work on the land. Other singers might be outlaws, having been forced to flee from their own land, generally following some violent conflict with local landownersor the Ottoman authorities. In the nature of things, women only exceptionally fitted these patterns. On the whole, their only route to ‘outsider’ status withinthe community and to enforced idleness was disability.KaradZiC collectedsongsfrom four blind women singers: Zivana, Jeca (whowas Zivana’s pupil), Stepanija, and an unnamed blind singer from northern Serbia. It is instructive in this connection toconsidersongs ofwhichseveralversionsexist, some of which weresung by male singersand some by women. There is little doubt that there tends to bea difference oi emphasis between them, reflecting different spheres of interest. This may be demonstrated by a comparison of two versionsof ‘the song ‘The Wedding of Todor of Stala6’.2g Bothrepresent variations on theconventional weddingtheme, in which a party of guests is gathered to go to claim a foreign bride and faces all manner of obstacles along the way. The song contains the usual set-piece description of the preparation of the groom’s splendid clothing and his horse, but its basic theme is the abduction of a girl who is alreadybetrothed to another. In each case the sympathy of the listener is with the lone hero, but the terms in which his plight is evoked differ considerably. What is particularly strikingis the fact that, in the version recorded from one of KaradZiC’s favored women singers, Blindiivana, the song is dominated by three women characters who are able to make decisions which shape their lives. The singers’ different perspectives emerge in 53

the first linesof the song. The earlier recorded version opens with a standard line: “Todor ofStalaeis drinking wine ...” He is being served by his aging mother, who then asks why he has not yet wed and brought a wife to brighten his days and a daughter-in-law to take his mother’s place. He replies that he has not yet found a girl who would be both to his liking and a friend for his mother. So far, the song contains only conventional elements. Whenthe son explains to his mother that the only girl who would suit them both is already betrothed, his mother advises him to forget her, but theson ignores her reasonable words and goes off to snatch his chosen bride. The girl herself takes no active part in the song, which ends with her abduction. The version recorded from iivana differs in a number of ways. To start with, it is twice as long: 281 lines as compared to 141 in the other version. This gives the singer scope to developher chosen themes. iivana’s song opens in an immediately more homely way, suggesting a closer,moreequal and practicalrelationshipbetween mother and son: “Todor is sitting at supper with his mother /... They sup, they drink cool wine./ His mother begins to weep tears/...” She laments, in moving terms, that she no longer has the strength to run the household and receive her son’s guests. She begs him to spend his money to find a suitable girl who would be able to help in the house. In a demonstration of manners appropriate to such a hero, he says nothing, finishes his food and wine, and gets up from table. Before preparing himself in the finery befitting a bridegroom, he dedicates himself before the cross and goes with a candle to the stable to feed his horse extra rations of oats and wine (in the tradition, heroes’horseshavetaken on something of their masters’ heroic qualities: the horse of the great Prince Marko,for example, regularly consumes several goatskinsof wine before any major endeavor). It is interesting that the singer should note the hero’s silent departure from the table and the practical detail of his needing to take a candle. The preparation of the horse and groom in their ceremonial trappings is a conventional set-piece, occurring in much the same form in songs of any length in which the main theme is a marriage. iivana’s hero then sets off and, when the sun is high, comes acrossa group of young women washing clothes in the Danube. The girl who 54

catches his eye is sumptuously dressed, most unsuitably for such an occupation. The description of her clothes as she stands in the river illustrates one of the most prominent and engaging features of this whole tradition: the mixture of notions of feudal nobility accessible to the peasant singers only by hearsay and from the tradition itself, and their everyday experience of reality. Noble ladiesand queens do the washing, bath the baby, and wear aprons to greet their noble guests at their castle door. (It is characteristic that these incongruities are most evident in connection with women’s occupations: men of both noble and peasant birth may equally wellbe portrayed sitting over a jug of wine, but domestic chores chime oddly with nobility.) The subterfuge by which the hero induces the girl to leave the others so that he can pull her up onto his horse is described by iivana in greater detail than in the earlier version, and again with practical touches. Once with the hero Todor, the abducted girl appears quite content to stay, although she hasno choice in the matter of marrying him. A priest is pressed into action and the deed done with dizzying speed. It is after this that the song becomes interesting, for the hero fades into the background and the main action is left to the female characters: Todor’s mother, his bride, and the woman, Jerina, who had originally paid for the bride’s betrothal to her brother. Having dispatched some brave knights sent in vain by Jerina to retrieve the girl, Todor knows that he will be in trouble, and he asks his mother for advice. But before she can answer, his bride makes her own suggestion: she will take armed lancers and money and repay Jerina the bridepriceshepaid-abrave and honorablecourse of action.Jerinaresponds by taking the girl prisoner and forcibly marrying her once again, this time toher brother, as originally planned. But in the morning, when she goes to wakethem, she findsthat Todor’s wife has slain her brother and the armed lancers rush to protect the young bride from Jerina’s anger. The ultimate judgment is the king’s, who reprimands Jerina for ignoring his advice not to take on Todor. She accepts hisjudgment and is reconciled with Todor’s wife, who returns peacefully to her new home. The crux of this song, in iivana’s version, is the relationship between the two women who are ultimately defeated by the masculine culture of violence, abduction, and forced 55

marriage. In the end, Jerina abandons her attempt to emulate this culture and finds common cause with the young woman whom she could legitimately see as having wronged her, but to whom she in turn did a greater wrong by forcing her into a bigamous second marriage. As in so many of these songs, the intricate implications of the situation are not developed, but remain suggestive ground for the listener’s imagination. What is clear, however, is the unusually balanced nature of the song, in the sense that the three female characters play an equal part in its development. It is Todor’s mother who sets the action in motion and, at the critical moment of his life, it is to her that he turns for advice. While the bride’s social role is essentially that of object or ‘merchandise’ she easily overcomes such constraints by her independence of mind and courage. Jerina, too, displays a readinessto accept an adverse situation which is unusual in the tradition, but not out of place in a female character. There are eight songs in KaradZiC’s collections which are confidently attributed to iivana, and others whichmaywellhave been hers, although, unfortunately, documentary evidenceis lacking. Her compositions are characterized by a strong story line, often with an unexpected twist, and striking emotional coloring, notably tenderness between individuals. She brings an immediate flavor of human relationships in her patriarchal environment which breaks through the conventional, feudal settings. Severalof the songs are concerned with notions of justice which reflect the essentially democratic social structure of the zudrugu, even where the characters concerned are kings and noble lords. In onesong, for instance, a man, Ljutica Bogdan, serves a duke loyally for ten years for love of hishorse which he finally steals. Whenthe duke’s brother comes after him, Ljutica Bogdan slays him and takes his horse as well. At this, the duke pursues him, on the mare which bore the two fine horses, and kills his erstwhile servant, lamenting over his body, in sorrow rather than anger, that he would gladly have given him the horse, had he known he wanted it so badly. The songs whichperhaps best demonstrate the qualities of iivana’s singing are ‘Momir the Foundling’ and ‘The Death of Duke Kajica’, 56

attributed to her with some confidence. In ‘Momir the Foundling’, an ‘Emperor’ out on a lengthy hunting trip catches nothing, but finds an abandoned baby boy. He takes it up with delight and great tenderness, to be a brother for his only,and much cherished, daughter (in view of the conventional attitude towards girls in the culture, this detail may reasonably be read as iivana’s own input). When he returns tohispalace, the ruler is met by hiswife,whotakeshis horse’s reins and asks: “‘Did you hunt down fine game?’/The Emperor handed the baby boy to his Empress/ and the Empress took the baby/ in her beautiful silk apron.” The song describes the Emperor’s pride in his ‘son’ as he grows, lavishing on him such favors that in the end he provokes his courtiers to a jealous plot: they tell their ruler that Momir has been found sleeping with his ‘sister’.The Emperor has Momir hanged and his sister followshim. The dry tree on which they die springs into luxuriant growth, a symbol of the young people’s innocence triumphing over the barren destructivenessof the jealous courtiers, and shaming their desolate father’s haste. The song contains many of the essential features of iivana’s singing: a story line which holds the listener’s interest, detail, a sense of justice, and tenderness in the depiction of human relations. The other song mentioned, ‘The Death of Duke Kajica’, has a straightforward, but well-composed story line of feats of military prowess in which Kajica is slain by a jealous rival. The song comes vividly to life in the terms of endearment which the Serbian king Djuradj lavishes on his favorite young noble. These occurin two blocks in the course of the song and are then brought together at the end, when the young man is slain: Woe, Kajica, my dearestchild! Ever my glory at my court! Ever my sharp swordon the field! And strength among all the nobles! Pure gold of Smederevol Right wingof the Serbian lands! How will your father recover from his griefl How canhe leave youalone ...

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KaradZiC recorded songs also fromhana’s pupil, Blind Jeca.By contrast with %ana’s, Jeca’s songs are all concise. One of them, ‘The Death of Duke Prijezda’, is particularly worth mentioning in this context as many other versions of it exist (13 in all). Jeca’s is the most concise and in it the singer makes Prijezda’s wifethe most prominent character, whereas shewas not mentioned at all in the first recorded version of the song. In acknowledgment of this, one Italian translator went so far as to call the song ‘TheWife of Duke Prijezda’. The wife is mentioned in versions by other nineteenth-century singers, but Jeca’s is the only one in which she is given a name. In addition tothese named singers,who are asmallminority among KaradZiC’s sources, three of the best-known songs in the epic tradition were noted down from women singers whose names have not been recorded. These are ‘The Maid of Kosovo’ and ‘The Downfall of the Serbian Empire’, sung by a blind woman from near the village of Grgurevci, and ‘The Death of the Mother of the JugoviCi’, sung by an unnamed woman in Croatia.so All three songs are connected with the battle against the invading Ottoman army on the Field of Kosovo. It is noteworthy that, while several of KaradZiC’s male singers have been the subject of study-by both KaradZiC himself and other commentators-virtually nothing is known of the lives of the women from whom these songs were recorded. The reason for this is at least inpart a characteristic concern with the dramatic: some of KaradZiC’s singers were border-fighters or outlaws who had to flee vengeance from the Ottoman administration for some real or perceived offense, generally because they had killed a Turk in self-defense. It is also because, although KaradZC himself took an interest in the singers and was well aware of the particular contribution an individual could make, at the timeofhis collectiowand all throughthe nineteenth centuryattention was concentrated on the songs themselves. There was still a prevailing sense that they were essentially communal products, individual singers being the more or less arbitrary vehicle for traditional materials handed down verbatim from singer to singer through the genemtions. Consequently, the contribution of individual singers was largely ignored and theirlives not deemed to be ofinterest Moreover, the life 58

of a blind peasant woman would be presumed to be predictable, lacking in external drama, and so unworthy of consideration. Wemust therefore contentourselves witha discussion of the threesongs Without further reference to their singers, despite the fact that their songs have undoubtedly played a significant role in the formation of the moral values and perceptionsof the cultureof which theyare a part. ‘The Downfall of the SerbianEmpire’ is an especiallysplendid song, the central image of which occurs in slightly different forms in other contexts, while its main theme is a memorable formulation of the essential ‘Kosovo idea’. Any attempt to find evidence of a female viewpoint in this song would be quite artificial. It is, however, one of the finest of the epic songs concerned with Kosovo,and it is rarely explicitly acknowledged that its best-known version was recorded from a woman singer. As wesaw in Chapter 1, the focus of the song is the choice to be made by the Serbian prince Lazaron the eve of the great battle, when he is told by a messenger from God thathe could save his army if he chooses the Kingdom of Earth. When, as he must, Lazar chooses the Kingdom of Heaven, he is told that he should go out onto the battlefield and build there a church of silk. This image of fragility is at the same time an image of overwhelming power. The silk suggests both royal luxuryand military banners,but above all it is, an abstraction, impossible to achieve in realityand therefore unassailable.The ‘church of silk‘ is the idea of righteousness carried, beyond reach, in the individual heart and soul. The somewhat moremundane explanation that a tent, a literal ‘churchof silk‘, would havebeen used on the eve of battle for the confession and absolution of the warriors does not, I think, deit is the i & of ~ the church that tract from the power of this image since has survived inthe individual imagination through the generations. In the troubled times that preceded-and, for long periods, have followed-the Ottoman occupation the lot of women in the Balkans was to see their husbands and sons off to battle, anxiously awaittheir return, and grieve at their loss. This bleak destiny is the subject of the two other songs to which I wish to draw attention here. Both of them apply this perennial destiny to the women left behind by the warriors at the BattleofKosovo. The first, recorded from an unknown womanin Croatia, focuseson the mother of nine sons who all 59

accompany their father to certain death. In the first half ofthe song the mother tries to persuade her husband to permit at least one of their sons to stay with her. When they all refuse, she asks that at least her faithful servant stay behind. But, despite his master’s instruction, the imperative of participating in the battle proves irresistible and he too abandons her. The song then gives a cumulative account of the burden of grief which finally provestoo great for the mother to bear. With a sure touch,the singer identifiesher breaking point as the moof her loss: her ment she is obliged to confront a concrete detail youngestson’s hand, which shehadclasped in a bond oflove throughout his short life. It is arguably its final image of overwhelming loss and grief that has guaranteed this song a central place in the tradition and has giventhe figure of the mother the status of an archetype. In the narrative songs, which are built up through the use of formulae and formulaic expressions, it is the climax which is most subject to change and which offers the singer the most scopefor her, or his, own unique formulation. Frequently, as in the song just mentioned, the images chosen for these occasions are among the most memorable moments in the whole tradition. The image which provides the climax for the second of the two songs, ‘The Maidof Kosovo’, is one which strikes a familiar chill in the heart of all who have been obliged to witness violence. In this song, a young woman searches for her betrothed and his companions among the bodies strewn on the field where the last great battle was fought against the advancing Ottoman army. The traditional singer does not spare the audience, describing the steaming blood up to a horse’s knees, the scattered limbs and bodies ripped open, with bones and innards exposed. Finally, the girl comes upon a soldierwho is still alive,though close to death, and goes to offer him water and what solace she can in his last moments.He tells her that herbetrothed and all thoseshe seeks are dead. In the intensity of her grief, she feels that her innocent body has absorbed the power to destroy eventhe most resistant aspects of indifferent nature and she cries out: If I were to grasp a green pine, Even the green pine would wither.31 GO

It seems to me that this vivid image captures precisely the capacity of human beings to absorb physically other people’s pain, so that the observer is forever changed, physically modified bythe knowledge of violence and suffering. It is at least arguable that such an image could be conceived only by a woman with the capacity to identify imaginatively with the destiny of countless women grieving in the shadows ofsoutheast Europe. It is worth quoting here anassessment of the contribution of women to traditional oral culture as formulated by a poet of refined sensibility, Jela SpiridonovitSavit, writing in 1944. Her account differs from the descriptions discussed at the end of Chapter 1, in that it is concerned with an instinctive aesthetic response through which she sees women in her culture as having been able to transform the often tragic nature of their historical destiny into something creative and enduring: It is her fine, deep, female sensibility that has the task, in addition to ennobling woman’s own character, of ennobling everything with which she comes into contact ... Among our people, that is really what women did. When our monks withdrew after the arrival of the Turks and literary creativity ceased; when our masterbuilders were dispersedand prevented from building white monasteries; whenthe fresco-painters leftour churchestheyremained: our women, to express,out of the people’s pain, a purified lyricism in the poetry of their embroidery. On a white background, the most frequent song was red and black. Blood and death. With their wonderful woman’s instinct, even before the gush singers, they brought the national shipof suffering and pain, with their song of silken threads, into the harbor of beauty. The meaning of beauty for the human soul is enormous. It is an inexhaustible source of joy, pure spiritual joy.That joy ennoblesIIS, helps LIS to step outside ourselves, identifying ourselves with works of art ... for art raises the individual above her small, personallie, leading her to a broaderrealm, forging a path to the greatest possible d u e and beauty: to anawareness of universal life. Hence the inexpressbeauty, in ible value ofart, and equally of woman’s calling:to awaken that interest in art?*

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1VukanoviC, Sqbske narodne paslavice,67. 2 A bibliography of South Slavic Folk Cultwe, edited by Roth and Wolf, covering works published in English, French and German, contains 27 pageson the epic, 6 on the ballad, and just over 2on ‘other genres’. 3 KmjeviC, ‘The collections of oral lyric (women’s song) arranged and published by Vuk KaradZiC’, 69-70. 4 Agoston-Nikolova, Immrwed Wonlen. 5 HClPne Courtin has done similar work on Bulgarian folksong: ‘Les personnages masculin et ferninin dans la chanson folklorique bulgare’, in Revzce des &tltdes slaves, 60 (1988): 439-44. 6 Agoston-Nikolova, 1. 7 Ibid.,20. 8 Ibid., 43. 9 Ibid., 55. 10 KoljeviC, T ~ Epic E in the Making. 11 KaradZiC, Sahana &fa,vols. 1 and 5. 12 ‘Djevojka na prodaju’, KaradZiC, vol. 5,480. 13 ‘NadZnjeva se momaki djevojka’, KaradZiC, vol. 1,175. 14 ‘Ovtar i djevojka’ (The Shepherd and the Lass), ibid., 178. 15Weissbort, Red Knight. 16 ‘Vilina posestrima’, KaradZiC, vol.1, 156. 17 ‘Moma i vila’, KaradZiC,ibid., 159. 18 ‘Sunteva sestra pa3a i tiranin’, KaradZiC, ibid., 163. 19 ‘Izjeden ovtar’,KaradZiC, ibid., lG8. 20 ‘PreCi mu2 od matere’, KaradZiC, ibid., 218. 21 Hasanaginica. 22 RizviC, KnjiZewno stvaranje mrlslimanskihpisaca U Bosni i Hercegwini,vol. I, 15. 23SkerliC, Olnladina i njena knjiZewnost, quoted byHatidZaKrnjeviC in the e n q ‘Sevdalinka’, Retnik knjiZewn.ih tennina, 715. 24 RizviC, op. cit., 16. 25 KrsiC,‘Sarajevo 11 sevdalinci’, Politika, Belgrade(29 June 1935), quoted in KmjeviC, op. cit., 715. 26 Ibid. 27 RizviC, op. cit., 14. 28 KrnjeviC, op. cit., 715. 29 ‘zenidba Todora od StalaCa’. This song is discussed also by Agoston-Nikolova, Immured Women,9697. 30 ‘Kosovka devojka’,‘Propast carstva srpskoga’,and ‘Smrt majke Jugovita’. 31 A. Pennington and P. Levi (trans.), Madw t h Prince (London: Duckworth, 1984), 24. See original version in KaradZiC, Sqbske narodm pjesme (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1969),vol. 2, no. 51,231. 32 SpiridonoviGaviC, Susreti, 172-73.

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Womenn's Voices in the Middle A~es Jefimija, born to the Lord of Drama, Wife of UgljeSa, Serbian ruler, Far from the world,in the peaceof her faith, Embroiders silk cloth for a monastery.

Sources The historical sources availablefor the medieval period in the South Slav lands are, in common with the rest of Europe, largely confined to two types: religious texts,including the lives of saints and liturgical works, and secular chronicles, legal documents, treaties,and letters. In the case of the lands which comprised the various Serbian states from the twelfth century onwards, the two kinds of writing are often closely related, as, on the one hand, several rulers were canonized and their lives written to conformmore or less to the conventions of hagiographic texts, and on the other, the biographies of those who did not become saints were written by men of the church. In each case, there is a tacit intention to present the rulers' lives in the most positive, devoutly Christian light in order to strengthen the dominant dynasty by implying its God-given right to rule. Almost by definition such a project provides little scope for an interest in the lives of ordinary citizens, still less in those of women. The oral tradition, with its echoes of contemporary events, offers an intriguing tapestry of folk memory and ideas from a range of different areas of human experience, but, while it is revealingfor what is retained and handed down in the popular interpretation of history, it is of course notoriously unreliable as a source of historical fact.Traditional histories of the region have tended to present accounts of the roles of successive rulers in relation to various power blocsand interests. The only individuals who feature in this context are those of aristocratic birth. All in all, while something is known about these public figures, there is 63

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as yet only scanty material on the basis of which it would be possible to try to buildup a picture of the everyday lives ofordinary women in this period. For a sense of the lives of such women, we must therefore rely on indications in the oral tradition. Furthermore, while the public lives ofprominent women have been documented, in orderto try to gain a sense of their private experience we must rely on our imagination, ‘reading between the lines’, and the few personal documents which havebeen preserved. A great deal of research has been carried out in recent years into the official documents, and we now have a detailed account of the public lives of prominent figures, particularlyin Serbia. For instance, the first two volumes of the comprehensive History ofthe Serbian People which began to appear in 1981are an invaluable source of information about the medieval period.’ After the first missionaries were sent from Constantinople to convert the Balkan Slavs in the ninth century in an effort to secure their allegiance, the history of southeast Europe, like that of the whole continent, may be characterized by conflicts between states, nobles, and war-lords, all jostling for power. In this picture of constantly shifting alliances, women ofnoble birth became a kind of currency. We have only to look at the fate of the wives of many of the Serbian rulers to gain some ideaof the way in which they were used.The first Serbian state, RaSka, began to attain a degree of stability and power in the region under the Zupan Stefan Nemanja (1167-96). H’1s son, Stefan the FirstCrowned (Pruouentuni),became the firstking in 1217. At this time, the interests of the embryonic state fluctuated between allegiance to Byzantium and the Orthodox Church and to various Catholic powers, notably Hungary. This is vividly illustrated by Stefan’ssuccessivemarriages: in 1191 he married Evdokia, the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexis 111. She was ‘sent away’ around 1201. From 1204 to 1207 Stefan was married to a certain ‘N’ about whom little is known, except that she was the mother of three of his four sons. Then, in 1207, he married Ana, the granddaughter of the Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo.2 By the time his eldest son, Stefan Radoslav, had come of age alliance with Byzantiumwas again opportune and Radoslav (1228-34) was married to the daughter of 64

the ruler of Salonica, and another son, Vladislav (1234-43), was married to the daughter of the Bulgarian emperor Asen 11. Stefan’s third son, Stefan UroS (1243-76), was married to a French woman, H6ltne d’Anjou. They had two sons. The first, Stefan Dragutin (1276-82), was married to a daughter of the Hungarian king Stephen V. But it was his brother, Stefan UroS Milutin (1282-1321), who exploited the advantages of marriage alliances to the full: his first wife,Jelena, the daughter of sebastocrator John Angelos, governor of Thessaly, was ‘sent away’ in 1283. Milutin then married Elizabeth, another daughter of the Hungarian king Stephen V, but he dismissed her in 1284 in favor of Ana, the daughter of the Bulgarian emperor Georgije I Terter. Finally, she too was dismissed in 1299 so that Milutin could marry Simonida,the six-year-old daughter of the Byzantine emperor, This catalogue speaks for itself: one can Andronicus I1 Paleol~gus.~ hardly begin to imagine the quality of life of some of these women, uprooted from their homes, often traveling great distances to the courts of men they did not know, who for the most part had no interest in them except as means of forming alliances and producing sons. It is likely that many of these women did not know the language of their husband’s court. On the whole they must have felt isolated and insecure, not knowing how long their presence would be considered opportune. This is not to say that individual women did not make a success of their careers as royal wives and come to exercise considerable influence over their husbands. They would also have the hadreassurance of sharing their destiny with women throughout Europe: the Hungarian princesses Katalin and Elizabeth would no doubt have offered each other support in their roles as wives to successive Serbian rulers. UroS’s wife, Heltne d’Anjou, had relatives at the Hungarian court, and her sister appears to have lived in Serbia.4 For the time being, however, we can only speculate about the personal experience of these women, mostof whose livesremain hidden in deep shadow. One particularlyvaluablesource of information about general conditions oflife in Serbia in the MiddleAgesis the fourteenthcentury Code of Laws compiled byKing-later TsarStefan DuSan (1308-55), an historical document of great importance. Modeledon Byzantine laws and taking into account local legal customs and un65

written laws, the Code provided a basis of legislation for the Serbian state which reached its greatest extent under DuSan. While the punishmentssuggested for transgressions are often extremely harsh, there is also a surprising degree of evenhandedness throughout the feudal hierarchy. As it reflects the concerns of society at that time, it is only to be expected that the Code contains few specific provisions for women. Out of a total of 201 articles, two are concerned with marriage and four others refer specifically to women. It is worth noting, incidentally, that one article, which specifies the sanctions for insults to bishops, monks, or priests, contains no provisions for insults to women who had taken holy orders. The first article about marriage stipulates that marriages must take place in church, and that those who marry without the blessing of the Church shall be separated; the second concerns mixed mamages and allows a ‘halfbeliever’ married to a Christian woman tobe baptized if he desires it. “But if he refuse to be baptized, let his wife and children be taken from him,and let a part of his house beallotted to them, and lethim bedriven forthw5Article 64 stipulates protection for the poorest women: “A poor spinner woman shall be free, like a priest.”6 Two of the articles concern rape and adultery and offer a revealing insight into the perceptions of social stratifcation. Article 51, ‘On Taking By Force’, states: “If any lord take a noblewoman by force, let both his hands be cut off and his nose be slit. But if a commoner take a noblewoman by force, let him be hanged; if he take his own equal, let both his hands be cut off and his nose slit.”In the light of the harsh punishment proposed for rape of a noblewoman by a commoner, it is worth noting here that one of the articles concerned with homicide states: “Ifa lord kill a commoner in a town, or in a district, or in a summer pasture hut, he shall pay one thousand perpers. But if a commoner kill a lord, both his hands shall becut off and heshall pay 300 perpers.” In other words, rape of a noblewoman by a commoner is considered a greater crime than murder. Article 52 suggestsa similar taboo against crossing social boundaries: “Ifa noblewoman commit fornication with her man, let the hands of both be cut off and their noses slit.”’ By contrast, other articles concerned with the privileges and constraints on thetsar mention the tsaritsa as being subject 66

to exactly the same provisions, suggesting an underlying equality in legal provisionsfor men and women of the same social status.This is borne out in the last article in the Code to mention women: “And the clerk shallnot call upon a wife when the husband is not athome, nor shall a wife be summoned without her husband, but the wife shall give her husband notice to go to court. In that case, the husband shall not be at fault until she give him notice.”8 Apart from thesefew references to women,the Code, likeso much else in historical texts and conventional treatment of such material, projects the image of a society in which women are irrelevant. In order ‘to complete the picture, we are obliged to ‘read between the lines’. We may assume that in realitythe influence of women on their local communities and-above all-their families was far greater than may be deduced from official documents. Many of the individual women who have left a mark on Serbian cultural history-and some written evidence of their lives-were connected to the Nemanjid dynasty. A recently published anthology of autobiographicalwritingsfrom the MiddleAges includes texts by seven women, written between1267 and 1502.” These are all figures connected with the ruling house in oneway or another.Few of their writings may be termed ‘literav’ in the narrow sense,but they are of undoubted interest for the light they cast on the lives of these individual women and hence on the lives of other women, at least those of the educated landowning class. It is indicative ofthe fluidity of the borders of state structures and typical of the medieval use of marriagealliances for political ends that several of the womenwho played aprominent public role were not natives of Serbia: some were Greek, and the one about whommostisknown,Kraljica Jelena (Jelena AnZujska: HClZne d’Anjou,d. 1314), was French.

Jelena AnZujska Queen Jelena’s origin hasso far not been established with certainty, but the most thorough investigation to date concludes convincingly that she was the daughter of Raoul de Courtenay, and first cousin of 67

Louis IX of France and Charles #Anjou, king of Naples. If this hypothesis is correct, she was also a cousin of Baldwin, emperor of Constantinople after the Latin conquest. It is likely that the marriage of Jelena to UroS took place at the court in Hungary, where she also had relatives.1° MijatoviC begins his exhaustive article with the statement that “for more than sixty years (from roughly 1250 until her death), she was the most prominent figure in the Serbian state, I wouldsay ‘the most popular’ and the person who had the most influence on the cultural life of the nation”.ll CirkoviC confirms that she ruled part of her son Dragutin’s state for more than three decades.’* The most reliable source of information about her life is the biography written by the Serbian archbishop Danilo 11. This is the only life of a woman that he wrote and is particularly valuable because Danilo knew Jelena personally and clearly liked and admired her. He describes her as “beautiful”, “ofsharp mind, but gentle nature”, and as “knowing all books, she was ready to answer all who asked anything”;her words were mild “and there was no hypocrisy in her, as there is in some, who respectone, but despise another. Great and small, rich and poor, the righteous and the sinner, the sick and the hale, she respected each of them equally and gave each of them their rightful honor ...’; indeed, she was “adorned with every excellent quality”.13 Danilo emphasizes the fact that, although Jelena knew her own mind, when she had to give orders she preferred to do so gently, persuading her listeners “through words of good sense’’ to her point of view, rather than relying on the authority of her position. She was also compassionate and ready to “comfort unhypocritically and without malice” those afflicted by grief, poverty, or misfortune. Danilo describes her as devout and generous in her support of churches and monasteries. Two aspects of her life mentioned in Danilo’s biographyare of particular interest for our purposes: coming from an educated background, she was quick to establish an impressive library and employ copyists at her court. This was not particularlyremarkable for a woman ofher status, but Jelena also set up in her home what may be termed a school for the daughters of poor families: “... and she did not care only for her own soul, but she distributed unstintingly 68

among widows and orphans and the poor and all who werein need, countless wealth of her kingdom, so that all marveled at her virtue and piety. And she was not content with this alone, but added yet another virtue.She ordered that the daughters of poor parents throughout her lands be gathered together, and, feeding them in her palace, she taught them all good order andhandiwork appropriate to women. And when they grew up, she married them to husbands who gave them homes, bequeathing them every richness, and in their place she took other girls like the first.”I4It appears, from Danilo’s words,that the instruction was largely in practical skills such as embroidery, but nevertheless, such a concern to provide facilities for the advancement ofgirls in the thirteenth century does seem worthy of note. Jelena’s interest in culture may be seen in the fact that she evidently influenced the decisionto appoint as Catholic archbishop in the Serbian town of Bar a Frenchman, Gerardus, who is described as “poet, philosopher, theologist and most learned in all the good arts”.15The other activity in which she was able to make a personal contribution was her support for Catholic foundations in and around her lands.16 At this time, there were significant Catholic populations along the coast of Zeta (roughly present-day Montenegro) and around Lake Skadar. Understandably, Danilo, archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church, does not mention her support of the Catholic foundations, although in a letter dated 1288, Pope Nicholas W , her contemporary, notes that he has heard that “she is God-fearing, devout and a sincere believer”,” but she was generous alsotowards Orthodox churches and monasteries in the territory under her control. She founded or rebuilt several churches and monasteries, and, following the pattern ofmany other womenof high social status in these lands, she ended her life as an Orthodox nun and was proclaimed a saint of the Orthodox Church. She was buried in the magnificent monasteryof Gradac, believed tobe of her own foundation. Where this flexibility becomes particularlyinteresting in a modern perspective is in the scope she evidently had for freedom of action and her readinessto support the interests of neighboring Catholic populations, even when thiscounteracted her husband’s policies. The first of the texts included in the anthology is 69

a ‘Letter to the People of Dubrovnik’, written between 1267 and 1268. In it she confirms her support for the city of Dubrovnik, its ruler, and all its citizens: And should any traders from Dubrovnik come to my court without the King’s approval, encouraged bymy letters or my friendship, or any nobleman or anyone atall, I shall pay for everything. And should the King wish to send an army against Dubrovnik,or should pirates or other evil befall Dubrovnik, I shall inform the City as early as possible and shall be with you in every misfortune.18

It may not be fanciful to deduce from her attitude that she herself saw her marriage as a formality based on external interests. It certainlyseemsremarkable that she should have been prepared to commit her disapproval of her husband’s policies towards Dubrovnik to paper. The othertext by Queen Jelena included in the anthology is composed of words attributed to her in Danilo’s biography and presented here in the form of a lament: We who dwell among all the vanities of this vain world, if we wishto live the liie of the spirit as it is pleasing to the Lord, we cannot achieve it. For the whole of this world languishesin evil, asthe holy wordhas said. For if the soul does not abandon worldly cares, it cannot either love God sincerely or hate the devil sufficiently. Since our mind is occupied with a whirlwind of material sins,just as a ship on the open sea is rocked by the ocean waves, so I, as a sinner, sink bitterly amidst my sins ... Oh, the judgment of my conscience and the despair of my sins weigh heavilyon my soul, and I have no hope of salvation. For I have ruined my soul in sins,and I have stifledmy mind in the uncleanness of lawlessness, and my body has falleninto the depths of the mire, and there is no way to raise myself... What should I do, sinner that I am, filledwith shame? For shame has coveredmy face and the ways are narrow allaround. Alack, how should I begin to lament my bitter lawlessness, since I cannot easily confess? What should I weep for first? For whatshould I moan and for what should I sob?

This is not the place to consider Serbian medieval politics in detail, but it is certainly of interest that when Uro3 came into conflict with his son Dragutin (one of Jelena’s two sons), Archbishop Danilo de70

fended Dragutin’sposition.Dragutin emerged the victor and his father withdrew from power and spent the rest of his life as a monk (he died in 1277). Jelena gave her son her blessing and, making a clear distinction betweenthe policies of his father and himself, Dragutin gave part of the state into his mother’s care, and she administered it judiciously for more than thirty years.

Maria Paleologina The next royal figure included in the anthology, represented by a brief biography inscribed on her gravestone, was Queen Maria Paleologina (married 1324). She was the daughter of John Paleologus, governor of Salonica and nephew of Emperor Andronicus 11. She was married at a very young age to the Serbian king, Stefan Detanski, after the death of his first wife, Theodora, who was Bulgarian. Maria thus became thestepmother ofKing-laterTsarStefan DuSan, the author of the Code of Laws, whose son UroS she refers to as her own grandson. When Stefan DuSan overthrew his father in 1331Maria was imprisoned with her children. But later her stepson went someway towards compensating for his action by making her son SiniSa despot and appointing him governor of Epirus in 1346. The brief account of her dramatic life expresses the warmth of her attachment to her family. It is not clear, however, whether she was herself the author, although it is at least possible that she composed the inscription before her death and that the date was inserted later: From imperial stockI came and returned to such again,I who in this world, by the grace of Him whomade me,wa ruler known by the name of Maria. Found worthy of the name of nun, it was as Marta that the hour of my death came tome. Laid in the earth in the year 6863 [1355], in the month of April on the seventh day, during the reign of my beloved son Stefan, Autocratic Tsarof all the Serbs and Greeks, and my beloved grandson, King UroS. And I pray you. fathers and brothers in the Lord, to mention me in your prayers.

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Kneginja Milica Arguably the best-knownwoman inSerbianmedievalhistory is Kneginja Milica, the wife of the Serbian ruler Knez Lazar (1371-89), who was killed at the Battle ofKosovo. As the wifeof the central character in early Serbian history-as it was perceived from the nineteenth century onwards-KneginjaMilicafiguresrelativelyprominently in the oral traditional poetry. Indeed, she has been described byKoljevid as “historical only by proxy, in so far as she is remembered as Tsar Lazar’s wifein the largely fictitious storiesabout her”.lg She is portrayed essentially as sharingthe destiny of so many women of this period throughout Europe: seeing her husband off to battle and waiting in vain for his return. In the song‘TsarLazar and Tsaritsa Militsa’, she is described sitting at supper with her husband on the eveof the battle and pleading withhimtoleave a “stout knight to act as messenger” to bring news of the battle back to those who can onlywait. In thissong, through one of the conflations common in the tradition, she hasbeen identified as the sister of the noble family of Jug-Bogdan, a figure unknownto history, but whose nine sons are saidin the tradition to have died at Kosovo. (This would make her the daughter of Jug-Bogdan and the famous Mother of the Jugovidi, poignantly portrayed in the song recorded from the unnamed singer mentioned in Chapter 2.) In this sofig, Lazar agrees to leave her favorite brother, BoSko, to keepher company, but BoSko cannot resist the urge to join his countrymen on the battlefield, or risk the shame of being seen as a coward who dared not fight. Milica pleads unsuccessfully with each of her brothers in turn, until, as the last of them rides past,she falls senselesson the ground. Just then theTsar, Lazar himself, rodeby And sawhis own Tsaritsa lyingthere. The tears sprang forth and flowed upon his cheeks. He turned his head away, he looked to left and right. But then he called his servant, Goluban, Who rode beside himon a fine white horse: “Mytrusty servant Goluban, dismount!

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Look tothe Tsaritsa. Takeher soft hand Lead her away, up to a peacefd place.

-

Now may God’sblessing beon you and her: You shall not come with me to Kosovo, But here shall stay withher in Knlshevats.” When Golubanheard what the Tsar had said He wept, and tears flowed down his cheeks, But he obeyed the Tsar. Dismounting from His battle-horse, he took the lady’s hand And led her to a peaceful room inside. But in the servant’s heart there was no peace, That healone should not go to the war. He fled away to where his horsewas stood And, mounting, turned and rode to KOSOVO.*~

This song,recorded from one of KaradZid’s finest singers,the outlaw TeSan Podrugovid, while describing Milica’s anguish with sympathy and tenderness, nevertheless identifies more readily with the compulsion of the male characters toplay their part in the fateful battle. Milica is visited the next day by two ravens who tell her the news of the disaster and thedeath of her husband and all her brothers. More details are brought by another of Lazar’s faithful servants, Milutin, himself severely wounded. The last words of the song are Milutin’s. Thiscontrasts with the woman’sperspective inthe song of the ‘Mother of the JugoviCi’, in which the last scene is of the Mother dying of a broken heart, unable to bear such sorrow. In Podrugovid’s song, Milica is simply a vehicle for the messenger’s words and no longer relevant once the message has been conveyed, and it ends with an indictment of the traitor blamed for the Christian defeat. In reality, Milica was the daughter of a nobleman, Knez Vratko, a descendant ofVukanNemanjid.She married Lazar around 1353, and after his death at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, she ruled Serbia for her sons Stefanand Vuk until 1393, when Stefan came of age and Milica entered a convent, taking the name of Jevgenija. She died in 1405 and was buried in the monastery of Ljubostinja,which she founded. She has left an exceptionally fine memorial, to both her 73

husband and herself, in her lament for Lazar, composed when his body was moved from PriStina,near the battlefield, to the Monastery of Ravanica around 1391-92. This poem,with all the authority of the direct expression of its author’s own experience, has a different impact from that of the traditional singer’s words. The reality of this living person’s anguish rings down the centuries with chilling clarity: Alack, what hasbefallen me! A sudden fierce weapon has piercedmy soul. Is this likethat which befellJeremiah? Hear how I sigh, how I sorrow, with no comfort for me anywhere! My girls and my young men have gone into captivity. A sword has swept, like death, through my home! And all my enemies, hearing my troubles, rejoice. All this cameupon me unprepared. Could I have expected to become what I am, deprived of the husband of my heart, my sweet and kind lord and prince, with all the bright and chosen ones, all the brave and manly warriors? Weep with me, fields and valleys, that you haveunited with their bodies and their blood! Weep with me and grieve for all the mothers of beloved children, for all the wives of valianthusbands, oh kin of allour dearest ones!

. . . . . . . . . . My lord, I have no strength to stop my weeping and lamenting. The laws of living havebeen shattered, and flerce painsfan flames into fire which consumes my very soul, team the innermost flesh ofmy body!21

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Like the famous lament for Lazar composed by Milica’s kinswoman, the nun Jefimija (discussed below), this remarkable text no doubt draws on the tradition of public lamentation in South Slav culture, which called for particular women in the villages to take on the task of leading the keening for the dead. Many fine poems in this genre have been collected, but few express the range of emotion of Milica’s text. It has an extraordinary quality of directness, followinga natural progression of thought from her personal loss to awareness of the scale and depth of the catastrophe that has befallen her homeland and her fellow countrymen, returning always to the immediacy of her own devastating pain. The image of the fields and valleys united with the blood and bodies of the fallen is a particularly strong one, conveying a sense of close attachment to the soil which had nurtured all those who died. The involvement of the natural world in the catastrophe is reminiscent of the image discussed earlier of the pine tree absorbing the young woman’s griefin ‘The Maid of Kosovo’: “If I were to graspa green pine/ Even the green pine would wither.” The anthology includes two other texts composed byMilica, this time from her new life as nun and devout benefactress of the Serbian Church and its foundation of Hilandar on Mount Athos. They bear witness to her thorough commandof the literary and theological heritage of the Orthodox Church and her fluent written style. For alltheir formal status, both texts convey something of their author’s own personality and a hint of the directness of her entirely personal lament: And therefore have I come, Jevgenija, faithful tothe Lord Christ, mother of my beloved son Stefan the Prince and Vuk, ruler of the Serbian lands and of the Danube region, having come to DeEani monastery, into the family of the holy King Stefan UroS the Third, andhaving seenthe fine setting,well suiteclto a life of devotion, I saw a sorrowful sight indeed-so much effortand zeal of the saintly founder, with the Lord’s permission, on account of our sins, burned and devas rated by the wicked followers of Ismail. and neglected and destroyed by those who ruled before us, the roof removedand come nearlyto ruination. Gazing up toheaven withburning eyes, I prayed tothe Almighty, my God, saying: “Lord before allthe centuries ... Have mercy on my sins, strengthen my sons in the blessed faith and grant them blessecl days, that they should serveThee, their God in blessed righteousness, asdid their lord and father, their prince now at peace ...

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Yes, when Thou comest again, to judge the quick and thedead, with Thy holy angels, place me to sit at Thy right hand, righteous Judge, with Thy chosen ones, who haveever done Thy will! For this cause, I have restored the villages earlier taken away, which are included in the bequest of the first benefactor, with all their possessions. This was restored by the pious lady Jevgenija...n22

Despotica Jelena-Jefimija The only one of these medieval royal personages who is generally acknowledged in Serbian cultural history as having composed literaly texts is Despotica Jelena (1349-ca. 1405), wifeofDespotUgljeSa, who took the name of Jefimija on entering a convent after her husband’s death. More attention has been paid to her and far more is therefore known about her life than is the case with any other medieval Serbian noblewoman.It is as Jefimija that she is known in the region’s cultural history. She became part of the world of educated readers of the Serbian and Croatian language whenthe Serbian poet Milan R a k i C wrote a poem about her in 1913, of which the following is a literal translation: Jefimija, born to the Lord of Drama, Wife of UgljeSa,Serbian ruler, Far from the world, in the peace of her faith, Embroiders silk cloth for a monastery. While nations lie bleeding, smothered to death, Whole Empires fall, the entire world moans, Alone in dark silence,she embroiders In gold and silk her noble soul’s black pain. Centuries pass, oblivion deepens, But still thisnation struggles as before, And it seems to me that it was our hearts Beating in herbreast allthat time ago.

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In our nation’s bitter hour of defeat, When no light gleamson the whole horizon, I remember you in your silent home, Serbian Queen, in a humble nun’s veil1 And then I feel that, alone as before, The noble Black Lady still singsand weeps, As the noose of dire fate tightens roundus, As our whole tribe is engulfed in darkness.

Jefimja’s ‘literary’ works take the form of embroidered texts which belong to a rich tradition of embroidery by Serbian noblewomen. Since the first records (Konstantin Filozof, ca. 1380-ca. 1439), she has been known as a “woman of wisd0m”,2~a “skilled ~raftswoman”,~~ a “well-educated lady”,25 a “wise and experienced woman”,26“one of the noblest ladies in our hi~tory”,~’ a “tender mother, a devout, noble, wise and able woman, a skilled embroideress... who left behind her a fine, a very fine memorial in the hymn of praise embroidered on Prince Lazar’s shroud, in the inscription on the Hilandar curtain, and in the text inscribed on the back of a little icon”.28The literary critic Pavle PopoviC devoted two pages of his history of Yugoslav literature to her, describing her prayer to Prince Lazar asthe finest of all the hymns of praiseto Serbian kingsand archbi~hops.~~ She was born in around 1349, the daughter of‘Cesar’Voihna, nephew of King (Tsar) Stefan DuSan, who ruled over the region of Drama in eastern Macedonia. Jelena had all the opportunities for education then available to a girl of her social standing: she learned to read and write both Serbian and Greek, to do fine embroidery, and to move in the circles of the Byzantine and Serbian nobles and church leaders, to follow secular and church affairs at home and abroad. Her husband, Despot UgljeSa, ruled a region on the Greek and Turkish border to the southeast, with its capital at Serres, which was under Serbian rule for some 26 years. One important source for medieval Serbian literature, Djordje Rad~jiCiC,~~ describes the c a p ture of the fortress by the Serbian army and the arrival on Saturday 24 September 1345, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon,of Stefan DuSan’s 77

The currain embroitlerctl IJyJefimija h r I-IilantlarMonastely L. MiskoviC, Cr1wm.i wnetniElti veg Belgrade, 1940 Muzej Srpske Pravoslavne Crkve,pos. i d . , knj. 1.

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bodyguard. The followingday the Kinghimself arrived. He is recorded as being there also in February 1355, having probably spent the winter in Serres before embarking on his great campaign to cap ture the remnants of the Byzantine Empire, inthe course of which he suddenly died. After his death, DuSan’swidow,Carica Jelena, ruled Serres, with her young son UroS at her side. This Jelena, too, was a woman who enjoyed reading “when affairs of state and concern over her son’s kingdom permitted”.31 During her husband’s lifetime she had shown an unusual interest in the world of books, trying to secure Serbian translationsof Greek works. However, whenshe settled inSerres, atown of “completely Greek character”, where was she surrounded by Greek monks, she ordered Greek books. Voihna’s young daughter, Jelena (later Jefimija), would no doubt have visited her, and the friendship of this intelligent, educated woman encouraged her own interest in art and literature. In 1365 UgljeSa acquired the title of ‘despot’ and married Jelena. DuSan’s widow left the fortress and the administration of its lands to her son and retired to a convent, taking -the name of Jelisaveta. UgljeSa’s young wife was able to pursue her interest in culture and scholarship thanks tothe Metropolitans Jakov and Teodosije who are both known to have been fond of books.3* RadojiW describes the life of the town of Serres: “In the patrician houses of Serres, two-storied, with many rooms, lived many prominent Serbian and Greek nobles. They were all connected, closely or loosely, with the Despot’s court. Social life in Serres must have been verylively. It was manifested, of course, in ways appropriate to the MiddleAges: there was hunting, celebration ofvariousholydays, knightly contestsand games, feasts, etc.”33 UgljeSa is praisedSerbian in history as courageousand valiant, a far-sighted statesman, who foresaw the danger of the Turkish advance and all of whose workwas imbued with the thought of how to resist such a threat. Hewas well aware that .Byzantium should not expect help from anyother states “but that help for the Balkansmust be soughtin the Balkansthemselves”.34 He worked in vain for a peace treaty between Constantinople and the Turks. Hewas also a generous benefactor to the Serbian foundations on Mount Athos, where he founded the Church of Simon Peter. Jelena had a single child, whomshe lost very young (probablyat less 79

than four years of age). He was buried on Mount Athos,in the grave of his grandfather, Cesar Voihna,at the Monastery ofHilandar. In 1371UgljeSa was preparing to drivethe Turks out of Thrace. He set out with his brother VukaSin towards Adrianopolis. On 26 S e p tember, a day’s march from the city, he met the enemy in wooded territory on the bank of the Marica river. The outcome was a disastrous defeat: UgljeSa and his brother were both killed and their bodies neverfound. Most of their men were drownedin theriver or cap tured. This crucial battle heralded the eventual penetration of the Ottoman Turks into the Central Balkans. After UgljeSa’s death, the town of Serres was under Greek administration until it fell to the Turks in September 1383. There is no trace of Jelena for nearly twenty years after she had to leave her fortress. Shewas no more than twenty-two when she was widowed, still grieving for her young son, with no parents to turn to for support. She took refuge in a convent and, at some unknown date the court of before 1389, using her nun’s nameof Jefimija, she went to Prince Lazar at KruSevac, because his wife Milica was a distant relative of hers. It is likely that the young woman, otherwisealone in the world, would havespent those twenty yearsat the KruSevac court. Regrettably, there are no sources of information which could give details of the books available at either Despotica Jelena’s father’s or her husband’s court, but these are likely to have been mostly religious works. The clearest evidence of her learning and talent may be seen in the texts she composed. There is some doubt that all the texts attributed to her are hers, but as it was not customary at the time to claim authorship of such texts, the fact that there is no firm evidence is not sufficient reason todoubt it. Her oldest known text is engraved on a gilt plaque on the little diptych (6.5 x 7.7 cm) of a small icon given by the metropolitan of Serres to Jelena’s son on his christening. It seems that her creative literary gifts were awakened by her sorrow at her son’s death. In the words of RadojiCiC: “When she composed the inscription for the little iconof her only child, Serbian literature acquired itsfirstwomanwriter.”35 The text dates from somewhere between 1368 and 1371 and isnecessarilyconcisebecause of the limited space available. 80

Little icon, but containing a great gift-the most holy likeness of the Lord and the Most Pure Mother of God, bequeathed by a great and holy man to my little son, UgljeSa, princeling, whom, in his innocence, and tender years, was taken into the eternal Family, and his body consigned to the grave, on account of the sins of our first forebears. Grant, Lord Christ,and Thou, oh Most Holy Mother of God, to my sorrowing self that I should ever lookto the ascent of my own soul, as I have observed that of those who gave me life and of the little son I bore, for whom my grief burns ceaselessly in my heart, vanquished by the ties ofmotherhood.

Beginning with warm words of gratitude to the metropolitan who gave the child the icon, Jelena commends herself toGod, remembering her own parents in her prayer, but focusing on her grief for her child. Jelena’s textis not a conventional abstract prayerbut personal and concrete: these are the words of a young mother confessing that, for all her faith, she cannot overcome her sorrow for her child-her grief is stronger than she is.

The inscription on the small icon given to DespoticaJelena’s son in: Dorde RadojitiC, Stari srpski knjitevnici XN-XVII veka, Bgd. 1942 81

Even if Jefimija was able tolive peacefully for nearly twenty years at Lazar’s court, she was destined to suffer another major blow when her protector was himself killed. As we have seen, Lazar’s widow Milica was left with her seventeen-year-oldson Stefan to govern the remnants of the principality-as a vassal of the Turks-at a critical and very troubled time in the country’s history. Judging by the scant information that exists, Jefimija was an invaluable source of strength and support to Milica until Stefan came of age and was able to take over the administration of the principality. Between them, Jefimija and Milica oversaw a period of orderly rule with wisdom and dignity, including undertaking a diplomatic mission in 1398 to SultanBajazit(who ordered Lazar’s execution after his father, Sultan Murad, was killed) in order to clear Stefan’s nameof slander. Her dignified bearing in the face of this experience was recorded by the first chronicler of medieval Serbian history, the monk Konstantin Fi10zof.~~ On their return from thisjourney, the two women spent some time in the iupanjevac monastery, while Milica-now the nun Jevgenijaoversaw the building of the Monastery of Ljubostinja. While shewas thus occupied, Jefimija began work on a curtain forthe Imperial doors in the Church of the Mother of God at the Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos. According to Mirkovid’sdescription, thisis an imposing composition, 144 x 118 cm, depicting in goldand silver thread Christ clothed as an archbishop taking mass in the company of Saint Basil and St John Chrysostom.Towards the bottom of the curtain, by Christ’s feet,is an embroidered inscription in which Jefimija acknowledges authorship,but the remainder of the text is taken from various prayers said at communion. It is a magnificent pieceof work, of great importance for the history ofSerbian art. This is the curtain that Milan Rakid’s poem describes Jefimija embroidering. Far more significant from a literarypoint of view is the text Jefimija composed and embroidered-around the middleof 1402-on the cover of the reliquary containing the relics of Prince Lazar in the Monastery of Ravanica.The impact of the work has been described by Lazar Mirkovid: “When one sees Jefimija’s shroud for the first time, one is surprised by the dense letters, whose gold sheen exudes 82

pure ceremony. Butthe longer one looks at these intertwinedletters, skillfully drawn and combined, the clearer it becomes that, in artistic terms, this cloth is unique among Serbian medieval embroideries, that it must have been created by a skilled hand, drawn by a heart full of emotion, a heart which did not regret the tireless effort required to inscribe its noble beats in heavy letters of gold.”37 Measuring just 99 x 69 cm, the cloth is quite plain: it consists simply of a text embroidered in gold-platedsilver thread and surrounded with a border of twining leaves and flowers. The text has been described as both strikingly patriotic and poetic. It is considered by the cultural historian Milan M a n i n to be one of the finest works of Serbian literature.38 In the beauties of this world you grew from your youth, oh new martyr, Prince Lazar, and the strong hand of the Lord showed you strong and glorious of all earthly men. You ruled over the expanse of your fatherland, and in all goods you made glad the hearts of all the Christians entrusted to you. And with your courageousheart and the desire of honor you went out against the snake and opponent of the holy churches, judging that it would be insup portable for your heart to see the Christians of your fatherland conquered by the Ismailites. And should you not succeed in this, to leave the passing greatness of earthly lordship, to adorn yourself with your crimsonblood and unite with the warriors of the Heavenly King. And thus you fulfilled both desires; youslew the snake and received the wreath of martyrdom fromthe Lord. And now do not leave your beloved children in oblivion, whom you have orphaned by your passing... Come to our aid, wherever you maybe. Look kindly on my little offerings and consider them great, for I have not brought praise in the measure of your worth, but in the power of my humble reason-therefore I expect modest rewards. Not so ungenerous were you, oh my dear lord and holy martyr, when you were in this transient world-and how much more in the eternal and holy one you have received from God-for you nourished abundantly a stranger, myself, in a foreign land. And now I beg you doubly: that you should nourish me still and calm the fierce storm in my soul and body. Jefimija offers thisfrom her heart to you, HolyOne! 83

After praising Prince Lazaras a man and ruler, admiring his courage in confronting the enemy of his country and the Christian faith, ready to die rather than surrender, Jefimija turns directly to Lazar with a lengthy, passionate prayerfor assistance, both for her country and for herself: “Bow your knee before the Lord who has crowned you with the wreath of martyrdom . . Pray that the Orthodox Christian faithshould not be leftunprotected in yourfatherland, pray that God the victor should give the victory to your beloved sons Stefan and Vuk ... Gather a council of your collocutors, the holy martyrs, ...”Jefimija lists all and pray with them to God who has glorified you the holy warriors she begs to come to Serbia’s aid. Then, on a more personal note, she expresses her pain at not being able to bring him greater gifts, and remembers with gratitude his reception of her at his court. For all the ceremonial formality of the setting, and the dignity of its expression, the most striking aspectof Jefimija’s text is its direct, personal tone. Jefimija died in around 1405. Somewhat fancifully, and with little respect for historical accuracy, Lazar Mirkovie evokes her last years: “Once as ruler, with her husband, she had distributed alms to the poor, founded hospitals and visited the sick, built churches and monasteries, and now she had’ nothing to give to the poor, nothing with which to feed and clothe them, for she was herself poor, living among strangers. In her anxiety for the salvation of her soul, she embroidered the Hilandar curtain, pressing into it her prayer, over the words of which hoversthe breath of care for the salvation of her soul, and offersit-all that shehas of her own-to the Most Pure Mother-of-Godof Hilandar, comparing herself, a widow,with the widow from the Gospels who offers two lepts, all that she possesses, thereby giving the greatest sum ... She offers her curtain with a prayer composedof prayers before communion, writtenby Byzantine mystics, and places it at the feet of the Savior on the doors of the Hilandar shrine of the Holy Mother-of-God, in order to pass through it to the open door of Heaven ...“39 KaSanin ends his account of Jefimija’s contribution to Serbian culturewith the conclusion: “Jefimija’s inscriptions-on the little icon, on the curtain, on the shroud-are essentially prayers which cameinto being in specific circumstances and

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with a specific purpose. Like others, her prayers are composed in the first person, in the form of a direct appeal to a divine or secular figure, and it is this characteristic which gives them their tone of immediacy and intimacy. Their other feature is that they contain, not abstract feelings or moral reflections, but sorrow and pain, personal suffering, fear for the writer herself and those near her, for a whole nation, conveyed in the simplest and most moving possible words. The first woman that we know of as writingin the Serbian language wrote not about someone or something else,but about herself, and she did so in an expressly confessionaland direct way.”40 Jefimija’swritings are powerful in their directness and we read them with a sense of privilege for having been granted some brief shafts of insight into the mind of a Serbian woman in the Middle Ages.We should not draw simplistic inferences about finding the beginnings of ‘women’s writing’here, however, for the tone of many medieval Serbian biographies ofmalesubjectsisalso often direct father, Stefan Neand tender, as for example St Sava’slifeofhis manja, the founder of the first Serbian state. It is partly a characteristic of the confessional character of such writing, much of which is a direct appeal to God. Nevertheless, Jefimija’s text is unique in its range of concerns and is undoubtedly one of the treasures of early Serbian cultural history.

Marija Angelina Paleologina The next woman included in the anthology ofmedieval autobiographical writings is Despotica Marija Angelina Paleologina, whose brother Jovan ruled Epirus and Thessaly (1371-73) as Jovan UroS Paleologus, and later became a monk, buildingthe Monastery of the Transfiguration in Meteora, and living there and on Mount Athos until his death around 1422-23. The text included is an elaborate statement in connection with a gLft to her brother to the effect that it is given of her own free will. She also makes provisionfor the protection of the monks of Meteora, should anyone comethere looking for Jovan’spossessions after his death: shestatesclearly that no one 85

should disturb the monks because all his bequests have been granted to the monastery in perpetuity. The text isclearly the workof a highly educated person, with a fluent prose style,not writing according to anypre-setformula, but following the movement of her thoughts as she tries to anticipate every eventuality.

Jelena, Daughter of Knez Lazar The lastwoman in the anthology-and represented by arelatively substantial body of writing-is Gospodja Jelena, the third daughter of Knez Lazar. She was married to a nobleman, Balsit,around 1386, ruling the lands of Zeta after his death. That she didso with gusto may be seen in the fact that at one point she waged war against Venice and went there to negotiate peace terms. In 1411 she mamed a Bosnian noble, Sandalj HraniC. The two texts included in the anthology are a lengthy will, detailing with painstaking precision every giftfor each individual and each category of personon her estate, and one of several letters written to her spiritual advisor, Nikon.This one, written around 1440, conveys once again a warm, fresh, direct and personal tone: A devout missive to the most honorable father, teacher of the Holy Gospels,and our spiritual advisor in the Lord, from humbleJelena! May your holiness know, since byGod’s grace I was honored to meet you, I have rejoiced with cheerfulness of spirit, but the time we saw each other was brief and slight; as someone would say: like a form glimpsed in a mirror, or as though I had been transported into a weightless dream. And because of the speed, my sorrow did not achieve whatI desired. But nevertheless, what spiritualwords we then heard from your reverence,and what we were able to grasp, we received with the whole of our soul kindly and wholeheartedly, even most faithfully, and we have had spiritual guidance through those piouswords, which weheard at that time, right up until today. And I have attended to the devout nature of your soul and its incorporeal angelic substance, ever sinceour final separation. And I have longed to see your person, and to refresh myself with your methodical words, to increase the grrat use I have of seeing you, But because of the great distance between us-ocean and forest-this is the cause that it is not possible for us to see your holiness. Since the desire for wealth and vain glory, and other pleasures besides, does not leave us, who are tossed on the sea of this vain life, raised towards the light 86

of honorable and immaterial existence, the eyes of our soul have clouded over with sorrowand the whirlwind of this world. And see, now, as though waking suddenly from adeep sleep, I longed to see your reverence! We received the letter from your hand, magnificent and kind, and with all my heart we kissed it tenderly, so easily comprehended, and we read it often. And it greatly comforted and refreshed my heart, and at thesame timenly soul, and we see it as a royal hiding place, of lavish riches, of the greatest value,more than a thousand thousand pieces of goldand silver. And once again I beg your reverence to send some relief or solace to u s and quench the thirst of our sorrow. For your reverence knows what storms and tempests and clouds are wont to stirup the self-willed heart ... Ah, Divine helper! Hear me: in all that is written above, I do not command but pray diligently,and bow my face tothe very earth. And doublyI greet you in the Lord, and do not disdain our prayers!

Tantalizing in their brevity, the texts quoted here nevertheless allow us to begin to imagine at least something of the lives of the women who wrotethem.

Notes 1SamardZiC (series editor), I s h i j a srpshog n a r o d a 2 SpasiC, Rodoslowze tablice i groboui e s k i h d i n a s t y ai vlastele, 53. 3 Ibid. 4 (5irkoviC (ed. ), Istarya q s k o g namda, vol. 1,354. 5 Dmhan ’S Code, Article 9,41. 6 Ibid., 55. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. Article 102,65. 9 MarinkoviC, Pisalt i potpisah. Autobiografske izjave srednjeg veka. 10 MijatoviC, ‘K0j e KraljicaJelend?’, 1-30. 11 Ibid., 1. 12 dirkoviC, 356. 13 Danilo PeEki, ‘2itije Kraljice Jelene’, in D. BogdanoviC, Stare srgske biografije, 180. 14 Ibid., 186. 15 Farlati, IZlp‘nlm Samtm, vol. VI1 (Venice, 1817), quoted in MijatoviC, 4. IG G. SubotiC, ‘KraljicaJelena AnZujska’, 131-47. 17 Annales Ecclesiastici, alutoso 0 d m . m Rapaldo, vol. 23 (Lucae, 1749). 40, quoted in MijatoviC, 3. 18 R. MarinkoviC, 68. 87

19 KoljeviC, 168. 20 ‘Tsar Lazar and Tsaritsa Militsa’, translatedby Geoffrey N. W. Locke, 7 7 Serbian ~ Epic Ballads. An An.tllology,173. 21R.MarinkoviC, 179. 22 Ibid., 180. 23 Konstantin Filozof, quotedin Glasnik 42: 267. 24 Kukuljevif, Slovnik unljetnikalrjtgoslavenskih, 80. 25 NovakoviC, S& i Turci, 137. 26JireEek, Istmifa Srba I, 419. 27 V. MarkoviC, Pravoslavno mondtvo i manastiri, 131. 28 Ruvdrac, Starinar, knj. 9 (1892), 122. 29 PopoviC,Jugvslm~enslur knjibnost, 10-12. 30 RadojiM, Stari @ski knjiiamici. 31Ibid., 80. 32 Ibid., 83. 33 Ibid., 83-84. A more recent account of the cultural life of Serres at this time is TrifunoviC, h a c i prevodilac Inok Isaqa. 34 Mirkovie, Monahinja Jefitnija, 4. 35 RadojiEiC, 85. 36 See Mirkovif,18. 37 Ibid., 23. 38 KaSanin, S@ska knjiZeunost,310. 39 MirkoviC, 35. 40 Manin, 311.

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Education, oh light divine! Without you mankind is enslaved. In vain the sun shinesdown on him If none but weeds grow in hisheart. In education God is praised And the truest incense proffered, It is the only way for man To draw near to God’s own likeness! It raises up thrones and empires; But without it a nation falls. It alone brings Vue happiness, Glowing brightlyright to the grave. Milica Stojadinovit-Srpkinja,1854

Under Ottoman administration, opportunities for the development of education and culture in the Central Balkans were severely limited. It was not until the migrations of Serbs into Habsburg lands in the seventeenth century, particularly in 1690, that conditions among the settlers began to be more favorable. Similarly, in the lands of Bosnia Herzegovina, there were few opportunities for education for all but a small elite of beys and their wives until the occupation of the territory in 1878-and ultimately its annexation in 1904-by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The Habsburg Monarchy offered women more basic rights than were available in the Ottoman Empire. As a result of its laws,the zudrugu system, which the immigrants brought with them, began to decline. As early as the beginning of the eighteenth century, it is possible to see from wills and court cases that women were beginning to use the law to bypass patriarchal customs. For example, Hungarian law protected the contribution they made to the marital home in the 89

form of their dowry and gave women the right to half the shared property. Thiscontrasted sharply with Serbian customary law according to which a man was regarded as privileged because he carried a gun, while his wifewas counted among his ‘possessions’; the man remained at his own hearth, while the bride was effectively sold to another; the man retained the name of the family, and consequently the property ought to be his as well. According to this law,although brother andsister were theoretically entitled to an equal share of the parental property, there was an accepted custom whereby the sister, of her own free will and so as not to jeopardize the love of her brother, would be satisfied with a smallerpart of their father’s prop erty than that theoretically guaranteed by law. To seal this arrangement, she would “make her cross [an expression left over from the age of women’s illiteracy] on the agreement with her brother”.’ Under Austrian law, marriage contracts whichprotected the wife’s right to her dowry could make it possible for a widow to manage her own affairs and continue her husband’s business, as did, for example, KatarinaJankoviC in Novi Sad whoran her husband Emanuel’s printing press whichwas a major industrialventure for the time.* Among the Serbs in southern Hungary, thanks to their successful commercial activity, a middle class began to emerge with the leisure to pursue education, culture, and the whole field of charitable activities. One of the severest obstacles to women’s progresswas of course lack of education, and it continued to be a major problem throughout thenineteenth century. Amongthe settlers in southern Hungary, the wealthiest employed private tutors. This could sometimes bring girls up to a reasonable level of attainment, asmay be seen from some linesin theoldest known eighteenth-century songbook belonging to Avram MiletiC, which suggest that the girls of Novi Sad were renowned for their education. For those who could not afford private tuition, however, there were few opportunities. So, for example, in 1757 the elementary schoolin Novi Sad had a student body of 90 boys and not a single girl. At schools in some of the other towns there were occasional girlsbut their numbers increased very slowly: it was not until the 1870s that more than a rare individual woman succeeded in acquiring a basic education. In fact, the first woman to 90

enter publiclifein the eighteenth century was self-taught. Savka SubotiC describesher earliest education: As I was a very naughty child, my mother sentme to a ‘ler’ [elementary school: from the German ‘lernen’]before I was four years old, just to get me out of the house. Elementary schools were open to both boys and girls, but they were not compulsory ... The children tormented themselves for a couple of years with musical scales and ‘school’ until it turned them against music forever; it was only thereally talented who could find an escape from such inauspicious beginnings.3

The name of one such exceptionally talented woman is known to history: Marta Neskova, who managed to enter the Novi Sad gymnasium in the 1750s because of her intellectual ability. Shewas the only Serbian woman in the eighteenth century known to have been able to ‘speak‘ Latin. One may deduce from the titles of books found in the inventory of several women’s possessions after their death that they were able toread, if not to write. At the turn of the nineteenth century one or two women’s names are found among lists of subscribers to books. When F6nClon’s T&?maque was published in 1814 five women subscribers were listed, one of whom was Evstahija, wife of the mayor of the town of Arad, Sava h i d . She was also one of the four women subscribers to the first Serbian newspaper, which began to appear in 1817. In 1829 the novel Silvan and M i h a by the popular writer Milovan VidakoviC had eight women subscribers. Some women contributed financially to the founding of the Serbian cultural society Matica srpska.One woman stands out in this meager landscapeas particularly interesting: MarijaPopoviC Punktatorka who becamethe wife of the flamboyant Romantic poet Sima Milutinovid Sarajlija and carried on a lively correspondence with Vuk KaradZid among others, even before her marriage. Widowed early, in 1847, she worked as a school teacher,both as an outlet for her extraordinary energyand in order that her son should want for nothing, and then as a talented lawyer who behaved withgreat generosity towardsher moreimpoverished ~1ient.s.~ One of the first manifestationsof the new-found leisure among the Serbiancommunity in southern Hungary was the emergence of 91

popular songbooks. Such collections of songs and poems from the mostvariedsources are foundwherevercircumstancespermit: for instance, among towndwellers inthe Bay of Kotor from the sixteenth century onwards. Very little is known about the origin of these collections: by their nature they are devoid of allinformation, as they simply record songsand poems known to the contributors. But it is likely that the sources of at least some items were women.The first tangible evidence is noted by Tihomir OstojiC who tried to make a systematicand exhaustive collection: “We wanted to have every song that was still alive in our society ... How we struggled to note down every text! We visited our older schoolfriends, and gatherings of our relatives, village girls at harvest time, and we even drove our aunts and mothers to sing ancient songs in their tired and trembling voices, although they, poor things, had long since lostthe habit of such ‘idleness’and resisted our entreaties for as long as they could...”5 The subject matter at least of the earlier songbooks is similar to that of the women’s songs in the oral tradition: mostly love poems, sometimes very explicit. But they also include some satirical songs. This similarityis quite natural as the towndwellers in the first half of the eighteenth century were still very close to their village origins. In addition, the process of evolution of some songs in the oral tradition is which becamepart of the tradiunclear: it is probable that some songs tion originated from written sourcesand were then absorbed into the oral repertoire. It was only gradually, with the admixture of the new written poetry-often stimulated by foreign models-that the subject matter of the songbooks began to diverge from the oral tradition. To date the oldest known songbook of Serbian urban poetry is that of Avram MiletiC, which was compiled around 1780, but it is clear that there is a great deal more work to be done in this area, which has been neglected until recently. It is at least likely that earlier examples will be discovered. While these popular songbooks were being compiled, written literature based on quite newmodelswasalso beginning to appear among the Serbian settlers in southern Hungary. Somewhat belatedly, a number of poets absorbed the works of European Baroque writers and began in the course of the eighteenth century to expand

the potential of the Serbian church language for secular purposes. Towards the end of the century, writers began increasingly to reflect the new trends of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. It was into thissocial and intellectualcontext that the firstknownSerbian woman writer sincethe Middle Ages wasborn.

Evstahija Arsit Evstahija ot ArsiC was born in 1776 to the CinCiC family in Irig, southern Hungary, and died in 1843. She had an unhappy personal life, being married and widowed three times. In her mature years she was an important patron of the literary effortsof her contemporaries and was probably better known in her lifetime for this activity than for her own writings. She was highly regarded by one of the most important culturalfigures at the time,Joakim VujiC (1772-1847), who called her “ma seule protectrice”. Even on the basis of the little she wrote it can be seen that as a writer she is certainly not inferior to many of her male contemporaries who wrote in a similar vein and who are better known than she is. h i d ’ s works, published somewhat anachronistically in 1814, 1816, and 1829, are entirely in keeping with the spirit of the Enlightenment, being essentially moral teachings, short pieces of advice, and philosophical reflections. She refers frequently the to example of the great Serbian follower of the Enlightenment Dositej ObradoviC, who clearly served as her model of a committed instructor of his people. All her activity as a mature woman was motivated by a desire to be useful and to educate, whetherby offering practical advicein a range of areas or philosophical reflections, which she considered of equal importance. Her writings are thoughtful, eloquent, serious, and direct. They suggest an impressive mind and deep commitment at a time when it was quite unknown for a Serbian woman to be involved in any kind of literary activity. A twentiethcentury critic, Milan Bogdanovid, sees in her work a tone which differs from that of her male contemporaries and betrays a specifically feminine quality: “Nevertheless, more than in many other writers of the time, a tender and 93

vivid word breaks through here and there, revealing the female nature of the writer. Something of that female coquettishness hinting at a certain preciousness of style, and something of the warmth of a feminine nature mean that here and there in her workwe come upon a lively metaphor and a fresh description.”6It is interesting, in view of the constraints of the nineteenth century, that the intellectual climate of the Habsburg lands in the eighteenth century encouraged a sense of belonging to a broad European culture: Arsid has also been described as “more cosmopolitan than Serbian“.’ Sovet’ Muternii (A Mother’s Advice, Budim, 1914), is a delicate little paperback booklet, beautifullyproduced on good qualitypaper, consisting ofpiecesofprose and verse, praising God, nature, and a commitment to one’s people, and encouraging the development of the capacity of reason. The work is dedicated in hlsome terms to a certain UroS StefanNestorovid,royalcounselor and inspector of schools, praising hiswork in education and stressing the teaching of girls as well as boys. The tone is immediate: warm, enthusiastic, full of a love of books and learning, and delight in the natural world. One poem urges her readers to celebrate the delights of nature as a source of joy:

What is theuse, oh brother dear, of being melancholy, Is it not better with your brother to share in joy? Hear the nightingale singing, Calling to the herders To lead their flocks outside Into thegreen fields. While the flowers andthe grass are sprinkledstill with dew, And before they bow their heads humbly to their creator. 94

The gentle breeze, thegentle breeze refreshes the meadows, and disperses, and disperses the scentof violets. The meadowlands, the meadowlands adorn themselveswith flowers and so attract, and so attract every eye towardsthem.

Polernaya Razntislyenye o chetirihGodishnih’Vremeneh (UsefulReflections on the Four Seasons) is a more substantial and ambitious volume,8 consistingof some 160 pages of verse and prose pieces of varying lengths, including somequite substantial, intricate, and thoughtful passages. It is characteristic ofArsiC’s intention that she should include the word “useful”in her title: usefulness to her fellow human beings is the point of departure of all her reflections. The preface warns of the dangers of being taken in by the superficial and illusory, using the metaphor of the theater to suggest the appealing but deceitful material world and its often negative influence. Readers are encouraged to observe the world with care and to rely on their own reason and powers ofjudgment to see clearly beyondthe facade. The preface is followed by a hymn to the glory of God as surpassing all earthly glory, thus subjecting this work, which extolshuman reason, to the ultimate authority of God. The substance of the work consists of two longer sections and numerous short essays. The first of the longer sections concerns the four agesof man-childhood, youth, maturity, and oldage-anddescribes the behavior appropriate to eachstage. There is atimeinevery human life for lighthearted amusement, a time for sobriety, and a time for reflection and for sharing with others the wisdom accumulated through a usefid, welllived life. The other long section is similar, consisting of a poem on each of the four seasons, followed by allegorical prose reflections, again on the four phases of human life. Some of these passages represent quite lengthy and intricate philosophical thought, persuasively 95

expressed for all the awkwardness of the language. Like all writers of her time, ArsiC had to contend with a literary language as yet quite unformed: a hybrid mixture of archaic Serbian and Russian church Slavonic, contemporary Russian, and the vernacular, which at this stage had no rules, no standard grammar or dictionary. The shorter pieces deal with a widerange of topics: the usefulness of philosophy to mankind; the various activities open to a man in society; love of God as what distinguishes man from animals;the value of work and effort; the importance of cultivating positive sentiments, of being satisfied with little, and not being a slave to emotions; man as first and foremost a biological being; the cultivation of qualities of wisdom through learning, thereby approaching the achievements of the great European countries; the beneficial effects of nature; the need to cultivate good blood-an intriguing mixture of scientific language with philosophy and ethics; preparation for death without fear; the secret connections between all aspects of the complex human individual; man’s place between the earth and sky and the Theater of Life; and education as the way in which individuals may help each other towards a more enlightened future, in keeping with God’s will. The work ends with several meditative poems in the form of prayers or hymns in which the writer approaches the idea of death and direct communication with God in the silence of the night, and a final prayer of farewell. The work suggests a remarkable personality, wise, thoughtful, wellread, with a great appetite for knowledge and a compelling desire to share that love with her fellow human beings. The subject matter is inevitably conventional in terms of the Enlightenment ideas it promotes, and therefore somewhat outmoded for the date of its appearance, but from the point of view of the author’s own context it is a powerful and persuasive document which offers its readers a great variety of topics for their consideration. It is impressive also in the range of styles and genres the author displays: she is equally assured in a simple poem praising nature, a mystical hymn in praise of God, and a complex reflection on human biology and ethics. The anthology of Serbian women poets published in 1972 includes two poems by h i d and anepitaph:

Hope and happiness, now take your leave of me; You have toyed with melong enough, From nowon you should visit others; Peace to the soul, of all gifts is indeed the greatest9

Julijana RadivojeviC Arsid’s Morulnu pouZeniju (Moral Teachings) was published in 1829. In the same year,an almanac entitled TuZiju appeared, edited by Julijana Radivojevid, who was thus the second Serbian woman writer of the nineteenth century. Born in 1798 in Vrgac, near the Romanian border, nothing is known of her after 1829 apart from a sonnet by the Czech poet Jan KollArwhich refers to a visit to “Julka Radivojevicka” in 1832.1° The poem refers to her as another woman poet, “knocking at the temple of art”, although according to the poet she described herself as “merely a seamstress”. She must have had some renown as KollAr learned of her existence from a friend and felt it worth recording his meeting in a sonnet. A letter of hers to KollAr has been preserved, which includes a mini-autobiography: I, Julija RadivojeviC, nee Vijatovit, saw the light of day on 2 January 1799 in VrSac, in the Banat. My father, Jovan VijatoviC, was advisor to the magistrate’s court there and director of Serbian schools for twentyyears;my mother was called Sara Niko. When I was eleven, having lostmy dear parents, I went to Vienna, to my mother’s brother, Aleksandar Niko, where I spent seven years, and almost forgot my mother tongue. On my way back to my homeland, via Pest, in 1821, I chanced to meet Maks RadivojeviC, a townsman and a master tailor, and that same yearI married him. Here I came to know Serbian booksand writers, and I read particularly with inexpressible joythe works of ObradoviCand I began, from a distance, to imitate that favorite writer of mine.In 1829 I published Tulqa, a little Serbian almanac;then I wrote an essay on education, particularlyof girls; then advice to young Serbian girls according to Ebersberg with many additions of my own. I have alsoin manuscript 14 pages ofvarious original poems.ll

Kregimir Georgijevit details all the facts known about Julija Radivojevid, and the Czech poet Safarik presents much the same information as Kollgr. He mentions a note about her published by Danilo k 97

iivaljeviC in 1901 which describes the content of TuZiju and suggests that itwould be no exaggeration to say that “thereis more poetry in her poems than is to be found in the work of the later Milica StojadinoviC”.12 Atthe time of writing his article, GeorgijeviChad been unable to find any trace of the almanac in any library in Yugoslavia, although eventually he managed to acquire a microfilm from Pest. He describes the content as one introductory article and several poems, one of which is dedicated to the memory of Dositej Obradovit: In Memory of Dositej ObradoviC Wheresoever I turn my ear There I hear the Muses sing, In one voice a sweet harmony Praise to the deathless Dositej. Receive me too into your company, To sing of the greatness of that name, Teach me that glorious skill And say all that is full of praise. Dositej, yourhonored bones, You fill my heart with sweetemotion. The cold earth has long covered you But your glorious works live on To enlighten all our hearts And souls, great Dositej! You took the covering fromour eyes, And let us kook upon the sun, You revealed the beauty of truth, And showed it tothe whole world, You journeyed through all of Europe. And gathered all the loveliest flowers With which to adorn the Serbs, To their pride to the end of time ...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . Your memory willremain eternally And time will not uproot it from our peq11e.l~

The intervening 13 lines of the poem are in the same vein, praising ObradoviC as a source of inspiration and pride for the Serbs and expressing the poet’s eternal gratitude in the name of all her people. Stevan Radovanovid states that, unlike Evstahija ot h i d , RadivojeviC shows no interest in the natural sciences and suggests that thewhole circle in which she moved was far more limited than thatof her rich, educated, and renowned contemporary. RadivojeviC’s almanac consists largely of verse, with only three prose texts: ‘New Year 1829’, a greeting to the new year which isinteresting because of the autobiographical information it gives about the young widowwith two small children having to work to support her family; ‘Childhood Tenderness’, a highly sentimental piece about the love of children; and ‘Night’, a prose poem, described by Radovanovid as influenced by the German poet and painter SalomonGessner,whoseidylls were very popular at the time all over Europe and who also influenced Arsit. RadovanoviC describes Radivojevid as surprisingly patriarchal and conservative in her ideas, asexpressed in a poem entitled ‘On Women’sDuties’. He suggests that the most important pages of the almanac are the last, which contain the three best poems. These are love poems, personal and immediate, and the earliest poems of this kind in modern Serbian literature, appearing 18 years before the firstlyricverse of the Romantic poet Branko RadiCevid.

Mina KaradZie-Ana Obrenovit ArsiC and RadivojeviC were born into the Serbian community in the Habsburg lands, where they spent their lives. Followingthe uprisings against the oppressive rule of local janissariesin Serbia, in 1804 and 1815, the foundations of an independent state were laid and conditions established in which education and culture could begin to develop. Two women should be mentioned here, not as original writers, but because of the prominent role they playedin thecultural life of the emerging independent country. The first of these,Mina KaradZiC (1818-94) was the daughter of the remarkable Vuk 99

KaradZiC, whose name has already been mentioned as the man who standardized the vernacular languageand made extensive collections of traditional oral literature. Mina’s first lovewas painting and she is known to have written only one “warm and sincere’’ articleabout the poet Branko RadiiSevi6,l4 who was a close friend of her family. Her importance lies in the fact that she became the focal point of the literary life of her young fellow countrymenin her father’s house in Vienna, attracting people with her charm and helping foster their commitment to culture. Her autograph book was filled with elegant and flattering tributes in many languages. Bogdanovit describesher as “quick, intelligent, lively, educated and charming, if not pretty”.15 She was of great assistance to her fatherin his work, particularly in his wide-ranging correspondence. Perhaps because of her devoted support of her father, her own personal happiness was neglected: she did not marry until 1858, and her husband, Aleksa VukomanoviC, who was professor of literary theory and the history of the Serbian people at the Belgrade Lyceum, died the following year of tuberculosis. After that she devoted herself entirely to her only son, who went to StPetersburg to study and died there in 1878 of the same disease. Mina was left to live out the remainder of her life alone. The other figure who should be mentioned here also suffered a tragic fate. This was Ana, or Anka, ObrenoviC (1821-68),the niece of the first Serbian ruler in the nineteenth century, Milo3 Obrenovie. Shehas been described as“very beautiful, very intelligent, well educated, undoubtedly better so than Milos’s daughters who still wore traditional [Turkish-style] dress”.l6 A painting of her exists which depicts her wearing the latest European fashion, with a wide skirt and d6colletr5, seated at a piano. Her father, Jevrem-Milos’s brother-was one of the first in Belgrade to introduce European manners into his home. He had a library of foreign works, subscribed to various European newspapers, and was determined to give his five daughters and only son a good education. He employed a music teacher and one of the best-educated Serbian men of the timeas tutor. Under his tutelage Ana acquired a sound knowledge of European culture and a great loveof literature. In 100

1834, when she was just 13, she published a number of ‘moral tales’,

translated from German,and continued to publish similar writings in variouspublications,including the Croatianculturalmagazine Dunicu, edited by Ljudevit Gaj in Zagreb under the pseudonym “An Illyrian woman from Serbia”.In 1836 she published a volume of her translations which was the first book compiled by a woman and one of the first publishedworks of any kind toappear in Serbia.As far as is known that concluded her literary work, but she continued to inspire admiration among poets, who dedicated poems and whole volumes to her, comparing her-predictably and with little justification-to Sappho,l’ or to “Aspasia, who nourished Socrates and Alcibiades”.18 A French traveler, Ami BouC, described his meeting with Ana at her father’s house: “The third daughter, Anka or Ana by name, is not yet married and combines with her very agreeable appearance the qualities ofwit, education and pleasing talent.”19 Her most poignant literary conquest was the Croatian poet Antun MihanoviC, author of the patriotic poem which became the Croatian national anthem. Posted to Belgrade as Austrian consul, Mihanovid was a frequent guest in Ana’s father’s house, where he evidently formed a deep attachment to hishost’s charming young daughter, despite the considerable difference in their ages: he was a mature man and she a girl of 16. MihanoviC asked her father for permission to propose. Jevrem had no objection, but the permission of Milos, the ruler, had to be sought for his niece to marry a Catholic. Milo3 refused and requested that MihanoviC be recalled. He left Serbiain 1839, but was evidently stillthinking of his love for Ana some time later when he wrote a poem entitled ‘The Stone Maiden’. Ana herself ceased to occupy herself with literature; in 1842 she married a certain AleksandarKonstantinoviCwho soon died, leaving her to live, with her daughter, at the court of her cousin, MiloS’s son Prince Mihailo. In May 1868 she happened to be riding with Mihailo in his carriage through the grounds of his country residence when he was assassinated. She too died and the papers marked her passing with the brief announcement: “With his Royal Highness,hiscousin, MrsAnkaKonstantinoviC,wasalso killed.”*O 101

Milica Stojadinovid The 1860s brought about significantchanges in the provision of education for girls in Serbia: by 1870, of the 318 elementary schools 80 were for girls. The first ‘Girls’ High School’ (Visadarojudtu Skola) was founded in 1863, with the aim of giving wealthier girls a modest education and training the poorer ones as teachers. At one point the school was supposed to be run by Mina KaradZiC, but the work was taken over by Katarina Milovuk. She was a woman of relatively good education for the time and espoused progressive ideas,founding the Belgrade Women’s Society, which gained a sound reputation for its humanitarian actions and social work. The first Serbian woman to achieve a substantial reputation and recognition as a creative writer wasMilicaStojadinovid (1830-78), usually known as Milica Stojadinovid-Srpkinja-the ‘Serbian Woman’. She is an intriguing, tantalizing, and, ultimately, tragic figure. From the point of view ofthe present study, she embodies with remarkable clarity the transition from women’s participation in the traditional oral literature to their integration in the world of their educated, learned male counterparts. In this context, Stojadinovid’slife and work illustrate the conjunction of historical, political, and cultural circumstances that dictated the direction taken by the ‘dominantSerbian-culture in the region in the course of the nineteenth century. Stojadinovid was referred to by contemporary Romantic poets as “the Nymph of Vrdnik”, “the Serbian Singer”,and “the Serbian poet and writer”. She was one of the most prominent figures in Serbian cultural life, and a personal friend of Vuk KaradZiC, who called her “my daughter from FruSka Gora”. The renowned poet Petar Petrovidremarked: NjegoS, prince-bishop of Montenegro, is saidtohave “Were I not a monk, she would be princess of Montenegro.”*l She was seen as a great beauty and “the pride and adornment of the whole of Serbian poetry”.22 In the course of a visit to Viennashe was received by the Serbian prince Mihailo, then in exile, who had courteously left a volume of her poems on top of a pile of books in his room. She was warmly welcomed by the established Serbian writers 102

whenever she visited Belgrade;the poet Ljubomir NenadoviC wrotea poem to her; and the eminent Croatian poet Ivan MaZuraniC called on her. Indeed, her reputation was such that she was even visited by two English women writers who traveled to Vrdnik to meet her. Regrettably, she refers to their visit only in a brief postscript to a letter I had a visit from two English women, of 1862, saying merely: “Today both writers.”23The Austrian writer Ludwig August Franklmet her at the home of VukKaradZiC in 1851 and, after her death, wrote this account of the impression she madeon him: Her appearance was striking: of medium height, with a pale face, likethat of the Mother of God, with a brow framed in dark hair. Her large black eyes looked with a calm which seemed not to come from this world,and her almost melancholy expressionwas at times softened by a smile on her finely formed lips. Her features would become enlivened only when she spoke about her native land, about the beauty of FmSka Cora and when she described the surrounding woods and green hills. Her eyes would shine more brilliantly whenshe heard of the hopes and aspirations which were blazing inthe hearts of those who longed for a brighter future. And when she put her own feelings into words, when she spoke of the glorious pastof her people and the tragic end of its empire on the Field of Kosovo, her voice would takeon a kind of solemn, elegiactone ...24

Despite such widespread admiration and recognition, however, Milica her death. Stojadinovid was virtually forgotten almost immediately after As the introduction to her ‘Spomenica’ (Memorial), published by the Committee of Belgrade Girls in 1907, puts it: “All that beauty, that as whole exalted soul, that great voice, it all dispersed like smoke, though there had never been anything there. A few yellowing books and one pale memoir.”25One commentator, the distinguished scholar Anica Savid-Rebac, explained this phenomenon in an essay, published in 1926: “her literary friends at first saw her work through the brilliant veil of her personality; later, when their first spring illusions vanished, she herselfvanished from their lives as well”.26 Milica Stojadinovidwas born in either 1828 or 1830 in the village of Bukovac in the Srem district of what is now Vojvodina, the gifted child of the village priest, who was later posted to Vrdnik. She had three brothers and two sisters, but tended always to be alone. She liked to wander through the fields and woods, imagining herselfas a 103

character in one of the stories her father used to tell from Serbian history. Both her parents were remarkable people who instilled in their daughter an unshakable morality, a profound commitment to the history and culture of the Serbian people,and a deep respect for the teachings of the Orthodox Church. While they expected their daughter to participate in the daily tasks of the household and p r o p erty, they were also content for her to read, learn languages, and spend long hours in her room over her writing. Her mother also read to her children and Milica had soon learned all the traditional songs about the Battle of Kosovo by heart. Milica was always the most attentive of the six children and her father determined that she should receive the best possible education available for girls at the time. Her first teacher praised her exceptional promiseand was only sorry that she was not a boy so that she could continue to study. At the age of 12 her father took her to board at the ‘Oberschule’ in Petrovaradin, where she was given a hard time by the teachers who recognized her gifts but regretted that she was from an Orthodox (Serb) family rather than a Catholic, Hungarian, or Austrian one. She succeeded in winning them over by learning quickly. Later, she was assigned to a governess, a Hungarian noblewoman with whom she perfected her German and learned to play the guitar. She appears also to havelearned the Slovak language at this time. However, she did not much care for thisfashionable‘foreign’ education, which she described as the “poison of Western civilization”,although she certainly usedher knowledge of German to excellent advantage. She was an avid reader of everything written in Serbian, but also of German literature. Later, she learned French and Italian. She loved literature with a passion rare in anyone of her generation in her homeland, and quite unknown in a woman. This hasbeen described as her greatest tragedy: “Out of love of poetry, she lost out on her whole life, sacrificing it to books and a literary dream of a higher life.”27 She wroteher first poem at the age of 12 and her first published poem appeared in 1845 in a Serbian paper in Pest. These first poems record the pain of being subjected to Hungarian insistence that Serbian children learn Hungarian instead of their own language. The year 1848, a dramatic one for all the peoples of the 104

Habsburg lands, made a deep impression on her, turning her into a passionate patriot, who greeted the revolution as a sign of the liberation of the Serbian people. She leda march of young people to Vukovar and a second one later in which she sang her own songs, which became very popular and were published in 1849 as a small booklet. When things began to go badly for the Serbs, she vowed that she would go to the Serbian camp with a guitar and “with song enflame the courage and anger of the Serbian warriors”.28She was evidently thinking of the model of Joan ofArc,whom she particularly admired. StojadinoviC published three collections of poems: in 1850, 1855, and 1869. Sadly, for all her passionate love of literature she lacked a real talent for poetry: she had a poor sense of rhythmso that some of her lines are clumsy and spoil what are otherwise often attractive, if slight, pieces. Additionally,in keeping with contemporary notions of female propriety, although her verse springs from an emotional response to the world, it is not personal. Her poems tend to be similar: generalized, didactic, composed for particular occasions. Her main themes are thebeauty of the countryside whereshe grew up, andher love of the Serbian people and glorification of their past. In this she was of course followingthe tastes ofthe times, in terms both of literature and attitudes to contemporary events. However, in her case it was no mere literary fashion: the patriotic impulse expressed in her verse was evidently deeply felt. When Belgrade came under fire in 1862, her impulse was to rushto be part of the action for its defense: I could not resist the call of my heart to see the Serbian soldiers, and I cannot put into words the way I felt when I saw them. On each barricade there were about 50 of them, in each of them I saw a hero from thetime of Djordje [Petrovit, known as ‘Karadjordje’] and Milo3 [ObrenoviC], and the eyes of each of them expressed excitement and their desire as soon as possible to get to grips with the Kosovo devil. I spent the wholeday in Belgrade, going round the barricades and watching those warriors. When I left in the evening,I wept that I had to 1eave.m

It is the strength of personality and the courage reflected in these lines that give Milica StojadinoviC a special place in the history of Serbian culture. And, while little of this may come across in her po105

ems and tantalizingly little is known of her life as a whole, she left a unique, detailed account of one year, 1854, in the form of a diary. This account, incorporating some of her frank, vivid letters, represents an act of considerable courage by a woman who, for all her personal humility, sensed that it would be a document of unique value. The personality that emerges from her work suggests that she was in many ways ahead of her time and destined to profound loneliness. The form her work took and her ultimate destiny were both shaped by the fact that she was a woman. While she was in contact with writers, notably poets,both Austrian and Serbian, and while her verse enjoyed considerable stuzcess when it was first published, she lacked the real support of an understanding milieu which would have helped her to make the most of her undoubted gifts. Her parents could have done no more bywayof encouraging her on her chosen path: they could not have been expected to see beyond the conventional expectationsof a woman of her time and background. It was understood that Milica would play her part in performing all the household chores, and, when her mother died in 1855, the task of running the house fell to her. She carried out this task humbly and conscientiously until the death of her beloved father in 1864. She published her last volume of poetry five years later and, as far as is known, wrotenothing more, apart from some letters. There is little information about the last years of her life. At some stage, she moved toBelgrade. One canonlyspeculate as to her frame of mind, her hopes and expectations when she made this decision, and the circumstances in which she left the FruSka Gora countryside whichhad been such a source of inspiration and joy to her in her early life. She must have felt an initial sense of relief at her release from the ties of running the house and smallholding and have hoped, at last, to begin to live the life of an intellectual in congenial company. However, she had already seen through the shallow social pretensions of the emerging middle class among her countrymen, as is clear from her letters and diary, and she ought perhaps to have had few illusions. The political situation in Serbia in the second half of the nineteenth century was chaotic and violent. Mihailo ObrenoviC, whohad 106

befriended Milica whenhe was in exile in Vienna, was assassinated in 1868. The whole atmosphere was very far indeed from the vision of freedom fromoppression which hadcolored Milica’s adolescent ideals. Whatever the quality of her Belgrade life initially, it is clear that it ended in misery and degradation. Shewas destitute and seems to have lost her mind, possibly as a result of alcohol addiction as she sought to alreviate her misery. The postscript to the 1985 edition of the diarycontainsdistressingaccounts by former friends. Vuk KaradZif’s daughter, Mina, with whom Milica had enjoyed a warm friendship, describes their lastmeeting.Milica had alreadycomplained in a letter to Mina that her “intellectual life had ceased, ceased in every aspect, and I am dead”. In Belgrade, Mina sought to renew their acquaintance. Milica appeared “in strange clothes”, looking thin and pale. She appeared not to recognize Minaand hardly to know what she was doing; she simply stretched out her hand saying: “Giveme something, anything ...” The poet Ljubomir Nenadovit also describes his last encounter with her. NenadoviC, a man whom she particularly admired and to whom shesent all her poems before publication for his approval, had dedicated a poem to Milica. Indeed, it has been suggested that her feelings for him amounted to more than she would admit even to herself.30It is not known why or when they ceased to maintain regular contact, but Nenadovit wrote after her death: I shall never forget an encounter in Belgrade, not far from the National Theater. It was somewhere there that I saw her and stepped round her. I had the impression that she had not noticed me. Then she began to call me: “Sir, Sir!”and I had no choice, I turned round: she hurried towards me, her white hair flowing loose. I have to say that I was pretty embarrassed when she said in a low voice: “Give me four groschen for brandy.” I put my hand in my pocket at once and pulled out a dinar. I handed it to her and she took it, looking gratefully at me. Poor creature.31

While we know nothing of the circumstances that led Milica Stojadino novit to such a pass, it does the cultivated circles of Belgrade credit that she should have suffered such neglect, at the end of a short, hard life which had begun with such exceptional promise. She 107

died in a house belonging toa Greek merchant on 25July 1878. She had a sixteen-year-old companion, who seems to have been with her on herlast day, having taken StojadinoviC’s jewelry to be sold to keep them going a little longer. She was buried in the Old Cemetery. In 1905her bones were taken to PoZarevac, where a memorial stone was placed in 1966. In 1912 a monument was erected to her inVrdnik. It is for her diary U F d k o j gori 1854 (In FruSka Gora, 1854) that StojadinoviC will be chiefly remembered. The work is a tantalizing document as it suggests a potential which was not altogether realized. It consists of simple accounts of the main eventsof the writer’s day-a walk with her sister, overseeing work in the vineyard, or a time of quiet contemplation by her favorite apricot tree; meticulous records of songs sung by the village girls as they worked; traditional stories; translations of poems and stories fromother literatures; and Stojadinovie’s own poems and letters. She is at her most assured when recording traditional songs and tales or writing her own verse, since there were abundant models for these. She embellished the traditional songs and tales with accounts of the circumstances in which they were sung or told, descriptions of the village girls, and the setting in the village or fields. She may well have added also something of her own style to the traditional tales, in view of her familiarity with them, the love she had developed for them in her childhood, her capacity to enter into them, and her evident ability to write vivid, well-constructed prose. She would have seen a clear purpose in recording these works of her ‘people’. The most obvious evidence of her potential as a prose writer, however, lies in her letters. Here again she is assured: she has a specific task, to communicate toa valued individual in a lively and compelling way something of the real quality of her life. This she does with admirable fluency, wit, and occasional brilliance. For all the fascination of the diary as a record, it is perhaps fair to say that the character of the writer which emerges from this text is even more engaging than the textitself.MilicaStojadinovidwas uniquely placed to articulate the concerns and values of the village women who created the traditional oral literature of the South Slavs. She grew up with a profound respect for all that was best in the pa108

triarchal way of life, at that time entering a period of fundamental change. Her commitment to the Orthodox religion also rooted her firmly in tradition, while at the same time it separated her somewhat from her urban contemporaries for whom the church was ceasing to be a significant force. Shewas thus typical of the central paradox of Serbian culture at this time: on the threshold of emerging into independent statehood, in an atmosphere colored by the revolutionary aspirations of the minority peoples in the Habsburg lands, there was a tension between buildingon the achievements of the urban culture established in southern Hungary in the course of the eighteenth century and the heritage of traditional culture in Serbia itself. When the vernacularlanguage was standardized in the mid-nineteenth century, it was based entirely on the language and culture of the villages, as embodied in the oral tradition. This paradox is central to the development of Serbian culture in the nineteenth century. It was made possiblebecauseof an exceptional conjunction of circumstances: the wholelate-eighteenth-century European ‘discoveryof the people’ under the influence of Herder prompted an intense interest in a people’straditional culture as embodyingits ‘true spirit’. This, combined with the general political pressure towards autonomy for the constituent peoples of the great Empires, meant that the uprisings in Serbia, led by village elders, were uniquely in tune with the ideals of young intellectualsthroughout Europe. As we have seen, MilicaStojadinoviC, in her smallvillagecommunity, shared wholeheartedly in these ideals. At the same time, she was shocked by the social pretensions and preoccupation with material goods that she saw as characterizing her towndwelling countrymen. The fact was that urban life was just beginning to be established in Serbia in her lifetime. Town-dwellers were, on the whole, recent arrivals from the villages who sought to distance themselves as rapidly as possible from their origins by acquiring the trappings of ‘civilization’ but little of its substance.StojadinoviC sawthrough this veneer all too clearly: in hereyes it could not offer a real alternative tothe strength and meaning of the village culture. One aspect of StojadinoviC’s diary which is ofparticular interest in the context of the present study is what emerges of her view of 109

women, women’s education, and their participation in cultural life. On several occasions in the diary she expresses her sense of pride and pleasure when she sees a woman rising above the mundane sphere of domestic tasks to which she is usually confined. Thus, for instance, she comments on her delight at the accomplishment of Mina KaradZiC,as she watched the young painter at work on her portrait: “I felt strange around the heart, as I looked at the fine work of this talented girl, who belongs to my people”. This last remark is typical, since, for StojadinoviC, any achievement by a fellow countryman brought credit to the whole Serbian people. The impact is still greater if the talent belongs to a woman. Her first comment comes in her lengthy letter to Ljubomir Nenadovid,‘Letter to a Poet’.52She mentions a book by a German womanwriter, Duringsfeldt, whichMinaKaradZid had given her to read: “As I read her composition, I was struck by her spirit and the ideas that came from a woman’s mind.” While she evidently valued her own education in so far as she had acquired a sound knowledge of German and an appreciation of the value of foreign languages, she was quite clear in her belief that a child’s, and particularly a woman’s, first task should be to acquire a thorough knowledge of her own tongue and its heritage. The diary entry for 3June includes a poem, ‘Conversation of Educated Serbian Women’, in which she ridicules the pretensions ofgirlswho cannot complete a sentence in their native tongue and whose conversation revolves around social occasions, dressmakers, and clothes. She was horrified by the amount of attention devoted to fashion and the way in which it interfered with serious matters. In the entry for 25 July, in a ‘Letter to my teacher, Mr D. M.,, she describes a scene in a NoviSad church, where the women enter dressed up in the latestfashion and talkloudly throughout the service. “Dear God, evenif it should occur to one of them to cross herself, fashion prevents her, for, unable to put three fingers together in her overtight glove, she crosses herself with her whole hand, as though she were mocking the cross in that Scottish leather She is generallycriticalof the fact that ‘education’ a p pears to turn people away from religion. Since StojadinoviC equates the Orthodox religion with patriotism, its neglect is doubly heinous. 110

Interestingly, she employs a term associated with religion since Marx to characterize the effect of education: This contemporary education is very destructive for us, because, like opium, it dulls the patriotic sentiments. I look around me, here in N. S., and such a foreign spirit blows, that you have to wonder whether you are among Serbs. m e r ever you move, there is something foreign: you hear Serbian women speaking a foreign language, or Serbian with half forelgn words: you hear children speaking a foreign tongue! I ask a Serbian woman why? And she replies that Serbian can be picked up in the street! And street language is what it will be, if it is not you, Serbian mother, who teaches the child our language from your own lips, as something sacred, if you do not thus lay the foundation of his national consciousness, without which a man is a crazy hotchpotch, even if his head is full of the wisdom of Socrates. A man with no national consciousness is like a leaf torn from its tree by the wind, blown hither and thither ... Every true patriot sees our need to raise ourselves into the world of the educated, but to c10 so by trampling our national customs underfoot is a betrayal of our peop1eP4

This is not to say that Stojadinovit was opposed to the idea of educating girls-she was well aware that the question had become urgent. In her diary entry for 25 July she writes: “One can say of a man that he learns while he is young,but of a girl one can say that she learns only as long as she is a For as soon as she stepsover the threshold of childhood, her mother awaits her with various kitchen utensils to teach her domestic skills. Onanother occasion, in a letter to a woman friend, in the entry for 19 September she discusses the matter ofgirls’ education at greater length, in connection with her thoughts about her little niece: I often think that it is high time that serious attention were paid to the education of female children, and I have decided-if domestic circumstances permitto communicate my ideas about this extremelyimportant subject in my letters to you, whounderstand these things,and to place allmy letters in my diary which I am keeping this year as a memorial to my FruSka Cora, and should this diary ever be published those letters might be of use, for we are on the threshold of the future.36 111

It is typical of StojadinoviC’s outlook that she should think of her letters as being useful. The emphasis in her reflections about girls’ her education is all on the contribution an educated girl can make to own children, to her whole family, and to her people. This is the overriding consideration. At the same time, she is acutely aware of the personal fi-ustration experienced by any individual living among people who cannot understand his or her aspirations. She expressed the difficulty of her own situation on several occasions. But, in addition to understanding the way a girl’s potential was usually curbed by her domestic obligations, she realized also that it was often as difficult for a man to have an uneducated wife. The tension inherent in Stojadinovid’sideas, her wholehearted commitment to tradition, combined with her own energy and the frustrations of her desire for greater participation in the intellectual life of her people, give her work a particular poignancy. The central dilemmaofStojadinoviC’s situationhas lent itselfto admirable treatment in a fictional account of her life by the contemporary novelist Milica MiCid Dimovska. (This work is discussedin the conclusion of this study.)

Draga Dejanovit Born some fifteen years after Milica StojadinoviC, but dying earlierbefore she was thirty-one-Draga Dejanovif (1840-71) took many of her older contemporary’s ideas definitively into the public sphere. The two women’s backgroundswereverydifferent:whileStojadinovid was the daughter of a village priest of little means,brought up in an unquestioninglytraditional environment, Dejanovid’s father was a wealthy lawyer and she grew up in a small town. This gave her relatively greater freedom of movement, although the path she chose for herself was still highly unusual for a young woman of her background. . Draga Dejanovid (nee Dimitrijevid) was born in Stara KanjiZa in southern Hungary. She was sent to school in T e m i h r (TimiSoara, now in Romania), but returned home at 12 because of problems with 112

her eyes.37 Around 1856 the family moved to Stan BeEej. Shortly afterwards her mother died, her elder sister married, and Draga was left to care for her seven-year-old sister, Mara. She fellin love with a young teacher and married him in 1861, despite the opposition of her father and other familymembers. The marriage was a disap pointment: DejanoviC appears to have been a weak man, under the strong influence of his mother and inclined to drink. Draga returned home after only a few weeks. She was then sent to chaperone Mara in Pest. The time she spent there was of great importance toher, as she met several young Serb intellectuals, writers, and members of the United Serbian Youth Movement, including the poet LazaKostiC. The movement was the first organization to include Serbs from the Habsburg lands and from Serbia: all the prominent young intellectuals of the day were members and, while they represented a range of opinions, they wereunited in their ambition for the unification of the Serbs. It was under their influence, caught up in the heady enthusiasm for the cause, that DejanoviC began to write verse. At the same time, the Serbian National Theater was founded in Novi Sad. One of the concerns of the Omladina (the United Serbian Youth Movement) wasto spread their ideas through dramaticart: Dejanovid joyfully acceptedthe challenge and joined the Novi Sad theater company. This was undoubtedly a daring step for a young woman of her background at the time, and her family tried hard to dissuade her, although their failure over her marriage should have prepared them for the fruitlessness of the endeavor. It appears that Dejanovid was not a particularlytalentedactress,however, and she left the company after a year in order to join the embryonic Serbian National Theater in Belgrade. Her role there seemstohave been mainly to help with the translation of plays. However, the troupe was soon disbanded because ofits constant financial problems. In the mid-l860s, following the death of her mother-in-law, DejanoviC was reconciled with her husband and returned toBeEej, whereshe bought her mother-in-law’s house and was able at last to live peacefully with her husband. There followed a few years of marital contentment and success in her work, which was all dedicated to the progress of her people. In addition to running her household, De113

janoviC took part in all the important cultural activities of her time. At one stage, when her husband was ill for a protracted period, she worked as a teacher. One of her principal concerns was the question of the education of girls, and she ensured that women’s issues had a was place in theYouth Movement’s agenda. Dejanovid’s personal life tragic: in 1867 she gave birth to a son, Dejan, who lived only a few days. The birth of her daughter, Desanka, in 1871 cost her her own life. While her funeral was attended by large numbers, her grave was soon quite forgotten. “Not flowers, but weeds and brambles coverthe resting placeof the earthly remainsof this noble, exalted woman.”38 A collection of Dejanovid’s poems was published in 1869 in Novi Sad.39The volume suggests a poet of real promise, endeavoring to express authentic emotions and ideas within the range of the conventional Romantic imagery of the day. Her main themes are love, pain, and patriotism, and her tone is more directly personal than Stojadinovid’s. She shows considerable facility with verse, sometimes using interesting free forms. In this she demonstrates familiarity with the work of the most original Serbian poets of her day. Above all, what emerges is a youthful energy and defiance in the face of conventional expectations ofladylikebehavior and concerns. Wholeheartedly committed to the cause of improving the situation of her compatriots she did not spare herself, but was always ready to work am tirelessly, sometimes misguidedly, on their behalf. One poem, ‘I Serbian’, expresses both her personal commitment to her people and herenergy:

For Serbdom my heart burns, For SerbsI live, and dieI gladly march againstthe evilI am a woman, yetI dare!

. . . . . . . . . . . My brothers’ pain has sickened me And Serbian mothers’ bitter tears-

My restless hand stretches forth, As though asword flashed inits graspa

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It is generally agreed among the few commentators who have taken Dejanovid’s work seriously that her most important contribution lies in her work to improve the lot of women. She has been called “the first Serbian feminist”by the literary critic Jovan Skerlidin his brief assessment of her place in Serbian culture.41 As a woman of abundant energy and intelligence Dejanovid was acutely aware ofthe misery and waste of most women’slives, seeing its cause in their intellectual backwardnessand material dependence. She saw the solution as lying in women themselves, in their education and capacity to lead an independent life.Given her background, her consistentcampaigning on behalf of women can only have brought disapproval, mockery, and opprobrium from her contemporaries. It is in this context, with an awareness of the kind of courage it entailed, that we should consider Dejanovit’s valuablecontribution. Dejanovid’s viewson the ‘woman question’ werepresented in three public lectures-‘A Word or Two to Serbian Women’,‘The Emancipation of Serbian Women’,and ‘Serbian Mothers’-in which she openly and courageously called on other women to join her. It is strikingand regrettable-that Dejanovid nowhere mentions Stojadinovid, although they share muchcommon ground: likeStojadinovid,Dejanovid criticizes the fashion for the superficial learning of foreign manners. She even uses a similar image of Western waysas poison corrupting the pure Serb spirit. The mostvivid expression of this point by Dejanovid comes in a suggestion that Serbian women are ceasing to breastfeed their children and employing ‘immoral’ foreigners as wet-nurses who fill their charges’ veins with a pernicious foreign substance instead of the pure, life-giving milk of Serbdom. The tone of all three lectures sounds understandably naive today: it is a youthful, idealistic,energetic call, ftdl of patriotic fervorand colored by the beginnings of the embryonic socialist ideology which was then entering into the thinking and writing of members of the Serbian Youth Movement. The style of the lectures, particularlythe first two, is compelling: it is hard to imaginethat any young womanin her audience could have remained indifferent. Dejanovid’s starting point is that women are generally held in low esteem and rightly so, for their faults are many and obvious. It is 115

clear from her tone that this general contempt was a source of personal affront to Dejanovit who had the confidence to be aware of her ownvalue and potential to contribute to the progress of her people. While her writings are rousing, they are also dignified: she is impatient with her contemporaries, certainly, but not superior or contemptuous. She lists the commonest failingsof which women are accused-“inquisitiveness, gossiping, dullness ofmind, sentimentality, love of fashion ...”-suggesting that the problemlies inthe ‘education’ girls receive. Boys are better off since they are generally guided by their fathers once they reach school age. Girls learn only about clothes. If they are really unlucky they are sent to an ‘institut’ (Dejanovit deliberately employs what was for her an ugly foreign word in inverted commas rather than the normal term for ‘school’). Here the child will not be permitted to speak a word of Serbian, although she knows no other tongue. In order to survive she will learn by heart a number of typical ‘institut’ conversations.In a similar way she will be exposed tothe rudiments of music and singing, but never learn enough to become really proficient and make a name for herself in her own right. Skills of this kind and others, such as handicrafts, would be of use to women who go on to become teachers themselves, but they are of no value to Serbian girls. In DejanoviC’s view the girl will stay at the establishment just long enough to learn nothing properly and never to have heard of her Serbian forebears or their history.She reprimands mothers for encouraging their daughters to learn just enough to put on a performance until their marriage, when it is all thrown aside, along with the huge sums of money spent on the event. Worst of all, they fill their daughters’ heads with the idea that they must be beautifulin orderto appeal to men. They must wear fine and costly clothes quite inappropriate to the circumstances of the Serbian people. She blames Serbianmothers for wantingtomake their daughters housewives and nothing more. There is an occasional hint of sarcasm, such as when she suggests that if it is true, as women seem to believe, that their only function is to make babies, if God were to find another way of doing it women would simply die out. She suggests that the vices of which women are regularly accused could be eradicated by proper educa116

tion and above allby work. Girls should betaught to work asmen do, to value work and the independence it brings, and to manage on little. Girls have just the same gifts and abilities, she says, and there are plenty of suitable jobs for women. She sees the preparation of girls for marriage, equipping them with useless skills, as a deeply humiliating ‘commerce’. She makes a further interesting point, having herself had to contend with many obstacles in her own life, when she suggests that it is only common sense to seethat if girls are taught to expect only the best in lie, that everything will be done for them, and all they want laidbefore them,they will not be able to cope when they inevitably come across problems of any kind. DejanoviC livesin the real world and not some fairy-tale construction, as may be seen by one of the many rhetorical questions withwhich she aims to stimulate her audience: “Arewe not in favor of trulysharing our lives with our partners, working, savingand enduring good and ill?”4* More than their mothers, however, DejanoviC blames the women themselves: “Butlet no sister believe that it is our husbands who have enslaved us. We are not our husbands’ slaves, no, we have enslaved ourselves by our prejudices ...n43 The solution lies in the emancipation of women: “The emancipation of women means their liberation from subordination to their fathers or husbands,which hampers them in their intellectual development and their ability to work.”44 The benefit of such genuine, constructive education is not only to the women themselves, but also to their effectiveness as wives and mothers: “No woman can be a good and effective companion and mother, if she has not first, like other people, thought, worked and consciously struggled with difficulties in her own life.”45DejanoviC readily acknowledges that not everything in the Westis bad. She quotes models of independent women pursuing education at the highest level,becominguniversityprofessors and doctors in Germany, England, and, above all, the United States, and urges her contemporaries to follow these inspiring examples. Where Dejanovit ceases to be convincing is in her insistence that in the Serbs’ ‘golden age’,as it is reflected in the traditional epic songs, women hadan honorable role and werevalued by their peers. She quotesseveral songsin which the wives and mothers of heroes are 117

shown as playing an important role in society. In fact there is an extraordinary discrepancy between the energetic praise of education and work in her second lecture and the naive tone of her third, with its fulsome praiseof a mythologized version ofthe past. But this gap represents a serious dilemma for women in the position of StojadinoviC and Dejanovid. What theycherish in theoral tradition is not so much its literal truth as its value system, the dignity it bestows on all who honor it. This is what they feel is in danger of being lost in the vain pursuit of fashion and a hollow modernity without substance. They both recognize the future that is on the threshold, but they strive with all their considerable energy to ensure that it will be a future nourished by all that isof real value in the old, traditional ways. StojadinoviC and DejanoviC both shared a deep commitment to their people, but at the same time they were both clearly aware of the need for change. They were both driven by a belief that the future lay in building on the firm foundations of tradition as embodied in theChurch, national customs, beliefs, and a shared historical heritage as formulated in traditional songs and tales. In this they both shared common ground also with the first Serbian socialist, Svetozar MarkoviC, who emerged from the United Serbian Youth Movement. He advocated moving fromthe communal life of the zudnlgu system straight into an advanced form of social organization, based on socialist principles, obviating Western capitalismaltogether. While neither StojadinoviC nor DejanoviC elaborated their ideas into an ideology, as MarkoviC did, their starting point was similar. They sought to preserve whatever was wholesome and positive in their own heritage, while adopting the best of the new ideas shaping the lives of women in the West. To an extent this was the dilemma facing all Serbian intellectuals in the nineteenth century, but it may be seen specifically as having held back the cause of women’s progress.In her commentary on Dejanovid’s feminist writings, published in 1935, Julka Hlapec-DjordjeviC (whose role is discussed in Chapter 6) suggests that DejanoviC was too intoxicated with the spirit of the Youth Movement and inclined to confuse the social problemof the position of women with nationalist ideasand this hampered its solution. 118

It is surelyunreasonable tojudge these two extraordinary womenby the standards of a later age. An indication of their courage and the isolation of their voices in their contemporary culture is provided by an obituary of Draga DejanoviC published in Mludu Srbgudu in 1871:

The Growing Presence of Women Writers The fact that women were beginning to come into public focus is clear, among other things, fromthe publication of variousjournals at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1891 the literarymagazine Juvor, based in Novi Sad, devoted spacein several issues to listingthe names of Serbian women writers. The first of these issues, number 16, lists 54 names, with the comment: It would be interesting if someone were to list the works, original and translated by these dear Serbian women of ours, if their lives were described and something of their literary work presented. Such a book would be most interesting and would presumably find sufficient gallant purchasers, evenamong our male readership.

It should be stressed that these women came from various regions, wherever there were Serb communities, including Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina. By issue 51 the journal had discovered the names of 140 Serbian women writers known to have publishedin thecourse of the nineteenth century. Not all of these women were creative writers-several of their publications were translations,others had submitted traditional songs or stories to a range of different magazines. But the great majority had published original poemsand stories, and itis at least remarkable that the names of only five of them should have survived. 119

In Mostar, in Herzegovina, in 1899 an even more ambitious project was undertaken: a whole issue ofthe literary magazineZora was given over to four women writers. The issue is discussed by Predrag Palave~tra,~’ and by Zdenko LeSid in his studyof the short story in Bosnia Her~egovina.~~ The four writers represented were Milka Grgureva, MilevaSimiC, DanicaBandid, and KosaraCvetkovid. The issueincluded an introduction by Jelena Belovid-BernadZikovska, acknowledging the editors’ readiness to take women’s contributions to contemporary culture seriously: “Modern woman is a completely developed individual, who isable to distinguishgood from evil, and who is capable of being good and just. And the more educated she is, the more decisive and constant she is, and the greater is her strength in making judgments and her respect for duty.” LeSiC comments that the poems and stories included in the issue have no literary value, but they are focused on expressly women’s themes, mainly questions of relationships between men and women, and mostly within marriage. In view of its failure as literature, however, the consequence of this attempt to affirm ‘women’s writing’ was, not surprisingly, negative: the poet Jovan DutiC, whowas one of the first writers to publish in the journal, expressed his anger at his colleagues for having put the issue together and wrote in a letter to M. SaviC that he distanced himself fromthe “famous women’s issue” which proved the sorrowful fact that there were “hardly any women readers let alone women writers among Nevertheless, as LeSiC comments,manyof the contributions by male writers toZora were of no literary wortheither, and the endeavor is of considerable historical interest, as Palavestra observes: “In itself, this actionwas a bold and revolutionary undertaking, which bears witness even today to the intellectual daring of the little group of Mostar writers in accepting progressive ideasand hastening the social and cultural transformation of their people.”50 Little is known of the great majority of the women writers whose names were publishedin Juvor. In some cases there are references to journals in which a poem or other text appeared, but for the most part the names are listed withoutfurther comment. While it is likely, as in the case of Zmu, that little of this output is of great literary worth, it is nevertheless significant that there were so many women 120

actively engaged in writing. To judge from histones of literature and culture, in which the names even of StojadinoviC and DejanoviC are rarely found, let alone given serious attention, it would appear that the women who began to publish in the twentieth century werestarting something absolutely new rather than building on what had gone before. This impression is one that has recurred with subsequent generations as well, each of which seemed to be starting afresh as all preceding endeavors had vanished, largely without trace, into the shadows of history. This sense is reinforced by a series of publications from the 1930swhich document the history of women’s involvement in public life and the beginnings of the women’s movement. It is remarkable that this should have been the case given the great release of energy which followed the pioneering work of Draga Dejanovit. With the beginning of the twentieth century it is indeed passible to speak of a ‘women’s movement’among the South Slavs, and yet the extent of this activity was unknown to later generations. It began to be rediscoveredby those reaching maturity in the 1970s.

Notes 1DjordjeviC, Sqbski knjiiamiglasnik, 206. 2 Quoted inh k i pokret U Vojvodini, 2425. 3 Ibid., 32. 4 Ibid.,49-51. 5 Quotedby B. MarinkoviC, Sqska gradjanska poezija,45. 6 M. BogdanoviC, Stan i n m ’I, 40 7 Danilo Zivaljevi€, in M. BogddnoviC,Stan i noui I. 8 Published in Budd, 1816. 9 RadovanoviC, Sqbske pesnikinje, 23. 10 Sonnet No. 25, Slay &era, y Lethi. 11Quoted in RadovanoviC, ‘Almanah “Talija”1829’, 660; and in full by GeorgijeviC, ‘JednapoStovateljica Dositejeva’, 128-30.For Milica StojadinoviC,see below. 12 haljeviC, ‘Neke biografske-bibliografskebiljeSke’, Bosunsku Vila (1901):32-33. 13 GeorgijeviC, 129-30. 14 M. BogdanoviC, Stan i n w i I, 30. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 32. 17 Danilo MladenoviCin 1834, quotedby M. Bogdanovit, ‘Ana ObrenoviCeva’,607. 18 Isidor StojanoviC,Let@ Matice S?pske, vol. 38, 64, quotedby M. Bogdanovie, ‘Ana ObrenoviCeva’, 609.

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19 Ami Bouc?. Die Europajsch Tiirkti (Vienna, 1889), quoted by M.BogdanoviC, ‘Ana ObrenoviCeva’, 610. 20 Quoted by M. Bogdanovit, ‘Ana ObrenoviCeva’, 612. 21 SFmenica Milice StqadinwiAS7pkinje, 1. 22 Ibid., 4. 23 Stojadinovit,U F m f k qgmi 1854,108. 24 Ibid., 32-33. 25 Spomenica, 1. 26 ‘Milica StojadinoviCSrpkinja’, Let* Matice v p s k e , 1926, nos. 1-2, reprinted in Savit-Rebac, H e h k i vidici, 154. 27 Ibid., 7. 28 Ibid.,3. 29 From aletter to Djordje RajkoviC. 30 StojadiwviC, U F n d q gm‘ 1854,337-39. 31 Ibid., 339. 32 ‘Pismojednome pesniku’, U F n l S k o j j , 10-23. 33 Ibid., 140. 34 Ibid., 141-42. 35 Ibid. 138 36 Ibid., 280. 37 The biographicaldetails are takenfromHlapec-Djordjevif, Stlrdije i esqi o fminiznnl, vol. I, 1935. 38 Hhpec-DordeviC,Studije i esqi ofaniniznw, vol. I, 169. 39 S p &age DejanowiE. 40 ‘Za Srpstvo mi srce gore’. 41 Omladina i njena knjiievnost, 502. 42 ‘Dve-tri reCi ndim Srpkinjama’,Matica @5ka (1869): 137. 43 ‘Emancipacija Srpkinja’,Matica vpska (1870): 56. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 59. 46 M h d a Srbijada, vol. I1 (1871): 320. 47 Palavestra, ‘Pripovedatkikrug mostarske &e’, 240. 48 LeSiC, PripovedaEka Bosna, vol. I, 400-403. 49Jovan DnEiC, ‘Pisma iz zeneve i Pariza’, Savremenik, 9, no. 4 (1963): 366. 50 Palavestra, 249.

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1900-1914 The future stretched her hand to me. Pointing to a bright ringshe wore, And she whispered: Whatis woman? Look here and see: she’s my betrothed, I am-hers.

The beginning of the twentiethcentury saw a great increase in women’sactivitiesofallkinds:womenengagedthemselves in the and charitable promotion of ideas of women’ssuffrage;insocial work; and in education and working for greater opportunities to qualify for professions andenter variousfields of scholarship. A range ofwomen’s journals emerged and the beginnings of an identifiable feminist movement may be traced. All theseactivities offered new opportunities toa host of women. Nevertheless, only very few of their names are known to the cultural history of the region today. The firstfortyyearsof the twentieth century represent a real ‘golden age’ for women throughout the region, but this was virtually a result of the forgotten in the aftermath of the Second World War as distorting effects of communist ideology. As more of this past is rediscovered it continues to be a revelation at the very end of the century. A poem published in the first issue of %nu (Woman) in 1911 in Novi Sad conveys something of the atmosphere of energy and confidence among the women of the time: What Is a Woman? Once I asked of a little child: ‘What is a woman? Tellme, please.’ 123

At that he broke into a smile, Full of sweetness, pleasure, delight. Without a second’s pausefor thought; Without a single moment’sdoubt, Quick as lightning, he said to me: ‘A woman-why, that’s my mother!’

Then 1asked of a fine young man: ‘What isa woman? Tell me,pray.’ And straight-away in his darkeyes A soft, strange flame began to burn. Neither did he reflect for long, Swift as an arrow, he replied, Declaiming, in exalted tone: ‘A woman isa pure white rose! A woman is a rosy dawn, A woman is a creature mild, A woman is a raging fire! A woman is a dazzling sun! A woman is a breeze inMay! A woman is a brilliant star! She is a shining glimpse of heaven, Clraming amidst thishell of ours! ...’ I moved on, but lie continued, Weaving new wreathsto womanhood, And if he has not by now expired, He may well be declaiming still!

I asked a man of middle age: ‘My wise friend, what is a woman?’ He trembled, and his lipsdid too, A long, long time no word he spoke, Sinking deeplyinto his thoughts. Then, when at last he raised his head, I thought that he would answerthen, 124

But he just bowed it lower still, Saying at last: ‘Ah, what’s the use? I’ve thought long about this question, If I replied one thing toddy, Tomorrow would not be the same. What is a woman? Who can tell? Ah, this is difficult terrainA famous saint once said of her: “With her is good, without better.” But those saintly words could aswell Take a different, devilish form, And then one could quite rightlySay: “With her is bad, withouther worse.”’

Next I asked a gray-hairedold man: ‘Tell me, grandpa: What’s a woman?’ At that hisso111seemed to tremble As with a thousand memories. ‘What is a woman, you would know?’ His voice was shaken sorrowfully: ‘What is a woman? That’sthe thing I did not know when I was young. I drank sweet honey fromher lips, And when the whole of lifehad passed, Then I saw that I had never Properly understoodher soul. “hat is woman? A mystery!’ And then he whispered, nlefdly: ‘When at last we start toknow her, She has gone, never to retw-n.’

Then I asked ofan ancient book, The kind ofwhich the past is built, I askedit: ‘What is a woman?’ The ancient book repliedto me:

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‘What is woman? She’s a person, Of waist more slender than a man’s. She is a person,but her fist Was ever smallerthan a man’s. They still callher a weak creature; That she was always loved, istrue, But,just as now,those seen as weak Were never really listened to. Only lookdeep into her eyes, Ask the flowers ofher old age, And the soft pillows and the hearth, Where her burning tears are buried.’ Finally I asked the future: ‘What is woman,do notconceal!’ Straight-away the future answered: ‘Something which has as yet to be. And once here, she will be legion, Let herjust begin to arise: The equal half of allmankind, There, that is what a woman is.’ I gazed long into that future: What then lies in store for woman? The future stretched her handto me. Pointing to a bright ring she wore, And she whispered: ‘What is woman? Look here and see: she’smy betrothed, I am-hers.’ signed: ‘sa’l

The turn of the century was also an age of paradox for women: more of them werereceiving a sound education and wereable to see themselves as on a par with their colleagues elsewhere in the world, but at the same time the educational level of the great majority of women in the region was extremely low. There was a daunting need for instruction of the most basic kind in fields such as hygiene and 126

the managementof money. It was difficult for the educated women, who began to form a small but impressive elite in this period, to identify with the broad process of involving women in the spread of literacy when their level of achievement was inevitably so limited. The great majority of the population was still rural, working and living in conditions which had not essentially changed for centuries. The only experience of literature available to many women was the oral tradition which remained a vehicle for their self-expression in printed form in the magazines which began toappear in this period. Traditional formswere often used in order to convey an educational or moral message in a familiar way. As opportunities for elementary education spread, particularly in the growingtowns, a specifically female readership began to emerge. The gap between individuals withadvanced education and thisgrowingfemale readership was filled largely with an increasing body of ‘trivial’ literature, tales of love and adventure, the most popular of which combined both elements, often in a historical context. Thiswas the kind of writing that cametobeassociatedwithwomenreaders, and writersbeganto emerge who published works specificallyto satisfy this market..There was then a prevailing sense that women had ‘their own literature’; any woman who aspired to write on the same terms as males was a deviation from this norm and critical comment on her work would inevitably involve the issue of gender and the extent to which her work contained what were conventionally seen as ‘female’ qualities. The first years of the twentieth century, up to the First World War, did not provide a context in which women writers were easily accepted: many continued to write under pseudonyms or used only their initials. They tended also to write for women’s magazines, by which their work was more likely to be accepted. The main focus ofwomen’sactivities in these first years of the twentieth century was not literature, but improving the general educational standard and economicposition ofwomen.Several outstanding women were involved in this process. One of the most influential figures in this ‘woman’s world’ was Savka Subotie. She was born in 1834, but it was not until the turn of the century that social conditions made it possible for her influence to be felt. Subotiegrew 127

up in the cosmopolitan world of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, living as a child and young woman in Novi Sad, Timisoara, Vienna, and Agram (Zagreb). She spoke German from her childhood as the family had a German cook livingin the house. She received the best all-round education available to a girl in her day and was fortunate in her marriage to the writer and politician Jovan Subotit, alongside whom she continued to expand her intellectual capacities in many different areas. It waswith the confidence acquired in this fruitful relationship that Savka SubotiC entered public life. She took a great interest in the issue of the position of women in Serbian society and in improving their sense of self-worth. She was particularly interested in their skill in embroidery which she regarded as their most significant contribution to European culture. She joined the board of the magazine h k i suet in 1891, by which time she had gained a reputation as an exceptional public speaker, who had given “several wonderfd lectures”,2 including one at the opening of an exhibition of women’s crafts in 1884. In an article about her written in 1903 she was described as capable of speaking for an hour without pause and without notes.3 She alsolectured in Vienna in 1910 and 1911, where she was referred to as “Die Mutter eines Volkes” and was showered with compliments. She was warmly received in many European tenters, feted at banquets in her honor, and her photograph and biographical details were requested from Rotterdam, Lisbon, London, and Paris. “In a word, for nearly ten years she represented to the world at large Serbian woman fighting for the equality of women.”4 In 1909 she became the president of the Serbian National Women’s Union in Belgrade, which fhrnished public recognition of her status as the ‘grand old lady’ of Serbian cultural life in this period. One of her most interesting published piecesis the text of a lecture she gave in Vienna in 1911 entitled ‘Woman in the East and West’ and published in Novi Sad in the same year. Thisis a serious, well-presented, and well-documented lecture, clearly the workof an exceptionally intelligent and thoughtful woman. She begins by contrasting the freedom of men with the constraints on women throughout history: “This freedom was not denied women by nature, but by men. With the right of the stronger, they limitedthe field of action of women to 128

the house. In a narrow circle the spirit also shrinks and the longer the cause lasts, the more profound is its effect.” She suggeststhat the role of the mother has the capacity to make an enormous contribution to human progress, but it is only educated women who can do the job properly: People say: women have not yet done anything great for thecommon good. But is not the upbringing of children the greatest thing that can be done for the common good, and how is it possible that anything great could be achieved in art orscience without schoolsand when public mockery undermines the will to action, that impulsive force in the development of education? That is why the productive power of women has been modest, but they have never destroyed. Men simply build and then destroy their own achievements, they destroy even the most precious human treasure, life itself, of which war is clear proof.5

In her essay Subotit gives a personal account of women in Serbian history, focusing particularly on progress made in recent years and the contribution of individual women to that process. She emphasizes the need for Serbian womento build on what is their own tradition, most fully expressed thusfar in the achievements of oral culture so much to promote at home and and the handicrafts she herself did abroad.

Women’s Magazines Some appreciation of the nature of the process to whichSubotiC refers may be gained by looking at the range of women’s magazines that began to be published in this period. Magazines dedicated to women first appeared in Serbia in the mid-nineteenth century. Unsurprisingly, they werevery different in qualityand purpose from the first consciously ‘feminist’ publications in France at about the same time. However, the number of womenreaders grew steadily,if slowly, from the 1840s onwards. The first dedicated magazine, h k i vosptateZj (Women’s Instructor) appeared in 1847 in Novi Sad. It was edited by a prominent writer and politician, Matija Ban. Its function 129

was described as “for the education of the beautifid, South Slav female sex”. To judgeby the numbers of subscribers and letters it was greeted with great interest, although there seems to have been a discrepancy from the start between the editor’s intentions and the inwas particularly concerned with terests of his readers: Ban himself the spiritual and moral education of women, while the readers’ letters on the whole show more interest in household tips. An insight into Ban’s attitude and the whole ethos of the magazinemay be gained from his own comment: “I thought that maxims would be better than articles, which by their length and the dryness of their subject matter might tire the flighty and impatient feminine nature ... I am writing for women and not for the learned classes .. In keeping with this view, the magazine consisted mainly of simplified versions of texts initially intended for a more educated malereadership. Likemanyofitspredecessors in WesternEurope,thisfirst South Slav women’s paper was edited by a man and its role was seen as one of providing moral instruction rather than information. The kind of ‘education’ aspiredto was intended to assist womenin fulfilling assuccessfullyaspossible the duties which society and family placed upon her: those of a good mother, wife, and housekeeper. Nevertheless, the magazine should not be too readily dismissed, as for many women, it was the only source of elementary advice and information on a range of practical matters. As such it was welcomed and Ban’s efforts appreciated. The magazine ceased with the Hungarian uprisingof 1848. An important aspect of the gradual provision of education for girls was the establishment of various women’s societies,the first of which was founded in 1863. One of these was the Belgrade Women’s Society (Beogradsko &mko drus2vo) founded by Katarina Milovuk. Among its activities was the production of a journal, DomuZicu (Housewife), again edited by a man, Stevan Bajalovic‘. The contents of this magazine were more varied than those of its predecessor: in addition to givingpracticaladvice it reported on the activitiesof the society and individual women’s social, humanitarian,and political activities, and it included articles on agriculture in North America, Greece, and other countries in an effort to broaden its readers’ horizonsand 130

WOMAN, monthly magazinefor women, editedby MilicaJaSiC TomiC Year I, I April 1911, no. 4.

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raise the general level of their education. D o W i c a proved to be a robust publication, appearing every month until 1941, interrupted only by the First World Warand its aftermath (1914-21). Several women’s almanacs, each entitled Sqkinja (Serbian Woman), appeared the first in 1875, in Velika Kikinda, and the second in 1897, in Zemun, edited by Jovan PopoviC. PopoviC had also edited a women’spaper with the same title whichappeared in 188283. It is likely that it gave way to a magazine of similar profile, h k i suet (Women’s World), which was published in Novi Sad between 1886 and 1914, and then in Belgrade from 1930 to 1934. Subtitled ‘Women’s matters and fashion’ its contents were, like so many similar publications, designed to keep women firmly within that world. It too was edited by a man and contained texts by male contributors. There were also two self-explanatory titles: Materinski list (Mothers’ Paper), published between 1901 and 1903, and Parisk moda (Paris Fashion), which was even more short-lived, appearing only in 1902. A specializedmagazine, Srpslza vailja (Serbian Embroideress), a p peared from 1905 to 1906. These first efforts were followed by the more substantial and successful publicationh a (Woman; 1911-21). Between1920 and 1938 an altogether more purposeful magazine appeared entitled &ski pokret (The Women’s Movement). In addition to the obvious commitment of the last title, all these publications contributed to awareness ofthe women’s movement by printing newsof international feminist congresses and articles on the progress of women’s rights issues at home and abroad. Nevertheless-and understandably-the ambitions of such articles, rooted in deeply traditional cultures, were modest and amounted to the kind of emancipation that would “enable women to help” rather than to act themselves.’ The fact that many of these first efforts did not survivereveals something of the gap between the perceptions of the educated few and the real world in which they were trying to work. When the 1897 almanac Srpkinja was published, it was expected that it would be bought, perhaps in multiple copies, by all the various women’s organizations by then in existence, but in the event some of them, including the largest, did not buy a single copy.8A new almanac with 132

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the same title, a substantial and invaluable source of information on this period, was publish.ed in 1913. It offers a comprehensive account of the situation of women in Serbia before the First World War, including an unsigned survey of women’s magazines: the author complains that, despite the relatively largenumber of titles, there was still none that could be called a real women’s paper, as any such paper “would have to be edited by an intellectually strong woman and to have only women contributors”. It is true, the author continues, that women are occasionally asked tocontribute to ‘mainstream’journals and almanacs, but only if there are insufficient male contributors and at their own expense: they are expected to pay the costs of correspondence and postage themselves, unlike the male contributors who may be less educated and qualified than they are. By way of illustration of this particularly unfair discrimination the author remarks that in the preceding ten years onlyfour books by women had been published normallyand their authors paid in Serbia, while one of the most productive women ofthe age, Jelica BeloviC-BernadZikovska,had published six substantial studiesin the last six years in German scholarlyjournals, all of whichhad been paid for in the regular way, without anyone inquiring as to the gender of the author. Inan article ‘Women’s Magazines fromthe Beginning of the Twentieth Century’ Slobodanka PekoviC makes the point that ‘women’s magazines’ are hard to categorize: they are not professional, literary, political, and so on, although they may contain elements of all or any such definitions. They are more like journals intended for “children or workers”. But, while children’s magazines are either educational or entertaining, and political journals tend to promote a particular ideology, ‘women’s magazines’ are generally characterized as ‘trivial’. It is not clear whether these are journals intended for a specific kind of reader or whether they are generated by a particular group. Are they, in otherwords, journals for women or is it thatthey are edited, compiled, illustrated,and so on, by women? Women’s magazines were an ideological force which was always taken into account, whether they were educational, informative, fashionable or spiced with everyday politics. Their missionwas to develop a particular profileof woman: as housewife, mother, follower of fashion, a particular kind of political and 111134

manitarian being. But whatever the tendency they nurtured, all women’s magazines helped their readers to bridge the gulf between two worlds-the world as it was and the world as they wished it to beg

At the beginning of the twentieth century in Serbia there were seven women’s magazines-weekly, fortnightly, or monthly-and most newspapers had a regular supplement devoted to women.By contrast, not a single publisher was producing any edition, not even of the most popular kind, intended for a female readership. This factalone conveys something of the gulf which existed between prevailing percep tions of ‘high’ culture and the trivial literature considered appropriate for the consumption of women. The strong didactic tendency characteristic of the women’s magazines produced at this time was clearly felt also in the literary contributions to them, even in the verse, but particularly in the prose fiction: The stories in women’s magazines insisted on the incalculable values of ~ M W , honor, diligence,reason, and those who possessed such qualities were rewarded with-Aaflriness, tranqrrillity,prosperity. Even when they favor an emancipated type of woman, who is usually shownas a fighter for free, extra-marital love, the narrators tencl not to grant such a heroine peace and contentment, but rather regret and restlessness, sometimes even death.1°

The general standard of the literary contributions-both prose and verse-to these magazines is mediocre: while there are many more names of women writing than have survived in literary history, there is little of enduring interest. (Among the regular contributors who stand out as exceptions are Milica JankoviC, Danica Markovit, and Jelena DimitrijeviC.)Whatis important is that so manywomen should have begun to wish toexpressthemselvesartistically.Furthermore, the magazines are of very great interest for the comprehensive picture they give of women’s lives, social conditions in general, and women’s place in society. It is worth lookingin some detail at the almanac Srpkinju, published in 1913 in Sarajevo, in this perspective.

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Srpkinja, I9I3 This 124page publication in many ways typifies the kind of material published in women’s magazines in the period before the Second World War. The foreword proclaims proudlythat this is the first time Serbian woman has come out into the limelight. “Because wenow wish to follow the example of the larger, cultured peoples,as in everything that is good, we have endeavored to make this booka true account of the work of Serbian women, women from all the regions and all branches of Serbdom.” The editors, described on the titlepage as “Serbian women of the pen”, explain that the idea of the volume was born in 1910 when there was an exhibition of Serbian women’s crafts in Prague. Appropriately, the opening article is an account of this exhibition by the woman most responsible for it: Savka Subotid. The next public event to focusthe editors’ mindswas the erection in 1912 of a monument to Milica Stojadinovid, the first modern Serbian woman writer, when a keen need was felt to acquaint Serbian women withthe work of their sisters in other regions. Fittingly, the initiative was taken by a group of women from Irig, a small town in the region where Stojadinovidwas born. The volume-a collection of informativearticles,fiction, and verse-isrichlyillustrated with photographs of many of the women involved and also with examples of the embroidery and national costume which the editors believed was the most valuable contribution Serbian women had to offer. The bulk of the volume is takenup with biographies of “all Serbian women writers”,arguing that women of the pen are the leaders of the female intelligentsia in other countries and that is what they should be among the Serbs as well: “We have endeavored to learn of the lives and work of deserving Serbian women, and to show faithfully and sincerely the conditions in which they work, because those conditions are at the same time a picture of the whole cultural development of Serbian women up to today, and we need to know what we haveachieved, and what remains still to be done.” Realizing that, even if they had published occasional poems, stories, or articles, the names of women writersare unlikely tobe widely known among their fellow countrymen the editors reproduce a list of 136

145 names which had first appeared in the earlier almanac with the same title in 1897. The editors express their determination to build on this beginning and to ensure that all women working with the written word should from now on acquire their rightful place in cultural life and the encouragement to continue. In a particularlyinteresting passage the unnamed author of an article on ‘Women and Literature’ expresses her understanding of the difficulties faced by women writers at this time: they had no access to an appropriate intellectual environment, the companionship of like-minded people, or even a library of any substance. While male writers, journalists, and editors met regularly in cafesovera drink and forged cooperative links, such opportunities were denied to women. Besides, the authorcontinues, men do notgenerally seekout thecompany of clever women, unless theyare also wealthy, of good family,beautiful, young, and cheerful! The only readily available medium for women is correspondence. But there again, men are usually happy enough to write letters as long as it is in their interest, but as soon as their female correspondents express aneed for some piece ofinformation or a book, for instance, they will probably not reply! The authorsuggests that men behave badly towards women because, as non-voters, theyhave no status and no support. In contemporary society the most highly educated woman is still seen as inferior to a barely literate man. In another valuable insight the author of the article states that thefew women whodo write are not as well known,for example, as actresses whose profession is paid because “money rules!” Again, men are prepared to publish poor verse and prose at their own expense, while they “as women ofgood taste refuse toenter public life in thatway”. Consequently, while some400-500 men were registered as ‘writers’ in 1913, the number ofwomenwriters was in marked contrast even to the numbers of women qualifying as teachers, doctors, and scholars. The next 52 pages of the almanac are devoted to biographies of40 of the most prominent Serbian women in the region, born in the second half of the nineteenth century, who may be described as concerned with the written word. The material makes fascinating reading, giving glimpses of the lives of a large number of remarkable 137

women, often self-taughtand with a fluent knowledge of several languages in which they were widely read. It opens up a quite new vista on the cultural lifeof Serbian womenin southern Hungary, in Serbia proper, and in Bosnia Herzegovina. They wereoften misunderstood by those around them and isolated in their endeavors: for example, Darinka Bulja (b. 1877) jokes that most of her poems and short stories were used “to light fires in my good mother’s hearth!”ll One of the first of these extraordinary women, was Jelica BelovieBernadZikovska (1870-1946), who spoke and wrote nine languages. She is reported as having published more than 800 articles in German .on questions of feminism and women’s education, and more than 30 books (“none of them at her own expense, all commissioned and manyof them alreadysold out” observes the biographer).l* These works include a novel, MZudu uAteljicu (The Young ‘Teacher), published under the pseudonym Ljuba T. DaniEie. BelovieBernadZikovska was director of the Girls’ High School in Banja Luka until she retired in 1900. She contributed a great deal to the education and cultural lifeof women in Bosnia Herzegovina. Two features of these women’s biographiesare of particular interest. The first is the emphasis, no matter where in the region they lived, on their being patriots, true ‘Serbian women’. This may be attributed in part to the importance of Milica Stojadinovid as a role model. As wehave seen in connection with her life and work,a was one of her defining characterstrong sense of national allegiance istics. The most compelling motivation was, however, no doubt the prevailing political situationat the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century: the Balkan wars directly involvedlarge A public profession of numbers of women who worked as nurses. commitment to the Serb cause would undoubtedly also havebeen a precondition for women to be taken seriously in Serbian society.The second theme emphasized in these biographies is the way Serbian feminism differs from the brash, aggressive, Western brand. So, for instance, in the biographical note on Zorka Hovorkova (born 1859) the author writes: “Mrs Hovorkova [is] yet another example of the fact that higher education and a broader range of intellectual activity does not spoil a womanor detract in any way from her special femi138

nine abilities."lS The entry on Dr Vladislava Politovaquotes an article she published in the journal Srpstuo in 1913: Our Serbs do not need to be afraid of intellectually~liberatedwomen, because Serbian women are not like women in the West, who wish tobe cmpktely independent, forgoing marriage and family and considering the home a prison ... Serbian women still live today from tradition, finding in their home a temple. Andtheywould not regretanysacrifice in order to preservetheir home ... Their feelings are still 'national', which is a question of survival especially for small nations. I t is therefore quite natural that we Serbian women cannot follow the same pathof emancipationas Western women.14

As in thecase of Dr Politova, severalbiographies quote from the writings of the woman concerned. This contributes to building a picture of avarietyofviewpoints and styles, the combination ofwhich amounts to a firm base on which future generations of women may work, once these women, their lives and works, have been given the attention they deserve. While readers todaycould not expect to find more than a few women writers in this period-of either prose or verse-whose work is truly outstanding, there is much that is of interest, if for no other reason than because of the amount of information it conveys about the lives of families from many different backgrounds, told fromthe perspective of women. It will be clear from the fact that the almanac Srpkinju was published in Sarajevo and several of the contributors were women living and working in the territory of Bosnia Herzegovina that there was a strong sense of community among Serbs throughout the region. It should be stressed that, with the administration ofBosniaHerzegovina by Austria-Hungary from 1878, all Serbs outside the Serbian kingdom itself werenow living in the same Habsburg state.The turn of the century wasalso an exceptionallyproductive and vibrant period in the culturallife ofBosniaHerzegovinawhichwas the birthplace of some of the most prominent Serbian writers of the time. The poet Jovan DuZliC, for instance, was born in Herzegovina. Parallel to thisactivity there was a new emphasis on education and culture also among the Muslims of Bosnia Herzegovina: the leading 139

cultural association, Gajret, was founded in Sarajevo in 1903. The development of a sense of a Muslim cultural tradition is discussed in relation to Muslim women writersin Bosnia Herzegovinain Chap ter 8. It is worth remembering at this point that so far in this chapter we have been considering the supportive climatefor women writers fostered by women themselves. The prevailing attitude towards women in the cultural life of the region, dominated as it was by a few highly influential critics, may be seen in a typically generalized and dismissive reflection by the prominent poet Jovan DuCiC, prompted by the publication in 1909 of works byIsidora Sekulid and Milica JankoviC: Women in literature have always demonstrated rather the characteristics of their gender than qualities of their individual talent, and this means that their books inevitably resemble one another. There are so few exceptions that there are virtually none. Hence reading lineswritten by women or looking at pictures painted by women, all these artistic creations have several general qualities in common: a lack of measure in their emotions, or order in their impressions; observation which is more minute than deep; a great deal of decoration, baroque ornamentation, sweetness, sentimentality, tending towards sniveling; more resourcefulness than wit; a great deal of perversity in color; much cunning in the means used,which are often neither permitted nor artistically honest; too much verbalism; more emphasis than ecstasymorelarge teardrops than pain; in painting too many flowers, furniture, luxury, order; everywhere more flirtation with the reader than concern for what is being written or painted; frequent pensiveness over nonsenseand concentration on shallow things ...l5

Its contemptuous tone apart, this statement is itself too general to be meaningful, and Dutic' was soon obliged to recognize that SekuliC at least did not in any way conform to this supposed pattern. But it is useful as a reminder of the negative, at best patronizing, attitude of many dominant figures in the cultural establishment of the day. Those fewwomenwho did achieve some prominence did so frequently at considerable personal cost. And,as so often, they demonstrated qualities of intellect, talent, and determination which were quite out of the reach of the great majority of their male counterparts. 140

Jelena Dimitrijevid One such womanwas Jelena DimitrijeviC. Born in 1862 in the ancient Serbian town of KruSevac, she was one of the most remarkable figures of this age. Marriedin 1881, at the age of 19, to an army offker, she moved to NiS, where he had been posted, and lived there until 1898. A long poem she published in 1892 in the local NiS dialect caused a sensation and clearly demonstrated her talent for languages. The following brief outline of her biography conveys something of her independence of mind and spirit: “Poet, short-story writer, novelist, folklorist, fluent in several languages, companion of many prominent figures, she traveled over all the continents and in her sixtieth year set out on a voyage round the world.”16 From NiS, she settled in Belgrade, associating withpeople educated in Western Europe, reading, and attending lectures by the finest minds of her time. Despite her exceptional qualities and her prominence in the cultural life of Serbia during her lifetime, when all the best known literarycriticswrote about her work, and her novel Now (New Women, 1912) was awarded the prestigious Maticu mpska prize for literature, DimitrijeviC was completely forgotten after her death until her Pisma iz Nifu o haremu (Letters from NiS about the Harem), first published in 1897, was reissued in a facsimile edition in 1986. New Women has yet tobe republished and she remains unknown to all but a few feminist-minded literary scholars. Her firstpoems appeared inthe literary journals OtaZdbina (Fatherland) and Vila (The Nymph) and immediately attracted attention as being unusually explicitand sensual withinthe framework of conventional notions of women’s love poetry. There was much speculation as to who the signatory ‘Jelena’ might be. Critics made the inevitable comparison of her workwith that of Sappho. (It is symptomatic of the position of women writers in European culture, particularly before the twentieth century, that Sappho is the first model of a woman poet to occur to many commentators. The implication is that they know nothing of the whole long tradition of European women’s writing.) “The story has sprung up somewhere that Jelena is a Turkish woman who has run away from a harem ... It is 141

easy to imagine that Jelena is a creature from the Far East, because her poetry is such a lively and faithful reflection of oriental lushness and sensuality, and has such an eloquent imprint.” In fact, this tone was entirely in keepingwith the late Romantic interest in exotic, oriental themes which was then in vogue in Serbian culture and characterized the verse of a whole group of poets and short-story writers. What was quite new in ‘Jelena’s’case,however,was the fact that these poems were Mtten by a woman. To be a woman writer was a rarity in itself,but for a woman to write in such a way was truly worthy of note: “She has chosen to write about the Turkish wayof life, or, more precisely, of love for Turkish women ... she has therefore created a new mode, a new, original work of poetry ...”l7 Jelena DimitrijeviC had the good fortune to marry a husband who would understand and appreciate her independent mind and spirit. Like so many of her contemporaries, in an age when only the most basic educational opportunities werewidelyavailabletogirls, she taught herself French, English, Russian, Italian, Greek, and Turkish. Her great appetite for learning and her natural curiosity are clear both from her many journeys and also from her decision to publish her accounts of them. DimitrijeviC’s work is remarkable in two ways: first for its explicitfocus on women in general and then for its interest in the fate of women in the East, both in their traditional social structures and the process of their emancipation from them. Her first works are concerned with women in her immediate surroundings, in the ‘exotic’ setting of southern Serbia, still dominated entirely by the Turkish wayof life. This applies particularly to her Letters from Nis about the Harem (1897), but also to the stories she publishedin 1901 and 1907. She then explored the situation of Muslim women in the transitional age they were living through at the turn of the century, when individuals had to decide whether or not to discard the veil, to pursue education and a generallymore independent lifestyle, including choosing their own life partner. This is the theme of DimitrijeviC’s novel Nom. In the light of her experience of the East, developed also and in her two volumes Pisma iz Soluna (Letters from Salonika, 1918) Pisma iz Indije (Letters from India, 1928), she turned her attention 142

alsoto the behavior ofAmericanwomen in a long short story ‘Amerikanka’ (The AmericanWoman,1918) and Novi met ili U Americi godinu &ana (The New World, or, A Year in America, 1934). In her last published work Sedum mora i tri okeana. Putem oko svetu (Seven Seas and Three Oceans. A Journey Round the World, 1940), she expanded her impressions from allher journeys, with a wealthof new material and the maturity of a woman of exceptionally wideexperience. The fact that Dimitrijevid, a Serbian woman, was given accessto the immensely private life of the harem is an eloquent testimony to the kind of trust she inspired in her Muslim women friends and neighbors. Indeed, one reads Lettersflorn Nis about the Harem, with a little unease, in that it is in a sense a betrayalof that trust, but DimitrijeviC must have weighed that fact against the value of giving her fellow Serbs some insightinto the private life of the Muslims among whom they lived, but in whose wayof life and views they showed on the whole little interest. ForDimitrijevid, the presence of Muslims‘Turks’-in NiS was not a source of outrage, but of fascination, a fact to be explored, with her characteristic non-judgmental curiosity.She evidently had enough confidence in the strength of her friendships with the women concerned to believe that she could explain the value of making their private lives public. The work is arranged as a series of letters to a friend, conventionally addressed simplyas ‘My dear N. ...’ It opens with abrief ‘explanation’ of the impulse which made DimitrijeviC explore the lives of her Muslim neighbors in NiS: on hearing that Dimitrijevid was to live there ‘her dear friend M.,, now deceased, exhorted her: “Get to know the Muslim women, observe their customs, especially their weddings, and describethemtome .. DimitrijeviC thus absolves herself of responsibility for her curiosity: it is no more than a duty to her late friend. Such a justification also suggeststhat Dimitrijevid was not alone in her interest and could be sure of a readership for her book. It is worth noting that, in herlecture ‘Women in the West and East’SavkaSubotiC, in 1911, emphasized the positive contribution made by Jelena DimitrijeviC in familiarizing her fellow countrymen with life in the harem and with Turkish literature. Subotid herself 143

had visited harems in Istanbul and elsewhere some fifty years previously and the fact that she had written and spoken about her experience could give other women the confidence to take an interest themselves. The greater part ofDimitrijevid’s text is devoted to a detailed account of a Muslim wedding, which must have been an invaluable anthropological and ethnographic source when it was first published. While Dimitrijevid’s attention is focused on her observations and she hardly mentions her own reactions, there are a few occasions which are worthy of note. She describes being met in the street one day by two Muslim women who curse her for daring to intrude into theprivacy of the Muslim way of life and expose it to the world. DimitrijeviCdefends herself by maintaining that she is passing their secrets on to one woman friend only and by saying that in any case she haspermissionfrom the highestlocal authorities. The women take her at her word. Describing the way the Muslim women greet each other, Dimitrijevid writesthat she herself has neverbowed to any woman the way they do themselves, nor has she curtsiedalthough she has practicedalone in theprivacy of her room. On one occasion she confesses herself astonished to be woken by her maid at about 5 a.m. to be told that a large company of women has assembled in her garden with rugs and equipment for making coffee. A particularly revealing passage describes one of the ceremonial evenings of the betrothal process when DimitrijeviC decided to take another Serbian woman along, thinking that it would be good to have someone with her to share the experience. She quickly realizes her mistake whenher companion begins to mock the unfamiliar customs they are observing. One of the Muslim women present notices, turns to her andgently remarks: “Madam,do you not know that those who do not know how to respect what is unfamiliar cannot love what is their own?”Dimitrijevid’s companion responds to Dimitrijevid: “They are conceited and stupid. I hate them.” The woman’s primitive reaction serves to highlight the openness of DimitrijeviC herself who is distressed and embarrassed on behalf of her Muslim hosts. In addition to giving a comprehensive account of a Muslim wedding, the volumealsoincludes numerous revealingobservations about the Muslim way of life, particularly the lives of Muslim women, which 144

counteract prevailing prejudices: thus for example, Dimitrijevid remarks: “If I ever heard someone say ‘Evil as a Turk‘, I would smile and remember my present neighbors. I went to see them the day before yesterday: the father was shelling peas; his son hanging out diapers (who knows, he may even have washed them, so that his wife should not tire herself). The father was untroubled, but the son was a little embarrassed, explaining that his wife did not feel well and could not lift her arms ...” Dimitrijevid’s prose works show her to be a fiction writerof considerable talent when she has a story to tell, with an excellent ear for dialogue. For the most part, however, she is driven by a desire to record faithfully her experiences, particularly of ways of life which differ from her own. These factual accounts are brought to life by the kindofevocative portraits, well-observed detail, and faithfully reproduced dialogue, enlivenedby words and phrases from the local dialect, that also characterize prose fictionof her day which she had read widely in several languages.Of the four ‘short stories’ published in 1901 and 1907, onlyone, ‘Fati-Sultan’, is developed as a real piece of fiction, although it too is probably based on a true occurrence, elaborated into a popular local tale. novel None (New Dimitrijevid’s masterpiece is her 295-page Women), well received and acknowledged at the time of its publication, but subsequently forgotten. While fiction remained for DimitrijeviC primarily a vehicle for conveying her experience of unfamiliar ways of life and she published no more after this work, her literary technique is competent, the story line, while perhaps in places melodramatic, iswell managed, and individualpassages are admirably written. As a novel it is at least as successful as Stankovid’sNeZistu km (Tainted Blood) which has remained in the Serbian literary canon since its publication.’*One can onlyconclude that the reason for the neglect of Noue is the fact that the novelis focusedentirely on women and a specifically women’s issue, notably the theme of the tension between traditional Muslim attitudes to women and the new perspectives offered tothe daughters of prosperous families through education, reading, learning foreign languages, and meeting visitors from Europe. In the novel’s focus and its serious endeavor to see 145

inside the Muslim culture that was a major component of the history of the region for 500 years, the novel is a unique occurrence in Serbian literature. The main protagonists of the novel are young girls “who live in Turkey, but dream about France. Every day theyread something new and long for that foreign, unknown, distant world.”lg The narrator suggests ironically that their onlypossibleaccesstosuch a world would be through marriage to a man who committed some offense and was sent abroad into exile. At the same time, there is a constant stream of foreign women through the house of the main character, Emir-Fatma, so that she is hardly ever leftalone to gossip and dream with her own friends. It is a confusingsituation forthe young women, exposedto two opposing culturesand increasingly uncertain of their place in either. Following a daring outing with some friends to the shore, where Fatma catches sight of a young man in a boat who throws her an armful of roses, her parents’ house, with the bars on its windows, suddenly seems like a prison, and she realizes that she can never see more than a corner of the sky from her Turkish house:“God made the sky for everyone, except for Turkish women.”20The women in Fatma’s family are interesting, reflecting different types of upbringing and temperament: the most important are her grandmother, an educated person, who speaks and writes Persian and Arabic and has traveled widelyin the Muslim world, who wears traditional, national dress but talks freely with her son and other members of the household and has the confidence to think for herself; her mother, who also wears Turkish clothes, knows little of any language other than Turkish, and is content to be subordinate to her husband whom she loves and respects; and her aunt, who is exceptionally independent-minded and flexible in her outlook, frequently in the company of foreign women and ready to offer Fatma fearless support at all times. The main focus of the young girls’ confusion iswhy their fathers, whowear European dress and permit them to read works of Westernfiction, shouldhate Europe so much. It emerges that their daughters’ education is a status symbol for these prosperous men, who do not have the imagination to foresee the consequences of offering them a taste of such a different way of 146

life. The problem is particularly forcefully expressed in a discussion between Fatma’s father and her grandmother about the relative desirability of the young woman being asked her opinion about the husband her father is to choose for her. Much of the novel is concerned with the crux of the problem: whether or not women should give up the veil. The arguments on both sides are well presented, with the narrator showingsympathy and understanding for those whosubscribeto‘old-fashioned’views. The negativeeffectof the tradition on Muslim men is seriously considered: deprived from an early age ofthe company of women, theyare left to learn the ways of the world in the street. All these conflicting ideas are brought into acute conflict in Fatma’s life when she has a direct face-to-face encounter with the young man from the boat who climbs into her garden oneevening when sheis there alone. The chapter describing the young girl’s succession of emotions and her torment of guilt and rapture is admirably written, encapsulated in the formulation of her central dilemma: “She had touched a butterfly, and what had fallen from his wings was dust ...”21 The crisis comes when Fatma believes that the fiance chosenby her father for her is that same young man: she overhears a conversation in which he is referred toas djmal, which is her youngman’sname.However, the wordalsomeans ‘beauty’ and it is in that sense that it was used. When her aunt manages to come by a portrait of the proposed fiance and Fatma realizes her mistake, she falls ill. From Istanbul, where her family takes her for the fresh sea air, she writes to her beloved French governess, describing convincingly her state of mind: she cannot disobey her father who, she realizes, would prefer to let her die rather than go back on his word. The development of the story is interesting: Fatma is saved from that fate when it is revealed that the fiance chosen by her father is not all he was supposed to be.The young man from the boat turns out to come from an excellent family and marriage between the ecstatic couple is agreed. After the wedding, however, it emerges that he has a severe drink problem and the young people’s shame, hurt pride, and inexperience prevent them from helping each other through the crisis, despite their mutual affection. There is a complex series of developments until the couple are happily re147

united and travel together to Pans where Fatma dies of consump tion. These adventures are of less interest than the account of the young people’s personal growth through all the constraints placed upon them by their society and its conventions. The novel contains many excellently observed psychological insights, detailed a portrayal of the Turkish way of life, and above all a sympatheticunderstanding of the situation of the Turkish‘newwomen’. It includesseveral sketches of different women’s lives showing a variety of individual reactions to their situation. One particularly interesting facet of the novel is the light it casts on the different perceptions of East and West. For example, the sensuality of the women’s dancing in the harem on the eveofFatma’sweddingis too open for a French woman present who is obliged toturn her head away for shame. The narrator readily understands that the Turkish girls experience this sanctioned exuberance as a rare moment of release in the general constraint of their lives. Another French woman, as an outsider, is able to remark caustically that one symptomof the way Turkish women are seen as objectsis the fact that, while men are called ‘Sun’, ‘Lion’,and so on, women tend to be given names whichmean ‘ruby’, ‘emerald’, ‘rose’: the kind of ornaments which men use to adorn their clothing. While it is clear that the narrator’s sympathies are with the ‘new women’, the novel explores the topic in all its complexity: the points of view expressed are fullyjustified by the individual characterization and the consequences of a particular course of action emerge from the development of the plot. In the end, the reactionary older mensuch as the protagonist’s father-who do not have the confidence to tolerate a reduction of their authority, are isolated: Fatma’s father receives news ofher death in Paris by telegram and, while he remains defiant before his wife and mother, in private he weeps for the first time in his life. Butthe novel doesnot endthere. The father, with all he represents, is no longer relevant: the end of the novel focuses on the remarkable figure of Fatma’s aunt Arif, herself happily married to a ‘new man’, and the diary Fatma’s husbandsent to Arif after her niece’s death. The lastwords remain, therefore, with the women themselves and the conviction that, for all the inevitable setbacksand 148

individual disappointments, the processof emancipation will continue. Dimitrijevid reflected on herlengthy experience of traveling in her two last volumes, both of which have a strong comparative dimension. Novi w e t ili UAmeri’cigodinu dana (The New World, or, AYear In America, 1934) returns to Dimitrijevid’s favoredgenre: she notes her immediate impressions in the form of letters to various close women friends. She concludes her chapter on American women with the following observations: Of all the cities whereI have been, I like Istanbuland London most. Of all the women with whom I have spent time, I am most interested in Turkish and American women. Turkish and American women! What can they have in common? A Turkish woman is an old oriental woman even when she calls herself mu: conservative, passive,a dead past, and nothing but a past. An American woman would be new even when she maintained that she was old out of coquettishness or caprice: progressive, active,the living present andthe future.22

Dimitrijevie’s last work, publishedin 1940, Sedum Mora i Tri Ohana. Putem oko sueta (Seven Seasand Three Oceans. A Journey Round the World) sums up the impressions from all her travels and conveys a vivid impression of her personality at this stage in her life: with typicalirony and realism, she dismisses conventional reactions to the notion of a woman ‘of her age’ traveling. She isundaunted by any of the uncertainties awaiting her and caps her dismissal of other people’s objections withthe remark “As far as my grave goes, what does it matter where it is-in India, in China or Japan, or on a Pacific island-since the gravesof our finest sons are scattered all over the globe.”23 In the process of rediscovering the contribution of women to Serbian cultural life in the first half of the twentieth century, Dimitrijevid has an important role: her work-particularly the Pisma iz Nisa o haremima and Noveis of intrinsic interest and her independentspirit is characteristic of her generation, of whom, with rare exceptions, little is known today. She is important also in the development of 149

feminist thinking in Serbia. Like so many women of her generation, Dimitrijevid was involved in humanitarian and educational work for women. She joined the board of the Union of Women’s Societiesin 1881, becoming its youngestmember. She worked as a nurse during the Balkan wars. She was on the board of the best-known Serbian women’s society, KoZo mpskih sestum (The Circle of Serbian Sisters), which is still active today.Her involvement in women’s affairs wasnot therefore theoretical, although she was well acquainted with feminist ideas current in Europe and the United States. Her practical work and her writing, focused entirely on the experience of women, are simply the result of what she herself, as an individual, felt to be important. One passage in Now reveals an edge of ironic anger which is not often conveyed in DimitrijeviC’swriting but which must have been a motivating force in all her activity. The passage describes a visit by the protagonist’s feminist aunt, Arif, to a literarygathering in Salonica. She is disgusted by the crude behavior and low intellectual level of the participants who spend the whole evening drinking and talking about anything but literature. As she sat there, she felt something unusual: that these men had not for one moment forgotten that she was a woman. And she left, her heart heavy with disappointment, and walked briskly downthe street, improvising lines of verse: Philistines! a woman stillfor you is zuoman, A thing of wood,a woven cloth, Infantile, for aLl her years. Philistines! a woman stillfor you is woman., Still you say: ‘That’s not for women.’ Boastful of your physical strength You treat her as your property. Still you say: ‘That’s not forwomen.’ Your mouths are full of: ‘Culture, culture’. Cultuxz soarson every side, But hasnot found its way to you. Your mouths are full of: ‘Culture, culture’.24 150

Interestingly enough, this poem was used in an article in Sqkinju, along with other passages from Nove, to illustrate the way in which the novel may be seen as an indirect comment on the position of educated women in Serbia. “Mrs Jelena Dimitrijevid places much of what Serbian women also have to bear in the mouths of her Turkish women. Therefore this novel acquires meaningas something close to us, as our own, as a novel about Serbian women-and not only a story of the lives of Turkish women.”25

Milica Jankovit There are two other writers singled out by their contemporaries for special mention alongside Dimitrijevid. The first of these isMilica Ispovesti JankoviC(1881-1939),whosefirstpublishedprosework, (Confessions), appeared in 1913. The second edition, published in 1932, consists of three pieces of varying length, displaying an undoubted abilitytoconvey emotions and states of mind. The first short story, concerning a man’s despair as he watches his wife and two small children die of tuberculosis, is a first-person narrative told from the point of view of the protagonist, with tenderness but no undue sentimentality. The third piece is the storyof a friendship between two schoolgirls interrupted by the marriage of one of them, who reestablishes contact some years later when she writes a long letter, accompanied by extracts fromher diary to explainher silence, trapped in an unhappy marriage to a pathologically jealous husband. ‘Yes, he loved me,I don’t denyit. But how? You know howa passionate hunter loves a valuable pedigree dog, which he endeavors to train to perfection?”*6The diary form is used for the third story in the volume, and the most interesting from the point ofview of women’s writing: ‘Torn pages from a young girl’s diary’. Arranged in disjointed sections, the story succeeds in entering into the thoughts and emotions of a young girl, with a clear sense of her own dignity and self-worth, gradually discovering the world, learning to recognize her own selfdeception and to accept that someof her misguided 151

assumptions arise from her own arrogance.*’ The volume has been described as JankoviC’s “youthful autobiography”.28 This istrue only in so far as it evokes a young girl’s growing consciousness: individual passages concerning the schoolgirls’ relationship and some of the observations of the narrator of the diary piece may well be based on the author’s own experience, but most of the material represents an imaginative effort to enter into the lives of people in circumstances different from her own. What is striking about the volume and some of JankoviC’s other writing is the impression it gives of belonging to another age: the author’s focusand the style are reminiscent of nineteenthcentury texts. Indeed, like so many nineteenthcentury heroines, the narrator of the diary piece spends most of her spare time absorbed in Russian literature, particularly Pushkin, and is abruptly awakened when she fails to distinguish reality from fiction. JankoviC’s novel Pisma ruskom kaludjeru (Letters to a Russian Monk) reinforces this sense: it is the story of a young girl who dreams of the mystic

The Charitable Society of Serbian Womenin Irig (1913)

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power of Slavdom and her contact with a monk who confides his most intimate thoughts and feelings to her. The material is inherently Romantic and so too is its somewhat sentimental treatment. Nevertheless, the work offers some well-observed insights into the sensitivity of the young girl. This is true also of the novel Pre mete (Before Happiness), published in 1919, the first part of which is in autobiographical form. Two further novels, Putem (Along the Way) and Mutna i kroava (Bloody, Troubled Waters) were published in 1932. They both demonstrate a certain facility with words and an ability to maintain a story line, but, while they were read with enthusiasm by her contemporaries and are certainly not without interest, they are limited in emotional rangeand ultimately somewhat monotonous. A volume of stories Ljudi U Jkumiji (People in School)was published in 1937 and discussed by Julka Hlapec-DjordjeviC in the second volume of her Studies and Essays on FeminismB Hlapec-DjordjeviCgives a brief overview of Jankovit’s work, praising her developed style and strong, independent voice.Shebelieves that JankoviCis ather best in shorter, impressionistic prose pieces, where her humor, immediacy, and warmth are expressed to their full advantage. Arguably the most interesting of JankoviC’s works-which initiates what might be described as a smallsubgenre of women’s writing in the regionS0-is Medju zidovima (Between the Walls),publishedin 1932. The work describes the author’s 13-month confinement in her room through illness, her fluctuating states of mind, observations and reflections in short prose fragments. It demonstrates a real feeling for words, once the author is deprived of a ready-made frame. The opening words of a piece entitled ‘Potetak’ (Beginning) give a sense of the flavor of this unusual text:

ors her observations on the bad days and a straightforward appreciation of all that she is able to see and experience when sheis granted a respite from pain.

Danica Markovit The one woman lyric poet to make real impact in the years before the First World War was Danica MarkoviC (1879-1932), and she did so, not gradually, but immediately, with her first published volume. This period, when some of the finest poets in the Serbian and Croatian language were writing in a unique blend of Symbolist and Parnassian modes, is generally regarded as the ‘golden age’ of Serbian poetry. Nevertheless, it was possible for MarkoviC to be noticed, her work favorably reviewed by the most influential critics, and three of her poems included in the anthology edited by one of them, Bogdan PopoviC, which is still considered to represent the distillation of the best lyric poetry of the age. MarkoviC’s first slim volume of poems, entitled Trhun’ (Moments), appeared in 1904 under the pseudonym ‘Zvezdanka’. This was the name the poet had used for her first POems published inthe journal Zvezda (The Star). The volume is typical of much of the poetry of this period, characterized by its somber concentration on the self. MarkoviC’s contribution to this prevailing mood is a deep sense of dissatisfaction and frankness. It is this last quality that distinguished her from her male contemporaries: the from which it volume is seen by one critic as “an a~tobiography”,~* would be possible to reconstructthe story of her most intimate emOtions and relationships. One of the most important criticsof the time, Jovan Skerlit, praised her work for its “sincerity” (iskrenost), suggesting that she waswilling to say what was usually unsaid and what no woman in Serbian culture had ever said. The Croatian poet and critic A. G. MatoS maintained that her poetry “could serve to document the psychology of the modern Serbian woman”.33iivojinoviC points particularly to the cycle ‘Kajanje’ (Regret), in which she describes her disappointment in her marriage. The main source of the dissatisfactionexpressed in thesepoemsis boredom with the 154

superficial, spiteful people around her, with the banality of life, and the contrast with her own imagination and desire for more exalted experience. The quality that particularly impressed her male contemporaries was her independence of mind, her sense of self, and a distance even in her relationships because she was not prepared to subordinate herself. Her detachment is a marked feature also of her secondvolumeofpoems Trenuci i raspolobju (Moments and Moods), published in 1928. As the title suggests, the volume incorporated the poems from the first collection. But the new poems introduce a new tone, greater confidence, both in the medium and in herself: the surer rhythms reflect a greater ability to rise above the subject or moodwhich is the topic of a particular poem. The fate of Danica Markovid is unusual. After the acclaim which greeted her first volume, shewas largely forgotten in the altered climate of cultural life following the FirstWorld War. Her personal experience was harsh: three of her six children died and she was left by her husband to bring up the other three on her own. Eventually her will snapped and, one summer night in 1932, she drowned herself. Neglected for more than 40 years, a selection of her work was then published in 1973 under the title Ekgtje (Elegies), edited and sympathetically introduced byMilosavMirkoviC,whobelieved that she was about to start a new poetic life in Serbian culture. MirkoviC was attracted particularly byMarkovid’s poems about nature, in which she fmes her attention on aspects of the natural world, bringing them to vividlife through her associations. He describes the achievement of these poemsas “The return of woman to nature and nature to woman-this is the pagan rather than the metaphysical task of these poems.”34Many of the poems are a kind of meditation: focused on a small detail such as violets or other wild flowers which attract the poet’s attention and encapsulate a mood, perhaps because of a particular memory associated with them. From such afocus, the poems grow into reflections on the poet’s life. The frankness remarked on by contemporary male criticsis no doubt her readiness to admit tothe experience of physical passion rather than the vague sentimentality that characterized muchof the mediocre lyric verse of the age. Markovid is present in her poems as a strong, thoughtful,at 155

times impatient, woman, with a range of emotionand insight, stimulated to write again and again by the experience of the gap between mundane reality and an ideal of communication, harmony, and &lfillment. While the writersbrieflydiscussed in this chapter continued to publish after the First World War, a great deal was fundamentally changed in the political and cultural circumstances of the region by the war. The settlements following the Treaty of Versailles mark the end of the administration of the Balkans by foreign powers and the emergence of several new independent states. It is possible therefore to see the 1914-18 war as the end of a long-drawn-out phase in the history of the region, but one which inevitably shaped the political developments of the rest of the twentieth century.

Notes 1 h(edited by MilicaJda TomiC),Novi Sad, year1, no. 1 (1911): 3. k ipokret U Vqfvodini, 150. 2 h k i Suet (1887): 163, quotedin & 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 151. 5 S. SubotiC, hna istoku i na zapadu, 5-6. 6 TodoroviC-Uzelac,h k a Stampa i kdtum Zerastuenosti, 49 7 PekoviC, ‘eenski Easopisi S poretka XX veka’. 8 See Srpkinja, 22. 9 PekoviC, 135. 10 Ibid., 139. 11Srpkinju, 4. 12 Ibid., 32. 13 Ibid., 36. 14 Ibid.,50. 15 Quoted by CligoriC,Zsidma Sekulf6276. 16 PekoviC, afterwordto the facsimile editionof Pisma ir NfXa o h a m a 17 PopoviC, ‘Pesme Jelene Jov. DimitrijeviCa’, 220. 18 Stankovif,N&ta km (Belgrade, 1910). 19 Dimitrijevif, Noue, 7. 20 Ibid., 18. 21 Ibid., 86. 22 Ibid., 96. dam m m i hi okeana, 13. 23 DimitfjeviC,& 24 DimitrijeviC, Noue, 254. 156

25 Srpkinja, 59-60. 26JankoviC, Zspoves~i,181. 27 ‘Otrgnuti listovi iz dnevnikajedne devojke’, in JankoviC, Zspouesti, 18-146. 28 GligoriC, ‘TenaU srpskoj knjitevnosti’,90. 29 Hlapec-DjordjeviC, Studije i eseji ofmin.izmx, vol. 11, 130. 30 h3na, f i f e sa ontolojkog. A later example appeared in Croatiain 1987: DrakuliC, Hologrami stralra (Holograms of Fear). 31 JankoviC,Meuj‘u xidovirna, 64. 32 %vojinoviC,in his Introductionto Tratlci i r a s ~ ~ jvii. a , 33 Quotedby Milosav MirkoviC, Introductionto Markovif, E&.e, 7. 34 Ibid., 10.

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As in Hans Andersen’s wonderful fairytale, where the youngswan i s surprised at the beauty of its reflection in the mirror of the lake, so too are women surprised by the beauty of the image of the new woman. After so many centuries, they have found themselves. A living butterfly has emerged from a dead chrysalis. Jela SpiridonovifSavi€,1935

The New Country The founding of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 established a quite new context for the development of the political life of the region. But while it meant the end of five centuries of foreign rule, and hence removed once and for all what had been felt to be the principal obstacle to national development, the new arrangement inevitably brought newproblems. The territories that came together in the new joint kingdom had very little experience of democratic procedures and theyeach had a different and welldeveloped sense of their own historical role. Two of the territories, Serbia and Montenegro, had become independent kingdoms in the nineteenth century, while the others had just emergedfrom Habsburg or Ottoman rule. It was not long before tensions between the various aspirationsof the three main components of the partnership began to be felt.Eventually these erupted in an outburst in the Parliament; in 1928, in whichthe popular leaderof the Croatian Peasants’ Party, Stjepan Radid, was shot and wounded by a Montenegrin delegate and another delegate killed outright. Radid later died of his wounds and the crisis that ensued led tothe suspension of the constitution and the declaration by King ‘Alexander Karadjordjevid of a period of absolute rule. In 1929 the country was renamed Yugoslavia’, 159

symbolizing his centralist intentions. Naturally, this course of action did nothing to solve the underlying tensions,but merely drove them under the surface to smolder there, creating rifts which would find full and brutal expression in the Second World War. Alongside the potentially divisive national aspirations ofthe various components of the new kingdom, there was a quite different, cohesive trend in the growing socialist movement. This too was driven underground, where it developed, ready to play a decisive role, also in the Second World War. Under the communist regime that was installed after that war, the role of the socialist movement between the wars was understandably highlighted, while the achievements of ‘bourgeois’ culture were played down. In this process the work of several outstanding women was acknowledged, but the names of others and their contribution to Serbianculture in general are barely known and have only recently begun to be restored to their rightful place in cultural history. The role played by women in the general process of the region’s modernization was crucial. The ‘women’s question’ was given a new urgency after the First World War. An article published in December 1918 summed up the situation succinctly: “Today the women’s question poses itself irresistibly and demands to be resolved ... It comes down to one thing: in the course of the world war, women showed themselves to be just as capable of acting in the fields of commerce and public life as men. They bore two-thirds ofthe burden of war on their shoulders ...*l An article by Ja3a Tomid, himselfthe husband of a prominent and active woman (Milica JaSa Tomit, editor of zena>, a p peared in 1918, describing womenas “the greatest victimof the world war”, the most affected and the least to blame for the violence. “Our women have shown, more clearly than ever before, that they are not mere machines which know how to bear children, but half of humanity, indeed more than that. Today, after the world war, women are by far the larger half of humanity. Only,until now, the neglected half.”* He stresses that it is impossible to imagine that, after all they had experienced, women could ever go back to being what they once were: they had performed so many differenttasks during the war and now they wereanxious totrain for proper employment. 160

’

In the new state women lookedfor a new role. In September 1919 the NationalWomen’sUnion of Serbs,Croats and Slovenes was founded. Its prime tasks were the general enlightenment of the people and the attainment of equalrights and status for men and women. There was considerable public reaction to these endeavors, with articles suggesting that the struggle for women’s rights in the Kingdom was comical: women themselves would mock the idea of the right to vote. “They influence politics indirectly in any case, as they do all other spheres of life as well, and they would not wish to do so publicly,becausethey are modest ... Theylive in absolute harmony with men, and are neither their object, as in the East, nor their rival, as in the West.”3 Against this kind ofprejudice and strong opposition, women’s struggle for the franchise continued through the inter-waryears and was not finallyresolved until the Second World War. Nevertheless, conditions gradually improved for women in other areas,notably in education. The number of women students increased steadily after the First World War,as did the number of faculties accessible to them. Many women who had fled from the war and studied as refugees in various Western European countries now returned and their presence altered the climate and raised expectations among new generations of girls qualifjring for higher education. In 1922 the first woman gained adoctorate at the University of Belgrade, and by 1930 there were twelve women teaching there (by contrast with six in France in the same year). Although the opportunities for employment and conditions remained unequal, increasing numbers ofwomen began to be appointed as doctors,barristers, university teachers, and so on. An article publishedin 1928 describes the situation: Every day we see the barriers fall, one by one, every day we see ever more new positions occupied .. Now no oneasks whether such and sucha woman will be appointed to a particular position, but each individual case i s seen as part of the general women’s question. And to set the women’s question in motion, or even to stimulate women to act, i s no longer without danger. For behind each one stands a crowd of others, a whole army, which i s advancing in dense, serried

.

ranks.4

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In 1926-27 the student body of the University of Belgrade consisted of 4,688 men and 1,235 women, while in the Arts Faculty there were 707 women and 469 men. This meant that women were largely in charge of primary and secondaryschool education. In 1928-29 women attained the right to be directors of schools. As Paulina LeblAlbalaobserves in the same article: “Such an influx of educated women had to be taken into account as a serious and powerfd cultural factor.” This is not to say, however, that progress was smooth: although by 1928 there were many suitably qualified women lawyers, there was a discussion in Parliament as to whether they should be appointed as judges: it was resolved that they should not because, in an enduringly patriarchal society, it was felt that women did not yet havesufficientauthority.Similarproblemswere encountered by other women in the public eye, as maybe seen in thecase of the outstanding philosopher and scholar KsenijaAtanasijevit, the public scandal of whose dismissalfrom the University of Belgradein 1935 is discussed below. As far as the spread of literacy among the population as a whole is concerned, the 1931 census recorded a 57.1 per cent illiteracy rate among women in Yugoslavia as a whole. This figure suggests a wide potential readership, at least for popular literature. Valuable information about the kind of writing available is providedby a bibliographypublished in 1936 by the AssociationofUniversity-Educated Women. The preface describes the bibliography as “evidence of the abilities ofYugoslav women,[and] itcasts light on their cultural level and on the range of their interests. It will serve as a foundation for further research into the intellectual efforts of our ~ o m e n . ”The ~ bibliography gives a comprehensive account of writing by women published in Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia Herzegovina between 1814 and 1935. In addition to literary works it lists books and articles on dressmaking, cookery, and handicrafts, as well as pedagogical and scholarly works, and fiction and verse for children. The number of titles published in the inter-war years suggests a substantial readership with a range of interests. One area which requires further research is the number of published plays by women writers.It would be useful to knowwhether they were all per162

formed, how they were received, and how many of the plays written by women and performed were published. If the reception of a play by the prominent Croatian journalist and writer of popular fiction Marija Jurid Zagorkain 1901 is anything to go by, these women playwrights may well have had difficulty in being accepted. Prose fiction and poetry were clearly in demand, however, with an average of between five and eight volumes by women writers published every year between 1922and 1935.

Popular Women’s Fiction Some of this fictionmay be describedas popular, the kind of ‘trivial’ literature often associated with women’s writing, particularly at the time. The most successful writer in this genre was Milica JakovljeviC or ‘Mir-Jam’ (1887-1952). ‘Mir-Jam’ was a prolific writer who may be described as writing ‘women’s literature’ in the sense that her works were intended specifically for a female readership. In the period between 1935 and 1941 she published seven substantial novels and twoplays. She was a very popular and, consequently,influential writer who did much to encourage ordinary women to read fiction. She began to write while still at school, publishing her first prose poem in 1904. Her first post was as a teacher in eastern Serbia, and from 1919 she worked as a journalist in Belgrade. One of her most popular novels is Ranjeni OTUO (The Wounded Eagle), published in 1941, and later dramatized by the critic and writerBorislav Mihailovid Mihiz. It has been described as the “apex of women’s subculture”.6 Its protagonist is a type which wasa sourceof fascination in the altered circumstances of the age: the unmarried ‘vamp’who changes lovers regularly out of material interest. Not only does this novel offer a sentimental love intrigue with obstacles, but a step ismacletowards reconciling two extremes withregard to free love. The main character of the novel is separated from her husband because it emerges that she was not a virgin when she married. However,she is neither a cruel, selfseeking seductress nor a naive victim. The popularity of the novel was probably 163

the result of its readers’ being able to identify with the characters in it. Perhaps it would be possible to set up an hypothesis about changing models of identiflcation during the interwar period.’

It is interesting that the influential critic Jovan SkerliC, whosejudgments were widely regarded as law, wrote very positively of Mir-Jam, as he had done of Milica JankoviC he saw her as a typically ‘female’ writer who fulfilled a particular role in catering for women readers on a level appropriate to their traditional statusand needs.

Ksenija Atanasijevie At the other end of the intellectual spectrum of published works at this time were the scholarly writings of several women academics. One of these is the impressive Ksenija Atanasijevid, who has already been mentioned. Born in 1894, she studied philosophy and classics at the universities of Belgrade, Geneva,and Paris. From 1924 to 1935 she taught at the Arts Faculty of Belgrade University. She was then dismissed on a charge of plagiarism, probably because it was inconvenient for her (male) colleagues to work alongside such an excep tionally gifted and productive woman. Her dismissal caused considerable controversy, provoking among other things a petition signed by more than 200 women: ‘A statement by women in public life and the professions on the occasion of the case of Miss Ksenija Atanasijevit.’8 A public meetingwas held at which many prominent intellectuals spoke in support of her, including the renowned poet Sima Pandurovid, whose speech casts light on the whole climate of Belgrade University at the time: “She hasbeen accused at the plenum of the University Council of plagiarism by one member of the faculty, who has not the remotest inkling of philosophy and who has unaccountably taken it on himself to defend that discipline from a genuine thinker.”gDespite all the support she received from the intellectual communityin Serbia, however,she was not reinstated and spent the rest of her working life-until 1941-as an inspector for the Ministry of Education. In 1942 she was arrested for writing articles against 164

anti-Semitism and National Socialism. Her output was remarkableamounting to some 200 works, including translations fromsix European languages-andreveals nothing of the great pressures that women in her position were under at this time. The 1936 Bibliography lists 68 titles she published between 1922 and 1935. The topics are mostly philosophy (her doctoral thesis and several articles were on Spinoza, some of whose works she translated), but also include classical Greek literature. It is clear from some of the titles that she also had an interest in the situation of women: she wrote essays on ‘Women in Euripides’ and ‘Ibsen’s View of Women’, as well as an article entitled ‘Some Feminist Reflections’, publishedin 1929, and a report, in 1931, on ‘The Women’s Conference on Peace and Die armament’. Her contemporary, the prominent feministDrJulka Hlapec-Djordjevid,described her as “our one intellectualwomangiant, who dedicated her reputation and her work to the service of the emancipation of women”.1°

Anica Savid-Rebac The other outstanding scholar-also with a training in classics-whose name is known today is Anica Savid-Rebac (1892-1953). The daughter of a literary historian and critic, Savid-Rebac was widely read and well informed about literature and art in general. She becameone of the most erudite individuals in Serbian cultural life. She was also a creative writer, publishing a volume of verse, VeZeri na mom (Evenings by the Sea), in 1929. Her poems are very different from the intimate confessional verse of her contemporary Danica Markovid. They are thoughtful, full of literaryreferences, and generally rather more cerebral than emotional. Several critics havewritteneloquently about her verse: In her poetry she is a verbalist, a thoughtful spirit, cosmic, and at the same time, of her homeland, and an artist. The spirit of her poetry is raised up into the universe on waves of light and darkness, movements of nature, forests, mountains, dawn and night. It is at the turning point of sleep and life ... There is an of the sun” in Hellenic spirit in her poetry “of the powerfuland melodious flight

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space, of poetic, symbolicand thoughtful content ... But she is also on the earth in her poetry, she moveswith infatuated step through her homeland, and through a woman’s dreams of personal happiness1

Two of the finest Serbian poets of the second half of the twentieth century, MiodragPavloviC and Ivan V. Lalit, have also written about her verse. In their own poetry they too draw on their knowledge of classical culture and deep sense of the continuity of the European cultural heritage based on the achievements of ancient Greece, and are thus particularlywell placed tounderstand Savit-Rebac’s work A woman of real education, a philosopher and aesthetician of true competence, Anica SaviC is a poet because of beauties which are beyond poetry, and her POems are a witness of experiences and knowledge above poetry, and hence her poetry is evidently a means and not an end, not the final form of discovery. Beauty for her is not in a line, a rhythmor a combination of words, a poetic vision, but beauty really lies for her in the seascape before which she is standing, in the heights towards which she raises her eyes, in the ideas in which she believes, in the history which she glimpses. Her Hellenic themes are not forher a wayof creating and expressing a truly exalted poetic density, a creative event which in the end justifies itself, but an instrument to enable her to come truly closer to the hidden sacral energyof a landscape,the emanations of historyand Classical and Renaissance poetry.l*

An authentic, personal voice, at times shadowedby swaying echoes of a prosody whose homeland is in the poems of Goethe and Hdderlin. The poetry of Anica SaviC-Rebac creates one of the most beautiful combinations of intellect and poetic sensibdiry; and while the poet’s spiritual curiosity turns towards antiquity-on the whole, the way it is reflected through the prism of English and German poetry of the first half of the last centuxy-and towards someother great voices of the past, her refined poetic sense reacts with the greatest subtlety tothe possibility that the echoes of this curiositymay be translatedInto the language of emotion.15

Anica Savit-Rebac was also a linguist of exceptional talent. One of her enduring contributions to Serbian culture is her translation into several different European languages of the long philosophical poem LuZu mikrvkozmu (The Ray of the Microcosm) by the nineteenthcentury Montenegrin poetNjegoS. Her public successwas not matched by private happiness,however: she tookher own life in1953. 166

Jelena Spiridonovie-Savie Almost her exact contemporary, Jelena SpiridonoviC-SaviC, (18911974) was also a woman of broad general education, able to lecture and write on a range of topics in European culture, as well as being a poet and fiction writer of considerable ability. Her first volume of verse, Sa uskih stuza (From the Narrow Paths), was published in 1919, and it indicates the direction that SpiridonovidSaviC’s work was to take. The volume consists of short poems of varied content, but they are rarely descriptive, dealing almost exclusively with the world of emotional and spiritual experience. Natural phenomena generally function as metaphors for emotion, the most common of which is elation. Taken as a whole, the volume communicates a clear sense of a rich spiritual life and of striving towards spiritual fulfillment. The title of the volume is symptomatic ofthe poet’s sense of constraint in the material world and her need to overcome its bounds through spiritual experience. It is interesting that she should have used the symbol of the sunflower in at least two of her poems, as this is the subject of a particularly fine symbolist poem by her contemporary, the great poet Jovan DuZliC,whose name hasalready been mentioned. All three poems are concerned with the contrast betweenthe bright and cheerful aspect of sunflowers in daylight and their existence at night. SpiridonoviC’s firstpoem is characteristically exultant, seeing the flowers as a constant reaffbmation of the miracle of resurrection. SpiridonoviC’s next published volume, whichappeared in 1923, is a slim, unassuming work of great originality, sadly almost unknown today.Entitled Pergumenti (Parchments), with the subtitle:‘Found and translated by Brother-in-Christ Stratonik’,it consists of two layers of solitary meditation. The first is dated 1814 and set in a monastery, where the young monk Stratonili prays for guidance as he doubts his vocation.When he is told of the devastationof a church in the course of the Serbian uprising againstOttoman rule, he goes to the scene to rescue what he can from the burned-out building and to take it to the monastery for safe keeping. Amongthe documents and treasures he finds some old parchments and a book and seems to 167

hear a voice suggesting that they could give his solitary life the purpose he feels it lacks. The second layer is the youngmonk’s ‘translation’ of one of the documents, purporting to have been written in the Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos in 1194. Its opening prayer echoes Stratonik’s own prayer from the beginning of the volume. The content of both meditations is similar: one of the three youngmonkswhoaccompanyStratonik to the destroyed church reflects: “Is it possible among such Beauty/that evil deeds are done? ... /Will the human soul/ever be mature enough/for the grateful eye of love? ... We have no power to create freedom/so let us guard the ancient things/old books and treasure.” The document that has survived through the centuries was written by ‘Gilbert, a crusader’ and describes his being taken prisoner and brought before Saladin. Bewildered by the humanity shown him by his captors Gilbert suddenly understands what he has never known: “Only now I understand, that Goodness alone,/no matter which faith men profess/bears the Meanof my soul/that ing of Life inits hands ... /And I regret, in the depths we, defenders of the Son of God,/were not always on the height from which/the Cadif s gentle eye looks down...’,l4 SpiridonoviC-SaviC published another volume of verse, Ve&e ZeZnje (Eternal Longings), in 1926.Jovan DuCiC wrote the introduction: The content of Jela SpiridonoviCSaviC‘s poetry marksher out from all the new young poets, including the best.By this I mean her personal spiritual tone, her aspirationtowardsthetranscendental, her abilityto generalize,to connect things into a shared, but fundamental, essential cosmic whole. I like her religious and deep inspiration in Parclments, which is for me one of the finest works of poetry in our language and the best thingto have been produced in our poetry by the generationsince the war.15

The volume contains somefine poems, always thoughtful, again concerned for the most part with the transcendental and involved with the material world only as a vehicle. It includes several thematic cycles, one of which is ofparticular interest for our purposes: ‘ Trugedije W ( T h e Tragedies of Woman). It offers various possible models of waysof being for women,including‘TheOldMaid’,‘TheGirlMother’, ‘The Adulteress’, and ‘The Libertine’. They are all simply 168

and delicately evoked with an attractive, discreet irony. Another cycle, ‘Pretete’ (Forebears), has poems devoted to ‘The Poet’, ‘TheArtist’, ‘The Ascetic’, ‘The Apostle’, and ‘The Victim’, all possible ways of life with which the poet can identify, before returning to the role laid down for her, that of ‘The Old Maid’. Spiridonovid-Savif’s last volume of poetry, Jesmje melodije (Autumn Melodies), was published in 1939. The overall tone is very similar to that of the preceding one. Several of the poems are arranged as small meditations for each of the daysof the week (for example, ‘The Wanderer’s Week’, ‘The Monk’s Week‘, ‘The OldMaid’s Week’). It is interesting that this poet, whose main concern is with the transcendental, should have been described as representative of ‘women’s lyric poetry’, emotional and warm, sad and discreet, ennobled by erudition”.16 It is not clear whether it is the fact that one or two poems mention women and their destiny or that SpiridonovidSavid is so open in her personal concern with the spiritual that has earned her this description. It may simply be that to be a ‘woman’ was still such a well-defined role that it remained some commentators’ first consideration.It is an issue also in the more thoughtful and elaborate description of her poetry by IvanV. LaliC: At one time over-valued and then forgotten, the poetry of Jela SpiridonoviCSaviC and the destiny of her poetry are a good example of a double misunderstanding: between thepoet and herown poetry, between the poem andits echo, between wanting and ability ... A fragile lyricism, of feminine sensibility, and sensual in a subdued way ... Through the whole of Spiridonovi€SaviC’s work runs an authentic,feminine lyric thread ...l7

SpiridonoviC-Savif also published a volume ofshort stories, Pripoveth (Stories), in 1939. These are original tales of loners, outsiders, told with warmth and sympathy for the disadvantaged, but verging on the sentimental. Here and there are glimpses of an irony that could have made SpiridonovidSavid afine writer of fiction, but regrettably thisis not sustained. A creative writer of great ability and originality, SpiridonovifSavid was at her most authoritative in her lectures, essays, and reviews, a selection of which was published in 1944. The introduction describes the volume as forming “an intellectual whole of a very personal char169

acter. Virtually the confession of the most intimate belief and conviction, in the form of well-informed,solidly documented aesthetic, cultural-historicaland religious-philosophical studies.”18 The subjects of the essays range from ‘Religious Experienceand the Present Day’, ‘A Requiem for Rilke’, and ‘Women Mystics’ to the work of her two outstanding contemporary women writers Isidora Sekulid and Desanka Maksimovid. These are thoughtful and perceptive studies to which we shall return when considering the two writers in question. The whole volumeis clearly the work of a deeplyintelligent and cultured individual with a well-rounded outlook on life. As such, Spindonovid-SaviC represents the considerable achievementsof the urban middle class in Serbia at this time. The last essay in the volume, ‘The Meaning of Inner Life for the Development of the Personality’, offers some insight into the outstanding contribution of individuals from this background tothe society in which they lived. It is the text of a lecture given to young membersof the Kolo mpshih sesturu (Circle of Serbian Sisters) in 1935. Spiridonovid-Savidstresses the lack of culture in Serbia, where the population was still 80 per cent rural, but points out that the prevailing poor hygiene, primitiveness, and lack of a sense of the aesthetic were not simply an expression of the poverty of the countryside, but also the consequence of the indifference of the townspeople. She points out that no oneever goes tothe villages to raise standards: the only outsiders the peasants ever see are “unscrupulous politicians, who bought votes and poisoned them with demagogy and brandy, or money-lenders who drank the last drop of their b l ~ o d ! ”She ’ ~ encourages young girlsto think of going into thecountry towork as teachers: We are particularly interested to know what is the specific role of women, as a cultural factor .. For women today, the doors of all possibilitiesfor intellectual development and education are .wide open, just as they are formen. Women tOday understand all the seriousness of scholarly work, the search for the truth, freedom of thought, artistic creation. They know far more, think far more clearly,judge more sharply than women in the past. Their spiritual horizon has opened up unbelievably: they have takenoff the shackles of inferiority and, as in Hans Andersen’s wonderful fairytale, where the young swan is surprised at the beauty of its reflection in the mirror of the lake, so too are women surprised by

.

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the beauty of the image of the new woman. After so many centuries, they have found themselves. A living butterfly has emerged from a dead chrysalis. Today, women are intellectually on a par with men, and their full development depends only on their personal qualities, abilities and talent ... But is there a purely women's contribution to cultural development? There certainly is! It is the intelligent refinement of what is the enduringly female in her. And what is that? ... On an intellectual plane, women can be equal to men, but on an emotional level-love, sacrifice and dedication-women are superior to men. Their domain is the domain of the heart. And that is the source of the specifically female contribution to the culture of the personality; that intensity of the emotional life is woman. This refined, deepened, female sensitivity has a dual task in addition to ennobling their own personality, women have the task of ennobling also that with which they come into contact. And there are two paths open to them: through their inner and their outer beauty ... Modern man, in the great struggle of life, has an even greater need for the beauty offered us by art, or the beauty of na... For life todayis not easy.2o ture which lies in its forests, mountains, sea

Isidora Sekulic' We have mentioned the name of Desanka MaksimoviC, a lyric poet of prodigious output, whose first volume appeared in 1924. She continued to publish throughout the inter-warperiod, but because she dominated the first decades after 1945we shall considerher work in the next chapter. The other outstanding woman writer of this period, whose reputation is well established in Serbian cultural history, is Isidora SekuliC (1877-1958). She is one of the few women writers about whom there is a substantial body of critical work, examining her contribution as a whole,her essays, and herliterary views. Having started to publish relatively late, at the age of 36, she produced eight works of fiction and analysis and an enormous output of essays and critical articlesof varied content. She continued to work until a short time before her death, aged 81. Her literary activity was interrupted twice, by the two world wars, which both brought radical changes to the political and culturaI context of her work; her fundamental literary tastes and attitudes were not altered, however. Although she be171

gan to publish before the First World War and continued to be an important figure in cultural life after 1945, it is to the inter-war period that the majority of her works belong. In many ways Sekulid represents a number of paradoxes faced by educated women at this time, but because she is so dominant a figure they stand out in her case with particular clarity. The first is the fact that, despite her intellectual caliber, she followed the commonest career for a woman of her educational background and workedall her lifeas a school teacher. She was not happy in this work and must have been an intimidating figure to her pupils. But, as we have seen in the case of Ksenija Atanasijevid, there was little prospect of employment at the university where her talents would have been put to far better use. Secondly, while she corresponded with the prominent intellectual figures of her day on an equal basis, she was faced repeatedly with the humiliating situation of being seen as an aberration, always the ‘first woman’ literary critic, essayist, member of this or that editorial board. Much of the criticism of her early writing drew attention to the fact of her gender in a way that was, at best, condescending, and she resigned from the board of the SerbianLiteraryCommunity (Srpska k n j i b n a zadrugu) shortly afterjoining it, when she discovered that oneof the founding members had left the board-because of her appointment.*l Even when she was elected to the Serbian Academy of Sciences as the ‘first woman member’ in 1950-at the age of 72there were objections. For all her awareness of her own intellectual ability, such humiliations, combined with the lack of personal satisfaction in her private life, must haveundermined her confidence. In her writing and thinking, and in her wholehearted commitment to her people, the ideal of the archetypal mother figure of traditional Serbian culture was still dominant. That she herself did not conform to this image must haveled to a sense of inadequacy: it was certainly not easy to be an unmarried woman in the society of her time. This impression may be deduced from the mysterious episode of her marriage. In 1913 she wrote to friends from Norway that she had met and married a Polish doctor, Emil Stremnicki. Early in 1914 it was reported in the Belgrade press that he had died. One critic’s comment, “This solved Isidora’s old-maid complex”,** is both typical and 172

ambiguous. There arethose who believe that the marriage was a f a b rication. Were this the case it would confirm the assumption of her sense of lack of status in Serbian society. She herselfcommented on how much easier it was to be an unmarried woman in Scandinavia than in Serbia where such women are “ridiculous, pitiful and pitiable, ashamed of their position, dependent on their married brothers or sisters”.23 The third dimension of Sekulid’s paradoxical situation is that, like so many educated womenof her day, she committed herself with great energy to the cause of promoting the education of women in Yugoslavia. In the early 1920s she attended meetings and conferences throughout the country and elsewhere in Europe, and she left her estate and the income fromher literary works tothe Circle of Serbian Sisters.24 This activity should, however, be seen in the context of the women involved in the almanac Srpkinja,discussed in Chapter 5. That they felt Isidora Sekulid to be one of them is clear from the tribute to her in its pages. It should again be stressed in connection with Sekulid that a commitment to the cause of women’s education for the great majority of the women concerned by no means implied a desire for radical political change. On the contrary, the priority wasvery much the education of women in order that they might fulfill to the best of their ability their crucial role as the mothers of Serbian sons. Sekulid’s few writings which address this question directly convey an irresistible energy: writingin a 1912 article on the waste of many women’s lives in inactivity with no “great general concerns”, she urges Serbian woman: Serbian woman! Smash with your fist, manfully smash the mold of that empty and sinfully false life, and do not sleep when it is not the time for rest, and do not indulge yourself when your children are born under the sign of death and devastation; do not burden yourself with the sin of unfulfilled duty;at a time of skirmishing do notstay outside the skirmish; flee fromthe shame of being a living gravestone overthe corpse of your people ... For this country,for this pe* ple, the time has come for impatience, and anger, and revenge. Awaken, Serbian woman, and h o c k on the hearts and pride of other Serbian women, and go from hearth to hearth and from nest to nest and extinguish with ash the fire where the weaklings warm themselves,and throw out of the nests thosechildren who do not cross themselvesin the name of the oath of national a l l e g i a n ~ e . ~ ~

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One may deduce from many of SekuliC’s writings that family life was an absolute value for her, rendered all the more precious by the loss of her mother as a child of six and the deaths of her sole surviving brother and beloved father in 1900. Family life and social commitment were one plane of existence, however; at best they could provide a frameworkfor creative activitythat was essentially solitary.One of SekuliC’s early stories, ‘Bure’ (The Barrel), published in her first volume of prose pieces,Suputnict (Companions), describes a child living the secret, solitary lifeof her imagination in a dilapidated garden barrel. This image suggests an inclination to an ascetic, monastic solitude in SekuliC’s intellectual life. In the story she also expresses her early attraction to the North, to silent, snow-covered landscapes: “I was always drawn more to the poetry of smoke-filled Siberian huts and the hardlife of Northerners, who are always fighters and heroes, than to the heavy, colorful South, its lazy, stifling winds and its warm, spoiled inhabitants.”*6 Several commentators remark on the fact that SekuliC appeared immediately as a mature writer, with clearly formulated ideas and a developed literary style applied to a range of different kinds of text: “Isidora SekuliC appeared almost simultaneously as ... a writer of subtle fiction, a lucid literary essayist, a mature critic ... a translator from English and a publicist in the service of the Serbian people. From then on, she would be involvedin such activities for the rest of her life.”*’ Companions was greeted with great interest by the important critics of the day. The work is hard to categorize and thus in a way typical of SekuliC’sopus as a whole.It consists of a series of short texts, some of which are a new free form of lyrical prose-almost prose poems-withtitles such as‘Longing’,‘Sorrow’,‘Wandering’, ‘Nostalgia’, and ‘Question’; others are autobiographical sketches of moments from the writer’s childhood. Arguably the most interesting pieces, however, are those which approach the essay form. Some of these had appeared earlier in magazines where they had already attracted attention. In the rather sparse literary landscape, in which Danica MarkoviC and Milica JankoviC were acknowledged as women writing the kind of verse and prose that one might, somewhat patronizingly, expect of women, SekuliC’s work had the rigorous intel174

lectual and analytical qualities normally associated with male writers. The tone of the review-by the most influential critic of the day, Jovan SkerliC-typifies the reaction of male commentators: An absolutely unknown beginner appears as a fully formed writer with a perfectlydeveiopedliterarystyle;agirlbeginstowriteaboutthemostdifficult problems of the mind and spirit... And now thather book has appeared,we are left with a sense of surprise, not enthusiasm or excitement, but surprise, which is after all a kind of recognition ...**

The prominent poet Jovan Dutie, who had written so condescendinglyofwomen’swriting in general, was evidentlyimpressed by SekuliC as an exceptionally original writer who would have to be considered on equal terms to men. Nevertheless, the Croatian critic Antun Gustav MatoS described the volume as a “woman’s book”, seeing it as a discreet novel of unhappy love.% For some,it was a neurotic, decadent, self-indulgent, fin-de-si2cZe text; for others, it was lucid analysis and poetic, suggestiveselfdiscovery.For the criticSlavko Leovac, writing somewhatlater, it is an extraordinary combinationof both, which, with its vibrant style, set up new harmonies and a balance between intellectualand poetic content.30 SekuliC’s next published volume is among her best-known wofks and considered by several commentators as her finest, although it too was received negatively by SkerliC. Pisma iz Norueske (Letters from Norway, Belgrade, 1914) is a mixture of poetic impressions of the magnificent northern landscape and of sharp observations and reflections provoked by the writer’s personal experience of her encounter with the North. It is about stark but inspiring natural surroundings, the stillness and simplicity of snow, about beauty, death, and above all the way the people living in such surroundings relate to them. Sheis attracted to the evident rigor of life in the North, the demands made on the people living there and their response to them. “Everyfolksongbegins bysaying that the sun hasset and shadows have fallen, every melody evokes sorrow, fear and darkness; in everylandscape one can hear storms and avalanches, in every chord of music lies the black, cold water of deep lakes never lit by the sun. Nowhere does one feel that eternity is only in harshness, as 175

in the Norwegian land~cape.”~’ What SekuliC experiences as the silence of the landscape appeals to her own conviction that silent solitude is essential to profound reflection and creativity. In addition to SekuliC’s own stated attraction to the North, the work reflects also the general interest of the European literary avant-garde at the turn of the century in Scandinavia and the artgenerated in surroundings so different from the Mediterranean inspiration of so much of European culture. As such, it represents yet another paradox in SekuliC’s oa~we:the style of this work is very different from that of her first published volume; there is none of the highly wrought prose with metaphysical overtones which some criticsof Companions felt to be a literary pose.The writing of the Letters is clearer, stronger, more persuasive. In this work SekuliC set herself a task, a problem to be overcome: how to make the foreign, barren landscape reveal its secrets, and particularly the unspoken intimatelife of itsinhabitants. The vigor of the writing reflects the resistance ofthe material and SekuliC’s own attraction to the problematic, eloquently described by SvetlanaVelmar-JankoviC: “To love what cannot be seen, which is not there, and which must pass, is a diffkult task. But Isidora SekuliC liked difficult tasks. Everything that teststhe spirit, that tempers it: obstacles, riddles, secrets, but only onthe side of good, that waswhat she The paradox lies in the fact that it was arguably in this work, concerned withsuchforeignmaterial,thatSekuliCwrote her most enduring prose. The work made a great impact on the younger generation of Serbian writers who were dissatisfied with the provincial character of Serbian realist prose.33 But this was to be SekuliC’s only work, apart from her essays, that reached beyond theconfhes and preoccupations of her homeland. Theseearly works-and the critical articlesand essays published at the same time-bear witness to the range and variety of SekuliC’s interests and to the long periodof her apprenticeship, when she immersed herself in various European cultures.s4 They represent, in a way, her most ‘European’ moment; after themand the catalyst of the First World War, she turned all her energies to the needs of the new country and the development of itsculture. While the Letten establish the calm prose style of the observer and chronicler which is characteristic alsoof SekuliC’s fictional works, in 176

1919 she published a short neo-romantic novel, which stands out from the rest of her opus. Djakon Bogoroditnne mkve (The Deacon of the Holy Virgin Church, 1919) tells the story of an impossible love between a devout young woman, Ana-who is also a fine musicianand thenew deacon from her church. On onelevel it is a tale of selfdenial, the sublimation of earthly love in a higher ideal. It is also a tale of power, in which Ana gives herself the satisfaction of testing the hold she hasover the deacon. After a struggle withhisconscience the deacon writes Ana a letter proposing that they both devote themselves, like saints, to their permanent struggle and to the church, and so triumph, their achievement being forged on the anvil of sacrifice. Ana determines to prove herself stronger than his resolve. She feels older and stronger than the young man and, as she folds his letter, she laughs: “For a womanalways laughs when she recognizes her power to rule over a man. Her power totransport him to the heights or throw himon therubbish heap, to caress him, or to cut and sting him.”35 Whenhe calls on her to hear her response to his letter she tells him she has promised herself to another man in order to save herself and the deacon from disgrace. But she insists on hearing his declaration of love and experiencing his passionate, desperate kiss, before leaving him to his torment. The styIe is suggestive, with strong undercurrents of irony, but it is oddly dated. It is as though Sekulid had wished to explore such concepts as the sublimation of the material world through art and asceticism, the creative power of obstacles, and the conflict between private and public life, and had chosen to do so using a readily available literary model.She developed some of these ideas in her later writing, but in a more analytical manner. The workwasinevitably susceptible to descriptions such as the following: “She wrote the novella ... as a kind of intimate diary, a sentimental confession of exaltedyouth, in a woman’s hand.”36 In fact, throughout her career SekuliC had to contend with negative and condescending criticism of her work. In the second edition of her Letters she expressed the enduring pain this causedher, on her own account and also on behalf of other women in public lifein her time: 177

I was not lucky in my work, and am not still today. This is hard to see from outside, but I know it all too well ... I was not permitted to be myselfor clever; people kept seeing something foreign, second-hand inwhat I was doing. I felt on my shoulders the whole burdenof a woman workingin the field of culture in a milieu which, let us be honest, found it very difficult to free itself from unhealthy tradition^.^'

After that, the major part of Sekulid’s output takes the form of critical or reflective essays, culminatingin her analysis of the work of the great nineteenth-century Montenegrin poet NjegoS, NjgoW. Knjiga duboh odunosti (To NjegoS. A Book of Deep Devotion,1951). In these essays, she does not subscribe to or evolve a coherent philosophical system; she did not believe in the power of reason to explain the “ultimate secret of existence”. While she did not develop her ideas systematically, she kept returning to the same basic questions, which she considered of particular importance, in an endeavor to solve them anew.S* The same measured, subtle style that Sekulid developed for her essay-writing characterizes also her works of fiction, which may all be seen as chronicles. Their titles are suggestive of this fundamental approach: Iz po31osti (From the Past, 1919), Kronika paZanu€?zoggrobZja (Chronicle of a Small-Town Graveyard, 1940), Zupisi (Notes, 1941), and Zupisi o m o m narodu (Notes about My People, 1948). Together, they give a full picture of the life of people in the towns and villages of Sekulid’s native region of Vojvodina. There is a recurrent pattern in many of them, of strength and promise in an individual’s youth, followed by difficulties and decline. It is symptomatic that her most developed work of fiction, Chronicle of a Small-Torun Graveyard, is constructed around the image of the graveyard: each individual’s story opens with a description of his or her grave. Another strong thread running through all these prose works is the central place of the Serbian Orthodox Church for the people of Vojvodina. The Church is inextricably linked to Sekulid’s strong sense of commitment to her people. Another theme in these works is the increasing resentment felt towards Habsburg rule, particularly by the younger Serbs in the region in the years leading up to the First World War. This often led to conflict with the older generation who were fearfulof the radical 178

ideas of their sons. The protagonist of the story ‘hmanoviti’ ‘(The Sumanovid Family) in From the Past expresses the impatience of the young and their quite new sense of the real possibility of Austrian rule coming toan end: ‘The peoplel’ he exclaimed.’‘You see, that’s what has risen up in me. A new concept has been born in me, a new word, a new satisfaction and a new task. The common good, father! Freedom, father!’39

In addition to a picture of Vojvodina life, this volume also gives a vivid account of the First World War as it was experienced in Belgrade, where the author lived most of her life and for which she clearly felt admiration and great affection. Her talent lies in her imagination which enabled her to enter intothe minds of many different individual charactersand explore the way major international events af€ected the detail of their lives. Of all Sekulit’s many lively characters it is perhaps the figure of Gospa Nola, the protagonist of the eponymous storyin Clwonicb of a Small-Town Gavqrard, who is the mostmemorable. An intriguing mixture of the shrewd,efficient businesswoman who seems to outside observers to have lost a11 her femininity, and a warm, generous woman who, childless herself,fosters other people’s children and lavishes on them the boundless, selfless devotionof a true mother. As such she seems to represent an ideal type of woman for Sekulid, one whose destiny is very different from her own, but the kind of person she would have had in mind in the stirring appeal to ‘Serbian woman’ quoted above. This story also demonstrates Sekulid’s ability, which she herself denied, to create a text with a strong story line, to engage and sustain the reader’s interest in the characters and their development. The lucid writing is also characterized by an engaging, gentle humor. Sekulid herself maintained that she did not consider these works as ‘fiction’ and that she had continued to be misunderstood as a writer throughout her career: I wroteessays long beforeVirginiaWoolfand no one noticedthat. People talked about ‘Isidora SekuliC‘s notes, marginalia, feuilletons’ ... I was never a storyteller, what were called my short stories were really notes,jottings. I always

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said so. I don’t know how to make a stoly. But at the same time, they calledmy essays ‘sketches’, ‘marginalia’. When I appeared on the literary scene, it was as though I’d thrown a bomb. Had you but seen all those newspapersand all those rags, Skerlit and MatoS were gentlemen in c o m p a r i ~ o n . ~ ~

The substantial body of criticism that has been devoted to Isidora Sekulid since her death cannot compensate her for the distress she suffered during her lifetime, but it is clear that she has now assumed her rightful place in Serbian cultural history. The selection of her work introduced by Svetlana Velmar-Jankovid offers a balanced overview of Sekulid’scontribution: Herself a creator par excellence, Isidora SekuliC believed in the power of art and the power of beauty: all beauty, but particularly the beauty of sound, color, form, words. Her essays are a search for values in art, the analysis of those values rather than their identifkation. In themselves, these essays are of great value in our literature. An essayist who is never dull, from whomone learns both the life of art and the art of life, without being aware that one is learning. Isidora Sekulit is one of those rare writers to whom we return. With time, she is receding from us, but her work remains always close to us. Perhaps it is becoming ever c1oser.41

Julka Hlapec-Djordjevit The women writerswe have been discussing were allconcerned with the education and general advancement of women, but they would not allhave considered themselvesfeminists. Theoretical feminist thinking tended to be promoted by women committed to more radical, openly political, mainly socialist ideas which gained momentum during the inter-war period. One outstanding figure at this time who may be seen as bridging the two main tendencies of the inter-war yearsisJulkaHlapec-DjordjeviC(1882-1969). Born in Stari BeCej, Vojvodina, she spent most of her life abroad, attending a French boarding school in Vienna and acquiring a sound knowledge of several European languages. In 1906 she became the first woman in Austro-Hungary to begranted a doctorate. She married a Czech offb 180

cer and remained based in the Czech lands for the rest of her life. Nevertheless, she was a prominent figure in the cultural life of Serbia, contributing regularly to some dozen newspapers and magazines there. She also published three books on feminism and two literary workswhichwerewellreceived in her native land. Her first published workwas Sudbina h. Krim seksualne etike (The Fateof Women. Crisis of Sexual Ethics) which refers, among other thingsand withtypicalirony-to a description of the goodness and selfsacrifice of the archetypal Yugoslav mother by a certain BoZa Lovrid: “and after he has sung of maternal love in the most lavish colors, he ends by saying that a woman’s feelings are well known to him, since he himself is-a father’7.42 Hlapec-Djordjevit’s main contribution to the development offeminism in the Yugoslav lands was her twovolume study Stwlije i esqi o f m i n i z m u (Studies and Essays on Feminism). The first volumewas greeted by the public as “a seminal work in the field of feminist ideology, the first and only one of its kind in our country and the result of many years’ work”.43The work‘s dedication is telling: “To my daughters, Dora and Vjera. The victory of any idea entails victims. I would wish that feminism should be realized with as few victimsas possible and that you should not be among them.,” It consists of 16 essays with such titles as ‘About Feminism’, ‘Feminism in Practice’, ‘The Crisis of the Family’, ‘French Women’, ‘American Women’, ‘Masaryk on Women’, and so on. Of particular interest is her discussion of Draga Dejanovit, which includes some valuable comment onthe whole context of Dejanovid’swork No innovation had more unfavorable conditions for its development than feminism. For, leavingon oneside our unfortunate positionon the edge of Europe and our long association with the backward Turks,the struggle for national survival was so flerce that it absorbed the energy of the whole people, driving it to seek in its glorious past a stimulus forwork at the same time as consolation for its wretched present. The emancipation of women, however, was in irreconcilable oppositionto the moral outlook of our forebears ...45

Hlapec-Djordjevid describes Dejanovid as standing out of the “numerous palesilhouettes” ofwomen around the United Serb was deep and original . She Youth movement, “a woman whose life

..

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is without doubt among the most important women of the Serbian For alater feminist commentator, Svetlana SlapSak, writing ~ ~ of the most inin the context of the Yugoslav wars of the 1 9 9 0 one teresting and relevant aspects of the work is the author’s pacifism: Hlapec-Djordjevid saw clearlythat the manipulation of people in war was the favored strategy of totalitarian regimes, and thatwomen were responsible for supporting peace through the struggle for their rights.47 SlapSak describes Hlapec-Djordjevid’s ideas on feminism as free of “all naivete, stereotypesor a single glib, critically undeveloped thought”. Furthermore, she sees her work as strikingly up-to-date: “Her feminist strategy isso modern that we can easily recognize it in the documents of the Beijing conference [of 1995].”48 The same modernity is also a feature of Hlapec-Djordjevid’s writing on literature: towards the end of her essay SlapSak sums up her reaction to this remarkable body of writing: “The vision of Hlapec-Djordjevid is not only the re-writing of the history of humanity and the writing into it of women, and not ,only where they have been left out, it is also the creation of a culture according to the measure of modern woman’s sensibility, which isthe main theme of her second volume. In a series of studies of individual women writers and their literary works Julka Hlapec-Djordjevid emerges as atheoretician and critic of women’s writing ‘avant la lettre’.”49 Hlapec-Djordjevid herself begins her second volume, entitled Feminizam ‘IL modenzoj knjihnosti (Feminism in Contemporary Literature), by saying that, even if it seemsavery modern phenomenon in factfeminismisvery old: “There were always women who, regardless of the regulations and laws established for the female sex, strovefor the maximum spiritual and material goods of this earthly life.”5oShe gives a brief historical survey of such individuals, neglected in the world’s cultural history. Listing women writersin numerous languages-and praising Virginia Woolf s Orlando as an example of a truly new, feministliterature, in comparison to much contemporary writing-the range of her references is striking. One chapter is devoted to contemporary French women writers;another to the portrayal of women in modern French literature; while the second half ofthe book consists ofdetailed studies of individual writers or works. The final section offers incisive 182

comments on some of her contemporaries’ portrayals of women in their writing or attitudes expressedin their essays. In common with so many of the women writers she discusses, Hlapec-Djordjevit’s own creative writing has been completely lost from the cultural historyof the region. And as in the case of several ofher outstanding contemporaries this is not only a loss tothe body of writing accessible to readers today, but also a distortion of the region’s history. Her first volume,Jedno dopisivanje (A Correspondence), subtitled ‘Fragments of a Novel’, published in 1932, was greeted with interest, and reviewed, among others, byKsenija Atanasijevit, who wrote positively about the work, with the benefit of her own sympathy for its qualities: “The work of Mrs DjordjeviC is unusually useful in our meager literature on women, their needs, rights and capabilities.”51 One study of the Serbian novel between the two world wars does mention the work, stressing its literary qualities and its originality in terms of genre. The comment is not particularly informative, however:“We should say at once that this book was written by a woman who is not without intelligence or feeling and that she has endeavored to express man’s real need for love and that other issues in humanlife may haveinterested her less than the theme of The form chosenby the author is a correspondence between a Czech woman in Prague and a man in Ljubljana, ‘initiallyabout a woman they both knew, evidently the Slovene writer Zofka Kvederova, on whom the Czech woman is writinga study.The subject matter is thus close to Hlapec-Djordjevit’sown experience and the text contains many of what may reasonably be construed as her own observations. So, for instance, the Czech woman is describing to her correspondent her admiration for ‘Z. K.’: “It seems that it is nowadays very hard for an intellectually developed woman, conscious her of dignity, to arrive at an inner balance, let alone a feeling of happiness. Constrained by obligations and prejudices, pressed into molds made for exhausted victims or dressed-up dolls, their powerful individuality encounters everywhere obstacles and lack of understanding.”53 The exchange of letters enables the Czech woman to express all kinds of frustrations that arise in her marriage. For example: “For women of aboveaverageinitiative and strong individuality,marriagetoday 183

means violence.”54 Predictably, the tone gradually changes and the two, who had known each other earlierin their lives and parted through a misunderstanding caused by the conventions of the time, decide to meet again. But theyare both married and the doomed attempt at a reunion ends in the man’s suicide.The author handles the alteration of tone, the couple’s fluctuating moods, and the different styles of each correspondent with great skill, and there is much of interest in the work, particularly comments on the difliculties facing intellectual women at the time. Hlapec-Djordjevid’s other work of poetic prose and travel sketches, Osetunju i op&nju (Feelings and Observations), has an introduction by Ksenija Atanasijevid, describing the essence of Hlapec-Djordjevie’s qualities as a writerand thinker:

..

. an alert mind; lively participation in all phenomena of any significancein this existence; sympathy with the joys and sufferings of human beings which, frequently, grows out of her sociological orientation; and then a sensitivity, refined and sometimes of a purely aesthetic tone, in the midst of the intimate eventsand experiences to which every person has a sacred right. These miniatures of a cultured, deselving and militant feminist deserve the closest attention: at times she has the ability to sink completely into the world of her feelings and wishes, but equally, she knows how to give herself unstintingly to both her immediate and wider social communities. And these are, without doubt, superior qualities in all the barren self-interest ofcontempomy life, on a personaland public This is a volume which, like all Hlapec-Djordjevid’s writings, certainly deserves to be better known: while not being strictly a literary work, in the sense of having a developed rhythmor sustained atmosphere, the writing is exceptionallyinteresting, subtle and accomplished, and always unexpected. Some pieces are complete miniature stories, understated and often tinged with irony, whileothers give some insight into what are perhaps the writer’s own most personal moods: in one piece, entitled ‘NaXe oti’ (Our Eyes), the first-person narrator describes her refusal of a transient affair for the sake of enduring ties, but still: “And whilewe debate seriously about politics or literature or exchange mischievous jokes, our eyescaress and kiss each other wildly.” One of the shortest pieces is a sustained exclamation, a concentrated expression of the anger and frustration of being a woman in a man’s world: 184

To Men I hate you, I hate you desperately. You strut proudly through the past as artists, generals, statesmen ... yes, and criminals, libertines. But it is always only You who are sung about, written about, talked about, only You. And you rule over the present too. You struggle with God, you seekpaths to the universe, youbuild bridges overthe chasms of the world. You tell me that e v e w i n g around me is Your work. Uncertainly Iseek where am I, what am I?How has my life passed, and those of my mothers and foremothers? The shackles of gender have branded those of us who have been left behind in the lowlands ofthe physical survival ofhumanity with the stamp of a nameless mass. We have not known feelings of excitement and luxury, the intoxication of victory, the rapturous power of creativity. And of love, which, according to You, is the purpose of our existence, all that is left to u s is the weary gathering of the fruits of autumnal, cold and rainy days. It is only now that we are awakening to the selfawareness of our own Self. No,we shall no longer nurture and flatter You, serve as the dunghill of Your self-advancement. We are tired of performing like monkeys, of the degradation of waiting, while a smile acknowledgingsated flesh appears on Your face, hardened with disdain. Take away the brightly colored baubles and glittering bracelets with which you lured us, so that we should not feel the pain of wounds inflicted over the centuries. Do not hand us the crown of martyrdom, its thorns have pierced our brain, ruined our sight. Youask in surprise: and what of the family? Descendants? Humanity? The World? If its salvation requires the sacrifice of our dignity: Letit all rot?

The second part of the volume consists of travel sketches.Compared to thoseofIsidoraSekulid,Hlapec-Djordjevid’s are lessobviously literary in intention-or rather they are largely descriptive, but filled with literary references. They read as a fresh and immediate record of impressions, which againoffers the reader a glimpse of this excep tionally interesting writer’s personality.

Women’s Rights and Political Activity While the learned, sophisticated urban culture dominated the intellectual life of the inter-war period, producing achievements of enduring value, there was a parallel, also vigorous trend: the develop 185

ment of socialist and socialdemocratic thinking. Its progressmay be traced in some of the journals dedicated to its promotion.It should bestressed that this was only one politicaltendency, and by no means widely accepted. A short work published by Lena Pop1 Hristit in 1928 expresses what was no doubt the predominant, fundamentally conservative position of most of society. HristiC’s book reads as a kind of testament, the fruit of her experience. She advises women not to try to be the same as men, but rather to complement them. She makes much of women’s freedom not to follow men if they do not like the direction men are taking. Above all, she is opposed to war and urges women to take control of this one area, to change the ways of war once and for all, encouraging women to formone great international union, a ‘vojsku srcu’ (army of the heart). However, her promotion of women’s dignityand pacifism do not drive her towards socialism. On the contrary, she sees communism as a ‘bacillus’ that sometimes appears in a society after war, and her rejection of it is categorical: “The equality of all people would be the height of human perfection; but to give oneself into the hands of the imperfect, in order for them to lead you towards the perfect is an option only for the stupid.’757 A very different position was taken, however, by women who declaredthemselvesasuncompromisingfeminists.Some of these founded a non-party, feminist society Dru.ftno za poseZivanje h e i zdtitu njenih puvu (Society for the Enlightenment of Women and the Defense of their Rights) in Belgrade in April 1919, and a similar society was established in Sarajevo in the autumn of the same year. The society published a journal, h k i pokret (The Women’s Movement), which also became the name of the society as the scope of its work expanded. The starting point for both the society and the journal was the recent world war and all that women had shown themselves capable of doing at that time. A bitter article describes the current provisions for women: A parliament consisting of delegates whom the People either did not elect or has already forgotten, wishes to put into the hands of our Serbian women, who represent half our nation, a regulation in which it i s written: even the best of you i s worse than the worst man in Serbia! Because:all those men who do noth186

ing and do not pay taxes, illiterates, alcoholics, fi-auds, traitors to the Serbian name, deserters, they have the right to vote, while you women shopkeepers, agronomists, the mothers of heroes, the wives of warcripples, workers,teachers, civil servants,doctors, lawyers, writers, youare just beginning to mumble the political alphabet.58

One feature of the Belgrade journal h k i pokret was the support it offered women throughout the tripartite kingdom, notably in Bosnia. Followingthe participation of a Muslim woman, RasemaBiSiC, in a meeting of representatives of women’s organizations, accompanied by a threatening telegram from the dominant Muslim Clerical ‘Beys’ Party’, promising persecutionfor educated Muslim women, from Nos. 4-5 (1920) onwards space was regularly devoted to news from Sarajevo of the progress of Muslim women. Generally, the orientation of the journal was international, reporting on the progress of the women’s movement throughout Europe, but also devoting space to original works of creative literature, mostly verse, by women writers. From these beginnings the women’s movement was promoted by different groups,someparty-political,like the SocialDemocratic Party, and through various journals, culminating in a ‘sociadliterary magazine’ h o t i rad (Life and Work). An issue published in 1938 as tensions mounted throughout Europe expressed the editors’ fundamental opposition towar: Wars solve no problems, conflicts simply provoke new battlesand wars generate more wars. Womenhaveresolved to devote all their energy to working for peace ... During the last world war, womensought rapprochement between the warring nations,and duringthe peace conference in Paris, women from all over the world demanded that the agreements reached should protect the world from the catastrophe of war in the future ... After that, it was women who were the first to convene international congresses wherethere were womenrepresentatives of peoples whohad been enemies until recently and whom the forces of war had driven apart ... Women will not permit that in the whirlwind of passions, with arms in their hands, people should destroy what has been created over the centuries through the efforts of manygenerations ...59

These journals-and others published in different centers of the tripartite kingdom-did much to raise the consciousness of women, in 187

sharing experience, informing their readers of political eventsin the country and abroad, and including women in social and political life.60

Milka zicina In the context of the grassroots women’s movement, reflectedin the journals discussed in the previous section,one morewoman writer of this period should be mentioned. Milka zicina (1902-84) was born in a village in Slavonia, one of the nine children of a railway worker. She attended the local school and began to work at the age of 16. Her experience of a range of different jobs was remarkable: she was employed as a domesticservant,washerwoman,factory worker, cook, shoemaker, chambermaid, typist,civil servant, and, finally, a journalist. Shewrote her firstnovel, Kajin put (Kaja’s Journey) while working as a chambermaid in Belgrade, in a hostel for travelers where she had to sit up at night to admit late arrivals. One day she appeared in the editorial office of the publishing firm Nolit and handed her manuscript to Velibor GligoriC. The prominent critic took an interest in his unusual visitor because he knew her background. He read the manuscript and recommended it for publication. The work has been described as just the kind of material the ‘progressive’ publishing house needed: “Her book was an exciting reportage from contemporary life and at the same time it expressed the aspiration of the movement of social literature towards a new, committed realism.”61The first edition included an introduction by the director of the publishing house, who complained that very few of the enormous number of manuscripts they received were worthy of publication. This one, however, stood out: “By the formal perfection and psychological depth of certain scenes one could not guess that this was a first work,the work of a beginner ... Despite the objectivity of the writing, gicina never stands toone side. She is certainly not ‘a refined, subtle literateur’, fittingher content into artificial forms for aesthetic reasons. In her robust rustic immediacy, she is an excellent psychologist, who knows how to approach things di188

rectly.”6* Between 1929 when it was founded and 1940, Nolit pubnot a translation. lished some 70 novels of which only gicina’s was Hers was the only novel to exemplify the trend of ‘social literature’ between the wars. That zicina was an extraordinary individualis illustrated by the following story. Duringthe ten years she spent working abroad, while she was in Frankfurt she heard that there was a group of Serbian art students living in Paris. She walked from Frankfurt to Paris to meet them, found a job as a chambermaid in Paris, and in due course married one of the students.63 While her writing admirably fulfills the requirements of ‘social literature’, and while gicina herself was a convinced communist-she was one of the few woman to be imprisoned in the purges following the break with Stalin in 1948 (spending four years in prison, 1951-55), and wrote a compelling account of her experience” her work cannot be said to conform to a ready-made pattern, rather it grew out of her own immediate experience. Kuju’sJozmtq, describes the life of a girl growingup in a village,one of eight children in a poor family-the father usually drinks the little money that comes into the house and the mother dies in an attempt to abort her ninth baby. Kaja’s one ambition is to go to school, but as her older sisters leave home to find employment and escape their violent father, she herself has soon to abandon school in order to work, until eventually she and a boy she works with decide that they too must leave the village. The second novel, Devojka za sue (A Girl for All Tasks), continues Kaja’s story, describingthe various posts she holds, first as a personal maid and then as a cook in a large restaurant in Belgrade. Both novels abound in vivid portraits, with many well-observed psychological details, lively dialogue-gicina had a particularly acuteear for dialect and speech mannerisms-and, for all the misery of the young girl’s life, an indomitable humor. The second novel is the more developed of the two, with sustained imagery relating to the protagonist’s memories of country life, which creates an alternative, dream-like reality, a different level of Kaja’s experience, to which she can return whenever her tasks permit. Typically, some immediateevent will remind her of somethingobserved’ in her childhood: 189

From her swollen throat, a torrentof words splashed into the cafe smoke,swaying and mergingin a rough stringof melody her head rigid,she sang her trade like the knife-sharpener who offered his services in a singsong voice, slowly pushing his little cart through the village ... Her older companion satcalmlybesidethetambourineplayer. Her hands hanging by her side, staring somewhere ahead of her, she sat the way an offended daughter-in-law,after a quarrel,gazesscowlingbeyondthecourtyard gate to the paths whichlead away from this ~npleasantness.~~

The essence of Kaja’sexperience, painstakingly builtup from several different angles, is her articulation of revolt against the humiliation of working asa personal servant. This is no theoretical position,but a discovery that comes to Kaja gradually through the various jobs she takes on. The exploitation of the factory, the constant pressure of the kitchen are problems that she canshare with others. She can join with them in expressing her resentment openly. A personal servant, employed by an individual on whom she depends for her survival, experiences constraints of a different kind. Kaja finds that she is happiest whenshe is “left alone to make her own timetable of jobs ... All through the week, alone in the kitchen, she enjoyed stealingthat little independence and, instead of cleaning the windows as she had been told to do, she would wash the bath, wring out the rag,stand up straight and smile at her reflection in the mirror, half hidden behind various little bottlesand jars.”66Characteristically, it is only whenshe is working for a more understanding employer that Kaja finally articulateswhatshe is feeling. Her employer is a teacher, a single mother whose daughter Kaja cares for. The teacher does all she can think of to make Kaja feel comfortable and contented. But she resents Kaja’s obvious joy whenpreparing to go out for the afternoon: without realizing it, she also wants to own Kaja’s personal life. Kaja tries to explain: “Madam, you don’t know who a servant is. You walk through your kitchen, she stands on the samefloortiles in that kitchen of yours, but you are not treading the same path.”67 The interest ofthese two novelslieslargely in their freshness. better Among2icina’s other works are two whichdeservetobe known on account of other, more enduring qualities. The first is a

novella., ‘&a je bilo stricu Darnjanu’ (What was the Matter with Uncle Damjan, 1950), which takes the form of a monologue spoken by the peasant Damjan, living in a patriarchal village society in the years immediately after the First World War, unable to adapt to the inevitable changes. Starting fromnothing, Damjan had worked all his life until he finally acquired a small piece of land and, with his wife, made it into a viable smallholding. This, and the patriarchal values with which he was brought up, are all he knows. When a factory is built within sight ofthe farm and the young peoplein the village are attracted to work there, he resents their desire for immediate gratification, leisure, and entertainment, without the kind of effort and self-denial that his own way of life required. There are constant quarrels in the house. Damjan’s breaking point comes, however, when his daughter-in-law announces that she is going to work in the factory. As patriarchal head of the family Damjan cannot be seen to be unable to provide for his household,and in particular he cannot accept that a female member of his family should sell her labor to orhers. He cannot adjust to the idea of a woman taking an independent stand, seeking to live her own life. iicina shows a remarkable ability to enter into the moment of the peasant’s awareness of the destruction of the values for which he has lived and toiled, but above dl of his loss of power. Damjan describes how he stormed away from the table after the confrontation, declaring: “Either thingswill be as Isay in this house, or ...” He spends the whole night meditating on the fact that he cannot complete the sentence. Whatever he said would be a hollow threat which would bring more shame on him than her. He nolonger has any power overher and he cannot face that reality. He recognizes his failure to adapt and hangs himself. There is nothing triumphant about the text: iicina articulates the poignant moment of social transition subtly and with sympathy. This issue is also the theme of her novel Drug0 imcznje (Another Property, 1961)which examines the changes to the way of life of peasants as they become workers in a local factory, but this longer work lacks the concentration of the earlier novella. The other work-which connects with Milica JankoviC’s account of her illness, mentioned above-is Zapisi s a onkoloskog (Notes from the 191

Oncology Department, 1976). This is a highly original document, with many of the qualities of fiction, such as the carefully selected detail and the description of various vivid characters from a range of different backgrounds, all united at the fundamental level of survival in the face of the threat of cancer. iicina’s acute ear enables her to reproduce her characters’idiosyncratic ways ofexpressingthemselves and the whole text bears witness to her ability to enter into other people’s lives and understand their point of view. The most powerful aspect of the text is the way it builds up a sense of a different, separate world, defined by the proximity of death. The outside world becomes unreal, and in the new world of the hospital the patients’ choices are drastically reduced to the question of how to behave in the face of the likelihood of death: in this situation their human qualities emerge insharp focus. The women discussed in this chapter are allwritersof substance, whose contribution to their native culture is considerable. The extent to which most of them have been neglected in the second half of the twentieth century is at best surprising and regrettable. More seriously, I believe that this neglect hasalso limited the scope for the culture of the second Yugoslavia to accommodate a variety of perspectives and styles and that this was a contributory factor inthe new immaturity of that culture in the immediate post-war years.

Notes 1 ‘zensko pitanje clanas’,RadniEke n.ouine(8 December 1918). 2 Tomi€.sta jebilu h a iJta de biti, 5. 3 Politika (30 September 1919). 4 Lebl-Albala, Razuoj uniumitetskog obrmuanja n d i h h a , 20-21. 5 Bibliograjija knjfgafarkih pisaca I C Jugvsluui]i,v. G P. MarkoviC, ‘Evropski uticaj na proces modernizacije Beograda od 1918-1941’, 85. 7 Ibid. 8 Published infiuot irad,Belgrade, vol. XXII, no. 45 (1935): 571-73. 9Quoted by Tomin in her article ‘Jdka Hhpec-DjordjeviC (1882-1969) ili o feminizmu’, 83. 10 Ibid. 192

1 1GligoriC, POT&&,92-93. 12Miodrag PavloviC, in S. RadovanoviC, Antologija qbskih Pesnikinja od Jejmije ab danas, 98. 13 Ivan V. LaliC, ibid. 14 SpiridonoviCSaviC, PergamenH. 13,20,50. 15SpiridonoviCSaviC, VeEiteCdnje, 5. 16 DragiSa VitoSeviC, in S. RadovanoviC, SrpsRe W i k i n j e od Jejmije do danas, 90. 17 Ivan V. LaliC, ibid. 18 Todor ManojloviC, Introduction to SpiridonoviCadviC, Sweti, 5. 19 SpiridonoviCSaviC, Susreti, 169. 20 Ibid., 170-73. 21See Forrester, ‘Isidora SekuliC as an early Serbian feminist’, 87. 22 Reported by Radovan PopoviC in his Introduction to his collection of SekuliC’s letters, Moj knlg kreainn, 6. 23 Forrester, op. cit., 92 (discussion of a section of Pisma iz Nmdke). 24 Ibid., 88. 25 SekuliC,‘SrpskojZeni’, Slufba (1894-1958), vol. 12 of collected works, 109-10. Two other articles deal directly with the question of women, particularly their role in culture: ‘zenina konzemtivnost’ (1923) and ‘0Zeni 11 literaturi i istoriji’ (1952). 26 SekuliC, ‘Bure’,Saprtnici, 338-39. 27 Leovac, ‘IsidoraSekdif’, Introduction to Kritffkiradovi Isidore Sekulc8. 28 SkerliC, quoted by GligoriC in Isidord SekuliC, 275. 29 Quoted by GligoriC, ibid., 279. 30 Leovac, K n j W n o deb Isidore SekuliC, 369. 31SekuliC, Pisma iz Nmdke. 32Velmar-JankoviC, Introduction to Isidura SekdiC, Seleckd Works (1974), 8. 33 Ribnikar, Knjikmi pogkdi Isidore SekuliC, 72. 34 Ibid., 20. 35 SekuliC, DJakOn Bogorodih d u e , 251. 36 Gligorif, op. cit., 281. 37 ‘SekuliC, Vrsta uvodne reti. ..’ (1951), Sapctnfci. Pisma iz Nmdke, Collected Works, vol. 1. 38 Ribnikar, op. cit., 320. 39 SekuliC, ‘SumanoviCi’,Iz $nviVosti. 40 Sekulif, Analitidci h u c ii hne,I, 19,102. 41 Velmar-JankoviC, OD. cit., 12. 42 Hlapec-DjordjeviC, SudMna h. Kriza seksllalne etike,27. 43 Milan L. RajiC, ‘DrJulka Hlapec-DjordjeviC’, h o t i rad, vol. XXV, no. 162 (1937): 199. Quoted in Tomin, op. cit. 44 Hlapec-DjordjeviC, Stdije 1 eseji ofetainizvw I. 45 Ibid., 164. 46 Ibid., 165. 47 SlapSak, ‘Julka Hlapec-DjordjeviC‘,88. 48 Ibid.

193

49 Ibid., 89. 50 Hlapec-DjordjeviC,StwlljG i eseji ofminiztnlt, II, 5. 51 Atanasijevit, reviewof DrJulka Hlapec-DjordjeviC‘sJo dupfszvanje, 148. 52 Koraf. ?$mkt roman tk~nedjudva rata 1918-1941,473. 53 Hlapec-DjordjeviC, Jednodoptkiuanje, 7. 54 Ibid., 27. 55 Hlapec-DjordjeviC, 0seCan.a i ofmknja, iii. 5G Ibid., 2. 57 Pop1 HristiC, h i od .%W, 22. 58 PetroviC, ‘OpStinskiizbori i naSe Zene’, 10. 59 ZeCeviC, 2ena i mir’,5. GO See BoZinoviC, ‘Nekoliko osnovnih podataka o Zenskom pokretu U Jugoslaviji’, 141-45. G1Jovan DeretiC, ‘Milkagicina i “novorealistitki roman”’, afterword to Devojka ur me, 355. G2 Bihaly, Introduction to Kajin pat, 9-10. G3 Personal interview with zicina’s late husband, Ilija SakiC, Belgrade, 1992. 64 Dnevnik, Februaly-Aprill993. G5 iicina, Dmojka za me, 39. GG Ibid., 241. G7 Ibid., 252.

194

Women’s Poetry Where does meaning go once lunch is prepared, when the clothes are washed, the children asleep, when deep in their newspapers husbands snore? Solitude constricts, I must getout, share with someone things bothblack and white. Asleep in others, I awaken in myself and sometimes fly, along with my cage! On the horizon the day glows yellow all around, perfect-like a pancake (beside the cooker-my shield from infinity!) When I was alone and was called married in my middle years my foot took to straying ... Mirjana BoZin (1991)

The Second World War in Yugoslavia Wehave seen that the various territories which made up the ‘old’ Yugoslavia emerging from the First World War entered the federal unit each with their own history, culture, and sense of identity. We have also seen something of the effect of the consequent tensions, particularly between Serbian and Croatian politiciansin theinter-war 195

years. While there is little doubt that it was in the interests of all the different components to become part of a larger entity, the process of welding them into a balanced wholein which the interests of each would be felt to have been satisfied was a task requiring great political skill and experience. In the absence of such skills, coupled with, the extremely low level of political life and violence, the crude tactic of government by personal dictatorship institutedby King Alexander and his assassination in 1934 created a climatein which political and national resentments were able to build up. These tensions offered fertile soil for the Axis powers which fostered a climate of national hatred leading to the appalling atrocities committed inthe course of the Second World War, particularlyby supporters of the Fascist p u p pet ‘Independent’ State of Croatia and Serb ‘Chetnik‘ forces loyalto the king and bitterly opposed both to Catholicism and to communism. In this context, the success of the Partisans as a fighting force, acknowledged in the support of the Allies, and the positive values promoted by their communist ideology, gave them a quite different kind of potential to begin the process of binding the country into a coherent whole. In this context of aconcerted drive towards unity, it may seem artificial to deal in this chapter only with selected territories of the second Yugoslavia, notably Serbia and Montenegro. It should be borne inmind, however, that the generalcultural trends of the whole country were similar and that it is certainly possible to talk in terms of a shared Yugoslav’ culture in this period. Writersand artists of all kinds traveled between the various centers, sharing the same essential cultural experience whether they were based in Ljubljana, Zagreb, Skoplje, Sarajevo, Titograd (Podgorica), or Belgrade. Because of the different historical development of the component territories, particularly of the Catholic Habsburg and Orthodox Byzantine and Ottoman areas, it was never possible to speak of a Yugoslav’ literature. Eachof the literatures-Croatian,Serbian,Macedonian, and Slovene-was acknowledged as having its own identity and was taught separately in schools and university departments. The situation of literature in Bosnia Herzegovina was different again and is considered separately in Chapter 8. 196

Throughout the lifetime of the second Yugoslavia one may speak of a senseof dual allegiance in cultural life: individual artists felt a need to be known in the capital, Belgrade,and to belong also totheir own native region. In its most confident period, then, this culture was genuinelypluralistic and open, with fruitfulpossibilitiesofcrossfertilization between the various centers. One needs to distinguish between this positive, organic process of evolution towards a shared culture and unified state, and the ideological imposition of a theoretical unity on the disparate components of the federation in the immediate aftermathof a vicious civil war. After the catastrophe of the war, combined with the absolute values of liberation from occupation and the overthrow of Fascism,the call for ‘brotherhood and unity’ was compelling. A large proportion of the population had been caught up in the real achievements of the Partisan movement and a great many intellectuals were genuinely committed to the communist cause. For young people in particular, who knew no other reality than the version of the truth they learned in school and through the media, the atmosphere was heady: summoned to reconstruct their country on a new basis of equality of o p porhlnity for all out of the ruins of the failed ideologies of the past, they responded with enthusiasm and energy.

Women in the Second World War It is important to describe briefly the role of women in the Second World War, and particularly the offkial history of that role because of the way this affected thinking about women and the way women saw themselves in the aftermath of that war. In a brief survey of the activities of women in the war Neda BoZinovidgives the following statistics: “In the course of the warYugoslavia lost some 1,700,000 inhabitants, of whom 600,000 were women. It is estimated that some 2,000,000 women participated in the national liberation movement in various ways. There were roughly 110,000 women in the fighting forces. Of the 305,000 fighters killed,25,000 were women, and of the 405,000 wounded 40,000 were women.”’ 197

As had been the case in the First World War, women were immediately involved, in many different ways, in the process of resistance to th,eoccupyingpowers.All the variouswomen’s groups, from the broadly humanitarian ones to the more radical women’s movement referred to at the end of the last chapter, were involved in the resistance. The radical activists had already been preparing for war and they immediately set about organizing women, particularly in the villages. Their first actions were “help for captured soldiers who escaped from columnsof prisoners, and for identified Jews, the collection and distribution of food, housing for refugees”.* As time went on they began to organizesupport for the Partisans, hiding and feeding them and caring for the wounded. From the summer of 1941 women also began to join Partisan units as both fighters and nurses. At the same time, in the towns many representatives of the broaderbased pre-war groups were involved in the underground resistance. In December 1942 the first women’s conference was held, with participants from all over Yugoslavia. The conference set up the AntiFascist Women’s Front (Antifasitit’kijcronth a ) with the aim of mobilizing women throughout the country in order to assist the fighting units of the Yugoslav National Liberation Army. Their tasks were various, but special emphasis was placed on the political education and the cultural and educational advancement of women, particularly the elimination of illiteracy. BoZinoviC emphasizes the fact that all the regulations and laws relating to the equality of women after the first conference in 1942 were won by the women themselves in feminist and anti-Fascist women’s organizations before the war and their participation in the war. The Anti-Fascist Women’s Front was active until 1953. Among the many tasks it took on in the process of the country’s reconstrzlction was the endeavor to ensure that every aspect of the legislature in the new Yugoslavia would be founded on the principle of the equality of women. A more detailedstudyof the topic was published byDuSanka KovateviC in 1977.3 Her account resembles that of BoZinoviC and together they give a comprehensive description ofthe official history of the role of women in the Yugoslav war of resistance and revolution. At the same time, unlike BoZinoviC, KovateviC reveals a charac198

teristicgap in perception betweenthosewhosee the communist avant-garde as responsible for all progress and those who give due credit to other liberal, middle-class groups. She beginsher study with abriefhistorical introduction, examining the struggle for social equality between the two world wars and clearly articulating the official distinction between ‘bourgeois’ (incorrect) and ‘radical’ (correct) approaches to the question of women’s rights. She defines the origins of the Anti-Fascist Women’s Front as being “not to deal exclusively with women’s problems, but rather to serve the movement of women ready and willing to takepart in the war and revolution ... In other words, the AFg was inspired by the idea of the emancipation ofwomen through their direct participation in the struggle to liberate the country and achieve a better future for the entire n a t i ~ n . KovalieviC ”~ gives a full account of the activities of the AFi in a volume abundantly illustrated withphotographs showing a wide range of options for women in the war: sewing, fighting, cooking, nursing, fleeing, caring for children, and even being lined up before a firing squad. KovateviC concludes her study withthe implied suggestion that the first constitution of the new Yugoslavia, giving women full equality withmen, was a direct consequence of women’s involvement in the war. She ends the work with a useful formulation of the official history ofthe AFZ: In theirfighttoliberatethecountry,womenthemselvesunderwentafarreaching transformation. The mass struggle of women as soldiers and revolutionaries is of recent date ... By fighting alongside men in the war, women for the first time realized their capabilitiesand entered a new era in the revolution, an era of constant and growing changes insociety, in human relations. The women of Yugoslavia did not enter the war and revolution out of feminist motivations. The human values by which they wereguided were courage, patriotism, and solidarity in a common ~truggle.~

The expression of the dichotomy here is revealing: the suggestion is that “feminist motivations” are something less than “human values” and by implication fueledby cowardice, lack ofpatriotic feeling,and selfishness-a particularly powerful condemnation in wartime. This formulation aptly illustrates the whole tension between the Commu199

nist Party’s assumption of a monopoly ofhigher aspirations and any possible alternative political views. It also explains the resistance to feminist ideas in communist societiesand the connotations of moral impurity with whichsupporters of feminist ideashad to contend. One important aspect of the new feminist thinking in the early 1980sin Yugoslavia was that it initiated a processof reappraisal of the history of women in the region. One of the most active of those involved was the Croatian sociologist Lydia Sklevicky, who began a systematic re-examination of the history of the women’s movement in Yugoslavia and published two important articles before her untimely death in 1990. The first of these was a study of the inter-war period, published in Po@ (Novi Sad) in 1984. On the basis of documents she demonstrates that the Yugoslavwomen’s movementbetween the warswas a complex phenomenon, composedofvarious different groups, in which the Communist Party was not the only organization fighting consistently for the political and social rights of women, as the official view maintained. Indeed, Sklevicky points out that the Alliance of Women’s Movements was the main organizer of the sustained action for women’s franchise in 1939. In 1921 the Yugoslav Women’s Union (later the Alliance) had 205 affiliated societies with a total membershipof 50,000, whereas women constituted not more than 1per cent of the Communist Party’s membership before 1940. Sklevicky believes that the increase in women’s membership of the Party after the 5th National Conference of the CPY in 1940 was a result of the incorporation into the Party platform of a women’s policy which contained essentially the economic and political demands that were the main components of the Alliance’s program.6 In 1984 Sklevicky also publisheda thorough study of the Anti-Fascist Women’sFront.Sheformulated her starting point asfollows: “Today,somefortyyearsafter the events ... the concept ‘uf&ejka’ [member of the AFZ], just as vague as ‘suffragette’, hasthe connotation of asomewhateccentricrelic-atypeofactivistwomanwho seems out of place and a littlec~mical.”~ She setsout to look beyond suchnarrowstereotypes and the accepted account of the movement’s history. On thebasis of a close examinationof the documents Sklevicky identifies two phasesin the development of the AFZ: 200

(i) emphasis on the autonomous character of the women’s organization, and (ii) stress on the integrative function of the movement, from the beginning of 1944 to the end of the war. The initial idea, established at the founding conference in Bosanski Petrovac in 1942, was that the organization should be independent in order to encourage the participation of the widest possible number of women and women’s groups, “regardless of their other possible affiliations ... their membership of pre-war women’s organizations, their age, class or religious allegiance”.8 The organization’s autonomy was esthe specific needs of sential if it was to be able to accommodate women who, in the great majority of cases, had no experience whatever of political activity. They needed a great deal of support and encouragement in order to contribute. There were practical reasons as well:it was impossible for most women toattend mixed meetingsif their husbands were going because theyhad to stay at homewith the children. If the meetings were arranged exclusively for women, however, they did not feel inhibited by their sense of inferiority, and individuals had a chance to express themselvesand to begin to believe in their own abilities. “An independent women’s organization had the ability to prepare them for the role of historical subject, so that they were no longer manipulated as a voiceless, inarticulate mass ...“g The AFZ functioned well as an autonomous organization,with a dedicated network of coordinators who worked to change the perception of most women that they were not suited to politicalactivity. Increasingly, however, the Communist Party hierarchy began to feel that such a degree of autonomy was undesirable. The official view was that “had it continued to develop along those lines, the AFZ would have become a quite separate women’s organization and it would have weakenedthe interest and commitment of women to the is at least debatable.In 1944 the general struggle“.10 This proposition organization was told to reform along more ‘integrative’ lines. One of the most far-reaching consequences of this reorganization was that, again, women with no confidence in their own abilities were expected to contribute to committees dominated by men. They became discouraged and their numbers began to drop. Sklevicky ends her study with some typical statistics: “Although women made up 201

more than a third (100,000) of the total number of participants in the National LiberationWar, [and]. in the course of the war 2,000 of them attained the rank of officer ... there was not a single womanin the Supreme Command or in the highest positions of the leadership.”” Such bald facts reveal the reality that underlies the official position that the whole ‘women’s question’ had been solved in the course of the war and revolution in which complete gender equality had been achieved. In fact, an opportunity to alter women’s percep tions of their value and abilities had been lost, the old traditional hierarchies had been re-established, and women were once again marginalized in a movement inwhich they were supposed to be participating on an equal basis. This discrepancywas of course reflectedin wider social relations after the war, and in cultural life. Gender equality was one of the fundamental principles of communist ideoIogyand built into all the new laws. It is undoubtedly the case that women’s optionsincreased greatly, but, at the same time, the underlying patriarchal structures and attitudes persisted. It was not until the generation born after the Second World War(to which Sklevicky belonged) began to be active in the 1970s that it was possible for these attitudes to be systematically questioned and reappraised.

Women Writers in Serbia since 1945 For the purposes of this study, as in earlier chapters, ‘Serbian culof whosecreativeartistswere ture’ includesMontenegro,many drawn to settle in the capital. However, it is symptomatic of the endurance of patriarchal values in Montenegro, where theyhad dways been strongest, that women writers from that territory did not begin to appear in mainstream Serbian culture until towards the end of the period under consideration. Understandably, it was individuals who had proved their credentials through their involvement in the socialist movement before the Second World War and through their actions during the war who formed the political and cultural establishment in the first post-war 202

years. These people had considerableauthority to determine the quality of cultural life.. Between 1945 and the break with Stalin in 1948 there was a short-lived phase of socialist-realist writing on the Soviet model in which some ofthese established figures participated, but this quickly gave way to a more open climate, thanks both to the political necessity ofdefining an independent role for Yugoslavia and to the presence of some outstanding writers and thinkers, such as MiroslavKrleZa in Croatia and Isidora SekuliC in Serbia, who defended the autonomy of art and the value of openness to Western models. A brief power struggle between the so-called ‘realists’ and ‘modernists’ resulted in a definitive victory for the ‘modernists’ and freedom of inspiration in art, within bounds setlargely by‘selfcensorship’, takingaccount of prevailing political norms.

Desanka MaksimoviC Immediately after the war, however, the expression of attitudes that were both too personaland too negative was unacceptable, as may be seen in the hostilereception of the Croatian poet Vesna Parun, whose verse expresses personal pain in the face of the misery of war. A more robust approach was required to encourage the population to look forward, not back, and to devote themselves energetically to the task of reconstructing the country. In this process DesankaMaksimoviC (1898-1993) played an important role. She had acquired the reputation of the leading woman writer in the period between the two world wars, and now becamepart of the dominant cultural establishment. An extraordinarily productive presencein the cultural life of her country for more than seventy years, MaksimoviC is perhaps best described as a phenomenon rather than a major writer. Essentially a lyric poet of great fluency, it seems as though every aspect of her emotional experiencewas immediately transposed with easeinto poetic form. There is no sense of struggle with ideas or form in her work, but a great vitality, delight in the natural world, and a positive energy whose charm it is hard to resist. In an attempt to explain MaksimoviC’s popularity, the criticMilorad BleCiC suggests that it

came essentially from her closeness to the oral lyric tradition, her accessibility to young and old alike, and her wholehearted commitment to her people. It may be seen from this description how well her work was suited to the historical moment. At one point, she was proposed by the jury of the prestigious Vuk KaradZid Prize for a special award. The justification was: “There are few writers of whom it could be said that they have identified their whole lives with their nation, with its spiritual and libertarian aspirations, as Desanka Maksimovid has done. She knew how to grasp the golden thread of popular culture, to weave her own contribution into it, to extend it and pass it on continually to the young, with love, rejoicing in every new creation ...“l2 Maksimovid’swork was well received from the outset. The main themes of her early poems were love and the natural world. Milan BogdanoviC, one of the critics who reviewed her first volume, Pesme (Poems, 1924), remarked on her old-fashioned and uncomplicated delight in life and her rare love of nature. The same critic also described her as essentially feminine: “Ofall the women who havewritten poetry in our literature, Miss MaksimoviC has the most feminine lines. That is to say,MissMaksimoviC can be most truthfully interpreted as a woman and only as a woman, whodoes not tomplicate or cloud her feminine simplicity and clarity with any universal problem~.”’~ As is the case with all such observations,it begs the question of what exactly the critic understands ‘femininity’ to be, and in this case whether not to be concerned with universal problems is an essentiallyfemalecharacteristic.Given the fundamentallyreligious tone of MaksimoviC’s work and her focus on the relationship of the individual to the natural world and, ultimately, to death, it is hard in any case to agree that her concerns are not universal. Other commentators also use the qualification ‘feminine’ without feeling that they have to refine it, although one, the poet Sima PanduroviC, writing in 1930, qualifies his assertionby saying that he does not wish to suggest that there are two separate categories of lyric poet, masculine and feminine, “one of which should be considered stronger and superior in itself“,14although to mention the possibility of such an attitude is almost to give it some validity. One of the most revealing re204

marks of this kind is made by Milan BogdanoviC again in his review Vrt detinjstua (The Garden of Childhood, ofMaksimoviC’svolume 1928): he describes her as being the most appropriate of all Serbian writers to write of childhood because of particular qualities of her verse: “That is, above all, her pure femininity, which is so freshly maintained in all her verse and whose psychology, like that of every real woman, enables her to be naturally close to the understanding of a child.”15While the epithet ‘feminine’ mayhave been felt by those who used it to convey something to their readers, it wasevidently soon feltby most to beinadequate and many other terms were used to describe MaksimoviC’s verse. For our purposes, it is of particular interest to consider the qualities which seemed to typify her work for women commentators. It is worth noting at this point that in BleCiC’s selection of texts, published between 1924 and 1978 by 45 literary critics, only two are by women and their contributions both date from 1932. We shall return to the question of the lack of women critics in the first decadesafter the Second World War. Forthe time being let it be said that this distribution is a fair reflectionof the prominence of women in cultural life before and after the war: the first 14 of the critics quoted were published before 1950 and include two women; of the remaining 31 commentatorswriting after the SecondWorldWar not one is a woman. Twowomen-whosework was consideredin Chapter 6”Jelena SpiridonoviC-SaviC, herself a poet, and KsenijaAtanasijeviC, a philosopher with a wide-ranging knowledge of classical and European literature-both wrote about Mahimovie’s volume of prose poems Gozba na Zivadi (Feast in the Meadow, 1932). SpiridonoviC-SaviC gives a brief definitionof what she feels are the essential qualities of Maksirnovie’s verse: “Desanka MaksimoviC’s exceptional lyric talent, through its refinement and depth of emotion, expressed in a wonderful, immediate, musical language, opens our hearts wide to her poetry;apoetryof deep spirituality and exceptionalsuggestive beauty.”I6 ForSpiridonoviC-SaviC, the secret of this intimate communication between poet and reader is the profound religious sense that informs all of MaksimoviC’s work. She defines this sense as not 205

theist or evenpantheist, and certainly not a commitment to the dogma of any one church, but a fundamental awareness of the connectedness of all things: the natural world, humanity, the cosmos. This awareness amountsin effect to love, the poet’s ability to experience the world around her and the livesof others as her own: “Through the power of love the shell of her narrow human individuality was broken, and she entered into the universal, because she descended to those depths of her own inner being which are the source of religion and all true art and love, the essential depths where everythingis one and oneis everything.”17The otheraspect of Mahimovie’swork for SpiridonovidSavit is what she calls her ‘eroticism’, the realm of human love, but delicately and subtly expressed. Suggesting that this is a rare quality in South Slav culture where passion is valued above all, she contrasts the individuality of true love with the anonymity of physical desire: It is a somewhat sadand painful fact that in our day, for a very great many, the animal is seen as strength. However, real strength, real power and depth of emotion are needed for that 0 t h [kind of love]. With us there is virtually no distinction between sensual pleasureand love. But a whole world dividesthem. For while the first is an expression of our egoism, the second is woven of altruism. The first is accessible to all, for it is an integral part of our nature, our physiology, while the other is known only to elite sonls. Of course, we are all people made of matter, and our poet has not taken her wonderful poemsfrom some blue star-for her too they are simply the offspring of her hot blood’s red cells, but thepower of love has giventhem wings, and they have soared.18

At the same time, SpiridonovitSaviC doesnot see Maksimovit’s verse as sentimental, suggestingthat an escape into shallow self-indulgence is not possible for those who lived through the First World War, nor has the poet succumbed to the two weaknesses of her time: aestheticism and intellectualism. In a particularly interesting passage SpiridonovieSaviC identifies the wellspring of Mahimovie’spoetry as goodness: The strength of our poet, which has enabled her to sublimate the sound of her own blood, that same strength also inspires her to goodness, which we experience as the unspoken &tmotiv of all her poetry, which is only more evidence of

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her religiosity. Whatever her blessed hands proffer is ennobled. That i s where her strength lies. And when we know life, we realize that this strength is, truly, not slight. But here too there is often a serious misunderstanding. For here again strength is seen as everything that comes from the animalpart of our bestrength^'.^^ ing. Hatred, revolt, vengeance, those are

In the context of the whole discussion of the contrast between the epic and the lyric mode SpiridonoviCSaviC’s contribution is particularly valuable. This is perhaps the first time that the dichotomy was articulated and a woman poet and intellectual felt able to suggest that the universal values she identifies are in fact superior to the promotion of vengeance and hatred which had inevitablybeen components of the prevailing heroic ideals. Ksenija AtanasijeviC’s review of the same volume is shorter and focuses on what she sees as MaksimoviC’s fundamental attitude in her life and her poetry, quoting from one of the poems in the volume: “One shouldsmilesadly and gently”.Atanasijevid identifies three groups of poems, with three dominant themes: the poet and nature; the poet, nature, longing, and ‘he’; and the poet, nature, and mystic intuition. She too refers to MaksimoviC as a “born poet”, who wrote because she had to write, “the way a flower has to bloom”.*O While one can imagine that Atanasijevid herself would favor a more cerebral, analytical kind of poetry, she readily acknowledges that Maksimoviehasshownherselftobeamasterin her chosengenre“genuine poetry, which comes straight fromthe heart”-and that she has an enthusiastic following wherever she goes. MaksimoviC’s fourth volume, published in the inter-war period, is neutrally entitled None p e s m (NewPoems, 1936). It builds on the strengths already expressed and identified in her earlier volumes without introducing anything new. However, some of these-maturepoems suggest themes that would be taken up in some of the works she published after the Second WorldWar: so, for example, a monologue in which the medieval saint Sava reflects on his life, and two poems in which a nun is heard to speak, in the first to her God and in the other to herself. These poems articulate the poet’s ability to enter into thelives and thoughts of others, as well as an understanding of the solitary, contemplative wayof life and the perspective it 207

offers on everyday preoccupations. The nun in the second poem describes the pleasure of silence and the way everything looks different to her now:“Now I watchcompassionately, as from heaven,/ through the cell window’s clouded glass,/human hungers and sins without end/and all that my heart once touched.”*’ As fundamentally a lyric poet concerned with universal relationships between the individual, nature, and the universe, Mahimovie’s work is timeless; that is, while she uses contemporary forms,her material is the essentially unchanging human condition. This remains true of her opus as a whole, with individual volumes exploring particular aspects of these relationships. In this scheme there are two moments that stand out, for quite different reasons: the first is the verse she published immediately after the Second World War, and the second her masterpiece, TruZim pomilovunje (I Seek Clemency), published in 1964. As wehave seen, running through allMahimovie’swriting is a deep sense of commitment toher homeland, both the narrow setting of her childhood and the broader idea of the nation. We have seen also that she emerged from the Second World War as an exceptionally popular, established poet, whose work was widely read in schools and therefore familiar to the broadest possible readership. The fundamentallyethical orientation of her verse,described by SpindonoviC-SaviC, indicatesalikely natural predispositionto the declared principlesof the new communist state: equality opportunity of for all, concern for the weak, and, above all, brotherhood and unity between all the component peoples of the state. As a result of her prominence and her own disposition she wieldedaparticular authority in the aftermath of the war. She took the responsibility of her position seriously, seekingalways to use it as a forcefor good and thereby retaining her exceptional popularity and commanding respect until towards the end of her long, productive life, when she chose to ally herself closely with the cause of Slobodan MiloSeviC. Immediately after the SecondWorldWar, shepublishedseveral short poems which were at once incorporated into school textbooks throughout the country and thereafter into mostanthologiesof Yugoslav poetry for many years to come. The most important of these 208

were‘Spomen na ustanak’(Memorialofa Rebellion), ‘Srbijase buni’ (Serbia is Rising), and ‘Krvava bajka’ (Bloody Fairy-Tale) which records the massacre of some7,000 pupils and teachers at a schoolin the Serbian town of Kragujevac as a reprisal for Partisan attacks on German troops. In addition to these shorter poems Maksimovit also wrote two longer narrative pieces: ‘Oslobodjenje CveteAndriC’ (The Liberation of Cveta Andrit), about a peasant woman going to vote for the first time in her life, and ‘Otadzbino, tu Sam’ (Fatherland, Here IAm), which tells the story of DuSica StefanoviC, a dedicated young scientist who represented the best of her generation of progressive youth, and who was arrested, tortured, and murdered by the Nazis. Such works were undoubtedly welcomed by the critics whose job it was to review them. They had grown up reading MaksimoviC’s verse as children and now she was again in tune with the new times. “True poetry alwaysserves the needs of the people”, wrote one, KreSimir Georgijevit, praising the poet for broadening her themes beyond her narrow personal concernsto express allthe noble aspirations of the historical moment.‘’ Georgijevitplaces MaksimoviC’s work in a long tradition of ‘political’ poetry in European culture, from The Divine Comedy to Mickiewicz and Mayakovsky. Another critic, BoSko Novakovit, explains why short lyric verse is not capable of expressing all the drama and tragedy of the times and hence a number of prominent poets chose to write longer, epic pieces: “The long narrative poem is a suitable formfor conveying and transforming magnificently exalted examplesof individual and collective heroism, sacrifice, dedication to In his discussion of the earlier poem about Cveta AndriC, Novakovit articulates the prevailing conviction that the new political structures automatically entailed the radical transformation of human relationships. He describes Maksimovie as having “fured one of the factors in the profound change in woman’s being, her liberation fromthe bonds of slavery in which the previous social order had bound her, and her free flight towards complete consciousnessof her dignity and human worth”.24 The historical moment which seemed to some poets to demand this kind of response did not last long and Maksimovit returned to her more natural lyric mode. She continued to be an exceptionally 209

prolific writer, publishing prose worksand verse for children in parallel with works dealing with her central concern, the expression of her own intimate response to the world. Her verse was characterized by an increasingly nostalgicnote with her advancing years, expressed particularly in her volume Nemum vise wemenu (I Have No More Time), published in 1974. At a time whenMaksimoviC’s profile as a lyric poet was already well established she published a work of great originality, TruZim pomilovunje (I Seek Clemency, 1964), which is widely regarded as her finest achievement and stands out from her otherworks as something quite new, although her lyric poemscontain many hints of the basic worldview that informs the work. The poet’s starting point is the fourteenthcentury Code of Laws (Zukonik) compiled by Stefan DuSan, king ofSerbia (1331-55). It was under this ruler that the medieval Serbian state reached its greatest territorial extent. Following the example of his predecessors DuSan expanded the kingdom, particularly to the south and east. By this time, following the Fourth Crusade, what was left of the Byzantine Empire was pitifully weak and it was DuSan’s aim to accede to the throne and bring the great culture of Byzantium new glory with the wealth and military strength of his young state. In 1345 DuSan was proclaimed tsar of the Greeks and Serbs and set about consolidating his power in the Balkans. Then, in 1355, he suddenly died, leaving his ambitions unfulfilled. After hisdeath the Empire quickly disintegrated, tom apart by feuding local lords, thereby assisting the advance of the Ottoman forces which inflicted a decisive defeat on the last vestigesof the Serbian kingdom at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. For many Serbs the reign of Stefan DuSan represents the height of Serbian medieval civilization before the five centuries of darkness under Ottoman rule. Enduring evidence of its achievements are to be found in the splendid icons and frescoes in the numerous monasteries of Serbia and Macedonia. Less well known is the personal contribution ofDuSan himself, notably the Law Code (mentioned in Chapter 3) whichprovides the framework for MaksimoviC’swork. The Code is in two parts, dating from 1339 and 1354, and it is accompanied by a short autobiography written by DuSan as an appen210

dix to his Laws. Maksimovid took the Code as her starting point in writing her own, very personal book of laws-seeking forgiveness for many human injustices, sins, and weaknesses. The individual poems are linked to the central idea by tone and form, and by their disposition in the book some are directly inspired by articles in the Code, and these are distributed in irregular order among the other, more numerous poems that express the poet’s own experience. What is of particular significance in the context of the present study is that the poems go some way towards providing the shadowy, silent figures of ordinary women in the Middle Ages with a voice. As we have seen, the Serbianhistoricalexperienceof the MiddleAgeshas been molded into a particular ethos, dominatedby the epic, heroic mode and excluding other possibilities.DesankaMaksimovid articulated the alternative lyric mode, the voiceofcompassion and a simple so eloquently. Such a goodness ofwhichSpiridonovid-Savidwrote voice is not of course in itself gendered, but the prevailing ethos renders its expression by a man all but inconceivable. Since Maksimovie had already given adequate proof of her allegiance to her homeland, with all its heroic virtues, she was ideally placed to offer this alternative mode as one that could coexist peacefully with the dominant ethos in the form not of a conflict, but a fruitful dialogue between two basic world-views. It is no accident that the poet gives her work the subtitle ‘Razgovor’, that is, ‘Conversation’ or ‘Dialogue’ with DuSan’s Code of Laws. This interpretation of Maksimovid’s I Seek Clemency, seeing it as a new departure, an alternative way of perceiving, may be considered as a feminist reading. For the majority of commentators it was the to atradition of mostrecent-artisticallysuccessful-contribution ‘patriotic’ writing bywomen,whose role was to express grief and compassion as a counterweight to heroic action and suffering. After this work, Maksimovid reverted to a more traditional form of intimate lyric poetry whichwas the most widely accepted mode for writing by women. The persistence of such underlying stereotypes may be deduced from the striking fact that, despite the victoryof the ‘modernists’, the progressive, prewestern forces in cultural life in Yugoslavia, their journals, anthologies, and publishing programs,the 211

editorial boards ofpublishinghouses and magazineswerealmost exclusively run by men: the new ground that had been gained was curiously inaccessible to women.In the years between the early 1950s and the late 1970s only a few women achieved any prominence in public life.

Mira Aleckovie It is symptomaticthat one of them, widely anthologized and in.corporated into school readers, was a poet whose work has some features in common with that of Desanka MaksimoviC. Mira AleCkoviC (born 1924) had the right credentials: having participated in the National Liberation War as a very young woman she was entrusted with the editorship of various youth magazines as well as membership of the editorial board of a number of publishing houses. She was even at one time president of the Union of Yugoslav Writers. She was a prolific writer, particularly of children’s verse,in which she wrote simply and directly of both traditional lyric themes and of the war, reinforcing public perceptions of that era. Two features of her verse are particularly praised in the 1972 anthology of Serbian women’s poetry quoted in the previous chapter: she is described by the critic Borislav Mihailovid-Mihizas blending traditional lyricprosodywithartistic verse, and he also admires “the lucid daring of her open and sincere words”. The othercomment, by DuSan MatiC, articulates a persistent, traditional perception: “The poetry of Mira AleEkoviC, although it is feminine poetry, is not sentimental ... in several places there are lines which are both soft and tender, but at the same time they carry in themselves the necessary moral firmnessand they are sufficient to justify and illuminate the femininity of her poet1y.”2~Once again the reader is left to determine what exactly “femininity” means to the commentator, but it evidently includes sentimentality and a lack of “moral firmness”. That AleCkoviC’s verse is often sentimental is undoubtedly true, as may be seen from the title of a selection of her verse for schoolspublished in 1972: P a m . Da Zivot buck Zjubav (Poems. That Life Should Be Love). The introduction to this volume 212

by Desanka Maksimovie is generally more informative, particularly about the traumatic effect on the poet, as a child of 15, of seeing corpses for the first time in Belgrade in 1939, an experience which inspired her to write her first mature poem, protesting against the senseless waste of war. The fact that by 1984 she had published 25 volumes (of poetry, prose, and verse for children) in itself suggests that AleCkoviC wrote with an ease that was not always to her advantage-her verse can often be banal. She can hardly be blamed for wishing to expressthe trauma of her personal experience of the war, but there was a tendency, which she did not always resist, for her work to fit too easily into the required form, to mold itself too closely to the historical moment. Other women poets of AleCkoviC’s generation published in the period under discussion, but none approached the public presence of AleCkovit, let alone that of her model and teacher Desanka Maksimovid. We shall return to these poetslater, in a more detailed discussion of the 1972anthology.

Frida Filipovit For the majority of women who tried to establish themselves aswriters in this period, and to follow a different path from that of Maksimovie and AleCkovie, there was a widespread sense of being at a disadvantage as compared totheir male counterparts. This was certainly the experience of Frida Filipovie, who was born in Sarajevo in 1913, but settled in Belgrade after graduating there in 1936. After the Second World War she worked as ajournalist and published a substantial number of short stories, mostly in magazines, and several volumes of prose. She is of interest for our present purposes becauseof her concentration on the lives of women and their ordinary, private experience. Her first published volume, Price o h i (Stories about Women, 1937), set the tone for her later work. It consists of 19 stories, on the whole very short, focused on female characters in a particular situation, characterized by a discreet irony, and showing an ability to enter into the lives of women from a range of different 213

backgrounds. The volume waswellreceivedby the critics, who praised her sensitivity and sure artistic instinct. FilipoviC published a second volume of stories,Do dunus (Until Today), in 1956. It is worth quoting the end of one of these stories, ‘zensko’(Female),written in 1940, for its articulation of enduring patriarchal attitudes. The story focuses on a youngmother who hasjust given birth to her first baby, evoking sensitively her exhaustion, apprehension, and bewilderment. When her husband tiptoes awkwardly in to see her and the baby, she remarks that he has been drinking and he responds, “Well, I had to buy a round. Even if it’s a girl, everyone congratulated me ...” Her mother-in-law’s thoughtful care and obvious delight in the baby begin to restore the young woman’s confidence after the effort of the birth. She gazes tenderly at her husband: He was sitting on a chair, his elbows resting on his knees, head bowed, so that his thick, dark hair fell over his forehead. He reached for his cigarettes, but, glancing at the cradle, put them back in his pocket. He seemed thoughtful, worried. Suddenly he raised his head, looked at his wife with an obscure smile, patted her hand ands a i d “Ah well, what can youdo! It’sjust ourluck!” At first she didn’t understand the meaning of these ordinary words, calmly spoken. But she felt something inside her tear, her joy and hope ebb away, like blood from a bad wound, and the gray everyday, ordinary life of the wife of an insigniflcant man, filled with work and anxiety about tomorrow, closed overher once again. She looked at her husband steadily, her eyes dry and sad. He turned his head away, as though guilty. Suddenly weary again, she closed her eyes and lay backon thepillow. “What is it, what is it?”, she heard her mother-in-law’s voice as in a dream. uwhy are you both so downcast? Don’t be ungrateful, my child. The next one will be ason, God willing.” Ah, the new mother understood, it’s because she’s a girl! That’swhy he’s like this! “Even though it’s a girl, they all congratulated me”-she recalled his words of a short time before. And at that moment, incapable of thinking, of analyzing that injustice, that senseless insult to her and her child-the young woman felt a great weight of prejudice, as old as the world, roll onto her chest, heavy as a mountain. Offended in her barely formed pride as a young mother, humiliated in her newly born dignity as a life-giver,for a moment she wished not to be, to disappear, together with the little femalebeing which she had that day brought joylessly into the world.=

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The controversy between the ‘realists’ and the ‘modernists’ in the and several Serbian poets attained a European presence, the most prominent among them being Vasko Popa (1922-91) and, later, Ivan V. LaliC (1931-96). Poetry continued to play an important part in the cultural life of the country and to command awider readership than in mostWest European countries. Nevertheless, the great majority of literary production was prose and for many years a significant proportion of it was concerned with the war. Novels, short stories, and films about the war, particularly about the struggles and ultimate success of the Partisans, abounded, encouraged by the vital importance of the Partisan story as the legitimizing ‘creation myth’ of the new Yugoslavia. Among these abundant works, which cover a great range of topics and approaches and include some subtle questioningof widely held assumptions, there is one modest contribution by a woman writer, Danica Lala JevtoviC (born 1930), entitled Odbegla (The Runaway). The novel focuses on a group of children, refugees, who make their way in a column to a center where they are housed. Told from the point of view of one of the children, it is an internalized account of the bewilderment and terror of war for those caughtup in it with no way of making senseof their experience. The writer uses symbolsand associations to convey the girl’s emotional world, beyond the real and rational, shaped by fear, isolation, hope, the innocence of a child growing up abruptly in an atmosphere of terror. A poet of this generation, also forgotten today, Milena JovoviC (born 1931) wrote spontaneous verse about her native village and was regarded as one of the most ‘authentic’of Serbian village writers. 1950s produced some excellent poetry,

Jara Ribnikar Among the prose writers who established themselves in the 1950s and 1960s there are two important women with an enduring reputation: Jara Ribnikar (born 1912) and Svetlana Velmar-JankoviC (born 1933).While Ribnikar published steadilythroughout the period, and well into the 1970s, Velmar-JankoviCachieved prominence in the 215

1980s and, particularly with the publication of two novels, in the 1990s. Her work will therefore be considered later.Jara Ribnikar was

born in what was to become Czechoslovakia. Having settled in Belgrade, she participated actively in the National Liberation War from 1941. After the war, she was one of the only womento hold the position of main editor in a publishing house Uugoslavija) and to be elected president of the Serbian PENClub. She began by writing verse, I d u d a n i , nodi, dani (The Days, The Nights, The Days G o By, 1952), under the pseudonym ‘DuSanka Radak’, but quickly turned her attention to prose. She has been a prolific presence in contemporary Serbian literature since her first collection of stories Devetog d a n a (On the Ninth Day, 1953). Perhaps her best-known work isher three-part novel Ja, ti, mi (I, You,We, 1967) which has been translated into several languages. After texts dealing with the war and communist revolution, in this and later works Ribnikar takes a particular interest in the urban underworld, basing her plots on court cases and newspaper reports, but entering into the minds of her characters, particularly at moments of crisis in their lives. She is especially concerned with individuals who feel rejected and marginalized. One of her most popular works, and arguably her finest, is Jan Nepomucki (first published 1969, then in a reworked version in 1978) which deals with the October Revolution. The novel has a complex texture, shifting from Prague before the First World War to Russia during the Revolution and civil war, following the fortunes of the eponymous hero and his charismaticbrother, Mihailo, who dies leaving Jan to care for his Russian family as well as Jan’s own wife and daughter who remained in Prague, cut off by the war. The brothers are musicians and the timeless theme of a commitment to musicand art in general acts as a counterpoint to the chaos and destruction of twentieth-century history, shifting the painstaking documentary context of the novel onto a different imaginative plane.The second version of the novel, which Ribnikar describes as “a second variationon the theme of Jan Nepomucki”, succeeds admirably in conveying a sense of a life story which is open-ended, about which there would still be much to be said and from various angles. As such it is an innovative text of exceptional freshness.In the author’s own words: “In 216

its unfinished nature and its unclear, uncertain lines, this book is often frighteningly close to life. Document merges into fiction. The photograph dissolves into mist. It takes a great effort to capture life in flight. As a rule all one sees is the outstretched hand, seeking. That hand is the only thing in which we can believe.”Z7

Svetlana Velmar-JankoviC Svetlana Velmar-Jankovid (born 1933) has been a presence on the literary scene in Belgrade since her first novel, 02iljak (The Scar)which deals with the war years in Belgrade-was published in 1950, but she attained a new prominence in the 1980s and 1990s. In the intervening years,as one of the editors of the literarymagazine KnjiZeunost (Literature), and later of the publishing house Prosveta, and writer of many literary essays and introductions to collections of poetry, she commanded respect as a meticulous, well-informed, and perceptive analyst. These qualities characterize her second published work, a volume of essays, Suwemenici (Contemporaries, 1968), which was awarded the Isidora Sekulid Prize. The same qualities are also evident in the creative prose works which mark a newera in her development. In 1981 she published an unusual collection of stories, DwtoZ, which immediately attracted media attention, and the prestigious Ivo Andrid Award. The stories are all connected with the Dordol district of Belgrade, where the author grew up. There is a sense in which Velmar-JankoviC may be said, in this volume, to be involved in a kind of dialogue with the past similar to the one which shaped Desanka Maksimovid’sI Seek C h c y . The stories bring to life characters and legends associated with particular streets in a way that conveys a sense of layers of history in the shadows of the contemporary city, ever present and accessible to the attentive ear. It also suggests that such attention tohistorymayreveal truths different to those conventionally handed down. A beautifully crafted and illustrated volume in the same vein, Vrdur (1994), tells of legends and stories associated withthe district of Belgrade of that name, in which the author was born. In 1990 Velmar-Jankovid published another 217

kind of dialogue, this time with the present in the light of the past. Written against the intensifying darkness of the riseofMiloSeviC, Lugurn (1990)28-whichwaswidelyacclaimed in Yugoslavia and awardedsomeof the most prestigious literary prizes in 1991-is a product of the new political climate following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. It is an understated, subtle account of the distortions in human relationships engendered by social upheavals. It bridges the wide gap between post-war communist rule and pre-war society in Yugoslavia by opening up previously taboo questions about the nature of the war in Yugoslavia and the meaning of ‘collaboration’ during the occupation. Tracing the life of a middleclass woman whosehusband was executed by the communist authorities, and who is obliged after 1945 to live with her two children in a small part of their large flat in Belgrade, it reveals the complex misunderstandings and false perceptions resulting from social divisions, resentments, and revolution. The first-personnarrativetakes the form of reminiscences, focusing on discrete moments of particular emotional and psychological intensity which are all equally vivid, so that the narrative shifts back and forth from a ‘present now’ to a ‘now then’, and gradually builds up a coherent picture of &e narrator’s life from 1928to 1984. The narrative is interrupted and its perspective modified from time to time by the imagined parenthetic comments of the narrator’s daughter and a brief, intermittent, staccato commentary by one of the main charactersin the novel, a s h o p keeper who belongs to the underground communist movement before the war and then becomes a Partisan major with considerable power over the family. This voice is legitimized by the literary device of the journal having been left to him in the narrator’s will. This in turn is justified by the whole underlying movement of the text, which aims to restore a disrupted balance in the interests of truth, justice, and human dignity. From the point of view of women’s writing, the novel is ofparticular interest as it describes the experience of seventy years through the eyes of a woman marginalized, firstby her role as middle-class wife with a dominant husband who assumed the right to make decisions for her, and then by her position as the dispossessed bourgeois widow of a discredited ‘public enemy’. 218

Velmar-JankoviC’s nextnovel, Badno (BottomlessPit, 1995), focuses on the life of the nineteenth-century Serbian ruler Prince Mihailo ObrenoviC. Presentedin the form of afictionaldiary, the author enters into the spirit of the times and the contemporary language with such meticulous care that many readers have been surprised to discover that the work is not an authentic document. The extraordinarily enthusiastic reception of the work suggests a deep need among people throughout Serbia, at a time of international isolation and vilification following the catastrophic Yugoslav wars of the 199Os, to look again at their past and find in it resources of a new, unbombastic, restrained dignity, away of regaining respect for their leaders and themselves.

Grozdana OlujiC WhileRibnikar and Velmar-JankoviCwere graduallyestablishing their reputations, the onlyYugoslavwoman prose writer to make such an impact in the 1960s that her work was translated into several European languages was Grozdana OlujiC (born 1934), whose works belong to a particular era and have since been virtually forgotten. OlujiC’s first novel, IzZet U ne60 (Excursion to the Sky, 1958), and particularly her second, Gkmam m.ljubav (I Vote for Love, 1963), were greeted as literary sensations for their fresh immediacy and exuberance in their evocation of contemporary life in Yugoslavia. OlujiCwas comparedtoFranqoiseSagan “for her brilliantflashes ofsteely wit”.m These works may be seen as the beginning of a youthful reaction to all the rhetoric and myth-making of the Partisan era: a refusal to be taken in by any ideology or manipulated by politicians. Excursion to the Sky is a first-person narrative, told by the cynical 22-year-old heroine, Minja. For her, life has little purpose and there areno ethical guidelinesor moral codes whichmean anything toher. She drifts in and out of relationships until she finds she is pregnant and the medical student father insists on having the child. They live in great poverty and then the young man, sick with TB, is killed in an accident. Minja is left, bewilderedand alone, but with a growing sense of 219

the value both of her loss and her unborn baby. These two novels have a fresh vigorthat mark their author out radically as the voice of a new generation. Her other twonovels tend to be seen today as somewhat forced and superfcial. Ne budi zaspab pse (Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, 1964) is based on a newspaper report of a suicide pact between two young people who believed that love could not be preserved within marriage. The story is related by the young man who survived. It is a complicated story in which the facts of the case are only gradually piecedtogether. The narrator's tone is not unlike that of the narrator of Excursion to the Sky in its casual cynicism.Divlje seme (Wild Seed, 1967)%Ooffers a new angle on the war and its aftermath in that its central character is a war orphan obsessed withthe need to know whoshe is by finding her parents. In this case the author uses a different technique to convey the immediacy of the young woman's thought processes: she is addressed throughout in the second person. So, for example, the novel opens with a sentence typical of the basic world-view of Olujid's main characters: "Tomorrow you're going to wake up and you won't feel anything. You've learned to wake up, you've learned to forget the taste of dreams, if that means anything, if anythinghasmeaning."31Thisdevice-whichpermits the author to see the world from the main character's point of view and yet to have some insight into the minds of the other characters-is well handled, but remains anot altogether successful experiment.

Anthology of Women Poets At the sametime,severalwomenpoets had establishedapublic presence sufficient to warrant their inclusion in the anthology of women's poetry that has already been mentioned. Sqbske pesnikinje od Jefimije do dunas (Serbian Women Poets from Jefimija until Today) was published in Belgrade in 1972. Edited by a secondary school teacher, Stevan Radovanovit, who had noticed an imbalance in the representation of women writers in Serbian cultural history,it represents a serious effort to give the poets included in the anthology a clearer presence in the public perceptionof that history. At the same 220

time, the editor’s approach is entirely traditional.In his postscript he explains his purpose in publishing the anthology: “Isthere not, even today, acertain lack of faith, a restrainedapproach towards ‘women’s creativity’? Have attitudes towards women writers changed appropriately in the present fundamentally altered circumstances? ... The intention of the editors is to disclose a n d draw attention [my emphasis] to several of our women poets who are insuffkiently known or unjustly forgotten.”32 Not surprisingly, in the interest of giving the poets included in the anthology credibility, the postscript stresses the enduring patriotic themes running through their work. It is interesting-and typical-that the editor, if somewhat apologetically, includes some traditional songs, but these are all songs in the heroic mold, sung by “blind women singersfor whom the tragedy of their enslaved people was greater than their personal tragedy”: there is no mention of the whole lyric tradition and its vital counterpointing of the epic mode. The introduction to the anthology also reinforces traditional attitudes to women and establishes an ‘appropriate’ framework for reading their work Serbian women poets have alwaysbeen inclined to the historic consciousness of the community ... The first of them, like Angels in the Serbian monasteries, their heads tenderly bent, as though bowing before the fate of their faith and their people, devoted themselves with almost religiousdedication to the cursed path of their society through life. As the people developed and in times of rebellion and wars a freedom-loving consciousnesswas born, women poets wove lines for liberty, or, in the nineteenth century, with their feelings and the manner of their singing ... bound the wounds of heroes, as though continuing the dream of freedom, never losto r i n t e r n ~ p t e d . ~ ~

The anthology includes poems by 32 women, nine of whom published between 1945 and 1972. Of these, Florika Stefan, Gordana Todorovid, Mirjana Vukmirovid,and Mirjana Stefanovid wereborn in the 1930s. (Dara Sekulid, perhaps the best known of this generation, is considered in Chapter 8.) Florika Stefan, born in 1930, represents one of the finest aspectsof Yugoslavintegration in that, like the great poet Vasko Popa, she came from a Romanian-speaking familyin the northern province of Banat and her first poems were writtenin Romanian. Her first volume in Serbo-Croat appeared in 1956 and she 221

published regularly thereafter. One of her early poems, included in the anthology, echoes the theme of Frida FilipoviC’s story ‘Female’: entitled ‘Tako sam se rodila’ (That’s How I Was Born), the poem describes the narrator’s father turning his head away on seeing that his baby was a girl. Several other poems identify strongly with the destiny of women, particularly the peasant women of her native rei Zene mogporekla’(Girls and gion, as for example‘Devojke Womenfrom My Birthplace).Gordana TodoroviC, born in 1933, published four volumes of poems between 1954 and 1973. Her first poems, awarded the prestigious Branko Prize,give the impression of a young woman, damaged forever by her youthful exposure to death and destruction in war,tryingtowork her experience into verse, searching for contact with others and for enduring human values. Her subsequent works demonstrate a growing confidence and delight in language and rhythms, incorporating unusual images and coinages which take on a playful, intricate life of their own. Mirjana VukmiroviC, born in 1936, has not merited an entry in the otherwise comprehensiveJugoslovenski knji2euni kksikon (Yugoslav Literary Lexicon) published by Matica srpska in 1984. She published two volumes of poetry in the 1960s and is described by the poet Stevan Raitkovie as “[almong our few women poets ... the freest from traditionalism, the closest to real modern expression and attitude.”34 Mirjana Stefanovie, born in 1939, published three volumes of poetry by 1973, the first of which is marked also by irony, defiance,and a playful conin her fidence in the medium of verse, which gradually gives way, later volumes, to a reflective melancholy and an endeavor to evoke what she describes as “physiological states, sensual sensationsand the most general emotions. They themselves, not their causes or conseq u e n c e ~ . ”StefanoviC ~~ also published, in 1961, a short prose work, Odlomci iz izmisZjenog dneonika (Fragments of an Invented Diary), a young woman’s perspective on friendship and love and the process of discovering and adapting to the adult world. With its youthful flavor, humor, and vigor, the work shares common features with the popular genre of so-called ‘jeans-prose’to be discussed below.A poet of this generation not included in the anthology is Jasna Melvinger, born in 1940. She had published five volumes of verse by 1972 and 222

had acquired a reputation for investing “the most various forms of life with a gentle, lyrical intonation”.s6 The volume she published in 1972, Pet sestam (Five Sisters), takes the form offive aging sisters’ disjointed, fragmentary thoughtsabout their lives. Written in dialect, the poems convey a strong sense of connection to the local landscape, its customs and characters. Only one of the last three poets included in the anthology, Nada Serban,born in 1948, has not found her place in the LiteraryLexicon. One of her poems, published here, is entitled ‘U weme nesigurno’ (In UncertainTimes) and dedicated to Jefimija. It evokes the strength that the poet derives from a senseof continuity, away, through her verse, of tapping into the power of the silence in which the medieval Jefimija woveher own poems. Tanja Kragujevit, born in 1946, and Darinka Jevrit, born in 1947, may be seen as pointing the way forward for numerous new voices which began to make themselves heard in the 1970s, free, finally, of the burden of being immediately read first and foremost as women. It remains, however, a striking fact that the comments on all of these poets,the quotations fromreviews included in the anthology by way of introduction to each poet, and the entries in the Lexicon are all writtenby male commentators.

The New Feminism .

In the late 1970s major changes began to occur in the way women perceived themselves and their role in society. In her study ‘The New Feminism in Yugoslavia’ Barbara Jantar gives a detailed account of women both in the workforce and in society as a whole in Yugoslavia.37 The situation was common to all the Eastern-bIoc countries and has been thoroughly documented in numerous studies. She describes women’s gains in Yugoslav society as typical of the political and economic advances of women in post-war communist societies, and indeed in all industrializing societies. She begins her essay with some basic statistics: the underlying context is represented by the fact that in the 1920s, 80 per cent of the population of Yugoslavia worked on the land, whileby 1978,70 per cent lived in towns. In 223

1923 women made up roughly 20 per cent of the workforce. Surprisingly, this had not changed radically by 1954, when the figure Was still only 24 per cent. In the 1970s it was 35 per cent, and by 1979 some 53 per cent of all economically active women betweenthe ages of 20 and 55 were employed, 46 per cent of them in unskilled jobs. As elsewhere the mass entry of women into the job market led to the feminization of certain job categories and the concentration of women in three main areas: in education, culture, and social welfare, women constituted 56.3 per cent of all employees, in public services and administration 42 per cent, and in trade and catering 41.8 per cent. With the acquisition of full political rights women in Yugoslavia could participate in self-managing institutions in a similar way to women active in political bodies in the industrialized countries. The facts of women’s involvement reveal a characteristic ‘pyramid’ effect familiar from other communist societies: women were regularly well represented at lower levels, but decreased in number as the bodies became more important. SO, for example, women made up 34 per cent of all delegates inthe Yugoslav ‘basicorganizations of associated labor’, but only 7.2 per cent in local community bodies. In 1985 there was not a single woman on the Central Committee Presidium and only one, Milka Planinc, on the Federal Executive Council.38 In other words, women had gained full civil and political rights and access to education, but they were still along way from having equal status in jobs andsocial and political positions. In the late 1 9 7 0 ~in~various countries of Eastern Europe, but particularly among Yugoslavs who were ableto travel freely in the West, there began to be a growing awareness of the gap betweenthe theory and the reality of women’s socialand political equalityand, with it, a new interest in modern feminism. The specific impetusin Yugoslavia was provided by the International Year of Women in 1975 and a conference organized the followingyear by the Marxist Centers of Slovenia and Croatia under the title: ‘The Social Position of Women and Family in Self-Managing Socialism’. Thiswas the first time in the experience of those present that a workshop had been convened to discuss just onetopic: feminism. Papers covered a range of aspects of modem feminism: from a typology of feminism and feminist atti224

tudes to the family, to the aims and methods of modern feminism and questions of equality, equal rights, and emancipation. There was not much reaction to the meeting or to the subsequent publication of the papers. However, for some of the women involved it provided encouragement for their further, more active theoretical and intellectual interest in feminism.Theybegan to exchangeideas with other women in Yugoslavia, to read feminist literature, and to travel, becoming better acquainted with European and American feminist thinking in the process. Then, in the autumn of 1978, an international conference ‘The Women’s Question-A New Approach’, was held in the Students’ Cultural Center in Belgrade. It had no official backing, but included participantsfromFrance, WestGermany, Hungary, Poland, Italy, and the United Kingdom. In addition to lectures and discussions there were films and exhibitions of art. The organizers, Dunja BlaZeviC and zarana PapiC, had planned four sections, but most participants were drawn to the first topic: ‘women, capitalism,revolution’.Theyconsideredtheoretical and practical problems in the development of the feminist movement in the West and compared them to the situation in Yugoslavia. Among the broad conclusions of the conference was the assessment that Yugoslavs generally did not see that there was a ‘woman’s problem’ in their country, and the contrasting view that self-management had failed to liberate women. A feminist historian from Croatia, Andrea Feldman, described the effect of the conference on those who took part: “It is obvious that the experience of this meeting was new and surprising for all the women participants fromYugoslavia. But it was extremely i n ~ p i r i n g . ”The ~ ~ response in the state media was “ridicule, an attempt to trivialize the meeting, and accusations of female intellectual aggressivene~s”.~~ The Yugoslav participants reacted by publishing serious accountsof the meeting in various newspapers, although they encountered some opposition from editors. The official line of attack in h a (Woman) and the standing Conference on Women of the CommunistParty was the familiar one that there was no ‘women’s question’ apart from the class question and that, consequently, feminism had nothing to offer, promising a solution for a problem that did not exist. Such a dismissal of their activities did not 225

diminish the enthusiasm of women from all over the country who had suddenly discovered so much common ground and an urgent focus for their energies. Women’s groups wereset up inall the main urban centers to discuss feminist theory, and women began to write, to appear on television, and to address public meetings on issues they felt to be important. They continued to encounter crude attacks, with the result that only a few intrepid individuals made a real impact with their writings. Apart from the scholarly work of Lydia Sklevicky, which we have already discussed, there were two important popular volumes,alsopublished in Zagreb in the sameyear as Sklevicky’sessays:SlavenkaDrakuliC’s Smrtni @ p i fminizma (The 1984), a collection of stimulating, often Deadly Sins of Feminism, outrageously funny newspaper articles,and vjeran KatunariC’s h k i ems i civilizacpz smdi (The Female Eros and the Civilization of Death, 1984), dealing with a wide range of sociological, psychological, and philosophical issues relatedto the ‘women’squestion’.KatunariC offers a particularly useful analysis of the persistence of patriarchalism in Yugoslav society after the Second World War,a state of affairs compounded in hisview by the fact that patriarchalism was incorporated into the communist form of government: “In the authoritarian conscience, the woman is located in the family as in its vital center. She is in the first place a mother and everything is done to conserve and maintain this modelof woman fromde~truction.”~~ In her discussionof the periodBarbaraJanCaridentifiesfive propositions which may be distinguished as central toYugoslav feminist thinking in the 1980s: i) the history of the women’s movement should be seen as autonomous and separate from the struggle of the working class; ii) while the contribution of women to the National Liberation Strugglewas remarkable and essential, it was dogmatically organized-this dogmatism led eventually tothe subordination of the women’s movement in Yugoslavia to the bureaucratic interests of post-war Yugoslavia; iii) women’s experience was common to all industrializing and industrialized societies; iv) far from uprooting traditional patriarchalism, industrialization had in fact produced a new and perhaps more virulent formof it; v) the use of the mass media to market products and the treatment of every human exchange as a 226

commodity had played a significant role in ‘keeping women in their pla~e’.~*Janhr concludes her essay with the suggestion that the lives of women in Yugoslavia had k e n more rapidly transformed overthe preceding twenty yearsthan those of their counterparts in the industrialized West: “In a single generation, Yugoslav women have moved from their place in traditional agrarian communities, capable of defending their household and land with a gun in their hand, to finding themselves as independent wage-earners in a society where the mass media exploit their new and still uneasy status to sell any and every product for mass consumption.” The new feminism had taken stock of this profound change and by doing so offended both the official ideology and the wartime generation’s deepest sensibilities.43 The effect of these new perceptions and the emergence of a new generation of women with the confidence to question all accepted opinions and values in their light was a fundamental change in the way women who came into contact with these ideas saw themselves and their role in society. A number of new initiatives came into being: women’s support groups, such as the SOS hotlines for battered women and children; feminist discussion groups; women’s magazines and the beginnings of university courses of women’s studies. There were now severalfora in which women could develop their ideas in a serious environment, without having to contend with the ridicule and contempt that had often beset the work of their predecessors. In this fundamentally changed atmosphere, new women-centered writing could emerge and be paid serious critical attention. The difference made by the presence in cultural life of women critics, literary historians, and commentators with a thorough knowledge of European and American feminist ideas cannot be overestimated. While it is clearly the case that not all women writers see their work as in any way determined by their gender and resent the kind of ghettoization theyfeel such a critical emphasis implies,there areothers who feel thatthe new atmosphere offers them the freedom towrite womencentered narratives in the knowledge that they will be understood by women critics who have developed their ideas in the same intellectual climate as themselves. 227

BiljanaJovanovid In this radicallyaltered climate a new kind of women’s writing began to emerge. The first writer to appear in Belgrade whose work may be described in such a way was Biljana Jovanovie (1953-96). Her first novel, Puda Avula (AvalaIsFalling) was published in 1978. It was greeted as an example of a kind of text some critics had described as ‘jeans-prose’ because of the narrative style: a first-person narrator’s rebellious, youthful tone, colored by adolescent slang. It is indeed, like other workswhichmay be characterized in this way, about a young person’s search for her own identity. The fact that the narrator is a young woman doesnot of course fully definethe work, but it does introduce a new element which deserves attention on its own terms. Looked at from this point ofview this work, together with Jovanovie’s second novel, Psi i ostuli (Dogs and Others, 1980), may legitimately be read as examples of women-centered narratives sharing common features with many works ofEuropean and, particularly, American contemporary literature, in which women begin to consider their marginalization, their status as ‘other’ in a new way. One instance is the way in which the narrator of such worksrelates to her body: where Western society has tended to reduce the female body to a commodity, the new women’s writing addresses the issue of female sexuality from a different perspective.The narrator of AvuZu Is Fulling, Jelena Belovuk, is seen to use her body as a wayof understanding herself and her position in the world: her provocative behavior and style of dress defy socialconvention and give her a kind of power she is not always sure she wants. Where Jovanovid’s novel differs from many other womencentered texts is in its lack of progression: her heroine’s playing with her body and with people around her does not lead to any revelation or fundamental change in her position in the world. She tries one course of action after another, but in the end is left with no sense of direction or purpose in her life. Dogs and O t h s , which hasbeen described as “a psychological portrait of a contemporary young woman for whom emotional maturing is impossible, a woman who is in fact emotionally disabled and therefore violently resists the world as she sees it, experiencing it as a tan228

gle of lies, evil and loneliness”.& The first-person narrator gives a rebellious, defiant, angry account of her troubled relationship with her mother and complex interactions with her brother, who is unstable and eventually kills himself-as had their father, who is referred to only as “that man”-and with some other characters who play an important role in her life, including Milena with whom she has a brief physical relationship. As in the earlier novel the text is shaped by the narrator’s searchfor her sense of self, whichshe tries to build up by inventing storiesabout her childhood and telling them to her grandmother, who then invents versions of her own. The text has a staccato quality, with a varied tone as various characters dominate: Milena, for instance, has a particularway of expressing herself. The narrator has the same skeptical, distrustful attitude to the world as Jelena in Avulu Is Fulling, but nevertheless cares for her brother and grandmother. It is a bleak text about a young girl who cannot find her place in the world. As the critic Jasmina LukiC points out in a closeanalysisof the two novels,“BiljanaJovanoviC’s heroines are tragic figures who invest their energy in shaping an authentic existence for themselves, but they are always defeated, either by the limitation and stupidity of their surroundings or the lack of emotional support whichtheyvainly expect to receive from those surroundi n g ~ . ’ LukiC ’ ~ ~ ends her discussion of the two novels with a general statement ofJovanoviC’s importance in the contemporary cultural history of the region: The refusal to be suffocated by the “typical stenchof life”, which we may identifir as the fundamental motivation for the behavior of Biljana Jovanovic‘s heroines, assumes the courage to raise many disagreeable questions: from issues concerned with their social surroundings to questionsof the morality which justifies the repression of those we recognize as dlfferent or weaker than ourselves. These questions are clearly articulated in these works because the heroines pose them from the margins in which they are themselves doubly marked, by belonging to their generation, but also by belonging to their gender. In her novels Avah Is Fulling and Dogs and Otlm Biljana Jovanovif was the first to recognize that double marginalization as an exceptionally important literary theme, therebyopening up a new space of experience which we can only discuss adequately ifwe recognize the problem of gender. From this point of view her novels retain a particular importance as one of the turning points inour contemporary literary produ~tion.~~

LukiC’s commentary is an example of the new potential for what may be described as ‘womencentered reading’. That other, more traditional kinds of reading were still prevalent among male commentators may be seen from an interesting essay in the commemorative section of the magazine Pro-Feminu dedicated to Biljana JovanoviC’s work and tragically short life. Ljiljana sop describes the impact of Jovanovid’s first novel, suggestingthat the sense of surprise it generated was best formulated by the writer Vidosav StevanoviC in his review: “In her writing there is nothing ‘feminine’, nothing sentimental, ‘mijam-esque’ [Mijana JakovljeviC,Mir-Jam], there is no tearfulness, sickliness, there are no kinds of surrogate^."^^ sop ends her essay by describing the reactions of two other Serbian male writers who have clearly understood Jovanovid’s work, suggesting that now, twenty years on, a reading such as StevanoviC’s was no longer possible.Nevertheless, JovanoviC’s third novel, DuSa, jedinicu mqu (My Soul, My One and Only, 1984), was greeted by critics as her most ambitious, which, assop points out, may simply have meant that she had expanded her material into what such critics might have considered as ‘male’-andgenerally more familiar-territory. In fact, the more traditional structure and content of the novel are arguably less ambitious than the two earlier works in that the latter were breaking new ground. My Soul, My One and Only concerns the fate of an extended Montenegrin familybetween the bombing of Belgrade in 1941 and the death of the central character, Ivan Kralj, in 1970. Focusing on one character or group after another, gradually revealingtheir personalities and their relationships with each other, the novel gives an impressive account of the dissolution of the traditional, patriarchal way of life under the pressure of the radical social disruption ofwar and revolution. In essence the novel concerns loss: from Ivan’s mother Milica’s sorrowful pickingthrough the wreckage of her home at the beginning, to Ivan’s own failed lifeand the disappearance of his son, representing the loss of a whole generation. Glimpses of the family’s former confidence and dignity are seen in the character of Ivan’s uncle, Simon,whose language and whole bearing still preserve something of the old ways and offer a haven to which younger members of 230

the family turn in times of need. Lacking the stability of Simon’s roots his nephews are exposed to the often destructive currents of the new post-war, urban world. Ivan is a weak personality who depends for emotional strength first on his lively, committed young communist wife, whom he betrays to the secret service, remainingin their crude and ruthless power throughout his life, and then on his son, for whom he cannot care and who grows into a petty criminal before deserting from the army and disappearing. Towards the end of his life Ivan tries to find a path towards more enduring values through the deeply Christian woman Marina, who had been a positive influence in the life of his son, but all that Ivan can discover is the final loss of his “one and only soul”. Jovanovit builds up a convincing picture of a society in flux and the fate of some of its most vulnerable members in that process. It is a subtleand compassionate account of a period that has been treated by many differentYugoslav writers in a variety of ways,and it acquires a fresh relevance the in era dominated by the newideologyof crude nationalism initiated by MiloSeviC, where the same ruthless, bullying tactics as those of the old secret serviceare used to control the population. The novel is an eloquent testimony to the squalid degeneration and failure which are the legacy of such manipulative societies. Jovanovie was an exceptionally talented writer who grounded her work in a thorough knowledge of the European literaryheritage and contemporary trends, and she was interested in the new possibilities opened up by contemporary literary theory and practice. This may perhaps be seen most clearly in JovanoviC’s dramatic works. It is a striking feature of theatrical life in Serbiaat the end of the twentieth century that there is a largenumber of women playwrights. Jovanovie is hardlytypicalof them: although three of her four playswere staged the reaction to them was muted and often clouded by misunderstanding. Jovanovid’s plays are deeply challenging, as is all of her writing. All of them are set in prison, real or symbolic: UZrike Mujnhof (1976) in the notorious German Stanheim, where members of the Red Brigade were held and tortured; h i U p,kuo pticu (Flying to 1982), concerns fear of the Yugoslav the Mountains, Like a Bird, prison island of Goli Otok where supporters of Stalin wereheld after 231

1948, a fear which makes a prison even of the characters’ home; C2 (1990) in the Yugoslav Central Prison-whose initials give the play its name-where political prisoners, Russian revolutionaries, and Interior Ministers from various periods meet; and Sobu nu Bosforu (Room on the Bosphorus, 1994), both prison and grave, a kind of purgatory in which torturers and tortured wait for deli~erance.~~ This last playwas published in the first issue of Pro-Feminu, the outstandingjournal on which the current study draws copiously. In a pointed article which closes the commemorative section of issue seven the journal’s main editor, SvetlanaSlapSak,expresses her disappointment that there had been no critical reaction to Jovanovid’s last, remarkable play, but acknowledges that ”Biljana Jovanovid, as a critic of nationalist ideology and politics, and as an expressly un-postmodern activist, had been simply ‘written out’ of Serbian literat~re”.~g Her last complex play, which SlapSak describesas “a verbal portfolioof colors”, has no place in the simplistic repertoire of the Serbian theater in the 1990s. For all the critical silencesurrounding her work, however, there is no doubt that Jovanovid’s death in 1996 deprived literature in the Serbian and Croatian languageof a rare talent.

Milica Mitit-Dimovska Belongingto the same generation, MilicaMidid-Dimovska (born 1947) declared her central focus with the publication of her first i (Stories about Women), in 1972. It collection of stories, Prize o h is worth noting that this was also the title of a collection published 35 years earlier by Frida FilipoviC. Filipovid was motivated by a similar sense of the marginalization ofwomen’s experience and, although her work was taken seriously by critics before the Second World War, there was little understanding of her concerns in the changed circumstances after the war. The climate in whichDimovska began her career was very different: while there were still those who could mock the portrayal of the ‘woman’s world’, as we have seen there was also the experience of a growing body of feminist writing in Europe and the United States which provided a con232

text for her work, even if she did not see herself as directly influenced by the theories or practice of feminism. More importantly, Dimovska is concerned less with women than with gender, the experience ofwomen as ‘other’, the socialroles and expectations imposed on women, but also on men. She also has the benefit of a generally more sophisticated approach to literature, drawing on the often playful techniques and irony of much postmodern writing and film to underminethe fundamental melancholy of her ‘woman’s world’. It was possible for critics to read Dimovska’s first collection of stones as an example of the dominant model of prose writing in Yugoslavia in the 1970s, focused on the everyday experience of people on the margins of society, unaffected by the grand schemes and mythologies of politics. Such fiction tends to use the language of a particular group or milieu to fix its narration in a specific context. In Dimovska’s work, however, dialogue is minimal, often poignantly banal, conveying the unbridgeable gap between an individual’s inner world, dreams and fantasies, and day-to-day reality. Another shared feature of collections of stories published at this time is that the individual pieces tend to be related on various levels so that they form a narrative whole. Staries about Women consists of ten short sketches forming two main groups with the same central character, a middle-aged woman with a distant, unfaithful husband and an equally distant, rebellious teenage daughter. The sketches gradually build up a fragmented picture of her unsatisfactory life from several angles, evoking complexrelationships in a few sentences. Typically the third-person narration is focused on the main character, so that her world is seen from her point ofview and the impression is created of a woman looking out at an inaccessible outer world from a role in which she is trapped by convention, circumstance, and her ‘own inability to assertherself. Dimovska’s expression is understated, conveying undercurrents of misery and misunderstanding. The wholevolumeevokes a woman’s world of unfulfilled lives, where individualslong silently for the simplest acknowledgment, where they have littlecontrol over their own destiny, but are the passive objects of social expectations, incapable themselves of knowing what they would like to be. 233

Dimovska’s secondvolume, Poznanici (Acquaintances,1980),develops the fragmented structure into a firmer wholein which the title has an ironic function, reducing the sexual relationship of the two main characters to the samelevelas their casual encounters with work colleagues or passers-by. The intricacy of the text emerges only gradually as the four selfcontained episodes are seen to lead towards the same incident, in which an old man diesin the street outside the officewhere the maincharacters are employed. The narrative is completed by the old man’s own account of the moment of his death. Interest is sustained in each separatecomponent and steadily increased by the realization that they are all connected in arbitrary and unpredictable ways. Ubme (Phantoms, 1987) has a similar structure. The central story is built up gradually by three different narrators: a virtually bed-ridden old woman-whose consciousness shifts between dream, memory, and the present with no clear boundaries-her son, and his wife, who take over the story, each from their own point of view. In this work the various threads are woven together even more intricately than in Acquaintances: themes left in the air in one section are taken up by a different narratorand the dream of the opening is elaborated as reality, so that gradually the pieces of the disjointed narrative fall into place and incomprehensible references acquire meaning. In addition to the purely technical pleasure of Dimovska’s assured command of her material, her technique conveys the underlying truth of the impossibility of communication and the isolation of individuals even withinthe family, whereno experience can be truly shared. Dimovska’s next workof prose fiction, Odmmvanje (Defrosting, 1991), with its unusual subtitle ‘Cosmetic Tales’, is described by the critic Jasmina Lukid as“her most significant to date”.50 Consistingof ten short stories of varying length, which focus on the lives of individual womenin a variety of socialsituations, this volume proves that Dimovska is a writer who manages a range of different tones and styles with great skill. Most of the stories observe the world through the eyes of a main character, not always a first-person narrator. The main focus of attention is the discrepancy between the central character’s thoughts, her expectations of the world, her dreams, and the mundane or isolated realityin which she lives her daily life. Some of 234

the situations described involve fantasy, such as the first piece, entitled ‘KoZa’ (Skin), in which the protagonist, Isidora, a typist, triesto keep the process of aging at bay with creams made in her kitchenlaboratory. In a dream she seesthat the secret of renewing the life of her skin is to rub her face with the placenta from a newborn baby. The result is disastrous and Isidora ends up in a mental hospital. Others involve extreme situations of violence, rape, and murder: in one, ‘Otrovna boja gledji’ (The Poisonous Color of Enamel), the main character is Miljana,a woman whose young daughter was raped and killed as she waited for her mother in the garden of the spa where Miljana works. The spa hosts literary symposia and the story skillfully handles levels of irony and reality, summed up in the factthat two of the meetings were devoted to the plausible topics of ‘Violence in Literature’ and ‘Gardens in Literature’. While all the stories concern women, some ofthem are shapedby the device of taking a cliche or stereotype to its literal extreme, while others dealwith realistic situations. The story which makesthe question of gender its central theme has an ambiguous title in the original: ‘U svome rodu’ (Among Her Own Kin/Kind ).51 The central character, Verica, is tIying to find an identity and a role through writing about her childhood, but cannot progress beyond a single sentencethat haunts her. She returns to her home in the hope of recreating the original experience, but encounas the question of why her cousin ters only more unsolved riddles, such ‘Doca’ refuses to accept her female gender, choosing instead to live like a man. Verica ends in despair, resolving to drown herself, feeling betrayed by everyone, including herself: “And, it had to be, she had betrayed herself, despised her armor, the gender to which she was destined for evermore.” She is saved, however, and, with irony typical of Dimovska,finds consolationfor the failureof yetanother attempted escape in the traditional saying that ‘Every woman has nine lives’. Jasmina Lukid concludes her essay on the work of Milica Mi&-Dimovska with the following summary of one of itsimportant aspects: One of the fundamental characteristics of ‘real’ prose was the endeavor to cast light particularly on the social margins as an area shaped to a great extent b e yond the control of society,52 and outside the dominant social and cultural codes. Milica MiCiC’s work in fact approaches the problem of the margin from 235

the opposite direction. She is not concerned with the social margins, but with women and characteristically female destinies. She thus places in the center of her fiction what is in fact the most numerous marginal group in every society, marginal from the point of view of money and power, and for that reason also from the point of view ofthe ability to control its own destiny. At the same time, it is a social group which is by no means free from social supervision;on the contrary, it is exposed to the pressure of rigid, clearly defined norms, which seekto determine not only outer forms of behavior, but also the relationship of the entire group to itself. Each individual is exposed to that pressure, as is the whole social group. In this important aspect of her fiction, it is precisely that relationship which Milica MiBC problematizes: the relationship of the individual to her social surroundings inwhich she has no possibility of adequate self-realization.That is one of the semantic planes on which this story about women ceases to be just a woman's story. Describingthe characteristically female destinies of her heroines Milica Mi&-Dimovska unmasks a general process of belittling the individual, undermining everything that gives a human life valueand meaning.53

MiCiC-Dimovska's most recent work is her fictionalized biography of her namesakeMilicaStojadinoviCSrpkinja. In the context ofDimovska'swork as awhole, it is another exampleof her womencentered focus. And, like that whole focus, it is also subversive in terms of the prevailing social norms. Dimovska's biography has particular relevance tothe present study because of its clear implication that Stojadinovie's exclusiveconcentration on acting and writing as a devoted patriot was misguided. In view of its publication date, 1997, it is impossible not to read the work as a dismissal of the exclusive preoccupation of Serbian politics in the 1990s under MiloSeviC, the promotion of the cause of Serbdom.

Other Women Writers Other significant women writers of thisgeneration include Olga Ostojit-Belta, Vida OgnjenoviC, and Judita salgo, all born in 1941. Olga OstojiC-Belta published her firstnovel, Smrt godtsnieg doba (The nineteen Death of a Season), in 1963. It describes a young woman of visiting her old family home, trying to piece together her identity from memories and anecdotes, and gives a modest but real sense of 236

consciouslyfemaleselfdiscovery.OstojiC-Beltahas continued to write novels and short stories, and her work is described as unusual in that it combines both a sharp intellect and a refined tenderness that avoids ~entimentality.~~ Vida OgnjenoviC is best knownas a productive, prize-winning playwright, a fieldin which she has acquired a considerable reputation as a meticulous craftswoman. Her plays are marked by an accomplishedsenseof theater, wit, intelligence, authentic detail, and close attention to language. Described by one drama critic, Jovan HristiC, as classical in their structure, the development of plot, and the way they treat individualthemes, Ognjenovit’s plays are nevertheless strikingly modern in their presentation, language, and ironic tone. More recently, she has also turned to prose, publishing volumes of short stories in 1996 and 1997, and a novel, Kucu m w i h mirisa (The House of Dead Aromas), in 1995. Judita salgo (1941-66) was a poet of great originality, inventiveness, and wit. Her unfinished novel, Put U BirobidZun (The Road to Birobidzhan), has an expressly female theme. One of the characters is Berta Papenheim, Freud’s Anna 0. The unsuccessful project of a new homeland for Russian and European Jews becomes here the symbolic image of every search for alternative spacein which a genuine freedom is sought.BertaPapenheiminvestigatesasylums for mentally illand hysterical women, recognizingin their illness a form of escape, one aspect of the search for ‘female ~ontinuity’.~~ Boba BlagojeviC (born 1946) published a collectionof short stories in 1975 and a highly original novel, Skdetnu Zudu (The Scarlet Oddball), in 1991, which considers the question of the ‘other’ from an unusual point of view: the first part is a young man’s self-analytical account of his life, while the second part is a literary text about him rejected by the main character as untruthful. The work is admirably written but hermetic. Other poets of this generation are Darinka JevriC (born 1947), who draws on the oral tradition, transposing it into a modem poetic idiom, and Radmila LaziC (born 1949), who often writes of women’s roles through an expressly female lyric subject,but with a measureof rational distance towards her own emotions. Her tone isconcise, lacking in obviouslyricism and has therefore been described as 237

“outside the framework of women’s poetry”.56 The important critic Svetlana SlapSak writes that “it is hard in the whole of modern Serbian poetry to find so much witty descriptiveness and sarcasm towards everything that resembles ‘enduring values’”.57Other women writers of this generation who have achieved a place in the most recent listing of Serbian writers are Vera Kolakovie (born 1948), who published a novel Skinite nuoZure, gospodine (Take Off Your Glasses, Sir) in 1967, which, like Ostojid-BelCa’s first work, maybe seen as an account of a journey of selfdiscovery, this time of a young woman going from the country to Belgrade to study and search for something, although she is not quite clear what. The novel, interestingly and concisely written, was well received at the time. She has continued to write novels and stories, frequently concerned with the destiny of women. Gordana Stosie (born 1945) writes largely autobioas her “unconventional graphical prose. What has been described treatment of some contemporary women’s themes (free love, sex, loneliness)” has earned her the reputation of “a SerbianErica J~ng”.~ Ljubica * Miletie (born 1948) is a poet steeped in the Christian tradition and Serbian history and culture. The next generation of poets includes a number of interesting voices. Mirjana BoZin (born 1952) tends to the understated, concise, miniature form, sometimes witty,always original, generally a brief idea expressed in one breath, as may be seen in her volume of Haiku poems Odgouor sunthorn zruku (Answer to the Sun’s Ray, 1990). Her volume of poems Bagfesno zuZete (ImmaculateConception,1991) suggests a newstrength and range, and a particularconcern with the destiny and, frequently welcome, solitude of women. Tatjana LukiC (born 1956) writes in an explicitly female voice. Gordana Cirjanie (born 1957), who has a wellestablished reputation as a sometimes hermetic poet, blends intimate themes with a rich framework of literary reference and a frequent dose of irony. Several newprose writersappeared in the course of the 1980s, such as Ljlijana Ninkovie (born 1954), with a collection of stories, hU ime ljubuvi (Woman in the Name of Love, 1989), and Ljubica ArsiC (born 1955), who published a witty collection of very short prose pieces, Prst U meso (A Finger in the Flesh, 1984). Hana Dalipi (born 238

1957) was greeted with particuIar interest as her autobiographical novel, Vikad U materini (Weekend at Mother’s, 1986) about her

childhood in a mixed Albanian/Serb family in Belgrade offered a new insight into such communities fromthe point of view ofa young woman.VesnaJankoviC (born 1958) is also an accomplished playwright, several of whoseworkshave been staged. Her first novel, ZZutnu knjiZicu (The Little Golden Book, 1985), is a warm but unsentimental account of life after the Second World War-particularlyas it affected women-told from the point of view of a child, while Stunari d w e (Tenants of the Soul, 1990) is a complex texture weavingtogether the livesofseveral generations.Jasmina TeSanovid (born 1954) stresseswomen’s experience in her prose works, Nevidljiva knjigu (Invisible Book, 1992) and Uegzilu (In Exile, 1994), and in her most recent novel, Sirene (Sirens, 1997) considers the question of and women’s bodies. incest as a form of violence against women Women havealso been contributing once againtoserious essaywriting, one of the strongest of whom is Branka ArsiC, whose philosophical essays draw, among otherthings, on the French tradition of ‘dcriture feminine’. Generally speaking,the 1980s offered acontext in which it was possible for women writers to publish workin a variety of styles and covering a wide range of themes. While there were undoubtedly still some critics for whom women writers were, perhaps unconsciously, not to be taken quite as seriously as their male counterparts, for the most part the gender of the author was no longer a significant issue. The kind of crude criticism of women authors on the basis of their gender that wehave come across in the course of this study is no longer conceivable. The new confidence with which women are now active in cultural life may be seen in the fact that a women’s publishing house was founded in 1994 by the novelist Jasmina TeSanovit and others; a Women’s Studies Center was established in Belgrade in 1993; and two admirable publications devoted to women’s issues have become a focus of serious analysis: the journal zenskt,studije (Women’s Studies), produced by the Center, and PreFmina, a substantial and admirably informative periodical. Thanks to these developments, the achieve239

ments of women in cultural life in the region are finally being restored to public awareness and future generations will have a firm foundation and acknowledged heritageon which to build.

Notes 1BoZinoviC, ‘Iz istorije Zenskog pokreta’, 145. 2 Ibid. 3 KovaEeviC, W m m of Y ~ p s h v i in a tlte National Libemtion War. 4 KovaCeviC, op. cit., 34. 5 Ibid., 67. 6 See JanEar, ‘The New Feminism in Yugoslavia’, in Yugoslavia in the I980s, ed. P. Ramet, for a description of Sklevicky’s work. 7 Sklevicky, ‘8ene Hrvatske U NOB’, 89. 8 Ibid., 108. 9 Ibid., 109. 10 AFZ official document 14/1616c, quoted in Sklevicky, op. cit., 111. 11Sklevicky, op. cit., 126. 12 Quoted in BleEiC, Kritidari o Desanki MaksimoviC, 13. 13 Bogdanovit, inBleEiC, 13. 14 PanduroviC, in BleEiC, 36. 15 BogdanoviC, in BleEiC, 2 6 16 SpiridonoviC-SaviC, ‘Gozbana livadi Desanke MaksimoviC’, in BleEiC, op cit., 51. 17 Ibid., 52. 18 Ibid., 53-54. 19 Ibid., 55. 20 Ibid., 57. 21 MaksimoviC, ‘Glasmonahinje’, Novepem, 47. 22. KreSimir Georgijevit, ‘Novi tonovi U poeziji DesankeMaksimoviC’, in BleEiC. 67. 23 NovakoviC, ‘“Ot&bino, tu sam!”DesankeMaksimovit‘. Knjlfevnost (1951), in BleEiC, 71. 24 Ibid., 72. 25 Radomovif, 141. 26 FilipoviC, Do danas,136-37. 27 Ribnikar,Jan NepOmucki, 214. 28 Translated by Celia Hawkesworthas f i m n p 29 OlujiC, An ExMmion to % h e Sky. 30 Translated by Gertrud Graubart-Champe. 31 OlujiC, WiZdSeed, 1. 32 RadovanoviC, op. cit., 221. 33 Ibid., 11. 34 Ibid., 184. 35 StefanoviC, Indigo, 3. 240

36 hvatiC,Jugohenski knfifeorrileksikon, 488-89. 37Jantar, ‘The New Feminism in Yugoslavia’. 38 Jantar, op. cit., 302-304. 39 Andrea Feldman, unpublished paper on ‘Feminism and Women’s Studies in Yugoslavia’, given at the second conference on Women’s Writing in Dubrovnik, 1988. 40 Jantar, op. cit., 209. 41 KatunariC, h k i ems i civilizaci’a smrti, 225. 42JanCar, op. cit., 210. 43 Ibid., 219. 44JovanoviC, Psi iostali. 45 LukiC, ‘Protiv svih zabrana’, 130. 46 Ibid., 133-34. 47 sop, ‘Dokje neznanogjunaka, Avala ne sme pasti’, 135 48 For an informative discussionof all the plays, see Jewemovic?, ‘Ram za sliku Ulrike Majnhof. 49 SlapSak, ‘Teatar minerala: Soba na Bosfonr Biljana JovanoviC’. 50 LukiC, ‘8ene 1 modeli Zenskosti U prozi Milice MiCiC Dimovske’. 51 The word rod means both ‘kin’ (family)and ‘gender’. 52 The term used by critics to identify thistrend in the 1970s is ‘stvarnosna prom’ as distinct from ‘realistitna’or ‘realistic’ prose. 53 LukiC, op. cit., 167. 54 KOj e h.Pisd izJugoshvije, 1994, Belgrade, ObiSanijez, 1994,181. 55 I a m indebted to Jasmina Lukie for this account of the novel. 56 KOj e h,op. cit., 132. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., 242.

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Beauty and t h Beast

The false beauty Slammed thedoor Finally As the Homeland And vanished Into History. So, the false beauty And the Homeland Have things in common: They bothleave behind them Boys W h o will die For them.

Ferida Durakovif, 1991

This study has so far followed the development of women's involvement in verbal art particularly in Serbia where, aswe have seen, conditions favorable tothe development of a literary culture existed first in theMiddle Ages, then among the Serbian communityin southern Hungary, and finally in the increasingly independent principality. Several of the women discussed in connection with their contribution to Serbian culture-particularly the process of modernization in the early years of the twentieth century-were in fact nativesof Bosnia Herzegovina. One of the most comprehensive accounts of the state of culture and education as they affected women in the region in those yearsis the richly illustrated almanac entitled Sqkinja, published in Sarajevo in 1913 (discussed in Chapter 5 ) . 243

The names of many women active the in territory of Bosnia Hemegovinahavealready been mentioned inpreviouschapters, thus demonstrating that the rigid separation of the cultural history ofthe whole region into its various components is inevitably artificial. Nevertheless, inview of the fact that Bosnia Herzegovina is nowan independent state, it is appropriate to examine something of the particular nature of its cultural development. This short chapter seeks to shift the focus to encompass the lands of Bosnia Herzegovina,on the southwestern edge of Ottoman Europe, which cameunder Habsburg rule from 1878 and were then, in 1918, incorporated into the new country that became Yugoslavia. There are several elements involved in the discussion of the cultural history of this region which make its presentation less coherent than that of the neighboring Serbian lands. In its broadest outlines, the general pattern of development is similar: the territories of Bosnia Herzegovina also saw a succession of more or less powerful states in the Middle Ages. The last Bosnian kingdom fell to the Ottoman advance in 1463 and the territory remained under Turkish rule until itsoccupation in 1878 and annexation to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1903. The most significant differencesare the evolution towardspolitical independence of the Serbian lands through the nineteenth century and the earlier incorporation of a section of the Serbiancommunity into the HabsburgMonarchy,with the largescalemigrations into southern Hungary at the end of the seventeenth century. The other obvious difference is the presence in Bosnia Herzegovina of a substantial Muslim population, for whom the Ottoman administration did not, of course, have the same connotation of an occupying force as it did for their Christian compatriots. In viewof this mixed population and its lengthy administration by foreign powers, there was no scope for the territory to develop a coherent sense of separate identity. And because its lands were populated by communities which looked naturally to their ‘parent’ cultures in lands both east and west, it was not possible for a single ‘story’ to develop to give it a real sense of shared history. The oral tradition, which flourished with special and enduring vigor in Bosnia Herzegovina, was a complex amalgamof Christian and Muslim tales

244

of valor and a particularly rich lyric tradition,nourished by the great artistic currents of Arabic, Persian,and Turkish verse. It is only now, with the independence resulting from the collapse of the second Yugoslavia in 1991, that a need is felt to give some COherent shape to Bosnian political and cultural history. But at the same time,the final make-upof the territory is far from clearand the enduring tensions, unresolved by the Dayton Accords, make the evolution of a shared account as yet impossible. The mainobstacletosuch an account is,of course, the mixed Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim population and the fact of the strong neighboring Catholic Croat and Orthodox Serb cultures, inevitably acting as a magnet to their co-religionists on the territory of Bosnia Herzegovina. As was mentioned in the Introduction, the systematicdivision of literary culture in the Serbian,Croatian-and Bosnian-language into national traditions is at best problematic and often arbitrary. The fact that, for example, a writer of Serbian nationality who lived all his life in Croatia, such as Vladan Desnica, a p peared on both the Serbian and the Croatian literature syllabus of Belgrade University is just one instance of the ultimate impossibility ofimposingarealsystem. The caseof the literature ofBosnia Herzegovina is the most problematic of all, as may be illustrated by winner of the situation of the best-known Yugoslav writer, Ivo AndriC, the Nobel Prizefor Literature in 1961. AndriC was born into a Catholic family in western Bosnia, but brought up in the mixed Muslim and Orthodox community of the small town of ViSegrad in eastern Bosnia, where in the nineteenth century the Drina river formed the frontier with Serbia. He attended school in Sarajevo which was then under Austrian administrationand studied in Zagreb, G m ,and Cracow in the Habsburg lands. After the First World War he took up a post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats,and Slovenes in Belgradeand served in various diplomatic postings in Europe. After the Second World War he settled permanently in Belgrade. The constant focus of AndriC’s work throughout his career was his native Bosnia, which he explored in depth, from a wide range of different standpoints. One important aspect of his treatment of Bosnia is his view of it as a microcosm of 245

the potential obstacles to communication between individuals caused by history and cultural divisions. The fate of Andrid’s work sincethe collapse of Yugoslavia encapsulates the difficulties which currently beset the cultural life of the region: in the early stages of the establishment of Croatia as an independent state one bookstore I visited in Zagrebhad placed AndriC in the ‘foreign’ writers section, though he has since been rehabilitated and his Catholic parentage has assured him a place as a Croatian writer. In Serbia, where he still ranks as the great ‘Serbian’ classic writer, one story from his large, multifaceted oeuvre, ‘Pismo iz 1920 godine’ (A Letter from 1920), has been used repeatedly in an attempt to prove the untenable proposition that people of different faiths cannot live together, and in justification of the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Muslim population in Bosnia Herzegovina in the war of 1992-95. At the beginning of the war in Bosnia Muslim extremists,in their turn, destroyed the statue of AndriC that had stood in Visegrad, the ,town in which he grew up, and to which he returne.d frequently and remembered in his works with exceptional understanding and affection. More recently, a lengthy work was published by one of the most prominent contemporary Bosnian literary criticsand historians which traces what its author sees as AndriC’s consistently negative portrayal of Muslim characters in his work.’ To the outsider, a reader mercifully free of the sensitivities of all three sides involved in these controversies, any interpretation of Andrid’s work that sees it from just one point of view cannot do justice to its richly provisional nature. To such a reader it seems impossible to generalize about the treatment of any national or cultural groupsin Andrid’s works: there are negative and positive individuals in all the communities, and the majority of hischaracters couldnot be describedas either, but rather as more or lessfallible human beingswhose fortunes are often shaped by historical events beyondtheir control. Throughout his life AndriC was committed to the idea of Yugoslavia, and it is as a Yugoslav writerthat he should most properly be remembered.At the present time of acute separation between the former components of that country, however, such a designationis all but meaningless. Far more than to the regions of Croatia or Serbia Andrid’s work islinked 246

to Bosnia, which, more than any other single writer, he explores in l all its historical and cultural complexity. It is a s o r r o ~ paradox, therefore, that AndriC cannot, at least for the time being, beseen as an outstanding Bosnian writer. When Bosnia Herzegovina became a separate republic within the framework of Yugoslavia, the strength of the respective Serbian and Croatian literary traditions to either side of its territory created problems for Muslim writers who were left effectively without a tradition of their own. One of the most prominent of these, Mesa SelimoviC, opted to consider himself as belonging to the Serbian tradition, like his Catholic-born compatriot Andrit. The reasons in each case are complex, but one of the most compelling was the fact that the oral tradition fostered for so long under Ottoman rule was more firmly woven into Serbian literature than was the case with the Croatian literary tradition. It therefore offered agreater sense of continuity to writers who felt that their work was rooted in the traditional culture rather than that of Central Europe.The experience of Ottoman rule was, of course, shared between the territories of Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia Herzegovina. It might then seem paradoxical that descendants of both a subject people and the ruling caste should feel that they were part of the same cultural tradition. But one should remember that the dominant ideology in the second Yugoslavia was essentially secular-for the great majority of its inhabitants, identification with a particular religion was more likely to be an acknowledgment of the cultural tradition of an individual’s family than an indication of commitment to a faith. This discussion is intended to serve as an introduction to the topic of women’s writing in Bosnia Herzegovina by illustrating the complexity of the present requirement to forge a tradition of Bosnian culture which would be separate from that of the neighboring territories and belong solely to Bosnia Herzegovina. The tradition which does belong exclusively to that territory is the work of Bosnian Muslim writers, written initially in Arabic, Persian, or Turkish, and then, increasingly in the course of the nineteenth century, in Serbo-Croatthough often in Arabic script. Fromthe end of that century and later within the context of the state ofYugoslavia the BosnianMuslim 247

community has steadily developed a sense of its own identity. In 1973 the literaryhistorianMuhsin RizviC publishedasubstantial twovolume study of the activities and works of Muslim writers in Bosnia Herzegovina during the period of Austro-Hungarian rule.* At the end of the twentiethcentury there is arichbodyofwriting by Bosnian Muslim writers. Nevertheless, this tradition doesnot fully account for the literature produced in the territory of Bosnia Herzegovina. Before the end of the twentiethcentury, therefore, it ispossibletospeakonlyof ‘literature produced in Bosnia Herzegovina’, and it is only since the countrybecame independent in 1992 that one canmeaningfully refer to the existence of a ‘Bosnian’literature which includes writers from all the main cultural groupings. Inview of the shared language a division of writing from this regioninto separate traditions is inevitably artificial. This chapter reflects that reality, while nevertheless endeavoring to give at least a glimpse of the specific conditions of women writersin Bosnia Herzegovina. There is one major consideration affecting all writers in this region whichmakes the position ofwomenwritersqualitatively different from that of their counterparts to the east. The enormous shadow cast by the whole ‘Kosovo complex’ affects the area only obliquelyand the sharp distinction between the epic and lyric modes identified in the Serbian lands does not at all apply to Bosnia. On the contrary, the oriental influences which enrich the lyric tradition in these lands assure the lyric mode a central place in the culture of the territory. To turn finally to writingby women in Bosnia Herzegovina. The field is understandably extremely restricted and it islikely that recent thorough studies such as RizviC’s history of Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) literature, LeSiC’s two-volume study of the short story in Bosnia Herzegovina,s and work on women poets from Bosnia Herzegovina: havediscussed at leastall the mostaccessiblematerial. There is no way of knowing what might be preserved in manuscripts, diaries, and letters which could well revealas yet unknown talents. But,given the turbulent history of the region and the massive destruction of the recent war, it is unlikely that muchcould ever be found. What is 248

~

Bosnian woman: Mrs Julka SrdiBPopoviC

249

known ofwomen’swritingbefore the twentiethcenturyoffersa modest but varied accountof the options open to literate women.

Nineteenth-Century Beginnings The first two women in Bosnia known to have written in the vernacular are Umihana Cuvidina(ca.1794-ca. 1870), ofMuslimbackground, and her younger compatriot Staka Skenderova (1831-91), from an Orthodox family,who together highlight the tragic complexity of life in this region. In 1813 Cuvidina was engaged to a certain Mujo GamdZi who was a standard-bearer in the army of AlipaSa Derendelija. Sent to fight against the Serbian uprising he was killed near the small town of Loznica near the Drina river. In her grief Cuvidina never married but turned to writing of her dead love in poems. The only poem that has survived in its entiretyis an epic of 79 lines in the traditional meter of oral poetry, entitled ‘The Men of Sarajevo March to War against Serbia’: it was subsequently widely adopted and absorbed into the oral tradition.’The poem, which was written in Arabic script using the “pure, popular speech”,5 describes the army setting off for war and capturing Belgrade. After Mujo is killed the narrator declares that “for a year I did not wash my face, for a second Idid not smile, and for a third I did not braid my hair. In the fourth year I cut off my hair.” Urged by her mother to forget the dead hero, she replies: You are mad, my dearestmother, Had you given him birth three times, You could not mourn him as I do, This hero who isnot of our kin, I shall neversee his like again.6

The literary critic and historian Alija Isakovit says of Cuvidina: “She wove into her poems the most delicate strands of her emotions and all the tragedy of her longing for something she had lost. Her poems were certainly very popular and they were even sung in the mahulas 250

[residential quarters].” He describes Cuvidinaas the “firstMuslim woman poet and one of the first women poets in our language altogether”.’ In the introduction to his history of Muslim writing Muhsin Rizvid writes: “One should lay particular emphasis on the poem by Umihana &vidina, sections of which are composed in sequences of longer or shorter lines, slower or faster rhythm, according to the content, and which otherwise cannot be distinguished in its internal stylistic qualities from the traditional epic-lyric song, but which r e p resents an interesting attempt at poetic creativity modeled on it. At the same time, it bears witness to the scope of this ulhamijado literature of moralistic character and demonstrates that the traditional poetry was a far better known and closer model for a woman poet than the serious, forcedverse-making.”S Cuvidina naturally saw the conflict between the Ottoman authorities and their Christian subject peoples which brokeout as Ottoman power began to wane fromthe point of view of the dominant group and in the simplest terms. Her concern was with the tragic personal consequences of war for the individuals involved and not with the wider meaning of the conflict. By contrast, her compatriot Staka able to Skenderova, who wrote a Chronicle of Bosnia, 1825-56:was observe her subject matter, not with detachment, certainly, but with a greater sense of the totality of the events she describes. She was encouraged by the Russian consul, A. F. Gilferding, to write an account of the endeavor by successive Ottoman viziers to quell the rebellions of the Bosnian beys in the first half of the nineteenth century. Like Cuvidina’s poemsher chronicle is writtenfor the most part in the traditional meter of the oral epicverse,whichmusthave seemed to her the most obvious form, if not indeed the only one available to her. Little is known ofher life, but she seemsnot to have had much experience of reading literature and it is likely that her education was minimal. Despite its form, however,the chronicle is a quite personal account of life in Bosnia at this troubled time. “Often finding herself in places where, as a woman, she should never have been-in the center of events which shook up all social layers and brought unrest among all the national groupings in Bosnia ... she wrote, with the energy and bitterness of a tormented ... but cour251

ageous woman, everything she knew about these events. And in her memoirs she spared neither the ruthless pashas nor the arrogant local beys, neither the Muslim tyrants nor the Serbian profiteers and usurers.”l0 Skenderova’s accountof Bosnia at this time is a dramatic narrativeof“violence and lawlessness,. suffering and- despair”.ll Skenderova’s younger brother, Jovan, was directly caught up in the violence and mercilessly tortured by followers of one of the pashas. VojislavMaksimoviCwritesofthis part of the chronicle: “This description of torture is reminiscent of the mythic suffering of ancient Christian martyrs in the old hagiographies ... which she had most probably read; the description also resembles some well-known accounts in our traditional epic poetry.”’* A. F. Gilferding translated the chronicle into Russian and published it in St Petersburg in 1859 as an appendix to his own Travels in Herzegovina, Bosnia and Old Serbia. The original text of the chronicle is lost, but fortunately Gilferding printed a substantial amount of it in its original form. In his introduction he wrote: “In the Chronicle youwill find the epic mode characteristic of the milieu in which the author lives. As she moves rapidly from the description of an epoch to the story of events the epic poem pours unconsciously from her pen. The manuscript I am translating is written as prose, uninterrupted, even without punctuation, and its author has no sense of the differences between prose and verse, but where she speaks, there her words flow into the regular traditional decasyllabic Serbian line.”13 The other woman pioneer of the written word in Bosnia, Milena MrazoviC (1860-1927), was not a native of that land. She was born in Bjelovar in Slavonia into a wealthy family and educated in Budapest. After the Austrian occupation of Bosnia Herzegovina in 1878 she moved there with her parents, remaining for the next 40 years. In 1894-95 she taught French at the Girls’ High Schoolin Sarajevo and then worked on the German-language newspaper Bosnische Post. She published sketches of Bosnian life following a journey through the country with the painter August Bock. In 1889 she became the owner and main editor of the paper which she edited until 1896, when she married Dr Josip Preindsperger, manager of the District Hospital in Sarajevo. Afterthe collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy she 252

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Peasant girl, Bosnia

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moved to her husband’s native town, Vienna, where she lived until her death.14 She wrote mainly in German, her most important works being Selam, S k i m und Novellen aus dem Bosnischm Volkslebm (1893), which was also published in English as Selam.Sketches and Tales of Bosnian Lije (1899); acollectionoftraditionalsongs, Bosnische Voulsmurch (1905); and two volumes of sketches of her travels in Bosnia. In her introduction to Selam, Mrazovie describes her work as “an attempt to furnish some insight into thesoul of an unknown and therefore despised people”. However, as LeSid points out, her sketches and stories cannot give any such insight nor indeed a recognizable account of Bosnia: the setting merely serves as a fertile ground for the portrayal of strangeand unusual events. Her Bosnia is the neeromantic Orient in which people still love passionately and die of love, with the mysterious breath of Eastern mysticism wafting over them. The real Bosnia is retained for the most part in the Muslim names, the traditional costumes and some exotic words ... In her stories, Milena Mrazovie set out above all to satisfjr the expectations of her readers, who wanted emotional excitement and a reason for tears or laughter. And her book offers them both, in her descriptions of ordinary people who find themselves in comic situations through their own naivete, and also of exalted personalities who readily sacrifice their lives in the name of love or the truth. Some of these stories show that she had some talent as a narrator and that she also knew how to shape her narrative ... Accustomed to writing for the readers of the Bosni.de Post, who were living their lives and pursuing their own interests in Bosnia, she did not burden them in her fiction with the real problemsof the people of Bosnia.15

With the Habsburg occupation of Bosnia Herzegovina in 1878 and annexation in 1903, the circumstances of life began to change, particularly in the towns. New opportunities began to open up for education and wider participation in public life. In the context of possibilities for the involvement of womenin the cultural lifeof Bosnia, the figure of Nafija Sarajlid (ca. 1893-1970) is of particular interest. A writer of clear and original talent, she published only a few short texts between 1912 and 1918. Born in Sarajevo, one of five sistersand three brothers, she had the great fortune that her father was not afraid to send all his daughters to school. Nafija completed the Girls’PedagogicalSchool in Sarajevo and 254

worked for three years as aprimaryschoolteacher.Somewhere around 1910 she married the writer Semsudin SarajliC. They had five children. Under constant pressure in her domesticlife, she described her texts as ‘Themes’ (‘ T m ’ ) which could have been developed into proper stories had she had time. As it was, when her eldest daughter died she gave up writing altogether to devote herself to her family. As the critic Alija IsakoviC wrote: “There was no one to tell her what a mistake she was making. And what a mistake-the victory of reality over lyric prose! Two writers in one family in those days! Nafqa definitively laid down her pen, but it would have been better had her husband doneHer prosesketches appeared in the magazines Zeman and Biserwhich were published in Mostar. Her first piece, entitled ‘Rastanak’ (Parting), is evidently autobiographical:” it describes a young woman leavingher post as teacher after a reprimand from the school authorities for “having instructed some of the older girls in ethics and reading” out of school hours. The twenty or so short pieces under the general title ‘Themes’are varied in topic and style, although they share the same basic qualities of conciseness and gentle humor. Some of them, including the first and last, give some valuable insights into the writer’s own situation. The first-person narrator of the firstpiecelaunchesstraight into her theme: “One day I said to Muhamed ‘How would it be if you had a look at my desk as well, to see what’s there?’” Muhamed resists but eventually the narrator finds some comments written on the pages on her desk, such as “passable”, even “good”, or a line would be crossed out. He refuses to acknowledge whetheror not he thinks the sketches are of any value. However, the narrator concludes: “But I did gather that he approved. That is why I have strung together a few themes which, at some greater leisure, unattainable to me, could be expanded into something longer.”We can only speculate about what SarajliC could have achieved had she had more time to devote to her writing; as it is, the constraints on herhave resulted in works of great originality, concentrated and suggestive: “Nafiia Sarajlid’s ‘Themes’ almost always have several layers of meaning, with sudden associations of images and ideas, and various unexpected and witty changes of direction, which bear witness to a lively, restless, and inquisitive 255

spirit.”l8 Some ofthe sketches are brief meditations on a theme; others are complete,miniature short stories.Sarajlid’slastpiece, ‘Nekoliko stranica Tebi’ (A Few Pages for You), published in 1918, expresses her bitter resignation at the narrow-mindednessof the society around her, in which she felt that even the educated few were ignorant and ‘empty’ under their veneer of polish. She was particularly concerned about the state of the Muslim woman who “with no conception of the outside world, isolated in her own surroundings, wretched and dissatisfied with herself, could hardly be a model for others”. Sarajlid tried to resist this state of mind with her writing, which she believedtobe the mark of an industrious, progressive people. Sheended herlast text withthe words: -Thoseof us who are in a position totake a book in our handsought to write. If we cannot each produce a book, like the Germans, we can at least write a few just a few pages.lg pages, if only like this, for entertainment,

Nafija Sarajlid was a writer of evident talent, whose sketches certainly deserve to be better known. Like others before her she was virtually forgotten in her lifetime, so that, in the wordsofAlija Isakovid, whenshe died “as quietlyas she had lived, very fewpeople knew that the first woman prose writer in the Muslim community had died”.*O

The First Yugoslavia, 1918-41 If the progress of women’s education and their participation in cultural life was slow in the relatively sophisticated capital city of Belgrade, this must be seen in the context of the still very low educational level of the population of the new country as a whole. One section of this population began to attract new attention in the inter-war period as it adjusted to the altered conditions of the new tripartite state: these were its Slav Muslim inhabitants. One of the consequences of the involvement of women in various aspects of public life during the First World War was the need to consider the whole 256

position ofMuslim women in the new circumstances: “The war drove poor Muslim women to work outside their homes, just as all other peasant women worked,and this was of greater significance for their progress than all the work of the intelligentsia for their liberation.”21 The inter-war period saw a steady stream of articles concerned with this question. One of the keyissueswas the one that had been raised by Jelena DimitrijeviC in her writing about the ‘new women’: whether or not Muslim women should continue to wear the veil. Several long articles on women’sissues appeared in the journal Gujret, published in Sarajevo and elsewhere in the course of the 1920s. These articles examined the teachings of the Koran and traditional practice, the relative position of women in the towns and in villages, the relationship between the social standing of a family and the degree of freedom of the women in it. On the whole, while sometimes criticizing what wereseen as excesses in some Christian cultures, the articles favored more education for Muslim women. It was not until 1932 thatan article on the subjectwritten by a woman,SuadaMuftit-ateacher-appeared in Gajret, vigorously proposing the involvement of the cultural society of the same name in the process of the education of Muslim women. It is clear from these articles that the gap between the small number of educated women in the towns and the majority of the rural population was even greater in the Muslim community than among the rest of the population, although it is important to distinguishbetween the Muslim community in Bosnia Herzegovina and that of southern Serbia (in the SandZak and Kosovo). As we have seen, the Bosnian Muslims had had a long tradition of productive cultural life, in which it had been possible also for a few wealthy educated women to play their part, writing in one or other of the classical oriental languages. A few women poets beganto appear in the pages of Gapet, and one of them, Vera Obrenovit-Delibasit, publisheda volume of verse entitled Nemiri mludosti (Disquiet of Youth) in 1927, which was positively reviewed by Hamza Humo: “This little book is modest and without pretension, and all the more attractive for that. It is feminine and warm through and through ..”22

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Since 1945 While the cultural life of the whole ofYugoslavia reflected the same broad processes that we have followed in Serbia, each of the republics retained something of its own character. The intention of this section is to try to give some impression of the particular quality of the literature of Bosnia Herzegovina that has been published since 1945, in terms of the role that women writers have played in its formation.Interestingly enough, although the oppositemight have been expected, it was in some ways easier for women to make an impact in the post-war cultural life of Bosnia Herzegovina than in Serbia, as may be deduced from the fact that in the 1970s some 40 per cent of the members of the Union of Writers of Bosnia Herzegovina were women. Nevertheless, as can only be expected, the number of women writers who have achieved prominence is modest. But if we recall the equivalent effort by Stevan Radovanovid in 1972 it is significant that the firstanthology ofwomen’spoetry fromBosnia Herzegovina, published in 1985, was edited by a woman, Ajsa ZahiroviC, herself a ‘poet.Zahirovid describes her intention in publishing the volume as to enable “the valuable contribution and creativity of women from Bosnia Herzegovina to be seen in one place for the first time”.23In her introduction to the volume Zahirovid gives a useful survey of what is known of women’s poetry there. A striking feature of her account is the variety of cultural backgrounds of the poets mentioned. ZahiroviC places considerable emphasison the contribution of women from all the component cultures of Bosnia Herzegovina to the exceptionally rich heritage of lyric verse in the region. She draws attention to the specific role of the Jewish population in Bosnian Herzegovinian cultural life, including that of some women, such as Rahela Levi (born 1870), whoisknown for a fine poem about Travnik, published in 1903, and Laura Papo-Bohoreta, who lived and worked in Sarajevo after 1918 before perishing with the great majority of the Jewish population of Bosnia Herzegovinain the Second World War.At the beginning of the twentieth century several women poets began to publish in literary journals and, since the 1950s, a considerable number of talented women poets have begun 258

to establish a solid reputation. ZahiroviC’s anthology includes 40 poets and lists 50 other names, which is a remarkable number for so small a temtory, particularly in view of its troubled historical circumstances, which were hardly conducive to fostering the sustained development of culture, particularly among women. We have seen that some writers from Bosnia Herzegovina elected to consider themselves as part of the Serbian literary tradition and that the history of the region meant that there was a strong sense of community among the Serbian, or Orthodox Christian, population of the two territories. It would not have occurred to the women contributing to the almanac Sqkinju (SerbianWoman)publishedin Sarajevo in 1913 to think of themselves as anything other than Serbian, evenifthey spent their entire lives in BosniaHerzegovina. Thus, for example, one of the first women poets to establish areputation in the pages of the (Muslim) culturaljournal Gujwt, as we have seen, was VeraObrenoviC-DelibaSiC (born 1906),who, although raised in an Orthodox family, married a Muslim, and later settled in Belgrade. This explains how it is possible that oneof the most important women poets from Bosnia in the post-war period, Dara Sekulit (born 1931), was included in RadovanoviC’s anthology of Serbian women poets. At times of unstrained politics such multifaceted identities do not present a problem tothe individual. What makes writers born in Bosnia Herzegovina distinctive is their use of the language characteristic of that region. It is her rich, evocative use of her native Ianguage that is the most enduring quality of SekuliC’s verse. In the words of Midhat BegiC:“In her poems SekuliC created a real model of Bosnian Herzegovinian speech, giving many of her poems an expressly Sarajevan, Bosnian Herzegovinian, borderland quality.”*4 Another critic describes her exceptional sensitivity to the richness of her native language and to linguistic subtleties: “This sensitivity is manifested in several ways: in her choice of vocabulary; in her feeling for ‘traditional’ expressive words; and in her sense of melody which-both when it was based on the experience of our contemporary poetry, and when it strove for certain characteristics of traditional lyricpoetry-refusedfamiliar, well-triedforms; and in the rhythm of her poems as a whole.”25 259

Sekulid’s work is often likened to that of Desanka Maksimovid and Vesna Parun (who was the most prominent woman poet in Croatia after the Second World War). Whatis seen as common to the three women tends to be formulated in terms of the ‘femininity’ of their verse. The introduction byAmiraIdrizbegovid to the selection of Sekulid’s poetry published in 1983 typifies such definitions: “Atonce emotional and intellectual, it is not typically feminine, althoughit is in its sources, in its fimdamental starting point and preoccupations.”26 Once again, it is not clear what is implied by the useof the word ‘feminine’ here, beyond a general concern with the emotions. What the critic had in mindis perhaps revealed by her comment that “Dam SekuliCdoes not write about love ina typically feminine waysentimentally and too personally. She writesin away that is at the same time open and discreet.” Someof the confusion setup for some catics by the whole phenomenon of a woman poet may be seen in a review published in 1976. The commentator evidently felt obliged to read Sekulid’s verse in the light of her gender, but did not find this a p proach particularly revealing: the text begins ‘Women poets are as much women as they are poets. Of course, their verse is not as heterobut it is still The same text ends geneous as other poetry, with the suggestion that there is in Sekulid’s worka symmetry between ‘femininity’ and ‘humanity’, as though the two categories werein some way in opposition to one another. Many of Sekulid’s poemsdo specifcally concern the destiny of women, often peasant women and mothers whose destiny is tobear sons, only to see them die in battle. SekuliC celebrates their dignity, while at the same time clearly seeking more is seen in particular as for women than their traditional roles. She drawing fruitfullyon the heritage of oral lyric verse, whichis especially rich on the territory ofBosnia Henegovina. At the same time, her most successful poems take account also of modern poetic techniques, creating a unique synthesis of the two forms of expression. Sekulid’s poems are often deceptively simple, typically composed in very short lines, but then surprise the reader with an unexpected word, turn of phrase, or twist of meaning. They cover a broad range of themes, encompassing many aspects of human experience,from death to dreams, conflictand reconciliation, beliefand doubt. 260

A very different kind of poet is Mubera PaSiC (born 1945), whose

work began to appear in 1964 and who had seven volumes and two selections of her verse published by 1985. She has been particularly praised for the collection entitled Monomanske d i c e (Monastic Sketches), first published in 1982. PaSiC’s poetry has been described as “cold, rational, but at the same time wise, surreal, unconscious”, and likened to architecture.28 In his introduction to her selected works DZemaludin AliC suggests that the original stimulusfor PaSiC is the heritage of surrealism which played a perhaps surprisingly important role in some Yugoslav literatures after the Second World War, as may be seen most strikingly in the work of Vasko Popa in Serbia. Delicately constructing a poetic world which takes on a life of its own PaSiC tends to withdraw from her increasingly hermetic poetry. “Her poetic language ... becomes a metalanguage, a means whereby sublimated existentialexperience is shifted into a different reality.”*9At the same time, AliC compares PaSiC’swork to that of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf: “it is a powerful human drama, a powerfulcreativetransformation,avaluableartistic,aestheticendeavor to overcome both mortality and eloquent vanity”. It is refreshing that this comparison is the only-discreet-reference to the poet’s gender. AliC did not feel obliged to stressthe extent to which PaSiC’s poetry differs from established norms of‘femininity’ and perhaps this is an indication that literature in Bosnia Herzegovina has come of age: there are now so many women writers publishing that other criteria must be employed to differentiate them from one another. The editor of another selection of PaSid’s poetry-published in 1985Is0 Kalad, is also concerned with trying to analyze the specific features of this poetry, without reference to the gender of its author, giving a brief descriptionof each of her collections published before 1985. Together, these two selections offer a comprehensive account of PaSiC’sstriking work. Two other poets of this generation who have made their mark on contemporaryBosnianpoetry are Ljubica OstojiC and Melika Salihbegovid, both born-like PaSiC-in 1945. OstojiC’s first volume, DoSZo j e do dje& (The Word was Born, 1976), is an intricately composed work in which each line of the first six-line poem forms the 261

epigraph to a whole section, building up to the final culminating poem. Her second volume, 2% divno &do (What a Surprise, 1977) exhibits the same tendency towards complex construction, this time in dialogue form and amounting almost to asmallplay in verse. SalihbegoviC made her appearance in 1977 with a volume of prose poems, Kaze (Tales), characterized by their appealing wit and unexpected twists. They suggest a poet with a firm command of her literary craft. A considerable number of new poets cameonto the scene a fewyears later, one of the most important ofwhomis Ferida BaZ Po DurakoviC (born 1957). Durakovie’s first volume of poems, maskuma (Masked Ball, 1977), introduces a quiet, melancholy voice of understated power, sustained in her later work, such as Oti Roje me gkduju (EyesWhichWatchMe, 1982), in which the rhythms and rhymes admirably expressthe delicacy of the material. In addition, there have been manyaccomplishedwomenprose writers-particularly of short stories-in Bosnia Herzegovina since the Second World War. The poet Vera Obrenovid-DelipaSiC (mentioned above) published a volumeof stories, Zme nad mahaZama (Dawn over the Mahals, 1955), which focus on women during and immediately after the Second World War. A certain ideological coloring is an inevitableconsequenceof the times, but ObrenoviCovercomes this with her well-constructed tales, full of tensionand apprehension, her plausible characters,and her ability to enter into the minds of ordinary people. One of the most prolific of modern prose writers is Jasmina MusabegoviC (born 1941), who began to publish literary criticism in 1965. Her first novel, Snopis (Dreamscape, 1980) consists of a group of self-contained yet interrelated texts focused on a hospital and the experience of illness, told by a first-person female narrator. Her second novel, Skretnice (Turning Points, 1986), has a more conventional formand the modernity ofthe writing is expressed in both the work’s intricate structure and the suggestive, dynamic quality of the prose. Described as an account of “a woman in the whirlwind of history” between the two world W ~ I -itSfocuses ,~ on a character who is “relatively emancipated” for the context in which she lives, who is prepared to make her own decisions and hold out for her own truth despite the disapproval of those around her. The novel traces the 262

crucial “turning points” in herlife, and particularly the effect on her of the extreme circumstancesof the SecondWorldWar.She emerges as a self-reliant, emancipated individual,no longer dependent on those around her for a senseof her place in the world. Musabegovie dedicated her third novel, Most (The Bridge, 1994), forged from the tragedy of the Second World Warand its aftermath, to the famous old bridge in Mostar whichwas destroyed by Croatian forces in 1992, and to her brother, killed in besieged Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb shell. Other distinguished prose writers include Safeta ObhodjaS (born 1951), Fatima Muminovie (born 1956), and Alma Lazarevska (born 1957), whose volume ofshort stories, Smrt U muzeju moderne umjetnosti (Death in the Museum of Modern Art, 1996), is one of the finest works to have emerged from the tragedy of the siege of Sarajevo. Obhodja3 writes admirably controlled dramatic stories full of convincingpsychologicalinsight and unexpectedtransitions: it is no surprise to learn that she has also written several plays for radio. Her first volume, %U i tujna (A Woman and a Secret, 1987) suggestsan experienced and skillful hand. MuminoviC began by publishing two volumes of verse before her collection of short stories Preko glave (Breaking Point) was published in 1988. The storiesallfocus on country people and conjure up memorable characters through dialogue and simple, but dramatic situations. One story in particular, ‘&vary (Security Guard), admirably conveys the bewilderment experienced by a poor peasant endeavoring to make his way in the “new, modern world”. The life of the countryside of Bosnia Hemegovina and its people has long been the focus of a tradition of outstanding short-story writing. By contrast, Bisera Alikadid is a writer concerned so far aboveallwith modern urban women-her work echoes that of Biljana Jovanovitin Serbia. Aftertwo volumes of verse which were well received AlikadiC published her first novel, Luwu (Larva), in 1974. While the novel itself is unmemorable it is worth quoting the afterword by the prominent critic Alija Isakovid for the light it casts on women’s writing in Bosnia Herzegovina as a whole. “Here is a prosework which is somewhatunusual simply because it is written by a woman. A woman from Bosnia Herzegovina! This re263

mark may seem too exclamatory, but we must remember that the branch of our (Serbo-Croatian) prose writingby women is very thin, particularly the Bosnian Herzegovinian component.”31 The novel is striking in the openness withwhich it treats love and sex from a young woman’s perspective, as is AlikadiC’s second prose work, Krug (Circle, 1983), which is a competent, literate piece with some interesting imagery. It may be, however, that AlikadiC’s most important contribution has been in opening the way for future women prose writers in Bosnia Herzegovina in such a manner that their gender will not be the cause of any particular comment. In turn, as IsakoviC subtly suggests in his commentary, the presence of a genuine, straightforward, unprejudiced woman’s. perspective may with time affect also the way male writers present their characters, both male and female: What should be particularlystressedisthe femaleauthor’sperspective, its moral-causal position and essence-while men interpret women (in one way or another) and impose themselves conceitedly, here a woman expresses herself, without hypocrisy and without inferiority; she leaves men the space requiredby their specificgravity, and not by their volume.32

This account, with its notional end-date of 1990, cannot consider any of the excellent works published by women writers in Bosnia Herzegovina since the recent war. A casual glance at publishers’ lists, however, suggests that women are now playing a significant role in the life of their country. It seems to me that Isakovit’s felicitousphrase is an excellent place to end this account. The happy notion that in the cultural life of the whole region from now on male writers may be expected to occupy the space determined by their ‘specific gravity’as writers rather than their ‘volume’ as representativesof their genderwith all the connotations of superiority that the male has traditionally enjoyed in patriarchal cultures-bodes well for the future. IsakoviC appears to acknowledge that it has taken time and energy for women writers to achieve this public recognition, for their work to be seen simply as the work of individuals forming a component part of the whole cultural achievement of the region rather than as something ‘other’, outside the mainstream. 264

*

Notes

1RizviC, Bosanski M m l i m n i 21 Andriteuu suzjetzl. 2 RzviC, Knjihnw stvaranje muslimnskih p a c a *c Bosni i Hercegvvini. 3 LeSiC, Pripovjedaeka Bosna. 4 ZahiroviC, Od stiha do f@sme. Poaya zena Bosne i Hercegovine. 5 Quoted by IsakoviC, Bisqk muslimanske knjiievnosti, 259. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 259-60. 8 RizviC, KnjiFhno stvaranje mzlslimanskihpFFaca ?L Bosni i Hercegouini,33. 9 Staka Skenderova, Ljetopis Bosne, 1825-1856, translated from the Russian by Vojislav Maksimovie and Luka Sekara (Sarajevo, 1976), and discussed by LeSit, Aipovjedatka Bosna, I, 98-99. 10 LeSiC, op. cit., 99. 11Ibid. 12 MaksimoviC, ‘Tri monaha Ijetopisca’, introduction to cokorilo, Pamuliina, and Skenderova, Ljetopisi (Sarajevo, 1976), 30, quoted in LeSiC, op. cit., 99. 13 Quoted from Skenderova, op. cit, 157, inLeSiC, 99. 14 See LeSiC, Pripwjedadza B0sn.a. ZZ. Pripoyedaci, 41625, for an account ofMrazoviC’s life and work. 15 LeSiC, ibid. 16 IsakoviC, ‘Nafilja SarajliC’,117. 17 Published in &man, 1912. 18 LeSiC, op. cit., 11,315. 19 Sarajlif, ‘NekolikostranicaTebi’, 1918, quoted in LeSiC, 11,318. 20 IsakoviC, op. cit., 116. 21 Ajsa ZahiroviC,Od stiha do pfesne, p. 11. 22 Hamza Humo, Capet, no. 21 (1927): 350. 23 ZahiroviC, Od stilia do pfesme. Poaija b a Bosne i Hercegouine, 11. 24 BegiC, cetiri bosanskdercegovackn pjesnika(Sarajevo, 1981), quoted in the introduction to SekuliC, Pjesm (Zzbor), 8. 25 cedomir MirkoviC, ‘“Recenzija” rukopisa zbirke Licem od zemljice’ (18January 1978), reprinted in SekuliC, op. cit., 108. 26 SekuliC, Pjesme. (Izbor), 5. 27 Radojica Tautovie, ‘Duboki glas tela’, Bmba (11 September 1976), reprinted in SekuliC, op. cit., 101. 28 DZemaludinAliC, introduction to PaSiC, Zzabrane pjame, 5. 29 Ibid., 14. 30 HanifaKapidZit-OsmanagiC, introduction to Jasmina MusabegoviC, Shetnice, 15. 31 IsakoviC, afterword toAlikadiC, Lama. 32 IsakoviC,introduction to Alikadif,KT.

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Alma Lazarevska

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Conelnsion My intention in writing this study was to indicate the broad lines of women’s involvement inliterature, oral and written, in anarea of the South Slav lands where verbal art has long played a vital part in cultural life. I believethat this somewhat artificial exercise is justified by two considerations: first, the imbalance in conventional accounts of culturalhistory in the region and, second,adesiretoexplore women’s contribution to verbal art as a continuous process. It is only by looking at this continuity that it is possible to assess the extent to which it is legitimate to talk in terms of an ‘alternative tradition’. It is hardlysurprising to discover that, like their male counterparts, women writers have reflectedthe dominant ethos of the age in which they lived and that they are equally varied intheir ideas, themes,and styles. Nevertheless, I believe that it has been possible to trace a concern with the position and role of women which offers a fresh perspective, and that this exploration has confirmed twofold a distortion in the cultural historyof the region. The first element of this isthe obvious neglect of those women who have clearly played their part in the development of cultural life. There is abundant confirmation of this continuing neglect. One instance is an article entitled ‘The Unwritten History of Women’ reporting on the 10th Congress of Yugoslav Historians in January 1998 and citing a paper by Dr Smiljana DjuroviC. DjuroviC points to the lack of attention paid to women’s historyin the region and suggests, in the words of the reporter, that a concern with “women’s history is the best indicator of the humanity and level of modernization in any civilization and societf.1 Her observation is borne out in a recent, comprehensive Histq of Serbian Culture, edited by the eminent linguist and academician Pavle Ivid and published in 1994, which offers a clear indication of the prevailing perception of that culture at the end of the twentieth century. The handsomely produced volume is a 267

joint effort by prominent scholars to give an account of all aspects of Serbian culture. It-describesthe development of culture in the Middle Ages, the cenhlries of Ottoman rule, and the nineteenthcentury “renewal of statehood”; the language as “an instrument of culture and product of the nation’s history”;* and the development of all forms of art, including architecture and the applied arts, naive art, music, painting, drama, film, radio,and television. While women are relatively well represented in some fields, notably music and painting, in the chapters concerned with literature there are strikingly few references towomen. Radmila MarinkoviC,the author of the detailed chapter tracing the growth of medieval literature, refers to Queen Jelena (HClGne d’hjou) as “an ideal mother and ruler, in her old age an exemplary nun” and the “literary match” of the first ruler, StefanNemanja.3Marinkovitdescribes the introduction of the Kosovo theme into written literature by Patriarch Danilo 111, and goes on to say that Danilo’s followers include other court figures: “here arethe learned Princess Milica, Lazar’s widow,the first Serbian woman poet of sorrow and pain, Jefimija, the famous embroideress, noblewoman and nun ...“4 The categories to which these medieval figures are assigned confirm DjuroviC’s perception of the enduring conventional attitudes to the region’s history and the lack of penetration of women into it. In the entire volume, there are seven female historical figures mentioned: five medieval noblewomen and the wives of two nineteenth-century rulers (one, Ljubica ObrenoviC, in a caption to a photograph of her palace, and the other, Natalja ObrenoviC, because she accompanied her husband to the first film festival in 1896). Of the nearly 90 writers discussed, three are women: Isidora SekuliC,DesankaMaksimoviC, and SvetlanaVelmar-JankoviC. The particular ideology coloring the account of Serbian history presented in this volume is without doubt a product of the political climate in Serbia at the time of its publicationand thus closely related to the second element in the distortion process I am seeking to define. This is connected with the two periods which have seen the most intense activity in formulating nationaland cultural history,the nineteenth century and the 1980s, both characterized by the rise of nationalist ideologies. A great deal of recent research confirms the fact 268

that nationalism reinforces gender stereotypes of heroic, aggressive masculinity and highlights the role of women as mothers who bear, nurture, and mourn the nation’s sons.5 While the drive for national liberation from foreign ruleand the formation of nation-states had a clear purpose in the nineteenth century, and the achievement of that purpose may well be perceived as a legitimate sourceof national pride, the rise of nationalism at the end of the twentieth century has quite different connotations. With this in mind I believe that it is indeed possible to endorse the statement quoted above that a concern with “women’s history isthe best indicator ofthe humanity and level of modernization in any civilizationand society”. The period between the two world wars was one of rapid modernization in which women played an increasingly active part in many different areas of intellectual endeavor. The history of the 40 years since the Second World War in the Yugoslav lands offers a familiar dichotomy:officiallyproclaimedequalityofopportunity, genuine new scope for women, and growth in their participation in public life, combined with enduring patriarchal values. These began to be undermined by the new concern with the development of civil society, democratization,and the promotion of alternative views and lifestyles which beganto be expressedin the 1970s. In the context of the increasingly cosmopolitan, sophisticated urban communities of the Yugoslav lands, these phenomena suggested the beginnings of a renewed process of modernization. However, such ideas, together with the new perspectives on gender roles formulated by the generation of women who began to articulate feminist ideas at that time, were rapidly marginalized by the rise of nationalist ideology in the 1980s. An article publishedin the Serbian weekly MNin 1983 clearly identifies this phenomenon.6 Prompted by a spate of anti-feminist phenomena-a series of articles in a youth magazine, anti-abortion graffiti in the center of Belgrade, a deliberately provocative literary critical text published in NIN suggesting that women writers were capable only of ‘gossip’-the article reports an interview with Dr Nada LerSofroniC of the University of Sarajevo, who was then conducting rethat search into the emancipation of women.LerSofroniCstates these phenomena do not surprise her: 269

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For some years now I have been following the (successful) penetrationof pettyare, to say the bourgeois notions and the renewal of ideas about women which way school textbooks, least, inappropriate to socialism... I have been following the women’s magazines and the ‘serious’ press, films and popular song lyrics implant in the public consciousness ideas about women as dependent beings, and theway women’s abilities have been reduced to their reproductive function (bearing and ... raising children) and functions of service (caring and supporting)

LerSofronit suggests that this ideological adjustmentwas carried out painlessly and the promotion of traditional divisions of labor and gender roles once again easily became a legitimate and recognized way of thinking. While it would have been unthinkable that a youth magazine in the 1970s should condone the notion that “women ought to be beaten”, by the 1980s t h i s was acceptable. LerSofroniC shows that among the general reactionary ideological trends which unite views opposed to democracy, women, and the working class, it is the ‘anti-women’ views which are the most openly expressed and meet with the least resistance. She believes that “the connection between aggressive nationalism and anti-feminism is socially and ideologically logical and deeply founded. It is a function of a unified ideological syndrome.” It is possible nowto see these sinister intimations in the early 1980s as part of a process whichgathered momentum through that decade, to erupt in the wars of the 1990s. The systematic brutality of the attacks against different ethnic groups then made women a particular target in the welldocumented, widespread use of rape as a weapon of war. The close connection between an atmosphere of heightened male aggression and violence against women has been recorded by the various SOS telephone lines for women and child victims of violence set up in the Yugoslav lands. The experience of the first Belgrade line, established on 8 March 1990, shows that men regularly beat, threaten, and rape their wives, particularly after important football matches and other sporting occasions which express male power. With the television coverage of the war and regular scenes of brutality, the level of violence against women increased to a point where in August 1997 the Belgrade SOS line was recording an incident of abuse every 15 minutes, and rape by a husband, friend, or 270

acquaintance every half-hour. Whilethe existence of thesetelephone lines and shelters for the victims of abuse can do little to affect the general climate, they are anindication of the way many women have felt compelled to act and to form groups opposed to the prevailing ideology in all its manifestations. Large numbers of women’s groups have now been founded in the former Yugoslav lands, particularly in Serbia and Bosnia.. In addition to offering an immediate response to the conditions around them, these activities may well foster a new readiness on the part of women to takecharge of their lives when the political climate improves. While it would be naive to suppose that these women’s groups are homogeneous and that all of them are opposed to the nationalist project, nevertheless many of them are concerned with basic issues affecting women, regardless of national boundaries.Thisalsooffersscope for reinforcing the alternative channels of communication which have been kept open throughout the years of the war and its aftermath. It remains to be seen what the long-term effects of the disastrous events of the 1990swill be on the cultural lifeof the region. Whilethe immediate prospects in all the Yugoslav successor statesare bleak, it is undoubtedly the case that violent division has lent a new urgency to the determination of many individuals to share their opposition to the prevailing climate across national boundaries. And because this climate has been particularly oppressive for women, this dimension of their common experience has acquired a sharper focus. Individual women have succeeded in maintaining their links across the borders, and they have continued to travel to one another’s centers to participate in women’s studies courses and avidly read each other’s works. Needless to say, they still represent a very small and highly marginalized fraction of society, but their steady fostering of alternative values may well playa part in future democratic structures thein region. When the political climate finally improves, women will be able to participate fully in societywith a newdignity and confidence achieved through many years of effort. It is hoped that the present work will also have a role in telling part of a story of continuous achievement which will offer future generations a different kind of account of their contribution to the cultural history oftheir lands. 271

Notes 1 R. Kovat!eviC, ‘Nenapisana istorija Zena’,PoliHka (21January 1998): 26.

2 P. IviC, ‘Knjifevni jezikkao instrument kulture i produkt istorije naroda’, IstOrju Srp~kebtlklm (1994): 41-52. S R. MarinkoviC, ‘Srednjevekovna knjifevnost’, in IviC, 59. 4 Ibid., 64. 5 See particularly the forthcoming study by Bracewell. 6 Slobodanka Akt, ‘Opasne veze’.

272

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AleEkoviC, Mira 212-13 Alhamijado literatwe 10,247,250-51 AlikadiC, Bisera 263-64 Antlrit, Ivo 245-47 Antifascist Women’s Front 198-202 h i t , Evstahija 91,93-7,99 ArsiC, Ljubica 238 AtanasijeviC, Ksenija 162,1f54-65,172, 183,184,205,207

DrakuliC, Slavenka 226 DutiC, Jovan 120, 139, 140, 167, 168 DnrakoviC, Ferida243,262 Feldman, Andrea 225 Feminism 13, 199-200, 211,223-27,232, 233,26749 FilipoviC, Frida 213-215,222,232 First World War20, 134, 156,160,161, 172,179,256

Balkan Slavs3-4,8,64 Balkan Wars 29 Belovie-BernadZikovska, Jelena120, 134, 138 Bkagojevif, Boba 237 BlazeviC, Dunja 225 BogdanoviC, Milan93-4 Bogomilism 8 Bosnia 5,8,245,247,271 Bosnia-Herzegovina 6,9,22,46,50,89, 119,138,139,140,162,197 Jewish population 258 Women’s writing 243-66 Bosnian Muslims 6,22,49, 139,244,247, 248,256,257 BoZin, Mirjana 238 BoZinoviC, Neda 197-98 Byzantium 3,9,11,64,79,210

Gaj, Ljudevit101 Gajret 140,257,250

Catholic Church 6,64,69,245 Cijanit, Gordana 238 CosiC, Dobrica 31 Cuvidana, Umihana 250-51 Dalipi, Hana 238-40 Dejanovif, Drab- 112-21,181 DimitrijeviC,Jelena 135,141-51,257

Habsburg Monarchy5,6,9,11,22,89, 105,139,178,244,248,252 ‘Hasanaginica’ 4 6 7 Herzegovina 8,27,120,139 Hlapec-DjordjeviC, Julka 118, 153, 165, 180-85 IsakoviC, Alija250,255,263-64 Islam 5,8,11, 12,18 JakovljeviC, Milica (‘Mir-Jam’) 163-65 JanEar, Barbara 226-27 Jankovit, Katarina 90 Jankovit, Milica 135, 140,151-154, 164, 174,191 Jankovit, Vesna239 Jasa-Tomic, Milica 131, 160 Jefimija 7645,220,223,268 Jelena, daughter of Prince Lazar 8 6 7 Jelena Anzujska (H6lSned’hjou) 6771,268 Jevrie, Darinka 223,237 JevtoviC, Danica Lala 215 JovanoviC, BiIjana 228-32,263 JovoviC, MiIena 215

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KaradZiC, Mina99-100,102,107,110 KaradZiC, Vuk StefanoviC24,33, 39,51, 53,56,58,91,99, 102 KatunariC, Vjeran226 KerniC-Peles, Olga 27-29 Kneginja Milica 72-76, 82, 268 KolakoviC, Vera238 KoljeviC, Svetozar 19-20,39,72 Kosovo, battle (1389) 18,19,58-61,72,210 myth 18,19,20,104,248,268 KovaceviC, Dusanka 198-99 KmgrgeviC, Tanja 227 KrnjeviC, Hatidza 36, 37,51 Lazarevska, Alma263 LaziC, Radmila 237-39 LerSofronic, Nada 269-270 LeSiC, Zdenko 248,254 Levi, Rahela 258 LukiC,Jasmina 229-31,234,23536 LukiC, Tatjana 238 MaksimoviC, Desanka 15,171,203-12, 217,260,268 Maria Paleologina71 Maria Angelina Paleologina 85-86 MarkoviC, Danica 135,154-56, 165,174 Matos, A. G., 154,175 MazuraniC, Ivan 103 Melvinger,Jllsna 222 MiCiC-Dimovska, Milica112, 232-36 Mihanovi6, Antun 101 MiletiC, Ljubica 238 MiloSeviC, Slobodan 208,218,231,236 Milovuk, Katarina 102,130 Montenegro G, 8,21,22,159,162,202,247 MrazoviC, Milena 252-54 MuminoviC, Fatima 263 Musabegovif,Jasmina 262-63 Muslim women 187, 257 (in thework ofJelena Dimitrijevic) 142-5 1 NemanjiC dynasty9,6447,268 Nenadovif, Ljubomir103,107,110

NediC, wadan 36, 37 NeSkova, Marta 91 NinkoviC, Ljiljana 238 Njegos, Petar Petrovic 21,102,166,178 Obhodjd, Safeta 263 ObradoviC, Dositej 93,98-99 ObrenoviC, Ana99,100-101 ObrenoviC, Mihailo101, 102,106, 219 Obrenovif, Milos 22, 101, 105 ObrenoviC-DelibaSiC, Vera 257,259, 262 OgnjenoviC, Vida236, 237 Olujic‘, Grozdana 219-220 ‘Omer i Merima’49 Oral tradition 10,14,20,23,24-26, 3362,244-45 Individual singers52-61 OstojiC, Ljubica261-62 OstojiC-Belca, Olga23637,238 Ottoman rule 3,4,5, G, 9,18,21,24,59, 80,244,247,268 PapiC, Zarana 225 Papo-Bohoreta, Laura 258 Parun, Vesna 203,260 PaSiC, hhbera 261 PlaninC, Milka224 Prince Lazar18,19,20,21,59,72-75,77, 80,82-84,86 Punktatorka, Marija PopoviC 91 RadivojeviC,Julijana 97-99 R a k i C , Milan 76-77 Ribnikar,J a n 215-17 RizviC, Muhsin 50-51,246,248, 250 Salgo,Judita 236, 237 SalihbegoviC, Melika261, 262 SarajliC, Nafija 253-55 SaviC-Kebac, Anica 103,165-66 Second World War 10,11,160,161,195202,258,263 Sekulif, Dara 259-260 SekuliC, Isidora 30-31, 140, 171-80, 185, 203,268

SelimoviC, Mesa247 Serban, Nada 223 Serbian Orthodox Church 3,6, 11, 12, 64,69, 75, 104, 109, 110,178,245, 259 Serbo-Croat language 2-3,23-24 Serbs in southern Hungary 6,19,90,92, 113,138,243 Smdulinke50-51 Skenderova, Staka250,251-52 SkerliC, Jovan 51, 154, 164,175 Sklevicky, Lydia 12,200-202,226 Slav gods 8,9 Slapsak, Svetlana232,238 SpiridonoviCSaviC, Olga 61, 167-71, 205-07,208,211 Stefm, Florika 221 StefmoviC, Mirjana221,222 StojadinoviCSrpkinja,Milica 2627,89, 98,102-112,118,136,138,236

StoSiC, Gordana 238 SubotiC, Savka91,127-29,136,143 Sultan Murad 18,19,83

TeSanoviC,Jasmina 239-41 Tsar Dusan 15,65-67,71, 77-79,210-11 TodoroviC, Gordana 221,222 Velmar-JankoviC, Svetlana 180,215,21719,268 VukmiroviC, Mirjana 221,222 Women’s magazines (1900-1914) 12340 Yugoslavia Kingdom of the Serbs, Croatsand Slovenes (1918-1829) 1,159,256 Yugoslavia (1929-1991) 2,161,247,258 Federal Republic (Serbiaand Montenegro, from 1991) G Wars 1991-1999 8,121,246,270,271

W n g a 11-12,40,56 ZahiroviC, Ajsa 258-59 2icina, Milka 188-92 ‘Zora’(Mostar),issue devoted to women writers, 1899 120

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