Supplement Contemporary Croatian Literature, pp. 15 - 34 - Zarez

30 II/40, 12. listopada 2,,,.Igor MandiæThe PriapusProblempublished by Bastard, Zagreb, 1999lthough he spent a long time in furiouspolemic with Slavenka Drakuliæand although (in theory) he remains asworn enemy of feminism, Igor Mandiæ is theonly intellectual in these parts to renouncethe posture of a macho who is waited uponby publicly announcing how much he lovesto cook. What is more, he is good at it (andhe readily shares his recipes with the readingpublic). Now he has published a collection ofessays (originally published in Erotica magazine)subtitled: "vulgar essays or essays onvulgarity". This way, Mandiæ has artfully managedto free himself from another typicallyPuritan Croatian taboo. He is not a memberof that intellectual club that patiently studiesencyclopedia-loving, sexually challenged Krlea,only to proclaim the interest in joy buttonor joy stick to be a dangerous deviationfrom their habitual ascetic posturing. Mandiæis, dare I mention that horrible, horrible word– a hedonist. What this actually means inthe country that canonizes the cult of masochisticvictims is that he is a heretic. Or at leastheretical enough to make fun of his reputationby ironically calling himself a "vulgaressayist", to use one example. Since this reviewercannot comprehend how any conversationabout sex could be understood as "vulgar",I am inclined to say that The PriapusProblem conducts a thorough on-the-spot investigationof private places of both sexes,and it does so with the almost pedagogicalzeal. If Mandiæ fails in anything, it is not thegenital explicitness, but the far subtler art oferoticism (as game of suggestion and guessing,not surgical penetration of the eye intothe pornographically dilated vagina or anus).(...)The book begins with the essay The Cultof Penis, where, to use some of Mandiæ's (notvery rich) vocabulary, a boner or or pecker ordong or pee-pee or cock undergoes a processof deification and becomes the "lifemaker"and archetype of desire. In the second essay,Emancipation of the Cock, we again readabout the male fears and dreams… Mandiædoes not hide that he explores an exclusivelymale view of both men and women.In In Praise of the Tush, Mandiæ is carefulto point out that he is hundred percent heterosexual:he sees no traces of transsexualityin his erotic appetites. The conservatism ofthis statement simply astonishes. How is itpossible that anyone who enjoys sex as a zoneof free, carnival-like transgression of decency,could suddenly consider himself a "purist",i.e., a Puritan "man"? Mandiæ is eitherpretending to be pure or else he is a hypocrite.In either case, he occasionally demonstratesVictorian cowardice, and from the standpointof the androgynous 21st century, heeven sounds a bit grandfatherly...Only when we reach the essay The Appealand the Curse of Perversions are we introducedto a wholly liberal text boasting this instructivesentence: "Codex of perversionshould be abolished as the perversion that itis". Thus the book really gets interestingaround its hundredth page, when Mandiæ finallyadmits that pornography is "nothingmore than a dream of colossal fucking" andfor this very reason one of the best-sellinglies ever. The same text professes a view thatpornography is so artificial it resembles art.(...)It seems that The Priapus Problem is Priapus'basic indifference to sex outside pornotopia.Like the tragic character played byBrando in The Last Tango in Paris, Mandiæpreaches dehumanized copulation of "universalcock" with "universal cunt"; intimacy isjust an unattainable "surplus" of communication...You won’t enhance your sexual life by readingThe Priapus Problem, but you will learnsomething about the sexual taboos ofMandiæ and our civilization in general. Itmight help you to lose some of your ownprejudices. And it certainly serves as a helpfulguide through sexual fantasies of themiddle-aged men of today. In spite of allstylistic imbalances and repetitions (symptomaticof the journalistic genre in which thetexts were originally written), The PriapusProblem is a provocative and stimulatingbook. Let’s call it the McDonald's of eroticliterature. It certainly serves up some tastymorsels of information that none of the othersupposedly liberal and open-mindedCroatian intellectuals (Left or Right) woulddare publish. Compared with them, Mandiæ'sadvantage is absolute, and it involves real,not virtual, courage.Nataša GovediæHrvoje TurkoviæFilm Theorypublished by Meandar, Zagreb, 2000urkoviæ's Film Theory treats continuityof perception and invisibilityof editing as the central problem ofboth film production and its reception:everything has to be discernible, rooted inhuman cognitive apparatus... Films, ofcourse, do shape human cognitive abilitiesin special ways (Hawks' Rio Bravo obviouslyhas a different impact than Godard'sBreathless). This epistemological functionis closely connected with social regulationwhich in turn shapes our sociability,making the art of film not only anepistemological, but also a communicationphenomenon (not necessarily a "language").In the first part of his book, Turkoviæconcludes his examination of film productionwith two relevant points. Firstly, heclaims that epistemological function of filmprocedures complies with general cognitivefoundations, although, in principle,it remains open to a wide range of possibilities.Epistemological function is capableof further development, but only withinthe frame of human cognitive limitationsand social possibilities (which escape precisedefinition). Turkoviæ uses George Stevens’Place Under the Sun and Hitchcock'sPsycho as cases in points.In the second part of the book he attemptsto elaborate on this "epistemic,epistemological and communicative" principles,applying them to a concrete problemof making a film scene. This problemboils down to the realization of continuitywithin the scene (...).The third part of the book explains theproblem of the editorial motivation citingHitchcock's movies Psycho and The Birds,Godard's To Live Your Own Life andBreathless and finally Buñuel's Un Chienandalou. Turkoviæ lists the central principlesof editorial and narrative motivationand explains the regular patterns of motivationalforce, which results in some cutsbeing "visible" while others remain "invisible".Of course, when narrative organizationand metacommunicational instructionsserve the purpose of organizing the particularscene, the agents of production becomeagents of coherence (structuring, organizing...)and they are, in principle, understoodas "macrostructures", i.e., generalprinciples of coherence. Turkoviæ uses theterm thematisation to describe this unique(and integrated) regulation of coherentperception (including both protagonistsand their fictional worlds). The fourth partof Film Theory discusses thematisation inmore detail, and the author tries to explaina connection between thematic focus andthe formation of the film world...Nikica GiliæMladen MachiedoBittersweet Italy(Three DecadesWithWriters)published by "Matica hrvatska", Zagreb,1999pistle is the central term in Machiedo'sbook Bittersweet Italy, where itserves as a main strategy for introducingour unknown neighbors (to useMachiedo's term). The book consists ofninety texts dedicated to Italian writerswith whom the author cooperated duringthe last thirty years. Some of them arefriends, acquaintances and fellow scholars,but there are also others, with whom Machiedodid not get along. All of them arelisted in alphabetical order and divided intofour sections: the ones that visitedCroatia; the ones that Machiedo met onlyon Italian soil or only through letters; theones he (in spite of his efforts) did notmeet at all. The last section is called "tracesof the spaces". Although the book will beof most use to scholars if Italian culture, itis not written exclusively for academic circles.The author defines each writer withinhis/her cultural context - the reader willtherefore meet Montale and the coast ofLiguria, Bigongiari and Florentine cafesfor the literary and academic set, Veniceand Paolo Barbaro. Machiedo’s criterionfor the selection of authors in the book isvery personal. The ones who appear in thebook have given Machiedo the gift of, ashe says, an exquisite encounter.Dušanka ProfetaPavle KaliniæDefeated bythe Timespublished by Nova knjiga RAST, Zagreb,1999ince he writes as a firsthand witnessof hard times, Kaliniæ is at his mostpersuasive in stories thematicallyconnected with the Croatian War for Independence.Through the bloody mist of warthe reader clearly sees that war is neitherheroic nor wonderful, but a succession ofchaotic coincidences caused by hatred, violenceand revenge. Besides the reality ofwar, Kaliniæ also describes the bitter fate ofCroatian emigrants and obtuseness of foreignerswho don’t have a clue about what’sgoing on in the Balkans. The authordescribes basic differences between Croatiaand Europe and writes very criticallyabout the Croatian present. In some of thestories Kaliniæ makes clear that all theseBalkan blues of national and political hatredare not characteristic of only our times,but also the times when our fathers andgrandfathers were young...Marinko KrmpotiæEverything Is JustA JourneyConversations with Vanja Sutliæedited by Boris Juriniæ, published by Irida,Zagreb, 1999verything Is Just A Journey..., a collectionof interviews with VanjaSutliæ, a distinguished Croatianphilosopher, has been published to markthe tenth anniversary of his death. This isthe first time that all of Sutliæ’s interviewsin Croatia and abroad have been compiledin one book. The interviews cover the periodfrom 1966 through 1989 and deal witha wide range of subjects, including dailypolitical events, Sutliæ’s university activities,lectures and writings…Tonèi Valentiæ