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

II/40, 12. listopada,,,. 33Nada Švob-ÐokiæTransition andNew EuropeanStatespublished by: "Barbat", Zagreb: 2000he subjects of the latest Švob-Ðokiæ'sbook, Transition and NewEuropean States, fit into differentframeworks: transition to a new system,transition period leading to a more dignifiedliving, concepts of globalization andregionalism, new uncertainties based onhistorical events, fear (or positive anticipation)of new and different times. Whileaccepting the need for a concise, theoreticallysound and (especially in her owncountry) topically relevant book abouttransformations, and keeping in mindthat, in this respect, Croatia is not verydifferent from the rest of the world, theauthor describes transition processes thatmarked the last decade for the fourteennew European countries. As a result, theborder of Europe has moved a little furtherto the East. But what have the newstates (and Europe) gained in all thischanges, where are they heading andwhat are the results of their first independentdecade - these are the complex questionsthat Nada Švob-Ðokiæ tries to addresswith equally complex answers. Atleast they are complex when compared toour expectations. Bilateral and multilateralrelationships of existent states initiatedthe new processes: globalization andregionalism. Are these concepts mutuallyexclusive or connected by cause and effect?What abut the new integrations, especiallythe European one? Has the statebecome, as the author notices, simply thebest delegate of a certain society in mattersof international affairs, or could wedescribe the state as force that guards theauthoritarian and powerful national elite(national elite being a group of people refusingto relinquish their positions - althoughthey have formally accepted theprocesses of democratization, just likethe majoriy of their society)? What standsin the way of democratization, emancipationand development of new states:these questions remain very important interms of the changes that have been embracedon the global level. New internationalsubjects must address and facethem as well. Interestingly enough, thesedifficult processess vary significantlyfrom country to country, depending onthe local situation and the way the localgovernment is run. Thanks to the relative“youth” of these countries, and tofrequent changes in their domestic policy(a result of learning by trial and error),we cannot say with certainty what is thebest way for any of them. For the samereason, more precise data about them isdifficult to come by, so our vision of thenew states, including their economic parameters,is understandably blurred. Rightnow, we couldn’t even write an accurateaccount of their most recent (ten years)history, let alone understand them inthe context of similar countries elswherein the world.Grozdana CvitanMiljenko JergoviæA History Manualpublished by Naklada ZORO & DANI,Zagreb – Sarajevo, 2000History Manual contains MiljenkoJergoviæ’s articles originally publishedin the independent Sarajevomagazine Dani. In his columns, this productive,widely read and popular multinational(Bosnian, Herzegovinian andCroatian) writer discusses his past, hischildhood and life in Sarajevo. In his attemptsto collect the fragments of hisown history, Jergoviæ evokes a now bygoneera; the era that was smothered by manylayers of ideology and nationalism.Jergoviæ is not interested in political profileof socialism, nor is he attracted to homogenouschronology and master historywith all its literary laws. What interestsJergoviæ are our daily lives, and all thoseplain, banal or intimate details that havebeen a feature of his worldview for so long.His generation and his hometown arean integral part of that worldview too. Inthe course of cleaning up his personal history,Jergoviæ digs deep in the storageroom of what was, rediscovering suchthings as “sugar bars” that the replacedchocolate bars as the most popular sweetsin the eighties, the first Coca-Cola machines,the football games where onebought newspapers to sit on, the periodof Sarajevo Olympics, old city coffeehouses,housmasters and many otherthings that marked, he writes, the goldenprewar years. This makes HistoricalManual a book of nostalgia and sentiment,of yearning for the “old” and “innocent”times. In its narrative technique ofpatchwork and narrative fragmentation(short cuts), and the continuous emphasison the didactic, this book closely resemblesprevious Jergoviæ's works, namelySarajevo Marlboro and Mamma Leone.Katarina LuketiæIn Defense of theFuture, Searchingthe Mine Fieldedited by Freimut Duve and NenadPopoviæ; published by OSCE and Durieux,Zagreb,1999he future of the region of formerYugoslavia was "defended" by RusmirMahmutæehajiæ, MiljenkoJergoviæ, Ivan Lovrenoviæ, Dragan Paveliæ,Slobodan Šnajder, Andrea Zlatar,Branko Sbutega, Baton Haxiu, BoraÆosiæ, Dragan Velikiæ, Filip David andDragoslav DedoviæEvacuationselected contemporary fictionfrom Bosnia and Herzegovinapublished by Feral Tribune, Split, 1999Drago Janèar. Although they choose differentforms – from diary notes to personalletters and essays – most authors agreeon one thing: it is almost certain thatthe future of the nations of former Yugoslaviahas been forfeited. Authors mostlywrite about the future of their owncountries, barely touching upon global issues.It seems that instead of sharing globalfears, we are focused on our narrowlocal concerns, which results in unitingus in a pretty bizarre way. Instead of beingafraid of nuclear and ecological catastrophesor the dangers of genetic engineering,this part of the globe fears theremains of land mines, corruption, nationalism,political anachronisms, isolationfrom the world. The ultimate fear is obviouslythe fear of being condemned toyour own backyard – another way of cancelinghuman rights in future. Talk aboutthe future is necessarily connected withour awareness of the present tense, thepresent moment, but more often thannot we derive our future from our recentor more remote past. In Branko Sbutega'swords, quoted from Writings about BokaKotorska 1993-1999: "It is not very uncommonfor a world to wait for somebodyor something to die, in order to awakethe global interest and respect for the deceased."Sbutega's words perhaps containboth the diagnosis and the medicine forour ailing future. This region has understoodthe word "future" as an excuse torewrite the past for far too long.Dušanka ProfetaDedoviæ decided to compile a corpusof fiction by a younger generationof Bosnian authors, who startedwriting in the late eighties. In the wordsof the editor himself: “in those severalprewar years when Communists lost anyability to govern, and the chauvinists stillhadn’t consolidated their power, the old rulesof the game barely applied, and the newones were still unclear”, adding that “in thiszone of zero gravity, a number of new namesappeared, working on the margins ofBosnian literary scene and heralding the revaluationof the prevalent literary tradition.”(…) The anthology features twentythreeauthors and thirty-two short storieswritten between 1987 and 1998… Just likemany of their compatriots, the featuredauthors have in the meantime scattered acrossthe globe, so some of them now live inbizarrely named cities like Kerkrade in theNetherlands, or Tampere in Finland, whileothers reside in Prague, Frankfurt, Washington,Chicago, Zagreb or Belgrade. Mostof those who remained in Bosnia and Herzegovinalive and work in Sarajevo, and twoare no longer among the living…What makes this book extraordinarilyinteresting in terms of reading experienceis its textual organization, that is, its storyplacement. Specifically, Dedoviæ circumventedsome of the more usual solutions:he did not arrange the stories according toauthors’ age, or alphabetically, or even accordingto his own reading logic. He dividedthe contents of the anthology into foursections entitled Child, Woman, Soldierand City, although he doesn’t always strictlyadhere to the constraints of these subtitles.In other words, he has arranged thestories thematically, grouping them in fourseparate wholes dealing with the subjectmatters of childhood, love, war, and “city”as the crucial background against which theplots take place and fate of characters is decided.In most cases, the city in question isSarajevo, as a paradigm of everything thathappened in Bosnia since April 1992, whenthe first grenade exploded. To quote thesentence from Asmir Kujoviæ’s story TheBum And The Princess, “what made mostof the people here related was a sense thatthey were all somehow at odds with theirpast: in conversations, everyone dividedtheir lives in before and after war.” War isthe canvas on which stories dealing withchildhood, living abroad, falling in love, urbansetting and its protagonists interminglewith events from the earlier war and warstories from the front line.Dedoviæ’s Evacuation completely fulfillsthe role of every anthology, which is toprovide the reader with the information onthe literary “state of affairs”, and to affordthe critics and literary historians easier navigationthrough the texts. Consideringthat short fiction in contemporary Bosnianliterature, as in Croatian new fiction, is afavorite genre of many novelists, DragoslavDedoviæ’s Evacuation offers a useful overviewof all pertinent writers of fiction fromthe younger generation of Bosnian authors.For those readers who are only preparingto read Bosnian authors, this book willprovide a good introduction to contemporaryfiction in Bosnia and Herzegovina.Igor Štiks