Changes in the Social Function of Literature in Serbia,
1988-2000
The break-up of “the second” Yugoslavia
(1945-1991) marked the introduction of a new system of political,
economic and social relations in the region.[1] Instead
of one, relatively large Eastern-European country, several new states – Slovenia,
Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Macedonia and the
FR Yugoslavia – have emerged. Bosnia and Herzegovina consists
of the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Republic of Srpska, while
the FR Yugoslavia is comprised of Serbia and Montenegro.[2] The
legal status of Kosovo remains unresolved. Changes to the basic type
of social relations that were established according to the ideological
mantra of communism in the second Yugoslavia, and applied in a more
liberal fashion than in other communist states in Eastern Europe,
constituted a significant alteration of the earlier dominant cultural
model in the newly formed Yugoslav successor states. Instead of the
multiculturalism and polyconfessionality that characterized the former
multinational union, national/cultural autism prevailed in these
former Yugoslav republics. National culture formulated along the
lines “I am I” because I do not possess any links to,
or similarities with, the “other” gradually hypostatized
into the essential measuring tape for the establishment and verification
of the relevance of any given work of art. Individual “I”s
and collective “we”s are validated by the fact of their
own existence, and the superiority of such a presence is then manifested
not only through the radicalization of difference regarding the “other,” but
also through the complete denial of the “other.” This
is the logic of an ugly paradox: “they” prevent us from
being “us”; “I” is not possible if the “other” exists.
Half a century of cultural interaction – culture being, above
all, the collection of various individual social interactions – turned
into its own radical opposite during the early war years of the 1990s.[3] National
cultures (Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian) and those cultures that
used the period of dissolution of the former SFRY to round up the
process of their own historical emancipation (Muslim, Macedonian
and to a lesser degree Montenegrin) became possible only within a
malignant and overemphasized notion of “difference from neighbors,” even
though if approached from other analytical vistas (excluding local
and chauvinistic ones), such difference always rested in details
and nuances.[4] Instead of these nuances
being interconnected, a period of radical antagonism followed. War
through art (if we can use the word art without quotation
marks) became functionalized and preceded actual armed conflict,
and also followed on its bloody heels. We should be reminded here
that within the context of the dissolution of the former SFRY, functionalized
art represents nothing more than the misuse of external artistic
forms. Naturally, we are talking about a particular situation, albeit
a very extreme one, which cannot be generalized but which, as a historical
specificity, marks the collapse of the ideas of tolerance and coexistence
among several nations living in the historically unstable region
of the Balkan Peninsula. Here is how it happened and why.
The destruction of “the second” Yugoslavia
began long before its final military phase. The dissolution started
during the last years of the rule of the Yugoslav communist emperor
Josip Broz Tito. After his death in 1980, the conflicts between nationalist-minded
party administrations in the Yugoslav republics subsided, only to
resurface with renewed vigor at the end of the 1980s. This tidal
wave was particularly apparent after changes in the power structure
of the Serbian Communist Party. The process that culminated in war
was accelerated by the manipulation of nationalist myths, the instrumentalization
of history and the break-up of the socialist system of governing,
paired with economic crisis, voluntarism, authoritarianism and a
refusal to follow the basic principles of European democracy, as
well as attempts by the new political elite to guard amassed material
wealth and power.[5]
Another set of reasons for the bloody break-up
of the country can be seen in the fact that newly elected national
leaders failed to observe the political and diplomatic rules practiced
by the international community and to understand the new historical
circumstances imposed through the real/symbolic meaning of the fall
of the Berlin Wall. Moreover, one should not discount the conflict
of interests that was manifestly present in the former union (SFRY)
and the unwillingness of the international community to fully understand
the intricacies of the Balkan political puzzle and to show resolve
in pursuing diplomatic solutions to various problems. All of this
means, of course, that one is being wise “after the fact.” What
is without doubt, however, is the empirical certainty that at the
end of the twentieth century in the Balkans, history took a sinister
turn as so often happens after a war or collective tragedy.
Signs of an imminent war appeared at the end of
the 1980s and during the early 1990s, and were apparent on many levels
and in different modes. Sport, for example, became an arena for expressing
overcharged nationalist sentiments and chauvinistic attitudes. There
was even a book that treated this aspect of the Yugoslav crisis;
its title, War Started at Maksimir, is indicative of the modes
of expressing nationalist frustration in the former Yugoslavia.[6] Scenes
from various sporting events clearly displayed the range of emotional
engaging the manipulated masses and are worth remembering. Through
these events, the historical spirit of one part of Europe crystallized
at the end of the twentieth century. It seems that Europe did not
fully understand this segment of its own geopolitical, historical
and cultural body of evidence. This might be due to the persistent
colonial stereotypes imposed upon the region. A particular stereotype
sees the Balkans as somewhat closer (geographically) to the Orient,
where the historical, cultural and, finally, democratic processes
by which modern people are constituted are not fully formed. The
region is perceived as being marked by frequent outbursts of atavistic
passions among ethnically close and religiously differing tribes.
Every stereotype partially rests upon the truth, but the problem
is that every stereotype is constructed through an absolutization
of truth or some part of it. It then takes these disjointed segments
as principles upon which the entire process functions. But let us
return to sport.
The players from two soccer teams, Hajduk from
Split and Red Star from Belgrade, cried together with their fans
at Poljud stadium in Split on 4 May 1980 when, during the game, the
announcer informed them of the death of Josip Broz. A few years later
everything had changed. Soccer fans from Split booed during the minute-long
silence in memory of one hundred coal miners from the Serbian town
of Aleksinac who had perished in an accident. This town would later
become a place of carnage after sustained NATO bombing raids in 1999.
I remember the stadium in Split in 1990, where Yugoslav athlete Biljana
Petrovic (a Serb from Croatia) ran a victory lap during the European
Championship in Athletics. She carried two flags: one representing
Yugoslavia and another representing the newly establish Croatian
state. This event occurred at a time when everyone was conscious
that a common state was a thing of the past. The newly elected President
of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, the father of that nation, was in the
stands at Split stadium. He regularly attended sporting events and,
in the early days of his presidency, was greeted with frantic cheers.
By the end of his rule the atmosphere had changed and the crowd often
shouted, resorted to harsh criticism of his rule and made loud jokes.
But during a soccer match in Zagreb between Dinamo (Zagreb) and Red
Star (Belgrade) on 13 May 1990 – when the Serbo-Croat war was
essentially under way – Tudjman’s name was chanted with
euphoria.[7] During his presidency,
Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic never attended sporting events
nor was he ever seen in a theater. At the start of his political
career, Milosevic organized mass rallies where people in attendance
cheered him as the Serbian leader destined to compensate all of their
real or mythical national frustrations. Once the initial euphoric
phase subsided and until his demise in 5 October 2000, Milosevic
lived in seclusion in his own Forbidden City. Whenever he had to
venture outside of his compound – to proclaim some kind of
victory (economic or military) over the rest of the world – everything
was carefully staged and planned. This was done in a manner similar
to that of the former North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung. Even today,
when the national teams of Croatia and FR Yugoslavia play against
each other, victories are valued double, while defeats hurt five
times more than before. This is because sports, within the Balkan
paradigm, still represent a substitution for war games against an “enemy” that
is too closely related.
This is how the political disequilibria manifest
themselves through sport. On the other hand, the arts and literature
were also battlefields for opposing nationalist forces. Of all professional
associations in the former SFRY, the first one to dissolve was the
Yugoslav Writers’ Union. This organization was established
as a carbon copy of the Soviet administrative model. It disintegrated
largely because writers were the first to spell out the previously
unspoken aspirations of their national party leaders.[8] The
Union was used as a training ground for some kind of democratic surrogate
that was to replace (we were told) the socialist system of governing
since this system was experiencing a serious crisis. Naturally, this
was only rhetoric. Writers were advocates of and litmus tests for
the process of the dissolution of the second Yugoslavia. They, nolens
volens, formulated and formed antagonistic sets of “national
interests” and lived the illusion that their “fifteen
minutes” had come, that their voices were being heard and respected.
However, all this was occurring in an environment traditionally lacking
the skills and culture of “listening.” The fact was that
writers were then, as before, only marionettes with a certain level
of public importance, and were used by the new political oligarchies
to legitimize their own positions. It seemed, for a moment, that
more liberal times were coming, times when everything could be said
and when voicing one’s opinion would increase in importance.[9] In
reality this was only a brief interlude that allowed the new/old
autocratic and somewhat remodeled system to establish itself as the
only master of real power. Words finally lost all their power, if
they had ever possessed any.
By reconstructing the basic elements of a broad
historical and cultural context, we have arrived at the crucial distinction
marking the change of the social function of literature that occurred
after the collapse of Yugoslavia. I will elaborate on this issue
within the context of Serbia and Serbian literature. There are various
reasons for this narrowing of analytical scope. The primary reason
is the fact that I am most familiar with this context and, through
my work, belong to it. The second reason rests on my conviction that
the aforementioned changes in Serbia represent one of its more radical
manifestations in comparison to the cultures and literatures of the
other Yugoslav successor states. This radicalism is the product of
complexity, extremism and anachronism, as well as the autistic character
of the Serbian historical and political situation. Of course, by
proceeding in this manner I am not dismissing similarities that are
evident within the general trend of transition. I am presupposing
their existence. If one is allowed today to think comparatively in
Yugoslav terms, such a methodological approach might turn an analysis
of potential similarities into a display of empirically proven sameness.
Transition from a socialist cultural model – a
euphemism for a watered down version of communism – to a new
model applied during Milosevic’s rule (that still does not
have a name) can be traced and investigated on many levels and in
various ways. I intend to rely upon a phenomenological description
of details of cultural life, and will focus on occurrences which
might indicate central prerogatives of the newly established cultural
model. This new model, unlike the earlier one, was not imposed by
decree. It simply sprang up like a “wild structure” out
of the historical turbulence of the last Balkan war of the twentieth
century. After it established itself and it became apparent how this
pseudo-cultural model would function, numerous contenders began jockeying
for positions of influence.
The semantics of notions such as “literature” and “writer” were
the first casualties of this mutation. Previously elitist in character,
and representing an art that synthesized and recaptured the general
and particular of human experience, as well as an art that deepened
the understanding of reality, literature lost its power and social
influence in the post-socialist cultural model. It became a very
private tale without social significance, a tale that seemed attractive
to certain academic circles, to some writers and to an occasional
reader whose passion for the written word resembled the passions
of other marginalized social groups. There are people belonging to
sects that worship Satan and clubs of bullterrier owners, but few
people (imagine this) read modern Serbian poetry! The broader social
base was indifferent to literature and its ethical strength dissolved
into the dark dumbness of lost interests for “imaginative writing.” Literature
was removed from its throne where it had previously sat as a regulator
of an unstoppable force that we sometimes call life and sometimes
history.
This does not mean that writers stopped writing.
On the contrary! Literature is being produced in Serbia under the
new circumstances. It is being produced at such a rate that one can
say that literary activities and writing in general has become a
form of mass activity in Serbia. Such a tremendous growth could seem
strange: why write when no one reads or needs the written word? However,
if the problem is analyzed more thoroughly it is obvious that this
occurrence reflects the absence of any kind of a positive value system
in society. Productive social limits have disappeared, and one can
state with certainty that in today’s Serbia everything is literature.
But in a country where everyone is a poet, there are no poets, and
the importance of the word as a vehicle of artistic expression is
ever more diminishing. In such an environment, you can write anything
and this “anything” might be absolutely brilliant. But
no one will take any notice of it.
Paradoxically, while literature has lost almost
all of its social relevance in Serbia, the reputation of the writing
profession has made significant gains. In the cultural and social
environment in post-1990s Serbia, it has suddenly become important
to be a writer, or to be called one. This social signifier is used
indiscriminately without even looking into what (if anything) a particular
writer has published. Socially relevant literature does not exist
any more and even if (and when) it does materialize, no one takes
notice. In Serbia today, one can debate the existence of literature
but cannot dispute the existence of many writers. There are more
of them than ever before. Official writers’ associations with
dubious functions (neither political, nor ethical and professional)
have almost two thousand members. The entire country has some fifty
bookstores and approximately two hundred libraries. At the same time,
an average print-run reaches between five hundred and one thousand
copies for any given book. The obvious question remains: for whom
are so many writers actually writing? I cannot come up with an answer
that does not include the pseudonym used by Homer’s Ulysses
when he tried to deceive Cyclops.
In spite of the disheartening realization that
in modern-day Serbia the amount of books produced every year is the
highest since the codification of the Serbian language while people
are reading less than ever before, it is important to be a writer
in this country. It is important because of the Serb cultural archetype
that a writer act as a social commentator. According to the rules
of the mythical/national matrix, the writer is the one who tells
us who we are, explains what is happening to us and provides guidance
as to what we should do. It is an appealing role, and there is no
lack of candidates for this prestigious position. It is a charade
and a parade of egoism and self-centeredness, and a tireless competition
over whose written words will carry more weight and be respected
more. With the aforementioned archetype in mind, it is understandable
why a battle of pen and paper is taking place in Serbia today. The
struggle for literary prestige seems to be an unavoidable consequence
of the collapse of the unperfected and incomplete socialist cultural
model of yesteryears. The earlier state of affairs was characterized
by the existence of a particular hierarchy in which everyone had
a designated place to fill and role to perform. Such a model functioned
due to an unspoken agreement on the issue of “poetic/aesthetic
tolerance.”[10] In turn, such
tolerance provided a space for “dissident” literature
and granted relative independence to literary and aesthetic criticism.[11] The
destruction of the old hierarchy in which everyone had a designated
place resulted, among other things, in a conflict between several
hierarchies established parallel to each other, which did not have
anything to do either with aesthetics or with an understanding of
the social function of literature but rather with the inevitable
struggle for power. This is why, in post-socialist Serbia, we have
new party-oriented literatures. As for the process of aesthetic and
literary evaluation, the order of the day is self-promotion. Every
party has a couple of its own writers. Every party favors and promotes
its own perception of literature and its own set of “values,” which
always correspond to narrow party interests. This practice is so
common that it cannot be viewed as a passing trend. Some party leaders – those
in power or belonging to real or relative opposition forces – think
of themselves as writers with a mission. For a politician or a minister
(party leader, journalist, singer of folk songs or lawyer) to say
that he is a writer greatly helps to establish his social position.
Very often one hears public figures begin to elaborate on any given
issue by saying “I, as a writer, think...” In most cases,
writing is not perceived as functional literature but is understood
as any and all kinds of writing.
This is how, after the collapse of the “second
Yugoslavia,” literature in Serbia re-established its connection
with politics. This time around, such a connection materialized in
a more perverse manner than ever before. During the socialist period,
literature was given a rather broad maneuvering space as payback
for its ideological servitude. Moreover, only certain themes that
directly touched upon the mechanism of the communist regime were
under political and ideological embargo and constituted a well-marked
taboo. Disagreements over literature would arise only when the occasional
writer (usually a well-known dissident) attempted to deconstruct
this taboo. In the new circumstances it looks like there are no more
taboos of any kind (everything can be said, but nothing can be done
any more), and language has lost almost all of its corrective powers.
It is being used as an unrefined tool for building propaganda banners,
which carry different political ideas.
The second significant change that occurred within
the realm of literary and artistic expression is a direct consequence
of the total disintegration of all value systems. During the last
decade of the twentieth century, Serbian literature suffered from
a permanent and intensive diminishing of aesthetic criteria, paired
with an occasional advancement of the mantra of the market-value
system. If compared with the western cultural model which operates
on the principle that a best-seller has to be the best book, the
Serbian application of a similar principle and its local variation
take the form of a grotesque, since book sales are meager or not
even worth mentioning, and because a market for these goods in Serbia
does not exist. The cultural infrastructure is indeed intact and
we still have publishing houses and libraries, bookstores and institutes,
as well as universities and too many literary awards and a relatively
broad media landscape. In some areas this existing infrastructure
has even been improved upon. For example, instead of the former big
and powerful publishing organizations that survived thanks to state
sponsorship and were controlled by the state, the publishing industry
in the third Yugoslavia is almost entirely privately owned. A distant
observer might conclude that everything that is needed for the functioning
of a complex literary system is in place in Serbia. There are writers,
manuscripts and publishers. The poorly developed literary market
in modern-day Serbia has several hundred publishers. What is lacking
is a reading public – the reason for the existence of literature
and the non plus ultra of every literary activity. Despite
the cultural infrastructure’s mirage of functionality, the
reading public has shrunk to a small circle of professional readers.
There is no mass readership and, therefore, there is no elite. During
socialist times it was the middle class that made up the reading
public. When this class disappeared during the economic downfall
of the 1990s, the reading public vanished. The reading of new books
(as a way of satisfying a cultural need) is limited to literary critics
and writers, even though not all writers read. Anyone else engaged
in this activity is motivated by the need for entertainment. Some
people go to soccer games (less frequently than before) and others
go on picnics (very rarely), while some people read texts built on
a rather low-level fabulation. In Serbia, some four million people
can read books – they are literate –, and thanks to their
school years they possess a vague understanding of what literature
is. With this in mind, the fact that best-selling books in Serbia
rarely reach a print-run of 10,000 copies speaks more about the state
of affairs on the literary front than any socio-cultural analysis.
Literary criticism, the fellow traveler of all
recent literary production in Serbia, completely lost its significance.
During the past era of ideological oversight, literary criticism
defended the artist’s freedom of expression and often fenced
off political voluntarism and radicalism. No matter to what extent
it had to be conscious of the ideological context within which literature
was created (as adoration, or as negation and indifference, or even
as transgression of the current state of affairs), Serbian literary
criticism had a crucial role in promoting literary achievements that
made Serbian literature an integral part of the European cultural
heritage. Its role was apparent in the context of assessing literary
values as well as exploring new avenues of critical thinking and
presenting new aesthetic forms. Naturally, certain socialist segments
of this body of evidence (Serbian literary criticism) remained locked
within the confines of an ideological dogma that represented a surrogate/substitute
of a denied religion.
Literary criticism in Serbia today has entered
a phase of pure solipsism. Decades ago it was argued that literary
criticism relied on too many academic terms when describing and analyzing
literature, and that such complicated language was not easily understood
by a broad readership. Even though this might have been a fair assessment,
it is worth reminding ourselves that literary criticism of past decades
insisted on the autonomy and multi-layered semantics of a work of
art, and that it struggled to prevent the simplification and banalization
of literature according to the prescribed mechanism of juxtaposing
positive and negative ideological connotations. Today’s literary
criticism is inward-oriented and caters to a small group of readers,
not more than one hundred, because its social function has changed
and no one any longer desires to read “academic” and “scholarly
written” criticism. Of the several dozen literary magazines
and journals that were published monthly in Serbia in the 1980s,
only a few remain. Many important journals, such as Delo, Vidici, Savremenik,
and Polja, died slow and painful deaths. The few that did
survive do not appear on a regular basis and their size has shrunk,
while their print-runs are so small that they cannot possibly create
what was once known as “mass readership.” A certain prestige
is still present in journalistic criticism because it emphasizes
the informative and advertising function. Due to generally poor living
standards criticism also became an activity susceptible to low-level
corruption. Critics are essentially servicing publishers by promoting
their products. For a meager sum of money a respectable critic will
write a review of an ordinary piece of literary trash and
hail a mediocre work as the best literary achievements of the decade.
Following the changes in literature, literary criticism is also changing.
The diminishing influence of criticism is the product of the general
dissolution of an earlier literary system, which has been replaced
by a chaotic hyper-production that has no self-control and self-reflection.
In conclusion, I will briefly summarize the crucial
aspects of an astonishing metamorphosis in the literary arts in post-socialist
countries. As I have pointed out earlier, this change took an almost
malignant form in Serbia. In spite of the fact that literature in
Serbia today does not represent a relevant and artistically mediated
way of conveying possible truths about the world, every year a few
hundred new writers appear on the scene. They struggle at all costs
to be accepted as writers and crave this kind of social promotion.
They are ready and willing to self-finance the publishing of their
manuscripts and to cover all printing costs, editorial expenses and
peer reviews, as well as to provide funds for marketing the final
product. Once published, these books (novels, collections of poetry)
enjoy a few brief moments in the spotlight (the time-frame can be
measured in seconds), and are then forgotten and never revisited.
Regardless of this devastating after-shock, it
seems that the appeal of being a “writer” never loses
its power. Everyone desires to possess and to profit from the right
to judge the world. This, in turn, is indirect proof that the entire
society functions in a chronic state of anomy where the lack of ethical
and aesthetic values is such that it is possible to say that everything is
of value – a self-proclaimed everything. Every morning
one can read in the daily press information that some contemporary
Serbian writer is, at the same time, the most important contemporary
Serbian writer. Instead of an interaction of the highest values we
are witnessing a leadership race – a model of action that reflects
the undemocratic principles of daily politics. The method is always
the same, only the names are different. In an environment where everything is
of value, there is no value at all. As the most elitist segment of
literature, poetry is suffering the unbearable pressure of everyday
babbling that no one listens to any more. Every day we have more
poets and fewer good poems. Everyone writes and no one reads. Until
very recently, approximately one new book of poetry per day was published
every day in Serbia, with some of the best Serbian poets (Ivan V.
Lalic, for example) having no more that fifty devoted readers of
their work. Instead of reading, everyone has taken up a pen and started
filling up white pages. Everyone is chipping away at the divine substance
of language because everyone wants to be seen as its rightful owner.
This is how a poetic substance, which is as rare in a language as
gold is in nature, is being constantly smothered by the remnants
of wasted language.
I will conclude by saying the following. The position
of literature in society is always in some correlation with the quality
of that society as shown in example of literature in Serbian society
between 1988 and 2000. Speaking in sociological terms, one can state
that a worn-out language is the sign of a worn-out society, and the
appropriate philosophical metaphor to describe such a state of affairs
is that the erosion of a tongue is a clear sign of a heart ailment.
NOTES
[1] The first
common South Slav state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
(later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) was established on 1 December
1918. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was established
in 1945 and is often referred to as the “second Yugoslavia.”
[2] To say
that the SFRY is an “Eastern-European” country represents
a relative qualification because this state was never a part of the “Eastern
Block,” nor was it, in terms of geography, entirely positioned
in the east. The SFRY had a system of government that can be characterized
as a somewhat relaxed form of partocracy (in comparison to other
countries belonging to the “Eastern Block”), and it existed
thanks to the Cold War balance of power and interests between two
opposing political and ideological spheres of influence. Furthermore,
the manner in which its president, Josip Broz Tito, governed the
country could be characterized as a “bon vivant” dictatorship.
With this in mind, it seems more appropriate to view the former SFRY
as some kind of a “bridge” between the communist East
and the liberal West. It should also be noted that the SFRY was closer
to the communist East because of its lack of civic democracy.
[3] This complex
of individual social interactions should not be confused with the
ideologically defined and proscribed, and administratively favored,
idea of the “Yugoslav” cultural integration/unitarization.
[4] Specificities
of these three cultures (Muslim, Macedonian and partly Montenegrin)
had crystallized somewhat later than the period of South Slav romanticism
of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in the nineteenth century. It is
known that the romantic concept of nation presupposes the establishment
of a collective, ethnic identity on the basis of tradition, language,
self-awareness and religion. In turn, all these elements could be
considered within the margins of a general notion of culture: nation
= a particular culture. The Macedonian language was codified in 1945,
for example, and this codification preceded the formation of the
Macedonian state. Muslims were recognized as a nation for the first
time after the Yugoslav Census of 1971. Until then, followers of
the Islamic faith in the former SFRY were declared either Serbs or
Croats or even “nationally undecided.” Due to its internal
dynamics and complexity the relationship between the Serbian and
Montenegrin cultures, which rests upon the category of “specificity
within sameness” will not be elaborated on here. The Montenegrin
people have their own state, and we know that cultural specificity
is one of stately prerogatives.
[5] Serbia
was the last country in Eastern Europe to call for a multiparty election.
Even then, the party in power controlled these elections.
[6] The
War Started at Maksimir, Beograd: Medija Centar, 1997. Maksimir
is a soccer stadium in Zagreb.
[7] Srecko
Mihailovic, “Rat je poceo 13. Maja 1990,” in Rat je
Poceo na Maksimiru, Beograd: Medija Centar, 1997.
[8] The Yugoslav
Writers Union ceased functioning in 1989, but its official dissolution
was announced in early 1990. After several unsuccessful attempts
to organize a meeting of the General Assembly of the Yugoslav Writers
Union, its president Slobodan Selenic resigned on 4 January 1990.
After his resignation the Union formally dissolved. See: Slobodan
Selenic, Iskorak u Stvarnost, Beograd: Prosveta, 1995.
[9] A number
of writers received “amnesty” and earlier banned books
started appearing in bookstores. The most famous communist dissident,
Milovan Djilas, was allowed to publish his books, and the authorities
dismantled various party committees that were in charge of monitoring
the activities of writers. The collected works of Slobodan Jovanovic,
of Dragisa Vasic, and of some other minor writers (such as Stanislav
Krakov and Grigorije Bozovic) were published. A new edition of Vunena
Vremena, a collection of poems by Gojko Djogo, appeared in bookstores.
This poet had been sentenced to two years in prison in 1982 because
of his poeticised criticism of Josip Broz. Earlier frequent attacks
on “the negative ideological views” in various literary
journals stopped. This trend has had a boomerang effect. Since everything
can be said, the importance of linguistic engagement has faded away
because the language of literature changes the world only as long
as it irritates taboos. Once taboos are dismantled, such language
loses its bearings. Moreover, the creative efforts of the diaspora
were slowly legitimized and became ecstatically less valued but nonetheless
an integral part of Serbian literature.
[10] During
the famous and rather public debate between “realists” and “modernists” in
Yugoslav literature during the 1950s, which was monitored by the
relevant party structures, an unspoken agreement regarding the validity
of artistic ways in pursuing aesthetic values was reached. The imperative
agreed upon was the writer’s/artist’s loyalty to the
system, while the avenues through which various aesthetic values
were explored were left to the discretion and preferences of individual
writers and artists. Thanks to this broad consensus, it was possible
to ideologically verify and categorize as elitist art works by such
different writers as Desanka Maksimovic, Mihailo Lalic and Branko
Copic, on the one hand, and Radomir Konstantinovic, Vasko Popa and
Oskar Davico, on the other. This unfair categorization was accomplished
in spite of the fact that works by these writers represented perfect
examples of the corralling together of authors who exhibited substantially
different levels and modes of artistic sensibility and realization.
[11] For
a personal view of this issue, see Dobrica Cosic, Piscevi zapisi
1951-1968, Beograd: Filip Visnjic, 2000.