Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? The Geopolitical and Imaginary Borders between the Balkans and Europe: The Geopolitical and imaginary borders between the balkans and Europe: 47 (Austrian Culture) [New ed.] 1433115654, 9781433115653

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ANA FOTEVA

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? takes up one of the most fraught areas of Europe, the Balkans. Variously part of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Byzantine empires, this region has always been considered Europe’s border between the Orient and the Occident. Aiming to clarify the politics of drawing cultural borders in this region, the book examines the relations between

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

the Habsburg Monarchy and the Balkans as an intermediate space between West and East. plexity of the region. Therefore, cultural multi-belonging, historical disruption, and recurrence of identities and conflicts are proposed to be “the essence” of the Balkans. Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? depicts the fictional imagination of the Balkans as a “utopian dystopia.” This oxymoron encompasses the utopian projections of the Austrian/ Habsburg writers onto the Balkans as a place of intact nature and archaic communities; the dystopian presentations of the Balkans by local authors as an abnormal no-place (ou-topia) onto which the historical tensions of empires have been projected; and, finally, the depictions of the Balkans in the Western media as an eternal or recurring dystopia. There is at present no other study that distinguishes these particular geographical reference points. Thus, this book contributes to the research on Europe’s historical memory and to scholarship on postcolonial and/or post-imperial identities in European states. The volume is recommended for courses on Austrian, German, Balkan, and European studies, as well as comparative literature, theater, media, Slavic literatures, history, and political science.

Ana Foteva received her Ph.D. in German literature at Purdue University. Currently she holds the position of Visiting Assistant Professor in German Studies at St. Lawrence University. She is the recipient of several grants and awards. Foteva has published in both European and American journals on a variety of topics, including Austrian literature of the fin de siècle,

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

It demonstrates that the dichotomy Orient versus Occident is insufficient to explain the com-

THE GEOPOLITICAL AND IMAGINARY BORDERS BETWEEN THE BALKANS AND EUROPE

Ana Foteva

literatures of Southeastern Europe, German Classicism and theater, and contrastive analysis.

47 PETER LANG

www.peterlang.com

AAUUSSTTRRIIAANN CCUULLTTUURREE

Foteva_cpi_cb:KraftHelga.qxd

4/5/2014

5:58 AM

Page 1

ANA FOTEVA

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? takes up one of the most fraught areas of Europe, the Balkans. Variously part of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Byzantine empires, this region has always been considered Europe’s border between the Orient and the Occident. Aiming to clarify the politics of drawing cultural borders in this region, the book examines the relations between

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

the Habsburg Monarchy and the Balkans as an intermediate space between West and East. plexity of the region. Therefore, cultural multi-belonging, historical disruption, and recurrence of identities and conflicts are proposed to be “the essence” of the Balkans. Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? depicts the fictional imagination of the Balkans as a “utopian dystopia.” This oxymoron encompasses the utopian projections of the Austrian/ Habsburg writers onto the Balkans as a place of intact nature and archaic communities; the dystopian presentations of the Balkans by local authors as an abnormal no-place (ou-topia) onto which the historical tensions of empires have been projected; and, finally, the depictions of the Balkans in the Western media as an eternal or recurring dystopia. There is at present no other study that distinguishes these particular geographical reference points. Thus, this book contributes to the research on Europe’s historical memory and to scholarship on postcolonial and/or post-imperial identities in European states. The volume is recommended for courses on Austrian, German, Balkan, and European studies, as well as comparative literature, theater, media, Slavic literatures, history, and political science.

Ana Foteva received her Ph.D. in German literature at Purdue University. Currently she holds the position of Visiting Assistant Professor in German Studies at St. Lawrence University. She is the recipient of several grants and awards. Foteva has published in both European and American journals on a variety of topics, including Austrian literature of the fin de siècle,

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

It demonstrates that the dichotomy Orient versus Occident is insufficient to explain the com-

THE GEOPOLITICAL AND IMAGINARY BORDERS BETWEEN THE BALKANS AND EUROPE

Ana Foteva

literatures of Southeastern Europe, German Classicism and theater, and contrastive analysis.

47 PETER LANG

www.peterlang.com

AAUUSSTTRRIIAANN CCUULLTTUURREE

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

“Ana Foteva’s Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? is an exemplary representation of the work necessary t o understand in contemporary terms a region where nationalist-imperialist paradigms for cultural study simply do not hold. The text takes up several cultures and breathes life into their intersections, as they meet in the present, reawaken ing the joint legacies of three ancient empires (Habsburg, Ottoman, and Byzantine) out from behind the blackout curtain of the Soviet Union. She present s authors writing in German, Serbi an, and B osnian, each trying to understand what stories co mprise the region’s inheritance beyond nationalism. Foteva’s deft juxtaposition of history, travelogue, and literature opens new visions of how cultures interact when they both share and are divided multiple. This volume is a must for a nyone working in Aust rian and Slavic literatures.” Katherine Arens, University of Texas at Austin “Given the competing and overl apping legacies and identities that complicate the Balkans’ cultural landscape, it is very hel pful to finally read a book t hat links the literature and history of the Habsburg and Ottoman realms. N o less refreshing is a book t hat credits Yugoslavia with nurturing and preserving the region’s multicultural legacy at least until its own dissolution.” Charles Ingrao, Purdue University

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

AUSTRIAN CULTURE

Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger General Editor Vol. 47

This book is a volume in a Peter Lang monograph series. Every title is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production.

PETER LANG

New York  Washington, D.C./Baltimore  Bern Frankfurt  Berlin  Brussels  Vienna  Oxford

Ana Foteva

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? THE GEOPOLITICAL AND IMAGINARY BORDERS BETWEEN THE BALKANS AND EUROPE

PETER LANG

New York  Washington, D.C./Baltimore  Bern Frankfurt  Berlin  Brussels  Vienna  Oxford

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Foteva, Ana. Do the Balkans begin in Vienna? : the geopolitical and imaginary borders between the Balkans and Europe / Ana Foteva. pages cm. — (Austrian culture; volume 47) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Balkan Peninsula—Relations—Europe, Western. 2. Europe, Western— Relations—Balkan Peninsula. 3. Balkan Peninsula—Boundaries—Europe, Western. 4. Europe, Western—Boundaries—Balkan Peninsula. 5. Borderlands—Balkan Peninsula—History. 6. Borderlands—Europe, Western—History. 7. Geopolitics—Balkan Peninsula. 8. Geopolitics—Europe, Western. 9. Balkan Peninsula—Politics and government. 10. Europe, Western—Politics and government. I. Title. DR38.3.E85F68 327.49604—dc23 2013028593 ISBN 978-1-4331-1565-3 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4539-0970-6 (e-book) ISSN 1054-058X

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

© 2014 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

To my parents and my sister

Table of Contents Acknowledgments ............................................................................................... ix I. Introduction: The Balkans’ Postmodern Geography .................................. 1 II. Travelogues of War and Peace ................................................................. 17 III. Serbia: Between East and West ................................................................ 45 IV. Bosnia-Herzegovina: Where Orient and Occident Meet .......................... 87 V. Slovenia and Croatia: Between the Balkans and Europe........................ 147 VI. The Balkans between Utopia and Dystopia............................................ 195 VII. Myth and Memory in the Habsburg Monarchy and the Balkans............ 273 Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 303 Index ................................................................................................................. 315

Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to all the people who helped me with this book. I have been very fortunate to work with Professor Katherine Arens, who helped me selflessly with her superb knowledge of the matter in question and her enormous pedagogical commitment. I am likewise grateful to Professor Charles Ingrao for his invaluable insights into the historical relations between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Balkans. I am deeply indebted to Professor Herbert Rowland for his thorough proofreading and extremely helpful suggestions for the content. Any remaining errors are mine. Last but not least, I would like to thank Professor Beate Allert and Professor Jennifer William for their long-lasting scholarly support and encouragement to publish my research.

I. Introduction: The Balkans’

Postmodern Geography This study takes up one of the most politically fraught areas of Europe, the Balkans, in the contexts of its various modern political affiliations. At times variously part of the Austro-Hungarian (k.u.k., i.e., imperial and royal), Ottoman, Byzantine, and Roman Empires, and now often viewed as part of Central Europe, this region has always been considered Europe’s border between the Orient and the Occident, Christian Europe and the Moslem East, that is, between European and various non-European populations. Although Metternich famously declared that “The Balkans begin at the Rennweg”1 (a street near the historical center of Vienna), the countries, languages, ethnicities, and cultures actually in that region have allowed the landscape to appear in Europe’s political and cultural imagination in many forms, most often as the border beyond which “the other,” variously defined, threatens Europe. Central Europe and the Balkans are the two liminal European regions that help Europe define what it is, and what it is not.2 Egon Schwarz defines Central Europe as a cultural, rather than geographical concept and postulates a utopian Central Europe (Schöpflin and Wood 143–56). I, on the other hand, examine the fictional imagination of the Balkans as a “utopian dystopia” (my terms), as an imaginary space (Todorova) and ab-normal no-place (ou-topia) onto which the historical tensions of empires have been projected. While examining the cultural and political contours of the Balkans and the different approaches to drawing borders between them and Europe, I pay close attention to the impact of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires on the cultural formation of the region, particularly on the liminal, in-between-zones of these empires. An analysis of the historical and political discourses and the fictional imagination of these zones unveils the historical negotiations of identity and cultural boundaries within a region whose borders have always been fluid, arbitrary, and particularly challenging of Europe’s most cherished self-images. Traditions Constituting European Identity Central Europe is shaped by a plurality of imperial legacies (the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, Hitler’s and Stalin’s conquests) that superimposed historical metanarratives on the numerous local marginal nations (Petkovi! 21–23). However, despite representations of the imperial

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discourses to the contrary, the small nations of Central Europe do share a historical and cultural continuum and a common, even though fluid identity. It is a different case with the Balkans. My approach to “reading” the Balkans does not aim at discovering or postulating a unified identity. Quite the contrary, in accord with Bhabha’s concept of cultural difference that is in opposition to cultural diversity (The Third Space 208-09), I propose that cultural multi-belonging, historical disruption, and recurrence of conflicting identities are the ongoing processes which replace the concept of a common identity for the Balkans and require a plurality of mobile and adjustable perspectives as interpretative strategies for viewing this region considered as a cultural and geopolitical space.3 Moreover, owing to their changing boundaries, the Balkans also possess the capacity to “radiate” ambiguity onto the bordering region of Habsburg Central Europe thus placing the essentialist definitions about culture and identity generally in question. Therefore, this study examines the relations between the Habsburg Monarchy (AustriaHungary)—an empire whose identity was from the beginning constructed on the basis of Catholic Christianity and which thus represented the Western European legacy in the Balkans as pars pro toto—and the Balkans as an intermediate space between East and West. The Balkans themselves were shaped by the Byzantine and Ottoman imperial legacies, i.e., by both Christian and Islamic influences. Todorova (181) argues for a common cultural heritage of the Balkan peoples, but admits the difficulty involved in deciding to what degree each of the empires and their cultures respectively shaped the common Balkan identity. The questions we must raise here are: where does the Byzantine tradition belong in the general division between East and West, and how does the succeeding Ottoman legacy relate to it? If we follow historians who claim that the history and cultural identity of Modern Europe is entirely continuous with Christianity,4 then we must conclude that the Byzantine Empire clearly belongs to the European legacy. Jenö Szücs and George Schöpflin (Schöpflin and Wood 8–29) give similar criteria for a differentiation between Western and Eastern Europe (Szücs) or between Europe and Russia (Schöpflin). Szücs focuses first on the historical and political processes which shaped the three regions that, according to him, comprise Europe. In 800 C.E. Western Europe was identical with Carolingian Europe (the realm of Charlemagne). Its borderline followed the lower reaches of the Elbe and the Saale in the South and the Leitha in the East. It was opposed to the eastern successor of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and to the Islamic Ottoman Empire, and after the Arabic invasion its purported center was moved further to the North. Western Europe usurped the name “Europe” after the death of Charlemagne

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in 814, thus ignoring the other pole of Europe—the Byzantine Empire (13– 14). The schism between Eastern and Western Christianity in 1054 moved the border between Western and Eastern Christianity further to the East: it separated, roughly, the Polish from Russian lands, and reached into the Baltic region in the thirteenth century. These two regions were shaped by the competing influences of Rome and Constantinople. The political demarcation line was at the same time a cultural one. Western Europe was culturally shaped by the Romanesque and Gothic periods, the Renaissance and the Reformation, but also by the development of autonomous cities with corporative structure and liberties, among other things. These phenomena did not reach further than the Polish and Hungarian Kingdoms (13–14). According to Szücs, following a not entirely perfect, yet acceptable consensus, the region between the demarcation lines of the former Carolingian Europe and Eastern Europe, which culturally still belonged to the West, was given the name Ostmitteleuropa (East-Central or Central Europe) (16). Everything beyond Central Europe was known as the East, a region that never took part in the medieval cultural development of Western Europe. In the sixteenth century the Russian state was founded between the White, the Black, and the Caspian Seas, in the territory between Poland and the Ural. In time, Russia and Eastern Europe became one and the same (16– 17). At the end of the medieval period the Seljuk Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire and renamed its Asian region Anatolia and the Southeastern European parts Rumelia—referring to the lands inherited from the Roman Empire.5 Since the Ottoman conquests stopped in Hungary, Szücs assigns it the role of the new border region from which Central Europe had just been liberated. He also decides to leave Southeastern Europe out of consideration because it was excluded from the European structures for a half a millennium (17–18). After “dividing” Europe into three parts, Szücs elaborates on the basic characteristics of the West (19). The main principle is the division between society and state (20) that sets in motion a development essentially different from any other in the world, most importantly from that of Eastern and, of course, of Southeastern Europe. Schöpflin discusses all the basic elements of Western society (which logically originate in the initial separation of state and society that Szücs stressed). The division of power brought about an attendant separation of secular from religious power, the founding of church universities independent of the state, and an autonomous development of the sciences and a spread of literacy that eventually undermined the role of the Church. The independent cities played a crucial role in promoting the market, the money economy, and technologies (Schöpflin and Wood 10–11).

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Schöpflin compares the Russian model to the Western situation and concludes that it is inherently different. The ruler not only of Russia, but also of the Byzantine state was able to integrate the Church into the framework of secular power and thereby exercise control over the religious domain. In the Byzantine Empire, where the political tradition was reinforced by the influence of Islam, the ruler used religion to strengthen the myth of legitimacy, according to which the Empire was divinely ordained, so that religion could never emerge as an autonomous, competitive value in the way that it did in Europe (13). The Byzantine Empire, with its traditional urban civilization and centralized bureaucratic state structure, was the opposite of the WestEuropean division of power, and Islam combined elements of PersianByzantine structures with its own military-theocratic autocracy. The cities in both the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires were therefore dependent on the centralized state and, although they were administrative, military and economic centers, they did not develop in the zone of interaction between sovereignty and power which gave Western cities the possibility of building up an independent communal existence (Szücs 22–23). Therefore, Szücs’ conclusion is that the Byzantine Empire did not partake in the Western European or, according to Schöpflin, in the European model of development. Central Europe, on the other hand, notwithstanding the intermediate and liminal, pervious nature of the area between Latin and Orthodox lands, emerged as a part of Western Christianity and thus firmly associated with the West (Schöpflin and Wood 19–20). Huntington mentions the possibility of differentiating between Orthodox Russian, Orthodox Byzantine, and Western Christian civilizations (45). He also argues that civilizations outlive empires (43), which brings us to the question of the Byzantine legacy after the demise of the Byzantine and the birth of the Ottoman Empire. In contrast to the previous mainstream in historiography, according to which “Ottoman rule […] sundered the Balkans from the rest of the continent and ushered in new dark ages for the region” (xl), both Todorova (162) and Mazower suggest that the Ottoman Empire did not destroy the Byzantine heritage, but much to the contrary regarded itself as a “successor to the ‘universal state’ of Byzantine Orthodoxy” (xl) and included Byzantine elements in its state structure. The Ottoman historian Brown goes a step further and includes the Ottoman Empire among the three Mediterranean empires, together with the Roman and Byzantine Empires. He further points out that although the Roman Empire was, for a short period, more extensive, it did not last as long as the Ottoman, whereas the Byzantine Empire lasted longer but could not match the diversity of the peoples ruled by the Ottomans (1).

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Brown’s categorization is important for this study because all the aforementioned empires—from the Roman, which embodies the Western imperial tradition, to the Ottoman, which is considered foreign, even hostile to the European/Western civilization—included the Balkans, which were also part of the empire of Alexander the Great. Due to these imperial legacies the Balkans are seen alternately as the “cradle of the European civilization,” a perception focusing on the ancient Greek legacy on the one hand, and, on the other, as a non-European, “other” space due to five centuries of Ottoman rule since the beginning of the Modern Age. The reasons for including the Western Catholic Habsburg Monarchy in the discussions on the Balkans in this study are the Monarchy’s own cultural ambiguity and its political influence on the history of the Balkan countries. Not only was this empire considered to be the border to the Orient, it also invited Orthodox inhabitants from the Ottoman Empire to serve as mercenary troops to defend the border areas against the Ottomans as early as 1522 (Rothenberg 8–15); with the occupation of Bosnia formalized at the Berlin Conference in 1878, it incorporated Ottoman territories populated by Slavic Moslems, Orthodox Serbs, and Catholic Croats living next to each other, and it was a coveted destination for many different peoples from the Ottoman Empire who aspired towards both education and economic prosperity. Considering the above facts, Metternich’s famous declaration that the Balkans begin in Vienna, or more precisely at the Rennweg6 could be interpreted in three ways: as an expression of his frustration over the inevitable political and cultural intermingling of Austria with the uncanny space; as an acknowledgment of the similarity between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires in regard to the complexity of nationalities and cultures in these two supranational states; and finally, from a postmodern point of view, as a dismissal of essentialist notions about what is West or Europe and where the borderline between the Orient and the Occident should be drawn. Geographical, Geopolitical, and Cultural Borders of the Balkans A perfect example of the Balkans’ ambiguity is that not only their cultural bases, but also their geographical names could well be disputed. The geographical name “Balkans” was based on the erroneous ancient Greek belief that the Haemus (the ancient Greek name for the Balkans) was a mountain chain linking the Adriatic and Black Seas, with a dominant position in the peninsula (Todorova 25), that it ran all throughout the peninsula, similar to the Pyrenees of the Iberian Peninsula (Mazower xxvi), i.e., it stretched from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. In fact, it ends in eastern Serbia (Glenny xxii). Therefore, even the geographical boundaries have been and still are being renegotiated. Todorova draws the geographical borders of the Balkans as follows:

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? The standard approach of geographers distinguishes between a stricto sensu physico geographical definition, and one employed for more practical purposes. The first accepts as the undisputed eastern, southern, and western borders the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the Aegean, Mediterranean, Ionian, and Adriatic Seas. (30)

It is significant that the northern geographical border of the Balkans is the most disputed one. According to Todorova (30), geographically “it is most often considered” to begin at the mouth of the river Idria in the gulf of Trieste and to coincide with the Sava and the Danube rivers. It is disputed because here the geographical and the cultural definitions of the region based on historical metanarratives collide, and every attempt to determine the border opens a Pandora’s box of historical and cultural argumentation. Since the above definition includes both Slovenia (or part of the Habsburg Monarchy) and the European part of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, it automatically questions not only the border between the Balkans and Europe, but also the border between the Orient and the Occident. Mazower gives a concise, but ambiguous definition of the Balkans as a part of Europe, but “not of it” (xxviii), alluding to its oriental heritage, and Glenny abandons the attempts for definition altogether, because “[a] serious consideration of the Balkan peninsula runs up against the unanswerable question of borders” (xxii). The disagreements and difficulties in naming and mapping the Balkans show the crisis of geography as “a concept, a sign system and an order of knowledge established at the centers of power” (Rogoff 20). Rogoff therefore proposes introducing critical epistemology, subjectivity, and spectatorship into the area of geography, which will “shift the interrogation from the center to the margins, to the site at which new and multidimensional knowledge and identities are constantly in the process of being formed” (20). Abandoning the “sequentially unfolding narrative” and historical thinking (1), Soja introduces the concept of postmodern human geography and proposes spatialization of the historical narrative that would emphasize “the combination of time and space, history and geography, period and region, sequence and simultaneity” (2). The postmodern and critical human geography provides us with a new vision that allows us to see in different ways “the interplay of history and geography, the vertical and horizontal dimensions of being in the world […]” (11). Like Rogoff, Soja points to the “relations of power and discipline […] inscribed into the apparently innocent spatiality” and the interference of politics and ideology with human geographies (6). Drawing on the “spatial turn” paradigm proposed by Soja, Bla!evi" suggests the use of the term “Balkan” “as a flexible, dynamic, and relational heuristic concept […] [that] enables and promotes a critical, multi-

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perspective and self-reflexive thinking about space,” rather than as a criterion for symbolic inclusion/exclusion (1), i.e., belonging or not belonging to Europe. Precisely postmodern geography opens the possibility of conceptualizing “space as a dynamic network,” in which “heterogeneous historical trajectories […] [are] densely interwoven with the asymmetrical relations of power” (Bla!evi" 1). The Balkans should therefore be reconceptualized as “a space of permeation and overlapping, where individual and collective identities have constantly been (re)created in the game of attraction and rejection” (2). Rogoff finds the connection between discourses on geography and those on space in the understanding “that power produces a space which then gets materialized as place” (Rogoff 22). Spatialization thus precedes geographical determination, but it also unveils geography’s subjective structure. The history of naming the Balkan space is a very illustrative example of the relation between spatialization and geography as a structure of subjectivity. For the ancient Greeks the mountain Haemus was a toponym, but the historian Strabo also considered it a natural divide between the ThracianHellenistic world and the barbarian lands along the Danube (Todorova 25), thus transforming a natural divide into a place of cultural boundary. The Ottomans first used the name Balkans, which in Ottoman Turkish means “a chain of wooded mountains” and corresponds to the land configuration, when they conquered the region and envisaged it as one space (Todorova 26). The space soon became an official place named Rumelia—the lands of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire (27)—which entailed a clear political message: the conquered Roman lands gave the Ottomans the role of successors to the Eastern Roman Empire. As we will see below, the other two terms for the Balkans, “European Turkey” and “Southeastern Europe,” came into existence in similar processes of interaction between a system of knowledge and changing centers of power. Rogoff suggests following the relations between the structures of metaphor and metonymy in order to develop a method that will offer an alternative to the subjective and power-centered geography (15). Both metaphor and metonymy are cognitive structures, the former based on relationships of similarity between things, not words, and the latter on relations of contiguity between things, not words, i.e., between a thing and its attributes, its environments, and its adjuncts (Silverman 111). Geography as a metonymic structure would then mediate between the concrete, material, and psychic conditions and metaphorical articulations of relations between subjects, places, and spaces (Rogoff 15–16). Applied to the discussion of the Balkans in this book, metonymic geography will mediate between spaces, which I define as the four Sub-Balkans, their treatment in history and the media as orders of knowledge and sign systems, and metaphorical

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articulations in literature of the relations between these spaces and local and external subjects. Therefore with this study I hope to offer a metonymic work of its own kind and, in Rogoff’s words (3) and in the Brechtian sense, to arrive at a positionality, rather than the clarity of having a position, as a possible model for mediation between political, historical, literary, and media discourses on the Balkans. In order to circumvent the aporia in the attempt to define the borders of the Balkans I will identify the four different Sub-Balkans based on the interactions between different external centers of power which have been most dominant in each, on the one hand, and collective local identities formed in a “game of attraction [to] and rejection” (Bla!evi" 2) from the centers of power, on the other. I will also envisage the Balkans as a fourdimensional space due to its unstable, moveable borders. This approach will do justice to the “simultaneity” of Soja’s postmodern geography (1) and Bla!evi"’s vision of the Balkans as “a space of permeation and overlapping” (2). The philosophical stream of four dimensionalism, as defined by Theodore Sider in 1997, explains the relations between objects, space, and time in the following way: As I see it, the heart of four dimensionalism is the claim that the part-whole relation behaves analogously with respect to time as it does with respect to space: just as things have arbitrary spatial parts, they likewise have arbitrary temporal parts. When applied to space, the idea that things have arbitrary parts means, roughly, that for any way of dividing the region of space occupied by a given object, there is a corresponding way to divide that object into parts which exactly occupy those regions of space. Applied to time, the idea is that to any way of dividing up the lifetime of an object into separate intervals of time, there is a corresponding way of dividing the object into temporal parts that are confined to those intervals of time. (204)

The Byzantine-Ottoman legacy defines, according to Todorova (162), the space of the Balkans and will therefore be considered the dominant cultural/historical/political object occupying the physical space of the Balkans in the sense of four dimensionalism. I argue that the Habsburg legacy must also be taken into consideration as the second cultural/political/historical object occupying or influencing the Balkans. In Sider’s sense, we must envisage the empires’ persistence through time as extension through space (197). They have spatial parts like their Balkan possessions/territories, which are also their temporal parts insofar as they belong to one or the other empire for a limited amount of time, i.e., “are confined to those intervals of time” (Sider 204). The Balkan territories are then subregions of the total region of time the empires occupy (197). In this sense, the objects (empires) “perdure” in the Balkans, i.e., are confined to

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intervals of time, never “enduring,” never being “wholly present” (197). For example, after the victory at the First Battle of Mohács in 1529 the Ottomans conquered the southern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary. The Habsburgs took back these lands from the Ottomans at the Second Battle of Mohács in 1687 and kept them in possession for almost two centuries. The Ottoman “perduring” in southern Hungary was a long interval of over two hundred and fifty years, and Hungary was a temporal part of the Ottoman Empire for roughly two hundred and fifty years. The lands between these reconquered territories and the Ottoman Empire, like the Pashalik of Belgrade in Serbia, experienced extremely short intervals of Habsburg rule, as I explain in the third chapter, on Serbia. They were then a short temporal part of the Habsburg Empire. This pattern, with substantial differences in the time intervals, applies to the entire border zone between the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. The four dimensionalism understood in a political sense corresponds to the processes of cultural multi-belonging, historical disruption, and recurrence of conflicting identities. The contours of the four Sub-Balkans are then a result of the time intervals in which different subregions of the Balkans were temporal parts of the two neighboring empires. From this perspective, one can say that some Sub-Balkans are “more Balkan” than others, and that a region can belong to more than one cultural and geopolitical legacy. Moreover, within the same Sub-Balkans different parts have been temporal parts of one and/or the other empire in different intervals of time. Yet, this division takes into account all temporal shifts between the two empires in the Balkans, and a closer analysis of the critical junctures between the empires will provide a differentiated perspective on the temporal “perduring” of each empire in the respective zone. One Balkan region was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and thus has long been considered part of Central Europe, part of Europe’s k.u.k. heritage. This area includes Croatia and possibly Slovenia. Todorova’s definition of the Balkans as an Ottoman-Byzantine legacy includes Croatia because of its cultural and political contacts with the Ottoman Empire (31)— the Croatian population in the Ottoman Empire ruled Herzegovina—and excludes Slovenia, conversely, because it had no direct political or cultural contacts with the Ottomans. We can use the same argument regarding Croatia and say that since Slovenia was part of both the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1941) and the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, now better known as the former Yugoslavia (1943–1991), one could categorize it as part of the Slavic Balkans. I will come back to this question when I discuss the Sub-Balkans of the South Slavs. A second Sub-Balkan includes regions that were part of both the AustroHungarian and Ottoman Empires: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Vojvodina, Hungary,

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and parts of Croatia and Romania. These regions admit to a mixed heritage— to Austrian Catholic and to Turkish-Islamic influences. Like Slovenia and Croatia, Hungary also belongs to Central Europe. Obviously, Central Europe recurs in the discussions on the Balkans. The distinction between these two regions is of great importance for this study because it adds yet another dimension to the discussion about cultural borders. “Western” travel reports on the Balkans from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries categorized the region as “Turkey in Europe” (Mazower xxvi) and alternated between Philhellenism, pity for the local Christian ethnicities and outrage against the Islamic conquerors, and admiration for the Ottoman rulers (Todorova 89–140). Reports from the early twentieth century labeled the newly independent Balkan nations that emerged from the Ottoman Empire as troublemakers that were jeopardizing stability and challenging every state structure (West 21). After World War II, all Balkan states, with the exception of Greece, became communist, and the rhetoric on the Balkans as “cultural others” was replaced by the Cold War bipolar rhetoric of the politically and ideologically opposed. Central Europe and the Balkans reemerged as cultural concepts after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In this context, it is critical to remember that the idea of Central Europe was reborn in the late 1980s as a historical-political and cultural program of a number of intellectuals from the communist European countries that had been part of Austria-Hungary. The goal was to revive their common identity built in the Habsburg era. This automatically implied setting boundaries between Central Europeans and “the others.” The most prominent figure of this movement, Milan Kundera, gave the impulse for a cultural reconstruction of the Central European identity and thus asserted its cultural identity markers—the Renaissance and the Enlightenment—which he regarded also as pan-European. Excluded from the European cultural identity was the Russian Orthodox culture, because, as Kundera claimed, it was never influenced by these two paradigms of European intellectual history (Kundera, “Tragedy of Central Europe”). As Todorova (147) points out, the non-European “other” in Kundera’s view was only Russia; he made no mention of the Balkans. The field of Eastern European studies in the United States has traditionally differentiated between Russia, which was covered in the field of Eurasian studies, and Eastern Europe. As the collapse of the communist block was becoming more apparent, Eastern Europe was divided into EastCentral Europe and Southeastern Europe (Todorova 140), something that Szücs had done as early as 1983. The latter was a name for the Balkans coined by the German geographer Otto Maul in 1929 in order to overcome “the standing historical-political dichotomy between the Danubian monarchy

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and the Ottoman Balkans that had become irrelevant” (Todorova 29). Ironically, this term recurred in the last decade of the twentieth century during the demise of the multinational and multicultural state of Yugoslavia, when the dichotomy between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires became relevant again. Parallel to the military actions, a verbal battle was also fought to prove that Croatia was only Central-European and not Balkan at all.7 The third Sub-Balkan region is comprised by the territories populated by Slavic peoples and includes Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, or simply the former Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. The common Slavic identity was considered one of the cohesive mechanisms in the former Yugoslavia—the name denotes the land of South Slavs. However, during the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia it reemerged as one of the most problematic identity markers, because it ignored the Habsburg, Byzantine, and Ottoman cultural legacies of the Slavic and nonSlavic peoples who lived there for centuries. When the power-hungry Milo!evi" began manipulating the South Slavic idea, Slovenia and Croatia began gravitating towards the Central-European identity and marked once again the invisible border between Central and Southeastern Europe/the Balkans. Finally, a fourth Sub-Balkan region, which could bear the epithet “most Balkan,” was part of both the Ottoman and Byzantine Empires, an area including Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, and part of today’s Romania. The delineations of this region must account for Greek, Greco-Roman, and Islamic influences, which is why it lies somewhat outside of the paradigmatic Slavic/European ethnic divide figuring in European thought. My study aims at clarifying the politics of drawing cultural borders in this region. I demonstrate that the simple dichotomy Orient versus Occident is insufficient to explain the utter complexity of the region. To that end I compare cultural borderlines established through religion, myth, and literary narrative as used for political goals, to boundaries defined through historiography. To accomplish this, I deal with the three Sub-Balkans of the former Yugoslavia, which had cultural and political relations with the Habsburg Monarchy, substantiating my discussions of these regions with reference to literary texts written in German and Serbian/Bosnian, as well as with reference to pertinent historiography on these Sub-Balkan regions. Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina are the three regions (now independent states) where the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Byzantine legacies encounter each other in an extremely complex net of political decisions, followed by cultural contacts, and therefore illustrate vividly the abovementioned Balkan processes of cultural multi-belonging, historical disruption, and recurrence.

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Colonial/Imperial Legacies and Postcolonial Struggles It is evident that the imperial/colonial legacies of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires play the key role in defining the borders of the Balkans. Within the large bodies of these empires lived numerous peoples who experienced selfgovernance very late in their histories. Moreover, the process of acquiring complete self-governance in the former Yugoslav republics was accompanied by atrocities and historical and cultural disputes. The dissolution of Yugoslavia was at the same time the final stage in the breakdown of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Therefore it provoked processes typical for postcolonial states, e.g., enforcement of national identity and state building through violent exclusion of those who did not belong to the own group. The most typical case is Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the Moslems were forced to defend themselves against Serbian and Croatian claims to the territory based on the pre-Ottoman Christian and Slavic past of the region. These historically delayed processes took place at the end of the twentieth century because of the specific character of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. These empires were typical supranational state structures and, as Benedict Anderson describes them, “were able to sustain their rule over immensely heterogeneous, and often not even contiguous, populations for long periods of time (19).” Anderson (37–38) traces the origins of national consciousness in Europe to the invention of the printing press and the subsequent gradual prevalence of the vernacular languages over Latin, a process that began in 1500. In the Habsburg Monarchy, however, Latin survived well into the nineteenth century (42). The Ottoman Empire was not only well behind the Western European development of press culture, but also had a completely different concept of nation. The Turkish word for nation was millet, which denoted religious affiliation. Consequently, there were only three millets—the Muslim, the Greek Orthodox, and the Jewish—and these covered the multitude of ethnicities (Glenny 71), some of which became nations only after World War II. Petkovi! argues that, although Central Europe has been associated with the successor states to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1), it would be more appropriate to observe it as a cross-cultural space in which traditions of many ethnic groups blended and which was at the margins of the Habsburg Monarchy (2). These same arguments apply to the entire Balkans, to which one must add that the region has the double burden of two partially overlapping but culturally diverging imperial legacies in the Modern Age. Petkovi! (5) describes Central Europe as permanently postcolonial because an external power has always exerted dominance over it. More importantly, he asks whether fundamental questions of identity encountered in

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postcolonial political situations should not rather be addressed through the link between postmodern and postcolonial theories, which would do justice to the fluid political and geographical situation of Central Europe (13–14) and distinguish the theoretical approaches to the overseas Western colonial tradition from the postcolonial situations within Europe (19). The multiplex character of the Balkans fits perfectly into the postmodern discourse of deconstruction of master narratives because, as we have seen, any classification tending to establish boundaries fails with respect to the Balkans. We will also see that the concept of nation breaks down due to the simultaneity of pre- and postmodern identities in the Balkans. Here again Irit Rogoff’s discourse of “unlearning” and “unbelonging,” or of destabilizing conventionally accepted knowledge, will be useful. It is precisely the Balkans, or more specifically the former Yugoslavia, that Rogoff discusses as the perfect example of a region that destabilizes Western historical knowledge: Issues such as rights and belonging … [which] entail the kind of horrific consequences we have seen throughout the former Yugoslavia since 1992, are bound to be dealt within political rhetoric, both instrumentally and in high moralizing tones […] the long shadows cast by […] the Ottoman and AustroHungarian Empires, by two World Wars, by allegiances with fascism to the West and communism to the East, did not translate into a clear-cut policy, into an unequivocal knowledge of what was right or wrong in this case. Everyone in the West had some sort of dirty history in the Balkans and everyone in the West had also taken part in demonizing some part of its population in the context of other conflicts located elsewhere on the globe […]. More than anything, the crisis in the Balkans—in dialogue with the general crisis of the ability to represent any form of stable geographic knowledge as a set of guidelines regarding identity, belonging and rights—has made manifest the degree to which we have collectively lost the navigational principles by which such questions were determined in the recent past such as mid-century. (2–3)

In the case of the Balkans I propose changing Rogoff’s exclusive concept of unbelonging into the inclusive concept of double or multiple belonging and elaborate on this in more detail in the chapter on Bosnia-Herzegovina, which as both an Ottoman and Habsburg territory populated by Serbs, Croats, and Moslems of Slavic origin illustrates this situation perfectly. Bosnia-Herzegovina will also be the case study for a discussion of the applicability of postcolonial theory to the Balkans, considering its double imperial legacy. For the authors of Habsburg Postcolonial: Machstrukturen und kollektives Gedächtnis (2003) the fact that Bosnia-Herzegovina was an Ottoman territory and therefore belonged to a non-European cultural paradigm for almost five hundred years leaves no doubt either that Habsburg rule there from the late nineteenth century until the beginning of World War I should be considered colonial, or that the postcolonial theory must be an

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adequate theoretical tool for examining the region. This well argued position, nonetheless, leaves other questions open, like the nature of the Ottoman imperial legacy in regard to colonialism and postcolonialism, the present-day implications of the non-European cultural legacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the other lands of the former Ottoman Empire and, in relation to the latter, the question of European cultural identity/ies in view of the ongoing integration processes. All these questions will be addressed in the fourth chapter. Postmodern theory, with its promotion of the artistic procedures of pastiche (Jameson 1962–63) and bricolage Lyotard (1613), which legitimize the simultaneity of different styles, does justice to the four-dimensional space whose subregions are temporal parts of once reigning empires and subsequent state formations, thus bearing traces which often create disharmonious architectural landscapes. In addition, postmodern literature can function for the Balkans as a region in a permanent post-traumatic condition in the same way as does psychoanalysis when it deals with posttraumatic stress disorders by working through the past. Lyotard believes that postmodern literature, with its diachronic retention of the past next to the present, functions similarly to Freud’s interpretation of dreams as a process which discloses the parallel existence of all past and present psychological experiences in the unconscious (1613). The above-mentioned theories and approaches are complemented by theories on nation-building, critical discourse analysis, as well as by historical sources on the origin and spread of nationalism in Eastern Europe, thus following the initial objective of this book to function as a metonymic work that mediates between political, historical, literary, and media discourses on the Balkans and also aspires to provide a facetted picture of this region envisaged as a four-dimensional space.

Notes 1

It is impossible to determine the source of this concise description of the Habsburg-Balkan relations attributed to Metternich. Historians use the term “Asia” instead of Balkans, e.g., Okey (Eastern Europe 17). 2 While the idea of the Orient was, in Said’s words, “almost a European invention [that] has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 24), the relationship between the Balkans and Europe is not based on a binary opposition and displays ambivalent features. On the one hand, Balkan Studies, similarly to Orientalism, “provided civilized and progressive Western Europe with an “other,” conceptualized in terms of deficiencies and backwardness” (Bla!evi" 1). On the other hand, due to “a disturbing similarity between Europe and its Balkan periphery,” the region was “perceived as incomplete and anomalous” despite the awareness that it possesses marks of European civilization (1). In

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this sense, we can say that the Balkans tend to destabilization, rather than reinforcement of European self-images. 3 In Bhabha’s view, cultural diversity in Western plural democratic societies is based on a transparent norm given by the host society or dominant culture that functions as a grid within which the other cultures are located and evaluated, thus creating a containment of cultural difference (The Third Space 208). He attempts to expose the limits of Western cultural liberalism and relativism with the notion of cultural difference, which is a position of liminality, a productive space of the construction of culture as difference in the spirit of alterity or otherness (209). From this point of view, the Balkans are the paradigmatic liminal space within Europe that cannot be positioned in the European universalist grid and evaluated from a singular normative stance. The pluralistic concept of cultural multi-belonging, on the other hand, dismisses the notion of center and allows us to see Balkan cultures as “incommensurable” (209) both to one another and to the normative notions of European culture. 4 Mazower gives the example of the Polish historian Halecki, who claims: “[T]hroughout the whole course of European history in its proper sense, Europe was practically identical with Christendom” (xl–xli). This historical approach, according to Mazower, has led the historiography and politics of the Balkan states to a denial of the Ottoman legacy. However, the Byzantine Orthodox legacy was also not considered European “enough” (xl–xli). 5 I discuss this region, whose other name is the Balkans, in detail below. 6 Rennweg is a street in the Third Viennese District, or Landstraße, located in the southeasternmost part of the city and thus geographically closest to the Balkans. The district also shows other surprising historical similarities to the Balkans. In Roman times it coincided almost entirely with the Roman Limesstraße, a road along the limes (a fortified frontier erected along the borderline of the Roman Empire as a defense against the “barbarians”), and during Habsburg rule it was the frontline of the Austrian defense against the Ottomans in the First (1529) and Second (1683) Ottoman Sieges of Vienna, thus enduring the most severe consequences of the Austro-Turkish Wars (Kretschmer). Today, this district is one of the most diverse parts of Vienna, mostly populated by immigrants from all parts of the former Yugoslavia and Turkey. The Landstraße, then, like the Balkans, has been a margin and a boundary since ancient days, and it exhibits an ethnic and cultural diversity similar to that of the Balkans. From this perspective the Balkans are the first, and Vienna/Rennweg is second border between Europe and the Orient/Asia. 7 This is illustrated in the analysis of Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts.

II. Travelogues of War and Peace In this section I analyze three travelogues on the Balkans written by foreign visitors. Robert Kaplan’s (b. 1952) Balkan Ghosts (1993) addresses the political tensions and conflicts in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1941) and in the former Yugoslavia (1943–1990), respectively. Milo Dor’s (1923– 2005) Mitteleuropa, Mythos oder Wirklichkeit: auf der Suche nach der größeren Heimat (Central Europe, Myth or Reality: In Search of a Larger Homeland [1996]) and Peter Handke’s (b. 1942) Noch einmal für Thukydides (Once again for Thucydides [1995]) are travelogues on Central Europe and the Balkans which focus on the numerous layers of history, not from the perspective of cultural and national conflicts and wars, but from that of the flow of history as an endless continuum (Dor), and an eternal present (Handke). Comparing these travelogues will allow me to show, on the one hand, the difference between perceptions of the region based on geographical concepts established at external centers of power (Rogoff 20) and on a sequential historical narrative (Soja 1), as exemplified in Kaplan’s travelogue, and, on the other, narratives that incorporate combination of time and space, history and geography, and sequence and simultaneity (Soja 1), thus subtly reflecting the processes in which the complex cultural web of the region was created (Dor and Handke). Robert Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts: The Balkans as Europe’s Twin “Br/Other” In the preface to his Balkan Ghosts Kaplan lays down the principles of writing travel literature: “In other words, at its very best, travel writing should be a technique to explore history, art, and politics in the liveliest fashion possible” (ix). “The liveliest fashion possible” is the key phrase here, for it openly defines Kaplan’s position on the nature of travel literature: the historical facts are used only to the extent to which they confirm the author’s position, and the writing style is designed to evoke emotions in the reader/recipient1 of the same kind as does fiction. Kaplan writes about Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece. He begins his journey to the Balkans from Austria, starting from images of antiimperial violence: the photograph of Francis Ferdinand which evokes memories of his assassination and the subsequent beginning of World War I, and the photograph of his assassin Gavrilo Princip (Kaplan xxii). Shortly

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after describing the photographs and their context, he comes to the stunning conclusion: The Balkans were the original Third World, long before the Western media coined the term. In this mountainous peninsula bordering the Middle East, newspaper correspondents filed the first twentieth century accounts of mud-streaked refugee marches and produced the first books of gonzo journalism and travel writing, in an age when Asia and Africa were still a bit too far afield. (xxiii)

Kaplan first observantly criticizes the Western media for creating stereotypical images of the region, rather than trying to report objectively, and then follows their methods against his better judgment: The Balkans produced the century’s first terrorists. IMRO (the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) was the Palestine Liberation Organization of the 1920s and 1930s, with Bulgarian paymasters, dedicated to recovering the parts of Macedonia taken by Greece and Yugoslavia after the Second Balkan War. […] Twentieth-century history came from the Balkans. Here men have been isolated by poverty and ethnic rivalry, dooming them to hate. Here politics has been reduced to a level of near anarchy that from time to time in history has flowed up the Danube into Central Europe. Nazism, for instance, can claim Balkan origins. Among the flophouses of Vienna, a breeding ground of ethnic resentments close to the southern Slavic world, Hitler learned how to hate so infectiously. (xxiii)

The definition of IMRO as the twentieth century’s first terrorist organization and the comparison to the PLO are highly simplistic and demonstrate ignorance of the details and the regional differences between the Balkans of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the post-World War II Middle East. Kaplan hereby forces into line two different periods in history and two different regions in order to provide an easily digestible image of the Balkans for the audience of the 1990s, which, due to the US foreign policy, was more familiar with the Middle East than with the Balkans, and so he is willing to continue the gonzo journalism on the Balkans himself. The mention of the Balkans as the place where twentieth-century history began is an allusion to the assassination of Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo and the subsequent outbreak of World War I, and Kaplan again offers a misleading simplification of the resulting military chain reaction of the Great Powers in Europe caused by their alliances and mutual obligations (Pauley 42–47). As for the claim that Nazism has Balkan origins, Kaplan does not even appeal to any historical facts but rather, following the principle of “lively” fashion, talks instead about hatred. It is unclear whether the inhabitants of the Viennese neighborhoods where Hitler lived “learned how to hate” under the

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influence of the different South Slavic groups from the Balkans and their mutual hatred, or if they rather felt their identity was threatened by the Slavs and therefore hated them: The closer one gets to either the eastern or the southern fringe of the Germanspeaking world—the closer one gets, in other words, to the threatening and more numerous Slavs—the more insecure and dangerous German nationalism becomes. […] To the south, in Austria, where blood from the Slavic world actually flows in “German” veins, denial of this elemental fact takes form of unreconstructed, panGermanic paranoia. (xxiv–xxv)

This passage contradicts the previous one, in which the origins of Nazism are sought in the Balkans, among the South Slavs. Here, Kaplan sees the origin of German nationalism in the German fear of the Slavs as a force that threatens German identity. Such sweeping generalizations and contradictions will reappear in the reports from the journey. Kaplan’s narrative procedure is ambivalent. On the one hand, he forcefully “orientalizes” the Balkans in Said’s sense by presenting it as radically different from Europe and the West generally and deploying concepts and images from the Middle East for that very purpose. On the other hand, he remains aware of the geographical closeness between the Balkans and Europe and uses the Balkan “otherness” to give an “original” explanation for crucial historical moments, interpreting infamous episodes in European history as a result of contamination from the “other,” yet near, uncanny Balkan space. Although this position is relativized one page later, the differences between Europe, represented by the Germans, and the Balkans, represented by the Slavs, are still depicted as irreconcilable. During the journey, Kaplan focuses on the issue of national identity, which was the most powerful tool of manipulation in the hands of Milo!evi", Tu#man, and Izetbegovi", the three most influential politicians in the wars of dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. Compared to the introduction, the reports from the journey show progress towards objectivity but are still very generalizing and tailored to fit the author’s intention to “explain” the 1990s conflicts in the former Yugoslavia through his view of the past. Kaplan also does not give his criteria for choosing his local conversation partners. Kaplan’s local conversation partner in Zagreb, the journalist Slavenka Drakuli", declares Catholicism and the Habsburg legacy as the identity markers of the Croats: […] despite the Communist-inflicted poverty and the damp, badly heated apartments and the sorry displays in the shop windows all around, we Croats are Roman Catholic, and Zagreb is the eastern bastion of the West; you, the visitor, are still in the orbit of Austria-Hungary, of Vienna—where the modern world was practically invented—and don’t you forget it! (6)

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Drakuli!’s assertion that Croatia should be defined as part of the AustroHungarian legacy implies that it must be clearly distinguished from the world of Orthodoxy and Ottoman Turkey beyond the Croatian border, i.e., from the Balkans. From this standpoint the battle between Communism and capitalism has the cultural dimension of a struggle between Central Europe, to which Croatia belongs, and to which the Balkans do not belong (7). The political context of this assertion is similar to the one in which Kundera draws the cultural border between Central Europe and Russia—he was literally facing the Soviet tanks occupying Czechoslovakia (Petkovi! 75–79)—whereas Drakuli! and the rest of the Croats lived for the first year of Croatia’s independence from Yugoslavia under Milo"evi!’s threats (which later, indeed, turned into military attacks) that he would defend, or rather claim, every inch of land where there was a Serbian grave. Ironically, the Serbs were invited by the Habsburgs to populate the regions of Croatia bordering the Ottoman Empire (Rothenberg 8–15). This is an example of how the text reduces and simplifies cultural identities to create an object of political manipulation. Drakuli!’s complaints about Communism camouflaging Croatia’s Central European essence are also relative and deployed strategically by Kaplan to make his point. Communist rule in Yugoslavia was indeed designed to provide cohesion for the explosive ethnic mixture of the country. Its main and most successful symbol was President Josip Broz Tito, who balanced the different nationalisms (or cultural identities) and very often used repressive measures to prevent their expansion. However, Tito was half Croat and half Slovene and a former citizen of Austria-Hungary. He never excluded the country completely from the economic or cultural influence of the West and often imitated Austria-Hungary’s institutions and public relations mechanisms to construct Yugoslavian identity. Indeed, no ethnic identity in the former Yugoslavia was completely repressed nor was it completely free to develop. Only a year earlier, the highly regarded Croatian scholar Predrag Matvejevi!, in his response to Kundera’s essay The Tragedy of Central Europe, reminds not only Kundera, but also European and especially Croatian and Slovenian intellectuals, of the cultural cooperation between Serbia and Central Europe. In a 1987 interview, the Serbian poet Miodrag Pavlovi! recalled that ‘many important Serbian cultural figures—Dositej Obradovi!, Vuk Karad"i! among them […] benefited from Central Europe. The notion of the Slav’s positive mission was engendered in German Philosophy of the Romantic period. We must take care not to judge the whole of Europe with reference to experiences with our closest Central European neighbors.’ (Schöpflin and Wood 185)

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Whereas Drakuli! dis-integrates Central Europe from the Balkans, Matvejevi! advocates for an integrative approach. Even though the events of the following decade confirmed Drakuli!’s position and refuted Matvejevi!’s, the history of cultural interaction between Central Europe and the Balkans did not end and may resurface in the processes of European integration. Rather than deploying either-or rhetoric, I consider Croatia as the most illustrative example of the fluidity and changeability of identity in respect to belonging or not belonging to the Balkans. Its geographical position and the Habsburg legacy categorize it as Central European. Nonetheless, it shares a common South-Slavic identity with the rest of the South-Slavic population from the former Yugoslavia, most importantly with the Serbs. Moreover, the standard Croat language was constructed on the basis of the same dialect (!tokavian) as the Serbian literary language (Hobsbawm 54–55). Additionally, as mentioned before, its border area in the Southeast was populated by Ottoman Serbs as early as 1520. Kaplan is right when he points out “the aspect of Croatian nationalism that saw itself as culturally superior to the Serbs” (Kaplan 23), but then he mistakenly blames the Habsburg Court for it. In fact, the Habsburg Monarchy made consistent efforts to preserve the freedom of worship, which was initially granted to their Serbian Orthodox subjects when they settled the border areas, and although there were periods in which the Catholic Church tried to convert them, the administration was always successful in returning their religious freedom to them (Rothenberg 14). For example, the Edict of Toleration was issued in 1781, during the age of Joseph II and his enlightened absolutism, and “was to have a particularly beneficial effect on the Orthodox Church” (Jelavich, History of the Balkans 159). Again, Kaplan parallelizes two different periods in history: the era of the Habsburg (Austro-Hungarian) Monarchy and World War II. During World War II Catholic identity was abused as an instrument of the fascist reign of terror in the infamous NDH (Independent State of Croatia) with the assistance of the controversial archbishop Alojz Stepinac.2 This was the time of forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism and of torture and mass executions of Serbs, Jews, and Roma in concentration camps. When Croatia declared independence in 1990, Milo"evi! played the card of the collective Serbian trauma that originated in World War II and managed to mobilize the Serbian population in Croatia against the legitimate right of the Croats to independence. Yet, he would not have had such great success without the hardline rhetoric of then Croatian president, Franjo Tu#man, who reintroduced the symbols of the NDH and thus manipulated the concept of Croatian cultural supremacy over the Serbs. The reemergence of the feeling of cultural superiority among the Croats can, to a certain degree, be

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explained by their efforts to be categorized as part of Europe, or Central Europe, and not of the Balkans, at a time when the border between these two became the border of independent Croatia that had to defend itself against the invading Serbs. Obviously, then, we must differentiate between identity and cultural borders in circumstances of war and peace. In wartime the national and cultural identity becomes a rigid defense mechanism without space for details and nuances. Kaplan follows this pattern of exclusive and defensive identity construction when he merges Habsburg, Vatican, and Croatian nationalism from the 1990s into one. Contrary to the Croatian nationalists, Kaplan considers the border between the East and the West to lie further to the South—in Belgrade, where “the Habsburg Empire ended and the Turkish began” (72). When Kaplan reaches inner Serbia, which is now the independent state of Kosovo, he experiences yet another razor’s edge between two irreconcilable identities—Orthodox Christianity, represented by the Serbs, and Islam, represented by the Albanians. Reflective of this problem is the fact that in the monastery of Gra!anica, Kaplan meets Mother Tatjana, who compares the escalating frictions between the Serbs and the Albanians to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. The context of this comparison is crucial. An Orthodox nun from the central Balkans attempts to explain the conflict between the ethnic Albanians and the Serbs in Kosovo to the American journalist. Like Kaplan at the beginning of the travelogue, she, too, borrows the Middle Eastern conflict to translate the local situation for the American audience. Yet the authentic local voice is lost in the translation. Kaplan, on the other hand, describes the Serbs’ fascination with the Kosovo myth as their deliberate ignorance of the physical world (38). But when he faces the physical world of Kosovo he experiences culture shock: Not until I traveled to Prishtina did I fully grasp the extent of the crime committed by Tito and the other sultans going all the way back to Murad. (41)

The difference in the textual rhetoric is striking. Kaplan forgets all political correctness when he describes Kosovo and its ethnic Albanian inhabitants. The men riding on the bus with him have “eyes glazed over by trachoma,” their trousers have safety pins instead of zippers, their breath stinks of alcohol,3 there is a feeling of danger in the air, and the architecture is a strange mixture of pre-modern and contemporary elements, like “wooden stalls illuminated by sodium lamps” (41). Then he compares the Albanian rebellion against the Serbs to the Palestinian intifadas, with the remark that he is aware of the oversimplification (42). Kaplan is obviously in aporia—he lacks the language and concepts to describe and analyze the inexhaustible complexity of the diverse Balkan country of the former Yugoslavia that is most vividly illustrated in the

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aesthetically unpleasing architecture of Pri!tina. Yet, this city is an authentic witness of the historical disruptions in the region and reflects, on the micro level, the four dimensionalism of the entire Balkan space. It can be expressed only through an architectural bricolage that retains the disorder of history and puts elements diverging in style and time next to one another, without logical and aesthetic connection. The visually challenging urban landscape of Pri!tina requires what Bla"evi# describes as “a critical, multi-perspective and self-reflexive thinking about space” in order to recognize the connections between the “heterogeneous historical trajectories [and] the asymmetrical relations of power” (1). The Christian Orthodox monastery from the Middle Ages amidst of territory populated by Moslem Kosovars and the combination of pre-modern, Ottoman, and postmodern, social realist, architecture reveal the aforementioned connections that resulted in a specifically Balkan combination of sequence and simultaneity. The Balkans thus resemble the structure of the unconscious much better than does the city of Rome, as described by Freud in his work Civilization and its Discontents (1930). Freud points out that the remains in Rome were reconstructed and restored (36) and were later incorporated into the Renaissance architecture as continuation of the Greco-Roman tradition.4 In many places in the Balkans, the architectural remains from different periods exist side by side in their original form to the present-day and thus defy what Soja called “sequentially unfolding narrative [that] predisposes the reader to think historically” (1). For example, in the Macedonian village of Upper Nerezi, located only a few miles from the capital Skopje, an Orthodox Christian monastery from the twelfth century and a mosque built in the twentieth century by the local ethnic Albanian inhabitants are only a few feet away from one another. This pattern, understandably with variations, is replicated throughout the entire Balkans. The contradictions of the former Yugoslavia accumulate with every station of Kaplan’s journey. The Croats consider themselves as the bastion of the West, but it was the Serbs who were the Christian bulwark against Islam on the borderline between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans. The Serbs oppress the Albanians, who struggle against the oppressor to acquire their human rights, but fail to create a structural basis for the practice of human rights. This 1990s Yugoslavia contradicts the logic of reason where A equals A. Yet here, A also includes B and C. For example, the Bosnian Moslems used to be Catholic or Orthodox Slavs—the Slavic identity marker is still retained in their language—but converted to Islam during Ottoman rule. In order to validate this complex identity the category of Moslems as a nationality was created in the former Yugoslavia. The challenges that the former Yugoslavia poses to the Western travel authors arise from the fact that the country comprehended the borderlands

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between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires and therefore embraced all four Sub-Balkans mentioned before: Slovenia and Croatia belong to the Balkan of Austria-Hungary (Central Europe); Bosnia-Herzegovina and Vojvodina belong to the second Sub-Balkan of Ottoman and Habsburg heritage; all of the former Yugoslavia with the exception of Kosovo belonged to the Slavic Balkan; and Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Montenegro belong to the “pure” Balkan of Byzantine and Ottoman heritage. The various citizens of the former Yugoslavia had one national identity, be it Serbian, Macedonian, ethnic Albanian etc.; one religious or cultural identity, e.g. Catholic, Orthodox, Moslem, and a very small percentage of Protestants; one linguistic identity, i.e., one of the four official languages in the former Yugoslavia; and the Yugoslav supranational state identity. The balance between these identities was never a simple matter, but the supranational state identity started losing its power rapidly after the death of the father figure, Tito. The dissolution of Yugoslavia showed with extreme vehemence how violent the recurrence of the seemingly more concrete and narrower cultural and national identity at the expense of the abstract and broad supranational identity can be. It also showed how easily an identity that lasted for a half a century could be destroyed. Kaplan is captive of what Soja called “the temporal prisonhouse of language and the similarly carceral historicism” (1) that are doomed to fail in the attempt to reflect the simultaneity of time and space and history and geography inherent to any space, but especially striking in the Balkans. The binary and exclusionary logical categories that Kaplan uses to explain the elusive space must also fail with respect to the Balkans and undermine the original intention to do justice to the complexity of the reality. The two following literary narratives demonstrate alternative approaches based on a differentiated perspective of a perceptive connoisseur of the region (Dor) and on a postmodern, fluid, and all inclusive perception (Handke). Milo Dor’s Larger Homeland: Paradigm for an Inclusive Europe Milo Dor’s compilation of travel reports made between 1977 and 1989 and published in 1996 in the collection of essays Central Europe, Myth or Reality: In Search of a Larger Homeland begins with an introduction in which he elaborates on the concept of Central Europe. He remembers his first visit to Vienna, which he made in 1938. His memory of this Vienna does not evoke the feeling of cosmopolitanism once typical for the capital of Central European culture: My parents and I were passing through on our way to Carlsbad and stayed in Vienna only for two or three days to visit families with whom we had been good friends for some time, some of whom were Jewish and were terrified, distraught, and completely baffled. I could hardly wait to depart from this oppressive city full of

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men in boots, who were shoving their way around on the pavement threateningly, and to leave Vienna behind.5 Meine Eltern und ich waren hier auf der Durchreise nach Karlsbad und blieben nur zwei, drei Tage in Wien, um einige von früher befreundete Familien zu besuchen, darunter auch jüdische Familien, die verängstigt, verstört und völlig ratlos waren. Ich konnte es kaum erwarten, aus dieser schwülen Stadt voll gestiefelter Männer, die sich auf den Gehplätzen bedrohlich Platz machten, abzureisen und Wien hinter mir zu lassen. (8)

Yet this first, negative, impression of Vienna does not prevent Dor from reflecting on the role that this city played not only in Central Europe, but also in the “destiny” (9) of the Western world in the twentieth century. He points out that some of the most influential politicians of the century, like Stalin, Trotsky, Buharin, Hitler, Masaryk, and Tito, lived in this city shortly before the outbreak of World War I, and that most of them did not know one other. Describing the energy and the absorbing power of Vienna at that time, Dor names it “a European cosmopolitan city” (10). The author then moves from world history to family history and explains that he decided to stay in Vienna after World War II because his Serbian ancestors, fleeing the Turks, emigrated from the Ottoman Empire to the southern border region of the Habsburg Monarchy 300 years earlier and considered Vienna “the center of their world” and “the capital of their Weltanschauung” (10).6 Dor explains that only after World War II did he begin to reflect on the ethnic and cultural mixture with which he grew up, most vividly reflected in the dishes prepared in his childhood, like Bohemian apricot dumplings, Hungarian pancakes, Szekely Goulash, Greek moussaka, and Viennese Schnitzel (which originated in northern Italy and was known as the Milanese cutlet). It was the absence of this hybrid culture, which was lived rather than verbalized and conceptualized, that evoked the memory of its past (11–13). Rather than postulating (Central) European cultural idiosyncrasies and geographical boundaries, as Szücs and Kundera did, Dor lists some of the symbolic and administrative traces of the former Habsburg Monarchy, like the rectangular or square public buildings from Trieste to Lemberg, the zeal for road and railroad construction and the building of factories, and the feeling of order whose memory lives in the stories told from one generation to another (13–14). Then he reminds the reader that the idea of Yugoslavia was born in Vienna in the nineteenth century, although unifying all Slavs inevitably implied destroying the Monarchy (14), and that Tito was a “burnt child” of the Monarchy who managed to keep together some of the former Habsburg lands in post-World War II Yugoslavia with an iron fist (15). Without feelings of nostalgia, Dor expresses regret for the missed opportunity in both the Habsburg Monarchy and the former Yugoslavia to

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unite different peoples with different cultures under a common roof (15). Finally, based on his journeys to many areas of the “much defamed” and “much praised Monarchy,” Dor reaches the preliminary conclusion “that it [the Monarchy] is somehow there” (15), still visible in the identical architectural style of the theater buildings and hotels built in the days of the Habsburg Empire. In Dor’s view, however, Hitler disrupted the Central European culture, comprised of different peoples and sustained by the Habsburg Jewry. Dor calls on the “soapbox orators” (18), who attempt to revive Central Europe, to remember that a culture created over several centuries and destroyed in a very short time cannot be easily replaced. Moreover, the two essential preconditions for its existence, the German language as lingua franca and the Jewry as vehicle of culture (Kulturträger) are missing. Yet, in the last paragraph of the introduction, based on his own interpretation of Karl Popper’s philosophy, Dor compares Central Europe to the reality of the immaterial, mental world created by men, which exists next to the reality of the physical world. Dor’s experience of the feeling of mutual belonging in the entire “so-called Central European space” brings him to the second preliminary conclusion that Central Europe is not a myth, but “a perceptible reality” (19). All stages of Dor’s journey through the parts of the former Yugoslavia that belonged to Central Europe are related to his personal history. He either writes about places that he has been visiting for decades (Istria, the former Yugoslav peninsula in the northern Adriatic, with the largest part now belonging to Croatia and much smaller parts belonging to Slovenia and Italy) or places where he lived when he was a child (Vojvodina, an autonomous province of today’s Serbia) and a very young man (Belgrade, the capital of Serbia). Therefore his travelogue through space and time combines the ontogenesis of a Central European subject with the phylogenesis of a region and includes cultures that existed both before and after the Habsburg period, thus providing a differentiated perspective for each place within the broader region. Dor’s journey begins in Istria, which he calls “the land on the sidelines” (20), a position in which he takes delight and which he considers more authentic, from the perspective of the endless flow of history, because it reminds him of the transitoriness of all human achievements (26). The marginal position also focuses on the locality life and does not aspire to symbolize eternal and universal values. The frescos in the small Romanic church, which can only be unlocked by a “small, wrinkled village woman,” represent Adam grinning cunningly as God expels him from Paradise because, in Dor’s interpretation, he knows that he will come to “the modest

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paradise” of Istria, where the sun shines more mildly and pleasantly than anywhere else (21). Dor’s Istria is a safe haven offering protection from different conquerors, as the fortress around the Romanic church, erected for defense against the Turk, silently reminds us, and a sanctuary for the “deserted,” as the inscription on the town gate in Rovinj In riposo dei deserti, explicitly states (22). At the same time, the children’s hospital founded by a Viennese doctor at the end of the nineteenth century and expanded with the help of the Austrian authorities in the nineteen seventies proves the sustainability of Central European cooperation. Istria is also a temporal island that preserved both archaic Croatian and Italian dialects and absorbed numerous cultures, beginning with the local Illyrian culture and continuing with conquerors and migrating peoples like the Celts, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Slavs, Venetians, French, and the Habsburgs. The county of Pazin, with its twentyone different rulers between 1380–1766, and architectural monuments like the colosseum in Pula, the Byzantine basilica in Pore!, the Romanic and Gothic churches, and the Habsburg roads, railroads, and factories witnessed the different rules. Yet Istria remains for Dor “an oasis of silence” (23) and an eternal “center of piece and harmony” (24) because of its marginal position, which saved it from the central conflicts of history. Dor’s Istria is a margin that shares the Balkans’ multiple belonging, but differs from them insofar as its history is not perceived as a process of disruption and recurrence, but as a continuous flow that brings different rules and cultures in orderly succession and creates harmony in the course of time. Even though the later stages in his journey are in places with more turbulence and disruption, this mode of writing remains predominant in Dor’s descriptions, thus offering an alternative to Kaplan’s hasty and forced deductive conclusions and static, stereotypical images. The narration of each stage of the journey shifts between the author’s personal story and the history of the respective place, the first moving in a circular motion, arriving and ending in Vienna, where it began, the second moving with an open end emphasizing the difference between the human, constructed identity and the independent course of history. Since Vojvodina is the place of Dor’s birth and early childhood, the interlacement of “human” and “historical” time is most visible. Dor tells the history of Vojvodina from the prehistoric days of the no longer existing Pannonian Sea and the unknown populations from the late Stone Age to the early Iron Age. Its history began with the Thracians and continued with the Celts, Romans and Dacians; during the Migration Period the region was traversed by the Huns, Goths, Gepids, Langobards, and Avars. The Slavs came and settled in the sixth century and the Hungarians in the ninth. Vojvodina became part of the Hungarian kingdom that was

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destroyed by the Turks. When the Austrians forced the Turks to retreat in the seventeenth century, they advanced all the way to present-day Greece and, on the way back to Austria, were joined by thousands of Serbs who had fought with them in the battles against the Turks and now feared revenge. Among these Serbs were also Dor’s ancestors. They were given land along the newly established military border with the mandate to defend it against the Turks. In the eighteenth century Maria Theresa settled Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks, and Ruthenians there to ensure that the region would remain Habsburg. Although the Serbs declared loyalty to Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand I during the Revolution of 1848 and were therefore granted autonomy, Vojvodina lost the autonomy after the agreement between the Austrians and the Hungarians and became part of Hungary. The Hungarians conducted an intensive assimilation and forced everyone to learn Hungarian, which is why Dor’s parents spoke better Hungarian than Serbian (53–55). Although Dor’s family was directly involved in the turbulent history of Vojvodina and experienced events and processes that we may define as traumatic, the tone of accusation, victimization, and suffering is entirely absent from his narration. Nonetheless, the profile of Vojvodina is quite different from that of Istria. In Istria there are no memories of battles, forced migrations, displacement, or assimilation, because these processes were completed before the Early Modern Age, whereas in the Balkans they have been in place from the beginning of the Early Modern Age to the presentday. Fascism and Nazism caused similar processes in Europe and their recurrence in the Balkans both during World War II and in the last decade of the twentieth century. Dor was born in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which was created from parts of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires and separated Vojvodina from Hungary. Yet both Budapest and Vienna remained reference points for his parents which, at the same time, did not prevent them from maintaining their Serbian identity and raising their child “as a young Serb” (56). However, this harmonious life was interrupted by World War II. The fate of Vojvodina vividly illustrates Dor’s claim that Hitler destroyed Central European culture. During the war Vojvodina was partitioned; one part was attached to the Croatian satellite state of Nazi Germany, another remained in Serbia under the Quisling government in Belgrade, and the third was given to fascist Hungary. The Nazis decimated the Serbs, Jews, and Roma, and after the war the German population, which collaborated with the Nazis either voluntarily or involuntarily, was expelled. The ethnographic map of Vojvodina was changed once again when numerous families from less developed areas of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia were settled there after the war (56–57).

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The narrative moves to the present when the narrator begins his journey through Vojvodina, and the reader now faces the physical reality from the narrator’s perspective. The architecture of Vojvodina reflects all the layers of its history. The solid building of the Serbian culture association Serbian Beehive, built in the style of the Central European founding period, creates the impression of a timeless island of peace and reflection amidst the hectic traffic and postmodern buildings made of glass and concrete (58). The square in front of the high school in Sremski Karlovci is another witness to the encounter between different cultures and times: On the square in front of the new school building, which was built around a hundred years ago in a downright fantastic style, old men are sitting on benches in the shadow of the trees, and individual pieces of their clothing—a red cap, white trousers made of thick cloth, or a vest of the same material—identify them as Bosniaks or Montenegrins. They seem to adapt to the architectural mixture of baroque breadth, Josephinian austerity, and Biedermeier modesty of the square just as effortlessly as the tourists in modern bandit disguise for which they take us. Auf dem Platz vor dem neuen Gebäude der Schule, das in einem schlichtweg phantastischen Stil vor etwa hundert Jahren errichtet wurde, sitzen auf den Bänken im Schatten der Bäume alte Männer, deren einzelne Kleidungsstücke—ein rotes Käppchen, eine weiße Hose aus dickem Tuch oder ein Wams aus gleichem Material—sie als Bosniaken oder Montenegriner ausweisen. Sie scheinen sich der architektonischen Mischung aus barocker Breite, josephinischer Strenge und biedermeierlicher Bescheidenheit des Platzes ebenso mühelos anzupassen wie die Touristen im modernen Räuberzivil, die wir in ihren Augen sind. (60)

Both buildings are remnants of Habsburg architecture and consequently reminders of Habsburg rule within the postmodern architectural landscape of social realism; they are also a postmodern mixture of an original Balkan type representing in one temporal moment the last three centuries of history and migrations in the region. In the sense of four dimensionalism we can say that both the building from the founding period and the men’s clothing represent temporal parts of larger cultures detached from their respective centers and displaced by the force of history, continuing to live in suspended animation without finding another center of gravity. This is the cultural image of a location that is becoming less Central European, without ever attaining the entirely Balkan quality of exclusively Byzantine and Ottoman styles. Dor’s Vojvodina is a place of constant migration and ethnic and cultural changes. Yet despite the migratory movements and the changes in the Central European profile of the province, the Habsburg ethnic diversity of Vojvodina was not obliterated in the former Yugoslavia. Dor enumerates seven larger and some ten smaller ethnicites ranging from one million Serbs to twenty-thousand Ruthenians, the small ethnic groups scattered around the province, nowhere present in numbers large enough to form a local majority.

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The radio in Novi Sad (the capital of the province) broadcasts programs in five languages, and the street names are always bilingual, whereas the public building have inscriptions in as many as five languages (63). In every-day life, diversity is a matter of choice or circumstances—the Serbian woman who moved to a Hungarian-speaking village in Vojvodina as a child learned Hungarian, but her son takes the bus to the next village to go to a Serbian school (66). Dor names Belgrade, Budapest, and Vienna “my cities” because of the role they played in his life. At the same time, he emphasizes the fact that all three cities lie on the banks of the Danube, and, because the river constitutes a vibrant connection between them they should be considered comparatively (150). Budapest is “the fictive city” of Dor’s birth. Since his family left very soon after his birth, his knowledge of it is based on his parents’ stories and Hungarian songs and on a short visit when he was fifteen (152–53). Revisiting the city, he becomes aware of its multilayered cultural map: The crescent, which crops up in Budapest time and again, testifies evidently of the Turkish presence in these regions. The Turkish rule along the Danube has long since become a legend, yet several distinctive institutions which reveal a Turkish influence have remained present in all three cities: the steam baths, which are most numerous and most beautiful in Budapest, as well as a multitude of coffeehouses, in which you can not only drink a “Turkish” [coffee], but you can also get various cakes and other pastries, the preferred dishes of the Arabian world. Der Halbmond, der immer wieder in Budapest auftaucht, zeugt augenscheinlich von der Anwesenheit der Türken in diesen Regionen. Die türkische Herrschaft an der Donau gehört längst zur Legende, doch einige charakteristische Einrichtungen, die den türkischen Einfluß verraten, sind in allen drei Städten bis heute präsent geblieben: die Dampfbäder, die in Budapest am zahlreichsten und am schönsten sind, sowie eine Menge Kaffeehäuser, in denen man nicht nur einen “Türkischen” trinken kann, sondern dazu auch verschiedene Torten und andere Süßigkeiten bekommt, die bevorzugten Speisen der arabischen Welt. (154)

Surprisingly, the first cultural tradition that Dor perceives as shared by all three cities is not the Habsburg/Central European, as would be expected in a writing about the Danubian space, but the Ottoman. This raises the question of what constitutes Central European culture. Is Central Europe a closed system of continuous traditions that evolved in a relatively small space and were shaped by the Romanesque and Gothic periods, the Renaissance and the Reformation, as Szücs puts it (13–14)? Or is Central Europe a multinational community, created by intellectual exchange at the universities that culminated in baroque art and by political events like the Hussite revolution, the Hungarian Renaissance, the advent of the Habsburg Empire as the union of three independent states—Bohemia, Hungary, and Austria—

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the wars against the Turks, and the Counter-Reformation of the seventeenth century, as Kundera famously claimed (“The Tragedy of Central Europe” 35)? Was Central Europian culture perhaps also shaped by external forces like the Ottomans, with whom the Habsburg Empire was at war for around three centuries? The Ottoman historian Inalcik claims, “it is a commonplace that the Ottomans were responsible for the spread of coffeehouses in Europe” (Brown 24). Inalcik enumerates other cultural elements brought to Europe by the Ottomans, like rice and tulip cultivation and military bands (25). Notwithstanding the latter’s significance for European agriculture and the military, the institution of the coffeehouse can be defined as one of the essential elements of Central European culture. The coffeehouse was one of the architectural and social identity markers of the Habsburg Monarchy and the birthplace of groundbreaking cultural ideas during the fin de siècle period in Vienna. Dor, with the perceptive eye of a multicultural humanist, gives the Ottoman element in Central European culture the place it deserves. Yet according to Dor, the Ottoman elements in Hungarian culture have been reduced to décor and become a thing of the past. In other words, the decorative function of the Ottoman legacy in Hungary testifies of its complete assimilation by Hungarian culture. In Dor’s view, the Hungarians have always been attracted to the West, and their “gate to the West,” from the Renaissance period to their uprising against the Soviets in 1956, has always been Vienna (155). In Dor’s view, Vienna is not so much the center or a reference point left over from the empire, but an intersection, where some decide to stay, while others leave to go further West. Dor’s memories of Belgrade are not as happy and harmonious as those of Vojvodina. He spent his early youth in Belgrade, which coincided partially with the first years of the German occupation. He remembers Jewish friends who were killed or hauled off to concentration camps, but also others who survived. One of the latter is Ivan Ivanji. Ivanji is not happy with how the urbanists planned, or rather failed to plan, the city’s unappealing infrastructure. He complains about the uncontrolled growth of population and the spread of “ugly houses” that in his view look exactly like those in Moscow, Chicago, the outskirts of Cologne, Bonn, or Frankfurt. In Ivanji’s opinion, the dull architectural style and the uniform clothing of the young people go hand in hand and are part of the process of Americanization (160– 61).7 The transformation of the former Yugoslav capital was continued in the twentieth century with the uncontrolled influx of population from all over the former Yugoslavia, especially from the rural areas. “Belgrade is a city which bursts at its seams,” says Dor, and adds that due to the multiple destructions in the history of the city and the fast growth, it shows “very little softness, affluence, and tradition” (159). With its position on the defense line of one or

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another empire, reflected in its Celtic name Singidunum (dunum means fortress), Belgrade’s destiny has been “to be a destroyed fortress at whose foot lies a provisory village” (158). The masters have changed constantly since the founding Celts, from the Romans, Byzantines, Slavs, and the Turks, who fought over it several times with the Austrians, to the Serbs, the Austrians again during World War I, and the Germans during World War II, on to its status as the capital of the former Yugoslavia (158). Belgrade is a city that symbolizes most vividly the Balkan history of disruption, cultural multi-belonging, and recurrence, processes which were already addressed in Dor’s previous travel descriptions. Belgrade experienced a turbulent decade under the dictatorship of Serbian president Milo!evi" after Dor’s visit in 1989. It culminated in NATO’s bombardment during its intervention in Kosovo in 1999. Standing on the Ottoman fortress Kalemegdan, Dor feels he is at the bow of a ship and wonders how the journey will continue. The metaphor of the ship implies that the surroundings are an open sea and that the ship can be steered in the wrong direction. Dor predicts the latter when he mentions the rise of an aggressive nationalist politics in Serbia whose absurdity is best characterized by the name of the political party, “Party of All the Serbs in the World” (165). Dor’s personal journey on the turbulent sea of history came full circle when it brought him back to Vienna. Dor has many epithets for Vienna: “an unfaithful mistress, who flings her hands around any boaster’s neck, […] a no longer young slut, who covers her wrinkles with thick makeup,” whom he, nonetheless, cannot help loving (167). What seems to be a weakness at first, proves to be of advantage in hindsight. Dor understands that he feels at home in Vienna because it is “the capital of the lost battles and the failed attempts to make history, […] the capital of a nation that constantly denies itself and only in this way begins to exist” (167). The self-narration of the postmodern nation does not glorify heroic victories; it redefines itself by learning from its defeats and mistakes. The true existence of the nation lies in its denial of the purported ethnic origins, which can never reflect the actual present-time existence of diverse, pulsing communities such as those of the Viennese eighth district, also known as Josefstadt. After traveling to former parts of the Habsburg Monarchy and beyond, searching for his various identities, Dor concludes that his homeland is not just Central Europe, but all of Europe, whereas his home (Zuhause) is the Viennese locality Josefstadt (167). Bhabha proposes the term locality as an alternative to the discourse of nationalism and as a model of existence for the Western nation. He suggests that the locality of culture is more about temporality than about historicity and that it is more hybrid in the articulation of cultural differences and identifications like gender, race, and class than any hierarchical or binary structure (Nation and Narration 291–92). Dor’s

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description of Josefstadt corresponds entirely to Bhabha’s concept of locality. Its name and the baroque monument of the Virgin Mary are reminiscent of the Old Monarchy, but they exist in the temporality of the hybrid culture reflected in the taverns whose owners come from all over Europe and offer not only Austrian, but also Italian, French, Yugoslav, and Hungarian wines (168–69). Dor’s friend, the renowned Austrian writer Peter Turrini, himself of Italian origin, describes the eighth district as dominated by foreign influences (überfremdet) which provoke feelings of xenophobia among what he calls the “radical lower middle class.” Turrini considers this xenophobia a paradox because the lower middle class of Josefstadt was itself created by immigrants and purebred Viennese never really existed (169). Another group of newcomers to Josefstadt are the young people from other parts of Austria who sell organic products. Turrini’s description of Josefstadt as a mixture of “foreigners, radical lower middle-class citizens, and organic freaks” (170) sums up the cultural differences and identifications of this locality, in Bhabha’s sense. Dor believes that the many historical defeats and political mistakes the Austrians made helped them come to the conclusion that they do not belong either to homo alpinus or to homo danubiensi, but are rather a mixture of peoples “who once joined the big Monarchy as a result of spoils, flattery or purchase” (171). However, this does not imply a dismissal of the term Austrian, which Dor understands not as a nationality, but as a Weltanschauung (172). Dor’s preliminary conclusions were that Central Europe is both physically still present and a perceptible reality of the second order shared by many people. His final conclusions, that Europe is his larger homeland, Josefstadt his home, and that his Austrian identity is a Weltanschauung, are his individual choices. Yet, precisely these personal conclusions, which do not lay claim to universal validity, offer a model for twenty-first century Europe. It is not Kundera’s Europe, which must learn from Central Europe how to return to its true cultural identity; it is a Europe which must include all other identities from its margins that were shaped by migrations, disruptions, and conflicts, a Europe which absorbs the border between the Balkans and Central Europe and renders it relative. The European subject, following Dor’s example, lives in the triangle between his locality, like Josephstadt, his broader European homeland, and his nation, ideally understood as a Weltanschauung of multiple belongings, not as an ethnicity or an exclusive culture. Peter Handke’s Once Again for Thucydides: Narrative Islands of Peace amidst of War Peter Handke’s (b. 1942) travelogue Once Again for Thucydides (Noch einmal für Thukydides)8 also begins in Istria, but then it takes a different

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route, both in a geographical and in a narrative sense.9 Although both Dor and Handke disclose attentive observation, the latter approaches the limits of the traditional form of narration and challenges the reader’s concentration, motivating him to develop a different perception of the physical world. Likewise, the cultural diversity of the places Handke visits is not analyzed discursively from a political and historical point of view, as is in Dor’s travelogue, but is presented metonymically in the narration.10 Handke, then, has a very different method both from Kaplan, who marshalls historical facts to reach preconceived conclusions, and from Dor, who argues inductively and uses history to arrive at better insights about his personal identity. Nonetheless, what connects all three narratives in this chapter is traveling through the same space. Rogoff argues that “metaphor is indeed a very limited and comfortable way of understanding sets of conditions and their articulations through the similar, which is by definition also the familiar” (15). The authors of the two previous narratives use metaphors to define the Balkan space. The familiar in these narratives is the “West,” which is often equated with Europe and viewed as a more or less homogeneous sum of values. The Balkans are then described from the position of the West either as a marginalized space where memories of historical injustices perpetuate revenge (Kaplan) or a plaything of historical migrations and battles (Dor). Handke’s narrative, on the other hand, does not make use of the similar/familiar to “explain” the Balkan conditions, but, in Rogoff’s terminology (16) mediates between the concrete and material, his personal psychological state, and the metaphorical articulations in literature to create a travelogue sui generis that presents metonymically the relations between subjects, places, and spaces.11 The concrete and material space in Thucydides is presented with an abundance of minuscule details of seemingly irrelevant nature that challenge the reader’s concentration, but also defamiliarize his perception and thus prevent him from resorting to the familiar and positioning his interpretation in an already existing system. In this process the narrator suggests to the reader how to change his perception by revealing his own psychological state. Finally, details of the material space evoke associations with famous literary topoi, like the comparison between a passerby’s hat in Skopje and Parzival’s half-brother Feirefiz (Thucydides 26) that puts both elements of the trope next to one another, following the mechanism of metonymy rather than of metaphor. Handke also recurs to the classical genre of epopee, yet combines it with the seemingly trivial content of the stories defined as epopees, e.g., The Sheet-Lightning Epopee or Once Again for Thucydides (Thucydides 11–14), or Epopee of Loading a Cargo Sheep (Thukydides 21– 24). He does so in order to alienate the reader’s literary reception and encourage its reorganization together with the reevaluation of the literary

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tradition, but more importantly to stimulate a different visual perception in the reader when/if he becomes a passenger like the narrator. This narrative procedure forces the reader to perceive the narrated space as an independent universe that is neither subordinate nor inferior to an outside perspective from which it could be judged. Thus Handke eliminates in this narrative entirely the possibility of what Bhabha calls “containment of cultural difference” that occurs when a “transparent norm” given by a certain society or dominant culture is constituted, and all other cultures, although acknowledged, are located within the “grid” of the normative culture (The Third Space 208). Considering Handke’s explicitly political rhetoric in the context of the Yugoslav wars from 1990 to 2001, employed both in the many interviews he gave as well as in his literary œuvre, this type of narration, which focuses on immediate, physical details, and overlooks current political events and heated debates, seems unexpected. Yet, according to Arno Dusini, precisely the events between 1990 and 1995 imbue the second edition of the book with special meaning. Dusini points to the subtle allusions to the wars that were added throughout the second edition and, more significantly, explains the title of the book and its intertextual dimension. Thucydides was a historian who not only wrote about the Peloponnesian War, but also reflected on the art of historiography and who, rather than following the factual presentation of events, was more interested in the rhetoric of war through which he interpreted the events (82–84). I argue that despite the apparent intertextual dimension and its function in the narrative and the political context of the 1990s, Thucydides functions primarily as a model for a narrative that resists the explicitly political media presentations about the former Yugoslavia. The second edition makes a strong statement simply by being published in the middle of the chain of wars, only a year before Handke’s most in/famous politically explicit book A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia (1996). The narration in Thucydides, which focuses on the minuscule details of the immediate surrounding and on the repetitive, everyday activities of the locals in order to distill a denser reality, challenges implicitly the media presentations and reports on the region which focus exclusively on the wars and operate with preconceived judgments and images. Nonetheless, these media presentations changed everyone’s perception of the former Yugoslavia, including Handke’s. Therefore, the second edition of Thucydides should be considered as Handke’s conscious decision to come back to the narrative he created earlier, to revisit his original, uncontaminated perception of the region, and to juxtapose it with the politicized presentations not only in the media, but also in his own literary œuvre.12 Thucydides is, therefore, not a work on Yugoslavia in the narrower sense, insofar as it does not explicitly thematize

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media coverage of the wars. It is, however, a work on Yugoslavia in the broader sense, not only because it deals with five places in the former Yugoslavia, but also because it serves as a narrative treasure house on which both the narrator and the reader can draw once all other discourses on the wars in the former Yugoslavia are exhausted. Handke’s journey begins in Istria, in the county of Pazin, on the night of August 22 to 23, 1987.13 The first-person narrator appears in the first line, informing the reader that the motel where he is staying is at the edge of a socalled “sinkhole,” where, as the legend says, Dante entered into the Inferno (Thucydides 5). The second sentence then shifts the focus to the audial and visual stimuli of the immediate surroundings and includes memories from the previous night, thus adding stimuli that are unnoticed by eyes and ears that are trained to take in sounds and images according to a preconceived, cognitively formed system of perception. There is no hierarchy in the sounds and objects that attract the narrator’s attention: he listens with equal attention to the sounds of an owl hooting, a rooster crowing (which reminds him of an enormous bumblebee that he saw the day before), and a cicada in an appletree and looks at the fresco of St. Martin. The narrator notices that only now, on seeing how St. Martin on the fresco in the local church spreads his cloak over the beggar and looks sorrowfully over “such conditions,” does he understand this saint whom he otherwise found offensive. This is a sign that the narrator’s perception is changing. On the following day he makes the conscious decision to continue this process: Later, at the train station, more than a few of the young Yugoslavian faces appeared disfigured, if only because of the gaps between their teeth, and I thought of the petrifying, Medusa-like gaze which I myself, already exposed, sometimes used unconsciously or even against my will, in order to expose others. I knew I had to overcome this habit completely, to breathe it away, to breathe it out of myself—or rather, to veil it so that I could perceive things even more clearly. (Thucydides 7) Dann am Bahnhof erschienen nicht wenige der jugoslawischen, noch jungen Gesichter mir entstellt, und wenn auch nur durch die Zahnlücken, und ich dachte an meinen zeitweiligen Medusen- oder Steinschleuderblick, unwillkürlich und auch wider Willen, ein selber Nackter, der den anderen entblößt, und daß ich mir diesen Blick für immer abgewöhnen oder aberziehen muß, wegatmen, aus mir herausatmen—oder aber ihn verschleiern, um besser zu sehen […]. (Thukydides 12)

The petrifying, Medusa-like gaze corresponds to a perspective that executes as it observes and places the observed in a preconceived system not only of visual, but also of cognitive patterns. Yet, every observer must understand that he is himself observed, or “exposed,” as the narrator puts it, i.e., that he, too, will be judged from within a system of which he is not a part. The narrator first feels the necessity to abandon the traditional art of perception

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altogether, but he changes his decision and arrives at a more realistic yet seemingly contradictory one: he will veil his gaze to see more clearly. The change in perception to which the narrator aspires is mirrored in his changed position within the narration: the first-person narrator disappears from the next four stories, all of them set in places in the former Yugoslavia, and, as Hárs points out, is absorbed into the world of sequential occurrences mixed with repetitions. This position, according to Hárs, moves the narrator away from the position of a reflecting outsider (224). The veiled gaze and the abandonment of the reflecting position from the outside imply a new locus for the narrator—that of a participant or actor in the dramatic sense. Herein lies the hidden political message of the second edition of the book. Although the story about Istria was written in 1987, as the first line explicitly states, it was not included in the first edition.14 In the second edition the story follows the introduction, which bears the date of 23 March 1987 and does not contain information about the place of action, only the information that the narrator listens to the radio news at 10:00, thus leading the reader to the conclusion that he is possibly in a country whose language he understands, perhaps his home country (Handke, Thukydides 7). The narrator in the introduction is thus invisible for the reader, who can only conclude that he is present, based on the information about the radio news (Hárs 223). The narrative position shifts, then, from the invisible narrator, to his firstperson counterpart, and on to the third-person narrator, who begins to participate in the narrated world. The narrator-participant remains only in the four stories set in the former Yugoslavia. In the following story, set on the island of Peloponnese, Handke uses the first-person narrator.15 The hidden political message in the edition of 1995 is thus that the narrator can be only seemingly objective when writing about the former Yugoslavia and when judging the events from a perspective alien to the actual setting. When he participates in the events, on the other hand, his perspective must necessarily be subjective (veiled) due to his involvement. Yet the latter position also implies a better vision than the seemingly objective one, because the distance between the observer and the observed disappears.16 But where is the authenticity? As Handke explained in an interview with Herbert Gamper, he does not embed his stories in a larger historical background, but in intervening spaces (Zwischenräume) (Handke and Gamper 151). In the same interview he talks about his passion for spaces, which most of the time can be narrated only in the very rare moments when they become “tellable” (erzählbar) (95). The narration in Thucydides thus searches for authenticity in fortuitous, short interactions without verbal communication and in the previously mentioned close perspectives of the surroundings. Taking place in the former

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Yugoslavia, however, these narrow spaces and short moments in the stories create a common narrative space that corresponds geographically to the space of the former Yugoslavia. The shared narrative space is created through variations of the repetitions and visual stimuli, which mediate between the five places in the former Yugoslavia, thus connecting both the stories and the places. The variations are interconnected on different levels. The motif of the inexhaustible variety of hats, or Kopfbedeckungen, as the author chooses to call them in the last story from the former Yugoslavia, is related to the short description of the various bandages in the first story, which takes place in Pazin (Thukydides 8– 9). It is also related to the detailed variety of the sheet-lightning flares on the island of Krk in Lightning Epopee or Once Again for Thucydides (Epopöe des Wetterleuchtens oder Noch einmal für Thukydides), and to the “white crown of hair” of the shoeshine man in Split (Thucydides 17), whereas the Tito star on the soldiers’ caps in Skopje (27) reminds one of the five-pointed partisan star on the smoke stack of the ship at the pier in the port of Dubrovnik (24). The close-up perspective on the insects and birds in Pazin recurs as a variation in the detailed description of the types of flares on Krk, and the craftsmanship of the shoeshine man of Split corresponds to the precision and attentiveness of the workers at the harbor in Dubrovnik. The motif of the saint that first appears when the fresco of St. Martin is seen, recurs with the carved figures of St. John and Jesus on the wooden door of the cathedral in Split, where John’s depiction as “seeking consolation with one hand on his master’s sleeve” (Thucydides 15) is explicitly defined as a variation on,17 possibly an allusion to the variation on the motif of sainthood, and concludes with the sentence: “In the shoeshine man of Split he briefly saw a saint: the saint of carefulness, or the ‘Saint of Small Measures’” (18). The motif of alternative sainthood, the sainthood of small measures, as a limited, local, and momentary interaction is an illustrative fictional example of Handke’s previously mentioned concept of intervening tellable spaces. The motif of the saint is also related to the problem of perception, initially discussed in the story of Pazin as the problem of the gaze, and is varied through the narrator’s description of the shoeshine man as his portrait painter, “completely different from the painters of tourists he’d recently seen—incomparably more fitting, truer, better fitted to the traveler” (18). Thus, the discursive and performative levels of the narration merge in the narrator’s interaction with one of the protagonists, creating an intervening space between the two modes of presentation. The cultural multi-belonging of the geographical space of the former Yugoslavia also recurs as motif expressed in different variations, although it is never explicitly addressed, but rather represented sporadically as an architectural style, the sound of a prayer, or an article of apparel. Each one of

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these variations stands metonymically for a whole culture, yet it also exists independently of the broader cultural context, embedded in the narrow tellable space of Handke’s narration. Moreover, until the story The Tale of Hats in Skopje the culture remains in the background, giving room for the immediate physical surrounding. However, it must be viewed as a continuum that begins with the Catholic church in Beram, where the narrator observes the fresco of St. Martin; continues with the station pillars in Pazin, “slender, round, and fluted in the old Austrian style” (9); the Catholic cathedral in Split with carvings of St. John and Jesus, and the description of the shoeshine man’s sweep of the brushes as the incredible accompanying sound “of the muezzin’s call to prayer from atop the minaret” (17),18 which subtly incorporates the Moslem cultural element; ending with the multifariousness of the hats in the capital of Macedonia, Skopje. In The Tale of Hats in Skopje we find an explosion of cultural differences, as if all cultures of the former Yugoslavia found their metonymic representation in the hats that people on the streets are wearing: A possible brief epic: the different hats passing by in large cities. For example, in Skopje in Yugoslavian Macedonia on the tenth of December 1987. Even in the middle of this city, there were those passe-montagne or mountain climbing hats […]. The small skullcaps of the cart drivers passed among them, while on the sidewalk an old man, wearing a hood with pointed gables like those on Islamic windows and pillars, said goodbye to his daughter or granddaughter from Titograd, Montenegro or Vipava, Slovenia (the daughter or granddaughter was crying). […] Then a man wearing a fez pulled down over his ears and spotted black and white like a magpie—the dappled Feirefiz, Parzival’s half-brother. […] Then troops of soldiers marched by with the Tito star adorning the front of their caps. Next came someone with a brown loden Tyrolean hat […]. One man pushed a cart wearing a plastic hat over his ears and a Palestinian shawl over his chin. […]: it was impossible to keep up with the variety. A beautiful woman with glasses and a lilac Borsalino hat sauntered by […], followed by an infant in an open-crowned sombrero, carried by a young woman in an especially large beret that read Made in Hong Kong. And so forth. A beautiful procession, so on and so forth. (Thucydides 25–28) Ein mögliches kleines Epos: das von unterschiedlichen Kopfbedeckungen der vorbeigehenden Menschheit in den großen Städten, wie zum Beispiel in Skopje in Mazedonien/Jugoslawien am 10. Dezember 1987. Es gab sogar mitten in der Metropole jene “Passe-Montagne” oder Gebirgsüberquer-Mützen […], und dazwischen die Radfahrkarren mit schwarzen kleinen Moslemkappen […], während daneben am Straßenrand ein alter Mann Abschied nahm von seiner Tochter oder Enkelin aus Titograd/Montenegro oder Vipava/Slowenien, vielfache Spitzgiebel in seiner Haube, ein islamisches Fenster- und Kapitellornament (die Tochter oder Enkelin weinte). […] Danach einer mit scheckigem Fez, über die Ohren geschlungen, im Elsternschwarzweiß Halbbruder Parzivals, der gescheckte Feirefiz. Die Soldatentruppe dann mit dem Tito-Stern vorn am Mützenbug. Darauf einer mit braunlodenem Tirolerhut […]. Einer schob einen Karren und hatte eine Plastikkappe

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? über den Ohren, das Kinn umwickelt mit einem Palästinensertuch. […]: der Vielfältigkeit war nicht mehr nachzukommen. Eine Brillenschönheit ging vorbei mit lila Borsalinohut […], gefolgt von einem Säugling mit Sombrero auf der noch offenen Schädelfontanelle, getragen von einem Mädchen mit überkopfgroßer Baskenmütze made in Hongkong. […] Undsoweiter. All das schöne Undsoweiter. All das schöne Undsoweiter. (Thukydides 37–39)

In this story, Handke’s intention to mediate between the epic and the coherent, on the one hand, and the disparate and the erratic, on the other hand, in order to unite the great epic with the small things of everyday life (Handke and Gamper 96) finds its most successful realization. Out of coincidence and chaos he creates an aesthetic system that celebrates the great cultural variety, rendering the cultural boundaries between Central Europe and the Balkans irrelevant. The narrator’s perception of the bazaar street in Skopje not only displays cultural elements from places in the former Yugoslavia, so far unmentioned in the narration (Slovenia and Montenegro), but also includes the ideological markers of the communist regime of the former Yugoslavia (the Tito star on the soldiers’ caps), traces of the global economy (the beret reading Made in Hong Kong), and international politics (the Palestinian shawl); finally, it unites the local Moslem culture with Parzival, the Christian epic of medieval Europe (the man with the fez resembling Parzival’s half-brother Feirefiz). Thus, the narrative common space which begins on the solitary Istrian peninsula in the northwest of the former Yugoslavia concludes with the pulsing, diverse, and, from the narrator’s perspective, beautifully chaotic capital of the southernmost republic of this no longer existing country. The oriental culture of the Ottoman Empire in the former Yugoslavia, which Kaplan interprets as “crime committed by Tito and other sultans going all the way back to Murad” (41), is, for Handke, simply there as an intrinsic part of the physical reality. It neither threatens nor complements Central and Southeastern European legacies likewise present on the same soil. Handke created with this “brief epic” a “distinctively postmodern and critical human geography” in Soja’s sense (11) that “rings with significantly different ways of seeing time and space together […], the vertical and horizontal dimensions of being in the world […].” Metonymy proves to be the ideal literary trope for what Foucault called “the epoch of simultaneity, […], of juxtaposition, […] of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed” (Foucault 22). Yet, it is also the ideal trope for the presentation of the Balkan space that was indeed created by disparate near and far influences, which remain located side by side in our present-day, challenging both aesthetic and discursive concepts of modernity. The collection of stories, however, does not end with the exalted tone of The Tale of Hats in Skopje, which celebrates variety. In the last story in both

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editions, Epopee of Disappearing Paths or Another Lesson of Mont SainteVictoire (Epopöe vom Verschwinden der Wege oder Eine andere Lehre der Sainte-Victoire),19 the narrator reports that the burnt landscape of the mountain Sainte-Victoire no longer affects him, more precisely, it no longer produces narrative presence (Thucydides 87). The space has, then, become opaque and untellable, indeed has disappeared from the narrator: “no, not surrounding, there was no longer any specific area to be surrounded” (89), and it thus can no longer produce narration. The narrator describes himself as someone who is stumbling and staggering dizzily (89) because he has lost his way, which was the only thing of permanence for him. Yet, permanence is not described as static duration, but as a possibility for repetition through which old knowledge (Erkenntnis) can be recovered in a new way (Thukydides 90), a variation of Heraclitus’ philosophy of constant change. Repetition is then, as Hárs points out, also the function of these narratives because it can resuscitate their content. Yet, repetition is not directed towards the future, but is intended to evoke the recipient’s reaction through the act of reading, in the moment of reading (Hárs 226–27). The importance that Handke attributes to the performative aspect is the reason for which he decided to read his texts before an audience (Dusini 93) and to dedicate the play Voyage by Dugout to the theater as a free medium (6). Reading the text aloud, as an intervening space between narration and performance that exists only in the moment of its articulation, addresses a small and close community and limits the effect of the performance to the here and now. It thus evokes the ritualistic origins of narration and theater and defies the digital, virtual omnipresence of the media, which Handke decried time and again because of what he saw as their inauthentic and static presentations of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The sudden knowledge about the lost path on the mountain of SainteVictoire functions for the narrator as an association of contiguity, hence metonymically, because it evokes the thought or memory that all paths that he had taken before have likewise been lost for him, e.g.: “the path in the Slovenian karst because he was no longer a nameless wanderer and visitor of parks but the one who …” (Thucydides 90). Handke refrains from any form of explicit political reference and leaves the reader to guess how the narrator’s role in the Slovenian karst has changed and how, consequently, it causes a change in the narrated space.20 The message of the narration is ambivalent: on the one hand, it may be interpreted as pessimistic, since the narrator reaches the Erkenntnis that the paths which connect the narrator and the spaces no longer communicate and that, consequently, narration cannot be produced. On the other hand, the repetition of narration has led once again to new knowledge, thus leaving open the possibility that new knowledge could emerge again in the future. The process of communication between the

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narrator, the narration, and the narrated space can be understood as a model of reception, i.e., of communication between the reader and the narration. Each new reading can produce new knowledge, each new reading is happening here and now, even when it is not performed, and the text should be read “once again,” as the title of the books suggests. Both Thucydides and Voyage by Dugout echo Barthes’ essay The Death of the Author insofar as both works require the reader or the spectator to focus on the moment of reading or watching the performance and to interact directly with the text, not with the author. For Handke, every new reading produces new knowledge if the reader can engage directly with the text and if he reads it as if it were for the first time. For Barthes, what Handke describes as a cognitive process is in actuality a creation, since reading anew also means rewriting, or indeed writing the text: […] there is no other time than that of enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now. The fact is (or, it follows) that writing can no longer designate an operation of recording, notation, representation, ‘depiction’ (as the Classics would say); rather it designates exactly what linguists, referring to Oxford philosophy, call a performative, a rare verbal form (exclusively given in the first person and in the present tense) in which the enunciation has no other content (contains no other proposition) than the act by which it is uttered […]. (1468)

Thucydides is Handke’s last text on the former Yugoslavia in which there are no explicit political references or comments. All later texts on the same topic should be considered as Handke’s conscious as well as unconscious reference to the narrated space of Thucydides and the perspective the narrator had at the moment of narration. By admitting that he has lost the paths of repetition that led to new knowledge, Handke admits that he can no longer find authentic narration for the changed reality in these spaces. In the play The Voyage by Dugout, he resorts to the theater as a model for direct interaction which can help the protagonists, both onstage and beyond, to regain authenticity in mutual communication. This should lead to new authenticity in the perception of the immediate surroundings, which has been distorted by media coverage of the wars, and thus reaffirm the inherent connectedness of human subjects and places.

Notes 1

I use the term “recipient” because the present-day electronic media have taken over the role of creating images of regions from travel writing. I elaborate on this in more detail in the sixth chapter, which deals with the media coverage of the Balkans. 2 Kaplan discusses Stepinac’s role in the NDH on pages 17–22. 3 Here, with the eye of a traveling reporter, which functions like the lens of a camera, capturing static images, rather than dynamic processes, Kaplan delivers verbal images of

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Kosovars that arouse antipathy. Very similar digital images, broadcast incessantly by CNN during NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999, were used to arouse sympathy for the Kosovar refugees from the Serbian military and paramilitary forces. 4 In her analysis of texts on Central Europe and the Balkans by Otto von Habsburg, Milo Dor, and Peter Handke, Arens concludes that these narratives address “a region that puts Western identity, Europe’s identity to the test—a region that ought to be taken seriously as the conscious and the unconscious of Europe’s identity (a subject en procés)” (“Politics, History, and Public Intellectuals in Central Europe after 1989” 131). Kaplan’s perplexity over the view of Pri!tina’s chaotic architecture as well as his regressive and contradictory analysis of fascism and present-day xenophobia in Austria confirm this observation and remind one of the necessity of questioning and reevaluating both visual perceptions and discursive interpretations of the Balkans. 5 All translations from Dor’s original German text into English are mine. 6 The region where Dor’s ancestors settled was called Vojvodina and was declared an autonomous province by the Habsburgs. Its history is elaborated in more detail in the third chapter. 7 This is a perspective similar to Kundera’s view, expressed in the essay “The Tragedy of Central Europe” (1981), that Europe is in a process of losing its own cultural identity, as well as to the culture shock created by Americanization that Joseph Roth’s fictional character Morstin, in the story The Emperor’s Monument (1934), experiences after World War I. It is, nonetheless, not the process of Americanization that produced structures similar to those in Chicago. The “ugly” buildings in the part of the city called New Belgrade are products of the architecture of social realism (as are those in Moscow) and are superimposed on a traditionally Ottoman city, which Belgrade was from the beginning of the Early Modern Age until the middle of the nineteenth century. 8 I will rely mostly on the second edition of Noch einmal für Thukyidides, published in 1995, whereas the first edition, published in 1990, will be used to examine the later changes in the sequence of the stories and their function in regard to the former Yugoslavia. The English translation is from the second edition. 9 On his journey Handke visits the Istrian peninsula, the Dalmatian towns of Split and Dubrovnik, and the Adriatic island of Krk—all in today’s Croatia—and, after a rather unexpected leap to the southeast, Skopje, the capital of today’s Macedonia. 10 Hárs argues that the reflections in Thucydides are not a preview but rather retrospection on the narration. According to Hárs, the question of the effectiveness of this new type of writing arose only after the writing was first conducted consistently. This raises the questions of how successful the narration is and where it leads. In this sense, Handke expands the boundaries of the narrative towards his personal limits as a narrator and the possible limits of the narration as a genre. Therefore, Hárs claims that we should consider Once Again for Thucydides as possibly the last book by Handke from which he can come back, but never move forward (220). 11 As Hárs points out, through this unique example of narration the landscape does not become writing, it is rather a type of writing, which the process of narration must mimic in a lifelike fashion (221). 12 In the play Voyage by Dugout or The Play about the Film on the War (1999), which is analyzed in the sixth chapter, Handke also uses the arsenal of impressions and images from Thucydides in an attempt to offer alternative models for perception and writing after his literary confrontation with the media. 13 All the stories bear the month and year, some also the day/s, on which the passenger visited the place. According to Hárs, this is a technical procedure which emphasizes the importance

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of the seemingly trivial events and justifies the recurrence of the literary terms “epic,” “history,” and “episode” in the headings (223). For Dusini, this is a formula typical for the chronicle, which he feels should hint at Thucydides’ less known, unfinished book about the Peloponnesian War (82). 14 The Pigeons of Pazin and The Tale of Hats in Skopje were added to the 1995 edition, although the dates of their writing are August and December of 1987, respectively. 15 In the edition of 1990 this first happens in Two Days Facing the Cloud-Kitchen Mountain [Zwei Tage angesichts des Wolkenküchenbergs], which is the ninth story in that edition and the thirteenth in the edition of 1995. 16 Handke tries to find another literary form for the Yugoslav conflicts in the play Voyage by Dugout, where the narrators retreat before the participants, who try to find their way back to authenticity through direct interaction and performative acts. 17 In the English translation the German word Variante is omitted and paraphrased with “ but this time” (15). 18 The erroneous English translation for Handke’s phrase “der unerhörte Beiklang” (26) is “the unexpected power” (17). 19 The story bears the date of January 1990. 20 The unfinished sentence leads to the book Abschied des Träumers vom neunten Land (Dreamer’s Farewell to the Ninth Land [1991]), in which Handke describes Slovenia’s independence of 1990 as inauthentic and forced because it broke the bond connecting the populace with the remaining peoples of the former Yugoslavia, which, in his view, had created an authentic culture of similarity and difference.

III. Serbia: Between

East and West The territory of today’s Serbia was the battlefield on which the Habsburg and the Ottoman forces fought repeatedly from the late seventeenth until the last decade of the eighteenth century. The encounters between the two empires had a strong political and cultural impact on the local Serbian population, which was torn between these two very different traditions and state systems, and its Orthodox Slavic identity. Serbia’s request for integration into the Habsburg Monarchy at the beginning of the nineteenth century was rejected and thus, unlike the remaining countries/regions from the part of the Balkans discussed in this study, i.e., Bosnia-Herzegovina, Vojvodina, Croatia and Slovenia, Ottoman Serbia never became part of the “West.” Yet, although Serbia was excluded from the group of “privileged” Balkan countries, in all the above-mentioned Habsburg territories except Slovenia, there were Serbian Orthodox communities who lived there for different periods of time, some of them for centuries. This specific geopolitical position resulted in multiple layers in Serbian cultural identity, which very often diverged from each another. These became evident and particularly problematic in the age of nation-building in Europe—for Serbia, as for so many one-time Ottoman and Habsburg dependencies, the middle of the nineteenth century—when the question whether Serbia belongs culturally to the West or to the East became an important political factor and has remained so ever since. As a result of Austria’s refusal to incorporate Serbia, the nation-building process in Serbia in the second half of the nineteenth century was based on a strong emphasis of the Slavic Orthodox component, although Austrian cultural influences were never excluded. Serbia was on the way to becoming an ethnically homogeneous nation-state with a Slavic Orthodox identity, i.e., an exact opposite both to the Habsburg supranational state, which endeavored to create space for the different ethnic, linguistic, and cultural identities, and to the Ottoman Empire where the concept of the nation (millet) was still based on religion. The formative moments in the construction of Serbian cultural and national identity have been consistently narrated from the perspective of Serbia’s political and cultural interactions with the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. The myth of the Serbian medieval kingdom played out against the

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historical background of the battle of Kosovo, in which the Serbs were defeated by the Ottomans. The process of nation-building in the nineteenth century was thus divided between the influence of Austrian culture, which symbolized the West, the remaining traces of the Ottoman legacy, and the Slavic Orthodox influence from Russia. The following short historical overview offers a closer look into the above-mentioned moments and will likewise demonstrate multiple cultural belonging, disruption, and recurrence as three dominant patterns in Balkan history. The subsequent analysis of three plays by the Serbian playwright from Vojvodina Jovan Sterija Popovi! (1806–1856]); Parvenue (Pokondirena tikva [1838]), Belgrade Once and Now (Beograd nekad i sad [1853]), and his last play The Patriots (Rodoljupci) which premiered in 1905 and was published in 1909, addresses the formative forces in the construction of Serbian national and cultural identity from a critical perspective. Serbian Identity between Conflicting Ottoman, Habsburg, and Slavic Orthodox Influences Serbia’s “modern” history began with a transformation of both dynastic privileges and religious identity. The battle of Kosovo in 1389, in which the last Serbian Tzar, Lazar, was killed by the Ottoman forces, also marked the end of the Serbian medieval empire. From this point on, the Ottomans appropriated ever larger parts from the territory of this South Slavic and Christian Orthodox population, a conquest that reached its peak with the capturing of present-day Serbia’s capital, the city of Belgrade, in 1521 (Jelavich, History of the Balkans 31–34). Approximately a century and a half later, as part of ongoing resistance to Ottoman incursions into Europe, Belgrade was first taken by the Austrians in 1688, in a joint offensive of the Holy League, a military defense alliance composed of Austria, the papacy, Venice, and Poland, as a vindictive response to the second Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. In the counteroffensive of 1690 the Ottoman army drove back the Habsburg forces, and Belgrade fell again under Ottoman rule. Despite the fact that the Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699 was extremely favorable for Austria because it gained considerable territories from the Ottoman Empire, Belgrade and the Serbian territories south of Belgrade remained Ottoman (64–65). In 1716 the Habsburg Monarchy joined Venice in its war against the Ottomans and gained new territories in the Balkans after the triumphant victory of Prince Eugene of Savoy over the Ottoman army. The Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718 put Belgrade and northern Serbia under Habsburg rule once again, but only for a period of twenty years. Austria felt forced to begin another offensive against the Ottomans after Russia’s territorial gains in its war with the Sublime Porte in 1736. As Christian Orthodox Russia was

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becoming a more important factor in European politics, Austria felt ever increasing apprehension about Russia’s influence in the Balkans. Therefore, after the unsuccessful offensive, Austria insisted upon peace with the Ottoman Empire. With the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739, the Habsburg Monarchy had to surrender most of the Balkan territories acquired in the Treaty of Passarowitz, including Belgrade and northern Serbia (68)1. Finally, in 1788 Austria joined Russia in a new conflict with the Porte out of fear that passive politics would strengthen Russia’s position in the Balkans. The Habsburg Military established the so called Freikorps, military units consisting of Orthodox Balkan populations living in the territory of Serbia, to help in this last war against the Ottomans. The outcome of the war was disastrous both for Austria and the Serbian volunteers, and although Austria took Belgrade once again in 1789, it was forced to surrender the occupied lands to the Porte, mostly due to internal and international events (94).2 After this last Austro-Turkish war, the politics of the Habsburg Court focused on maintaining the status quo in the Ottoman Empire as a guaranty against Russian expansion in the Balkans, although Austria did not exclude the possibility of its own expansion against Russia at the cost of Ottoman territories in the Balkans (Tischler 17). The Habsburg-Ottoman clashes in the Balkan territory populated by Serbs had far-reaching historical and cultural consequences for the Serbs. During the fourth Austro-Turkish war, which started in 1688, the Habsburg Emperor Leopold I incited the Serbs and other Orthodox Christian ethnicities from that Balkan region to a general uprising against Ottoman rule (Boarov 5–6). When in 1690 a Turkish counteroffensive drove the Austrians back across the Danube, the Serbian Patriarch "arnojevi! led around thirty thousand Serbian families who feared Turkish revenge from the Ottoman lands into the Austrian territory on the border with the Ottoman Empire (6). This area was part of the Hungarian populated territories within the Habsburg Monarchy, which after the Dual Compromise in 1867 became the Hungarian Crownlands, or Cisleithnia. Leopold I promised the Serbs the right to choose their own vojvoda (a duke), which gave the territory its name, Vojvodina, and the right to have their own magistrates. Ironically, the Serbian military units fell under Habsburg Military Command after 1693, and the Serbs lost the right to vojvoda, but the name has remained until the present day. The question of election of vojvoda was postponed until the revolution of 1848 (10). In 1712 the patriarchate of the Serbian Orthodox Church was established in Karlowitz (Karlovci) and became the national and religious center of the Serbs in the Habsburg Monarchy (Rothenberg 12–13). The Serb settlers faced numerous difficulties in the territory they populated. It had been previously devastated by the Ottoman conquests, and

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the Hungarians did not welcome the significant influx of Slavic Orthodox population. From the very beginning the Serbs found themselves ground between loyalty to the Habsburg Court and pressure from the Hungarian nobility (Boarov 13). However, the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries were the age of Enlightenment and administrative reforms in the Habsburg Monarchy. The living standard of all subjects was improving and questions of national and religious identity were treated in accordance with the principles of the Enlightenment. Maria Theresa, for example, confirmed the Serbian privileges in Vojvodina in 1743 and had two free imperial cities established (20). Her son, Joseph II, issued an Edict of Toleration, which gave greater protection to Christians of Orthodox confession, i.e., to the Serbs, among others (Jelavich, History of the Balkans 159). Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire was becoming more chaotic and was losing the battle with the economically superior Western European states. Sultan Selim III’s (1789–1807) authority over peripheral territories of the Empire declined dramatically, resulting in his attempts to introduce reforms known as the New Order (Tanzimat). The Ottomans’ elite, especially the Islamic hierarchy, refused to adjust its social and military structures to the economic developments in Western Europe because they considered the reforms a threat to Ottoman tradition and identity. Among the most resolute opponents of the New Order were the elite military units of janissaries. The once small efficient army of janissaries had degenerated into a powerful corporation that almost represented a state within a state. They demonstrated their power by exertion of unrestricted force, or simply violence, against the local population. Their fear that the New Order was going to change completely the structure of their organization was fully justified (Glenny 3– 7). The uncontrolled violence of the janissaries against the local population was the immediate cause for the first Serbian uprising of 1804. In the beginning, the local peasantry under the leadership of Black George cooperated with Sultan Selim’s modernizing agents against the janissaries. However, the Ottoman Serbs who fought voluntarily on the Austrian side in the Austro-Turkish wars, considered the idea of becoming a part of the enlightened, well organized and, last but not least, Christian Habsburg Monarchy very compelling. The best proof of this is the correspondence between the leader Black George and the Austrian officials. Black George, a former member of the volunteer Habsburg forces, asked the Austrians in the very beginning of the uprising not only for food and ammunition but also for eventual incorporation of Ottoman Serbia into the Habsburg Monarchy (Ivi!, vol. 1, 23–35). The Habsburg Court had, nonetheless, a different agenda. As previously mentioned, Austria considered the status quo in the Ottoman Empire as the best guaranty for the preservation of the Old Order in Europe

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and against Russian expansion in the Balkans. The up and coming star of Habsburg diplomacy, Metternich, as well as Emperor Francis I managed to retain the neutral, or rather passive, position towards the Serbian pleas throughout the uprising. After the military victories of the Serbs against both the local landlords and the Sultan’s army (the Sultan decided meanwhile to treat the Serbs as rebels against the Empire), the uprising became a war against the Ottoman Empire (Glenny 14). The passive position of Austria encouraged the proRussian faction among the rebels, who after several unsuccessful attempts to induce the Austrians to occupy Belgrade succeeded in their pleas to the Russians, who entered Belgrade in 1811 (Tischler 116). Russia not only had large support among the Serbian Orthodox clergy,3 but also played the role of protector of the Orthodox populations within the Ottoman Empire.4 Even though the Serbian alliance with Russia turned out to be a miscalculation because Russia needed its forces in the war against Napoleon and therefore had to withdraw them from the war with the Ottomans (Glenny 16), its political influence in Serbia remained strong.5 At the same time, Austria’s rejection of incorporating Ottoman Serbia into its supranational structure did not weaken its economic, political, and cultural influence in Serbia. Serbia was granted broad autonomy within the Ottoman Empire in 1830 and gained full independence in 1878. During this period of state building and the establishment of a national administrative system the help of the Habsburg Serbs, who were educated and trained to work in state institutions, was essential. When the autonomy of the Serbian Orthodox Church was reestablished in 1832, the Habsburg Serb Jovanovi!, who was elected the first Metropolitan of Belgrade and all of Serbia, introduced reforms modeled on the Serbian church in the Habsburg lands. The Habsburg Monarchy also remained a long-term center of Serbian cultural life due to Serbia’s inability to provide proper conditions for the printing press. And finally, the civil code which was introduced in Serbia in 1844 and included criminal and administrative law, regulations concerning crafts, government officials, local government, and education, was taken over almost unchanged from Austrian prototypes (Jelavich, The Establishment of the Balkan National States 55–62). The era of emergent Serbian nationalism thus saw a population split in several ways: over religious and political differences and with an infrastructure still in need of rebuilding. It is not surprising, then, that culture was used in the cause of changing hearts and minds. The Role of the Theater in the Construction of National Identity I have chosen three plays from the nineteenth century to illustrate the multifarious, sometimes conflicting and sometimes complementary cultural

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and political ties between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Serbs as a nation being constructed. All three plays were written by Jovan Sterija Popovi! (1806–1856), a Serbian native of Vojvodina. He was educated in Karlowitz, the seat of the Serbian Patriarchate in Vojvodina, in Temesvár (present-day Romania) and in Pest, thus in Habsburg cultural territory. In Pest he was a frequent visitor of a German-language theater with a repertoire consisting both of classical plays and popular plays (Volksstücke) from the Viennese suburb theaters. Upon return to his home territory, he was one of the educated Habsburg Serbs who were invited to help establish state institutions in Serbia proper. He was assigned the position of minister of education, in which capacity he organized secondary education in Serbia proper. He was also one of the founders of the first Belgrade theater, which opened with the premiere of his tragedy The Death of Stephen De!anski in 1841 (Popovi!, Izabrane komedije 335–36).6 I consider Jovan Sterija Popovi! one of the most important intellectuals in the process of constructing the Serbian national identity that I am tracing here, despite his unfamiliarity within Habsburg cultural history. Not only did he address the most important events and factors in the process of Serbian identity construction, but he also offered a constructive critique of Serbian politics and historiography. He did this by writing plays, which through stage performance addressed a broad audience directly and effectively within a very short space of time. These theater performances played an equally important role in the construction of the nation, as the novel would have in other regions of Europe. Before turning to the plays themselves, I want to argue this point, in opposition to many of today’s critics. Benedict Anderson describes the process of nation-building in Europe as a gradual and continuous interaction between print, the capitalist market economy, the subsequent prolific emergence of vernacular languages which replaced Latin, and the mass production of literature written in those languages (37–46). He considers the novel and the newspaper the two most important genres, which “provided the technical means for ‘re-presenting’ the kind of imagined community that is the nation” (25). Timothy Brennan similarly focuses on the impact of the novel and its specific discourse in the process of nation-building. The most important trait of the novel, he believes, is the multitude of languages present at once in this genre, which thus simulates the multifarious linguistic and social structure of the nation. Brennan refers to Bakhtin’s theory of the novel as the genre of the new epoch, which reflects the intensive interaction between the previously isolated various languages and genres (Bhabha 49–50): The world becomes polyglot once and for all. The period of national languages, coexisting but closed and deaf to each other, comes to an end. Languages throw light on each other: one language can, after all, see itself only in the light of another

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language. The naïve and stubborn co-existence of “languages” within a given national language also comes to an end—that is, there is no more peaceful coexistence between territorial dialects, social and professional dialects and jargons, literary language, generic languages within literary language, epochs in language and so forth. (Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination 12)

In addition to linguistic complexity, Bakhtin defines two other interdependent characteristics of the novel which are in my view significant for the nation-building process: the novel’s origin in the comical genres and the novel’s inconclusive present. Unlike the national heroic past, which is the world of the epic, the subject of the comical genres and the novel is contemporary reality. This implies the novel’s presentation of reality without any distance, in a zone of direct contact. The folkloric character of the laughter in which the comical genres originate destroys not only the epic, but also every hierarchical distance, because an object has to be brought close in order to become comical. The plane of comical representation is, therefore, specific both in its spatial as well as in its temporal aspect—the role of memory is minimal because in the comical world tradition is ridiculed in order to be forgotten (22–23). The tense of the novel is the inconclusive present—the novel’s topic is everything that is not yet completed, and the author is present on the level of narration parallel to the world which he is depicting (27–28). Nonetheless, the novel does not exclude the past and the future, but they are represented from the starting point of the author’s own contemporary reality (29–30). The latter perspective enhances the process of nation construction by referring to a certain historical past and molding it for the necessity of the present—a process which Hobsbawm calls “invention of tradition”: ‘Invented tradition’ is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historical present. (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1)

The novelist, because of the novel’s linguistic and social diversity, can depict the repetition of a set of practices from the past and can relate them not only to the present, but also to the future. As Bakhtin states, prediction, along with eternal rethinking and reevaluating, is characteristic of the novel, and the center of activity that ponders and justifies the past is transferred to the future (Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination 31). Hence, the novel creates the nation as an eternity in the past and as a continuum in the future from the starting point of the present. How do the three plays, two comedies and one historical tragicomedy, which will be analyzed in the present study relate to the novelistic process of

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constructing a nation? First and foremost, drama in general constitutes a mass medium, one particularly appropriate for an emerging nation such as the Serbian. Print culture, in addition, may well be less effective in a country with a low literacy rate like Serbia proper in the middle of the nineteenth century. In contrast to comedies and histories, the “pure” dramatic form, also known as absolute, has the following genre characteristics: the characters interact directly in a dialogue; the author, any narrative instance and speech ad spectatores are absent (therefore it is considered to be primary and selfreferential, i.e., a representation of itself as opposed to a secondary depiction of external realities, like for example a historical event), and time in the drama is an absolute sequence of the present, i.e., every moment leads to the immediate future and to the final outcome (this differs from the novelistic inconclusive, open-end present). In addition, this type of drama is neither a very old nor a long lasting genre—it was created in the Renaissance and ended with the end of the French Classicism (Szondi 14–18). Even in this short period it never reached full “purity,” and in drama theory it is considered to be an idealized norm with many deviations (Pfister 103). The absolute drama, which has been placed second to the novel in terms of public impact, may thus have never existed. Nor is its description appropriate to the kind of plays that might actually have furthered a nationbuilding process, because that drama would have appealed principally to an educated upper class. In contrast, genres less “pure” like the comedies Parvenue and Belgrade Once and Now, and Patriots, as a mixed genre formed from the historical play and comedy, may well have had the ability to speak to more than one audience at a time. Those genre affiliations already categorize these plays as “less dramatic,” or rather “more novelistic,” if that is to mean dialogic.7 Following his earlier works on Rabelais, Bakhtin emphasizes more than once that contemporaneity and the “low” present (a life without beginning or end) had always been a subject of representation in what were considered to be lower genres, i.e., genres of laughter (The Dialogic Imagination 20). Similarly, Szondi points out that historical plays have to be categorized as “non-dramatic” because of their reference both to the past and to an external reality (17). The reason why these particular plays are capable of performing the same function in nation-building as the novel lies in the specific role of the theater in society generally, and in the Habsburg Monarchy specifically. Klotz points out the general political implications of the theater as an institution—the theater is political because it functions on behalf of the polis, from within the polis, and is directed towards the polis, addressing and influencing all moving forces in the respective society (Bürgerliches Lachtheater 13)—and closely examines the political influence of the genre he named bürgerliches Lachtheater (literally bourgeois theater of laughter).

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He claims that after the French Revolution the serious theatrical genres failed to reflect the tectonic political changes in the European societies because their traditional dramatic technique and the world view they presented were inadequate for those historical events (15). In other words, ever since the end of the eighteenth century the open drama form, which includes topical history and off-stage reality, has become predominant on the European stage (Klotz, Geschlossene und offene Form im Drama). In addition, the French Revolution promoted the upcoming class of burghers with some access to culture that was represented in the bürgerliches Lachtheater. I argue that the bürgerliches Lachtheater relates to the previous serious theater genres as the novel relates to the epic. As Klotz puts it, it produces a new type of comedy which does not focus primarily on physical anomalies, and which does not necessarily depict disparities that only affect “insignificant people” (people from the lower social classes, as opposed to royalty and aristocracy) who live under insignificant circumstances. The focus of this genre is on the general disparities in the society, and thus it creates space for experiences of general importance (Bürgerliches Lachtheater 16).8 The great advantage of the theater in respect to its influence in society is its collective and direct reception, which resembles the impact of a political campaign. Additionally, the comical genres produce laughter as their response, which is related to society in different ways. Klotz points out that people laugh about things that have previously been declared funny in their society, and thus that laughter is a reaction which is constantly practiced. The comical public performance in front of a contemporary audience assumes conformity with the audience’s historical and societal practices (Bürgerliches Lachtheater 11–12). Moreover, because reception in the theater is collective, it reinforces the societal criteria about what is funny, so that even the “undecided” recipients will have to acknowledge, or indeed follow the collective laughing response and, consequently, internalize the societal criteria of the comical. In other words, it is easier to guide a theater audience to laugh critically at disparities the playwright intends to criticize than it is with any genres whose reception is not collective. At the same time, by mocking disparities the playwright promotes ex negativo values for which he stands and which the audience recognizes as positive. An additional historical fact comes into play. The theater had played a key role as a cultural symbol of the Habsburg Monarchy since the days of the baroque operas and the Jesuit ludi caesarei, both performed at the Imperial Court in Vienna in the seventeenth century. The traveling theater troupes aspired to imitate these spectacular genres as closely as possible in their performances for the masses. This was the beginning of the aesthetic interaction between the Court and the plebs, which had also political

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implications. The Court continued to nourish the “high theater genres,” and the Volkstheater developed its very own aesthetics. The popular genres that developed from the baroque operas blossomed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Theaters were established in the Viennese suburbs of the petite bourgeoisie where numerous subgenres of the bürgerliches Lachtheater developed. These are the genres which reflected the turmoil of the revolutionary years, since this was a theater by the people and for the people. The performances addressed the petite bourgeoisie audience directly and received a corresponding response because the audience and the performers shared a common aesthetic and social horizon. Popovi! experienced this type of performance in the German-speaking theater in Pest. One can trace back the origins of the type of carnival and petite bourgeois comical elements in his plays unmistakably to the genres of the Viennese popular suburb theaters, which radiated their aesthetics throughout the Monarchy. Aesthetically and politically, these genres were initially marginal—in the traditional aesthetics they were considered trivial and “low” and were never performed in the Court Theater.9 The aesthetic marginalization led also to a political and social marginalization of these genres because their influence was restricted to the society’s lower middle class. Vojvodina in the Age of Linguistic Misunderstanding The importance of the theater for the nation-building project I am describing cannot be underestimated. Popovi! was writing for a marginal group in more than one sense. The Serbs from Vojvodina were on the margin of the Habsburg Monarchy, but they were also a marginal, split part of the Serbian nation. They were simultaneously looking in two different directions—both towards Vienna and towards Belgrade. The Serbs from Serbia proper were also living on a margin: they were a border region of the Ottoman oriental, Islamic empire, and were looking both towards Vienna (and later towards Paris), or roughly towards the West, just as they were looking towards Petersburg, the Christian Orthodox East. I will borrow the metaphor of the Roman two-faced God Janus from Bhabha, who uses it when he talks about the ambivalent discourse of the nation (Nation and Narration 3), to illustrate this specific geopolitical and cultural position of the Serbs. The discourse of the emerging nation in Popovi!’s plays is thus Janusfaced, doubly ambivalent. Its first ambivalence is, according to Bhabha, inherent in it and arises from the tension within the discourse between representation of social life and the discipline of social polity, between the private and public spheres, since the national discourse necessarily includes these oppositions. The other ambivalence arises from the aforementioned geopolitical position of the Serbian nation—its belonging, generally

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speaking, both to the Occident and to the Orient. The key motif in Popovi!’s discourse of nation is thus language. Language reemerges as a leitmotif in all three plays, but in Parvenue it is the central theme. Hobsbawm asks whether language should be considered a criterion for a nation and explains that non-literary, vernacular languages are always a complex of local variants or dialects, and that it is difficult to conceive of “a genuinely spoken ‘national language’ evolved on a purely oral basis for a region of any substantial geographical size” (52). He concludes that “a certain popular cultural identification with a language” is thinkable in communities where the language distinguishes the members of a linguistic community from their neighbors (53). Hobsbawm gives only the example of Magyar speakers to illustrate this process and does not name the neighbors from whom they intended to distinguish themselves, to whom the Serbs belonged, among others. However, his language criterion for a national identity applies precisely to the Serbs from Vojvodina, because Vojvodina was (and is still, although to a far lesser degree) a typical area of the supranational Habsburg state with linguistic diversity,10 which exemplifies what Brennan calls a “‘hodgepodge’” and [a] hopeless polyglot entity following the decline of the medieval empires within Europe” (Bhabha, Nation and Narration 50). Popovi! depicts this linguistic diversity in a comical, mocking manner. In Parvenue (Pokondirena tikva [1838]), the theme of inauthentic use of language, which is closely related to the failed attempt to acculturate to European culture, is varied and criticized in a satirical way. The play has a clear-cut, conflict-laden structure composed by two opposing groups of characters. The comical characters, who aspire to acquire a different cultural identity, are depicted as inauthentic and are mocked mercilessly. Popovi! was clearly aware of what Klotz defines as the public function of the theater of laughter, whose well-planned comicality depends on the mutual understanding between the author and the audience stemming from their shared historical and social experiences (Bürgerliches Lachtheater 11). Using this function, Popovi! goes a step further and determines for the audience, and thus for the entire society, the behavioral patterns worthy of derision. As Rizvi! pointedly notes, the comicality in Parvenue consists in an “inversion into inadequacy” (“Priroda, vrste i stupnjevi komi#nog u dramama Jovana Sterije Popovi!a” 541) and is present in the very first line of the main comical character, Fema: “In my house I want to have noblesse” (Popovi!, Izabrane komedije 185). This statement contains, according to Rizvi!, not only an elliptical exposition, but also the comical basis for the plot, the complication, and the first conflict as well as the division of the characters into two opposing groups of nobles and rustics (541). The former

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function as exempla a contrario when their inauthenticity is contrasted with the naturalness of the latter (“Komi#no u Pokondirenoj tikvi”), and their behavioral patterns are caricatured. The main comical character Fema, a middle-aged Serbian woman who attempts to use as many German words as possible (with a dash of French here and there) in order to appear noble and sophisticated, is drawn in a way that leads the audience to laugh at her and not with her. Her attempts are comical because she fails to achieve her goal of sophistication in a plot revolving around the classical comical discrepancy between intent and result: the character’s language skills, which leave a lot to be desired, are contrasted with her aspirations for sophistication. This type of comicality has an enormously strong effect onstage, but it also makes the play almost impossible to translate. Fema’s linguistic incompetence proceeds on four linguistic levels, thus unveiling a careful method which points to the construction of an alternative language system: Morphological and phonetic levels: Distortion and false pronunciation of words of German and French origin: "pancir (Popovi!, Izabrane komedije 185) instead of Spazier (a walk), epiket (186) instead of étiquette (a code of behavior), riftik (187) instead of richtig (correct), miko fo (189) instead of comme il faut (becoming, seemly), and inpretinencija (194) instead of Impertinenz (impertinence). Syntactic level: Words of German origin follow the inflection rules of the Serbian language, creating extraordinary hybrid structures that could function both in Serbian and in German: Here is the tip for you.11 Johann, Johann, come here for a minute and throw the ruffian out. Evo ti trinkgeltA. (196)12 Jokan, Jokan, kummTE pisli her und virfTE gurbijanA hinauz. (187) Hier ist Trinkgeld für dich. Johann, Johann, kommen Sie bissel her und werfen Sie den Grobian hinaus.

The example of the verb unterhalten (to entertain) is especially interesting here because it combines the phonetic and syntactic levels of the parallel language system by creating three different pronunciations through the Serbian inflections added to it: unterONDLUJU (186)—third person plural; unterHONDLUJE (198)—third person singular; unterLONDRUJU (194)— third person plural (Klai! 140). The German words, in addition to their distortion, are pronounced following the Austrian dialect, rather than the standard German language, and the vocabulary is colloquial, not literary. These sentences can only be understood by people who speak and/or understand both languages and therefore address specifically the Serbian population of Vojvodina in the

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early nineteenth century. The syntactic level of Fema’s alternative language system thus reflects the hybrid culture and works against the author’s intention to mock and punish the character, which will happen eventually. Moreover, Fema’s language can be described as a linguistic strategy which demonstrates Bakhtin’s description of the Modern Age as an epoch which marks the end of the “peaceful coexistence between territorial dialects, social and professional dialects and jargons” (The Dialogic Imagination 12) and stands in opposition to the author’s endeavors to defend the boundaries between the different languages by mocking the characters who transgress them. Semantic level: Fema places the already mispronounced words in a wrong context. However, her linguistic mistakes are always based on an analogy to one or more elements of the official languages. When the servant asks Fema whether he should bring the dog and she tells him: “Apport!” (Fetch!), she makes a semantic shift by giving a dog command to the human who should bring the dog. When she adds: “Propopo.” (Popovi!, Izabrane komedije 202) (instead of apropos), she creates a semantic gap because apropos is not logically connected to the previous content, yet it works on the level of phonetic similarity to apport. Finally, when she adds: “Johann, sans tourtour” (the French word tour can mean in this context either a walk or force, i.e., she tells Johann either that he should not take a walk and delay, or that he should not use force when he brings the dog) and repeats the word twice, the servant responds in a nonsensical gibberish which has phonetic similarity to Fema’s words: “Semener rotunder,” thus mocking her strategy for an alternative language system. As we will see later, the servant, together with Fema’s brother, represents the author’s voice in Fema’s poetic punishment. Jauß claims that a comical character can evoke feelings of protest or solidarity in the audience if s/he is drawn so as to challenge an outdated social or repressive norm, and can consequently lead the audience to laugh at the mocked norm, not at the character (259–67). The main comical character in this play, however, embodies a kind of social behavior that is depicted as scandalous according to the moral norms of the respective society, of which the audience is well aware. She conveys an implicit contempt for the Serbian language by using German and French phrases, thus implying her contempt for the entire Serbian culture. She refuses to acknowledge her relationship to her brother, annihilates the memory of her late husband, who had been dead for only six weeks and from whom she inherited a fortune, represents an obstacle to the realization of the innocent love between her daughter and a young man from the country, and tries to have her daughter married off to a man who pretends to be a world citizen, a philosopher, and a poet, but in actuality only wants Fema’s fortune.

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Fema is drawn as an inauthentic character par excellence, one who has committed the unpardonable crime of denouncing her own people. From a dramaturgic perspective she is also an ambiguous and ambivalent character. On the one hand, she is the female version of the comical stock character senex iratus (heavy father figure) who stands in the way of the happiness of the young lovers (Frye 150).13 The function of this character is to defend the old society controlled by established habits, rituals, and arbitrary laws against the new society of the young and rebellious characters. Frye calls the change from the old into the new society “a movement from illusion to reality,” and defines reality as negation of the illusion (147). Popovi! reverses the procedure of the traditional comedy, as defined by Frye, allowing the young lovers and other positive characters to defend the old, traditional society, and the negative comical characters introduce the “reforms” and changes. In this comedy, the old society is authentic and natural, and the new society is an inauthentic and dangerous world of illusion that must be defeated by the victory of the positive characters, i.e., by the happy ending. The victory of the positive characters in the end is sealed by their laughter of “excommunication” (Jauß 249) that confirms the values of the old society and eliminates everyone who does not belong to it. Fema’s excommunication is prepared for by her most outrageous act, which is also the climax of the play—she gives up the idea of having her daughter married off to the impostor-poet and decides to marry him herself. Fema’s brother, Mitar, uses her comical flaws, namely her obsession with the French and German cultures and her desire for a new husband, to mock her. His mockery excommunicates Fema from the group, but it simultaneously provides a possibility for the mocked character to improve. Mitar assures Fema that she can live in Paris three years at his expense if she changes her behavior and begins to act like a common peasant (which she is) again. Fema is at first reluctant: “Ah, even three days without nobility is too long, let alone three years” (Popovi!, Izabrane komedije 237). When Mitar says that every woman of nobility in Paris has two husbands, but the common ones have even three, Fema agrees instantly, and Mitar closes the play with the line: “Oh, those marvelous three husbands! They can do wonders!” (238). The climax and the dénouement in the play reveal the real conflict hidden behind the language comicality and the love story of the young, innocent couple: the patriarchal, rural culture feels threatened by the uncouth attempts of an out-of-control female character who threatens to change it and/or escape from it. Fema’s brother and the servant are both men who identify fully with their Serbian peasant origins and defend the patriarchal Serbian traditions. They oppose Fema not only on the level of the plot, but also more importantly on the level of language. The servant mocks Fema’s failed attempts to speak German and French, and her brother is particularly

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scandalized by Fema’s neglect of her dead husband’s memory, which from his perspective also implies denial of her peasant origin and thus her native culture: Mitar: Oh, go to hell with that fashion of yours! How can you mention fashion when your hands are as rough as a block of wood? You had a wonderful husband and you didn’t take care of him, but kept nagging and biting him until he dropped dead. Fema: Sin sunzer, ser tuzer. Fema: Seper se leper. Mitar: Listen here, if I take the club, you’ll get so much sepr lepr that you will have to pray to God for help. You sow; you’ve become as shameless as a louse. Mitar: O, "avo ti odno i tu modu! Kakva te moda sna!la, nesre#o, kad ti stoje ruke ispucane kao panjevi. […] Dobila si krasnog mu$a, pak ga nisi znala %uvati, nego si ga donde %angrizala i jela dok se nije sdoksao. Fema: […] Sin sunzer, ser tuzer. […] Fema: Seper se leper. […] Mitar: Bre, ako uzmem toljagu, sad #u ti dati sepr lepr, te #e! se krstiti. Krma%o jedna, izbezobrazila si se kao va!ka. (223)

It is significant that Fema defends herself against her brother’s accusations by responding with supposed French and German phrases which do not make any sense—the two characters, then, do not speak to one another, but speak parallel to one another, showing no attempt at communication. The interaction between Fema and her brother shows the reverse side of the communication between languages and cultures—the “Western” culture “mediated” by a character like Fema appears opaque and impermeable to the Serbian peasant, and these two are indeed closed and deaf to one other, in the way languages were before the Modern Age (Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination 12). Fema has mastered the language and the cultural norms of the West only poorly, and her brother is entirely hostile to them. He is, moreover, irritated by his sister’s mindless celebration of what she considers being Western culture and as a consequence asserts the patriarchal norms of his own culture more strongly than ever. The servant Jovan is a pivotal character for the affirmation of the Serbian peasant culture. He is the ethnic soul incarnate, an illiterate peasant who is in harmony with his origins and who therefore objects to Fema’s attempts to “westernize” him by changing his name to Heinz, Johann, or Jean: Fema: First of all, your name will no longer be Jovan. Jovan: Then what will it be? Fema: Heinz. Fema: Heinz. Jovan: Am I a horse? Fema: You fool! The best pedinters14 have that name.

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? Jovan: I am not a pedinter, but a servant, and my father didn’t tell me to become German, but to remain what I have always been. Fema: […] Prvo i prvo: ti se ne#e! vi!e zvati Jovan. Jovan: Nego kako? Fema: Hanc. Jovan: Zar sam ja konj? Fema: Budalo! Najlep!i pedinteri imadu to ime. Jovan: Nisam ja pedinter, nego !egrt, nit’ je meni otac kazivao da se nem%im, nego da ostanem koji sam bio. (194)

The interaction between Jovan and the impostor-poet adds yet another important perspective to the language theme. The poet speaks a language which resembles Old Church Slavonic and uses it in order to make his banal poetry sound profound and mysterious and thus to evoke a feeling of awe among the other characters. At first Jovan thinks the poet is Slovak because he used to work in Slovakia and has some (real) knowledge of the language. He realizes at one and the same moment that the language is not Slovak and that the poet is a charlatan. This is a moment when the authentic simple man from the country shows his superiority over the inauthentic world-citizen (217). The artist’s opposition between the authentic and the inauthentic is founded on some noteworthy historical premises. As already noted, Hobsbawm emphasizes the importance of language as an identity marker for cultural communities in culturally mixed spaces (58) and explains that language creates an “intercommunicating elite” which has the potential to function as a model “for the yet nonexistent larger intercommunicating community of the ‘nation’” (59–60). He explains further that dead, classical languages proved ill-suited to become national languages and gives the example of Vuk Karad$i! and the Serbian language as a success story in the creation of a national language due to Karad$i!’s successful strategy to create the Serbian literary language using the dialects spoken by the Serbian people, rather than Church Slavonic (60). This is indeed the situation represented in the play, with which the audience would have been familiar. However, a historical fact intervenes: the founding father of the idea that the Serbian language should be based on the vernacular dialects rather than on the Slavonic-Serbian language was Dositej Obradovi! (1742–1811), an Enlightenment thinker from Vojvodina. Obradovi!’s idea went back to the political decision of Maria Theresa and Joseph II to introduce Serbian into elementary education in order to prevent the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church on their Serbian subjects (Stokes 148–49). The political decision of the Habsburgs originated in the ideas of the Enlightenment for equality of different peoples and their right to education. Obradovi! later

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became the role model for Vuk Karad$i!, the creator of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet from Serbia proper. So, the play’s impostor-poet is not only a comical character who provokes laughter with his pretentiousness, he also represents a historically documented idea about the aesthetic superiority of Church Slavonic to the vernacular Serbian, to which the author is strongly opposed. This idea is annulled by Jovan, the simple man who speaks in vernacular Serbian, who thus at the same time represents the position that the vernacular Serbian of the simple people should be the basis for the national language. The triumph of the simple man over Fema and the other characters in the group of “nobles” at the end of the play implies the author’s perspective through the mechanism of poetic justice. The audience should take a clear message from the play. The Serbs should hold on to their vernacular language as the identity marker of their culture, because an authentic dialogue between domestic and Western cultures takes more time and efforts than the wannabes are ready to invest. The danger of “Western” culture thus lies in moments when it is misperceived and misinterpreted. The latter can lead to a denial of the domestic culture. And yet, Fema’s alternative language system, which stands for the hybrid culture in Vojvodina in the nineteenth century, leaves room for other interpretations of the character and the play, different from that of the authorial voice. The staging can create the possibility for a distanced position towards the patriarchal culture, which is victorious in the text, and for decoding of roles, which was accomplished in the 1981 production of the play at the National Theater in Zenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. As the critic Kova#evi! explains, the greatest shift of this production consists in the representation of the roles onstage. In this production, Fema is not only a parvenue, but also a woman who wants to follow the prevailing Zeitgeist and to break free from the backwardness of her Vojvodina home. She is presented onstage as a tragic character oppressed by patriarchy. Her counterpart is her brother Mitar, who appears as a vulgar demagogue, a mossback, and a bully manipulating other peoples’ freedom (623). This production captures the inherent potential of the play for identification with the main character based on solidarity, which, according to Jauß, occurs when the purpose is not to mock the norms (or in this case the deviations from them) through the comical character, but rather to recoup the ostracized and repressed elements in order to build new norms (262). If identification with the comical character based on this principle is possible, it raises the question of the possibility of different models for intercultural communication. Although Fema’s language does not exist from a linguistic perspective, it fulfills two important functions: first, it represents Fema’s attitude towards the Western cultures—they appeal to her precisely because

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she does not know them and can therefore view them as a means of escape from her own cultural sphere, which she perceives as narrow and oppressing. Second, her language, in its most radical form, is an analogous answer to her brother’s condemnation of her attempts at acculturation to the Western cultures. Mitar remains deaf and shows no understanding for Fema’s endeavors and wishes; hence he receives an unsympathetic and meaningless reply from her. The intercultural communication between the opposing groups of characters proceeds in a similar manner during the entire play. Furthermore, Fema’s comical behavior points to deeper structural phenomena in inter/cultural communication. Bhabha draws on T. S. Eliot’s essay Notes towards the Definition of Culture, where the latter describes migratory cultural experience as a process in which migrants take with them “only a part of the total culture” and develop on the new soil a culture “bafflingly alike and different from the parent culture […]” (Bhabha, Culture’s In-Between 54). In Bhabha’s view, precisely this “partial” culture, as “the contaminated yet connective tissue between cultures” demonstrates the “impossibility of the culture’s containedness and the boundary between” (54). Migrations unveil the “unhomely, migratory, partial nature” of all cultures that constantly challenge the constructed boundaries of the national culture, “its anointed horizons of territory and traditions” (54). This antagonism between “culture’s partial, even metonymic presence” (54) and the essentialist, static concepts of tradition, nation, and territory becomes even more visible in the play Belgrade Once and Now, where Western European cultural norms, mediated through the Habsburg Monarchy, challenge Serbian tradition on the territory of Serbia proper. In Parvenue, on the other hand, the conflict between Fema and the opposed group of characters illustrates “culture-sympathy and culture-clash” (54) as two diverging processes in the translation of cultures. Fema’s character represents “a social subject constituted through cultural hybridization” who rejects “the overdetermination of communal or group differences” (54) represented by the other characters. Especially Fema’s alternative language system embodies the Bakthinian “hybrid” (O romanu 63), which in Bhabha’s view undermines claims to cultural totalization (Culture’s In-Between 58). Although mercilessly mocked by the author, Fema’s hybrid linguistic structures document the encounter of two styles, two language types, two world views and two systems of values (Bakhtin, O romanu 63), thus creating a space of enunciation that engenders a new speech act (Culture’s In-Between 58), or indeed a new world view. This space of enunciation corresponds also to Bhabha’s concept of the “third space” that has the potential of setting up new political initiatives (The Third Space 211), or a new community that embodies culture’s inherently transgressive character. In Belgrade Once and Now the question of

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communication between domestic and foreign, “contaminating” cultures, is discussed discursively, and cultural transgression is addressed with humor and defeatism.

Modernizing Western Influences Threaten to Change Ottoman Serbia The play Belgrade Once and Now (Beograd nekad i sad [1853]), published fifteen years after Parvenue, is set in the territory of Serbia proper and thus considerably farther away from the Habsburg Monarchy and its westernizing influences than Vojvodina. In it, the interaction between languages is presented as interaction between cultures, not characters, and is carried out in the play’s oppositions between generations and between the country and the city. Nonetheless, these oppositions generate neither a clear-cut conflict structure, nor a dramatic plot in the traditional sense. Rather, the problem of intercultural communication unfolds on the discursive level, in the discussions, or indeed arguments, between a grandmother and a granddaughter about the old and new norms and customs. Belgrade Once and Now, then, exhibits many similarities to the genre of Konversationsstück (conversational play), which Szondi defines as an unsuccessful attempt to save the absolute drama (87). The dialogue, which in the absolute drama is one and the same with the characters’ decision to act (14), is in the conversational play no longer an objectification of the characters’ subjectivity, but a mere conversation which revolves around topics, not decisions (87–90). This procedure not only reveals Popovi! as a very modern playwright (the conversational play is most typical for the turn of the century and the first decades of the twentieth century), it also proves his willingness to present intercultural communication as a complex process which is indeed fraught with tension, rather than as a conflict as in Parvenue. The exposition in this play is the exact opposite of that in Parvenue. The old grandmother Stanija, who lives in the country, comes to visit her grandchildren and her son, who live in the capital of Serbia, Belgrade, and experiences an immense culture shock. The values and reforms, which Fema failed to introduce in Vojvodina, seem to have gained a foothold in Belgrade twenty years later. The first comical situation is created when Stanija makes the sign of the cross in front of her grandson’s portrait because she takes it for a religious icon, and her granddaughter laughs at her while clarifying the misapprehension (Popovi!, Izabrane komedije 316). Thus begins the conversation between the two generations, in which the grandmother is repeatedly astonished at the new norms, and the granddaughter responds with laughter. The comicality of this play is achieved through the discrepancy between the grandmother’s value judgments and Weltanschauung, on the one hand, and the changed reality, on the other. However, here, unlike in Parvenue,

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what is considered to be inadequate is relative, hence comical. In the first situation the grandmother appears as a comical character because she is not acting in accordance with what seem to be the dominant cultural norms of the time. Yet when the servant Vu#ko (a variant of Jovan from Parvenue), who shares the grandmother’s perspective, joins the interaction, their position gains in importance, and their questions about the cultural identity of the Serbs become questions of general relevance. One typical example of this is the seemingly banal conversation about coffee: Stanija (looking at it): What is this? Ljuba: Coffee. Stanija: Coffee? It’s yellow. Ljuba: It has milk in it. Stanija: Whoever drinks coffee with milk?? You drink milk plain. Vu%ko: I always say that. But the master and the mistress … Stanija: I can’t drink this, my child. Give me coffee instead, if you please. Ljuba: Well then, make some black coffee. Ljuba: Make it the Turkish way. Vu%ko: There you are, old mother! Anything good is Turkish, anything bad is German. Stanija (gledi): &ta je ovo? Ljuba: Kafa. Stanija: Kako kafa? 'uta. Ljuba: S mlekom. Stanija: Ko pije kafu s mlekom?? Mleko se pije samo. Vu%ko: I ja ka$em. Ama gospoda … […] Stanija: Ne mogu ti, kjerko. Nego daj mi kafu, ako o#e!. Ljuba: A ti donesi, Vu%ko, crnu kafu. […] Ljuba: A ti skuvaj po turski. […] Vu%ko: Ete majka! &to je dobro, to je turski, a !to ne valja, to je po nema%ki. (318)

The grandmother and the servant object to the Western influence in all segments of culture—dining, clothing (e.g., Stanija is shocked by the European hat her granddaughter is wearing and wonders why people stopped wearing the Turkish fez, 321), and manners of communicating—and consider only the traditional norms as authentic and appropriate, yet when they talk about them they use the designation Turkish. This seemingly contradictory discourse offers a condensed interpretation of the ambivalent cultural position of the Serbian nation. The culture created over centuries of life in the Ottoman Empire comprises the rural Orthodox Christian tradition, the Ottoman patriarchal family structures, and oriental customs in food, conduct, and clothing. These influences have created a hybrid culture that is interpreted as the only authentic culture by the older generation and the rural population, although they remain aware of the “Turkish” influence as

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foreign. Nonetheless, they feel alienated and threatened only by the Western influences, because their acculturation proceeded within the old OttomanByzantine-Serbian cultural paradigm, and the Western cultural paradigm destabilizes their already established cultural identity. These individual cases are representative not only for Serbia, but for the entire border zone between the Balkans and the Habsburg Monarchy, the size of which changes, depending on political decisions and historical events. The interaction between the two cultural paradigms is, roughly speaking, never without visible frictions and is never perceived without anxiety by the affected populations. The in-between position of Serbian culture reveals “the self-alienating limit” of any culture understood as a form of representation (Bhabha, The Third Space 210). When Stanija and Vu%ko explain to Ljuba that Turkish coffee is authentic and good, and Western coffee with milk is inauthentic, they also demonstrate the process of translation within the signifying process of one and the same culture. Here is revealed the moment of “alienation and secondariness in relation to itself” (210) of the culture. Namely, the characters have to bridge the difference between the signifier “Turkish coffee” and the purported “originary, holistic, organic” (210) Serbian cultural identity as the signified. Stanija and Vu%ko mistakenly take the translation between the older signifier and the signified as an organic connection and originary identity, whereas Ljuba accepts the new norm as yet another signifier that needs to be translated, as she indeed does for her grandmother. Stanija’s confusion over the European measurement of time offers yet another perspective on the intercultural frictions: Stanija: What time did the clock strike? Ljuba: Twelve, old mother. Stanija: What do you mean twelve? There are twelve hours until evening? Ljuba: Well, we don’t count in Turkish anymore.15 Stanija: How do you count then? Ljuba: In German. Stanija: In German. Belgrade’s head will roll one day because of the Germans. Stanija: […] Koliko to izbi? Ljuba: Dvanaest, majka. Stanija: Kako dvanaest? Zar do ak!ama da ima dvanaest sati? Ljuba: E, sad se vi!e ne broji po turski. Stanija: Da kako? Ljuba: Po nema%ki. Stanija: Po nema%ki. Nemac #e Beogradu da dojde do glave. (331)

In this passage language and culture are interchangeable. Here, counting in German does not mean using German words, but German, i.e., Western European methods for measuring time. When the characters say “German,”

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they actually mean “Austrian”—both as a language (the German phrases in Parvenue, although disfigured, are recognizably pronounced with an Austrian accent), and as a culture. The above passage also contains an uncanny anticipation of future political events. Belgrade was bombed by the Habsburg Army in World War I and by the German in World War II, and the city was under German occupation during World War II. The grandmother’s resentment at the interference of the foreign culture is representative for the anxiety-laden collective memory of the borderland cultures and peoples who, taught by the past, always expect the worst in the future. While the grandmother condemns the Austrian influence as demonic and destructive of tradition, her grandchildren welcome it as liberating, exciting, and of better quality. The best example of this is the following conversation in which Ljuba explains the concept of the ball to the grandmother: Ljuba: You know what, old mother? I should take you to a ball some time. Stanija: What does “to a ball”mean? Ljuba: Well, men and women gather and dance all night long. Stanija: And girls go there at night? That’s not good, my child. Ljuba: But if you see it, old mother, you will like it. Stanija: What do I have to see? If all girls are like that, then it’s the end of the world. Ljuba: Other girls do even more than this, especially those who have been educated in Pan%evo, Zemun,16 Pest, or in Vienna. It’s stunning how liberated they are. Ljuba: Zna!, !ta je majka. Da te vodim jedanput na bal. Stanija: &ta je to “na bal?” Ljuba: Tako, skupe se i mu!ki i $enski, pak igraju po celu no#. Stanija: I devojke idu no#u? To ne valja, kjerko. […] Ljuba: Ali samo da vidi!, majka, dopa!#e ti se. Stanija: A !to imam da vidim? Ako su sve take, to je kraj sveta. Ljuba: E, druge jo! vi!e rade, osobito one koje su bile u Pan%evu, u Zemunu, u Pe!ti, ili u Be%u na vaspitaniju. Da se %udi!, majka, kako su slobodne. (324)

Popovi! returns here to the traditional structure of comedy, in which the older society is replaced by the younger. Yet, the traditional conflict between generations, presented here discursively as difference of opinion, will not be resolved either in this dialogue or at the end of the play. The norms represented by the grandmother will not be mocked as obsolete, rather the new norms of the granddaughter will be rendered relative in comparison to those of the grandmother. The conversational structure of the play allows for comments on many other societal processes. The literacy rate, which has been increasing under Western influence, is not viewed as necessarily beneficial for society because it too changes society in unexpected ways:

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Ne!a:17 Mother is right. Youth is out of control. They see something in Paris or in Vienna, and hey presto, they want it in Belgrade! Everybody wants to be smarter. They write and write, but have no clue why or what for. Velimir: Of course, what else do you expect? Ne!a: You just go on, keep spending the Swabians’18 paper. Before, when I wanted to sue someone, I would go to the Captain, and if I didn’t like it, to the Master, and that was it. His judgment was final. But now, brother, there are indictments, appeals, lawyers, you write, and write, and write, and there is no money. Ne!a: Pravo ka$e majka. Ova mlade$ uze ma. &to je videlo u Parizu, !to u Be%u, haa u Beograd! Ama svaki ti ‘o#e da je pametniji. Pi!i, pi!i, niti zna! za!to, ni kro!to. Velimir: Da, kako mo$e druga%ije biti? Ne!a: Adje, ajde, tro!ite &vabama artiju. Najpre kad imado koga da tu$im, idem kapetanu, ili ako mi se ne dopada, Gospodaru, pa kraj. Kako ti presudi, tako je. A sad, brate, tu$ba, parnica, apelacija, rekuracija, terancija, advokati, pi!e!, pi!e!, pi!e!, a nema para. (336)

This dialogue between the father and the son refers to the introduction of a civil code in Serbia in 1844, which was taken over almost unchanged from Habsburg prototypes, as well as to Serbia’s dependence on the Habsburg Monarchy regarding the printing press (Jelavich, The Establishment of the Balkan National States 55–62). Popovi!, who held a law degree from the university in Pest, was very likely familiar not only with the Habsburg judicial system, but also with its implementation in Serbia proper. Based on the above dialogue, we can assume that the civil code did not function well in Serbia and that the citizens did not understand the abstract regulations and felt alienated from them. For the father, the legal procedures are a waste of time, and the only ones who profit from them are the “Swabians,” i.e., the Austrians because all legal documents are printed in Vienna. The influence of the theater as an institution on Serbian culture is addressed in a very modern dramatic procedure by two characters who, in so doing, move beyond the fictive play and implicitly address the audience/recipients. Ljuba states explicitly: “A country without a theater is regarded to be far behind all others” (Popovi!, Izabrane komedije 344), and then describes how theater functions: Stanija: Who is a greater fool here, those who pay you for their embarrassment, or you, who go and watch that? Ljuba: Oh, we pay them; they don’t pay us. Stanija: Do you pay a lot? Ljuba: Two quarters each time. Stanija: You will go begging, my daughter, begging, if you give away your money for such foolish things. Ljuba: But there are other things, too. Stanija: Next thing you’ll be telling me is that girls and boys kiss each other.

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The phenomena of spectacle and public performance are entirely inconceivable to the grandmother and violate her moral norms. The performance described presents actual Western manners, which then significantly influence the fictive reality of the play. The grandmother, for example, considers it a scandal that Ljuba can now go out in the streets and show herself to everybody, although she has not yet been promised to anybody (348). The play thus shows how spectacle in the theater taken over from the West changes the customs of the local culture.19 The influence of the Habsburg theater, then, moves the boundaries between the private and the public spheres, and people begin inevitably to imitate manners presented onstage. Those who feel alienated by these manners, like the grandmother, remain spectators and cannot take part in the representative interactions of the new society. The role of the theater in nation-building is presented through Vu#ko’s reception of another type of performance. Vu#ko explains to Stanija that he has seen a play about the wedding between the daughter of Tzar Lazar (the last Serbian emperor, who died at the battle of Kosovo) and the Turkish Sultan: Vu%ko: They played how Lazar’s daughter married the Turkish Emperor. I’ve seen that already. And when that old man died I laughed like crazy. Stanija: How can you laugh when other people die? Vu%ko: Because it’s beautiful. Old mother, you must go and see how beautiful it is. Vu%ko: Igradu kako je k#i kneza Lazara po!la za turska cara. Tu sam ve# bio. E, kad poginu onaj starac, ba! sam se smejao.

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Stanija: Kako bi se smejao, kad drugi gine? Vu%ko: Zato !to je lepo. E, majka, da ide! da vidi! lepo. (343)

The repetition of the Kosovo myth in the theater instructs the Serbian audience to seek its national origins as far back as the medieval past. The dramatic performance creates a kind of religious consciousness about the eternal existence of the Serbian nation, a type of myth to which Anderson refers as simultaneity (24). Simultaneity is a type of consciousness about a nation as something “which has always been and will be fulfilled in the future,” and “it views time as […] a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present” (24). Simultaneity, which is achieved through physical presence onstage and evokes consciousness of the nation’s heritage, corresponds in the process of nation-building to the inconclusive present of the novel, which does not exclude the past or the future, but rather represents them from the starting point of the author’s own contemporary reality (Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination 29–30), who thus molds the historical past for the necessity of the present (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1). Simultaneity thus replaces the novel’s continuum, or rather eternity of the nation. However, Vu#ko’s reaction to the play marks a departure from the serious plot. He describes the performance as “beautiful,” but precisely because this beauty makes him laugh. This contradictory reception can be explained through the aforementioned discrepancy between the serious dramatic genres and the Zeitgeist of the nineteenth century. The tragedy of the royalty and the aristocracy was not an adequate expression of the relevant cultural and geopolitical processes in nineteenth-century Serbia. As already noted, a substantial part of the population was illiterate and consequently untrained in the reception of tragedies. More importantly, a playwright of the nineteenth century like Popovi!—and, as Klotz tells us, he is not alone in this (Bürgerliches Lachtheater 15)—was not able to express the current Zeitgeist in tragedy. The Serbian literary scholar Hristi! offers an illuminating explanation of this phenomenon, which confirms Klotz’s position. In Hristi!’s view, Popovi!’s time was best presented by the conventions of the sentimental comedy, not by those of the Shakespearean or Schillerian tragedy. In the nineteenth century even Serbia’s bloody medieval history could be conveyed onstage only in the form of a naïve, Biedermeier plot. Not only Popovi! but also Schiller lacks great historical vision, according to Hristi! (638).

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Vu#ko’s incommensurate reaction to the murder of Tzar Lazar onstage can therefore be interpreted as the author’s awareness that the Aristotelian conventions for tragedy, which require spectators to accept illusion and assert they feel pity and fear when watching a tragic performance (Aristotle 44), do not have the anticipated effect in the nineteenth century. Like Ljuba in her description of the theater, Vu#ko too makes a comment that goes beyond the performance and the fictional play, thus rendering the distinction between the stage and reality relative. Popovi! thereby demonstrates his knowledge of modern dramaturgy and possibly makes a self-referential comment about his own tragedies, which Hristi! describes as “bad” (638), and which, unlike his comedies, are neither read nor performed today.20 As we will see in the next section, Popovi! chose to represent one of the most far-reaching historical events for the Serbs in Vojvodina, the Revolution of 1848, in a comedy with a tragic tinge. It is critical to note that the play’s conflict remains on the level of discourse, not of plot, leading to discussions, not complications. The grandmother does not intend or try to prevent Ljuba from marrying the man she wants to marry, and there are no conflicting actions among the rest of the characters either. The genre of Konversationsstück was thus chosen to juxtapose two different cultures, Serbian and Austrian, discursively, rather than confrontationally. Within Serbian culture, these discussions reveal the Ottoman layer becoming more visible, as differences develop between the domestic and the foreign, the old and the new. It is also significant that, in addition to the Austrian influence, French culture as a Western role model starts playing a greater role in the conversations.21 Ljuba’s friend states: “Oh, please, every fashion comes from Paris or Vienna, because there you have the best upbringing” (Popovi!, Izabrane komedije 327). The Turkish and Austrian (Western European) influences on Serbian culture and the construction of the Serbian nation discussed in the play confirm Serbia’s Janus-faced geopolitical and cultural position. In other words, they illustrate the permanently postcolonial state of Serbia and the remainder of the Balkans that Petkovi! (5) first assigned to Central Europe. The absence of dramatic conflict leaves the play without a resolution. It ends with the announcement of Ljuba’s wedding, thus fulfilling the comedic convention of a happy ending. The play’s last dialogue is between the old grandmother and her son, who emerges in the play at a very late stage and has a small but significant role, mediating between generations and cultural positions. The grandmother refuses to go to the wedding because she feels alienated by the new customs, and her son comforts her: “What can you do, we just do what everyone else does” (Popovi!, Izabrane komedije 355). When the grandmother expresses her fear that she would embarrass her family because she does not know how to behave in accordance with the new

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customs, her son assures her that there are also many others who refuse to adopt the new manners, unlike the “whippersnappers” (355). This concluding and generalizing statement indicates the author’s skepticism towards the cultural change, which, however, is modified by the grandmother’s statement in the last sentence of the play: Stanija: All right, I will stay until the wedding is over. If I come here again in twenty-eight years, I know that I will not find it [Belgrade] again. Stanija: Ajde, da ostanem dok ne projde svadba. Posle dvadeset i osam godina, ako dojdem, znam da ga ne#u na#i. (355)

The stage direction following the last sentence calls for general laughter, but it must be interpreted only in regard to the preceding statement. Together, the statement and the stage direction illustrate the author’s ambivalent relationship to the influence of the Habsburg and Western European cultures on Serbia, respectively. The laughter at the end is laughter of approval together with a feeling of defeatism towards the foreign influence. The end of the play also demonstrates Popovi!’s awareness of the continuing influence of Western culture, so that the characters who support it are not mocked or excommunicated through laughter, which was still possible in Parvenue. The direction for laughter accompanying the last statement can therefore also be interpreted as an encouragement to the audience to take the inevitable changes with a light heart. Both Parvenue and Belgrade Once and Now focus on the position of the Serbs in Vojvodina and Serbia proper as people between, roughly speaking, two different cultural systems, and unveil the multiple levels in the Serbian cultural identity arising from this position in-between. The following section will examine the beginning of the Serbian nation-building process against the background of the European revolutions of 1848, again observed from the perspective of the Serbs in Vojvodina, their conflicts with the Hungarians, and their political miscalculations. Creating the Nation in the Revolutionary Turmoil of 1848 The ideas of Liberalism and the Serbian nation did not lead to nationalism and violence only in the Balkans; much to the contrary, they first lit the fuse in other parts of Europe. The supranational Habsburg Monarchy became a battlefield for the “awakening” nations that comprised it, and Hungarian nationalism in particular, which intensified during the revolution of 1848, became one of the most typical examples. In Patriots (Rodoljupci) (which premièred almost fifty years after the author’s death, in 1905, and was published five years later, in 1909) the process of nation-building is presented against the background of the conflicts between the Hungarians

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and the Serbs of Vojvodina in the revolutionary year of 1848.22 Again, the author takes the genre of bürgerliches Lachtheater as the most suitable form for presenting the state of mind of those who do not influence political events, but rather must adjust to them. The characters in the play are depicted as they live within the “locality of culture” (Bhabha, Nation and Narration 292), specifically the locality of a Serbian ethnic group in the Habsburg Monarchy in the turbulent year of revolutions and rising nationalisms. This locality, which, as Bhabha points out, is more about temporality, than about historicity, is characterized by more than a century and a half of coexistence between Serbs, Hungarians, and other ethnicities in the southeastern province of the Habsburg Monarchy as well as by multilingualism and a fluid identity. This diversity is suddenly caught up in the process of nation-building, which aspires to assert the historicity and purportedly eternal existence of the nation, as opposed to the extreme localization of ethnic coexistence in the Empire. The characters in Patriots are descendants of the Serbs who emigrated to the Habsburg Monarchy from Ottoman Serbia, which meanwhile has become a de facto independent state. For the Habsburg Serbs the concept of the nation is supposed to fill the void left by the uprooting of their community from its native soil in Serbia proper. By means of comedy the play makes visible the difficult process of turning this loss into “language and metaphor” (Nation and Narration 291). Comedy is the most appropriate genre to depict these processes because it can show all the paradoxes and absurdities, the confusion, and the ambivalent attitudes of the people who partake in them. As Bakhtin explains, comical genres have contemporary reality as their subject, which is portrayed without any distance, in a “zone of direct and even crude contact” (The Dialogic Imagination 23). Such absence of distance eliminates the reverence and pathos typical of the spirit of patriotism and nationalism and creates space for an additional perspective. In this sense, Popovi!’s play parodies the invention of traditions, which through repetition of norms and rhetoric, attempt to imply continuity with a suitable historic past (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1). Parody always implies something considered inauthentic as the object of its mockery. In Patriots, the process of inventing traditions for an emerging nation is practically deconstructed in a postmodern sense—through disillusionment and parody of the discourse of “nationness” (Nation and Narration 292). The play captures the moment in which the nation-space is created and reveals the ambivalence of “the image of cultural authority” which is caught in the act of constructing itself (Nation and Narration 3). Popovi! depicts the ethnic soul in its indecisiveness, changes of attitude, and feeling of alienation towards the abstract construction of nation with sharp satire. The comical characters bear telling names: Smrdi! (stinker),

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Lepr%i! (this name is derived from the verb “to waver” and, though not an explicit qualification of the character, like the previous one, still implies a character who is unsteady, irresolute, and shaken in belief); Mrs. Zeleni!ka (derived from the adjective “green,” the name implies immaturity); and &utilov (the name is derived from the adjective “yellow” and implies an unhealthy complexion or, metaphorically, a feeble and indecisive character). The characters change their minds and national consciousness as circumstances change. This is demonstrated effectively in the first three scenes. The actions and statements of the characters in the third scene contradict those in the previous two scenes. In the first scene, the characters are taken by the Hungarian revolutionary zeal: I. (A street. In the center can be seen the Hungarian flag.) 'utilov, &erbuli#, Smrdi#, Gavrilovi# and a lot of other townspeople 'utilov: Ilyen a szabadsag!23 All: Ilyen! &erbuli#: Long live the fifteenth of May!24 Smrdi#: Vivat! 'utilov: It’s not free to shout “vivat.” […] In freedom there’s only “ilyen.” […] 'utilov: You see? You live in Hungary and you don’t even know Hungarian. When you eat someone’s bread you ought to learn his language. Gavrilovi#: Indeed, sir, I eat my own bread. 'utilov: Arulo, traitor to the fatherland. 'utilov: You can go to the devil! Me, a traitor to the fatherland for saying that I eat bread paid for with my own money! 'utilov: That’s the least they can say of you, that you’re a Conservative. Gavrilovi#: So you want everyone to be a Conservative. 'utilov: What, what? Conservatives, when there’s freedom? Gavrilovi#: I take that to mean those who eat their own bread. (Popovi#, The Patriots 11–12) Pozorje prvo (Na sredi vidi se zastava ma#arska) 'utilov, &erbuli#, Smrdi#, Gavrilovi# i mnogi drugi gra"ani 'utilov: Ilyen a szabadsag! Svi: Ilyen! &erbuli#: Da $ivi petnaesti mart! Smrdi#: Vivat! 'utilov: Nije slobodno vikati “vivat.” […] 'utilov: Vidite, vi u Ma"arskoj $ivite, a ne znate ma"arski. To je sramota. (iji ‘lebac jedete, onoga jezik treba i da nau%ite. Gavrilovi#: Bogme, gospodine, ja jedem svoj ‘lebac. 'utilov: Arulo, izdacija ote%estva. 'utilov: Idite vi s milim bogom! Ja izdajica ote%estva !to ka$em da jedem za svoje novce ‘lebac! 'utilov: Najmanje je ako vam se ka$e da ste konzervativac. Gavrilovi#: To je onda $eleti da svi budu konzervativci.

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? 'utilov: &ta, !ta? U slobodi konzervativci? Gavrilovi#: Ja podrazumevam one koji jedu svoj ‘lebac. (Popovi#, Komedije 241– 42)

The characters uncritically accept the revolutionary language and use the new terminology, which distinguishes between conservatives and liberals, without understanding the differences, and identify with the Hungarian nation. For &utilov, the designation “traitor to the fatherland” is identical to “conservative,” and the fatherland changes in accordance with change in the balance of power, as we will see in the third scene. This was indeed a period in European history when these ideologies were about to gain a foothold, and the political agendas of the opposing groups were not always clear. As Okey puts it, “social and national conundrums overlapped” (The Habsburg Monarchy 132). Also, Liberalism and nationalism indeed went hand in hand for the greater part of the Revolution of 1848, and this was especially true for the Hungarian national movement. Yet in the play this terminology, or indeed labeling, is used to justify the momentary and, as we shall see below, repeated shift of national identity. In the second scene, the characters begin to change their Serbian names into Hungarian ones, put on Hungarian cockades, and continue to praise Liberalism and to accuse Gavrilovi! of being a conservative. In contrast to this, the third scene begins with the zealous cry, “Long live Slavdom!” and has an almost shocking comical effect because of the complete change of identity: Lepr!i#: Long live the Slavs! […] &erbuli#: Ilyen! Lepr!i#: What do you mean “ilyen” in the empire of the Slavs? The Slavic people is the greatest in the world. And there are 80 million Slavs in Europe, so Europe must be Slav too. 'utilov: What does that have to do with us? Lepr!i#: It’s a sin against our nationality—and a sin against nationality is greater than a mortal sin. What do you think a Serb is?—a sparkling drop in the boundless sea of Slavdom. The Slavic nation is the most glorious nation in Europe. Pan-Slavism is an idea that occupies the greatest of minds. (Popovi#, Komedije 244) Lepr!i#: 'ivilo slavjanstvo! &erbuli#: Iljen! Lepr!i#: Kakvo “iljen” u slavjanskom carstvu? Slavjanski je narod najve#i na svetu. U Evropi ima osamdeset miliona Slavjana, i Evropa mora biti slavjanska. 'utilov: &ta se to nas ti%e? Lepr!i#: &ta se ti%e? To je greh protiv narodnosti; a greh protiv narodnosti ve#i je u sada!nje vreme nego smrtni greh. &ta mislite, !ta je Srbin? Bistra kaplja u neizmerimom moru slavjanstva. Slavjanski je narod najslavniji narod u Evropi. Panslavizam je ideja koja zanima najve#e duhove. (Popovi#, The Patriots 16)

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The contradictory actions of the characters, creating an effective comical discrepancy in the play, demonstrate the split, or “double consciousness”25 of the Serbian community in Vojvodina in 1848 as well as the “double structure of the national narrative” (Bhabha, Nation and Narration 297).26 The Vojvodina Serbs are objects of both Hungarian and Serbian “nationalist pedagogies” (297)—historical narratives about the glorious and eternal existence of the nation—and are simultaneously portrayed in their failure to successfully play the role of “subjects of the process of signification” (297), i.e., to perform social practices which will translate as “signs of national culture” (297) of both the Hungarian and Serbian nations. The performative failure is portrayed very effectively in the characters’ interpretation and treatment of national symbols. Lepr%i! vaguely remembers the story about the flags which their ancestors brought with them when they migrated from Ottoman Serbia to the Habsburg Monarchy, but admits regretfully that everything has meanwhile been forgotten (Popovi!, Komedije 249).27 The ardent patriot Mrs. Zeleni!ka then informs the characters and the audience that the Serbian colors are blue, red, and white and that she will change her name from Zeleni!ka (green) into Plavi!ka (blue), because the color green is Hungarian (251). Nonetheless, as political events unfold, rumors spread that the Hungarians were not fully defeated in the battles with the Serbs after all and may begin an inquiry about the burning of the protocols written in Hungarian. When information surfaces that the Hungarian army may arrive in Vojvodina shortly, the characters change their mind about the symbols once again, creating a strong comical effect: &erbuli#: Wouldn’t it be a good idea to put on Hungarian cockades, like Mr. 'utilov? That way we are still Serbs, but when the Hungarians see our cockades, maybe they won’t look into that business with the protocols. Lepr!i#: That’s going a bit too far, but patriotism condones everything. So here’s what we’ll do: we’ll put our Serbian cockades under our coats, because our hearts are Serb, while on the outside we’ll put on these odious Hungarian cockades, as a symbol of how they’ve oppressed us! &erbuli#: Long live Mr. Lepr!i#! He’s one smart boy! Lepr!i#: (pinning on the cockade): Just wait for Du!an’s Empire, then you’ll see. (Popovi#, The Patriots 34–35) &erbuli#: Ne bi li bilo dobro da metnemo ma"arske kokarde, kao gospodin 'utilov? Ta mi smo i tako Srblji; a Ma"ari, kad vide svoje kokarde, mo$e biti da ne#e ni istra$ivati za protokole. Lepr!i#: To ide malo dalje, ali rodoljubije sve dopu!ta. Zato #emo ovako u%initi: ispod ‘aljine da se postave kokarde srpske, jer na!a srca srpski di!u, a spolja metnu#emo mrske kokarde ma"arske, znak kako su nas gnjavili! &erbuli#: 'ivio gospodin Lepr!i#! Zaista pametan de%ko! Lepr!i#: (Pridevaju$u kokardu). (ekajte dok bude Du!anovo carstvo, pa #ete viditi. (Popovi#, Komedije 258)

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The absurd act of putting on double cockades illustrates in a comical way the rift between the nationalist narrative of the past and the performative strategy for the present as two parts of the ambivalent nation-space. The performative strategy fails to produce signs of national culture for the present due to the overlapping of the marginal and minority position of the Serbian community in Habsburg Vojvodina and the challenging historical moment. In a sequence of actions contradicting one another, as well as the rhetoric of nationalist pedagogy, the characters have changed their national identity three times, thus remaining consistent in their contradiction and in their double consciousness. The following excerpt deconstructs in a parodic way the process in which the people become objects of nationalist pedagogy: Lepr!i#: […] Du!an made the stones of Constantinople itself quake. But this wonderful glory of ours fell victim to the frenzied onslaught of the Turks.28 Gavrilovi#: Because of us and our discord. Lepr!i#: The Serbs, who were born for freedom, didn’t want to be slaves, so they decided to cross over into Hungary at the invitation of the Emperor Leopold. Patriarch (arnojevi# brought forty thousand families under the wing of Austria, and the nation received excellent privileges: its own military commander, its own patriarch, its own administration—but now it has nothing. Who’s the cause of this? Tell me, who’s the cause? Gavrilovi#: We don’t know. […]29 Lepr!i#: […]; the Serbs have spilled the most blood for the liberation of Hungary; to be exact, they conquered Srem, the Banat, and Ba%ka, and their privileges clearly state that the Serbs are allowed to keep all the lands they acquire. Consequently, all those lands are ours. Gavrilovi#: What do you mean, ours? Lepr!i#: We’ll set up our own military commander, our own ministers, our own officials and judges, and there’ll be peace. […] Lepr!i#: In Serbian Vojvodina no one but a Serb can be a civil servant, from the president down to the lowliest scribe. […] Gavrilovi#: How will this state be maintained? Lepr!i#: Serbian Vojvodina will have its own finances, its own national coffers, which will be issued to cover all expenses. Gavrilovi#: And how will they be filled? Lepr!i#: That’s the finance minister’s problem, not ours. (17–19) Lepr!i#: […] Od Du!ana drhtale su stene samog Carigrada. No ova lepa slava na!a pala je kao $rtva besomu%ne navale turske. Gavrilovi#: Zbog nas sami’ i na!e nesloge. Lepr!i#: Srbin, koji je ro"en za slobodu ne hte biti robom, zato odlu%i pre#i u Ma"arsku, na poziv cesara Leopolda. (etrdeset hiljada familija povede patrijarh (arnojevi# pod okrilje austrijsko, narod dobije lepe privilegije; imao je svoga vojvodu, svoga patrijarha, svoje magistrate; sad nema ni!ta. Ko je tome uzrok? Govorite, ko je tome uzrok? Gavrilovi#: Mi ne znamo. […]

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Lepr!i#: […]. Srbi su najvi!e krvi prolili za oslobo"enje Ma"arske; upravo, oni su osvojili Srem, Banat i Ba%ku, a u privilegijima jasno stoji da sve zemlje koje Srbi zadobiju, za sebe zadr$e; dakle, ove su na!e. Gavrilovi#: Kako na!e? Lepr!i#: Postavi#emo na!eg vojvodu, na!e ministre, na!e vlasti i sudove, pa mir. […] Lepr!i#: U Vojvodini srpskoj ne sme drugi biti %inovnik nego Srbin, od ministerprezidenta do poslednjeg pisara. […] Gavrilovi#: A kako #e se izdr$avati? Lepr!i#: Vojvodina srpska ima#e svoju finansiju, svoju narodnu kasu, iz nje #e se svi tro!kovi podmiravati. Gavrilovi#: A kako #e se puniti? Lepr!i#: To je briga finans-ministera, a ne na!a. (245–46)

The uncritical reception of mythologized history expressed in language of metaphor, which compensates for the void left after the immigration from the native soil (Bhabha, Nation and Narration 290), leads to a skewed perception of the present reality. Although the Serbs were a minority in Vojvodina in 1848 (see endnote 10), Lepr%i! raves about a Vojvodina governed entirely by a Serbian administration. A past expressed in the language of heroic myth and the unrealistic wishes for the future are fantasies created to disguise, on the one hand, the harsh reality of the military life of the Serbian settlers in the eighteenth century, characterized by poverty, patriarchy, and perils on the European battlefields (Boarov 17), as well as the marginal position of the Serbs in Vojvodina in the present. All the characters are thrown into the nation-building process without their prior consent. In the differences between their acting, or rather reacting to their turbulent history, we can follow the process of interaction between the individual and the discourses of the nation. By remaining consistent with his rational interpretation of current political events and the long-term strategy for nation-building, Gavrilovi!’s character embodies the counterpoise to the short-term strategy of the other characters. His sobering and rational interruptions of Lepr%i! reveal him as an autonomous subject who interprets history critically and attempts to construct the nation based on the principle of “societas (the acknowledgment of moral rules and conventions of conduct)” (Nation and Narration 2) in the present moment, rather than by engaging in social practices which should translate as signs of national culture: Gavrilovi#: […] I hold that the well-being of the nation lies in language and law, in greatness and progress, not in cockades and colors. Those can change tomorrow, just as they were chosen in the first place, and no one will be the worse for it. (Popovi#, The Patriots 36)

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? Gavrilovi#: […] Ja dr$im sre#u narodnu u jeziku i zakonu, u veli%ini i napretku, a ne u kokardama i bojama. Ove, kako su danas izabrani, tako se sutra mogu promeniti, pak niko ne#e osetiti nikakvu !tetu. (Popovi#, Komedije 259)

The last shift of identity shows the characters regretting their previous actions and rhetoric and acquiring an extremely self-critical attitude that verges on self-hatred and renders the previous glorifying and elevated rhetoric of Serbian patriotism null and void: Smrdi#: I don’t know: we boast how we fought the Turks and other peoples, but we always ruin everything afterwards. Nagy: And so it has to be, when you’ve no sense, and everyone’s plotting against himself. &erbuli#: Yes, the Serbs are a crazy people. 'utilov: I don’t know what those border forces had in mind. Hungary is a fatherland to us all, that’s why it’s called Magyarorszag. &erbuli#: That’s right. The Serbs are an unthinking people. 'utilov: The Serbs are a crazy people. Take those magistrates and sheriffs we had; the Serbian ones were always the worst. Nagy: As I know them, the Serbian people are good, but extremely simple;30 they obey their elders and let themselves be led into both good and evil. But your educated people, your would-be intellectuals, small-time merchants and dubious tradesmen, those are people I have never seen the likes of anywhere. They know nothing, but want to know everything, they strut and shout and rejoice when everything revolves around them. When have you ever seen the Serbs put their trust in someone reasonable and honest; no, as soon as someone starts to move up, everybody tries to bring him down. […] Nagy: Everywhere else people write and read books that the populace might be instructed; but with you, it seems, it’s all for show. Your histories contain nothing but who hacked up and beat how many people. As for any mistakes the people might have made, that’s to be avoided; nobody worries much about that. (38–39) Smrdi#: Ja ne znam: mi se hvalimo kako smo tukli Turke i druge narode, pa sve mi propadali. Nagy: I mora tako biti, kad nemate razbora i kad svaki u svojoj glavi radi. &erbuli#: Jest, srpski narod je lud narod. 'utilov: Ja ne znam !ta su ti grani%ari naumili. Nama je svima ote%estvo Ma"arska, zato se i zove Magyarorszag. […] Smrdi#: Tako je. Srpski je narod nepromotren. 'utilov: Srpski je narod lud. &erbuli#: Bre, sprski je narod pokvaren. Uzmite vi fibirove i solgabirove koje smo imali; Srblji su uvek bili najgori. Nagy: Koliko ja srpski narod poznajem, on je dobar, osobito prost; slu!a svoje starije i daje se navesti i nazlo i na dobro; ali va!i u%eni ljudi, va!e nadriknjige, trgov%i#i i gdikoji majstor%i#i, to su takvi ljudi kakve ja nisam video. Ni!ta ne zna, a ‘o#e sve da zna, razme#e se, vi%e i rad je da se svi okre#u po njegovoj glavi. Kad ste vi jo! videli da Srblji poklone poverenje jednom %oveku, koji je ina%e razuman i po!ten, nego kako se ko podigne, svi gledaju da ga uni!te. […]

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Nagy: Svugda se pi!u i %itaju knjige da se narod nau%i. Ovde, mislim, da je to parada. U va!oj istoriji drugo nema nego koliko je ko ljudi posek’o i potuk’o; i gdi je narod pogre!io, %ega treba da se kloni, o tom slabo brinete. (260)

Even though the characters criticize the Serbian myths primarily in order to please the Hungarian Nagy, their well-articulated arguments show that they do possess awareness of the unrealistic mythical dimensions of Serbian history and do not take it literally. Myth here has still not become absolute truth, i.e., internalized nationalist pedagogy, and the characters are not fully irrational nationalists ready to die and kill for the nation. Such ardent nationalists could not be comical characters. Overall, the characters are neither ardent Serbian patriots or nationalists nor Hungarian supporters—they are simultaneously both of these. As such, they, too, epitomize in a comical manner the Janus-faced position of the Serbian people in Vojvodina who have had a national identity permanently in flux. Moreover, the resonance of this play reaches beyond the Serbian nation and history. It portrays the essence of the locality of culture of all Balkan peoples and their typical behavior in an existence characterized by historical disruption, recurrence, and multiple cultural belonging. This type of existence has created a behavioral pattern of alternation between national euphoria and shortsighted opportunism, a Balkan variant of the ambivalent nation-space. As we saw in Nagy’s speech, Popovi! locates the responsibility for this type of behavior in a deficient process of education. Nagy’s critique illustrates an enlightened reading of a mystifying historiography that possesses a distinct potential for misleading people, rather than for compelling them to examine history. He locates the responsibility for such demands with the educated, or at least literate people, who are in charge of narrating the nation. The would-be educated are those who pretend they know Western European ideas—the same way Fema from Parvenue pretended she learned German and French—and spread them among the illiterate as the ultimate truth. The “masses,” i.e., the mostly illiterate and simple people, follow them; they do not lead. This is a very farsighted observation of the Balkan type of nationalism, whose dangerous consequences will be felt more than once in the twentieth century. The fact that both Nagy and Gavrilovi! are very articulate and give general comments which go beyond the respective dramatic situation let us conclude that they represent the author’s perspective. As a Hungarian, Nagy’s view of the Serbian cause is detached and objective and complements Gavrilovi!’s. They belong to different nations, but are brought together by the ideas they share. Gavrilovi! is the author’s strongest instrument for the education of the audience. He responds to the foolish and unethical acts of the “patriots” with the attitude of a teacher who brings children gone astray

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back onto the right path. He has the final word, one which is implicitly addressed ad spectatores: Gavrilovi#: Oh patriots, patriots, I am going tell the world what you’ve done, to see whether anyone can be found who can say that the people can prosper with such as these. (95) Gavrilovi#: O, rodoljupci, rodoljupci, idem pripovedati svetu !ta ste radili, da vidim `o#e li se na#i koji, koji #e re#i da pod ovakovima mo$e narod procvetati. (301)

The answer is, of course, implied by this rhetorical question, and so is the message to the audience—to be wary of following leaders. Popovi! places great emphasis on the educational role of the theater because he is well aware of its strong influence. Its educational role is focused on the principles on which, according to Popovi!, the nation should be constructed. Popovi!’s commitment to the values of the Enlightenment, more specifically to the rule of law and functioning state institutions, is verbalized many times in Patriots. Similarly, his commitment to the Serbian language (both in Parvenue and Patriots) reflects his belief that it is one of the most important identity markers of the nation. He is undoubtedly committed to the Western European thought of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His criticism is again directed not at the Western European influence on Serbian culture, but rather at the “would-be” mediators of these ideas who communicate them to the Serbian people in a distorted way. As an enlightened thinker, Popovi! believes in the power of reason and in individual responsibility. Thus, he criticizes his Balkan compatriots, rather than the imperial powers that created the history of disruption and recurrence in the Balkans. This is a procedure very different from that of the two Bosnian authors Ko#i! and Andri!, as we shall see in the fourth chapter. Popovi!’s criticism of Serbian historiography and of the arbitrariness of national symbols is prophetic and very modern. However, that does not stop him from defending patriarchy (in Parvenue and Belgrade Once and Now) as an authentic Serbian tradition or from criticizing the liberation of women as an invented tradition based on an erroneous perception of Western European culture. Popovi! died in 1856, when the process of nation-building and identity construction in Serbia had just begun. While his work illuminates this process in a humorous mood, in the decades after his death nationalist and radical forces in Serbia proper gradually prevailed over the moderate ones. Serbian nationalist politics aimed at incorporating Balkan territories that were in Habsburg and Ottoman possession. Vojvodina, however, was not a priority of Serbian politics. The focus was on Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Macedonia. Serbia took the latter two from the Ottoman Empire in 1908

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and the Balkans Wars of 1912–1913, respectively. The contest for BosniaHerzegovina from 1878–1914 changed the relations between Serbia and Austria-Hungary and resulted in the assassination of Francis Ferdinand and the outbreak of World War I. Popovi!’s criticism of local, semi-digested perceptions of Western values and customs in Serbia turned out to be prophetic when it came to Serbian nationalism. Serbia was constructing its national identity and building state structures in the interim period 1830–1878, between achieving autonomy within the Ottoman Empire and full independence. This process was not straightforward. For example, opponents of the absolutist reign of Prince Milo% (1815–1839) were not enlightened proponents of a Western type of democracy, but rather power-hungry provincial leaders who struggled to fragment Milo%’s power among themselves. In order to limit the absolute power of the regent, they needed a constitution (Stokes 156). Once the constitution was in force, however, the door was open for a number of politicians and intellectuals who visited Western European countries to introduce at one and the same time the ideals of democracy and nationalism to the young principality (145–46). Territorial expansion and assertions of the centuries-long existence of the nation were typical of both Western European and Serbian nationalisms. But in the Balkans these ideas encountered a mostly rural, to a great degree illiterate population, and state structures that were only in the beginning stages of development. Also, the territorial aspirations of the newly liberated Balkan states ran up against territories in the possession of the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empires.31 Under these circumstances the Serbian radical politician Gara%anin secretly sketched out a plan for the expansion of the Serbian state as early as 1848. Serbia’s aspirations for territory in the Ottoman Empire were justified by historical claims to the lands of Tzar Du%an’s medieval Serbian Empire. These included, among others, Bosnia-Herzegovina, at that time a part of the Ottoman Empire, but after 1878 a territory of the Habsburg Empire (at least de facto, if not de jure). Gara%anin’s claim to Bosnia coincided with his conviction that Serbia needed an outlet to the sea, which Bosnia conveniently provided (Glenny 45–46). The question of where Bosnia-Herzegovina belonged triggered World War I and was one of the most important determining factors behind the decade-long sequence of wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. As we shall see in the next chapter, cultural and national identity as well as imperial interests collided in Bosnia-Herzegovina and sealed its ill fate. The Serbian national state built in the nineteenth century exerted a powerful influence over the Bosnian Serbs and thwarted Austro-Hungarian projects of Bosnian identity construction.

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82 Notes 1

Ingrao offers an instructive interpretation of two significant processes in the aftermath of the Treaty of Passarowitz that, in his view, would have far-reaching consequences for the Habsburg Monarchy two centuries later. The demographic map of northern Serbia and the Hungarian plain was radically changed as a result of the expulsion of the Turks and other Moslems from these territories and the subsequent settlement of Serbs and other Orthodox Christian peoples from the Ottoman territories. In addition, the Habsburg Court encouraged resettlement of this territory by inviting Czech, German, Hungarian, Ruthene, Slovak, and other peoples to immigrate. At the same time, the Habsburg authorities aimed to exert greater control over this border region on Hungarian territory by placing it under the direct jurisdiction of the imperial offices in Vienna, rather than the Hungarian Diet. This enhanced the cultural and administrative consolidation of the non-Hungarian populations, thus leading to “a diversity that would contribute to the kingdom’s dissolution in 1918” (Ingrao, Samard$i#, and Pe!alj 4–5). In Samard$i#’s view the Peace of Passarowitz and the two decades of Habsburg rule in Serbia “have gradually exposed western media, diplomats, [and] observers, […] to the until now under-appreciated reality from the other side of the ‘Limes’” (25) (an expression he uses for the Habsburg-Ottoman border). Samard$i# further points out that the political decisions changed society on both sides of the “Limes,” as he calls it, and asks, whether the “era of Europeanization of the Balkan politics and culture actually start[ed] with the Peace of Passarowitz” (26). In this context he notes that the modernization of Serbian politics and culture under Austrian influence, which is closely examined in this chapter, was accompanied by hostility towards Austria (26). In his conclusion Samard$i# questions both the persistence of the “Limes myth” as well as the mythologized perception of the “deserted, suffocating, depressing, pessimistic buffer zone that, […] found itself operating on the frontiers of two civilizations as the periphery of peripheries and, to protect itself from these civilizations’ basic values, developed defense mechanisms that negated their basic values for generations” (30). Instead, he argues that precisely the Peace of Passarowitz should be viewed as a moment in history that destabilized both the perception of the Ottoman-Habsburg border as an eternal cultural boundary and its mythical interpretations in Europe as well as in the Balkans (30–31). 2 At this time, the French Revolution was shaking the foundations of the Old Order in Europe, and within the Monarchy there were revolts against Joseph II’s reforms in Hungary and the Netherlands (Jelavich, History of the Balkans 138). 3 One of the most ardent proponents for Russian support was the Serbian metropolitan Stratimirovi# from Vojvodina. He suspected rightly that Austria, unlike Russia, would not support Serbia’s independence from the Ottoman Empire (Boarov 51). 4 Russia began its victorious campaign against the Ottomans in the first half of the seventeenth century. After conquests of strategic Ottoman territories Russia also exerted great influence over certain Orthodox populations in their rebellion against the Ottomans, confirming this influence in the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji of 1774. In this treaty the Sublime Porte gave Russia vaguely defined rights over all Ottoman Orthodox populations, which the Court in St. Petersburg used to justify interventions in the affairs of the Ottoman Balkan Christians (Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements 3–4). 5 Article 8 of the Treaty of Bucharest between Russia and the Ottoman Empire placed Serbia under Russian protection and assured that Serbia could expect Russian support in international affairs (Jelavich, The Establishment of the Balkan National States 55). 6 Stephen De%anski was one of the kings of the Serbian medieval kingdom. 7 Szondi uses the adjective “epic” to refer to narrative and novelistic elements in the drama, but since Bakhtin uses the term “epic” to describe an older genre gradually superseded by the

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“novel” in the Early Modern Age, I will use the adjective “novelistic” to refer to drama’s common features with the novel. 8 The most typical examples of this type of comedy in the German-language drama are, according to Klotz, Kotzebue’s Die deutschen Kleinstädter (The German Small Town Dwellers [1803]), Bäuerle’s Die Bürger in Wien (The Burghers in Vienna [1813]), and Nestroy’s Der Talisman (The Talisman [1840]) and Freiheit in Krähwinkel (The Freedom in a Hick Town [1848]) (Bürgerliches Lachtheater 19). 9 I have to emphasize here that the social and aesthetic division between “high” and “low” genres in the Austrian theater tradition has never been absolute. The Viennese genres of the Bürgerliches Lachtheater developed from the original, comprehensive theater genre of the old-Viennese popular comedy (Alt-Wiener Volkskomödie). The latter has its roots in the heroic gallant baroque opera, a high genre that was performed in the Court Theater. 10 In 1848, five million Hungarians, over two two million Romanians, more than a million Germans (or German speakers), and three hundred thousand Serbs as well as substantial Slovak and Ruthenian populations lived in Vojvodina (Milo!evi# 605). 11 All translations from Parvenue and Belgrade Once and Now are mine. 12 The Serbian inflections are marked with capital letters. 13 According to Frye, the female version of the heavy father figure is rather rare in comedy (150). Popovi#, however, has an even more radical female character of this type in his play The Evil Woman (Zla !ena [1838]). 14 The German word Bedienter (servant) is pronounced as in the Austrian dialect and is used in the plural form with the Serbian inflection -i. 15 The old Ottoman way of measuring time uses daylight as the starting point, as opposed to European/Western clocks, which divide the day into two periods called ante and post meridiem, using noon and midnight as starting points. 16 Pan%evo and Zemun are towns in Vojvodina, hence in the Habsburg Monarchy. 17 Ne!a is Stanija’s son, and Velimir is her grandson. 18 The designation Swabians for all German speakers in the Balkans goes back to the Treaty of Passarowitz of 1718 and the subsequent population policy of the Habsburg authorities, who especially favored the Southern Germans from Swabia and invited them to settle in the southeastern provinces of the Monarchy (Ingrao, Samard$i#, and Pe!alj 28). 19 One of the functions of the theater is the representation of social norms. Schwanitz explains that in medieval times the theater became an institution whose role was to represent the ruling class of society, which in those days was the aristocracy. The theater performance was a public display of the prevailing social norms and manners, performed in order to mediate them to the lower classes, which were themselves excluded from the representation (Schwanitz 50– 53). 20 Halliwell explains that Aristotle’s concepts of pity and fear, first mentioned in chapter 6 of his Poetics (50a 25–30), should always be considered in relation to the specific components and patterns of tragic plots laid down in chapter 9, which is to say that “the capacity to elicit pity and fear [is] an objective attribute of the poetic material as handled by the playwright” (Halliwell 171). The tragic plot-structure originates in the pre-Aristotelian notion of a great change of fortune, metabasis, of the Greek heroic myth (171–71), and if the poet mastered the art of writing a well-made tragedy and incorporating metabasis, the audience can be induced to respond with true tragic emotions (169). At the same time Halliwell emphasizes the cognitive status that Aristotle attributes to the emotions: “pity and fear […] are to be regarded not as uncontrollable instincts or forces, but as responses to reality which are possible for a mind in which thought and emotion are integrated and interdependent” (173).

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When observed in the above context, Vu%ko’s comment on his laughter is a complex statement that transgresses the fictional play, implying several things: first, the play was unable to induce feelings of pity and fear because it was not a well-made tragedy; second, the nineteenth-century audience was far too removed from the heroic world of the Serbian medieval myth of the battle of Kosovo; third, the cognitive capacity of the spectators, even when they are from a rural background like Vu%ko, must never be underestimated. Therefore, Vu%ko’s laughter is a rational reaction to the discrepancy between a dramatic plot based on a medieval myth and a changed historical reality. 21 This cultural tendency was motivated by Serbia’s political decision to move closer to France and to distance itself both from Austria and Russia after the Crimean War between Russia and Turkey in 1853 (Jelavich, History of the Balkans 244). 22 Anderson explains that the rise of Hungarian nationalism in the nineteenth century was as a reaction of the Magyar nobility to Joseph II’s attempt to replace Latin with German as the language of state in order to administer the Empire more easily. The Magyar nobility feared they would lose their privileges under a centralized administration comprised of Germanspeaking bureaucrats. Popular Hungarian nationalism, on the other hand, which was originally independent of the aristocratic, was enhanced by increasing literacy, the spread of printMagyar, and the liberal intelligentsia. The popular nationalists, led by the charismatic Lajos Kossuth, even abolished the Magyar Feudal Diet of Noble Counties in 1848 and pursued reforms which required that every Hungarian (i.e., everyone who lived in Transleithania) should speak Magyar. Kossuth’s position was to allow the various non-Magyar minorities the same civil rights as the Magyars, but not the right to proclaim a nation, for which they lacked historicity (102–03). Boarov regards the beginning of the Serbian national movement in Vojvodina as a reaction to the Hungarian requests to the Habsburg Court. In the beginning the Serbs had one main request—to be granted the status of an official nationality within Transleithania. But soon the dynamics of events inspired the Serbs to seek a truly national movement by requesting a Serbian Parliament and autonomy. The Serbs also refused to comply with the Hungarian position, according to which everyone in Transleithania was a member of the one and only political nation of the Hungarians. This disagreement moved Kossuth to an emotional response, which in turn provoked a counter-reaction on the part of the Serbs, who set fire to protocols written in Hungarian and, contrary to the Hungarian order, called Parliament into session. At this historic session in May 1848 a vojvoda of the “Serbian Vojvodina” was elected, for the first time since 1693, but Emperor Ferdinand declared the election illegal. The Hungarians then started a war with the Serbs that lasted for two years. The Serbs won a few battles—most notably the three victories at Sentomas, which the Serbs renamed Srbobran (defender of Serbs)—and lost a few too. With the help of Russia, Austria ultimately defeated the Hungarians, which proved to be the last stage of the revolution of 1848. Vojvodina retained the right to elect a vojvoda and a measure of autonomy. However, this was not the Vojvodina that had been proclaimed at the May session, but a much smaller territory that was also known as “Bach’s Vojvodina” (after the Habsburg foreign minister Alexander Bach). In this Vojvodina the Romanians, and not the Serbs, were the majority, the official language was German, and the second elected vojvoda was the former Austrian consul in Belgrade Meierhoffer (Boarov 53–61). 23 Long live freedom! (Hungarian) The translations from Hungarian are from the English edition. 24 The English edition erroneously translates March as May. On 15 March 1848, 20,000 demonstrators in Budapest marched on the royal castle and won an end to censorship and the

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release of the peasant tribune Mihály Táncsics. This victory established Lajos Kossuth as the leader of the Hungarian movement (Okay, The Habsburg Monarchy 129). 25 Gilroy coins the term “double consciousness” to describe a state of mind torn between two different identities stemming from different cultural legacies. These identities appear to be mutually exclusive only when nationalist or ethnically absolutist discourses orchestrate political relationships (1). 26 The historical documents on the Serbian uprising against the Hungarians in Popovi#’s native town, Vr!ac, show that he was decisively and consistently against hostility to the Hungarians. He was very well informed about the political machinations both in Belgrade and in Vojvodina and was convinced that an uprising against the Hungarians would not be beneficial for the Serbs (Milo!evi# 605). 27 In the days following the March demonstrations a group of Serbs in Vr!ac hoisted the Serbian flag, which was red-white-blue instead of red-blue-white (Milo!evi# 605). 28 The highpoint of the Serbian medieval state was reached under Emperor Stephan Du!an (1331–1335). After his death the Serbian kingdom did not fall to the Turks, as Lepr!i# erroneously claims, but was fragmented among competing nobles, as Gavrilovi# rightly points out (Jelavich, History of the Balkans 19). 29 The right of the Serbs to elect a vojvoda was guaranteed by Leopold I in 1690, but it existed only on paper and was never enacted. In 1693 it was officially abolished. The reason why Gavrilovi# says that they (meaning everyone, not just him) do not know how the privileges disappeared is that the election of the vojvoda became a matter of intrigue and competition between a certain shady figure named )or"e Brankovi# and Patriarch (arnojevi#. They were both trying to concentrate power in their hands until Leopold I put the Serbian Freikorps under direct command of the Habsburg Court and abolished the right to a vojvoda (Boarov 9–10). The Hungarian Diet abolished the agreements for national parity in the election of magistrates and senators, which the Serbs and Catholics reached on the basis of Maria Theresa’s charters in 1790–1791 (20–22). 30 The translation should be: “especially the simple ones.” The author wants to emphasize the difference between the uneducated, but honest and hardworking people, and the supposedly educated class, whom he holds responsible for the wrong political decisions. 31 Peter Sugar gives an excellent analysis of the similarities and differences between Western and Eastern European nationalisms. He traces the origin of nationalism as an idea back to the “closed philosophical systems” of the Enlightenment, “designed to answer all objections in advance” (7). These systems created the ideological justification for the demands of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars from 1776–1815, which transformed the Western European monarchies into nation-states (8). Although nationalism was imported into the East from Western Europe, it underwent significant changes on the way from the one to the other system. In Sugar’s view, nationalism in the West was a mere instrument for the construction of the political nation in the present and was not sentimental about the past, whereas nationalisms in Central and Eastern Europe created, “often out of myths of the past and the dreams of the future, an ideal fatherland, closely linked with the past, devoid of any immediate connection with the present, and expected to become sometime a political reality” (Sugar, Nationality and Society in Habsburg and Ottoman Europe 10). A perfect, comical, illustration of this practice is Lepr!i#’s speech about Tzar Du!an’s empire and a Vojvodina governed entirely by Serbs, which was cited above. The transmitter of Western European nationalism to the East was Germany, where Western ideas were modified and used to produce new interpretations of old beliefs. Germany in the early nineteenth century was not a state in the modern sense of the word, and Germans were both Easterners and Westerners. As Westerners, they were influenced both by the

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Enlightenment and by modern nationalism, and as Easterners they felt the need to adjust the new ideas to the reality of “their quasi feudal economy and political structure” (Sugar 12). Since the Eastern European states were even further away from the modern nation-state, the German variants of the Western ideas were more applicable for them. Yet, “by the time they became operating forces east of Germany they were at least twice removed from their western models” (13).

IV. Bosnia-Herzegovina: Where Orient and Occident Meet Bosnia-Herzegovina represents the most typical case of multiple cultural identities in the part of the Balkans discussed in this study because it was ruled both by the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. First of all, BosniaHerzegovina contains both Byzantine and Ottoman legacies, which, as we have seen, Todorova defined as the cultural paradigm of the Balkans (162). It also claims descent from Catholic tradition as far back as medieval times (Donia and Fine 13–17). In Bosnia-Herzegovina, as elsewhere in the Balkans, though not under identical circumstances, the Habsburg Monarchy comes into play as the region’s third imperial legacy. The cultural change brought about by this empire consisted primarily in introducing the Enlightenment, a money economy, and the ideas of the nation and Liberalism—in other words Western European ideas and developments from the age of industrialization.1 Contrary to the ethnically homogeneous Serbia of the nineteenth century, where a number of politicians and intellectuals felt the strong appeal of the Habsburg Monarchy and attempted unsuccessfully to become a part of this empire and of the “West,” the Habsburg Monarchy came to Ottoman Bosnia uninvited and integrated it into the “West.” This integration was not achieved without difficulties and eventually failed with the outbreak of World War I and the subsequent dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. The above-mentioned imperial legacies make Bosnia-Herzegovina an ideal case study for a discussion of the concepts of post/colonialism and the applicability of postcolonial theory in the Balkans, the present-day implications of the non-European cultural legacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the other European lands of the Ottoman Empire and, in relation to the latter, the question of the European cultural identity/ies. I will therefore first discuss the double imperial imprint on BosniaHerzegovina in the context of colonialism and its impact on the identity formation of the local population. Then I will explore how the play Badger in Court (Jazavac pred sudom [1904]) by the Bosnian Serb writer Petar Ko#i! (1877–1916) illustrates the social and national resistance of the Bosnians Serbs to the Habsburg Monarchy. Finally, I will examine the conflicts among the local cultural identities in the Balkans as well as the relationship between the local population and the two imperial regimes in

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Bosnia-Herzegovina as they are depicted in the novel The Bridge on the Drina (Na Drini %uprija [1945]) by the Yugoslav Nobel prize winner Ivo Andri! (1892–1975). Colonialism and Imperialism in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Balkans Bosnia-Herzegovina’s multiple cultural identities in the Modern Age arise from the two imperial legacies—the Ottoman and the Habsburg. To uncover what this means, I will approach the situation by addressing (1) how these imperial legacies relate to the local ethnicities and cultures in BosniaHerzegovina specifically, and to the Balkans generally; (2) to what extent they coincide with the available local cultural identities, and to what extent they diverge from them; and (3) what the present implications of these imperial legacies are. In order to answer such questions one must also discuss the legacy of colonialism and imperialism in the Balkans. Todorova (17) dismisses any possibility of using the vocabulary of colonialism in reference to the Balkans (with the single exception of the word “semicolonial”) out of fear that anything related to colonialism would automatically classify the Balkans as non-European. In contrast, Donia explicitly names Habsburg rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina “colonial” when he refers to cultural or social differences between the Habsburg rulers and their Bosnian subjects: The modest success of Habsburg authorities in building a secular public educational system turned into something of a Pyrrhic victory. Austro-Hungarian administrators were to share with colonial administrators elsewhere the realization that secular education, far from churning out loyal followers of the regime, incubated resentment of colonialism and spawned revolutionary intellectuals who turned to radical European ideologies for their inspiration. (88)

For Donia it is obviously the mission civilisatrice of Habsburg rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina that qualifies it as a colonial power in the region, education being only one segment of that manifold process of colonial civilization. Petkovi! (5) describes the whole region of Central Europe, which was both historically and culturally shaped by the Habsburg legacy, as “permanently postcolonial” because of the constant presence of an “external power” (5). He thus raises the question whether the postcolonial status of being of this region necessarily implies previous colonial rule, or whether it should be rather understood as a metaphor for a succession of foreign rules which created a fluid political and geographical situation, whose questions of identity we should address through the link of postmodern and postcolonial theories, whilst differentiating them from the overseas Western colonial situations (13–19). Yet Ottoman rule added another cultural dimension to the

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discussion on colonialism in the Balkans, which explains Todorova’s anxiety over the term and requires additional differentiation.2 Clemens Ruthner elaborates on the use of the term “colonialism” specifically in the case of Habsburg rule in ways that are important for the present discussion. First, he points to the view of the German historian Wolfgang Reinhard that the semantic field of the word “colonialism” shifted from the neutral meaning of “migration” to the emotionally charged political meaning of control of one people by another, “culturally different” one (113), and emphasizes that colonialism uses the cultural difference as a strategy of justification for political and socio-economic inequality (Feichtinger and Prutsch 113). He further argues that the Habsburg Monarchy could not be categorized as a colonial power stricto sensu because there was no great cultural difference in existence between the center and the periphery, i.e., the dichotomy center-periphery did not overlap entirely with the dichotomy developed-undeveloped, except in the case of BosniaHerzegovina (114). In his discussion on Habsburg colonialism in BosniaHerzegovina, Ruthner points to Detrez’s elaboration on the question of colonialism in the Balkans. Detrez argues that despite the perception of Ottoman rule by Balkan historians as five centuries “of merciless oppression and exploitation,” and its description as “the Turkish yoke” (1),3 the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans was by fourteenth- and fifteenth-century standards a perfectly legitimate procedure for expansion, and the economic exploitation by the Ottomans was not harsher than that conducted in Western and Central European countries without foreign rule (1). He then suggests, instead, to define as “in some way ‘colonial’” (2) both the economic and political dependence of the Ottoman Empire on the Western European powers from the seventeenth century until its dissolution in the twentieth, as well as the strong Western European influence on the independent Balkan states carved from Ottoman territory in the nineteenth. As for Bosnia-Herzegovina, although the period under Habsburg rule reminds in many respects of overseas colonialism (the most notable being the absence of legitimacy in both the occupation of 1878 and the annexation of 1908), the country was, Detrez claims, never turned into a real colony. In his view the two most important reasons for this are the fact that until 1908 Bosnia-Herzegovina was administered by Austria-Hungary, but remained formally a part of the Ottoman Empire, “which might have refrained the Austro-Hungarian government from taking radical measures,” and the involvement of the Croatian and Serbian populations in Bosnia-Herzegovina in AustroHungarian internal politics (3). In his conclusion, Detrez resorts to Todorova’s term “semicolonial” with the explanation that it best describes the “quasi-colonial” position of the Balkan nation-states, which were drawn

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into “Western Great Powers’ ‘spheres of influence’,” and their “semioriental” and/or “semi-Christian” religious and cultural pattern (3–4). Detrez correctly points to the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, the creation of the Balkan nation-states, and the Habsburg occupation of Bosnia as the most important historical events in the discussion of colonialism in the Balkans and, more importantly, emphasizes more than once how important it is to remember that terminology is dependent both on the Balkan perception of foreign rule as well as on the “Western” perception of the Balkans. Yet his analysis, although consistent and logical, takes complex processes as finished and defined once and for all. My objective in this study, and specifically in this chapter, is to analyze the above-mentioned processes and their implications for the present as well as to undermine the static perceptions that produce rigid terminology. Rather than defining the Ottoman conquest as a legitimate means of expansion for a fourteenth-century empire, on the one hand, or an oppressive yoke, on the other, I will be asking how it determined the cultural pattern of the Balkans from the beginning of the Early Modern Age onwards, what types of identity shifts it caused, how farreaching their impact was, and how it related to Habsburg rule. I will then analyze the interdependent processes of colonial/imperial rule and nationalist discourses of the local populations in Bosnia-Herzegovina typically addressed in literature. The definition of post/colonialism in BosniaHerzegovina and the Balkans must be observed within the complex of the above questions. The case of Bosnia-Herzegovina is unique and yet paradigmatic for the part of the Balkan situation discussed in this study. The Ottoman conquest played a relatively late role in Bosnia’s cultural identity. In the medieval period Bosnia was an independent kingdom populated by Slavic Serbs and Croats (which at the time were religious and cultural, rather than national designations) that went through periods of foreign rule by Hungary or the Byzantine Empire. Parts of the kingdom were Catholic, parts Orthodox Christian, and there was also an independent Bosnian Church in schism with Rome but of Roman Catholic theology (Donia and Fine 14–19). The rulers of Bosnia were either Serbs or Croats, but Bosnia was also at war with both Serbia and Croatia which proves, as Donia and Fine insist, that it was always one entity, separate from the neighboring Croatian and Serbian kingdoms (19–32). Such multiple cultural identifications were common in medieval Europe long before the rise of the nation-states. Bosnia’s identity, however, became even more complex, or rather more complicated, with the Ottoman conquest. When the Ottomans officially conquered Bosnia in 1465, three churches— the Bosnian, the Catholic, and the Orthodox—existed alongside of each other. The Franciscans aspired to gain greater influence and spread

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Catholicism, and the Serbian Orthodox population increased when Serbian refugees came to Bosnia after the Ottoman conquest of Serbia, but the Bosnian Church did not disappear. When the Ottomans began attacking Bosnia, its Christian notables preferred to submit to them rather than to the Hungarians, with whom they had had a long history of warfare, because the Hungarians intended to impose Catholicism on the entire population of Bosnia, while the Ottomans did not threaten to interfere with the threefold religious web of the kingdom (30–34). Sugar (Industrialization of Bosnia-Herzegovina) puts the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia and its impact on the confessional shift in a larger perspective. He reminds us that the Balkans had been a battlefield of Orthodoxy and Catholicism for centuries before the Ottoman arrival due to the schism between the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, as laid out in the first chapter. The balance of power between the two groups was constantly changing, and the followers of the two religions mistreated one another alternately. The Ottomans’ religious tolerance was thus favorable for both groups and stimulated conversion to Islam. An additional circumstance, unique to Bosnia, was the spread of the Bogumilism heresy among the Bosnian population, which was fought both by Orthodoxy and Catholicism. When the Ottomans arrived, the new religion offered sanctuary from the hostile Christian confessions, and the Bogumils were the first to accept Islam, followed, nonetheless, by the members of the other two confessions who did not want to miss the economic advantages of the conversion promised by the Ottomans. Soon the conversions lead to splits in families and to the development of a native Moslem community (14). The first moment of Ottoman conquest, therefore, was in part a compromise, but it is significant in illuminating the in-between position of the Balkan peoples. It shows, namely, that the fate of the small ethnicities in the Balkans had always been to “choose” between one or another ruler in this way. This motif of “choice” recurs in varied form throughout history. The small peoples from the Balkans were repeatedly forced or lured, by weapons, threat, or privileges, to become part of greater state structures, which for centuries became empires on the basis of that choice, and after the disintegration of the empires these people were not viable without the political and economic support of the former empires, or later the European Great Powers. For this reason Serbia sought help simultaneously from the Habsburgs, the French, and the Russians both during the uprising against the Ottomans and afterwards. Petkovi!’s metaphorical expression “permanently postcolonial” proves here to be an apt description of the Balkans. Detrez’s term “quasi-colonial,” on the other hand, which refers specifically to the period of deterioration of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Balkan nation-states as well as to their dependence on the Western European

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states, springs from a much narrower perspective and consequently has a much more limited scope. The Ottoman conquest was a historical disruption for the whole region insofar as it brought Bosnia and the whole Balkan region onto a path that diverged from that of the rest of Europe. Ottoman rule did preserve and continue the region’s Byzantine tradition to a certain extent and did not force religious conversion on the local population. But while the rest of Europe was moving towards greater decentralization of power, a market economy, and an application of Enlightenment principles, Ottoman Turkey kept and reinforced the Byzantine model of centralized power and thus did not begin introducing the above-mentioned Western European elements of social development until the middle of the nineteenth century. In Bosnia, therefore, the Ottoman conquest enriched or complicated, depending on the point of view, the already existing cultural mixture. Complicating the issue was the fact that privileges were endorsed for those who voluntarily converted to Islam. Although this process of conversion was not violent or rapid, considering that Ottoman rule in Bosnia lasted for more than four hundred years, it considerably changed the religious and cultural map of Bosnia. An élite of wealthy Moslem landlords was emerging, while more and more Christians were becoming serfs on Moslem estates.4 The cities acquired a distinctly Moslem character, although Christian churches were still being built (Donia and Fine 35–45). As far as religious assimilation is concerned, Bosnia-Herzegovina is again a paradigm for the whole Balkans. We cannot speak of complete assimilation in either the religious, cultural or linguistic sense, but the conversions to Islam were substantial in Bosnia, unlike in Serbia and Macedonia, for example. Moreover, the converted population identified fully with Ottoman rule and Moslem culture and was thus distinguished from the rest of the population. There were a few other areas in the Balkans with massive conversions to Islam, like Sand$ak Novi Pazar, Albania, and Kosovo. Thus, the confessional structure of the Balkans as a whole is reflected in Bosnia-Herzegovina as one small but distinct part of the larger pattern. The part of the Bosnian population that did not convert could still exercise its Christian Slavic cultural identity with limited freedom. Yet the cities and their economies were clearly dominated by Ottoman culture, and the Christian populations were forced both by economic and cultural factors to live in villages. Until well into the nineteenth century, in addition, there were no secular institutions of education, which means that the population’s education was limited to Moslem religious schools. The practice and reinforcement of Christian culture was thus possible only in the monasteries (Ingrao, “Ten Untaught Lessons” 4) and in the private sphere of a more

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popular culture that nourished the oral genres of epic poems and lyric songs (Glenny 11). The occupation of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary in 1878, the last phase of imperial rule in the Balkans, was a classical exchange of territories between the Great Powers that ignored the local population. Bosnia was given to Austria-Hungary at the Berlin Conference at the expense of the weakening Ottoman Empire, which was not in a position to oppose the decisions of the Western European Great Powers. These were the result of a previously elaborated plan by the then Prime Minister of Hungary, Count Gyula Andrássy, designed both to maintain the Monarchy’s international equilibrium between the weakening Ottoman Empire and the expanding Russia, and to keep the balance between the awakening nationalities within the Monarchy’s boundaries. The plan reflects this precarious position through its two antagonistic principles: to counter Russian influence in the Balkans through the Slavic Orthodox Christian populations and nation-states, and at the same time to avoid any intervention that would increase the number of Slavs in the Monarchy (Sugar, Industrialization of BosniaHerzegovina 21). Andrássy became aware of this contradiction after the Christian revolt against the Ottomans in Herzegovina in 1875 and the subsequent Serbian and Montenegrin declaration of war to Turkey on 1876. The Ottoman victory over Serbia strengthened the Empire’s position in the Balkans, but also made intervention by Russia quite likely, which would have led to the establishment of a great Balkan Slavic state. Andrássy therefore offered Russia Habsburg neutrality in exchange for Russia’s promise not to establish a great Slavic state and for Russian recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a territory which the Monarchy could appropriate at any time. Serbia and Montenegro thereby remained separated and unable to form a greater Slavic state, and Habsburg expansions into the Balkans remained possible (22–23). With the official occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, however, the number of Slavs in the Habsburg Monarchy was increased and the fragile equilibrium between Habsburg nationalities was jeopardized even more. The Habsburg attempt to modernize the newly acquired territory after the Western European model of industrialization and secular education did not proceed straightforwardly, as it provoked the resurgence of variants of nineteenth-century nationalism stemming from the medieval pre-Ottoman, Christian Catholic, and Orthodox identities nourished by neighboring Habsburg Croatia and independent Serbia. Because the Ottoman period had disrupted the historical development of medieval Bosnia, these identities had not developed in an uninterrupted continuum towards more modern versions of nationalism, but simply recurred at critical moments of history such as the age of nation-building, the civil conflicts just before World War I, in World

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War II, and during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.5 The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand was only the conclusion of a first act preceded by a long process of nationalist propaganda from independent Serbia that Bosnia-Herzegovina actually belonged to Serbia.6 During World War II, in a second act, Bosnia-Herzegovina was integrated into the Independent State of Croatia—a fascist satellite of Nazi Germany— and Croatian and Moslem supporters of the regime were united in the persecution and extermination of Roma, Jews, and Serbs, whereas Serbian guerilla units were killing in revenge Moslem population. In the war of 1992–1995, a third act of nationalist violence, Serbian military and paramilitary units attacked Bosnia-Herzegovina and supported Bosnian Serb paramilitary units in their fight against the Bosnian Moslems. Bosnian Moslems and Croats alternated between fighting together against the Serbs and against one another, when Bosnian Croats attempted to carve up Herzegovina to which they claimed historical right. Bosnia-Herzegovina thus presents a particular kind of cultural site for Balkan intellectuals to analyze, as they seek to cope with stresses in their “permanently postcolonial” position at the edge of Europe. I will further examine the questions of colonialism and imperialism in the context of the tensions between Habsburg identity politics for Bosnia-Herzegovina and the local nationalist resistance to it. Bosnia-Herzegovina’s “Uncanny” Geography: The Sense of National Identity Bearing in mind Bosnia-Herzegovina’s cultural complexity, we should ask the following question: To whom does Bosnia-Herzegovina actually belong? It would be easiest to say it belongs to the Bosnians. But who are the Bosnians? And why did the common Bosnian identity, which Donia and Fine claim has existed since medieval times, fail to withstand critical moments in history, most recently in the last decade of the twentieth century?7 Why did, for example, the majority of the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats prefer Serbia and Croatia, respectively, to their native Bosnia-Herzegovina? A new approach, different from the linear historical explanation of Fine and Donia, must be considered in an attempt to answer these questions. The question of identity reveals itself here to have been centrally determined by more than the geopolitics of the region. The disintegration of Yugoslavia and its most atrocious episode in Bosnia-Herzegovina confirm Rogoff’s position supporting the need in such situations for a “suspension of belief in the possibility of either coherent narratives or sign systems that can actually reflect straightforward relations between subjects, places and identities” (6). It is not enough to claim a common identity from medieval times within the borders of today’s Bosnia-

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Herzegovina without considering the consequences of the personal changes of identity that the intervening moments of imperial rule imposed or facilitated for those in the region. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, and generally in the Balkans, the construction of identity always occurred in relation to an external power that provided the framework, but not the details necessary for everyday negotiations among its subjects. As we shall see in Andri!’s novel, the change of official identity was always brought about in tandem with the redefining of power relations, i.e., when feelings of satisfaction for some brought resentment for others. The present-day implication of the cultural disparity between the center and the margins in the Balkans is the continuing existence of culturally different identities next to each other, which in the discourse of nationalism have been repeatedly interpreted as irreconcilable differences or, in Huntington’s view, as an inevitable clash of civilizations. So far the model which can best be applied to Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Balkans and their identity politics seems to be Rogoff’s “necessary constitution of an active form of ‘unbelonging’ against which the anxietyladen work of collectivities and mutualities and shared values and histories and rights can gain some clarity and articulation” (5). Collective anxieties in the Balkans and elsewhere continue to be the source of an aggression which is a defensive and vengeful response to a real or imaginary, mythic threat. The anxieties arise from the sense that “we” do not belong to the same cultural paradigm as “they,” but that “we all” have to live together. “They” can become “you” both in a paradigm of dialogue and a paradigm of conflict. The two, as we know from the traditional form of this drama, are never separated from one other, because the traditional dramatic dialogue of ethnic nationalisms reflects on the micro-plane of culture the dramatic conflict played out on the macro-plane of geopolitics. The cultural paradigm for the Balkans is thus a state of constant tension. The twentieth-century wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the former Yugoslavia also showed both that “traditional geography [is] a sign system in crisis” (8) and that identity construction in the region remains an extremely precarious and unpredictable process. The Ottoman Empire reorganized medieval Bosnia into districts (the so-called sand&aks) in order to govern it with greater efficiency and benefit for the Empire (Donia and Fine 49). That was an imperial modus operandi par excellence because, as Rogoff points out, space gains a different quality when it becomes part of an empire, which demonstrates its ability to master the space by making it known and governable (22). The Ottoman Empire thus provided the first comprehensive framework for Bosnia in what is known as the Modern Age in the European history of ideas. But the Ottoman Empire was not a part of the European history of ideas and therefore could not provide a paradigm for identity construction that would function as the available Western European ones

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did.8 European national identities were born on the wings of the art of printing and on the rapid growth of literacy and, as a result, were documented alongside and through a proliferation of literature and print media. In other words, a discursive construction of national identity was missing in the Ottoman Empire. The function of the word, not just language disparity, has often been neglected in theoretical discussions of identity politics in postcolonial studies. Yet discourse, as an agent in identity construction, is the focus of a branch of linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). When analyzing discursive identity construction, CDA focuses on language in its many varieties but also mentions visual sign systems as formative forces in this process: Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) starts from the perception of discourse (language, but also other forms of semiosis, such as visual images) as an element of social practices, which constitutes other elements as well as being shaped by them. (Wodak vii)

Further along in the study the authors define the nation as a “product of discourse” (22) and quote Stuart Hall’s position on nations as systems of “‘cultural representations’ through which an imagined community is interpreted” (22). Hall also describes the nation as “a symbolic community” (22) whose national culture is a discourse rather than any sort of essence. That discourse produces meanings about the nation with which the community can identify and perceive itself as a nation. Hall finds the meanings of the nation in its stories, thus in language in the narrow sense of the word (23). Such verbal identities are critical for the ethnicities in Bosnia, whose purported history is often preserved in forms closer to myth. National identity can of course also be produced through other forms of language or cultural production. The best example of this for the region in question is the Habsburg policy of identity construction in BosniaHerzegovina, which focused on the architecture of Sarajevo as an instrument in constructing the nation and used media and history to accompany this process with narrative methods. Benjamin von Kállay (1839–1903), who was the Habsburg governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1882 until 1903, considered the Roman Empire a role model for successful imperial rule in distant provinces. He thus intended to copy this rule through application of the uniform legal code, the allegiance of the population to the person of the emperor, and the construction of a system of roads physically uniting the provinces with the center. He also believed that the Habsburg civilizing mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina must be accompanied by promotion of Bosnian cultural awareness. The Habsburg Empire thus felt a dire need to construct a single, new Bosnian identity in order to combat the nationalisms

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from Croatia and Serbia with territorial aspirations towards BosniaHerzegovina. As a consequence, the dominant forms of local patriotism were constructed discursively as bo"nja"tvo and were identified as multiconfessional Bosnian nationalism (Donia 62–63). As Aida Lipa points out, the greatest change during Habsburg rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina occurred in urban planning, not in the imposition of new terminology (1). On the one hand, the oriental architecture of Sarajevo was replaced by structures in the neo-Renaissance style, for which the principal inspiration came directly from Vienna’s Ringstraße, and an attempt was made to achieve symmetry between the secular objects of public administration and those of religious worship as well as parity between Moslem and Christian objects of worship (Donia 68–69). On the other hand, a so-called pseudo-Moorish style in architecture was introduced, both to appease the Moslems and to create an Orient as it was imagined by the West, distinct from other forms from the Eastern empires. Lipa explains that this style was used with the aim of fostering a national identity through invented architectural styles, which had no religious, only territorial connotations, but whose aim was to differentiate it from the styles of Serbia and Croatia. Such a style in fact represented a conglomerate of different styles in Islam, especially those from Africa and Spain, as these were mostly known to Europe, but did not reflect a genuine Bosnian architecture. (1–2)

Donia proposes the term “neo-oriental” as a variant of “romantic historicism deriving its inspiration from Islamic architectural motifs” (70). The institution which united the discursive identity construction and the civilizing mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina was the Landesmuseum (State Museum). It was designed to be an educational institution which would promote Bosnian cultural identity through scholarly journals and print media as well as through exhibitions of folk costumes and support of artistic productions (Lipa 2–3). Parallel to the construction of the Bosnian national and cultural identity the Monarchy was also updating its own comprehensive multicultural identity. The ethnographic section of the Landesmuseum participated in the Jubilee Exhibition in Vienna in 1898 with a pavilion “made in a picturesque oriental style by a young, gifted Viennese architect” (Lipa 3) and thus offered the center a possibility of imagining the new marginal province. The imagination was carefully guided by Kállay, who insisted primarily on the aesthetic effect of the exhibition, ordering, for example, that the carpets from Bosnia-Herzegovina be made with Persian patterns designed in Vienna “in order to purify the taste of the natives and to adjust it to the needs of [contemporary taste]” (3). Through such acts, foreign cultures acquired an odd kind of indigenous power within the Habsburg sphere.

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Diana Reynolds analyzes the colonial character of Habsburg rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina on the basis of the Foucauldian concept of “Exhibitionary Complex.” The “Exhibitionary Complex” is a method of soft power on the part of the modern state designed to exert influence over the population through a network of museums, new scholarly disciplines like ethnology and art history, as well as through art exhibitions (Feichtinger and Prutsch 244). The three institutions which comprised the “Exhibitionary Complex” in Bosnia-Herzegovina and were under the direct control of Kállay were the aforementioned Landesmuseum, then the Fachhochschule für Kunstgewerbe (Technical College of Arts and Crafts) and the Büro zur Wiederentdeckung und Entwicklung des bosnisch-herzegowischen Kunstgewerbes (Office for Rediscovery and Development of BosnianHerzegovinian Arts and Crafts) (247–48). Reynolds claims that the reform of arts and crafts undertaken by the Habsburg administration had the intended function of both educating and assimilating and that the museum exerted political influence apart from its educational role (246). The complementary process to the cultural assimilation of Bosnia-Herzegovina into the Habsburg Monarchy was the presentation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Vienna as “the favorite child of the Monarchy” (250). Apart from the presentations at exhibitions, Bosnia-Herzegovina also received its own volume in the impressive multi-volume ethnographic work Die Österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild (Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Word and Image), better known as the Kronprinzwerk (Crown Prince Work) after its founder, Crown Prince Rudolf.9 Moreover, in 1893 a ballet was performed in the Hofoper (Imperial Opera House) in Vienna under the title Eine Hochzeit in Bosnien (Bosnian Wedding). The plot was set in a village in BosniaHerzegovina, and all three confessions and cultures were depicted in harmonious coexistence there (243). The political reality in Bosnia-Herzegovina was, of course, very different from that staged in the ballet. At the moment of Habsburg occupation, the Orthodox Christian community, with 43 percent of the population, was the largest and best organized in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It identified with Serbia and Montenegro and opposed the occupying Catholic power. The Catholic community amounted to only 18 percent, yet it was very vibrant thanks to the work of the Franciscans, who were replaced by the Habsburg authorities for ecclesiastical and political reasons, thus alienating the Bosnian Croats from the new masters (Sugar, Industrialization of Bosnia-Herzegovina 16– 17). Sugar explains that the Habsburg authorities worked on the assumption that they could count on the support of the Catholic element, but never on that of the Orthodox. Therefore they felt that no concessions were needed to acquire the support of the Catholics and that no concessions could gain the sympathy of the Orthodox. The most logical decision was to secure the

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support of the second largest, and economically and politically most powerful community—that of the Bosnian Moslems, the landowning element. Since agrarian reform, i.e., more equal distribution of land among the communities, coupled with the abolishment of the Ottoman feudal structure, would have alienated this community, no changes were made in this respect (33). The absence of agrarian reform and the failed attempts to construct one Bosnian political nation, which will be discussed in the following section, would prove fatal not only to Habsburg rule in BosniaHerzegovina, but also to the Monarchy itself. The Conflict between Habsburg Supranational and Local National Identity Politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina When the Habsburg Monarchy occupied Bosnia, it faced armed resistance initiated primarily by Moslem guerilla units, which were sporadically joined by Serbs, especially in eastern Herzegovina (Donia and Fine 94). In the wake of the Berlin Conference of 1878, where the Habsburg occupation of Bosnia was to be declared, Bosnian Moslems set up a provisional government that opposed the occupation. Serbs also took part in this government (Batakovi! 61). However, after the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina the Moslems felt less and less alienated and threatened by Austria-Hungary because, as we have seen, Habsburg rule privileged them for political reasons. As noted above, a common Bosnian identity called bo"naj"vo was designed to unite all three confessions under the umbrella of a distinct Bosnian cultural awareness. This construction was, to be sure, based on a unique Bosnian identity originating in medieval times—the Ottoman, Serbian Orthodox, and Croatian Catholic, cultural legacies—and it was secured in another way by the introduction of the Bosnian Latin variant of the Cyrillic script—the bosan!ica (Donia 73; 89). The local variants of Serbian and Croatian were to be unified in the new official language— Bosnian, or die Landessprache (zemaljski jezik).10 The Ottoman cultural legacy consisted not only in the Islamic cultural identity, but also in the millet system, which equated religious affiliation with national affiliation and which the Habsburg authorities retained for three reasons: they were used to handling minorities along ethnic and linguistic lines; through its retention several political issues could be avoided; and the population in Bosnia was used to living in communities divided along ethnic and linguistic lines (Sugar, Industrialization of Bosnia-Herzegovina 36). Yet the Habsburg Monarchy undertook a difficult mission in the construction of a nation based on feudal Ottoman structures and elements of modern political identity. Although the national designations “Serbs” and “Croats” were avoided, and the old millet terms “Orthodox,” “Catholic,” and “Moslems” were used, both the Serbs and the Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina

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were at the time of the construction of the Bosnian supranational identity far too influenced by propaganda from neighboring Croatia and Serbia, where the process of nation-building through secular education had already gone far enough to appeal to the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina more than the multinational Habsburg state did, and thus could not accept what seemed as deprivation of their national identity. As Lipa11 points out, the Serbs and the Croats equated everything Bosnian with Austria-Hungary. Nonetheless, the Habsburg policy in Bosnia-Herzegovina is the first example of an attempt to construct a discursive identity in a multicultural state in the Balkans, and it was based on one version of the history and the identities of the people who inhabited the land at the moment in which the identity was constructed, not on more sectarian versions of the inherited historical legacies of the soil. Unfortunately this example of cultural politics from the late nineteenth century anticipated the ill fate of the future attempts at identity construction on the same basis. Serbian nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina can be enlightening with regard to the pattern of identity deconstruction that has actively worked against cultural integration. The Serbian historian Batakovi!, for example, depicts Governor Kállay’s efforts to consolidate Bosnian identity as a systematic suppression and violation of Serbian identity in BosniaHerzegovina, not as an even marginally viable experiment in cultural identity politics. He emphasizes the fact that “the modern-day Muslims [in BosniaHerzegovina] were descendants of the islamized Serbs or Croats” (65), thus implying that their confession should not have been included in the construction of their national identity. Batakovi! further interprets the presence of Habsburg administrators in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a deliberate policy to assimilate Serbian identity into a Habsburg identity, and views the introduction of the Bosnian script, a Latin alphabet, as a suppression of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (66–67). These are only a few examples of the fear of Habsburg rule that some Serb intellectuals feel even today. The Habsburg occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina occurred at a time when the nation-building processes were well underway not only in Europe but also in the Balkans, and the ethnicities were choosing the narrower and seemingly more authentic identity of the nation over the broader and seemingly less authentic supranational identity of the Habsburg Monarchy. The appeal of the national paradigm based on ethnic and/or linguistic affiliation, which unfortunately has remained the most powerful cohesive force of the nation both in Europe and the Balkans, collided with the Ottoman concept of the nation as a religious affiliation (millet) which the Habsburg authorities retained and combined with the discursive construction of the supranational Bosnian identity. This identity politics was in some way a typical Habsburg paradox because it attempted to combine feudal and, in

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this case, also non-European concepts with progressive strategies for discursive construction of a political nation in the age of ethnic nationalism. It is also the most specific element of Habsburg colonial rule in BosniaHerzegovina that distinguishes it from the administrative and ethnic references of the overseas empires (Arens “Central Europe and the Nationalist Paradigm” 2–3). To be sure, combination of centuries-old social and political resentments of the Orthodox and Catholic communities towards the Moslem community, especially towards Habsburg privileges given the Moslem landowning class, almost inevitably ended in a violent resistance against the foreign power, which was often unjustly interpreted as exclusively oppressive and onesided. Neither the nation concept of the Ottoman millet system nor the Bosnian supranational identity construction disappeared with the dissolution of the Monarchy. They recurred in the former Yugoslavia, falling victim to the violent attacks of the national paradigms in the last decade of the twentieth century. Habsburg Resonances in the Former Yugoslavia and Present Day Bosnia-Herzegovina The Habsburg experience in Bosnia-Herzegovina recurred in similar ways in the former Yugoslavia as well. Nowhere was the idea of a common Yugoslav identity nourished with more intensity than in Bosnia-Herzegovina, because it was inextricable from the idea of one Bosnian identity. The portrait of Marshal Tito, iconic for the former Yugoslav identity, was even more omnipresent in Bosnia-Herzegovina during his communist regime than in the rest of Yugoslavia, and the narrative of the heroic Partisan struggle in Bosnia-Herzegovina against the Germans in five offensives, out of a total of seven executed on the soil of the former Yugoslavia, was recycled in films, songs, and other forms of performance. Thus the strategies for identity construction in the former Yugoslavia focused strongly on the myth of Bosnia-Herzegovina as the most unified republic, forged in the war against Nazi Germany, and as a role model for the Yugoslav ideology of brotherhood and unity among the different peoples. The reality was that while promoting the myth in public, Marshal Tito had to juggle various ethnic nationalisms in both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Yugoslavia. The category of “Ethnic Moslem” was first introduced in 1961 in order to give an equal chance to the meanwhile largest population in Bosnia-Herzegovina to declare its nationality and thus build a national consciousness. In the census of 1971, Bosnians could identify themselves as Bosnian Moslems with regard to their nationality (Donia and Fine 178). While this did justice to the Ottoman identity enhanced during Habsburg rule, it is in Europe a unique case of national identity based on religion and

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shows how difficult it was to translate the Ottoman millet concept into the European concept of nation. The Moslem national identity has been contested by Serb and Croatian nationalists and has also been instrumentalized by Moslem nationalists before, during, and after the fratricidal wars in the 1990s. Political reality in Bosnia-Herzegovina today still does not reflect the existence of a common identity. After the three years of war BosniaHerzegovina ended up divided into two political entities—the Bosniac-Croat Federation and the Bosnian-Serb Republic—representing three constitutive national ethnic-religious groups—Moslems (Bosniacs), Croats, and Serbs. It is clear from a historical distance that Bosnia-Herzegovina was imaginable as an integral entity only within a larger framework of an empire or within a multinational state like Yugoslavia, where the republics of the Serbs and Croats provided better possibilities for the national identity of the Bosnian Serbs and Croats without threatening the historical borders of BosniaHerzegovina. Is Bosnia-Herzegovina’s survival possible today without a center defined from the outside that would guide and control the interests of these competing groups within the whole? A complementary question is whether the traces of the constructed identity, both from the days of the Habsburg Monarchy and from Tito’s Yugoslavia, have actually disappeared completely. An identity is first constructed, but then it “becomes” natural and continues to exist even in a state which does not offer shelter for it. The current state of Bosnia-Herzegovina does not offer a future solution. In 2013 Bosnia-Herzegovina still illustrates perfectly Rogoff’s postmodern position of “an uncanny geography,” which goes back to Freud’s concept of uncanny (unheimlich, that which is not at home). The uncanny is a frightening experience, which, however, leads back to what is known (Rogoff 7). The horrific war in Bosnia-Herzegovina brought everyone who was involved directly or as a spectator back to the old known histories of foreign rule and of inherited anxieties and atrocities, all of which made individuals feel not at home. Even as a nation, Bosnia-Herzegovina is not at home after the disintegration of the supranational structures which protected it, and it is not at home in the process of establishing nation-states and reducing the national identity to one nation and one religion. The survival of the common identity first constructed in the Habsburg Monarchy and nourished in the former Yugoslavia proved, paradoxically, to be of little use in the preservation of the Bosnian state after the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Those who believed in the common identity were the greatest victims—if they survived the war, they had to witness the violent deconstruction of this common identity. This brief study of the theoretical discussion about Bosnia-Herzegovina and its national and cultural identities suggests that a new cultural paradigm

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is needed for the whole Balkans. Even after the repeated massive ethnic cleansing of the late twentieth century, there are still multiethnic territories with high tensions between the ethnicities (nations) that live next to one other. The new paradigm must emphasize not a nationalism that never suited the region, but rather a cultural multi-belonging characterizing the identity structures of the whole Balkan region and of every Balkan nation/ethnicity, and that paradigm must be applied to every political entity in light of its own history. Now that the center is missing (an imperial reference point), each entity reflects the structure of the former empires and multinational states in its own way. The most difficult task for the formerly colonized is to take responsibility for the new situation, which allows them to govern themselves and to construct their identity independently. This is indeed a postcolonial situation with similarities to the former colonies of the overseas empires, and postcolonial theory proves here to be the adequate method of addressing the issues of identity. Rogoff advocates articulation of “specific intellectual and cultural discourses which reflect those states that Homi Bhabha says are characterized by ‘in-betweenness,’ and Edward Said describes as never being of ‘anything,’ or to which Paul Gilroy (following Du Bois) attributes ‘double consciousness’” (Rogoff 7). These three terms are not interchangeable or synonymous. Said’s “never being of anything” corresponds to the “imputed ambiguity” which Todorova attributes to balkanism as a discourse (17). Todorova emphasizes Mary Douglas’s proposition that, in practice, ambiguity and anomaly should not be differentiated from one another (17). Said’s and Todorova’s concepts, in fact, imply exclusion. Bhabha’s “in-betweenness” and Gilroy’s “double consciousness,” on the other hand, are concepts of ambiguity treated not as an anomaly, but simply as a state of being. They correspond to my preferred term of cultural multi-belonging, which underscores the positive, comprehensive identity politics that the region requires. As previously mentioned in this study, Gilroy coins the term “double consciousness” to describe a state of mind torn between two different identities stemming from different cultural legacies. These identities appear to be mutually exclusive only when nationalist or ethnically absolutist discourses orchestrate political relationships (1). He proposes, instead, occupying the space between these, seemingly, mutually exclusive identities as a “provocative and even oppositional act of political insubordination” (1), and replacing the idea of cultural nationalism and overintegrated concepts of culture based on “immutable ethnic differences” with the concept of hybridity (2). Overcoming the nationalistic perspectives arises primarily from the necessity to reevaluate the significance of the modern nation-state and to undermine the relationship between nationality and ethnicity that “too currently has a special force in Europe, but it is also reflected directly in the

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post-colonial histories […]” (7). The nation-state, as a concept of Western modernity, inevitably collides with the Balkans’ postmodern geography and cultural hybridity. The bloody lesson of Bosnia-Herzegovina, however, must be learned simultaneously in the Balkans and in Europe. If the Balkans are going to be treated as part of Europe, the cultural paradigm of Europe will have to be extended, too. In addition to the constitutive traditions inherited from the Romanesque and Gothic periods, the Renaissance and Reformation, a comprehensive European identity for the new age will have to acknowledge the Byzantine tradition and the influence of the Ottoman legacy in the culturally hybrid Balkan region. Only then will the Balkans be treated not only as a geographical, but also as a cultural part of Europe, or to paraphrase Mazower, the Balkans will be both in Europe and of it (Mazower xxxiv). The inclusion of the Ottoman legacy in the European cultural model will negate Huntington’s false assumption that interethnic conflicts are only the first stage in the inevitable clash of civilizations. This assumption is extremely susceptible to political abuse, particularly for the Balkans, which looked to both the oriental and occidental imperia as its historical determinants. The new cultural paradigm for the Balkans must deconstruct the traditional concept of the nation as a linguistic and ethnic unity, which is still present in Europe, and also overcome the old Ottoman concept of nation based on religion. The salvation of the remaining multiethnic entities from the empires in the Balkans will have to become an imperative for the European integration policy, just as the integration of other migrant populations has become. This difficult process will require constant renegotiating of identity. Bosnia-Herzegovina will remain a warning both for the failure of the internal negotiation of identity and the (European) protection of its multi-ethnicity. Here we must return to the debate on colonialism. Ruthner offers the approach of reading Habsburg colonialism as a polemical and heuristic metaphor which should focus on the modeling of collective identities or identifications under Habsburg rule and Habsburg cultural politics in that supranational state comprised of many peoples, precisely because the European Union endeavors to create a new and better multi-state structure (Feichtinger and Prutsch 121–22). In other words, it is necessary to reexamine Habsburg rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina, its colonial character, its relation to the Ottoman imperial legacy, and its implications for the presentday situation in order to manage the consequences of the recent conflict and make projections for the future. The Habsburg combination of imagined Orient and selective modernization based on the failed attempt at construction of one Bosnian identity, varied in the Yugoslav communist ideology of brotherhood and unity, worked as such a heuristic metaphor for

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only a short period of time and under very specific circumstances, but this is not to say that their achievements should be dismissed entirely. The following two subsections offer a closer and differentiated picture of Ottoman and Habsburg rules based on literary works by two Bosnian authors who address the tensions and collisions between imperial rules and religions as tensions between subalterns and occupiers, or indeed colonizers. Analysis of the literary works reveals that the self-perception of part of the local population in Bosnia-Herzegovina is one of permanently colonized people oppressed by foreign rules. Furthermore, the analysis of Bosnian literary works addresses the concern over the deployment of postcolonial theory that, in Simonek’s view, may perpetuate the discourse of colonialism by treating Slavic cultures and literatures from the region as “voiceless objects” in need of emancipation (30). Simonek proposes, instead, theoretical models from Slavic Studies, yet does not consider the possibility of combining postcolonial and other theoretical models, as indeed postcolonial theorists themselves consistently do. The compatibility between Bakthin’s concepts of hybridity and Bhabha’s concept of cultural “in-betweenness” that proved productive in the analysis of the in-between position of the Serbian nation in Vojvodina in the third chapter is only one such example. The following subsections demonstrate that a combination of European and postcolonial theoretical models is necessary for a detailed perspective on Southeastern European literatures. Badger in Court: Dialogue of Misunderstanding between the Subaltern and the Colonizer A second version of the integration processes is offered by Petar Ko#i! (1877–1916), a Serbian writer from Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was expelled from high school in Sarajevo for advocating nationalism and thus had to finish his education in Belgrade. He pursued Slavic Studies in Vienna and came back to Sarajevo to take the position of clerk at the publishing company Prosvjeta (Enlightenment)12 but was fired for taking part in a workers’ strike and was banished to Banja Luka. There he founded the magazine Otad&bina (Homeland) and formed a political group which advocated a struggle against both the Austro-Hungarian occupation and especially the remnants of feudal structures from Ottoman times. As a national and social revolutionary, Ko#i! was favored among peasants and progressive youth, and as such he was elected a member of the Bosanski sabor (the Bosnian Parliament) in Sarajevo. Not surprisingly, Austria recognized Petar Ko#i! as a serious enemy, continuously persecuting and repeatedly arresting him because of his activities between 1907 and 1909. On the eve of World War I he started to show signs of a nervous breakdown and was taken to Belgrade for treatment. He died in a Belgrade mental hospital in

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the middle of World War I (Butler, “Between the East and the West” 340– 56). The play Badger in Court is a combination of social and national protest against the Habsburg occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The plot of the play is constructed around the absurd decision of a Bosnian peasant to bring a badger to court and have him convicted and sentenced for ruining the crops. As the dialogue between the plaintiff and the judge unfolds, the role of the badger becomes a clear metaphor for the exploitative Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The narrative introduction at the beginning of the play lays out the conflict of the dramatic dialogue. The courtroom is described as “clean and light” with “legal articles and some hefty tomes” (Ko#i! 153). David, the plaintiff, is “small, short, as a withered branch […] He pretends to be shy” (153),13 but the recipients are warned by the narrator not to believe his shyness. The conflict of the play is introduced by the juxtaposition of the Habsburg Empire, which symbolizes order, Enlightenment, and abstract bureaucracy, and the local peasant, who is plain and poor, but plays a double role. The character of David is structured as a Rollenfigur, a structure already announced in the narrative introduction by the indication that his shyness is not authentic. The Rollenfigur is best described as a stock dramatic character who takes on different roles within the play on the level of language, while not necessarily performing different roles in the plot, i.e., disguising himself and/or appearing as more than one character. Hillach elaborates on this type of character specifically as it occurs in Nestroy’s plays, but he explains that puns and irony in the comedy generally depend on the type of language that can be expressed only by a Rollenfigur (11). According to Hillach, Nestroy’s language and message are incongruent, because the words function as an independent force and come between the message and the character who speaks them. Since no character of Nestroy can be identified with what s/he says, the language does not create independent and individualized, but only stock characters. The characters in Nestroy’s plays thus use language as a mask (15). What Hillach describes as a Rollenfigur can be also explained using Bakhtin’s concept of diglossia. In parody, according to Bakhtin, the author uses someone else’s speech in order to insert in it meaning directly opposed to the meaning of the speech in the original text. The two meanings in a parody are thus antagonistic and diverge from one another (Probleme der Poetik Dostojevskij 215–16). We shall see that the dialogue in Ko#i!’s play is developed following the concepts of the Rollenfigur and diglossia. David enters dialogical interactions not only with other characters and the badger, but also with himself, using speech that is dialogical due to the diverging voices within it.

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When David enters the courtroom with the badger in a bag he greets the judge and the clerk with the phrase: “Good morning, bigheaded gentlemen” (Ko#i! 153). In this short greeting we can already hear the two diverging voices: on the one hand the tone is humble and follows the official style; on the other hand, he uses the not quite polite term “bigheaded” under the false pretense, as we see later on, that he is just a simple peasant who does not really understand the meaning of the words and often uses them in a wrong context. David then pauses for an instant and continues, this time addressing himself and then the badger: David: Hey, wait you loony David! Where’s the fire? Can’t you see that these gentlemen are busy? Lean against the wall and wait a minute. (To the badger) And you, you thief, you are finally where you belong. By God, there is no corn here, but there is something else, badger. There are paligraps,14 double, bulky paligraps, badger! Woe betide you! For you dared eat a whole cornfield and you didn’t sweeten it with a paligrap, that’s sad, terribly sad! David: […] E, %ekaj, blentavi Davide! &to si posrlj’o k’o prase u surutku? Zar ne vidi! da gospodini imaju posla? Osloni se na zid, pa malo pri%ekaj. (Jazavcu) A ti, lopove jedan, do!’o si "e treba! Istina bog, ov"e nema kuruza, ali ima ne!to drugo, jazo. Ima paligrapa, dupli,’ kabasti’ paligrapa jazo! Jadna li ti i pre$alosna majka! Zar izjesti %itavu njivu kuruza, pa ne zasladiti sa paligrapom, e to bi bilo bogu plakati! (Ko%i# 153–54)

The schizophrenic attitude of the character talking to himself is Ko#i!’s version of the dramatic technique of the speech aside, or a built-in diaglossic moment. David’s speech to himself belongs as much or as little to David as an individual as does his greeting of the Habsburg officials and his reprimand of the badger. These are all different roles assumed by the character and created by available language, not just by his character. David’s language can also be viewed as a verbal articulation of the aforementioned state of being described by Bhabha as “in-betweenness” and by Gilroy as “double consciousness”—it can shift between registers and addressees without difficulty and without warning, because the subject uttering it is used to living under unstable conditions which indeed require of him to adjust to the communication code of the foreign rulers in public, while retaining his original code in the private sphere. The court officials, by contrast, use official, one-voiced language and are therefore overwhelmed by David’s habit of switching between roles and his double-voiced speech. The communication between David and the officials is an example of miscommunication and misunderstanding, as illustrated by his dialogue with the judge: David: Did you wake up in good health, sir? Judge: You actually want to shake hands with me and greet me?

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? David: We are all in good health, thank God! How are you, how is your missus? Is she in good health? Judge: Are you right in the head? Are you completely sane? David: We are also in good health, thank God, and I thank you for taking interest in my family and me. (Turns to the court clerk): Did you also wake up in good health, child? Judge: What is wrong with you, fool?! Where do you come from? What is your name? David: My name, your honors, is David, from the village of Melina, the district of Banja Luka, and the country, bigheaded sir, I think it was Bosnia. My house lumero15 is 47. That’s what the honorable court always writes when it sends me summons. David: […] Zdravo svan’o gospodine? Sudac: Ti da se sa mnom rukuje! i zdravi!? David: Zdravo smo, ‘vala bogu! Kako si ti, kako je gospoja? Je l’ ona zdravo? Sudac: Da tebi ne fali !to? Jesi li ti potpuno zdrav? David: I mi smo, ‘vala bogu, svi zdravo i mirno, a tebi ‘vala koji se ti raspituje! za me, i za me i za moju vamiliju. (Okre$e se pisar!i$u) Jesi li ti zdravo svano,’ dijete? Sudac: Ama !ta je tebi, budalo?! Kako se zove!? Oklen si? David: Ja se zovem, slavni sude, David &trbac, selo Melina, kotar Banja Luka, a zemlja, mislim, glavati gospodine, da #e biti Bosna. Ku#na mi je lumera 47. Tako me slavni sud pi!e i tako mi pozovke !alje. (Ko%i# 154)

Most notably, David uses the language of the private and public spheres in one and the same situation. In the beginning he offers a formal greeting and never forgets to use official titles. Then he begins asking the court officials about their private lives in a more familiar tone. Faced with two language roles used alternately, the judge cannot understand that communication depends on his ability to switch between roles, as well. In a nutshell, then, this dialogue exemplifies Ko#i!’s writing of resistance to the Monarchy: the language of the Monarchy is represented by the institution of the court. The court speaks with one voice and is deaf to any other response except that of bureaucracy and authority. It cannot hear or understand utterances from everyday life that express genuine human problems. Therefore the judge is lost in his intercourse with David, whose speech is consistently double-voiced. At times the judge senses David’s strategy, but cannot explain it: The Judge: David, you are a fool, and then again you are not. David: I thank you for these words as an older and more educated man. Sudac: Ti si, Davide, i budala, i nisi budala. David: ‘Vala ti na takvoj rije%i k’o starijem i u%evnijem! (158)

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David’s response this time is not ironic, because the judge has for a moment abandoned his attitude of superiority and guardianship over the Bosnian peasant. This is an exception in the communication pattern of misunderstanding, exemplifying how understanding can be reached— through acknowledgment of the “other’s” ability to think and judge. Nonetheless, the playwright has constructed a more complicated case. David’s character cannot be identified entirely either with public or private language alone. Moreover, the language is used not only to create roles, but it is also a discursive strategy of pretended misunderstanding of the court rules that reveals the power of the Habsburg authorities as a foreign empire which unjustly imposes its rule on Bosnia. In his use of different languages, then, David acts like Hamlet, who puts on an “antic disposition” (Shakespeare I. v. 64) to reveal the crime of his uncle, who usurped the throne and disempowered him. The play is, then, ultimately about discursive resistance against disempowerment. Again, we return to the discussion on Habsburg colonialism. Ruthner emphasizes Osterhammel’s position that colonialism is not only a power relation whose structure can be followed historically, it is simultaneously an interpretation of this relation, which, according to Osterhammel, is based on the discursive strategies of the colonizer to first create the inferior “other,” who needs help, then to create belief in the right of guardianship, and finally to create the utopia of no-politics, i.e., administration free of politics (Feichtinger and Prutsch 115). I will now demonstrate how Ko#i! builds all three discursive strategies into his play and thus implicitly describes Habsburg rule as colonial. Simultaneously, however, he deconstructs the colonizing discursive strategies for his audience through the language of the main character. The mispronunciations in the passages quoted above present David as uneducated and ignorant of the Habsburg court system, i.e., as inferior. But he uses those words with a wit and irony which go beyond the limited knowledge of the Bosnian peasant he is assumed to be by the authorities, thereby demonstrating the superiority of the clever peasant over the educated occupiers. The peasant absolutely knows how the game is played. David accuses the badger of ignoring every single legal article while eating a whole cornfield. This accusation is made in a double-voiced language par excellence. The direct meaning is absurd because, naturally, the badger does not understand human language and does not know the laws and legal articles. The second voice in the exchange diverges from the direct meaning and makes the statement reasonable on another level: from the audience’s perspective the Habsburg authorities have, after all, introduced an absurd number of legal articles in Bosnia-Herzegovina which interfere even with the most private matters. Yet the authorities expect the local population to know

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the regulations and to obey them. What the authorities interpret as order and efficient administration, the locals interpret as control and oppression.16 When addressing the badger and reprimanding him for his ignorance, David assumes the role of the authorities and simulates their belief in their right to guardianship and the illusion of an impartial administration. Another example of ignorance and inferiority used as a strategy for resisting power is David’s response to the question about his whereabouts. He gives not only the street name and the house number, but also the name of the country, albeit with uncertainty: “the country, […] I think was Bosnia” (Ko#i! 154). Again, we have a double-voiced statement, the direct meaning simply indicating the geographical location and the second voice, introduced with the phrase “I think,” implying to the audience that it is not clear to whom the country belongs and whether it can still be or should be called Bosnia. When the clerk asks David about the name of the cornfield, David responds: David: The field has a strange name, child. It is called: NEITHER DAVID’S NOR IMPERIAL NOR SIPAHI’S.17 Judge (laughing): When you talk, David, everything is so entangled. How can this be? David: Very easy, gentlemen, I will tell you everything, in order and by the law. I cleared that field from the woods and I said to myself, it’s mine now. Around that field is the imperial wood. At the end of the field there is a pole in the ground with two letters like hooks (I.W.). Supposedly the letters: Imperial Wood. My God, your Emperor has some strange beauty! In the days of the Turkish Court it was: everyone’s, no one’s; today it’s imperial. And, as I was saying, around that field is the imperial wood, and the ranger says: “True, David, you cleared that field, but it’s imperial. After you cleared the imperial wood, there remained the imperial land. The wood is imperial, the land must be imperial too.” Now the sipahi comes: “You are lying, Vlach.18 You didn’t clear it, the piece of cultivable land had been there for a long time; and every piece of cultivable land is mine!” Where the justice is, I do not know. I only know that these are the reasons why people call that small field NEITHER DAVID’S NOR IMPERIAL NOR SIPAHI’S. David […]: (udnovato se, dijete, zove njivica. Zove se: NI DAVIDOVA, NI CARSKA, NI SPAI’SKA. […] Sudac (smije se): U tebe, Davide, sve to nekako zapetljano. […] Kako to? David: E, lako gospodine moj. Sve #u vam kazati po redu i zakonu. […] Ja sam je iskr%io, pa velim: moja je. Oko te njive carska !uma. Na kraju te njivice […] stoji dirjek, uboden u zemlju, s‘ one dvije k’o kantarske kuke (C.&.). To vele k’o pi!e: carska !uma. Bo$e moj, bo$e, %udne ljepote va!eg cara! […] Za turskog suda: sva%ija, ni%ija !uma, a danas carska !uma. Pa ka$em vam, oko te njivice carska !uma, te gruntovnik veli: “Istina, Davide, ti si je iskr%io, ali to je carska !uma. Po!to si iskr%io carsku !umu, ostala je carska zemlja. &uma je carska, pa i zemlja mora biti carska.” Sad dolazi spa’ija: “La$e!, Vla!e! Nisi je

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iskr%io, ve# je to, bivakarce, od davnina ziratna zemlja, a svaki komadi# ziratne zemlje moj je!” Na %ijoj je strani pravda, ne znam. Samo znam da za to svijet tu njivicu zove NI DAVIDOVA, NI CARSKA, NI SPAI’SKA. […] (159)

This passage addresses the local reality of David’s uncertainty as to whether the country is Bosnia as well as the much more political and essentially postcolonial question of to whom the piece of land belongs.19 More importantly, David’s answer is simultaneously the subaltern’s response to the above-mentioned discursive strategy of the colonizing power to create belief both in the right of guardianship as well as the utopia of an administration free of politics. Using the language as a mask again, David resorts to the popular description of the land, which, with the triple negation “Neither David’s, nor imperial, nor sipahi’s,” suspends the illusion created by the entangled bureaucratic language of the Habsburg administration that the hitherto neglected and badly managed territory has received the proper guardianship which would lead to prosperity of the entire population. Much to the contrary, the description implies that rather than introducing land reform and land tenure, the Habsburg administration has not only perpetuated, but even worsened the Ottoman laws of land possession. In Ottoman times the field could have really been everyone’s and no one’s, since the Ottoman state had a dysfunctional administration which, with the exception of tax collection, had no de facto central control over the territories of the vast empire (Ingrao, “Ten Untaught Lessons” 3). This situation changed, of course, under the purportedly strict and efficient Austrian rule, which registered and defined every piece of land, acts which affected peasants like David, who was not a landlord in Ottoman times and tried to survive by appropriating a small piece of land, a common practice during Ottoman rule.20 Habsburg rule, however, strengthened the old power structures because its administration precisely defined the rules of land possession and dispossessed David. The landlords from Ottoman times were privileged once again, while the Christian peasants felt deprived yet again. Yet it is just as interesting that the nationalist language of hatred is fully absent from Ko#i!’s play. Its satire is directed against the Habsburg authorities and the Moslem landlords, and thus not against the Austrians and Moslems as cultures or nations. This is why David uses the possessive adjective royal, not Austrian, and the word sipahi, and not Turks, or Moslems. David’s complaint in the following passage shows clearly the social aspect of the protest in the play: The other day, Master Stevo asked me: “Do you admit, David, that you are a Serb, an Orthodox, in school, in church, and ato-no-to21…” Oh, damn, what a hard word! I’ll sooner break my tongue than pronounce it … Are you, David, such a Serb?” “What is that, Master? What is this new faith? Are you masters trying to make

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? Romans of us? You are not to be trusted, you’re masters. I am a Serb, and the Serb you want, may God protect us from him!” He got angry and shouted: “That is our right as masters, that we demands of the State government!22And he who is not such a Serb—he is not a Serb at all, but a Kraut, a spy, a traitor!”I thought, by God, Master, you were demanding that the Empire cut the tax on the tithe and the third,23 and you’ve started some silly games. […] … Neki me dan […] pita gazda Stevo: “Priznaje! li ti, Davide, da si, srpski, prekoslavni, !kolski, crkvenjski i ato-no-to …” O, te!ke rije%i, krst joj ljubim! Prije bi’ slomio jezik nego !to bi je izgovorio … “Jesi li ti Davide, takvi Srb?—” “&ta je to, gazda? Kakva je to sad nova vjera nastala? Da vi nas, gazde, ne#ete porimiti? Nije vam vjerovati, gazde ste. Jas sam Srb, a taki Srb, bo$e sa%uvaj i zakloni!” On se razljuti, pa podvrisnu: “To je na!a, gazdinska prava, !to tra$imo od Zemljane vlade! I ko taki Srbin nije—nije ni Srbin, ve# &vabo, &okac, !pijun, izdajnik!” Ja sam, bogme, velim, gazda, mislio da vi tra$ite carevina ukine ovu prokletu tre#inu i desetinu, a vi po%eli nekakve budala!tine zbijati. (Ko%i# 166–67)

The poor Serbian peasant does not feel any more deprived by the Habsburg authorities than by the small, yet existing, wealthy Serbian class. David is thus constructed as a symbol of a social struggle that must also be a national one because the structures of power are perpetuated by the foreign ruler. Hidden within the social protest, however, lies a distinct national rhetoric. The rhetoric of social struggle is thus also double-voiced. David’s harshest complaints, again disguised by irony, are against the Habsburg regulations and taxes which, as David relates, have literally stripped him and his family of every possession. He tells the court how his son was recruited by the Habsburg Army and died in Graz. The Monarchy sent the family three forints as a death benefit, a mere pittance. Weeping, David tells how the family refused to take the money and, to explain their subservient reaction, adds the cynical explanation that the son was only a burden to the family anyway (Ko#i! 11–12).24 This language of sorrow and cynicism continues in the further enumeration of the possessions which the Habsburg authorities confiscated from David. The tax system of the Monarchy is thus repeatedly depicted as a voluntary dispossession of the peasants. For example, the clerks from the tax office have just come and taken four goats and the pig from David. He concludes that the only things the authorities did not take were the malnourished and sick animals, “but we, loony Bosnians, don’t need anything else! […]” (162). The equation of Habsburg administration with social tyranny is a matter of historical interpretation.25 The important question connected to the problem of social injustice is: When does the social resistance acquire distinct nationalist tones and become a national/ist struggle against the oppressor? The play gives an insightful answer to this question through the seemingly plain and uneducated language that David speaks. He explains to

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the judge where the ideology of national resistance is prepared—in the Theresienschule, the Empire’s diplomatic academy, where the sons of the Serbian wealthy class acquire the learning of the foreign power and gain an understanding of its plans, regulations, and legal articles (168). Behind the naïveté in David’s explanation the voices of warning and threat are heard: […] and when those children, you son of a gun, master your learning, grasp your plans, your scriptures and protocures,26 and when they come back to their fathers’ homes, woe betide you! Gone will be Bosnia: Gone, by God, like you never had it! It shall be this way, I swear to God, and not even my tears will help you! […] pa kad ta djeca, maj%in sine, poprime va!u u%evinu, po’vataju va!e planove, spise i protokure, pa se onda vrate u o%eve dvore, te!ko vami! Ode Bosna: ode, vala, k’o da je nijeste nikad ni imali! Tako #e biti, kunem vam se bogom $ivim, i moje vam suze ne#e pomo#i! (167–68)

As previously mentioned, Donia claims that secular education in BosniaHerzegovina, stimulated by the Habsburg administration, did not strengthen Habsburg rule, but rather started shaking its foundations instead (88). Yet Sugar points out that in 1908 there were only 350 grammar schools in Bosnia-Herzegovina attended by only 15% of the children, and only 12 high schools. There were no universities, and for political reasons high school graduates were not permitted to attend universities within Austria-Hungary with instruction in a Slavic language, which limited the number of university students from Bosnia-Herzegovina to the few whose knowledge of German or Hungarian was advanced (Industrialization of Bosnia-Herzegovina 202). It seems, then, that the Habsburg education laws were as restrictive as they were modernizing and that they, too, deepened the social gap between the peasants and the wealthy class. The poor peasant David does not identify with the children of the wealthy Serbs, but he rightly warns that national ideology will find its way to Bosnia-Herzegovina. As we will see in Andri!’s novel, the direct interaction between the Bosnian students and the ideals of nationalism and social equality from the Austrian universities will form an explosive mixture of centuries-old resentment and discursively elaborated rebellion. The Habsburg restrictions also forced the poor, less educated class to seek patronage from Belgrade, in neighboring Serbia, where nationalist ideas imported from Europe had already been adapted to the ethnically homogenous Balkan nation-state and were further modified to serve the purpose of strengthening the national consciousness of the Bosnian-Serb population. David’s true motivation for suing the badger in court is revealed shortly before the end of the play. When the judge asks David when the badger was born, he responds:

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? David: And how long has it been since you came to Bosnia? Judge: Well, around twenty-three, twenty-four years ago. David: Oh, that’s a long time, by God, brother! Really, when will you finally … Well, that’s more or less how old this thief is, may all his brood die! Judge: How do you know this? David: I have a way to know it. You just write down, that’s exactly his age. Judge: It does not work that way! You have to say how you know that. David: Well, since you want to know, I’ll tell you: he pokes his nose into other people’s poverty, which makes me think he was born in your time. That’s how I know it. Judge: What did you just say? David: Easy now … Forgive me, Sir, I got confused. Forgive me, Sir, please, I got confused, and I have no idea what I’m saying. Clerk: I would like to say, honorable judge, that this man is pretending. David: (to himself) Oh, son, you figured out that now? David: A koliko ima godina otkad ste vi u Bosnu do!li? Sudac: Pa ima tako dvadeset i tri, i %etiri godine. David: O, mlogo, po bogu brate! Zbilja, kad #ete vi ve# … E, toliko je godina, od prilike, i ovom lopovu, !jeme mu se zatrlo! Sudac: Kako ti to zna!? David: Znam ‘vamo po ne%em. Pi!i ti slobodno, toliko mu je. Sudac: Ama to nije tako! Mora! kazati po %em to zna!. David: E, kad ‘o#e! da ka$em, kaza#u ti: dira u tu"u sirotinju, pa ja mislim da je ba! za va!eg zemana ro"en. Eto po %em znam! Sudac: Kako, kako? David: Sve polako … Oprosti, gospodine, pomeo sam se. Oprosti, gospodine, pa ne znam ni !ta govorim. […] Pisar%i#: Ja bih reka,’ gospodin sudac, da se ovaj %ovjek pretvara. David (u sebi): E, moj sinko, zar si ti to sad vidio? (171–72)

Here, instead of diglossia, David’s speech reveals a simile which makes his position more explicit. David has changed the strategy of diglossia and deliberate misunderstanding and started raising one voice of resistance with a clear, unequivocal message, which infuriates the judge. Nonetheless, the judge and the clerk decide to play the earlier game, one that is more accommodating of their terms and their supposed superiority, and sentence the badger to pay David a symbolic compensation. But they also call a doctor, who examines David and declares him a “forty degrees fool” from a scientific standpoint (29)—yet another parody of the precise, scientific language and methods of the new administration. David’s closing speech demonstrates a highly emotional rhetoric whose effect onstage would be extremely powerful: I am not, gentlemen, a forty degrees fool, I come across strangely to you because inside of me there are millions of hearts and millions of languages, because before this court today I cried in the name of millions of souls, who are almost dead from all the beauty and bliss and can hardly breathe! (Everyone looks at him in

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astonishment) Good-bye, badger! Good-bye, gentlemen! May God look upon you, and don’t hold it against me for wasting your time. Nijesam ja, gospodini moji, %etrdeset gradi budala, ve# sam ja vami zato %udnovat !to u meni ima milijun srca i milijun jezika, jer sam danas pred ovim sudom plak’o ispred milijuna du!a, koje su se od silnog dobra i miline umrtvile, pa jedva di!u! (Svi ga gledaju zabezeknuto). Zbogom, jazo! Zbogom, gospodini moji! […] Zbogom ostajte svi i ne zamjer’te na eglenu! (177)

Through the mouth of the Bosnian peasant we hear the author with a political message condemning the social and national injustice in the Monarchy. This speech creates a picture of millions of deprived people and inspires the audience to struggle against the unnamed, but implied oppressor. The speech’s explosive potential for action was recognized by the Habsburg authorities, leading them to prosecute the author. Consistent with his strategy of diglossia Ko#i! lets David finish his speech in another voice, a voice of reconciliation and humility that was probably a failed attempt to placate censors. But the potential of the Bosnian peasant announced in the play’s introduction remains as a threat. Petar Ko#i! and his most famous work, Badger in Court, signal the obstacles to identity construction in a multicultural and multiethnic country governed by different empires. The Habsburg Empire appropriated Bosnia in 1878, when the Serbian state, which had already been in existence for around forty years, supported a nation-building process based on ethnic and linguistic unity and thus aspired to inclusion of the Serbian population in Bosnia. The Habsburg attempts to construct a Bosnian identity could therefore not attract the majority of the Bosnian Serbs, who looked up to the “authentic” Serbian identity across the border and considered the Bosnian identity an artificial construct of the foreign oppressor. In making this assessment, however, it is critical to remember that for the Bosnian Serbs Habsburg rule meant only a substitution of one foreign rule for another and the ultimate perpetuation of Moslem social domination. Not just rejection of the Habsburg Empire, unification with Serbia was for them the only way out of this cycle. From this point of view, all the efforts of the Habsburg administration to modernize Bosnia-Herzegovina were interpreted as pure exploitation and social oppression.27 Robin Okey claims that the ultimate Habsburg aim in their nominal support of Bosnia-Herzegovina was to divide-and-conquer and that “Vienna […] expected Bosnia to drive a wedge between Serb and Croat nationalisms” (Robertson and Timms, The Habsburg Legacy 48). There was indeed a logical contradiction in the Habsburg policy of technological modernization, on the one hand, and preservation of the feudal agrarian conditions from Ottoman times, on the other, and the Bosnian Serbs were indeed victims of this policy, even while

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on the surface it seemed to put them in a favored position among the Balkan Slavs. We can conclude that there was justification for Ko#i!’s call for resistance to social and national oppression under Habsburg rule. The dangers hidden behind this message, however, are the individual interpretation as to what form the protest should take and its susceptibility to political manipulation, given that both versions of Bosnia-Herzegovina accommodated parts of Bosnia’s history. It is no wonder, then, that when the play was performed in Belgrade after the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 (Glenny 291) it was interpreted strictly as a Serbian national program against the Habsburg Monarchy, not as a social protest with equal claim to being a critique of class. Taking up a more sophisticated analysis of the situation than is possible in the immediate appeal of a play, Andri!’s novel The Bridge on the Drina (1945) offers more detailed insight into the relations between the local population and the two empires which ruled Bosnia as well as into the coexistence and conflicts of the different ethnicities and cultural identities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It also depicts the process by which the cultural identities were reduced to one particular identity, a supposed national character, which thus became more susceptible to more modern kinds of political manipulation. The theme of resistance to foreign power seen in The Badger in Court is, however, still present in full measure in Andri!’s novel. Ivo Andri! and the Habsburg Language Politics for Bosnia-Herzegovina Ivo Andri! (1892–1975) was born in the Bosnian town of Travnik to a Croatian family. He went to high school in Vi%egrad—the “hometown” of the famous bridge described in his novel The Bridge on the Drina (Na Drini $uprija [1945]). Typical of students at the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he studied in Zagreb, Vienna, Cracow, and Graz. During World War I he was arrested by Austro-Hungarian authorities because of his membership in Young Bosnia (Mlada Bosna), the revolutionary organization dedicated to Bosnia-Herzegovina’s liberation from Austria-Hungary. He spent one year in prison, was granted amnesty in 1917, and afterwards went to Zagreb, where he founded the literary journal Knji&evni Jug (Literary South) in 1918. In 1919 Andri! went to Belgrade, where he began a successful diplomatic career. This was the moment of his conscious change of nationality, when he “became” a Serbian writer. Through an analysis of his most famous novel I will demonstrate what this meant in practice. In 1924 Andri! received a doctorate in history from the University of Graz for his dissertation on spiritual life in Bosnia under Ottoman rule. He stepped down from his diplomatic position at the beginning of the German occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941, but remained in Belgrade, where he was

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able to work, despite the war. His three greatest novels, The Bridge on the Drina, Bosnian Chronicle (Travni!ka hronika), and Miss (Gospo#ica) were written during the occupation of Belgrade and were all published in 1945 (Butler, “Between the East and the West” 345–50). After World War II Andri! was president of the Yugoslav Writers Association, a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, and a member of the Yugoslav Parliament. He was a proponent of a united SerboCroatian language, which also would have included the Bosnian and Montenegrin variants (Butler, “Ivo Andri!” 119). After the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia in 1992, these all became officially distinct languages, although they are mutually intelligible. The language argument is a good entry point into advocacy for cultural identity. Andri! explains his linguistic position in the preface to Ko#i!’s work. First, he points out that the “occupational administration” (of AustriaHungary) introduced German in all important spheres of society and preserved the use of local language only for the less important branches of life, like lower offices and schools. Local language was thus perforce subjugated to the danger of being “ruined and distorted”28 and was reduced to a local variant for communication among the lower social classes. Andri! describes Habsburg attempts to construct a single common linguistic Bosnian identity as the “perfidious and narrow-minded29 politics of Kállay’s administration which wanted to impose the vociferous term of ‘Bosnian language,’ but was actually attempting to separate the peoples of BosniaHerzegovina from the greater Croatian and Serbian cultural centers, from Belgrade and Zagreb” (23).30 It is useful to hear an opposing opinion to Andri!’s, expressed roughly fifty years later, from another native of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Moslem Aida Lipa: After the Austro-Hungarian occupation the newcomers were carriers of modern culture and cultural activities but respected the old ones. Architecturally, Sarajevo became one of the most interesting cities in the region. The old, Turkish part of the city nicely complemented the new, Viennese-type of architecture, making Sarajevo not only historically, but also visually a true city in the margin between the East and the West, between the Romantic Orient and the modern West. […] Only in terms of a nation-building process it seems that the attempts of the monarchy to suppress nationalist tendencies coming from Serbia and Croatia were not fruitful. Despite the immense amount of money that was spent on its promotional campaign to advertise BiH as an integral state, the nationalist ideas of creating Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia prevailed […] […] the struggle for this country’s [Bosnia’s] independence continued and manifested itself again when the aggression against BiH started in 1992. […] This leads to the conclusion that the civilizing mission of the AustroHungarian monarchy to BiH was after all too civilized towards certain nationalist groups; […] (13–14)

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What Andri! considers a deliberate distortion of an authentic language and a merely political construction of one identity at the cost of another, Lipa considers the protection and promotion of an already existing identity, which was at the same time a guaranty of the territorial integrity of BosniaHerzegovina. What needs to be remembered as the basis for argument is that a national identity or a national language cannot possess an absolute authenticity. A certain amount of arbitrariness will always be present in the choice of a dialect as the basis for a future standard language and in the choice of national symbols. As Schöpflin puts it, “all identities are to an extent constructed, but an entirely invented identity, one without any kind of roots at all, incapable of eliciting resonance from those whom it is supposed to define and serving no positive function, will hardly be a great success” (Schöpflin and Wood 18). Austria-Hungary undoubtedly insisted on constructing a distinct Bosnian identity and language for its own political purposes. It was in the Monarchy’s interest to preserve the integrity of the territory coveted by both Croatia and Serbia and thus to minimize their potential growth in power and influence. But this does not mean that a basis for this identity was completely missing.31 The Serbian and Croatian languages had also been based on arbitrary decisions, and in the beginning Karad$i!’s ideas were disputed and dismissed by his opponents in Serbia, who preferred to have Church Slavonic, and not a Serbian dialect, as a basis for their nation’s standard language. The denial of a distinct Bosnian and Montenegrin identity, ultimately provoked the proliferation of official languages noted above in those countries whose overemphasized differentiation from Serbian was a defense mechanism against the assimilating tendency emanating from Belgrade. Until historiography and linguistics in the Balkans liberate themselves from blatant political influence, linguistic “balkanization” will not be resolved, and both the differences and the similarities will be manipulated for opposing political agendas. The Bridge on the Drina: A Narrative of Consolidation or Disintegration? Ivo Andri# received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 and has remained to this point the only writer from the former Yugoslavia to hold this distinction. The Bridge on the Drina also remains his and the former Yugoslavia’s most famous novel. It is a novel without an animate hero; the motif of the bridge is of central importance, as Dagmar Burkhart (172) points out, as a symbol for man’s ability to communicate and for the eternal victory of form over chaos.32 The bridge is used as the nucleus of the novel, a reference point around which the private stories of the people from the small town of Vi!egrad on the border between Bosnia and Serbia are told. The

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private stories are in the foreground of the narration and are depicted in the finest detail, constituting the micro-world of the narration, embedded in the macro-world of history. The bridge plays the role of a witness, or as Burkhart describes it, becomes the world stage (theatrum mundi) on which the townspeople’s lives are acted out parabolically (177). The narrated time in the novel spans almost four hundred years. The linear time begins with the departure of the future Grand Vizier Mehmet Sokollu (or Sokolovi! in the Bosnian original) from his native Vi%egrad in 1516 and ends with the outbreak of World War I. The bridge on the Drina, which is still in existence today, was commissioned by this Grand Vizier, who was brought to Istanbul at the age of ten with other children from the Balkans. The Ottoman Empire had a regular procedure of collecting children from Christian families (an action preserved in the collective memory as “tax in blood,” dev'irme in Turkish) in order to convert them to Islam, bring them up in the Ottoman tradition, and have them serve mostly as soldiers. Mehmet Pasha Sokollu was one of the very few who had such a successful career in the capital of the Empire. The Bridge on the Drina is a very specific, indeed untypical example of the genre of the historical novel. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory defines the historical novel as “A form of fictional narrative which reconstructs history and re-creates it imaginatively. […] Though writing fiction, the good historical novelist researches his or her chosen period thoroughly and strives for verisimilitude” (Cuddon 383). The Bridge on the Drina deviates from this genre insofar as history is omnipresent as a broader context, but the narration does not focus or elaborate on historical events, but rather on people’s lives. Some of the episodes do demonstrate the direct impact of history on individuals— exemplified particularly by the episodes about Serbian families who became victims of the repressive Habsburg measures introduced after the assassination of Francis Ferdinand. Other episodes, however, only imply the role of history in people’s lives—for example, the episodes about people who were seduced by the money economy inaugurated by the Habsburgs, eventually feeling the consequences of the insecure speculations business. Finally, there is a group of episodes in which the actors are fully isolated from the turmoil of history. These are typically, although not exclusively, love stories. Dubravka Juraga uses Lukács’ term “historical anecdotes” to describe Andri!’s narrative methods in his historical novels. According to Juraga, the form of Andri!’s novel is fragmented and episodic, and the larger historical framework is missing (166). In my view, the larger historical framework in The Bridge on the Drina is not missing; rather, it is omnipresent in the background, if not always visible. I will complement Burkhart’s comparison

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of the bridge to the medieval metaphor of the world as theatrum mundi by arguing that history plays the role of God in this narrative, or history is presented as timeless divinity and spectator of the people who are playing their roles. Andri! was aware that he was not writing a historical novel stricto sensu. Within the narrative he refers to his novel as a chronicle: “It is now 1914, the last year in the chronicle of the bridge on the Drina” (Andri!, The Bridge 265). Drawing on Lukác’s comparison between the historian and the chronicler, Juraga argues that “the historian relates events from the past within the context of a specific narrative model of the history of a society as a totality, while the chronicler focuses on specific local actions without placing these actions within a larger context” (169). She concludes that, from this point of view, Andri!’s novels are not genuinely historical but operate more in the mode of chronicles. It has not been seriously disputed that the novel The Bridge on the Drina has more the character of a chronicle than of a historical novel. But again it must be emphasized that history is present as a larger context for the private and public events in Vi%egrad, even if not in the immediate foreground. The impression that the larger historical context is missing is created as part of the narrative strategy. It helps to imply details about Bosnia’s historically marginal position in both the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, and to focus on the impact of important historical decisions as an echo whose sound source is in another country. History is “made” somewhere else, be it in Istanbul, in Vienna, or much closer, in neighboring Serbia. The Bosnians, particularly the citizens of Vi%egrad, who live on the border with Serbia, are only actors with subordinate roles in a play directed from outside. A very illustrative example of this condition is found in chapter VII, which describes the exodus of the Turks from Serbia after it declared independence from the Ottomans. The refugees warn the Moslem townspeople of Vi%egrad that the same could happen to them the next day, but the latter have developed a specific attitude towards history: But the next day everything was as it had always been, for the townsmen did not like to remember evil and did not worry about the future; in their blood was the conviction that real life consists of calm periods and that it would be mad and vain to spoil them by looking for some other, firmer and more lasting life that did not exist.33 (Andri#, The Bridge 99) Ali ve# sutradan, sve je opet bilo po starom, jer kasablije ne vole da pamte zlo i ne mare da brinu brigu unapred; u krvi im je saznanje da se pravi $ivot sastoji od samih zati!ja i da bi ludo i uzaludno bilo mutiti ta retka zati!ja, tra$e#i neki drugi, %vr!#i i stalniji $ivot koga nema. (Andri#, %uprija 116)

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Life in its fullness, life that people live, oblivious to the broader historical context in which they exist, is presented in the novel sporadically, in episodes which function as intermezzi and give the reader a chance to forget about history. These episodes deal with universal human passions and vices. A typical example is the episode in chapter VIII which tells the story of the proud and beautiful Fata, who commits suicide to prove that she always keeps her word. By contrast, both the previous and the following chapters are closely related to current political events and their strong impact on people’s lives. As mentioned before, chapter VII describes the exodus of the Turks from Serbia, and chapter IX depicts the reactions of the townspeople to the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia. The rare intermezzi, which contrast with the rest of the episodes and function as exceptions to the rule, demonstrate vividly that history hangs constantly over the heads of ordinary people, like Damocles’ Sword. The approach to history in The Bridge on the Drina categorizes the novel as postcolonial, aware and critical of traditional master narratives of history and “the ambivalent temporality of modernity” (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 236). This hybrid genre between chronicle, historical anecdote, and historical novel introduces “another locus of inscription and intervention, another hybrid ‘inappropriate’ enunciative site” that reveals “the split consciousness [and] ‘colonial’ disjunction of modern times and colonial […] histories” (236) in order to question the “disjunctive present” (237) of modernity that cannot function identically for the imperial centers and the colonial margins. The novel, therefore, foregrounds the “ordinary people” of a marginal province of two empires “where progress is only heard of and not ‘seen’” (237), depicting the peoples’ destiny as influenced by politics of alleged modernization forged in faraway imperial centers. In the treatment of theories of postcolonial and Balkan identities provided above I posited two divergent paradigms, expressed on the level of language and in the use of myth. The first of these paradigms is analytical— it differentiates and separates the different identities and emphasizes the element of tension and conflict. The other one is descriptive and synthetic— it describes the events and focuses on the element of common experience. These two paradigms are not always separable from one another and appear either simultaneously or successively. The title of the novel is the first instance of the synthetic tendency. In the original, the title has “incorrect” word order, for a sentence in prose. The preposition on precedes the noun Drina, and the name of the river is followed by another noun, bridge. In English it would translate as On Drina the Bridge. This word order is not incorrect in poetry, especially in the Slavic-language folk poetry in the Balkans. The word for bridge, $uprija, is also a key to historical perspective, since it is the Bosnian variation of the

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Turkish word köprü, a word existing parallel to the Slavic word for bridge— most. The use of the slavicized Turkish word and the peculiar word order makes any translation into another language inadequate in terms of conveying the overtones of folk poetry and the synthesis of Slavic and Turkish cultures, i.e., of the local Slavic-Balkan and oriental elements. This short elliptical sentence is a condensed expression of the different layers of Bosnian identity demonstrated on the level of language. The narration follows this paradigm of synthesis on the level of lexicology but not on that of phonetics. On the lexicological level, the narrator often uses Turkish words for both pragmatic and stylistic reasons. Some of the concepts, professions, and objects for which Turkish words are used are indeed strictly related to the Ottoman tradition and are thus nonexistent in languages which do not share this tradition. They can only be described, and not really translated. For example, the word softa in the original text (Andri!, %uprija 77) is translated as “seminarist” in English (Andri!, The Bridge 67). The word “seminarist” does not convey the fact that the student is Moslem. The context does so, avoiding misunderstanding, but the feeling of the original sentence is lost.34 When the narrator uses Turkish words in order to preserve “the taste” of the Orient and convey the unique mixture of cultures, it seems to be done for purely stylistic reasons. An example of this is the expression bo&ji sevap (Andri!, %uprija 77) which is translated as “for the pure love of Allah” (Andri!, The Bridge 67). The word sevap is used both by Christians and Moslems, and in practice its semantic field extends beyond its literal meaning, which refers to Allah and no other God. These combinations of Slavic and Turkish/Arabic words also demonstrate the comprehensive character of Bosnian culture, which is impossible to “translate.” The narrator abandons the synthetic paradigm on the phonetic level. The language of narration is Serbian, i.e., the variant of Ekavski-pronunciation that differs from both the Bosnian and the Croatian variants, which are Jekavski, characterized by omission of the letter and the sound “j.” The difference becomes especially noticeable when the narration is compared with direct speech, which is written in the Bosnian variant. Thus, a linguistic hierarchy is established in which the Serbian variant, which is the voice of a higher-level narration, is superior to the Bosnian, which is reduced to a local everyday speech. This linguistic strategy, on the one hand, implicitly dismisses the Bosnian language as a potential standard, literary language.35 On the other hand, it achieves a different kind of synthesis, since it implicitly integrates the Bosnian and the Serbian variants into one, Serbo-Croatian, language, while retaining their phonetic differences. The contrast between synthetic and analytic approaches to cultural politics is also applied to the myths in the novel. The significance of myth for

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postcolonial fiction is discussed in Fraser’s book on the poetics of postcolonial fiction (162–68). According to Fraser, the preservation of myth in postcolonial fiction is a result of “the extended backdrop of orature that preceded written literature in many former colonial territories” (163). The use of myth in The Bridge on the Drina is also specifically related to the question of local identity in relation to the imperial legacies and master narratives of modernity. As Bhabha points out, postcolonial writing challenges modernity by redefining the signifying relation to a disjunctive present and “staging the past as symbol, myth, memory, history, the ancestral” (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 238). Burkhart refers to an interview with Ivo Andri! in which the author insists on listening to legends, which are traces of the collective human aspirations throughout the centuries. Fairy tales are, according to Andri!, the true history of humankind. Among the most important legends in human history he lists the legend of the Flood and that of the son of God being crucified for the salvation of humankind (176). Also, before narration of the building of the bridge begins, the first chapter tells the legends circulating about the bridge. The narrator in this chapter is distanced from the narration, using expressions like “They used to tell” (Andri!, The Bridge 18). This authorial concern does not extend further into the novel, however. Only in the first chapter does the narrator refer to the legends as such. The myths in subsequent narration are not treated as myths, but rather used as implicit similes for the fate of the people in Vi%egrad, thus enabling the “iterative value” of the past as sign to reinscribe the lessons of the past into the very textuality of the present (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 238). The two myths I have chosen from Andri!’s interview illustrate the paradigms of conflict and common experience, respectively. At the beginning of work on the bridge the ruthless and cruel Abidaga is assigned to supervise the workers, who are Serbian peasants from the villages around Vi%egrad. He treats them with unnecessary and unspeakable cruelty. They decide to sabotage the work on the bridge by destroying during the night what was built during the day. When the main conspirator, the Serbian peasant Radisav, is caught, the punishment is severe, but one commonly practiced in Ottoman times: The criminal should continue to be interrogated, […] but he should not be tortured beyond endurance lest he die. Everything must be made ready so that at noon the same day he should be impaled alive on the outermost part of the construction work at its highest point, so that the whole town and all the workers should be able to see him from the banks of the river; (Andri#, The Bridge 46) Da se krivac ispituje i dalje, […] ali i da ga ne mu%e preko mere mukama od kojih bi klonuo; da se spremi sve !to treba da danas u podne bude $iv nabijen na kolac, i to

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The impaling is narrated over three pages and is depicted in all detail and naturalistic crudity. When it is finally over, Radisav is nailed to a stake and to a beam for all the townspeople to see, an image evoking the picture of Jesus on the cross. This use of myth sharply separates the two communities: Radisav is the Christian martyr who symbolizes the victimization of the Serbian community, and Abidaga is the oppressor who symbolizes the cruelty of Ottoman rule. Yet another scene uses myth to demonstrate common experience. The description of a great flood of Biblical proportions that occurred during the last year of the eighteenth century (in chapter V) shows how a disaster brings members of every religion in the town together to support and help each other in the face of a common threat: Turks, Christians and Jews mingled together. The force of the elements and the weight of common misfortune brought all these men together and bridged, at least for this evening, the gulf that divided one faith from the other and, especially, the rayah, from the Turks. (77) Izme!ani Turci, hri!#ani i Jevreji. Snaga stihije i teret zajedni%ke nesre#e pribli$ili su ove ljude i premostili bar za ve%eras onaj jaz koji deli i jednu veru od druge, i naro%ito, raju od Turaka. (89)

Only a common misfortune can bring the different faiths together, that is the pessimistic message of the narrator, and they only stick together until the danger disappears. Afterwards, they go back to the “normal” state of distrust, tension, and potential conflict. The text, then, provides a historical analogy to the arrival of the Habsburg troops in Vi%egrad: The formal and official entry of the Austrian troops took place the following day. No one could remember such a silence as then fell on the town. […] In the Turkish houses depression and confusion reigned, in the Christian houses caution and distrust. But everywhere and for everyone there was fear. The entering Austrians feared an ambush. The Turks feared the Austrians. The Serbs feared both Austrians and Turks. The Jews feared everything and everyone since, especially in times of war, everyone was stronger than they. (124) Sve%an i zvani%an ulazak austrijskih trupa bio je tek sutradan. Nikad niko nije zapamtio takvu ti!inu nad kasabom. […] U turskim ku#ama poti!tenost, u hri!#anskim oprez i nepoverenje. Ali svuda i u svima—strah. &vabe koji ulaze boje se zasede. Turci se boje &vabe, Srbi &vabe i Turaka. Jevreji se boje svega i sva%ega, jer je, naro%ito u ratno vreme, svako ja%i od njih. (149)

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The arrival of the Habsburg troops does not unite people in solidarity for one another but in the common feeling of fear. Everyone, including the occupying troops, is depicted as a plaything of history. The representatives of the three faiths, Mula Ibrahim, Pop36 Nikola, and the Rabbi, David Levi are all ordered by the police chief to welcome the troops on the bridge. As the Austrian troops approach, a change of perception unfolds in the minds of these three notables. Their initial fear is replaced by feelings of alienation, awe, and admiration: These men, born and brought up in this remote district of Turkey, the rotten-ripe Turkey of the nineteenth century, had naturally never had the chance of seeing the real, powerful and well organized army of a great power. […] Now for the first time there appeared before them the real ‘power and force’ of an Empire, victorious, glistening and sure of itself. Such an army dazzled them and checked the words in their throats. At the first sight of the saddles and the tunic-buttons another world could be sensed behind these hussars and jaegers in parade kit. Their astonishment was great and the impression profound.37 (130) Ovi ljudi, ro"eni i odrasli u ovom zaba%enom kraju Turske, i to dotrajale Turske XIX veka, nisu, prirodno, nikad imali prilike da poznaju pravu, sna$nu i dobro organizovanu vojsku jedne velike sile. […] Sada se prvi put pojavljivala pred njima zaistinska ‘sila i ordija’ jedne carevine, pobedni%ka, ble!tava i sigurna u sebe. Ova vojska morala je da im zaseni o%i i zaustavi re% u grlu. Ve# na prvi pogled, po konjskoj opremi i svakom dugmetu na vojniku, naslu#ivala se iza ovih upara"enih husara i jegera duboka i jaka pozadina, sila, red i blagostanje nekog drugog sveta. Iznena"enje je bilo veliko i utisak dubok. (157)

The omniscient third-person narrator knows the foreign empire, unlike the characters, who are about to experience it. Almost imperceptibly, he prepares the reader for the characters’ reaction to the Habsburg army by describing the setting as a “remote district” of a “rotten-ripe” oriental empire, and the newcomers, by contrast, as a “powerful and well organized army of a great power,” thus steering the reader’s literary reception in the same direction as the characters’ perception of the foreign power. The characters measure their own world by the primarily aesthetic impression of the Western power and develop a feeling of inferiority towards the “deep and strong background, power, order, and affluence of another world.”38 The locality of the novel should, then, be perceived in the same way by readers and characters alike, namely as a dystopia. As a dystopian locality it again unifies the different communities in their feeling of discontent with the place where they are forced to live. The perceptions of the Mula, the Pop, and the Rabbi stand as pars pro toto for those of the communities they represent. They sense, even if they cannot articulate it, that the “other world,” the “West” has come to Vi%egrad in all its glamour, order, and ability to dominate, and that it is different from

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all their traditions. The local encounter between the Habsburg army officials and the representatives of the three faiths from Vi%egrad on the bridge over the Drina is therefore simultaneously a global encounter between the Occident and the Orient. The novel, consistent with its narrative style, does not state this explicitly, but presents it metonymically. This incisive scene also includes global history through the element of dramatic irony. The informed reader, unlike the characters, knows that the Empire which the characters perceive as “victorious, glistening and sure of itself” was in 1878 recovering from its defeat by Prussia and was trying to minimize the threat of Russia, whereas at home it was torn by various nationalisms which undermined the Old Order and prepared the beginning of the Empire’s end. The bridge in this scene is indeed the world stage on which the actors play their roles, unaware of the omnipresent force of history. With the arrival of the Habsburg Empire in Bosnia another set of differences is added to the already existing ones. Civil servants, artisans, and craftspeople in “new” trades, up until then unknown to the locals, arrive from all over the Habsburg Monarchy, and these people are Czechs, Poles, Croats, Hungarians, Ashkenazi Jews, and Austrians (Andri!, %uprija 163). The cultural and ethnic texture of Bosnia thus becomes even more complex for the readers. The novel now focuses more on the differences between BosniaHerzegovina as a whole, with its Slavic Orthodox, Catholic, and Ottoman legacy, and the West, symbolized by the Habsburg Monarchy, than on the differences within Bosnia-Herzegovina. Almost exactly two-thirds of the novel (in the original text 262 of 396 pages) are reserved for the Habsburg period in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The already existing differences between Moslems and Orthodox Christians lose, for a short while, their particularities, since they are embedded within the larger context of Habsburg rule. Later in the novel they will recur in the distinct form of discourses of national and social differences. The paradigm of differentiation/similarity within Bosnia noted earlier is also perpetuated in the description of Habsburg rule. All townspeople share the mixed perception of wonder, distrust, and unwilling admiration towards the incessant activity of the newcomers. The narrator perceives the townspeople as one entity when he describes their sentiments about this phenomenon: However, what most astonished the people of the town and filled them with wonder and distrust was not so much their numbers as their immense and incomprehensible plans, their untiring industry and the perseverance with which they proceeded to the realization of those plans. The newcomers were never at peace; and they allowed no one else to live in peace. It seemed that they were resolved with their impalpable yet ever more noticeable web of laws, regulations and orders to embrace all forms of life, men, beasts and things, and to change and alter everything,39 both the outward

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appearance of the town and the customs and habits of men from the cradle to the grave. (135) Ali ono !to najvi!e iznena"uje svet u kasabi i ispunjava ga %u"enjem i nepoverenjem nije toliko ni njihov broj koliko njihovi nerazumljivi i nedogledni planovi, njihova neumorna radinost i istrajnost sa kojom pristupaju izvo"enju tih poslova. Ovi stranci ne miruju i ne daju nikome da ostane miran; izgleda da su re!eni da svojom nevidljivom ali sve vi!e osetnom mre$om zakona, naredaba i propisa obuhvate $ivot sam, sa ljudima, $ivotinjama i mrtvim stvarima, i da izmene i pomere sve oko sebe; i spoljni izgled kasabe i navike i naravi $ivih ljudi od kolevke pa do groba. (163)

In contrast to this stands the Austrian perception of the Balkan attitude towards activity and change, typically displayed in Austrian ethnographic literature of the second half of the nineteenth century. For instance, Peter Stachel’s research into this literature emphasizes once again the Austrian perception that Bosnia-Herzegovina needed to be modernized and civilized. The ethnographer Hoernes, for example, held that the population of Bosnia lacked the capacity for productive management because of the long Turkish oppression, which resulted in an apathetic mentality. According to Hoernes, Bosnia was shaken awake from this lethargy by the Habsburg administration (Feichtinger and Prutsch 270). Szücs regards these two contrasting views as exemplifying the essential difference between the West and the East. He claims that Western social structures have always carried the precondition for their change within themselves and reaffirms István Bibó’s definition of the Western model as “movement” and the deviation from it as “inertia” (23). What the narrator emphasizes in the above passage, however, is not so much the intuitive feeling of the townspeople about the structural differences between Orient and Occident as their intuitive fear of the threat hidden in the Habsburgs’ incessant activity and need to categorize and define. The passage is a monitory introduction to the later verbal conflicts among the locals provoked by the Western proneness to differentiation and analysis, and to the last scene in the novel, in which the destruction of the bridge is interpreted by one of the characters as a logical consequence of the Western incessant activity and need to change. As in Popovi!’s play Belgrade Once and Now, discussed in the third chapter, the attitude towards the changes documented by Andri! is shaped to a certain extent by generational difference—the older people in Vi%egrad are more likely to condemn them. The difference in confessions in Vi%egrad is an additional factor in determining the attitude towards the changes. There are two rich and respected Moslems in the town who will not accept the changes and try to live their lives as if they were not happening. One of them is (emsibeg Brankovi!, who retreats to his house on the hill and forbids his family to bring home even the smallest piece of clothing, or tools, or to use words that are “new,” i.e., Austrian (Andri!, The Bridge 137). The other one

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is Alihod$a, whose main concern is the changes made to the bridge and the building of the railroad. The bridge is for Alihod$a much more than a structure that connects the two banks of the river and enables people to travel faster and more safely. To him the bridge is a sacred object, an earthly counterpart to Allah’s angels, who spread their wings and helped people to go from one place to another after the devil created rivers and ravines to ruin God’s creation (208–09). Yet even he recognizes that the railroad did indeed diminish the significance of the bridge for the town. All the traffic between Vi%egrad and the rest of Bosnia was shifted to the railroad, and the bridge was reduced to décor (212–13). As a consequence, Alihod$a mistrusts modernization and technology because they violate his view of the world, i.e., the world the way he knew it. The scientific age, with its aspirations for progress and speed symbolized by the Austrian drive to build and change, crushes the poetic idea of a holistic world, with which Alihod$a grew up. With the arrival of the new administration the centuries-old differences between the confessions also receive a new profile and definition and are expressed on a different level. The narrator no longer implies them through a different treatment of myth and language, but now takes them up overtly, as themes in the narration. He considers the “new” differences in identity part of the same complex of phenomena as the Eastern Crisis in 1908 caused by Bosnia-Herzegovina’s annexation, the building of the railroad, and the accompanying instability of monetary politics (215). In this complex of events the narration shows a cultural and ideological watershed in the lives of the townspeople. Earlier, they “had concerned themselves exclusively with what was near to them and well known”; now, they take up “questions […] which lay farther away, outside this narrow circle” (215). These are questions that arise concerning national identity and social rights, as discussed in the books and pamphlets that young people from Vi%egrad bring home from their studies in Vienna or Prague. These books inspired the young people to establish Serbian, Moslem, and Jewish papers and organizations (215). In this way, confessional differences become national differences and are raised to the level of discourse. The ideas that flooded Western Europe with the flourishing of print media at the beginning of the nineteenth century have finally reached the Balkans. Andri! paints them as follows: Newspapers were read avidly, but superficially and hastily; everyone looked only for the sensational news printed in large type on the front page. […] All that took place was accompanied by glamour and the brilliance of big words. The younger people did not think that they had lived that day if by the evening their ears were not singing or their eyes had not been dazzled by what they had heard or seen in the course of the day. (226)

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Novine se %itaju pohlepno i mnogo, povr!no i nadohvat; svak’ tra$i samo one koje na prvoj strani donose senzacionalne natpise, ispisane krupnim slovima. […] Sve !to se de!ava, pra#eno je !umom i bleskom krupnih re%i. Mla"i svet ne smatra da je $iveo tog dana ako mu uve%e, pre spavanja, ne zvone u!i i ne ble!te o%i od onoga !to je preko dana %uo i video. (280–81)

Young intellectuals began gathering and discussing national and social issues with the superficiality and volatility they appropriated from the newspapers. A conversation between a young Serb (with an Austrian father) and a young Moslem, both about to begin their studies in Vienna, illustrates the new language of difference that dominated the townspeople’s communication. Galus, the Serb, “explains” to Fehtim why he should not study oriental languages in Vienna: […], Galus said belligerently: ‘In that, you Moslems, you begs’ sons,—often make a mistake. Disconcerted by the new times, you no longer know your exact and rightful place in the world. Your love for everything oriental is only a contemporary expression of your “will to power;” […] But it in no way means that you have any sense for orientalism as a study. […] In general you have not got the calling or the true inclination for science. […] And when I say that, I am not saying anything insulting or offensive. On the contrary. You are the only nobles in this country, or at least you were; […] The true studies for you are law and economics, for you are men of practical knowledge. Such are men from the ruling classes, always and everywhere.’ (242–43) […], Galus govori vatreno:—Tu se vi muslimani, begovski sinovi, %esto varate. Zbunjeni novim vremenom, vi vi!e ne osje#ate pravo i potpuno svoje mjesto u svijetu. Va!a ljubav prema svemu !to je orijentalno samo je jedan savremeni izraz va!e “volje za mo#i”; […] Ali to ne zna%i nipo!to da vi imate smisla za orijentalistiku kao nauku. […] Vi uop!te nemate zvanja ni prave sklonosti za nauku. […] I kad to tvrdim, ja ne ka$em ni!ta uvredljivo i nepovoljno. Naprotiv. Vi ste jedina gospoda u ovoj zemlji, ili ste bar bili to; […] Za vas su pravne studije i privreda, jer vi ste ljudi konkretnih znanja. Takvi su uvijek i svuda ljudi is gospoduju#e klase. (302–03)

These are echoes of the Western European intellectual history imposed on the Balkans. Nietzsche, Marxism, and socialist ideas are combined with the centuries-old frustration with foreign rule and repressed aggression against the privileged confession. The old code of communication, which was based on a tacit agreement between the different cultures to respect common manners of conduct and keep quiet about mutual mistrust, is destroyed by the new fashion of merciless analysis and the will to prove an argument right. As the Jewish woman Lotte, who runs a hotel next to the bridge, puts it: “Life was bursting asunder, was crumbling, was disintegrating, […], life was losing its value and wasting away in mere words” (258).

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The age of discursive and political disintegration, of “life bursting asunder,” finds a symbolic simile in the explosion of the bridge at the end of the novel. The bridge was mined by the Habsburg authorities immediately after Bosnia-Herzegovina’s annexation as a preventive measure against potential attacks from Serbia, which did not happen then. Six years later, at the beginning of World War I, the bridge was blown up. Alihod$a sees his worst prophecy fulfilled. Once humans dared change a sacred object, the end was near. To him this was the end of the world he knew, and the end of his life. The last lines of the novel communicate his thoughts about the potential triumph of “the impure infidel faith that puts everything in order, cleans everything up, repairs and embellishes everything only in order suddenly to demolish and destroy,” thoughts he has while dying of a heart attack (313). The story of the bridge on the Drina is one of a failed attempt to heal a personal trauma and to bridge over differences. The reason for which Mehmed Pasha Sokollu commissioned the construction of the bridge was to remove the traumatic memory of crossing the river Drina on the slow ferry when he was taken by the Ottomans to become a jannisary. The trauma recurs as “the same black pain which cut into his breast with that special well-known childhood pang.” To heal himself from the pain, he decides to have a bridge built, to “join the two ends of the road which was broken by the Drina and thus link safely and forever Bosnia and the East” (26). Parts of the bridge were blown up during the retreat of the AustroHungarian troops in 1914, during the retreat of the Serbian troops in 1915, and during the retreat of the German troops in 1943. Yet, the bridge was not “cruelly cut in half” (Andri!, The Bridge 312) and still exists today. This scene is therefore entirely fictional and, as such, has a highly symbolic meaning. The attempt to heal a trauma and to build a durable and true link between the West and the East, two acts which merge in the building of the bridge, unequivocally fail this time, but a glimmer of hope remains, again expressed through Alihod$a’s language: “Anything might happen. But one thing could not happen; it could not be that great and wise men of exalted soul who would raise lasting buildings for the love of God, so that the world should be more beautiful and men live in it better and more easily, should everywhere and for all time vanish from this earth. Should they too vanish, it would mean that the love of God was extinguished and had disappeared from the world. That could not be” (314). The fictional explosion of the bridge, symbolizing the failure of communication between cultures, religions, and ethnic communities failed, functions in contrast to the optimistic message that there will always be people who persevere in their efforts to bring different cultures together in harmonious coexistence. We should consider the fact that the novel was written during World War II, when Bosnia-Herzegovina was undergoing a civil war alongside the war

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with Nazi Germany and when the future of the whole world was still uncertain. But we must also remember that roughly twenty years after the author’s death, in 1992, another bloody civil war broke out in BosniaHerzegovina and that another old Ottoman bridge, the one in the city of Mostar, which was under UNESCO protection, was blown up by the Bosnian Croats during their fight with the Moslems. The paradigm of conflict and disintegration prevailed in the former Yugoslavia and in BosniaHerzegovina, which justifies the symbolic explosion of the bridge. The fictional destruction of the bridge ends one epoch and marks the beginning of another. For Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Balkans it marks the definitive end of the imperial age and the beginning of recurring bloody struggles between identities shaped by imperial legacies and Western ideas. Due to the proliferation of small states in the Balkans after the disintegration of the two vast empires, it has become common to use the word “balkanization” in every context where disintegration is involved. The end of the novel puts the phenomenon of balkanization in a different perspective. The disintegration does not occur within the Balkans as some endemic disease, but is provoked by historical events and theoretical approaches from outside. The balkanization of identities is a result of the compulsion to analyze and the need to define—approaches inherent to the Enlightenment and the rise of the sciences. This complex of ideas gave birth to the “twin starts of Liberalism and Nationalism” in Europe, as Anderson puts it (103), and “Europe gave the Balkans the categories with which these peoples defined themselves, […] [and] also the ideological weapons […] with which to destroy themselves” (Mazower xliii). Bosnia-Herzegovina is the most typical, and the saddest, example of this tendency. Neither the Habsburg Empire, nor Yugoslavia, nor Bosnia-Herzegovina was able to withstand the analytical approach of defining differences in minute detail or the shock of the revelation that the differences disappear if one goes back far enough in the past. The Bosnian Moslems had indeed been Christian Catholic or Orthodox inhabitants of medieval Bosnia, but they then built up another identity during the four centuries of Ottoman rule which must be considered as authentic as the Croatian and the Serbian identities. Andri! apparently saw a solution for these tensions and contradictions in the Yugoslav state. In his treatment of language and political activity he was a truly Yugoslav writer,40 hence a writer of a state that no longer exists. The Bridge on the Drina, however, does not reflect his faith in the state of Yugoslavia, which at the time he was writing the novel had existed for twenty-seven years. The novel depicts the Bosnian history as one of tension, conflict, and violence as the rule, and solidarity and peaceful coexistence as the exception. The novel hardly offers a utopian vision of the future of the Yugoslav state. Vi%egrad, as a micro-version of Bosnia-Herzegovina, is

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depicted as an eternal dystopia, a battleground of cultures and empires without true communication among them. The novel creates the impression that there is no escaping from the cycle of violence. The foreign power provokes resistance, then punishes both the guilty and the innocent, thus creating frustration and a desire for vengeance among the victims, which starts the cycle of violence once again. Unfortunately, history confirmed this depiction with the wars of Yugoslavia’s dissolution at the end of the twentieth century. The paradigm of tension and conflict is also present in the reception of the novel and the assessment of Andri!’s political views. A closer analysis of the narrative strategies utilized in the work will make it possible to detect the potential for antagonistic readings that provoked violent political reactions. The Literary Reception and Political Interpretations of Andri!’s Fiction Burkhart claims that the main theme of the novel, which in her view embraces the will to remember and the struggle not to forget, becomes a significant trait of the structure of the entire work, thus drawing the reader into the poetic procedure of preserving memory (179). The persistence of memory, however, can perpetuate the images of violence as well as peace, and the literary response to victims and perpetrators can be abused as an instrument employed to continue the cycle of violence. Bogert reports that just before the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina began in 1992, the Moslems of Vi%egrad smashed the monument to Andri! on the bridge over the Drina and threw it into the water, also that a few Moslem intellectuals from BosniaHerzegovina expressed harsh criticism of Andri!’s life and work.41 Other intellectuals have defended him, saying that representatives of each of the three nationalist ideologies in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Serbian, the Croatian, and the Moslem, have accused Andri! of different faults.42 We must analyze the character of Andri!’s narrative in order to understand the different reactions to it. Since we are moving within the realm of narrative fiction, we must consider its nature when we judge Andri!’s subjectivity. As Käte Hamburger elaborates in her study of fictional language, the binary opposition subjective-objective taken over from logic is inadequate with regard to literature because (1) fictional narrative is never entirely subjective, i.e., it is never a judgment given by a statement-subject, but rather a fictive life and existence which takes place as appearance independently of a statement-subject (148), and (2) when the mode of presentation creates the illusion of an objective historical narration, the fictive narrator is likened to a historical narrator or reporter and is conceived as a genuine statement-subject (150). The latter leads to misunderstanding of the logic of literature, for even if the literary style is identical to historical narration, there is a boundary which separates fiction from reality,

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established by the simple fact that the material is fictionalized, in other words, that the persons in action are portrayed as characters acting “here and now” (151). Since we defined the novel as a chronicle, we can conclude preliminarily that the narrator of this fictional work may be perceived by some readers as a genuine statement-subject giving a historical report. They will thus expect or indeed project onto the narrator an objective, neutral style of historical narration.43 We have already established the fact that the novel does not have an animate hero. Consequently none of the characters develops fully into a round protagonist with psychological depth and/or a well-defined and multifaceted worldview. We must therefore analyze the different voices and roles of the narrator as well as the arrangement of scenes. As Bakhtin explains in his analysis of novelistic language, each word/statement which is directed towards a certain object enters a dialogical relation with other, already existing words and judgments on the same object and either melds together with them, rebounds off of them, or cuts through them (O romanu 31). The novelist thus raises the societal discursive diversity around the object to the level of fully rounded narration saturated with dialogical resonances (34). The dialogical relation between words and judgments arises from the fact that each one of them belongs to a certain language of discursive diversity, language being understood as a specific worldview, or a form of verbal interpretation of the world (47). Literary language, and the language of the novel in particular, is thus a unity of different languages that touch and recognize one another (51). The societal discursive diversity of languages is organized in a special way when it enters the novel, i.e., it becomes an artistic system which orchestrates the intentional theme of the author. The author, then, does not speak in the language; it is rather as if he spoke through the language, which is to a certain extent detached from him (56). When the narrator in The Bridge on the Drina describes the convoy of children taken by the Ottomans to Istanbul to become janissaries, he does not use the objective, detached style of a historical report, but an emotional style which echoes the language in which the stories about these traumatic events had been told from one generation to another: The chosen children were laden on to little Bosnian horses in a long convoy. On each horse were two plaited panniers, like those for fruit, one on each side, and in every pannier was put a child, each with a small bundle and a round cake, the last thing they were to take from their parents’ homes. A little way behind the last horses in that strange convoy straggled, disheveled and exhausted, many parents and relatives of those children who were being carried away for ever to a foreign world, where they would be circumcised, become Turkish and, forgetting their faith, their country and their origin, would pass their lives in the ranks of the janissaries or in some other, higher, service of the Empire. (24)

134

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? Izabrani de%aci otpremani su na malim bosanskim konjima, u dugoj povorci dalje. Na konju su bila dva pletena sepeta, kao za vo#e, sa svake strane po jedan, i u svaki sepet stavljen je po jedan de%ak i sa njim mali zave$ljaj i kolut pite, poslednje !to nosi iz o%inske ku#e. Na izvesnom odstojanju od poslednjih konja u ovom neobi%nom karavanu i!li su, ra!trkani i zadihani, mnogi roditelji ili ro"aci ove dece, koja se odvode zauvek da u tu"em svetu budu obrezana, potur%ena i da, zaboraviv!i svoju veru, svoj kraj i svoje poreklo, provedu $ivot u janji%arskim odama ili u nekoj drugoj vi!oj slu$bi carstva. (23–24)

The narrator’s language melds together with the languages of the oral tradition, the private sphere, and the collective memory of the Christian population, which express the trauma caused by the abduction of the children and the fear of loss of identity. This scene also illustrates the appealing and seductive power of literature arising from the capacity of fictive language to create the appearance that the characters are acting “here and now” (Hamburger 151) despite the use of the past tense in the narration. The literary narrative draws the reader into the simulated present situation and forces him to react to it. How the reader reacts to this narrative depends on his personal involvement in the historical background of the novel and/or his knowledge of the respective space. The islamized Slavs can interpret this process as an attack on their identity or be indifferent to it, whereas the Serbs can interpret it as a confirmation of their position as victims. We now need to compare the narrator’s language and perspective in chapter VII, which depicts the exodus of 120 Turkish families from Serbia after its declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire. The people of Vi%egrad are gathered on the bridge on an early summer evening. The narrator now takes the role of observer, together with the people of Vi%egrad: The air smelt of fresh melons and roasting coffee. From the great flagstone, still warm from the day’s heat, and sprinkled with water, rose moist and scented the special smell of the kapia which filled men with freedom from care and evoked lively fancies. […] In such a moment, when even the most ordinary thing took on the appearance of a vision filled with majesty, terror and special meaning, the first refugees from U$ice appeared on the bridge. The men were for the most part on foot, dusty and bowed, while the women wrapped in their veils were balanced on small horses with small children tied to the saddle-bags or to boxes. Now and again a more important man rode a better horse, but with lowered head and at a funeral pace, revealing even more clearly the misfortune which had driven them hither. Some of them were leading a single goat on a short halter. Others carried lambs in their laps. All were silent; even the children did not cry. (97–98) Vazduh miri!e na zreo bostan i pr$enu kafu. Sa velikih kamenih plo%a, jo! toplih od dnevne $ege, a poprskanih vodom i dobro pometenih, di$e se, mlak i mirisan, osobiti dah kapije, koji zara$ava bezbrigom i zavodi na dokono ma!tanje. […] U takvom trenutku kad i najobi%nije stvari mogu da imaju izgled privi"enja,

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punih veli%ine, straha i naro%itog zna%enja, pojavi!e se prvi u$i%ki muhad$iri na mostu. Mu!karci su ve#inom i!li pe!ice, pra!ni i pogru$eni, a na sitnim konjima klatile su se umotane i zabuljene $ene ili nejaka deca, uvezana me"u denjkovima ili na sanducima. Poneki ugledniji %ovek ja!e na boljem konju, ali nekim pogrebnim kasom i oborene glave, tako da jo! vi!e odaje nesre#u koja ih je ovde doterala. Ima ih koji na konop%i#u vode jednu kozu. Neko nose jagnje u naru%ju. Svi #ute, %ak ni deca ne pla%u. (114–115)

The strong visual effect of the scene is created by the contrast between the warm, pleasant evening on the bridge and the sudden appearance of the Turkish refugees from Serbia. The visual images created by the narration undoubtedly evoke an emphatic reaction in the reader, yet the narrator describes the convoy from an outside perspective with language in which empathy and detachment are parallel to one another, or are rebounding off of one another, in Bakhtin’s words. Rather than the language of myth or of the oral tradition of the private sphere, with internalized emotions of anxiety and trauma, we observe here a camera-like perspective that documents the personal experience of historical events, including many visual details, but it remains external and detached. Indeed, the scene does not end with a conclusion by the narrator, as in the previous case, but with the statement of a refugee, who warns the Moslems of Vi%egrad: “Here we are fleeing into Turkish lands, but where are you to flee when, together with us, your turn will come?” (Andri!, The Bridge 98) How the reader interprets this scene depends on whether he identifies himself as someone belonging historically to the group of Christian observers or Turkish refugees. Even within one and the same group different interpretations are plausible, e.g., feelings of detached compassion, relief that one remains spared, or indeed satisfaction on the part of the Christian observers, and emotional identification and/or a desire for retribution against the Christian observers, to whom the narrator belongs, on the part of the refugees. In another instance, the narrator implicitly defines himself as a Serbian Christian when he says “Our women crossed themselves” (Andri!, %uprija 96), meaning the Serbian women, a sentence which in the English translation is indeed translated as “The Serbian women crossed themselves” (Andri!, The Bridge 83). He makes a clear distinction between the Serbs and the Moslem Turks, between the “downtrodden” and “those who rule and must oppress in order to rule,” respectively, attributing reason to those who rule, and “a senseless hope” to the downtrodden (83). In addition, visually strong images of torture and public execution of Serbs on the bridge appear throughout the novel, creating a leitmotif of Serbian victimization. The first one is the aforementioned scene of impaling in chapter III. The second one occurs in chapter VI and depicts how in 1804, during the Serbian uprising against the Ottomans in neighboring Serbia, both

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the Ottoman authorities in Bosnia and the local Moslems became overly cautious, executing Serbs from Bosnia and displaying their heads on the bridge. The third one is found in chapter XX, after the assassination of Francis Ferdinand, when the Habsburg authorities take extremely repressive measures against the Bosnian Serbs and hang three of them on the bridge. Lastly, the narrator’s depiction of nineteenth-century Ottoman Bosnia as a “remote district of […] rotten-ripe Turkey” (130) is likely to alienate those whose identity is closely bound to Ottoman rule and culture. Rather than trying to establish impartiality and a neutral point of view in the narration, we should focus on answering the question what the different languages and perspectives in the narration mean. For this purpose, we must remind ourselves of the narrator in Handke’s Once Again for Thucydides, who moved from the position of an invisible reflecting outsider to the firstperson on to a third-person narrator involved in the narrated world as a participant.44 The latter, though involved in the events of the narration, has a more detailed, fuller perspective than the seemingly objective narrator from outside who is not part of the narrated world. The narrator in The Bridge on the Drina tells the story not as a direct participant in the narrated world, but as part of the narrative world and narrative strategy, which uses the language of one of the communities (language being understood in Bakhtinian sense as a worldview). He is, as it were, a former participant of the narrated world—he would not have been able to tell this story if he had not previously belonged to the narrated world—one who abandoned that world in order to tell the story, yet brought with him the language of one of the communities to which he belonged. His position, therefore, inevitably implies that he observes and narrates historical events and experiences from the perspective of a former participant in one of the narrated communities. Both the narrator’s position and the different reactions to the novel remind us that it is illusionary to seek one neutral and comprehensive perspective on the traumatic historical experiences and the precarious geopolitical situation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The novel thus illustrates the remaining tension in Bosnia-Herzegovina both through its dystopian depiction of the locality Vi%egrad and through the emotional reactions to the narration, which demonstrate different experiences and interpretations of history that will remain different.45 The intensity and the barbaric nature of the reactions, on the other hand, indicate the absence of a willingness to hear the other side and the inability to understand the other’s position; in other words, they demonstrate how encapsulated the communities are in their own narratives.

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Not a Clash of Civilizations, but a War between Nations It is obvious that there are several factors which have played an important role in the persisting potential for conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. If we compare the cases of Vojvodina and Bosnia-Herzegovina we will get a more detailed picture of the factors that enabled multiethnic and multicultural identity to persist in the former and those which worked against it in the latter. First, we must not underestimate the social component and the struggle for land in a mountainous country with very little cultivable soil. Andri! describes this situation in the following way: “[…] that great and strange struggle, which had been waged in Bosnia for centuries between the two faiths under the pretense of faith,”46 [was fought] for land and power […].” Unlike Bosnia, Vojvodina is a natural granary, with no mountains and extremely rich soil. Another, possibly the most powerful factor, which is related to the previous one, is identity. While in Vojvodina the differences between Magyars and Serbs were linguistic, ethnic, and religious (although both nationalities were Christian), the identities in Bosnia-Herzegovina differ only in religion. The inability to acknowledge the different religious and cultural identity of the “other” and at the same time to nourish the common elements produced three different languages in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian)47 that are mutually intelligible. In Vojvodina, as we have seen in Popovi!’s plays, the Serbs shifted between identities with an ease that was depicted as hilarious. Freud’s phrase “narcissism of minor differences” (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents 61), which describes hostilities between communities that live in adjoining territories and are related to each other in other ways, has been used so often to refer to situations similar to the one in BosniaHerzegovina that it has become commonplace. Freud himself uses the examples of both nations, such as Portugal and Spain, and parts of the same nation, such as Southern and Northern Germany. Freud’s scientific explanation is that this mechanism enables venting aggression on the other group, whereby cohesion within a group is enhanced (61). Yet if we view this mechanism from a historical perspective, we can locate the critical moment for the interethnic hostilities in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the transition from the Ottoman millet system to the nineteenth-century nation-building process in which two different models of national identity construction, or of imagining the nation, collided in Bosnia-Herzegovina: the Habsburg concept of a supranational, political nation, which corresponds roughly to the German concept Staatsnation, and the Serbian and Croatian ethnic concepts, which correspond to the German concept of Kulturnation or Volk.48 The Habsburg authorities emphasized the shared historical experience of the religious communities (ignoring the fact that for the most part it was one of

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conflict and tension), the common language, and the common cultural code, acknowledging the confessional differences, i.e., retaining the Ottoman millet structure. The national paradigms, on the other hand, emphasized the national narratives of justification of the respective peoples, focusing on oral epic traditions, myths, origins, continuity, tradition, and timelessness, or at least immense longevity of the nation as well as common ethnic origin. The logic of the Kulturnation is obviously the opposite of the Ottoman religious millet and the Habsburg political nation since it endeavors to absorb the ethnically and linguistically identical community with a confessional difference into the nation body of the Volk, if necessary through religious assimilation and ethnic cleansing. This was indeed the only model for nationbuilding in the Balkans in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Except for some differences resulting from the absence of the Ottoman millet system and the time period in which it took place, it was the prevailing model in Europe. In the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina minor differences in the Freudian sense are therefore differences that are detrimental to the numerical enlargement of each nation, understood as an ethnic and linguistic community. In this regard it is important to emphasize that all Balkan nations are small and live in constant fear of disappearing, as Kundera aptly puts it (Testaments Betrayed 192).49 The fear of the “other,” who occupies precious territory and challenges your own national identity, is therefore even greater than in numerically large nations. The process of building ethnic nations in Bosnia-Herzegovina was disrupted twice: during Habsburg rule and during Tito’s Yugoslavia. When the latter began dissolving, all national discursive strategies recurred in Bosnia-Herzegovina with even greater vehemence than in the nineteenth century. All ethnicities/nations offered rigid and exclusive national paradigms, including the Moslems, who desperately needed BosniaHerzegovina since they did not have greater motherlands like the Serbs and the Croats, and who feared that the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina would directly threaten their existence, which in fact came to pass during the war. Yet the comprehensive political programs that did not distinguish between religious nationalities gained only an insignificant percentage of votes and so could not influence Bosnian politics. The third factor to consider is the longevity of the imperial regime. The Serbs in Vojvodina had been under Habsburg rule since 1690 and had profited from the enlightened and efficient administration, which resulted in a higher living standard than that in their original country, Ottoman Serbia. The Habsburg regime in Bosnia-Herzegovina lasted for “only” forty years, beginning at a time when the nation-building process in neighboring Serbia and Croatia were already well underway. These two states exerted a

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magnetic force on the respective national communities in BosniaHerzegovina to join their “mother states.” The fourth factor is the cultural disparity between the two empires in Bosnia. When the Habsburg Monarchy occupied Bosnia and “integrated” it into the West, it had to accommodate the oriental cultural element, which did not exist in Vojvodina. The concession to the Moslem landowners is one example of this accommodation, but the price for it was the outburst of Serbian unrest and the intensification of Serbian nationalism. The last, but not least important factor is that the Serbs in Vojvodina were invited by Leopold I to settle territories devastated by the HabsburgOttoman clashes. The Habsburg Monarchy occupied Bosnia in 1878, roughly seventy years after it had refused to incorporate Ottoman Serbia in its supranational structure. Following this refusal, as mentioned in the third chapter of this study, Serbia moved towards a distinctly national paradigm in its identity construction, considering it natural to integrate territories populated by Serbs, like Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bosnia-Herzegovina is, then, a paradigmatic case of the permanent Balkan potential for conflict. This potential arises from the interaction between foreign imperial legacies, which shaped local religious and cultural identities, and the nation-building process, which defined the local cultural differences more accurately and thus deepened the gaps between them. The conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the last decade of the twentieth century is thus a conflict among nations that defined their identity according to the imperial legacy that privileged one or another of them. Therefore the binary paradigm which explains the conflict as a battle between Occident and Orient is inadequate and misleading because it ignores the wide spectrum of historical legacies and imperial entanglements laid out in this chapter. Although the next chapter focuses on the cultural and geopolitical position of Croatia and Slovenia, the literary imagination of these two countries by Austrian writers, and the concept of Central European identity, the Balkans, and specifically Bosnia-Herzegovina, will reappear as seen from a different perspective and portrayed in a different light. Some of the historical processes we observed and analyzed in the Balkans will also prove to be typical for Central Europe. Both the literary imagination and the historical analysis will show that the boundary between the Balkans and Central Europe is time-relative and an object of permanent negotiations. Notes 1

The Empire’s adherence to Enlightened Absolutism during the reign of Maria Theresa (1740–1780) and especially during the reign of her son Joseph II (1765–1790) categorizes the region without any doubt as Western. Compared to the new economic and fiscal policies of

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Protestant Prussia under Frederick the Great (1740–1786), however, the Habsburgs in fact lagged behind the era’s latest Western development, but compared to the Ottoman possessions in the Balkans they were the West incarnate. (See particularly Charles Ingrao, “The Revolutionary Origins of the Twentieth-Century Holocausts” 22–23). This demonstrates the in-between position of the Habsburg Monarchy as a “less Western” region within Europe. 2 Heidemarie Uhl points to the lurking danger in the use of postcolonial interpretative strategies in the case of Central Europe. She argues that once the colonial/colonized terminology is established, it may easily become a self-reproducing mechanism for generation of a homogeneous, colonized “other” (3). In the case of the Balkans, this “other” can easily merge with the “oriental other,” in Said’s sense, thus becoming the “non-European other” within Europe. Therefore it is important to examine both Habsburg strategies for justification of their occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which indeed entailed colonialist and orientalist elements, as Ruthner demonstrates in his study on Habsburg rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina (“Habsburg’s Little Orient”), and the responses of the local population that illustrate their resistance against this treatment. The analysis of the literary works by Bosnian authors reveals a complex and antagonistic mixture of identities that cannot be subsumed under the homogeneous notion of the “other.” 3 Here, we must remember to consider Balkan historiographies as part of, or rather as a reaction to, the mainstream Western European historiographies, which have made only insignificant attempts to interpret the Ottoman Empire as a successor of Byzantium, rather than as its destroyer, thus failing to offer any position that would bind Christianity and Islam (Mazower xl). 4 Todorova informs us that high culture in the Ottoman Empire was represented exclusively by Ottoman, Arabic, and Persian Moslems, educated and concentrated in Istanbul. The only exception was Bosnia, where the highest positions in the social hierarchy were occupied by Bosnian, Slavic-speaking Moslems who, unlike the Moslem élite in the remainder of the Balkans, did not entirely disappear from the newly seceded states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Brown 57). 5 Sugar points out that Islam, Orthodoxy, and Catholicism are more than forms of worship in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They represent three different cultures, which, like the religions, come from three different sources. The Moslems looked to Istanbul for leadership, the Orthodox identified with Montenegro and later with Serbia, and the Catholics looked to Hungary, Venice, and later to Austria and Zagreb, considering themselves Croats. Sugar describes these divisions as sharp, but not as important in his own day (the book was published in 1963), as they were during Ottoman and Habsburg rule (Industrialization of Bosnia-Herzegovina 6). In view of the war from 1992–1995 we can say that these divisions retain their importance a century later. 6 Although the assassination of Francis Ferdinand was prepared by a group of Serbian secret agents known as the Black Hand, the members of the revolutionary group Young Bosnia who conducted the assassination were underage idealists of mixed ethnic origin, including Moslems, who did not pursue nationalist goals but aspired unification of all South Slavs. I elaborate on this historical event in more detail in the sixth chapter. 7 While Bosnia may have been one entity with a common identity in the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern Age, it was in the nineteenth century a consistent object of expansion and power plans of both the Balkan nation-states and the Great Powers. As mentioned in the third chapter, Serbia made plans to appropriate it, and the Habsburg politicians Andrássy and Kállay proposed to partition it between Dalmatia (today in Croatia, then part of the Austrian Crownlands) and Serbia, hoping, on the one hand, to neutralize Serbia’s dream of South Slavic unification, which would have required acquisition of lands from the Habsburg

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Monarchy and the detachment of Serbia from Russia, and on the other, to prevent an agreement between Serbs and Croats, who were also interested in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Sugar, Industrialization of Bosnia-Herzegovina 20). 8 Edward Said admits that Ottoman rule over the Arab world was no “less imperialist” than the “British, French and American imperial experience.” Yet, he attributes “a unique coherence and a special cultural centrality” only to the latter three (Culture and Imperialism xxii). Even though Said excludes the Balkans from consideration, he emphasizes highly significant differences between the Western and Ottoman Empires, which, of course, also apply to the Ottoman possessions in the Balkans. The absence of coherence and cultural centralism in the Ottoman Empire meant in practice both greater religious tolerance, because of the millet system described earlier in this study, and “local corruption, social injustice, lawlessness, and violence” (Ingrao, “Ten Untaught Lessons” 3). In the case of BosniaHerzegovina, as this chapter will show, it also meant a collision between the nation-building process of the earlier Ottoman ethnicities and Habsburg attempts to construct a political Bosnian nation. 9 Peter Stachel argues that the concept of the ethnographic institutions of the Monarchy, whose center was in Vienna, corresponded to the specifically Habsburg version of the civilizing mission. The Austrian “ethnographic-human-geographical” approach aimed at the imagination of the peoples in the Monarchy as a culturally versatile “raw material,” and the role of the state was not to promote homogenization in the linguistic-national sense of the word, but rather to serve as a medium of cultural improvement in a very broad sense. The role of the ethnographic works was to introduce the different peoples to one another and thus contribute to the overcoming of national differences (Feichtinger and Prutsch 264). 10 Over 125 years later, at a conference organized by the Slavic Department of the University in Vienna in 2002, the term and the existence of a “Bosnian language” were discussed again. The opinions were divided. Prof. Dalibor Brozovi#, of the Lexicographic Institute in Zagreb, claimed that the notion of a “Bosnian language” is as artificial as that of the former SerboCroatian tongue, and advocated a Bosniac language for the Bosniacs (Bosnian Moslems) and Croatian for the Bosnian Croats. The German professor Werner Lehfeldt recommended, contrary to Brozovi#’s position, use of the expression “Bosnian language,” echoing the term Austrians used during the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Bogert 60). 11 Lipa (11) attributes the same attitude to the Serbs and the Croats from Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Croatian centrifugal tendency in Bosnia-Herzegovina notwithstanding, Serbian nationalism was much more powerful. It was based on the well-articulated national identity of the Bosnian Serbs, who outnumbered the other two ethnicities, and on the influence of independent Serbia as a strong ideological magnet. 12 The existence of this publishing company goes back to the establishment, with Kállay’s permission, of the cultural society Prosvjeta in 1902 (Donia 101). 13 All translations into English from the original Serbian text are mine. 14 Mispronunciation of the German word Paragraph (legal article). 15 Mispronunciation of the German word Nummer (number). 16 Sugar defines Habsburg rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina as “the era of bureaucracy” (Industrialization of Bosnia-Herzegovina 29). The number of officials grew from 120 in 1878, when the Habsburg Monarchy took over Bosnia from the Ottomans, to 9,533 by 1908, after only thirty years of Habsburg occupation. However, because living conditions there were worse than elsewhere in the Monarchy, only few well trained professionals went to BosniaHerzegovina, which is why foreign officials like the British consul described Habsburg rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina as “provisional” and the Habsburg administration as “the scum of the Austrian official world” (30–31).

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Sipahi is a Moslem landlord of the Ottoman Empire. Vlach is an offensive name for a Serb used by the Turks. 19 The decision of the Austrian administration to retain the social structure of feudal landowners from Ottoman times with only few changes surprised Europeans and disappointed Bosnian Christians—mostly the Serbs—who were serfs on the land of Moslem landowners. The new authorities considered this the most efficient way to prevent massive social upheaval that could have been unleashed if they had undermined the leading position of the Bosnian Moslem landowning class. The Austrians undertook limited reforms to codify and regulate the nature of peasant obligations, establish an orderly land-registry system, and provide court procedures that would give peasants some protection against abuses by Moslem landowners. Even when a law was passed which encouraged peasants to purchase the land they titled, the peasants had to provide full compensation to the landlord, which only a few could afford. Thus, the agrarian question remained the main source of conflict under Austrian rule (Donia and Fine 96). This is also the reason why for Ko%i# and other members of the Serb intelligentsia the struggle for the national cause was inextricable from the social revolution. 20 As Ivo Andri# writes in the preface to the 1961 edition of selected works by Petar Ko%i#, Bosnia is one of the very few countries in Europe where the ratio of cultivable land to wood or wasteland is so unfavorable. Andri# further claims that neither Ottoman nor Habsburg rule made efforts to help the country profit from its most valuable resources—ore and wood. The Ottomans, according to Andri#, focused on primitive exploitation of the land, and Habsburg authorities worked not for the benefit of Bosnia’s population, but in the interest of the Central European capital. Under such circumstances, the scarce cultivable land became the focus of social and political ideas and aspirations both in Ottoman and in Habsburg times. The struggle for cultivable land was disguised throughout the centuries by religious, political, and nationalistic beliefs and discourses, but in essence it was a struggle for a piece of land (Ko%i# 7–8). 21 Autonomous. 22 I have translated the Serbian expression “Zemaljna vlada” as “State government.” It is in turn a translation of the Habsburg term Landesregierung, which referred specifically to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a Habsburg Reichsland. 23 One third and one tenth of the annual production of land or labor taken as a tax. 24 The introduction of military conscription in Bosnia-Herzegovina caused armed rebellions among the Serbs of eastern Herzegovina (Donia and Fine 113). Ko%i#’s way of presenting the recruitment of David’s son (as a sacrifice for the family) and the family’s refusal to receive the pension for their son reflects the attitude of the Herzegovinian rebels that the Habsburgs were occupiers who had no right to impose any regulations on Bosnia-Herzegovina and needed to be expelled. The Habsburg Army sent pension checks to all its former members or their families. 25 The Habsburg administration continued the practice of the tithe, and, as in Ottoman times, government inspectors assessed the harvest on the spot. Yet, the assessments were so high that the tithe usually amounted to 20 percent and not the legal 10 percent. The peasant had to pay the assessed tax in cash in the early fall before he could sell the harvest profitably. Appeal of the assessment was forbidden, so the peasant had to borrow money either from the a*a or the usurer. He would only get short-term loans at exorbitant rates and would have to sell his harvest fast, at any price, to repay his loan with interest in time. When asked about the misery of the peasants, Kállay would present impressive statistical figures for the period from 1879–1895, which indeed proved that they lived better than before. What he would not mention, however, is that in 1879 Bosnia-Herzegovina was worse off than it had been five years earlier because in those five years the revolt against Ottoman rule and 18

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the resistance to the Habsburg occupation had destroyed numerous houses and animals and had damaged the fields. The progress which Kállay documented statistically was thus in truth a matter of rebuilding to the 1874 level. He also forgot to mention that the tithe increased by 101% between 1880 and 1895 and that the peasants were paying new taxes that did not exist in 1879 (Sugar, Industrialization of Bosnia-Herzegovina 34–35). On the other hand, in Sugars view, precisely Kállay’s administration wanted and sought to raise the living standard of the local population in Bosnia-Herzegovina because political propaganda could not instill loyalty to Austria-Hungary. Sugar positively assesses the measures for economic growth taken by Kállay’s administration, but he criticizes “the sequence of economic growth, education, and finally political rights […], which is reminiscent of the long-range programs of colonial powers.” He argues that, instead, the Habsburg administration should have considered the traditional and cultural factors, harmonized them with the economic growth, and developed all of them along parallel lines. He also criticizes the Habsburg treatment of the religious institutions, the attempt to create one nationality for Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the exclusion of the local population from administrative posts, and, to a large extent, even from participation in economic enterprises (201–03). 26 Mispronunciation of Protokoll (protocol). 27 One of the first measures taken by Serbia and Bulgaria when they gained independence from the Ottomans was a radical change in land tenure featuring expropriation and redistribution of property from the Moslem landlords. This was well known in Bosnia, and the Christian peasants working for Moslem landlords expected that the new Christian ruling power would conduct a similar land reform in Bosnia. They even refused to work for some time, expecting that their protest would facilitate changes that never happened (Sugar, Industrialization of Bosnia-Herzegovina 33). 28 Hobsbawm explains that national languages are “almost always semi-artificial constructs,” and that some of them are literally invented. He uses the example of Serbo-Croatian to illustrate the political implications involved in the choice of a dialect as the basis for a standard national language. In 1838, Ljudevit Gaj, the founder of the Croatian national language, chose among the three main dialects of Croatian one that was closest to Serbian dialects, seeking to underline the basic unity of the southern Slavs. This was an idea known as the “Illyrian Movement,” and Gaj was its most prominent proponent. Hobsbawm claims that this arbitrary decision both caused Serbo-Croatian to develop more or less as one language and provided an excuse both for Serbian and Croatian expansionism (54–55). Andri#’s concern is, nonetheless, understandable if we observe the process of language standardization in the Balkans as a “form of linguistic nation-building” (Fischer 1). From the Yugoslav perspective, creating a political Bosnian nation seemed not only to be a redundant political move but also a centrifugal force that would separate the Serbs and Croats from Bosnia-Herzegovina from their nations in Serbia and Croatia. The Serbo-Croatian language was supposed to offer a broad basis for national and linguistic identification, while fulfilling the function of a cohesive mechanism between the different nations speaking different variants of this language. 29 In the original one finds the Serbian version of the German word “borniert.” 30 During the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia Croatia’s and Serbia’s influence in Bosnia-Herzegovina became a weapon for appropriation of the country under the pretext of centuries-old cultural and national bonds between Bosnia-Herzegovina and these two nations. Although the Habsburg policy towards Bosnia-Herzegovina seemed to Andri# to be disintegrating in the sense that it separated the Bosnian Croats and Serbs from Croatia and Serbia, respectively, both during the existence and the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia

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it proved to be the basis, albeit an insufficient one, for the preservation of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a political entity. 31 A perfect example of the existence of intercultural communication is the Bosnian Serb poet Aleksa &anti# (1868–1924) who wrote the poem Emina (1903) which glorified the beauty of a Moslem girl and became so popular that music was composed so that it could be performed. The style of the music is in the Bosnian Moslem tradition of sevdah, a unique Bosnian musical genre based on oriental tonality. The term sevdah consists of the Turkish word sev, which means love, and the Serbo-Croatian word dah, which means breath, or in this context more a sigh. It is thus a musical-poetic genre about unfulfilled desire for the beloved. This genre, in which Moslem and Slavic Christian traditions unite, shows that the attempts of the Habsburg administration to construct a common Bosnian identity based both on Ottoman and Christian Slavic traditions was not entirely an invention without basis in reality. The failure in the construction of the political nation, on the other hand, illustrates the incompatibility between the common cultural identity of the different religious groups expressed in popular performative genres and the discursive construction of national identity, which defines precisely the national affiliation and limits the possibilities for cultural identification beyond the nation. 32 Burkhart projects onto the bridge general attributes associated with the bridge as a concept: communication and connection. Yet from the beginning of the novel, which depicts the building of the bridge, the structure demonstrates the tensions between the locals and the rulers from outside as well as the tensions among the locals from different religions. The destruction of the bridge in the last chapter thus concludes logically with an open, ominous ending of the dystopia of roughly four centuries of narrated time. 33 Emphasis mine. 34 The original text includes a glossary of archaic words, most of them Turkish or Arabic, which permits their integration in the narrative without the need for textual interpolation or substitution by descriptive expressions. 35 Thomas Butler (“Ivo Andri#” 119) justifies Andri#’s decision to change from his native Jekavski to the Serbian Ekavski by referring to his enthusiasm for a Yugoslavia in which Serbia would play the unifying role. With specific regard to the Ekavski variant, Butler claims that Andri# uses it in order to have “an omniscient narrator whose language does not mark him as local” (120). This interpretation does not deny the presence of a linguistic hierarchy in the novel. 36 An Orthodox priest. 37 Emphasis mine. 38 The entire series of attributes, which I translated into English and emphasized in the original language, is omitted in Edwards’ translation and is reduced to the phrase “another world.” 39 Emphasis in both cases mine. 40 A number of scholars in articles written after 1990 take the position that Andri# could only be considered a Yugoslav writer. Among them are: Longinovi#, who claims that Andri#’s Yugoslavism is expressed by a sense of “unity in the shared negative historical experience of all three Slavic communities, otherwise divided by religion” (151). On the basis of a monograph on Ivo Andri# by 'elimir Juri%i# Stoffel concludes that Andri# was firmly rooted in the idea of “Yugoslavhood” and that he therefore chose to live in Belgrade [the capital of the former Yugoslavia] (167). Butler explains that “as a Bosnian living in a land that had been occupied and then annexed by Austria (1908), [Andri#] shared in the enthusiasm for a Yugoslavia in which

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Serbia would play the role that the Piedmont had played in the unification of Italy” (“Ivo Andri#” 119). Villari draws the following conclusion, based on his reading of Andri#’s early fiction: “It is evident, at any rate, that the founding of the S.H.S. [Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes] was the fulfillment of Andri#’s dream of a great Yugoslavia conceived not as an area defined by boundaries but as the sphere of a cultural and human universe with an infinite number of facets: the mingling of the Turkish Islamic element, so full of fascinating aspects, with the peoples of mid-Eastern Europe and those of Western Europe” (20). Claudio Magris, on the other hand, proposes that Andri#, along with Krle$a, another exYugoslav (Croatian) writer, the Italian Italo Svevo, and the Pole Bruno Schulz, should be considered a Habsburg writer. In their works, according to Magris, one can recognize the Habsburg image of humanity with its specific features as well as the Habsburg spirit and motifs, which can be traced, even if only indirectly, to the “koine” created by the Habsburg Empire (14). 41 Muhidin Pa!i# claims that Andri# had expresses a pathological hatred for Moslems and Islam, and Had$em Hajdarevi# argues that the ordinary Bosniac who reads The Bridge on the Drina is bound to feel guilty in some way (Bogert 57–59). 42 The Croatian writer Mile Stoj%i# argues that as long as Bosnia-Herzegovina is ruled by nationalist ideologues, each will find fault with Andri#. This is why some Serbs call him “an implanted Serb,” some Bosniacs say, as mentioned before, that he hates Moslems, and some Croats claim he is a Croatian apostate (Bogert 59). 43 For example Bogert, who claims: “[…] Andri# constructs a neutral narrative point of view (or overview) that permits an altruistic reader to infer tolerance and understanding here, even though no accommodation takes place on either side (61).” In his famous essay on the fictional character of history, The Historical Text as Literary Artifact, Hayden White draws on Frye’s distinction between literature and history as a relation between a “fictional [presence of a mythic plot structure] and a thematic aspect.” The more the work moves towards “the overt articulation of the theme,” the less fictional it is, i.e., it becomes “discursive writing,” in other words, history (1714). The narrative structure in the The Bridge on the Drina is deceptive because of the absence of the traditional mythic plot structure. This is replaced by the history of the city and Bosnia, “told” through the history of the bridge from what seems to be a neutral point of view. 44 Andri#’s influence on Handke has been overlooked thus far, although the Austrian gives clear signals of his reception of Andri#’s works in his own literary œuvre. The intertextual connections between the two writers are examined more closely in the sixth chapter, but here we must mention that Handke’s technique of shifting between objective and authorial narrators in Once Again for Thucydides may well have been inspired by his reading of Andri#. 45 Edin Hajdarpa!i# points out that the “Ottoman past remains one of the most controversial historical subjects across much of the Balkans” (715). He gives recent examples of different memories and receptions of Ottoman rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina oscillating between violent attacks on mosques and aggressive resistance against their reconstruction on the part of Croatian and Serbian nationalists, and glorification of Ottoman times as era of religious tolerance and freedom on the part of Bosniac nationalists (715–16). 46 The English translator Lovett F. Edwards omits the crucial phrase which I have emphasized (Andri#, The Bridge 87). I have used the original (Andri#, "uprija 102) and translated the phrase myself. 47 Bosnian has been the official language of Bosnia-Herzegovina since the war of 1992–1995. In the former Yugoslavia (1943–1990) there was one language, called Serbo-Croatian or Croatian-Serbian, which was also the official language of Bosnia-Herzegovina at the time.

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Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian became three different languages with the dissolution of Yugoslavia. 48 The authors of The Discursive Construction of National Identity remind us that these two national models should not be considered an absolute binary, since in Richter’s view “every nation is to be thought of as a socially constructed pattern of interpretation with which the world is seen from the standpoint of the difference between ‘us and them.’ […] even the ‘good’ nation of citizens needs its image of an enemy in order to conceive itself as a nation” (Wodak 20). In the case of Habsburg Bosnia-Herzegovina the enemies were neighboring Serbia and Croatia, something that the Serbian and Croatian populations within BosniaHerzegovina could never accept. 49 Kundera describes the phenomenon of small nations as a situation or a destiny, rather than a quantitative, numerical concept. Small nations “haven’t the comfortable sense of being there always, past and future; […] always faced with the arrogant ignorance of the large nations, they see their existence perpetually threatened or called into question; […] (Testaments Betrayed 192). One should consider this situation in the analysis of nationalism of the small nations. The myths about the purported eternal or extremely long existence of the small nations work against the backdrop of collective anxieties over the constant threat of assimilation and disappearance.

V. Slovenia and Croatia: Between the

Balkans and Europe Throughout this study I have argued that the Balkans are defined by multiple cultural positions, historical disruptions, and recurrent constellations of power and opposition. According to the criterion of multiple cultural identifications Slovenia can be unequivocally excluded from the Balkans. Slovenia’s territory was a Habsburg land until 1918, it was never under Ottoman occupation, and its cultural identity had been built solidly within the flow of Western Europe’s history of ideas (Goldstein 41).1 Therefore, we can agree preliminarily with Todorova’s position that Slovenia does not belong to the Balkans (31). Croatia, with its Catholic religious identity and its inclusion in the Western European history of ideas, must also be considered culturally a part of Europe. However, three factors combine to raise the question of whether Croatia’s cultural position must not be considered ambivalent. First, territories populated by Croats existed under Ottoman rule for different periods of time.2 Second, the ethnic and linguistic proximity of the Croats to the Orthodox Serbs has played an important political role. This factor was at different times either a bridge connecting the two peoples or a source of ideological and military conflicts. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Croat Ljudevit Gaj initiated the idea of a standard Croatian language based on the 'tokavski dialect, which was also spoken in Serbia. The intellectuals who supported this idea, which was based on a linguistic and national unity of all South Slavs, were known as “Illyrians,” after the erroneous assumption that South Slavs are descendants of this oldest Balkan population. A number of Slovenes and Serbs joined the Croatian core of Illyrian intellectuals and advocated for this concept for a short period of time (Goldstein 58–61). And lastly, and maybe most importantly, a considerable number of Croats have lived for centuries in the territory of BosniaHerzegovina. The Croatian population in Bosnia-Herzegovina was the basis for Croatian plans for expansion into Bosnian territory both in the nineteenth century and at the end of the twentieth. The liaisons between the state of Croatia and the Bosnian Croats at the end of the twentieth century brought to the surface the historically inseparable ties between Croatia and the Balkans. Despite the feeling of a common South Slavic identity, which was strengthened during the Illyrian movement, both Croats and Slovenes nonetheless felt overwhelmed by Serbian dominance in the Kingdom of

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Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes that was founded in 1918 after the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Although the new state nominally guaranteed the equality of the three nations, the Serbian ruling dynasty and the previously established structures of the Serbian nation-state prevailed over the concept of a truly multinational state structure. In the post-World War II Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, despite the autocratic character of Marshal Tito’s regime, there was a general tendency towards equality among the nations that was constantly rebalanced and renegotiated. With Tito’s death, the symbolic cohesive force of the multinational state disappeared, giving way to rigid nationalist programs that eventually brought about Yugoslavia’s dissolution. As in the last days of the Habsburg Monarchy, different nationalisms in the former Yugoslavia nourished themselves at the cost of the country and the peoples. The rise of aggressive Serbian nationalism and Milo%evi!’s attempts to achieve Serbian dominance similar to that in the inter-war period provoked Croatian and Slovenian reactions which focused, among other things, on cultural identity. One of these reactions is highlighted in Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts (1993). Kaplan’s Croatian interlocutor insists that Croatia is “still in the orbit of Austria-Hungary” (6) and that the battle between communism and capitalism in the former Yugoslavia has cultural, not just ideological dimensions (7). I argue that Croatia can be considered part of the Balkans due to its political and national ties to the Balkan South Slavic nations. Its cultural identity, however, is Central European, despite periods of Ottoman interruption. In the course of the seventeenth century the territories populated by Croats under Ottoman rule, with the exception of parts of BosniaHerzegovina, were regained by the Habsburgs and from then on developed in the context of the Catholic, i.e., European paradigm. Thus, Croatia’s cultural identity is not multiple, unlike Serbia’s and Bosnia-Herzegovina’s, where competing and conflicting Ottoman, Orthodox, and Habsburg influences were involved in the nation-building process, but rather a Central European identity which developed in a continuum. Slovenia’s ties to the Balkans are much looser than Croatia’s but exist nonetheless. During the almost seventy years of Yugoslavia’s existence Slovenia built strong economic ties to the other Yugoslav republics and reinforced its Slavic identity. Therefore, it has to be considered at least related to the Balkans, although not necessarily part of them. The Balkan concept of multiple identities, however, applies both to Slovenia and Croatia insofar as they belong to Central Europe culturally, but can be associated politically and ethnically with the Balkans. During the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, Slovenia and Croatia revived traditional Habsburg cultural legacies as a cultural paradigm in order

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to distinguish themselves from the rest of the country, which did not partake in it, or at least not to the same extent. In the nineteenth century Slovenia and Croatia built their nations on the basis of South Slavic identity and their linguistic and ethnic distinction from the ruling German Habsburg dynasty, the Hungarians, and the Italians. At the end of the twentieth century, by contrast, the two emphasized their cultural affiliation with the Habsburg legacy and Central Europe, as opposed to the ethnic and linguistic similarity among the South Slavs.3 Further along in this chapter I will offer a short historical overview that highlights the Slovenian and Croatian national paradigms within the Habsburg Monarchy. I will then examine different positions on the questions of nationalities and the Habsburg experience regarding the process of nationalization. Then I will turn to an analysis of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s (1874–1929) libretto Arabella (1929) and Joseph Roth’s (1894–1939) novel The Radetzky March (1932) elaborating on the literary representations of the Habsburg supranational concept of identity from a post-Habsburg perspective via the depictions and functions of the “others” (Croats and Slovenes) in these two works. The Slovenian and Croatian National Paradigms in the Habsburg Period The American historian Arnez, who was of Slovenian origin, argued in 1958 that Slovenia’s history has been marked by competing German and Italian interests in this territory, which became especially visible at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries (1–4). He further points out that Slovenes were among the nations of the Habsburg Monarchy which were classified as nations without history, i.e., nations without a feudal nobility in the Middle Ages or any form of sovereignty over the territory it populated (26). According to Arnez, the reasons for the survival of a Slovenian identity should be sought in the activity of the priests who educated the peasant population concentrated in small rural communities. The urban population was entirely under German cultural influence and was sequestered from the peasants (28). Croatia’s history assumed a different pattern. The existence of the Croatian medieval kingdom goes back to the tenth century, and in the eleventh century Croatia’s medieval rulers were granted the heritable title King of Croatia and Dalmatia by the Pope (Goldstein 18). But just like Slovenia, Croatia was also an object of different interests: German, Venetian, and Hungarian. The territory of the medieval kingdom was often divided among the Hungarians, the Venetians, and (in the fifteenth century) the Ottomans as well (21; 30–31). By contrast, throughout the late Middle Ages Slovenia’s territory was divided among various families of exclusively

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German nobility (Arnez 36). The Habsburgs acquired Slovenia in 1456 after contested processes of succession among different German dynasties (Arnez 37), and the Croatian nobility elected the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Habsburg as king after the Ottoman victory over the Hungarian army in the First Battle of Mohács in 1526 (Goldstein 34). Portions of Slovenia and Croatia were united under one administrative center in Ljubljana after Napoleon’s victories over the Habsburg Monarchy in 1805 and were named the Illyrian Provinces. In their short period of rule over these territories (1805–1813) the French attempted to strengthen Slovenian and Croatian national consciousness in order to gain their support. Arnez evaluates the short French occupation as “significant in its subsequent awakening of the Slovenian national idea” (42), whereas Goldstein claims that, “Croatian society was not mature enough” to profit from the French endeavors and to “give public life in the region a strong national character” (57). Nonetheless, the term “Illyrian” reappeared in the previously mentioned movement for Croatian and South Slavic unification in the 1830s. In 1848, the year of European revolutions and bold national programs, Slovenes and Croats had different agendas. Slovenes demanded unification of the four Habsburg administrative districts populated by Slovenes in one kingdom with a separate national parliament and equal status for the Slovenian and German languages. At the same time, they expressed their loyalty to the Habsburg Emperor by requiring that they be a part of Austria, and not of the German Empire (Arnez 44–45). Croats, who already had their Parliament (Sabor), feared Hungarian expansionism and requested from the Emperor preservation of their territorial integrity and closer links with Austrian Crownlands (Goldstein 67). They expressed loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty and agreed to remain within the framework of Hungary, but demanded autonomy. The Sabor demanded a transformation of the Habsburg Monarchy into a constitutional federation in which Croatia, together with the Slovenian lands and Vojvodina, would be one of the federal units. This was part of the AustroSlavism which dominated Croatian politics in 1848–1849 (69–70). Slovenian demands for language equality were fulfilled “at least in principle” (Arnez 48), although Slovenian was considered in practice the “language of servants” and thus inadequate for official use (49). The Habsburg Court freed Croatia of all state links with Hungary, but imposed a constitution that organized the Monarchy as a centralist state under Austrian domination and abolished the autonomy previously proclaimed by the Croatian Sabor (Goldstein 71). Both Arnez (50) and Goldstein claim that in the decades after the revolution Habsburg politics towards the nationalities favored the German language and culture. For example, the Croatian flag was banned, and

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German began to be introduced in high schools in Croatia (Goldstein 72). In 1865, Slovenian political leaders drafted a proposal for some sort of political autonomy, which the government dismissed due to “the long-run PanGermanistic political planning” (Arnez 51–52). In Croatia two nationalpolitical programs developed during the years of post-revolutionary absolutism. Goldstein points out: “These were both Croatian ideologies of national identity, and the dilemma they created lasted right to the end of the twentieth century. One was Yugoslavism […] and the other was exclusive Croatian nationalism” (75). Yugoslavism grew on the foundations of Illyrism, and its proponents argued that Yugoslavia was the best protection for the small Croatian nation. Croatian nationalism rejected the idea of Yugoslavia and attempted to proclaim all South Slavs Croats (75). Nolte examines the spread of pan-Slavic sentiment in the Habsburg Monarchy through the athletic associations. In 1862, the Czech gymnastic club Sokol was founded in Prague as a Slavic counterpart to the older German Turnverein. One year later, the first Sokol club outside the Bohemian Crownlands was founded in Ljubljana, following the Czech model, and in 1874, inspired by the example of Ljubljana, a Croatian Sokol club was founded in Zagreb. The influence of the club reached beyond Habsburg borders, and in 1882 a Serbian Sokol was also founded in Belgrade (Judson and Rozenblit 128). The Czech club organized gigantic gymnastic competitions where all Slavic clubs gathered. The program of the association was defined as “a new ideological direction […], a reformulation of old-style Pan-Slavism with its overtones of tzarist imperialism into a new program that emphasized cultural cooperation among all the Slavic nations” (128). Cultural cooperation was only a pretext for the national idea in the program of the clubs, and this is clearly visible in the statement of Ljubljana’s mayor Hribar. He called upon both Slavs and “non-Slavic friends” to fight “PanGerman expansion” (129). The Sokol association thus reflected the Slavic national paradigm in the age of nationalism and Liberalism in the Habsburg Monarchy. The movement failed, in Nolte’s view, because “the realities of the Slavic world undermined the solidarity exhibited on the exercise field” (134). The admission of Russians prompted the Galician Polish Sokol Union to withdraw from the Federation, and the Bulgarians cancelled their membership because of Czech support for the Serbs in the Second Balkan War (134). Nolte concludes: “The Czech presumption of leadership of the Slavic world reflects the conundrum of supranational identities, which have often been the unsustainable inventions of a group claiming dominance […] over others” (136). Nolte’s conclusion prefigures the difficulties in the sustainment of both pre- and post-World War II Yugoslavia, where the Serbs, like the Czechs in

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the Habsburg Monarchy, often claimed leadership and exerted dominance. The relationships between Serbs and Croats have varied throughout history. According to Goldstein, Serbs often considered the concepts of Serbianism and Yugoslavism to be synonymous (94). After the close cooperation between the Serbs of Vojvodina and the Croats against the Hungarians in the 1848–1849 revolutions, the relationships between the two peoples began deteriorating over several issues. The most severe disagreement arose from the Habsburg occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which opened a discussion of where Bosnia-Herzegovina belonged politically. Serbia’s position on this issue is elaborated in the third, fourth, and sixth chapters of this study. In Croatia, both the Yugoslav and Croatian nationalist parties condemned the occupation of 1875, but the Croatian Sabor supported that of 1878, expressing the hope that Bosnia-Herzegovina would join Croatia in the future (95). Arnez claims that Slovenes maintained their loyalty to the Habsburg Monarchy, believing that the best solution would be for Slovenia to remain in a federalist Austria (62). He blames “the political militarism of Germanminded Austrian leaders” for the decision of the Slovenian politicians in favor of the Yugoslav solution, which gave the Slovenes a greater “chance for national freedom than they would have ever imagined under a domination of German-minded Austrians” (64). Goldstein claims that Italy would have acquired much more Croatian territory after the dissolution of the Monarchy if Yugoslavia had not been created, adding that the new state was also beneficial for Croatia with regard to social and land reforms (113). Nonetheless, he concludes that the Serbs apparently considered the new state a reward for their victories in World War I and an extension of pre-war Serbia, whereas Slovenes and Croats hoped for a unification of equal nations (113). Habsburg versus National Identity In the above section I have offered a short overview of two national historiographies that now themselves need some historical qualification. Arnez’s book was published in 1958, i.e., in the second decade of communist Yugoslavia’s existence, and was written from the perspective of an American scholar of Slovenian origin who stresses the distinctiveness of the Slovenian nation from the rest of communist Yugoslavia. Goldstein’s book was published in 1999, i.e., in the first decade of Croatia’s independence after the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, when all nations of the former Yugoslavia reinforced their national identity. Therefore, both works emphasize the continuity in the national consciousness of the Slovenian and Croatian nations and their efforts to defend it from the assimilatory attempts

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of the dominant nations within the Habsburg Monarchy and later political entities. As my analysis in this chapter will demonstrate, Hofmannsthal’s and Roth’s works offer very different perspectives on these nationalities in the Habsburg Monarchy. Identity in these works is not a matter of language and ethnicity, but a matter of belonging to the Monarchy. Pieter Judson indicates that the idea of nation has become so dominant in our ways of understanding society that it is extremely difficult to imagine a world not shaped by the category of nation-state, such as the “non-national world” of Habsburg Central Europe. He points out that the Habsburg state did not attempt a nationalization of its peoples and until 1867 “functioned as a collectivity where patriotism of loyalty to the dynasty rather than an ideology of shared nation-ness bound subjects and later citizens to the greater polity” (Judson and Rozenblit 2). Both Arnez and Goldstein confirm Judson’s position that scholars tend to treat categories like language and ethnicity as unchanging, ahistoric facts “without seeing that the very process of nationalization […] actually created those ‘facts’” (2–3). It is therefore instructive to offer here Judson’s examples of Slovenian-speaking liberals in the 1860s who allied with German Liberalism and German culture, of Slovenian-speaking parents in Southern Styria who often demanded German classes for their children, “much to the dismay of Slovene nationalists,” and of German speakers intermarrying with their Slovenian neighbors, “despite the hysterical warnings of German nationalists” (5). Judson explains that various theories elaborating on the phenomenon of nationalization treated it as an inevitable result and a necessary component of modernity. He draws our attention to the fact that creating national communities in Habsburg Central Europe was a laborious task and an artificial process (4). This is explicitly thematized in Roth’s The Radetzky March and is implied in Hofmannsthal’s Arabella, where the linguistic and ethnic concept of nation is fully absent. Steven Beller claims that “every Central European nation, without exception, suffers from an inability to rise above its perception of its own past, its history” (3). In this respect, according to Beller, the “non-historic” Habsburg nations had even more difficulties than the “historic” nations of Austrians, Hungarians, and Poles. The difficulties became painfully apparent with the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, in which the South Slavs never overcame their ethnic divisions (5). The reason for the obsession with history in Central Europe is, in Beller’s view, “the authority of continuous tradition” which “for centuries […] had been wielded by the Habsburg dynasty, […] [and] Central European history had been Habsburg history” (9).

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Although Beller considers the Habsburg Monarchy as “a most imperfect medium by which to govern the region,” he draws attention to the void in the continuity of Central Europe’s past created by the disappearance of the Monarchy (9). The nationalism in the small countries of Central Europe in the inter-war period was, in his view, a result of this void. At the same time, the model of the nation-state was irreconcilable with the multinational character of the region and with the legacy of the supranational dynastic Habsburg rule (9). Cultural differences between the Balkans and Central Europe notwithstanding, we can now see the similarities between the two regions more clearly. Like the Habsburg Monarchy in Central Europe, the Ottoman Empire also left a void in the Balkans. With the gradual weakening of the Ottoman Empire, nation-states were built in the Balkans, one more nationalistic than the other. In addition to Beller’s arguments, we must emphasize that nationalism in these two regions was not limited to the interwar period, but was present latently throughout the Cold War and recurred violently after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Observed from this angle, the conflict in former Yugoslavia does not have the cultural, or even an ideological dimension, but a nationalist one. Beller claims that the Habsburg Monarchy is not a good model for overcoming the problems caused by Central European history (11). Solomon Wank shares this view and elaborates in detail on the flaws in Habsburg politics towards the nationalities by deconstructing historians’ positions that present the Monarchy as a role model for a multinational state. Wank argues that the continued existence of the Habsburg Monarchy after the 1848–1849 revolutions was far less a result of the nationalities’ identification with the state, than of the “existence of a strong Germany committed to the political status-quo in the dual monarchy and the preservation of Austria-Hungary as a Great Power” (3). Contrary to historians who claim that various nationalities within the Monarchy aspired not so much to autonomy as to improving the positions of their ethnic groups, Wank offers the examples of the Croats, Slovenes, and Poles, who all required independent national representation, i.e., some form of autonomy (4). Wank further refutes the claim that, if the Monarchy had not been dismembered, it would have been the best state form for the small nationalities in the Danubian region. The Slavic peoples would have inevitably been under German dominance in a post-World War I AustriaHungary, which would have been reduced to “a military and economic appendage of Germany” (6). The idea of Austro-Slavism originated by the Czech historian Palácky was not an “unconditioned affirmation of the Habsburg Monarchy” by the small Slavic nations, but rather a search for protection against Russia. The idea’s success was also predicated on the

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federalization of the Habsburg Monarchy, which would never have been approved by the ruling dynasty, because that would have meant the end of the empire (7–8). One final argument against the Habsburg politics towards the nationalities is the identity of Francis Joseph who, according to Wank, saw himself as a Roman-German Emperor and considered the Monarchy as the heir to the Holy Roman Empire. Wank argues that, despite the universalistic basis of the Habsburg dynastic ideal, most of the Habsburgs considered themselves Germans, especially after 1867. In addition, German Austrians experienced an identity crisis after Prussia’s victory over the Monarchy in 18664 and were divided between imperial, state, and national sentiments (9). Judson’s above-mentioned position on the artificiality of constructing nations in the local context of Central European communities is undoubtedly justified and can be supported by Anderson’s elaboration on nation construction in his work Imagined Communities. Drawing on Gellner’s position that “Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to selfconsciousness,” but rather a process of inventing nations, Anderson differentiates between “true communities” and nations. He then adds that all communities larger than the village are imagined and that they should be distinguished by the style in which they are imagined (6). Therefore, both rising nations in nineteenth-century Central Europe and the Habsburg Monarchy are imagined communities of different sorts, and the former are not more artificial than the latter. The problem arises from the diverging styles of imagining, i.e., from the conflict between the national and the supranational paradigms. As Arens points out, the Habsburg Monarchy after 1867 had to create “a narrative of self-justification” that would provide a center and “a core identity that might not apply equally to the periphery” (“Central Europe and the Nationalist Paradigm” 3). The narrative of the Austro-Hungarian “nation of ‘others’ (other religions, languages, ethnicities, classes)” (3) differed from a narrative of nation-ness insofar as it sought “to divorce issues of ethnicity and specific geography from national self-image” (3). In Arabella, Hugo von Hofmannsthal follows precisely this pattern of undefined ethnicity and geography, whereas Joseph Roth goes one step further in The Radetzky March and takes as his theme the narrative of self-justification and its impact on individual identity. Both writers use fictional characters of “other” nationalities—in Arabella the Croat Mandryka and in The Radetzky March the members of the Slovenian family von Trotta—to illustrate the diversity of the Monarchy. Both writers also use specific geographical spaces—for Hofmannsthal it is Slavonia and for Roth Slovenia—and attribute utopian qualities to them as fictional spaces in which to realize their particular imagined communities.

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However, we shall see that the approaches to the utopian spaces in the two works are different. Hofmannsthal uses Slavonia as a fictional utopia for his Central European cultural and anthropological program. Roth, however, shows an ambivalent attitude towards the private utopia of his main character, who projects the Habsburg supranational identity onto Slovenia and then perishes by the myth on which the Habsburg identity was based. Hofmannsthal’s Arabella: Nineteenth Century Slavonia as a Utopian Chronotopos of an Ideal Future Society In the following analysis of Hofmannsthal’s (1874–1929) last work, the lyrical comedy Arabella (1929),5 I will examine his utopian project for postHabsburg Central Europe and post-World-War I Europe as it is depicted in the play. Hofmannsthal’s cultural and educational program for a better Europe and intercultural understanding between Western and Southeastern Europe found mature and unified expression in an artistic realization of his theatrical poetics, which aims at educating the audience. Before turning to a close analysis of the piece, I will therefore offer a brief overview of Hofmannsthal’s cultural and political views on the role of Austria in postWorld-War I Europe and on the political and educational role of the theater. Jacques Le Rider claims that after the shock of 1914 Hofmannsthal became aware of the symbolic historical and geographical meaning of the Habsburg Monarchy, revealing his position on this issue in his essayistic work Reden und Aufsätze (Lectures and Essays) of 1917. For Hofmannsthal, the Monarchy was the heir to the Holy Roman Empire and thus not only Germanic but, through its links with Italy, also Roman. At the same time, the Monarchy occupied the space of Central Europe and was the bulwark against Russia,6 hence a bridge between the East and the West (Robertson and Timms, The Habsburg Legacy 121–22). What is even more significant for Arabella, however, is Hofmannsthal’s view of Austria as an idea, expressed in his essay Die Österreichische Idee (The Austrian Idea [1917]), an idea which once brought about the reconciliation of Germanic and Slavic populations and must do so in future as well: This primary and fateful gift for compromise with the East—let us say it precisely: toward compromise between the old European, Latin-German and the new European, Slavic world—this only task and raison d’être of Austria, had to experience a kind of eclipse for European consciousness during the decades 1848– 1914. […] More powerful than the narrowly partisan and the ideological—both of which are mistaken for the only political forms of expression—is fate, which for us is a matter of combining the European into the German essence and bringing this no longer sharply national Germanness into balance with Slavic identity. (Hoffmansthal, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Austrian Idea 101)

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Diese primäre und schicksalhafte Anlage auf Ausgleich mit dem Osten, sagen wir es präzise: auf Ausgleich der alteuropäischen lateinisch-germanischen mit der neueuropäischen Slawenwelt, diese einzige Aufgabe und raison d’être Österreichs mußte für das europäische Bewußtsein eine Art von Verdunkelung erfahren, während der Dezennien 1848–1914. […] Stärker als das Engparteiliche und das Ideologische […] ist das Schicksalhafte, welches bei uns darauf geht, in deutschem Wesen Europäisches zusammenzufassen und dieses nicht mehr scharf-nationale Deutsche mit slawischem Wesen zum Ausgleich zu bringen. (Hofmannsthal, Österreichische Aufsätze und Reden 107)

The reconciliation of Germanic and Slavic “essences” will result in a higher synthesis at the end of Arabella. Martin Stern points to Hofmannsthal’s historical publications of 1914– 1917, which reveal that the increasing threats to the Monarchy’s existence made Hofmannsthal deeply aware of his Austrian identity and his love for Austria (255). Arens points out that in the essay Wir Österreicher und Deutschland (We Austrians and Germany) of 1915, Hofmannsthal envisions Austria as especially European and as the continent’s defense against the Turks (Kovach 185). In Hofmannsthal’s opinion Austria’s liminal position between the West and the two types of East, Russia and the Orient, thus imposes a specific cultural role on the country. Both Le Rider (122) and Arens (Kovach 187) point to the same passage in Hofmannsthal’s essay The Austrian Idea of 1917, in which he elaborates on the cultural role of Austria vis-à-vis Germany: “This Europe that wants to give itself new forms needs an Austria: […] it needs Austria in order to comprehend the polymorphous East” (Hofmannsthal, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Austrian Idea 101–02). Thus, as early as 1917 Hofmannsthal was aware of the necessity to integrate the “polymorphous East,” i.e., the culturally mixed margin of Southeastern Europe, into the new Europe and to conceive of Austria not as a fortress defending Europe from Asia, but as a bridge to Asia. The “polymorphous East” would receive its fictional counterpart in the Slavonia of Arabella. After World War I Hofmannsthal began a new activity, namely attending conferences with the aim of spreading the idea of Europe (Stern 259). At one devoted to the topic “Die Rolle des geistigen Menschen beim Aufbau Europas” (“The Role of the Intellectual in the Construction of Europe”) in 1926 Hofmannsthal expressed his opinion that Austria might indeed be especially entitled to take the initiative for a new Europe since it was the only country truly destroyed in the war (Stern 260), “[…] and no one will be more sincere in his concern about Europe than one to whom Europe must replace his lost great fatherland” (Hofmannsthal, Prosa IV 337).7 To the question of whether the creation of the United States of Europe was necessary and possible, posed in an opinion poll by the daily paper Frankfurter Zeitung, Hofmannsthal’s answer was: “I consider it necessary to

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establish new, supranational associations and to find the political form for them. The necessary is always possible” (Hofmannsthal, Österreichische Aufsätze und Reden 508–09).8 Based on the above, we can assume that the model for the United States of Europe was in Hofmannsthal’s view based on an Austrian nation, which Arens describes as “a psychological and anthropological community” (Kovach 199). In his vision of the new nation, Hofmannsthal aspired to an improvement of the whole based on historical conservation that dismissed élitist concepts of Bildung,9 but supported the value of Bildung itself. Arens concludes that Hofmannsthal refused to consider the Enlightenment a process concluded during the nationalist era and advocated instead for a modern Europe proceeding from an understanding of the Enlightenment as an unfulfilled project (Kovach 199–200). For Hofmannsthal, theater plays an important role in the process of Enlightenment and in the concept of comprehensive education. In his essay Das Spiel vor der Menge (The Play before the Crowd) written in 1911 on the occasion of Jedermann’s (Everyman) initial performance, he ascribes broad public resonance to theatrical performances and emphasizes the inherently political function of the theater: When you deal with theater, it is always a political issue. You act when you appear before a crowd, because you want to influence people. Dramatic creations of this great, simple type indeed arose from the people. For whom should they be performed, if not for the people? The benefit for the writer consists in confronting terribly broken conditions with an unbroken relationship to the world, which in its innermost being is indeed identical to the former.10 Gibt man sich mit dem Theater ab, es bleibt immer ein Politikum. Man handelt, indem man vor eine Menge tritt, denn man will auf sie wirken. […] Dramatische Gebilde dieser großen, simplen Art sind wahrhaftig aus dem Volk hervorgestiegen. Vor wen sollten sie, als wiederum vor das Volk? […] Das Wohltuende für den Dichter liegt darin, unsäglich gebrochenen Zuständen ein ungebrochenes Weltverhältnis gegenüberzustellen, das doch in der innersten Wesenheit mit jenem identisch ist. (Hofmannsthal, Prosa III 62–64)

We shall see in Arabella a practical application of Hofmannsthal’s theoretical proposals for a comprehensive education that would create better “Austrians,” or “Europeans,” in the spirit of Enlightenment, Renaissance, and Humanism, as well as the re-establishment of an unbroken relationship to the world. The “foreign,” or non-Austro-German, character in Arabella is the rich Slavonian count and estate owner Mandryka.11 Croatia claims a “royal” medieval past and an influential noble class. After the liberation of Slavonia from 150 years of Ottoman rule in the late seventeenth century, the Slavonian society lacked a sizeable middle and lesser nobility, possessing

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only a few dozen large estate owners, with many serfs stripped of all rights (Goldstein 48). I will demonstrate further on that Hofmannsthal uses this historical background to create a stereotype that fulfills a certain function in the play. András Váry analyzes the creation of stereotypes in the statistics and ethnographic works of the Habsburg Monarchy between the 1790s and the 1830s and claims that their aims were not the homogenization of culture and the exclusion of the “other” from the public sphere. Rather, these ethnic stereotypes aspired to personal characteristics that all people, though culturally different, should have (Wingfield 39). Váry explains that these characteristics were “conducive to the realization” of a new, civil society, and that although they qualified communities as “fit” or “not fit” to participate in the construction of civil society, the ethnic stereotypes had no nationalist tendencies in the first decades of the nineteenth century (39–40). Although ethnic groups were differently evaluated as to whether they met the standards of civil society, the door was open to each ethnicity, provided it “improved” itself and followed the educational principles of the new society (51). A century later, Hofmannsthal seems to follow this pattern in order to re-create a society onstage that may never have reached full maturity in reality. Mandryka is not marked by his national, but rather by his regional, Slavonian, identity. He learns, develops, and repents over the course of the play, all of which enables him to change and “become” better. His teacher is the Viennese Arabella who, nonetheless, also learns and changes under Mandryka’s influence. I will argue that the play is not merely an idealized look at the “glory days of the Monarchy,” but a utopia directed towards a possible future society based on changing through give and take, on understanding the relativity of “selfhood” and the “other,” on organic unity between the margin, here represented by Slavonia, and the metropolis Vienna, and on a humanistic ideology of intercultural communication. Hofmannsthal has constructed a seemingly naïve, melodramatic plot that can mislead the reader in his or her interpretation of the play, but is in actuality only an elegant veil for a deeper poetic and ideological message.12 Claudio Magris interprets the play merely as a conglomeration of music, agitated emotional states, and longing for love. He further claims that society and reality have no value in this lyrical comedy because they have been turned into a mere musical background decorated by emotional games (227).13 Contrary to Magris, Weiß bases his analysis on the premise that Hofmannsthal consciously set the work in a concrete socio-historical space in order to give a plausible and discernible, but also charming and sympathetic critique of this society. He claims that to Hofmannsthal tradition

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is no less important than the realization that the old Austrian society had become anachronistic even in the days of the Habsburg Monarchy (220). Weiß further argues that Hofmannsthal’s retrospective view of the Monarchy is used ironically and makes several points about the structure of the plot that I will support, but I will also claim that irony is only one aspect of the play that is used as a means to another end. Weiß points to the time of dramatic action, 1860, and concludes that although the 1860s were a seemingly happy time for Austria, the inner substance of the Monarchy already decayed (23). Moreover, 1860 was the year after the battle at Solferino, in which Austria lost most of its Italian territories and began the difficult and ultimately unsuccessful process of negotiation with the nationalities and the redefinition of the state. Weiß’ argument is that the complicated political reality in the decades following 1860 and leading up to the Compromise of 1866 is at odds with the jovial atmosphere in the Empire, and that it is time in which appearance (Schein) wins over being (Sein) (23). According to Weiß, Hofmannsthal uses irony to criticize this illusory world (Scheinwelt), and the only characters who refuse to play the false social roles are Arabella and Mandryka. They are to be looked upon as saviors from the inauthentic society (25). The interplay between Schein and Sein, a recurring motif in Hofmannsthal’s work, is indeed present in the play, but it is more complex and ambiguous than the discrepancies that Weiß points out. I will name this procedure a double structure and will argue that it was implemented consistently on the level of plot, characters, language, and dramaturgy in order to achieve a certain ideological goal. The climax of the play takes place on the last night of Carnival in which Arabella is the queen. Carnival is about masks and roles, as opposed to “authentic” reality. Pointing to the clear limitations of the Austrian situation, Arabella’s sister Zdenka wears a mask even outside of Carnival—she pretends to be a boy because the impoverished family cannot afford to marry off two daughters. Arabella’s family used to be high nobility, but because they are impoverished now they only play the role of nobility. This is indeed a Scheinwelt and can be justifiably interpreted as an aesthetic analogue of the Monarchy, which six years after the fictional time of the play would also become “double.” The double structure and its function in the dramaturgy of the play as well as in the relationship between Arabella and Mandryka and their position in society deserve closer attention. When the fortune-teller at the beginning of the play prophesies an ill fate for Arabella’s wedding prospects because of her sister’s interference in her love affairs (Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke: Operndichtungen 518), a dramatic structure based on a double negative is created. The prophecy is neither an alienation-effect in Brecht’s

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sense, which would inform the audience of the ultimate outcome and eliminate the suspense, nor is it a prophecy of the ancient Greek tragic type, which has to be fulfilled in the end. This is why Arabella’s mother, Adelaide, cries out in despair at the peak of the misunderstanding: “Oh had this evening never, never happened! The prophetess did not foretell all this!” (Hofmannsthal, Selected Plays and Libretti 625). Hofmannsthal clearly uses traditional genre expectations to acknowledge that traditional solutions are not necessarily adequate to this situation. Here, in fact, Hofmannsthal modifies the tradition of the baroque theatrum mundi, in which people play their roles before God, who is merely a spectator. The fortune-teller gives only the framework for the unfolding of the love story and leaves it up to the characters to play their roles to the best of their ability.14 As Schäfer tells us, the fortune-teller is a double character, representing both the temporal dimension of history and something surreal and time-transcending (145–46); hence, she is the only character who remains at a distance from society in the play and sees things which others cannot see. I argue, therefore, that in this dramaturgy she is assigned the role of an impartial spectator and judge of roles, a part traditionally reserved for God. Her influence thus goes beyond the fictive frame of the play and guides the recipients to develop double vision, one part embedded in the historical context of the Habsburg Monarchy and the fictional frame, the other timetranscending, which renders the fictional frame relative and transforms the recipients into active protagonists beyond the fiction. In their actions in the real world they should learn from the actions of the fictional characters in Arabella. The framework created by the fortune-teller is, then, a postEnlightenment version of the religious metaphor of theatrum mundi, presenting in Arabella an abstract, ahistorical model of universal educational value. The framework created by the fortune-teller is more likely to develop into a tragedy than a comedy. And yet, the genre of the play is lyrische Komödie—a reversal of expectation that would indeed be appropriate to the Carnival season, or to Bakhtin’s notion of it as the carnivalesque, which deals with such reversals. This comedy of errors could, indeed, easily turn into tragedy by the end of the third act, when it seems impossible to overcome the misunderstanding and when Arabella’s father, Count Waldner, challenges Mandryka to a duel to save his daughter’s honor (Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke: Operndichtungen 569). As Weiß cynically remarks, Count Waldner cannot save the honor of his family in a manner befitting his social standing, because he has previously sold the pistols to pay off his debts (24). This critical dramatic moment thus turns into a parody of itself. True tragedy, however, is still possible at this moment in the drama. Although the duel cannot take place, Mandryka is not convinced of

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Arabella’s innocence, and the sole fact that he doubts her makes her a tragic heroine of a new sort, a victim of Desdemona’s type, even without bloodshed. In his discussion of the bourgeois tragedy Walter Benjamin elaborates on the function of the intriguer which the German Trauerspiel inherited from the Staatsaktion,15 claiming that comedy enters the realm of tragedy through this character, who possesses tragic potential and can transform comedy into tragedy (106). Hofmannsthal consciously implements the tragic potential of the comedy associated with the figure of the intriguer in order to unite the double structure of the plot and the dramaturgy and to make his own point. The figure of the intriguer in Arabella is not an animate character; it is actually the city of Vienna together with the values it has taught its fictional residents. At the moment when it seems that Arabella’s and Mandryka’s romance will turn into a disaster, Adelaide cries in despair: “Oh Wien, du Stadt der médisance und der Intrige!” (Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke: Operndichtungen 566).16 Characters not only act in a double manner by playing different roles at such moments: their language is also doubled. The “doubleness” of the characters’ language is not utilized in order to disguise, but to reveal the inauthenticity of their actions. Thus the double structure of the dramaturgy, the plot, the characters’ actions, and their language has above all the function of revealing the inauthenticity of the world presented onstage—to turn it upside down as the Carnival season requires, but to a deeper ideological end. Although the world of the old Monarchy is mocked and parodied because of its inauthenticity, moreover, mocking and parody are not aims in themselves. The ultimate goal of the play seems to be educational in nature. The lyrical comedy can be saved from a tragic outcome only through the character’s endeavors to overcome inauthenticity, to come back to their “true selves,” to move towards sincere communication and abandon limiting traditions that force a daughter into men’s clothes and a son-in-law to challenge his father-in-law to a duel. After all, the characters’ freedom to act is established by the fortuneteller at the beginning of the play. Adelaide’s relieved outcry of “Oh, Theodor, Welch eine Wendung!” (575) after the overcoming of the misunderstanding should therefore be interpreted as dramatic irony.17 Adelaide assumes that the “Wendung,” which is also a technical term used in drama theory and therefore again a pun, i.e., a double language,18 is due solely to Zdenka’s decision to reveal her female identity and to tell everyone that she, and not Arabella, gave Matteo the key to Arabella’s bedroom. This solution indeed occurs according to the external logic of the plot. In the deeper plot structure, however, it is the process of Arabella’s, Mandryka’s, and Zdenka’s recognition of the other and of themselves that

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brings about the change in the play, which is not a sudden reversal, but the result of the characters’ development. Hofmannsthal’s ingenuity in these juxtapositions consists in his method of directing dramatic irony towards the audience, which can thus be misled either to interpret the play as an aesthetic escapade from grim reality, on the basis of the melodramatic plot structure (Magris), or as an aestheticintellectual mockery of reality, on the basis of doubling (Weiß). The play, however, gives numerous signals to the audience on how to avoid the interpretative trap of dramatic irony (or falling back on traditional readings), warning it of the unreliability of sensual perception. Mandryka’s furious words of disbelief regarding Arabella’s morality are simultaneously an appeal to the audience: MANDRYKA for himself And if there are many here called Arabella—my damned huntsman’s ears hoax my hard stupid skull—shall I make a fool of myself before a stranger? […] And it is not even an hour yet since I let her go, like that, in freedom—am I then a fool, an utter ass? (Hofmannsthal, Selected Plays and Libretti 596) MANDRYKA vor sich Und wenn hier viele Arabella heißen—meine gottverdammten Jägerohren foppen meinen dummen harten Schädel—daß ich als ein Narr dasteh vor einem Fremden? […] Noch ist nicht einmal vorbei die Stunde, die ich grad ihr freigegeben habe—also bin ich schon ein Narr und Esel? (Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke: Operndichtungen 566–67)

In the beginning, Arabella and Mandryka are infatuated with each other entirely on the basis of image and appearance. Arabella wishes that the roses she received from one of her many admirers were from “some stranger on a journey” whom she had only seen once before (Hofmannsthal, Selected Plays and Libretti 544). She becomes obsessed with thoughts about the stranger, telling her sister Zdenka: “this morning I caught sight of a stranger,” “a gentleman from Hungary or from Wallachia” (550), and soon feels so closely related to him that she calls him “My stranger” (555). She does not really know or care exactly where the stranger comes from, moreover it seems that she does not even know exactly where Hungary or Wallachia are. Mandryka is defined as “a stranger” because he does not belong geographically and culturally to Vienna, which constitutes his appeal for Arabella. Mandryka, on the other hand, is so enchanted by the picture of Arabella her father sent him that he asks Count Waldner for his daughter’s hand in the exalted style of a bygone age and in the manner of an old autocrat:

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? MANDRYKA […] Mine are the forests, mine the villages. Four thousand people on my land pray for my happiness, and I, with upraised hands, now beg of you, my lord and father, give me your honored daughter, grant me her hand in marriage. For fourteen weeks, she has been mistress of every thought I’ve had. (566) MANDRYKA […] Mein sind die Wälder, meine sind die Dörfer, viertausend Untertanen beten, daß ich glücklich sei—und ich, mit aufgehobenen Händen bitte ich: Herr Vater, geben mir die gnädige Tochter, geben mir sie zur Frau, die jetzt seit vierzehn Wochen jeden Gedanken hier in dieser Brust regiert. (536)

Mandryka’s lines reflect the stereotype of a rich Slavonian feudal estate owner with thousands of serfs at his disposal. The stereotype is reinforced and completed by Mandryka’s self-description when he introduces himself to Arabella: “You must forgive me. I am half a peasant. With me, things happen slowly, but they’re strong” (579). The direct and simple language Mandryka uses to describe himself is in stark contrast to the artificial and sophisticated atmosphere of the Viennese ball where he and Arabella are having the conversation. In addition, he shows irrational generosity (and fulfills the stereotype of a somewhat alien and excessively rich foreigner buying his way into society) by treating the guests of the ball with gallons of champagne and mountains of roses (Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke: Operndichtungen 551). The audience encounters a spontaneous, impulsive, generous, and childishly innocent character—a man from the rural margin of the Empire, so different from the well-tempered and controlled Viennese who “belong” at the ball. Mandryka’s characteristics appeal to Arabella in the beginning, but they will later prove to be almost destructive, and Mandryka will have to cultivate his passions in the process of his “improvement” in accordance with Hofmannsthal’s project of an ongoing process of Enlightenment for the new nation. The mutual appeal between Mandryka and Arabella arises from a feeling of the uncanny. The uncanny, or in the German original das Unheimliche, is “that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar” (Freud, The Uncanny 124). Arabella explains to her sister Zdenka why she cannot fall in love with Matteo: “He’s not the man that I could marry! He’s not a manly man. I could never feel afraid of him; with me, a man like that has played his hand!” (Hofmannsthal, Selected Plays and Libretti 547). The implication is that she can fear Mandryka, who is, therefore, “a manly man,” and not a pampered Viennese. In his first conversation with Arabella, Mandryka still perceives her as a picture with an uncanny power over him:

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MANDRYKA […] You are so beautiful—there is a power in your face to print its features on a soul as on soft wax. Over a simple man, who lives among fields and forests, such a power is very great, and he becomes a dreamer, he becomes like a man possessed, and his soul decides, a complete decision—and as he decides, so he must act! Arabella is alarmed by his ponderous and passionate manner, she rises to her feet (579) MANDRYKA […] So schön sind Sie—eine Gewalt ist da in ihren Zügen sich einzudrücken in die Seele wie ein weiches Wachs! Über den einfachen Menschen, den Felder und Wälder umgeben, ist eine solche Gewalt sehr groß, und er wird wie ein Träumer, wie ein besessener wird er und faßt den Entschluß mit der Seele, einen ganzen Entschluß und wie er entschlossen ist, so muß er handeln! Arabella erschrickt vor der dumpfen Heftigkeit, steht auf (545)

Arabella’s beauty becomes irresistible through the power it emanates, or which Mandryka projects onto her. So Arabella finally meets the man she can fear, and Mandryka gladly succumbs to the obsession with Arabella’s face which paralyzes his reasoning. From this primary mutual feeling of appealing fear (a traditional awe characterizing lovers) Arabella steers the conversation in a more rational direction, which should bring about disillusionment. She informs Mandryka about the condition of her family: “We’re not so grand by the usual worldly standards. We live rather dubious lives on the edge of society” (580). Mandryka, however, perceives the world in a different manner than Arabella. He responds: “Your pedigree, Arabella, is written in the features of your face!” (580). Instead of disillusioning Mandryka, then, Arabella herself becomes fascinated with Mandryka’s Weltanschauung: ARABELLA Never have I met a human being like you! You carry your own breath of life about with you, and what does not pertain to you does not concern you. (581) ARABELLA So wie Sie sind, so habe ich keinen Menschen gesehen! Sie bringen Ihre eigene Lebensluft mit sich und was nicht Ihnen zugehört, das ist nicht da für Sie. (547)

The process of acknowledging “the other” begins with the above line, and it is significant that it is guided by Arabella, but also that her world is not completely dominant in this process. At this point, however, it is still the mutual fascination and the lure of the uncanny that dominates the relationship between Arabella and Mandryka. The relationship between the concepts of heimlich and unheimlich elaborated by Freud plays a key role in the progress of mutual recognition in Arabella:

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? [The] word heimlich is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which are not mutually contradictory, but very different from each other—the one relating to what is familiar and comfortable, the other to what is concealed and kept hidden. Unheimlich is the antonym of heimlich only in the latter’s first sense, not in its second. […] The notion of the hidden and the dangerous […] undergoes a further development, so that heimlich acquires the sense that otherwise belongs to unheimlich […]. Heimlich thus becomes increasingly ambivalent, until it finally merges with its antonym unheimlich. The uncanny (das Unheimliche, ‘the unhomely’) is in some way a species of the familiar (das Heimliche, ‘the homely’). (Freud, The Uncanny 132)

The power behind Arabella’s beauty and the impulsiveness behind Mandryka’s breath of life, as well as his innocent Weltanschauung, are first the appealing and then the destructive, uncanny forces that will nearly turn the comedy into a tragedy. Mandryka’s mode of observation, which focuses on the immediate surroundings, and his impulsive nature prevent him from reasoning and grasping the broader context of the “game” he suspects. As Arabella pointedly remarks in the above citation: “what does not pertain to [Mandryka], does not concern [him]” (Hofmannsthal, Selected Plays and Libretti 581). Therefore, it is natural that he is persuaded of Arabella’s deception, because all material and immediate things lead him to that conclusion. Arabella, on the other hand, first acknowledges and admires Mandryka’s emotional nature, but she fails to understand it at the critical moment when his mode of observation leads him to the false conclusion that she has deceived him. Only when Zdenka, pretending to be Arabella, reveals her identity to everyone as well as the reasons why she gave the key to Matteo, does Arabella understand her sister, but also Mandryka and herself, in new ways: ARABELLA Zdenka dear, you are the better of us two. You have the kinder heart, and nothing for you exists, nothing in the world, except what your heart dictates to you. (624) ARABELLA: Zdenkerl, du bist die Bessere von uns zweien, du hast das liebevollere Herz, und nichts ist da für dich, nichts in der Welt, als was dein Herz dich heißt zu tun. (573)

This line is almost identical to the earlier one where Arabella describes Mandryka. Both Zdenka and Mandryka “think” with their hearts and are not at home in the calculating and artificial world of Vienna, where everyone plays double roles. Mandryka is the foreigner, “the unheimlicher other” from the outside, while Zdenka has been redressed as the un/heimliche from

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within.19 The revealing of Zdenka’s physical disguise and her heimliche physical existence has a more of symbolic than literal meaning. She, too, has to go through the process of acknowledging “the other” in herself, i.e., the repressed woman to whom she should find way back, as Arabella encourages her to do at the beginning of the play: ARABELLA My little Zdenka, there’s been something dangerous about you for some time. I think it’s time that you became a girl quite openly, and ended this masquerade. (547) ARABELLA: Zdenkerl, in dir steckt was Gefährliches seit letzter Zeit. Mir scheint, Zeit wärs, daß du ein Mädel wirst vor aller Welt und daß die Maskerad ein End hat. (523)

Zdenka, Mandryka, and Arabella all have to go through a process of getting to know everyone else and themselves, to discover das Unheimliche in themselves and come to terms with it. Although Arabella is innocent of deceiving Mandryka, she too discovers her uncanny side when she compares herself to her sister and to Mandryka—what is in her need not be her. She has played the role of seductress for too long and has let her admirers cherish too many hopes because she has been distant, rational, and unemotional. By the end of the play she understands what Zdenka tells her at the beginning: “I will not be a woman—a woman such as you. Flirtatious, cold, and proud as well” (547). She has been trained—costumed—as a Salondame, which she is not. Arabella’s rationality in confronting this duality is, however, both her weakness and her strength. What distinguishes her from Zdenka and Mandryka is her capacity to face reality from a distance as well as her language skills in conveying her thoughts and feelings to the others. She is thus equipped to be the guide in the process of Enlightenment which all three characters undergo. Arabella’s leading role in the process of Enlightenment unveils Hofmannsthal’s ideological biases towards Western-European values. An “enlightened” character is indeed the ultimate goal of this process, and, as Arens insightfully remarks regarding the poet’s cultural concept of the new nation, Hofmannsthal naïvely believes that Slavs can simply become German, “German” understood as a specific form of European culture with Renaissance-humanist values (Kovach 200). Thus the “Slavonian” ultimately has more changing to do than the “Viennese,” and since these characters stand for the respective cultural models, it means that the Slavonian cultural identity needs to adjust more to the Austrian model. Within the economy of the play it is nonetheless clear that Arabella and Mandryka need each other in order to become “better” people and complete

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individuals. However, Vienna cannot be the home for the “new,” “improved” people. The topos Vienna in Arabella symbolizes moral decadence (the Waldners are financially ruined because of the father’s gambling debts and hope that a rich relative will die and leave them money); inauthenticity (the double structure of the society, as mentioned on several occasions in this section); claustrophobia and closeness (the Waldners live in a hotel); and finally, intrigues, which add the attribute of femininity to the city. Nina Berman points out that Hofmannsthal depicted oriental cities as “confusing, seductive, disorienting, and potentially deadly” (17). She also offers insight into Hofmannsthal’s correspondence with Carl J. Burckhardt, in which he describes Marrakesh as a “pure, eternal, ancient and childlike, innocently fresh world” (15). In my own interpretation of Hofmannsthal’s short story Reitergeschichte (The Tale of the Cavalry [1898]), I argue that the city of Milan, which the Habsburg troops enter after their victory over the Italian insurgents, is equated with a woman and that the occupation of the city is thus equated with sexual dominance (192). In addition, the supposedly transparent Milan functions as an alibi that lures the main character into a nearby dangerous village, where he dies (Foteva 193–94). Hofmannsthal’s impression of Marrakesh, as described in his correspondence with Burckhardt, reveals additional details important for Arabella: My dear Burckhardt, it will be more difficult for me to part from this city than from any city in Europe. Even before daybreak I was delighted to be here—and in the evening, at sunset, on my flat steeple roof over the giant, buoyant market-place filled with people, when the snakecharmer, looking up to me, greeted me and prompted his audience to admire the noble and wise stranger, who time and again would have a royal present sent to him, while letting the five-franc bill flutter in the air with a magnificent gesture, and they, old people and youths applauded me friendlily for a short instant, I was happy again to be here, in this pure, eternal, ancient, and childlike, innocently fresh world.20 Mein Lieber, ich werde von dieser Stadt mich schwerer trennen als von irgendeiner Stadt in Europa. Schon vor Morgengrauen […], freute ich mich hier zu sein—und beim Sonnenuntergang, auf meinem flachen Turmdach über dem riesigen menschenschwimmenden Marktplatz, wenn der Schlangenbändiger, […] zu mir heraufgrüßte und seine Zuhörer aufforderte, den erhabenen und weisen Fremdling zu bewundern, der ihm abermals ein fürstliches Geschenk habe zukommen lassen, und dabei die Fünffrancs-Note mit einer prachtvollen Gebärde im Wind flattern ließ, und sie alle, Greise und Jünglinge, einen kurzen Augenblick mich freundlich applaudierten, war ich wieder froh, hier zu sein, in dieser reinen, ewigen, uralten und kindlich frischen Welt. (Hoffmansthal-Burckhardt 183)

Hofmannsthal projects fairy-tale features onto the Orient and displays Western cultural superiority indeed. In this, he certainly follows the nineteenth and early-twentieth century patterns of orientalist discourse, as

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Berman points out (16). But his economic superiority and generosity towards the locals are especially intriguing because in Arabella they will become features of both Mandryka Senior, who sprinkled tons of salt onto the streets of Verona so that a girl could ski in August (Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke: Operndichtungen 530), and Mandryka Junior, who treats the guests at the Viennese ball with gallons of champagne and mountains of roses (551). Yet another carnivalesque exchange of roles has taken place—the rich foreigners are now people from the southeastern margin of the empire, and the poor Orient is now the Habsburg metropolis Vienna. Considering Hofmannsthal’s ingenuity in the deployment of the double structure, we can safely assume that the role exchange is a message for the recipients to take on the role of the “other” in order to understand their position. In his last work, Arabella, Hofmannsthal retains some of his earlier patterns, but applies them in a manner different from that in his previous works. The dangerous, seductive, and feminine city is shifted from the Orient, or from the Western margins of the Habsburg Empire (Milan), to the center, Vienna, and the “pure, eternal, ancient and childlike, innocently fresh world” is shifted from Marrakesh to the southeastern margin of the Monarchy, Slavonia—a part of the Monarchy seeking a kind of understanding from the center. In addition, the depiction of Slavonia in Arabella evokes associations of free, unlimited space and control (“Mine are the forests, mine the villages” 566)21 and characterizes that control as innocent, using the strongest symbol of purity and innocence possible—the glass of fresh water from the well which the girls from Mandryka’s villages bring to their fiancés as a token of mutual belonging (547). In Arabella, the topos Slavonia is thus depicted as a non-existing, utopian space. It is not even present “physically” as setting in the plot of the play, but is evoked as an imaginary space through Mandryka’s descriptions. These are so powerful that they call forth Adelaide’s memories of her childhood as an attempt to escape reality: ADELAIDE What delicacy, O what charming country custom! I feel the air of my old home round me and my father’s castle, down there the village sleeping—(586) ADELAIDE: O welche Zartheit, bezaubernde ländliche Sitte! Ich fühle die Luft meiner Heimat um mich, und das Schloß meiner Väter, drunten schlummernd das Dorf—(550)

Slavonia functions within the whole play much as it does for Adelaide. It is juxtaposed to the dystopian Vienna and is the place where the project of Enlightenment which begins in the metropolis can be applied in an ideal way, in harmony with nature and undisturbed by the vices of the big city.

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Schäfer describes the Slavonia in Arabella as a green paradise, a secluded, “insular” space, a hortus conclusus. Even the parts depicted as cultured space receive something of this unspoiled state from the surrounding woods, which protect and harbor it, thus rendering the boundaries between the cultured space and an imaginary virgin landscape relative and indistinct (156). Schäfer also emphasizes Franz Tumler’s interpretation of Mandryka’s origin, which according to him has something “indeterminable” and flows into Slavonia from the sfumato sky stretching towards Asia (151). Bearing in mind the “Asian” quality of the Slavonia in Arabella, we must include Hofmannsthal’s notes on the relationships between Europe and Asia collected in the essay The Idea of Europe in the reading of this libretto. Here, he expresses his disappointment over the inner-European divisiveness of the time (the essay was published in 1916) and over the miscommunication between Western and Southeastern Europe, the latter to some extent part of Asia, and yet inevitably related to Europe: The tragicomedy of the European mandates. The division of the Western powers in the Crimean War. Incipient indifference toward this Europe in which remainders of the ancient world were primary objects of deliberation: the so-called “Orient;” Balkan lands; Europe. (Hoffmansthal, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Austrian Idea 92) Tragikomödie der europäischen Mandate, Abspaltung der Westmächte im Krimkrieg. Beginnende Unlust gegen dieses Europa in den vornehmlich sein Deliberationsobjekt bildenden Resten der antiken Welt: sog. “Orient”; Balkanländer; Europa. (Hofmannsthal, Prosa III 374)

Then he looks at Asia and perceives it as a “Paradise—the still present, primordial timelessness, “eternal. […] Human encounters instead of the functionality of the machine. […] The beauty of things” (95).22 Hofmannsthal regards the Asian “paradise” as spiritually and morally superior to Europe and as a model from which Europe should learn: It was to this Asia, at which Europe stared, that it handed the palm of victory. The self-confidence of this Asia. […] Listen to the condemnation of the European character, all the more crushing, the more dignified and without polemic it is. Listen to how Asia builds itself up, conscious of its unity, […]: conscious of its sublime inner existence, of that first birth of religious thinking […]. (95) Diesem Asien, auf das es mit ergriffenem Blick hinstarrte, hat Europa symbolisch die Palme gereicht. Selbstbewußtsein dieses Asien. […] Hören Sie die Verurteilung des europäischen Wesens, um so zermalmender als sie würdevoll und ohne Polemik ist. Hören Sie, wie Asia sich aufrichtet, seiner Einheit bewußt, […]: Bewußt seines erhabenen inneren Erbes, jener Erstgeburt des religiösen Denkens […]. (380)

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The topos Slavonia in Arabella is then a complex utopia which draws from the past but is directed towards the future. The depiction of Slavonia as a feudal and rural region evokes the 150 years of Ottoman rule in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, hence an Asian and/or oriental presence, and thus implies all the above-mentioned positive traits which Hofmannsthal attributes to Asia. The cultivation of Mandryka evokes the subsequent project of enlightened reforms pursued by the Habsburg Monarchy in order to bring this region culturally closer to the other parts of Croatia, which had been continuously under Habsburg rule. At the same time, Hofmannsthal develops a project of reuniting former margins of the Monarchy with their former center of Vienna through common cultural values which, to be sure, are negotiated and re-negotiated in the process of coming together. Vienna and Slavonia need each other in the same way Arabella and Mandryka need each other. Mandryka needs to cultivate his senses, and Arabella needs to regain authenticity in her emotions. This can happen only in an equal interaction of the two cultural modes symbolized by the geographical spaces and embodied in the two dramatis personae. In the kind of test familiar from Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte [1791]) Hofmannsthal has Arabella and Mandryka undergo a three-step process of illusion, disillusionment, and eventual maturation. In this process they almost fall into the abyss between Schein and Sein. This process is about acknowledging the external “other” by acknowledging the “other” in oneself. Things most obvious and probable should not be taken as obvious and probable. Neither reason nor the senses are enough to overcome the gap between Schein and Sein. Mandryka suspects rightly that a “game,” i.e., a masquerade, has taken place, but his senses and reason cannot help him get to the bottom of things. The “game” is not the one he suspects it to be. Likewise, the audience should not draw conclusions on the basis of the audiovisual presentation and the structure of the play. It must follow Arabella and Mandryka in the process they undergo. Arabella is a fictional counterpart to Hofmannsthal’s program for a “new European idea: new reality. Not a utopia, not a confederation, not a permanent conference, although all these things can come—but rather a new European self, a changed relationship of the self to existence, to money” (96). As Bogosavljevi! rightly concludes, Arabella and Mandryka are intended to marry for money, but they marry for love (Robertson and Timms, Theater and Performance in Austria 77), and they both change and become better individuals. However, the reasons, why the Slavic character is a Croat, and not a Czech or a Pole, are not merely political, i.e., cannot be reduced to the Croats’ loyalty to the Habsburg Emperor and to Austria’s search for a new sphere of interest in the Balkans after the Dual Compromise (73–74). Much to the contrary, Hofmannsthal understands the discontent of the

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Balkan peoples towards Western Europe, as we can see clearly in The Idea of Europe, and does not justify Western European politics towards that region. The Slavonian character, whose ethnicity is never mentioned, symbolizes rather the regional identity, as opposed to the national one, as well as the bridge between Western and Southeastern Europe, and the latter is perceived and depicted by Hofmannsthal not only as Slavic, but also as slightly oriental and Asian. Arabella is therefore a utopian model for communication not only between “the old European, Latin-German and the new European, Slavic world” (Hofmannsthal, The Austrian Idea 101), i.e., the peoples of the former Habsburg Monarchy, but also for a new Austria, an Austria that would not be a bulwark against the Turks, but a bridge to the Orient, and a new Europe that would not be defined in binary opposition to Asia. There is no place for the traditional national, or political, paradigm in this utopian project, because that paradigm is an exclusive, ethnically and linguistically strictly defined concept and thus in direct opposition to Hofmannsthal’s culturally comprehensive approach. The Radetzky M arch: Habsburg Identity between Irony and Utopia We saw in the previous section that national identity was meant to be overcome in Hofmannsthal’s treatment of the Habsburg geographical and cultural space in his libretto Arabella. The Croatian region of Slavonia was “deprived” of all concrete national and geopolitical qualities and was merely used as an imaginary, utopian space for Hofmannsthal’s program of a future “a-national nation” based on cultural values. Unlike Hofmannsthal, Joseph Roth elaborates explicitly on the conflict between national and supranational Habsburg identity in his novel The Radetzky March (1932). I argue that Roth’s perspective on Habsburg supranational identity in The Radetzky March is divided between nostalgia and irony. He deals with legacies, as did Hofmannsthal, but unlike Hofmannsthal, he does not offer a program based in the past and directed towards the future. The narrator’s tone when referring to the old Monarchy is “tender and spiteful at once” (Roth, The Radetzky March 26), two qualities he attributes to the nasal German of the Habsburg higher civil servants and nobility. At the same time, the characters’ fate in the novel and the function of historical events in the structure of the plot present the victory of the national over the supranational paradigm as tragic and senseless, but as an unavoidable outcome that is out of control. My other argument is that Roth’s own approach to border regions and fluid identities is presented from a critical distance through the history of the von Trotta family—that he understands what these regions and identities imply, but does not have the faith that they can adapt to the future that

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Hofmannsthal had in mind. I will therefore interpret Trotta’s family history both as a personal identity crisis related to the question of a national versus a supranational paradigm, as well as a symbol of Roth’s general concern with the identity shift from a supranational to a national paradigm in the last decades of the Habsburg Monarchy. A short overview of Roth’s political views will help us compare the resigned tone of The Radetzky March with Roth’s elaborate but sometimes naïve anti-nationalist political program. In his analysis of Roth’s publications on nationalism and politics Alfred Riemen quotes a passage from Das neue Tagebuch (The New Diary) of 1934, in which Roth claims that he lost his homeland, Austria, “before whose gates the Tatars once had to halt, and now the Germans” (Riemen 375).23 Riemen concludes that Roth is referring to an Austria that is in fact a representative of the state which Roth considers to be the true Austria, in other words the old Habsburg Empire, which was reduced to the German-speaking part in 1919. Roth, however, kept his faith in the reemergence of a new supranational empire from this reduced Austria (375). Riemen further explains that Roth hoped for a reestablishment of supranational institutions as the only efficient weapons against nationalism (379). The Monarchy was, in Roth’s view, one of those institutions because it was the only state form capable of preventing dictatorship (386). Roth expected the remaining members of the Habsburg family to save Austria from Hitler and to establish a new Holy Roman Empire which would not be bound to one nation. Two other weapons against nationalism were, in Roth’s opinion, the Catholic Church, which was also a supranational institution (383), and the Jews from Eastern Europe (Ostjuden), who were neither Russians nor Poles, but cosmopolitans, and whose lot was thus never to become a nation (380). Joan Acocella emphasizes Michael Hoffman’s position that “in Roth’s mind Catholicism equaled Judaism, in the sense that both crossed frontiers and thus fostered a transnational, European culture, the thing that Hitler stood poised to destroy, and that Roth so treasured” (8). Le Rider, on the other hand, claims that Hofmannsthal’s passion for the supranational Habsburg ideal reflected his hidden Jewish origins and his support for the position of the Jews as “a Volk […] best placed to comprehend the […] idea of supranationality,” considering this perception of the Jews as a supranational nation to be “the meeting place of Hofmannsthal with Joseph Roth” (Robertson and Timms, The Habsburg Legacy 127). Both Riemen (392) and Ian Reifowitz (120) point to Roth’s emigration experience after 1933 as a watershed in his writings on the Habsburg Monarchy. Reifowitz claims: “After 1933, the year that began with Hitler’s seizure of power in Germany, Roth’s nuanced portrait of Austria transformed into an idealized version of a multinational paradise that barely resembled

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the quality of the past” (Reifowitz 121). The idealized picture of Austria after 1933 should therefore be clearly distinguished from the irony and resignation present in The Radetzky March. An important theme in The Radetzky March related to the questions of nation and identity is indeed the border region. Edward Timms elaborates on Roth’s position on borders, categorizing three essential border themes in Roth’s journalistic work: Roth’s criticism of unnatural borders; his fondness of borderland people (Grenzmenschen); and his defense of emigrants from borderlands (Timms, “Joseph Roth, die Grenzländer und die Grenzmenschen” 421). The first two themes are essential for Roth’s positions on identity and nation in The Radetzky March. As Timms explains, Roth’s concept of “unnatural borders” was a reaction to the post-World-WarI proliferation of new state borders where they had never existed before (422). Immediately after World War I, in a report from Western Hungary, Roth condemned the political negotiations that had led to new state borders as reflecting a “ chess board mentality,” which was detached from reality (422).24 Reporting from Katowice in Upper Silesia, Roth also claimed that the simple man did not know whether he was German or Polish (Reifowitz 422). According to Timms, Roth coined the term Grenzmenschen for his favorite type of people and used it first in the above-mentioned diary, Das neue Tagebuch, in 1934 to refer to the Ostjuden between Poland and Russia (“Joseph Roth, die Grenzländer und die Grenzmenschen” 426). He praised the city of Lemberg for its linguistic diversity and projected harmony and cosmopolitanism onto it, while ignoring the intensifying national conflicts in the background (426). The aspect of The Radetkzy March on which my analysis will focus is the interdependence between individual identity formation and the state’s identity politics. The Radetzky March is an ideal case study for this topic because it depicts the process of sea change in political and cultural symbols and myths as a formative factor in the development of individual identity. Three generations of the same family undergo this process of change from 1859 to 1914, thus illustrating how precarious and tragic it can be. The novel also illustrates how the common cultural legacy which created supranational and fluid identities such as those of the Grenzmenchen was ousted by the national paradigm, which has remained the most important identity factor both in Central Europe and in the Balkans ever since. Jan Schlosser elaborates in detail on the identity crisis of the first ennobled member of the von Trotta family, as it is depicted in the chapter on Solferino in The Radetkzy March. Schlosser’s instructive argument is that the moment in which the first von Trotta, “the hero of Solferino,” saves Francis Joseph’s life becomes fatal for the former’s identity and alienates him from his peasant origins. From this moment on, von Trotta experiences a deep

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crisis of identity whose key features are self-alienation from his origins rooted in rural Slovenia and personified in the character of his father, and alienation from the Monarchy (186–87). Schlosser focuses on social factors as a source of alienation and on the criticism which the hero of Solferino directs towards the Habsburg Monarchy. He claims that von Trotta manages to find himself again only for a short period before his death and that this “temporary self-discovery” is possible due to the social utopia of the private sphere (190). Whereas Schlosser observes the alienation of the von Trotta family from a socio-political point of view and relates it to political criticism of the Monarchy, I will discuss the identity of the family as a “double consciousness” (cf. Gilroy 1) which becomes an identity crisis in the course of the historical change from a supranational to a national paradigm. Captain Joseph Trotta does indeed experience his ennoblement, symbolized in the title “von Sipolje,” as self-alienation, “[As] if his own life had been traded for a new and alien life manufactured in a workshop” (Roth, The Radetzky March 3), as well as alienation from his father: “But to the decorated, aristocratic captain, […] his own father had suddenly moved far away […]” (3). However, it is equally important that Captain Trotta’s father, too, feels alienated from his son and expresses his alienation by his inability to speak to him in Slovenian: Just five years ago he had still been speaking Slovenian to his son, although the boy understood only a few words and never produced a single one himself. But today it might strike the old man as an audacious intimacy to hear his mother tongue used by his son, who had been removed so far by the grace of Fate and Emperor, while the captain focused on the father’s lips in order to greet the first sound as a familiar remoteness and lost homeyness. (Roth, The Radetzky March 5) Vor fünf Jahren noch hatte er zu seinem Sohn slowenisch gesprochen, obwohl der Junge nur ein paar Worte verstand und nicht ein einziges selbst hervorbrachte. Heute aber mochte dem Alten der Gebrauch seiner Muttersprache von dem so weit durch die Gnade des Schicksals und des Kaisers entrückten Sohn als eine gewagte Zutraulichkeit erscheinen, während der Hauptmann auf die Lippen des Vaters achtete, um den ersten slowenischen Laut zu begrüßen, wie etwas vertraut Fernes und verloren Heimisches. (Roth, Radetzkymarsch 10–11)

For Captain von Trotta, the Slovenian language and identity are already no more than a childhood memory, a mixture of heimlich and unheimlich, as indicated by the phrase “familiar remoteness and loss homeyness.” A feeling of loss is clearly present in von Trotta’s consciousness, but it had developed before his heroic deed and the beginning of his new life as a nobleman. It is a sense of loss that can be associated more with the loss of childhood’s innocence and feelings of security than with the loss of national identity. Captain Trotta’s “original” identity was not national, but that of a peasant

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community which incidentally spoke some Slavic language. Therefore, the disruption in Captain Trotta’s identity is described by the narrator as a detachment from the identity of a Slavic, not Slovenian peasant: “Captain Trotta was severed from the long procession of his Slavic peasant forebears. A new dynasty began with him” (The Radetzky March 6). The last sentence should be interpreted as literal and ironic at the same time. It is literal because the family does achieve social advancement, which distinguishes it from the original peasant community, and because the ennoblement creates a basis for the Austrian supranational identity of the family. Nonetheless, the only member of the family who identifies entirely with the supranational Austrian identity is the district captain, the son of the hero of Solferino, i.e., the second generation of the ennobled Trottas. Describing the peculiar eating habits of the district captain, the narrator concludes: “He was a Spartan. But he was also an Austrian” (25). This definition does not lack irony either, especially if we consider the preceding description of the ritualized Sunday lunches which the district captain has with his son: Herr von Trotta und Sipolje ate very swiftly, sometimes fiercely. He virtually destroyed one course after another with a noiseless, aristocratic, and rapid malice; he was wiping them out. He ate the most important morsels with his eyes, so to speak; his sense of beauty consumed above all the essence of the food—its soul, as it were; the vapid remainders that then reached mouth and palate were boring and had to be wolfed down without delay. (25) Herr von Trotta und Sipolje aß sehr schnell, manchmal grimmig. Es war, als vernichtete er mit geräuschloser, adeliger und flinker Gehässigkeit einen Gang um den anderen, er machte ihnen den Garaus. (33) Es war, als äße er die wichtigsten Stücke mit den Augen, sein Schönheitssinn verzehrte vor allem den Gehalt der Speisen, gewissermaßen ihr Seelisches; der schale Rest, der dann in Mund und Gaumen gelangte, war langweilig und mußte unverzüglich verschlungen werden. (34)

The meal is for the “ideal” Austrian an aesthetic, but not a sensual experience. Once deprived of the form, the food does not retain any value and is devoured hastily and without interest. The eating habits of the district captain stand as pars pro toto for his philosophy of life, which is based on his identification with form, and the form is symbolized by the Monarchy and the emperor. The substance is ignored, but the district captain is not aware of that. The first von Trotta, however, is well aware of the lack of substance in the identity and form of the Monarchy. His disenchantment with the Monarchy, to which he had been sincerely devoted, is provoked by the forged report on the battle of Solferino he reads in his son’s history book,

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which misrepresents the actual event (Roth, Radetzkymarsch 13). Although Trotta’s intervention with the emperor himself results in the removal of the section from the schoolbook, Trotta never regains his original belief in the Monarchy: He had been driven from the paradise of faith in Emperor and Virtue, Truth, and Justice, and, now fettered in silence and endurance, he may have realized that the stability of the world, the power of laws, and the glory of majesties were all based on deviousness. (11) Vertrieben war er aus dem Paradies der einfachen Gläubigkeit an Kaiser und Tugend, Wahrheit und Recht, und, gefesselt in Dulden und Schweigen, mochte er erkennen, daß die Schlauheit den Bestand der Welt sicherte, die Kraft der Gesetze und den Glanz der Majestäten. (17–18)

Trotta leaves the Army and retreats to the estate of his father-in-law in Western Bohemia. The narrator reports: Penny-pinching and distrustful, he made his purchases, his sharp fingers fishing coins from the stingy leather pouch and slipping it back upon his chest. He became a little Slovenian peasant. (12) Knauserig und mißtrauisch erledigte er Einkäufe, zog mit spitzen Fingern Münzen aus dem filzigen Ledersäckchen und barg es wieder an der Brust. Er wurde ein kleiner slowenischer Bauer. (18)

A few lines further, the narrator presents Trotta’s process of becoming a Slovenian peasant as complete, as if he needs to reassure himself that the process has been successful: He was a little Slovenian peasant, that Baron Trotta. Twice a week, […] he still wrote his father a letter […] the salutation Dear Father […]. He very seldom received an answer. (12) Er war ein kleiner, alter, slowenischer Bauer, der Baron von Trotta. Immer noch schrieb er zweimal im Monat, […] dem Vater einen Brief, […] die Anrede “lieber Vater!” Sehr selten erhielt er eine Antwort. (19)

Von Trotta first has to “become” a Slovenian peasant, which implies he was not one before. What qualifies him as such in the eyes of the narrator is his mistrust and frugality. These traits, as well as the adjective “klein,” are undoubtedly elements of a stereotypical presentation that aims at depicting the “Slovenian essence” and should be taken with a grain of salt when we consider the novel in its entirety. Roth most likely possessed a general knowledge of Slovenian history and was acquainted with the fact that only the peasant population in Slovenia

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concentrated in rural communities spoke Slovenian, whereas the urban population was entirely under Austro-German cultural influence (Arnez 28). However, the stereotypical qualifications mentioned above go beyond historical facts. It seems that Roth uses stereotypes and, as we shall see later on, geographical inconsistencies as well, to make his plots work. Roth’s use of stereotypes and inconsistencies, in fact, seems to be based on ironic distance, not only from the narrator and the characters, but also from the discourse of the Habsburg supranational identity, which is often present in the narrator’s and the characters’ language. The irony towards the discourse of Habsburg identity is noticeable in von Trotta’s “Slovenian existence.” Von Trotta “becomes” a Slovenian peasant on the estate of his father-inlaw in Western Bohemia. This is the first contradiction in his “Slovenian existence.” A Slovenian peasant can be defined as such only if he lives and works on a Slovenian piece of land, because he gains his identity from that concrete peasant community bound to a specific geographical location. Therefore, living the life of a Slovenian peasant in Western Bohemia is a paradox. The stereotypical presentation of the Slovenian peasant in the thirdperson narrator’s description above should compensate for the paradoxical displacement of the peasant from the original piece of land and for the concrete, everyday life of Slovenian peasants, which is never depicted as it is actually lived in Slovenia. The second contradiction in von Trotta’s “Slovenian existence” emerges from his relationship to his father: Now he was closer to the war invalid at Laxenburg Castle than years ago, […]. He never discussed his background with his wife. He sensed that an embarrassed pride would come between the daughter of the older dynasty of civil servants and a Slovenian sergeant, so he never asked his father to visit him. (12) Jetzt war er dem Invaliden im Laxenburg Schloß wieder näher als vor Jahren, […]. Mit der Frau sprach er nie von seiner Abkunft. Er fühlte, daß die Tochter des Staatsbeamtengeschlechtes ein verlegener Hochmut von einem slowenischen Wachtmeister trennen würde. Also lud er den Vater nicht ein. (19)

The narrator tells us that von Trotta feels he becomes closer to his father. The temporal adverb “now,” which denotes the time after von Trotta retires and begins to live the life of a Slovenian peasant, also fulfills a causal function: von Trotta now feels closer to his father because he lives the life of a Slovenian peasant. However, two items of information refute von Trotta’s feeling of closeness to his father, as well as the previous claim by the narrator that von Trotta becomes a Slovenian peasant. His father has never responded to his letters, and von Trotta is so embarrassed before his wife by his father’s Slovenian peasant origin that he does not talk to her about him and does not invite him to Bohemia. There is also a discrepancy between the

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narrator’s assertions and the information about the characters we receive from him. Von Trotta does not become a Slovenian peasant on the estate of his father-in-law in Western Bohemia—one cannot reverse history, except in myth. He attempts to revive his lost identity and ends up living in an inbetween psychological state, alienated from his Bohemian wife as well as from his Slovenian father. Von Trotta gives up his military existence and wears his uniform only once a year, on August 18, when he drives to the nearest town with a garrison to take part in the birthday celebration of the emperor. There is a double inauthenticity in von Trotta’s existence: he can be neither a Slovenian peasant, nor an Austrian officer. His grandson will inherit this conflict of double rejection in his search for an authentic identity. Von Trotta’s disappointment with the military and his alienation from his peasant origins prompt him to choose the profession of civil servant for his son. District Captain von Trotta, unlike his father and son, is one with his Austrian Habsburg identity. He is a nobleman and a civil servant—a social status and a profession which symbolize the Monarchy. His life reflects on a personal level the order and ceremony of the Monarchy’s public sphere. Moreover, it seems that his life consists only of the public sphere and has no private component. Having sent his son to a military academy in his teenage years, he sees him only in the summer, and their communication is formal and stiff. On Sundays, the district captain reserves exactly three hours for his son, in which he interrogates the teenager: “How is Herr Colonel Marek?” “Thank you, Papá, he’s fine.” “Still weak in geometry?” “Thank you, Papá, a little better.” “Read any books?” “Yessir, Papá!” […] (22–23) “Was macht Herr Oberst Marek?” “Danke, Papá, es geht ihm gut!” “In der Geometrie immer noch schwach?” “Danke, Papá, etwas better.” “Bücher gelesen?” “Jawohl, Papá!” […] (29)

The father makes sure that his son cherishes the memory of his heroic grandfather and follows in his footsteps. The third-person narrator reports the child’s feelings for the Imperial Royal House of Habsburg in a combination of free indirect speech and psycho-narration (Hermann and Vervaeck 22– 24): He loved them all sincerely, with a child’s devoted heart—more than anyone else the Kaiser, who was kind and great, sublime and just, infinitely remote and very close, and particularly fond of the officers in the army. It would be best to die for him amid military music, easiest with “The Radetzky March.” (23–24) Er liebte sie alle aufrichtig, mit einem kindlich erhabenen Herzen, vor allen anderen den Kaiser, der gütig war und groß, erhaben und gerecht, unendlich fern

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The free indirect speech here creates the impression that the narrator may share the character’s feelings. However, the third-person narration indicates that the distance between character and narrator remains, thus enabling the narrator to take an ironic stance in the last sentence. The passage clearly represents the fantasy of a teenager nourished by his father’s repetition of the myth about his grandfather and the Habsburg dynasty—he is being indoctrinated into an imagined community that will not work in his favor. Carl Joseph’s identity crisis begins with his tragic love experience. Immediately after the death of his beloved, Missis Slama, his father takes him on a journey to Vienna. On the train, Carl Joseph suddenly begins projecting his grandfather onto his father: His love was dead, but his heart was open to his father’s nostalgia, and he began to sense that behind the district captain’s bony hardness someone else was hidden, a mysterious yet familiar man, a Trotta, descendant of a Slovenian war invalid and of the singular Hero of Solferino. (39) Seine Liebe war tot, aber sein Herz aufgetan der väterlichen Wehmut, und er begann zu ahnen, daß hinter der knöchernen Härte des Bezirkshauptmanns ein anderer verborgen war, ein Geheimnisvoller und dennoch Vertrauter, ein Trotta, Abkömmling eines slowenischen Invaliden und des merkwürdigen Helden von Solferino. (50)

This initial projection will soon become Carl Joseph’s obsession with his grandfather’s legacy, and his adult identity will revolve around it. As a member of the Ulan Regiment, Carl Joseph serves in a little town whose name the narrator does not relate, but he provides us with other important details about the town’s character: The barracks lay in the northern part of the town. […] The barracks looked as if it had been thrust into the Slavic province by the Imperial and Royal Army as an emblem of the Habsburg might. The ancient highway itself, which had become so broad and roomy after centuries of migrating Slavic generations, was blocked by the barracks. The highway had to yield. […] The regiment was stationed in Moravia. (58) Im Norden der Stadt lag die Kaserne. […] Es schien, als wäre die Kaserne als ein Zeichen der habsburgischen Macht von der kaiser- und königlichen Armee in die slawische Provinz hineingestellt worden. Der uralten Landstraße selbst, die von der jahrhundertlangen Wanderung slawischer Geschlechter so breit und geräumig geworden war, verstellte sie den Weg. Die Landstraße mußte ihr ausweichen. […] Das Regiment war in Mähren gelegen. (72–73)

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This description is not told from the perspective of a character, but is rather a seemingly objective report by the third-person narrator, which creates a parallel between the family history of von Trotta and the identity of this Moravian town. The Slavic peasant element in the von Trotta family has to make way for the Austro-German military identity, just as the Moravian country road has to make way for the barracks of the Habsburg Army. This anonymous Slavic region is related to the Slovenia of The Radetzky March, which is not a concrete geographical space, but rather fulfills the function of a symbolic topos and could be replaced by any other Slavic border region in the Habsburg Monarchy. The family history of the von Trottas is likewise symbolic. Both Slovenia and the von Trottas are symbols of the Austro-Slavic mixture in the Habsburg Monarchy in the last sixty years of the Monarchy’s existence. They also symbolize the many fluid and comprehensive identities that existed during the victorious march of the ethnically defined national paradigm. However, we must differentiate between the function of the topos Slovenia in the novel and in Carl Joseph’s life and identity as a character in the novel. The two are closely related and sometimes seem to be intertwined. The narrative never provides a direct report from Slovenia. All we know about Sipolje is reported through Carl Joseph’s imagination. In his imagination, besides the idyllic picture of his ancestors’ rural life, he also provides many physical details of his grandfather’s village: He went over to the strategic map, the only wall decoration in this room. He could have found Sipolje in his sleep. It lay in the extreme south of the monarchy—the good, quiet village. […] Nearby were: a well, a water mill, the small station of a single-track forest railroad, a church and a mosque, a young broad-leafed wood, narrow forest trails, dirt roads, and lonesome cottages. It is evening in Sipolje. At the well, the women stand in particolored kerchiefs tinted golden by the glowing sunset. The Muslims lie in prayer on the old rugs in the mosque. […] It was the intimate game he had played as a cadet. The familiar images emerged instantly. His grandfather’s enigmatic gaze shone over everything. (115) Er trat vor die Generalstabskarte, den einzigen Wandschmuck in seinem Zimmer. Mitten im Schlaf hätte er Sipolje finden können. Im äußersten Süden der Monarchie lag es, das stille, gute Dorf. […] In der Nähe waren: ein Ziehbrunnen, eine Wassermühle, der kleine Bahnhof einer eingleisigen Waldbahn, eine Kirche und eine Moschee, ein junger Laubwald, schmale Waldpfade, Feldwege und ein einsames Häuschen. Es ist Abend in Sipolje. Vor dem Brunnen stehen die Frauen in bunten Kopftüchern, golden überschminkt vom glühenden Sonnenuntergang. Die Moslems liegen auf den alten Teppichen der Moschee im Gebet. […] Es war das vertraute Spiel aus der Kadettenzeit. Die gewohnten Bilder kamen auf den ersten Wink. Über alles glänzte der rätselhafte Blick des Großvaters. (140)

Slovenia and Sipolje undoubtedly have a utopian function for Carl Joseph. The picture of the village tinted gold by the glowing sun, the enigmatic gaze

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of his grandfather, and even the many details that lend fictional authenticity to the image are daydreams. One thing, however, breaks the logic of the fantasy. Apparently, Carl Joseph can locate the village on the military map in the southernmost part of the Monarchy, i.e., its geographical position should be understood as realistic. However, this part of the Monarchy in the days of his grandfather was Vojvodina, and in Carl Joseph’s days it was BosniaHerzegovina. Slovenia lies further to the North—it is not really the border. Another question is why the narrative presents Carl Joseph imagining a mosque and praying Moslems. The Moslem element in Slovenia is insignificant, indeed almost nonexistent, and so is the number of mosques. That story is a pure fabrication of imagination. We can conclude preliminarily that the absence of the “real” Slovenia in an otherwise realistic novel fulfills the function of a utopian border region for the fictional character of Carl Joseph. Pointing out these and a few other inconsistencies in the representation of geography and history in the novel, Mira Miladinovi#-Zalaznik concludes that it would be pointless to suggest that Joseph Roth did not know the geography and history of Europe, his own country, and the Balkans, or that he confused different facts, since as a correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung he traveled through Europe and wrote numerous articles about his experiences and things he learned in the country he called “Südslawien” (Southslavia) (30). “Südslawien” is a literal translation of the designation Yugoslavia, because the word jug means south in the Slavic languages of the former Yugoslavia. Regarding the imaginary space of Slovenia, Armin Wallas first offers an argument similar to the one I make above, saying that the borderlands Slovenia and Galicia gain reality as possible places of residence only through the imagination of Carl Joseph von Trotta (58). Further along, however, Wallas claims that despite Roth’s critique of the Habsburg Monarchy and the depiction of Carl Joseph von Trotta’s tragic fate, he considered the Monarchy a role model for cultural and ethnic diversity. In addition, Wallas asserts that Roth’s awareness of un-belonging conditioned by his Jewish origin made him sensitive to border regions and to the alienation and isolation of the individual in concrete social reality. In Wallas’s view, Roth establishes a corresponding parallel between Slovenia and Galicia as two border regions (58) to contrast the Slavic “life-world,” which in this case corresponds to the culture of Eastern Jewry, as a positive ideal with the signs of disintegration of the modern world. At the same time, Roth’s fondness for these marginal cultures demonstrates his resistance to the ideology of nationalism (62). Wallas thus considers the utopian quality of Slovenia to be the ideological message on the level of the novel, not just a projection of Carl Joseph’s character.

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In my view, Roth distances himself both from the stereotypes in the text, as we saw in the description of von Trotta’s life in Bohemia, as well as from the utopian projections of the fictional character Carl Joseph. In fact, I believe that the above geographical and historical inconsistencies should therefore be regarded as a part of Carl Joseph’s, and not Roth’s, perspective. Carl Joseph’s identity crisis and alienation arise from the crisis in the identity symbols and myths of his time. He seeks a utopian escapade in Slovenia in order to escape a reality in which the unifying force of the Habsburg myth with which he grew up can no longer sustain itself. But he has been influenced by the Habsburg myth to such an extent that he cannot perceive the reality without projecting the myth onto it. The village he can find on the map “in his sleep” is not at all the actual Sipolje. The village on the map is Carl Joseph’s imaginary Sipolje, onto which he projects Habsburgian unity in diversity. Thus, in the imagination of the Austrian officer of Slovenian stock, who nonetheless has never visited Slovenia, the oriental Islamic culture of Bosnia-Herzegovina merges into one with the Catholic rural culture of Slovenia. Carl Joseph combines the stories about Slovenia from his childhood with the official imagination of BosniaHerzegovina in the Habsburg Monarchy, thus creating his own private utopia. His respect for the Monarchy’s diversity politics and affinity for border regions with fluid supranational identities notwithstanding, Roth is aware of the crisis in the symbols and myths and expresses this awareness through the distance the narrator takes from Carl Joseph’s observations and projections. Carl Joseph’s utopian projections onto Slovenia should be read as a parallel to his experience of the Corpus Christi procession in Vienna—seeing things he does not entirely understand, and definitely not in a forward-looking way. Before Carl Joseph attends the procession, in consequence, he listens to Count Chojnicki’s tirade about the end of the empire and the vices of democracy and modernity: Impious, derisive, fearless, and without qualms, Chojnicki used to say that the Kaiser was mindless and senile, the government a gang of nincompoops, the Imperial Council a gathering of gullible and grandiloquent idiots, and the national authorities venal, cowardly, and lazy. The German Austrians were waltzers and boozy crooners, the Hungarians stank, the Czechs were born bootlickers, the Ruthenians were treacherous Russians in disguise, the Croats and Slovenes, whom he called Cravats and Slobbers, were brush makers and chestnut roasters, and the Poles, of whom he himself was one after all, were skirt chasers, and fashion photographers. Every time he came home from Vienna […], he would deliver a gloomy lecture, which went more or less: “This empire is doomed. The instant the Kaiser shuts his eyes, we’ll crumble into a hundred pieces. The Balkans will be more powerful than we. All the nations will set up their own filthy little states, and even the Jews are going to proclaim a

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Reifowitz claims that Roth acknowledged through Chojnicki that AustriaHungary was not a paradise (124). Chojnicki is indeed the realistic and cynical counterbalance to the daydreaming Carl Joseph, who has lost his sense of reality. The narrator describes Chojnicki as unbelieving and derisive, but also fearless. Chojnicki, unlike Carl Joseph, is not afraid to face reality, as grim and ugly as it may be. His criticism of the institutions of the Monarchy is fully justified, but the insulting ethnic stereotypes should be a warning sign that Roth and Chojnicki are not one and the same voice. Roth did consider the modern world and the ideas of nationalism, democracy, and equality to be the destructive forces of his world (Reifowitz 120). But the narrator signals that Chojnicki is holding a lecture, explaining to the audience how things really are, delivering his platitudes from the position of an arrogant know-it-all. Chojnicki may be Roth’s tool of unconscious self-criticism of his mistrust in democracy and modernity, just as Carl Joseph may symbolize Roth’s self-criticism of his utopian projections onto the border regions and the diversity of the Monarchy. The soldiers present at Chojnicki’s “lecture” dismiss his prognosis with laughter, but Carl Joseph, “more sensitive than his comrades, […] sometimes felt the dark weight of these prophecies” (136). And yet, against his better judgment, Carl Joseph goes to Vienna to attend the Corpus Christi procession: Inside Carl Joseph the old childish and heroic dreams surfaced, the ones that had filled him and made him happy during vacations at home, on his father’s balcony, when he had heard the strains of “The Radetzky March.” […] The lieutenant thought about his grandfather, the Hero of Solferino, and the unshakable

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patriotism of [his] father […]. He thought about his holy mission to die for the Kaiser […]. The porcelain-blue eyes of the Supreme Commander in Chief—eyes grown cold in so many portraits on so many walls in the empire and now filled with a new fatherly solicitude and benevolence […]. The blood-red fezzes on the heads of the azure Bosnians burned in the sun like tiny bonfires lit by Islam in honor of His Apostolic Majesty. […] (192) The bells tolled from St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the salutes of the Roman Church, presented to the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. […] Carl Joseph […] saw the golden radiance streaming from the procession and he did not hear the dark beating of the vultures’ wings. For they were already circling over the two-headed eagle of the Hapsburgs—vultures, the eagle’s brotherly foes. No, the world was not going under, as Chojnicki had said; you could see with your own eyes that it was very much alive. The inhabitants of this city surged across the broad Ring Street, cheerful subjects of His Apostolic Majesty, all of them members of his court retinue. The entire city was simply a gigantic outer court of his palace. (193–34) In Carl Joseph standen die alten kindischen und heldischen Träume auf, die ihn zu Hause, in den Ferien auf dem väterlichen Balkon, bei den Klängen des Radetzkymarsch erfüllt und beglückt hatten. […] Der Leutnant dachte an seinen Großvater, den Helden von Solferino, und an den unerschütterlichen Patriotismus seines Vaters […]. Er dachte an seine eigene, heilige Aufgabe, für den Kaiser zu sterben […]. Das porzellanblaue Auge des Allerhöchsten Kriegsherrn, erkältet auf so vielen Bildern an so vielen Wänden des Reiches, füllte sich mit neuer, väterlicher Huld […]. Die blutroten Feze auf den Köpfen der hellblauen Bosniaken brannten in der Sonne wie kleine Freudenfeuerchen, angezündet vom Islam zu Ehren Seiner Apostolischen Majestät. […] (234) Vom Stephansdom dröhnten die Glocken die Grüße der römischen Kirche, entboten dem Römischen Kaiser Deutscher Nation. […] Carl Joseph […] sah den goldenen Glanz, den die Prozession verströmte, und er hörte nicht den düsteren Flügelschlag der Geier. Denn über dem Doppeladler der Habsburger kreisten sie schon, die Geier, seine brüderlichen Feinde. (235) Nein, die Welt ging nicht unter, wie Chojnicki gesagt hatte, man sah mit eigenen Augen, wie sie lebte! Über die breite Ringstraße zogen die Bewohner dieser Stadt, fröhliche Untertanen der Apostolischen Majestät, alles Leute aus seinem Hofgesinde. Die ganze Stadt war nur ein riesengroßer Burghof. (236)

Carl Joseph, who grew up with the myth of his grandfather and the Imperial and Royal House of Habsburg, perceives the procession with childish naïveté. The narrator makes it clear that such dreams of childhood play the key role in the lieutenant’s perception. Again, the utopian projections onto Slovenia and the identification with the Habsburg Monarchy merge into one another in Carl Joseph’s mind as he follows the procession. From this perspective it is clear that for him the diversity of the Monarchy is projected onto Slovenia, which explains the mosque and the praying Moslems in Sipolje. Overall, it is clear that Carl Joseph cannot grasp the Zeitgeist in which he lives. He is at home only in his utopian fantasy about Slovenia and in the world of dying myths and symbols. The narrator signals this unequivocally with the symbolic remark about the vultures as the evil doppelgängers of the

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eagle. The narration deals masterfully with Carl Joseph’s naïve perception, on the one hand, and the ironic criticism of the stiff world of anachronistic forms and symbols on the other. The procession could also be interpreted as the juxtaposition of presence and absence, that is, of performative art and technology, or of tradition and modernity. Benjamin (Das Kunstwerk 11–12) was the first to clearly outline the principal difference between works of art created before and after the technological breakthroughs of the late nineteenth century, which changed the basis for consciousness: “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. […] The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity. […] The whole sphere of authenticity is outside technical—and, of course, not only technical—reproducibility” (“The Work of Art,” 1169). The ubiquitous photographs of the emperor on which his porcelain-blue eyes are frozen, seemingly dead, are reproductions without presence and authenticity. But the physical appearance of the emperor in the procession should denote the presence and authenticity of the Habsburg myth, and in Carl Joseph’s view it does. Carl Joseph perceives the myth with childish innocence and does not question its somewhat contradictory content, e.g., the function of the fezzes as symbols of Islam in the display of respect for the Catholic Apostolic Majesty; nor does he wonder why most of the spectators are members of the emperor’s court retinue. The supposed authenticity of the procession is from the narrator’s point of view just another form of inauthenticity, but Carl Joseph does not perceive it in that way. The news about Francis Ferdinand’s assassination in Sarajevo reaches Carl Joseph’s dragoon regiment in a small town on the Russian border celebrating its centennial anniversary. This is the last disillusionment in Carl Joseph’s belief in the Monarchy’s capacity to preserve unity in diversity. The Hungarian count Benkyö states clearly before all guests: “I will say it in German. We are in agreement, my countrymen and I: we can be glad the bastard is gone!” (The Radetzky March 297). Carl Joseph finally grasps that the end of Austria is near. The narrator relates his thoughts: “The fatherland of the Trottas was splintering and crumbling” (298). And yet he feels obliged to act in the spirit of the grandfather who saved the emperor’s life, and thus the grandson must protect the royal family from insults. He commands everyone to be quiet, an order which a lieutenant is not allowed to give to higher-ranking officers who are present in the room, and he threatens to shoot the next person who insults the murdered heir to the throne. This reaction is not heroic, but inappropriate and dangerous, because it threatens the military hierarchy. This is why Colonel Festetics feels compelled to intervene: “Order him to keep quiet” (299).

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After making one ridiculous and unsuccessful attempt to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps, Carl Joseph makes another attempt to live a life following his grandfather’s imagined model. He leaves the army, or rather deserts, and retreats to a small house at the fringe of a wood. He convinces himself: He lived like his grandfather, the Hero of Solferino, and like his greatgrandfather, the retired veteran in the castle park of Laxenburg, and perhaps like his nameless, unknown ancestors, the peasants of Sipolje. (310) Man lebte wie der Großvater, der Held von Solferino, und wie der Urgroßvater, der Invalide im Schloßpark von Laxenburg, und vielleicht wie die namenlosen, unbekannten Ahnen, die Bauern von Sipolje. (378)

He believes he has found peace in a simple life in harmony with nature and in his informal and straightforward communication with the local peasants. But his time requires more sacrifice from Habsburg subjects than did the time of his grandfather. When it becomes clear that there will be war, Carl Joseph anticipates it as a chance to repeat his grandfather’s heroic deed: Here was the war for which he had prepared since the age of seven. It was his, the grandson’s war. The days and the heroes of Solferino were returning. (313) Das war der Krieg, auf den er sich schon als Siebenjähriger vorbereitet hatte. Es war sein Krieg, der Krieg des Enkels. Die Tage und die Helden von Solferino kehrten wieder. (382)

The narrator leaves no doubt that war is not as heroic as its depictions in history books and its glorification in myths make it look: The Austrian army’s war had begun with court-martials. For days on end genuine and supposed traitors hung from the trees on church squares to terrify the living. The living, however, had fled far and wide. (317) Lieutenant Trotta approached the hanged men. […] These were the faces of the peasants he had drilled with every day. (318) Der Krieg der österreichischen Armee begann mit Militärgerichten. Tagelang hingen die echten und die vermeintlichen Verräter an den Bäumen auf den Kirchplätzen, zur Abschreckung der Lebendigen. Aber weit und breit waren die Lebenden geflohen. (386) Leutnant Trotta ging näher an die Gehenkten heran. […] Das waren die Gesichter des Volkes, mit dem er jeden Tag exerziert hatte. (387)

Lieutenant von Trotta finally experiences war first-hand and sees that it is about the destruction of human life. But the myth of his grandfather’s heroic deed and sacrifice for the emperor prevails in his consciousness and lures him into an act which is deeply humane, but does not have the “heroic” quality of his grandfather’s deed. Roth clearly marks these assumptions as

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inappropriate for the future. Carl Joseph gets killed as he fetches pails of water for the thirsty soldiers: He was not afraid. It never occurred to him that he could be hit like the others. He heard the shots before they were fired and also the opening drumbeats of “The Radetzky March.” He was standing on the balcony of his father’s house. The army band was playing down below. […] Now a bullet hit his skull. He took one more step and collapsed. The brimming pails shook, plunged, and poured water on him. The end of the grandson of the hero of Solferino was a commonplace end, not suitable for textbooks in the elementary schools and high schools of Imperial and Royal Austria. Lieutenant Trotta died holding not a weapon, but two pails. (320) Er hatte keine Angst. Es fiel ihm nicht ein, daß er getroffen werden könnte wie die anderen. Er hörte schon die Schüsse, die noch nicht gefallen waren, und gleichzeitig die trommelnden Takte des Radetzkymarsches. Er stand auf dem Balkon des väterlichen Hauses. Unten spielte die Militärkapelle. […] Jetzt schlug eine Kugel an seinen Schädel. Er machte noch einen Schritt und fiel nieder. Die vollen Eimer wankten, stürzten und ergossen sich über ihn. (390) […] So einfach und zur Behandlung in Lesebüchern für die kaiser- und königlichen österreichischen Volks- und Bürgerschulen ungeeignet war das Ende des Enkels des Helden von Solferino. Der Leutnant von Trotta starb nicht mit der Waffe, sondern mit zwei Wassereimern in der Hand. (391)

Lieutenant von Trotta is not afraid and does not consider the possibility of death because he is convinced that he is following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who performed a heroic deed and survived. Therefore he does not expect to become the target of a bullet “like the others.” He dies with the sound of The Radetzky March in his ears and a picture of his father’s balcony in his thoughts—he goes to his grave accompanied by the myth which shaped and eventually destroyed his life. Deeply humane and ethical deeds like Lieutenant Trotta’s do not enter history books because they do not fit into the myths which supposedly sustain empires. There is nothing spectacular about pails of water and the attempt to quench the common soldiers’ thirst. Carl Joseph dies believing in the myth, but acting in a contrary manner—he sacrifices himself to help the ordinary people who are the true heroes of the war, without affecting or questioning the big picture of why they are in these positions. Carl Joseph’s father dies three days after the news of the emperor’s death. His son’s death shakes him, but he survives it. The emperor’s death, on the other hand, takes the meaning out of his life, which was based on the aspiration to be a perfect subject of the Monarchy and of Francis Joseph. The history of the three generations of von Trottas coincides with the rise of nations and nationalisms in the Habsburg Monarchy and the attempts of the Monarchy to balance the different identities with the help of aesthetics and ideology. The family history also reveals the inability of the Habsburg

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myths and symbols to resist a changing reality. The von Trottas, who seem to be privileged by their Habsburg identity, become victims of the myth and the victory of the national over the supranational identity. Carl Joseph uses Slovenia to create a utopian space where he can salvage the supranational Habsburg identity which has become his personal identity. In his imagination of Slovenia (one which follows the political course that the Monarchy actually took) Carl Joseph merges Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia into one another, thus applying the Habsburg method of unity in diversity in the construction of the supranational identity. Roth distances himself from Carl Joseph’s imagination by contrasting it with the historical reality depicted in the narrative, with the comments of other characters in the novel, and with the course of events in the plot. The violent victory of the national over the supranational paradigm is depicted realistically at the end of the novel. Both Hofmannsthal and Roth combine the regions of Central Europe and the Balkans in the construction of their fictional utopias. In Arabella the Balkans are implied by the inclusion of Slavonia as a former Ottoman territory, and in The Radetzky March the inclusion of Balkan/oriental BosniaHerzegovina is implied by the Islamic traits erroneously imposed on Slovenia in Carl Joseph’s imagination. The inclusion of the Balkans in these two utopian projects reveals the difficulty in drawing a sharp boundary between Central Europe and the Balkans, or, in other words, in drawing the northern boundary between the Balkans and Europe. With a slight alteration of Metternich’s claim that the Balkans begin at the Rennweg in Vienna, we can conclude that the Balkans undoubtedly were present in the fictional imagination of the Austrian writers of the fin de siècle and were used as a utopian space with oriental quality that, nonetheless, belonged to the Habsburg Monarchy and was supposed to fill out a void in the public discourses of political identity and unity. In contrast to the two fictional utopias analyzed in this chapter stand the media reports on the Balkans as a space of recurring violence. The Balkans, however, remain present in the imagination of Austrian writers despite, or precisely because of the dystopian media presentations. As we will see, Kraus, and Handke in particular, use the Balkan space to create a fictional safe haven designed to offer protection from the reductive language and aggressive images of the media.

Notes 1

Ivo Goldstein points out that unlike in Croatia, the European Reformation took strong root in Slovenia, in contrast to Croatia. This phase of Slovenia’s history makes it even “more

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Western” than neighboring Catholic Croatia. The Counter-Reformation then managed to reconvert almost all Slovenian Protestants to Catholicism (41). 2 Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries Habsburg territories populated by Croats were torn away by the Ottomans. In 1550, “Croatian territory under Habsburg rule had been reduced from 50,000 to about 20,000 km+” (Goldstein 36). In the battles between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans following the Ottoman invasion of Vienna in 1683 much of the Ottoman-occupied Croatian territories were freed. In the early eighteenth century Venice and Austria gained more territory from the Ottomans and established a frontier with the Ottoman Empire that coincides almost entirely with today’s national border between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (46). 3 Otto von Habsburg, son of the last Habsburg Emperor, Charles I, lays out his political views in the book Zürück zur Mitte, published in 1991, the first year of the Yugoslav wars and the second year after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The work is full of optimistic visions of a future united Europe, despite the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, which had already begun. His general position is that the revival of Central Europe and its integration into Europe are something that will occur very swiftly and smoothly because it is a natural process: Suddenly, we can again see the solidarity of the peoples in the Danube region, a consolidation of Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Austria and Bavaria, a friendship which, incidentally, had always existed in the hearts of the people. […] No wonder, then, that when traveling beyond the former dividing line of Yalta, one gets again the feeling that the Danube region is on its way to becoming a center of Europe once again. (Translation mine) Auf einmal sieht man wieder die Solidarität der Völker im Donauraum, ein Zusammenwachsen von Ungarn, Böhmen, Mähren, der Slowakei, Slowenien, Kroatien und Österreich oder Bayern, eine Freundschaft, die übrigens in den Herzen der Menschen immer bestanden hat. […] Kein Wunder, daß man, wenn man jenseits der gewesenen Jalta-Linie reist, wieder das Gefühl hat, daß der Donauraum auf dem Wege ist, erneut ein Zentrum Europas zu werden. (Habsburg 22) In the chapter “Die Heimkehr der Kroaten und Slowenen” (“The Homecoming of the Croats and Slovenes”) von Habsburg claims: “In Croatia and Slovenia people are determined to turn to the West again, as it corresponds to the traditions of these countries” (73). He further expresses hope that Croats and Slovenes will be the bridge between Europe and the remainder of the Slavic populations in the Balkans, as Czechs and Slovakians are a bridge for other Slavic peoples in the North (76). What followed in the decade after this text was written was the further disintegration of the former Yugoslavia: fierce clashes between Croats and Serbs in the territory of Croatia, the tragedy of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the continued presence of all republics of the former Yugoslavia, with the exception of Slovenia and Croatia, on the waiting list of the EU. Cultural belonging to Central Europe did not solve the problem of nationalities in the former Yugoslavia, just as it did not solve it in the Habsburg Monarchy. Both the Central European and the Balkan parts of the former Yugoslavia first had to go through the process of nationalization, which was carried out through wars. 4 After Prussia’s victory at the battle of Königgrätz, Austria was excluded from the German Confederation, and the 10,000,000 Austro-Germans became a minority in the Monarchy. It was natural that Austro-Germans still felt closely related to the German cultural tradition, which at that point was epitomized in the German Confederation (Zöllner 411).

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The text to be discussed here is the lyrical comedy Arabella, as published in Fischer’s 1979 edition of Hofmannsthal’s complete works. I will not discuss the text of the libretto as it was written for the opera and will refer to the work as a “play,” a “comedy,” or a “piece.” 6 Gerhard Weiß’ reference to a short interchange between Dominik and Adelaide in Arabella which is included in Fischer’s 1956 edition and the English translation of the play of 1963, but not in the 1979 edition, underlines Hofmannsthal’s view of Austria’s geopolitical position: 5

Dominik: We are always poised on the edge of an abyss— Adelaide: How clever! And how true, my friend! With a glass of champagne The Prussian threatens to the left, the Russian to the right—but our guardian angel will protect us! Dominik: It’s love that will protect us, love alone! (Hofmannsthal, Selected Plays and Libretti 599) Dominik: Wir schweben immer über einem Abgrund— Adelaide: Wie geistreich! Und wie wahr, mein Freund! Mit einem Glas Champagner Der Preuße droht von links, der Russe droht von rechts—doch unser Schutzengel wird uns erhalten! Dominik: Die Liebe ists, die uns erhalten wird, allein die Liebe! (Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke: Lustspiele IV 71–72) 7 Translation mine. 8 Translation mine. 9 The German word Bildung signifies here a synthesis of education and culture. 10 Translation mine. 11 Slavonia, the easternmost part of Croatia, was conquered by the Ottomans in 1526 and remained in their possession for about 150 years before the Habsburgs regained it (Goldstein, 36–46). 12 In the post-Congress Vienna of 1860 the poor Waldner family seeks for a rich spouse for their beautiful daughter, Arabella, in the hope that he will save them from their poverty. They dress and present the other daughter, Zdenka, as a young man because they can only afford to merry off one of their daughters. Count Waldner, who is an addicted gambler, has a rich friend in the Habsburg province of Slavonia to whom he sends a picture of the beautiful Arabella. However, the picture reaches not his friend, who has died in the meantime, but rather the friend’s not less wealthy nephew Mandryka, who, enchanted by the image, travels to Vienna to meet the beauty. In Vienna, Arabella is surrounded by wooers, but none of them arouses her interest until she meets the stranger Mandryka, who fascinates her with his simple, rural habits. The two young people feel genuine affection for one another and are about to be married when Zdenka, pretending to be Arabella, gives the key to her sister’s bedroom to Matteo, one of Arabella’s wooers, and tells him that she will receive him later that evening. Zdenka does this because she is in love with Matteo and fears that he will leave Vienna if rejected by Arabella. Mandryka overhears Matteo’s and Zdenka’s conversation and, convinced of Arabella’s deception and furious with jealousy, demands an explanation from Arabella. In the last act the errors and the confusion are clarified and both couples unite in love and understanding. 13 Magris’ reading may well be influenced by the nature of the genre of libretto, which goes beyond the literary in order to achieve musical and visual effects onstage. In fact, as Bottenberg points out, the correspondence between Richard Strauss and Hofmannsthal reveals that Strauss insisted on a stagier and less dramatic plot, requesting that Hofmannsthal provide

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more emotional conflicts in Arabella to justify the music. Hofmannsthal agreed with most of Strauss’ suggestions concerning the arousal of Mandryka’s jealousy through the misunderstanding in the third act and made corresponding changes in order to satisfy Strauss’ desire for a “conflict that is visible and audible onstage […]” (Kovach 129). 14 Rudolf Schäfer makes the insightful observation that the fortune-teller gives a general and abstract prophecy that unfolds in a specific and concrete manner over the course of the comedy. Her prophecy provides only a very rough scheme for general human interrelations and by no means determines the plot. Rather, it leaves open countless possibilities for action, and this gives the characters the freedom to choose from among these possibilities. However, the characters still move within the boundaries of the general scheme (146). 15 The Haupt- und Staatsaktion is a theatrical genre considered to be trivial in traditional literary theory. It was created by German traveling theater troupes in the late seventeenth century. Wilpert describes these plays as tragedies tailored to the popular taste of the time, based on stereotypical plot structures, and without any literary value (361). 16 “Médisance” is the French word for “intrigue.” The English translation does not convey the usage of the same term in two different languages: “O Vienna! City of scandal and intrigue!” (Hofmannsthal, Selected Plays and Libretti 612) 17 I use the term “dramatic irony” in the two senses which Manfred Pfister assigns to the term. We can talk about dramatic irony when either a character’s verbal utterance or his non-verbal conduct gain an additional meaning in the eyes of the recipient that is contradictory to the intention of the character and is based on the recipient’s higher level of information. In the former case we are dealing with verbal, in the latter with an actional dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is created on the syntagmatic level through an arrangement of situations which makes the connections between them visible for the recipient, but keeps them invisible for the characters (88–89). 18 The English translation “Oh Theodor, how everything has changed!” (Hofmannsthal, Selected Plays and Libretti 627) does not include the hidden meaning of peripety, namely the sudden, unexpected reversal in the dramatic plot that steers the action into its opposite. 19 The names Arabella, Zdenka, and Mandryka also hint at the dynamics between the “self” and the “other.” Arabella and Zdenka live in Vienna and have a German surname, but their given names are Italian (Arabella) and Slavic (Zdenka)—the latter is relatively common in Croatia. Both names refer to peoples of the Habsburg Monarchy and imply that the “Austrian” is necessarily only part German, i.e., has the “other” as an inherent part of his or her “self.” Mandryka, on the other hand, is a Slavic, but not a Croatian name. It is not clear whether Hofmannsthal used it in error or wanted to attribute pan-Slavic traits to the character. Mandryka also uses the Hungarian word “teschek” (please) repeatedly, which reflects the centuries-long political connections between Croatia and Hungary and the Hungarian cultural imprint in Slavonia, implying that all cultures of the former Habsburg Monarchy contain “the other culture/s” in themselves. 20 Translation mine. 21 Schäfer points to the dual nature of Mandryka’s character. On the one hand he looks up like a child not only to women generally and to Arabella in particular, but also to the emperor and the empress, to Adelaide, and even to Zdenka after her transformation back to a girl. On the other hand Mandryka’s character displays traits of an aristocrat and a large estate owner, which are revealed in his “imperatival manner of speaking.” (154) 22 According to Schäfer the “green paradise” of the Slavonia depicted in Arabella is a variation of the paradise described in the essay The Idea of Europe (161). 23 Translation mine.

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Pauley implicitly supports this view in The Habsburg Legacy: 1867–1939, claiming that the theoretical self-determination principle behind the Allied decision to allow Austria-Hungary to disintegrate was imperfectly applied in practice. He explains that the Allied assumption of an affinity among the nationalities based on linguistic and ethnic similarity disregarded the role of culture and common history in the identity formation of the nationalities. Pauley supports his claim with examples of national plebiscites like the one held in Slovenia, where after World War I many Carinthian Slovenes voted for Austria rather than for Yugoslavia (92–93).

VI. The Balkans between

Utopia and Dystopia The rise of the print media in the last decades of the nineteenth century coincides roughly with the process of deterioration of the Habsburg and especially the Ottoman Empires, as well as with the rise of the Balkan nation-states. This temporal coincidence may be the main reason for the petrified picture of the Balkans as a region of conflicts and wars in the Western European media. As Luhmann tells us, the media must give an impression “that what has just gone in the past is still present, is still interesting and informative” (26).1 Therefore the selection criteria for classifying information as newsworthy include conflicts among the most desirable media topics because conflicts “have the benefit of alluding to a self-induced uncertainty […] and put off the liberating information about winners and losers […] to a future” (Luhmann 26). Thus, the media have stigmatized the Balkans as a conflict-producing region which has been in existence at least since the beginning of the twentieth century, causing a shift in the Western imagination of the Balkans from a semi-European and culturally ambiguous region of otherness to a dystopian region troubled by conflicts and recurring wars. In this chapter I discuss three works by three Austrian writers which deal with the wars in the Balkans and adopt the media/documentary mode of presentation: Serbisches Tagebuch (Serbian Diary [1918]) by Roda Roda (1872–1945), Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind [1915–1922]) by Karl Kraus (1874–1936) and Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder das Stück zum Film vom Krieg (Voyage by Dugout or The Play about the Film on the War [1999]) by Peter Handke (born 1942). Roda’s diary represents a mixed genre comprising a travelogue and a war report on the actions of the Austrian army in Serbia in 1915. It is also a particularly illustrative example of the perpetuation and intensification of stereotypes about Serbs previously created in Austrian newspapers. Karl Kraus’ documentary play is a merciless critique of the media’s role in society, particularly in World War I. One of the journalists criticized in the play is Roda Roda. The play The Last Days of Mankind is a culmination of Kraus’ previous critique of war reports and the use of language in the media, which had been provoked by newspaper reports on the Balkan Wars in the first decade of the twentieth century (Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 154–55). Kraus depicts the Great War in his play as the final stage in

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the dehumanization of humankind by the media and technology. The reference to the Balkans is significant both for the structure and the thematic content of the play. Handke’s play deals with media reports on the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the last decade of the twentieth century and can be interpreted as a postmodern follow-up to The Last Days of Mankind. Handke takes up Kraus’ choice of genre and topic and places the plot in a Balkan setting, which is also partly the setting of Kraus’ play. Handke also makes a clear allusion to Kraus’ play when one of his characters refers to the present-day time as “the time after the last days of mankind” (Handke, Die Fahrt im Einbaum 125).2 Media coverage of the wars in the former Yugoslavia and its use of images symbolize for Handke the post-final stage in the dehumanization of humankind. At this stage, the electronic media construct reality from images and present them as the complete and only possible reality. Before examining the literary works, it is important to gain insight into the historical background of the relations between Serbia and AustriaHungary from the Austrian occupation of Bosnia in 1878 until the outbreak of World War I. The short historical summary will show that the hostilities between these two countries were the result of complex geopolitical circumstances and not of centuries-old hatred and cultural incompatibility, as the media tended to present them. However, it will also demonstrate the difference between the languages of historical narration and literary presentation. The Beginning of Hostilities between Serbia and Austria-Hungary During the years of Serbia’s state- and nation-building the myth of Serbian courage and military capability, embodied in the Battle of Kosovo (1389) and the uprising against the Ottomans (1804), was one of the most important factors. Mihailo Obrenovi!, the son of the first Serbian prince, Milo% Obrenovi!, decided in his second reign (1860–1868) to turn this myth into reality, passing legislation which obligated all able-bodied men between the ages of twenty and fifty to serve in the military. This legislation not only enormously increased the size of the Serbian army, it also gave an incredible boost to nationalism, which now had a material basis for its myth. Despite the increase in numbers, however, the Serbian army was far from being an efficient combat army of European niveau because it lacked discipline, clothing, medical support, proper logistics, and, most importantly, weapons and trained officers (Glenny 122–23). The grandson of Milo% Obrenovi!, Aleksandar (1893–1903), felt the consequences of the militarization introduced by his grandfather directly. He and his wife were assassinated in their royal palace in Belgrade by a group of

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officers under the leadership of Captain Dragutin Dimitrijevi!-Apis. This captain would play a key role in the conspiracy for the assassination of Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo eleven years later. The officers were taking revenge on the King for his attempts to purge a military which had become too powerful. With Aleksandar’s death, the support for the moderate Liberal Party also died, and the road was open for the militaristic aggressive Radical Party (Glenny 187–88). At the same time, the contest for Bosnia-Herzegovina caused continued political antagonism between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, which was the root cause for the most far reaching political event in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century—the assassination of Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. From the standpoint of political pragmatism it seemed that both countries were justified in their claims to this Ottoman province: from an ethical standpoint neither of them was. Almost one million Serbs lived in the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina (alongside Croats and Slavic Moslems) which since the beginning of the nineteenth century had constantly been shaken by rebellions against authorities in Istanbul. The Ottoman Empire was rapidly deteriorating, and Serbia decided to start a war against the Ottomans in 1876 in order to gain territories populated by Serbs and other Slavic ethnicities. This war, in which the Serbs were defeated, claimed many Serbian lives and remained vivid in the collective memory of the nation. The Treaty of Berlin in 1878, which was concluded by the Western European countries in order to decide the fate of the dying Ottoman Empire, among other things, gave Austria-Hungary the right to occupy Bosnia, but not to annex it. In other words, the treaty allowed the Sublime Porte to retain de jure sovereignty over Bosnia-Herzegovina (Donia 38–39). The unresolved question of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s ultimate sovereignty nourished Serbia’s hopes of finally acquiring this territory. Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, had vital interests in the province. It seemed that Bosnia-Herzegovina could provide a bulwark against Serbian and Montenegrin attacks against the Monarchy (Pauley 33), create a counterbalance to Russia’s Balkan aspirations simply because of its geographical location, which would enable Austria-Hungary to control the northern Balkans economically and politically, and thus secure Austria’s comeback as a superpower (Glenny 251–52). This was the Austro-Hungarian “solution” to the Eastern Crisis. When in 1908 the Young Turks seized power in Istanbul, the question of who had sovereignty over Bosnia-Herzegovina came back onto the agenda. Austria-Hungary found itself in the precarious situation between the Young Turks’ demands for de facto sovereignty over Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia’s unceasing aspirations to appropriate it. It is clear that giving up the territory to either of the two aspirants was not an option for Austria. In addition to the previously mentioned reasons for the occupation of Bosnia-

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Herzegovina, Austria-Hungary needed it to maintain the delicate national balance within the Monarchy. The heir to the throne, Francis Ferdinand, felt great apprehension with regard to Hungarian nationalism and sought means to undermine it. The foreign minister of the Monarchy, Baron von Aehrental, thought he had a remedy for this fear. Both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia would be attached to the Croatian Triune Kingdom, which previously had been under Hungarian jurisdiction, and the province’s three Slav communities—Catholic, Moslem, and Orthodox—would receive a degree of autonomy. The strong South Slavic group would then create a counterbalance to Hungary, guarantee the influence of the Monarchy at the gates of the Orient, and, last but not least, neutralize Serbia’s influence over the South Slavs in the Monarchy, who eventually would feel compelled to request membership in the Austro-Hungarian customs union. The next step would be the dismemberment of Serbia, offering the southern part to Bulgaria and integrating the North into the Empire (Glenny 287). It is noteworthy that at the beginning of the twentieth century Austria considered offering the Serbs something similar to what the leaders of the Serbian uprising had asked for, but had not received, a century earlier, during the First Serbian Uprising against the Ottomans. That was Austria’s plan in theory. In practice, Bosnia-Herzegovina’s annexation to the Monarchy in 1908 aroused disapproval throughout Europe, outrage in Turkey, and nationalistic hysteria in Serbia. Despite intense diplomatic activity in the European capitals aimed at annulling the annexation, Serbia reluctantly accepted it in 1909 at the persuasion of the Russian government, itself under strong pressure from Germany. In the same year, the Serbian nationalistic organization Unification or Death (Ujedinenje ili smrt) was established in Belgrade under the leadership of Dragutin Dimitrijevi!-Apis (Glenny 291–92). The seven founding members of Unification or Death called themselves Black Hand (Crna ruka). They united with the idealistic patriotic organization in Bosnia-Herzegovina called Young Bosnia (Mlada Bosna) consisting of high school students. As mentioned in the fourth chapter, Ivo Andri! was also one of its members. The primary goals of Young Bosnia were social revolution and national liberation from Austria-Hungary, but the group had no specific plan regarding what should happen to BosniaHerzegovina after its liberation. The ultimate goal of Black Hand was a greater Serbia, which would include Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia (Glenny 300–01). Black Hand also was the mastermind behind Francis Ferdinand’s assassination, while Young Bosnia became the clumsy, but nonetheless successful, executor of that plan. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, succeeded in shooting the Archduke only by accident, because the

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chauffeur missed a turn and had to stop and back up, which gave Princip the opportunity to target the Archduke and his wife. After the assassination he swallowed cyanide which had oxidized and was therefore ineffective, thus surviving to be imprisoned by the Austrian authorities (Glenny 304–05). It is unquestionable that Serbia played the key role in the assassination, but the question is how far into the hierarchy of the Serbian state structures the conspiracy could be traced. The members of Black Hand had undoubtedly infiltrated deeply into the Serbian army and secret services. Pauley claims: “Other members of the Serbian government knew of the plot one month before it was carried out, but did not effectively warn the Austrian government or prevent the assassins from carrying out their work” (38), and Zöllner goes one step further in his claim that a document discovered in the archives of the Serbian foreign ministry in World War II hints that the Prime Minister Pa%i! possessed some vague information about the conspiracy (479). For Austria-Hungary it was now imperative to take political measures against the agent behind the assassination in order to preserve its authority on the international political scene. However, the Monarchy did not choose the most suitable moment for action, namely that immediately after the assassination, taking a whole month to issue an ultimatum to Serbia (Pauley 38). When the ultimatum was finally issued on July 23, 1914, its most essential demands were formulated in a way that practically gave Serbia a perfect excuse to reject them. Serbia did not agree to allow AustroHungarian authorities to investigate the crime and offered no guarantee that propaganda against the Monarchy would cease. At the same time, it demonstrated sharp diplomatic skills, accepting five demands outright and four conditionally, which in the eyes of international diplomacy made it look conciliatory (Pauley 40–41). Austria-Hungary decided to declare war on Serbia on July 28. It went to war nominally to protect its territorial integrity against Serbian expansion and consequently mobilized only along its border with Serbia. But the alliances in Europe were far too interdependent to let a conflict between an empire and a small Balkan state be resolved only on a local level. Thus, a badly planned assassination executed by a naïve high school student in the capital of a small Balkan province triggered the Great War, which introduced the twentieth century to indescribable destruction and suffering of both servicemen and civilians. The unresolved questions of World War I created the basis for an even more atrocious repetition in World War II and a third one in the Balkans at the end of the twentieth century. In the following section I discuss Roda’s Serbian Diary—a composite genre of diary and war report set in the context of the Habsburg Army’s march through Serbia in 1915. The reports from the field reflect the author’s

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personal biases, which are, again, rooted in the Austrian propaganda against Serbia from the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina onward. These biased reports are instructive in regard to the process of creating and nourishing stereotypical presentations about this part of the Balkans through reductive and selective interpretations of history—reinforcing the imagined community to which the Austrian-Germans of the Monarchy could relate. They are also an example of the language and style used in the print media which Kraus criticizes in his play as inculcating false consciousness and dooming the nation by robbing it of its future. Roda’s Serbian Diary: War between a Nation of Engineers, Painters, and Poets and a Nation of Peasants Roda’s Serbian Diary (1918) focuses on the Austro-Hungarian military actions against Serbia in October and November of 1915. He had accompanied the Royal and Imperial Army as it entered Serbia and occupied a few cities before the extent of World War I was entirely clear. In the foreword Roda states clearly whom he finds guilty of the war: The Austro-Hungarian war against Serbia was full of grimness and vicissitudes. A nation whom we never combatted, but protected for hundreds of years—they hated us like the devil—only because we possessed something that they coveted. We were not in possession of some small, oppressed regions which would aspire unity with a great motherland; no, we had those South Slavs among us who were the greatest in numbers, territory, gold, and civilized behavior; and the Serbian state wanted to wrench from us territory which had twice as much population as they did.3 Der österreichisch-ungarische Krieg gegen Serbien war voll von Grimmigkeit und Wechselfällen. Ein Volk, das wir seit Jahrhunderten nicht bekämpft, aber beschützt hatten—es haßte uns bis zur Weißglut—nur weil wir besaßen, wessen es begehrte. Uns gehörten nicht etwa kleine, unterdrückte Bezirke, die zur Einheit strebten mit einem großen Mutterland; nein, jene Südslawen standen bei uns, die am reichsten an Zahl, Boden, Gold, Gesittung waren; und der serbische Staat wollte uns ein Gebiet entreißen, das doppelt so viel Volkes wie sein eigenes hatte. (Roda 9)

The foreword functions as a guideline for readers. All reports from the field must be read in connection with the supposed facts asserted at the beginning, which offer a justification for the war and the suffering of the Serbian civilian population it caused. The first sentence could be applied to any war; it does not entail an accusation against anyone. If one were to read it in isolation, it could even be interpreted as pacifist. Later, Roda will show more than once deep compassion for the suffering of the Serbian people, both civilians and

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soldiers. He knows Serbia, speaks the language, and shows interest in the culture. But just as in this first paragraph, he never forgets to remind the reader that the Serbian people are paying the price for the arrogant and irrational politics of their leaders and thus that such policies have deep consequences for individuals and the group. Both the claim that Austria protected the Serbs and that the Serbs hated the Austrians are only half-true. The Austrians had, after all, protected the Serbian rebels in the uprising against the Ottomans in 1804, yet only to the extent to which the Habsburg policy of maintaining the status quo in the Balkans allowed them to, i.e., they allowed unarmed refugees to enter the Austrian lines, but rejected the rebels’ appeals for arms and munitions (Rothenberg 104). Moreover, the settlement of Serbian border soldiers in Habsburg territory in 1522 and in 1690 had originally been organized for the protection of the Monarchy’s borders from the Ottomans and ended with an agreement for mutual use by the Serbs and the Austrians. The nationalistic sentiments incited in Serbia by Bosnia-Herzegovina’s annexation in 1908, as Roda saw it, could be described as hate towards Austria, but the parallel sentence construction in the quotation above obscures at least part of the historical truth, suggesting that both Austria’s protection and Serbian hatred had lasted for centuries.4 This statement is very illustrative of how distant historical events meld together in the collective memory and become truisms, and how Roda’s text shows clear partisanship for Serbia. In point of fact, Serbia’s desire for Bosnia-Herzegovina was illegal at the time it was a Habsburg territory, but the question is how justified the occupation and subsequent annexation by Austria-Hungary were. The Serbian plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina’s integration focused on the Serbian population living there, but ignored the Croatians and the Moslems, who did not see themselves living within a greater Serbia.5 Roda shared his reason for traveling to a Balkan country and writing about it, namely the outbreak of violence, with Robert Kaplan, who decided to revisit the country after hearing of the death of an ABC journalist who had reported on the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s (Kaplan x). But in Roda’s work Austria’s proximity to the Balkans produces a very different travelogue from those by the American author. Memory of the “common” history between Austria-Hungary and Serbia in Roda’s travelogue reaches as far back as 1456, when the Hungarian general Hunyadi defeated the Ottomans and captured Belgrade, and is reinforced by the mention of Prince Eugene of Savoy’s victory over the Ottomans at Belgrade in 1716 (Roda 15). For the Austro-Hungarians the Balkans do not present an abstract, distant part of the Earth; they are rather an intrinsic part of their history. And yet, as we shall see, stereotypes and prejudices still play a great role in the mutual perception of these two countries.

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Roda confirms Belgrade’s high symbolic value in Austro-Hungarian memory. The first chapter of his diary bears the title “Die Einnahme von Belgrad” (“The Seizure of Belgrade”). After the above-mentioned allusions to past Austro-Hungarian battles for Belgrade, the author describes the military actions of the Imperial and Royal Army leading to the occupation of Belgrade in 1915, thus implicitly interpreting the last event as the final Austro-Hungarian conquest of this city. One notices unconcealed admiration for the actions of the AustroHungarian army in Roda’s description of the battle for Belgrade as well as an aesthetic treatment of war in his writing. He details the Army’s preparations for the artillery attack (23–25), its heroic attitude during the attack (27–28), and concludes the chapter by quoting General Field Marshal von Meckensen: “‘The most beautiful action of the war, that is what Field Marshal General von Mackensen called the conquest of Belgrade” (35). Despite this triumphalist Austrian tone at the diary’s beginning, Roda later in the text shows the sensitivity of a person educated in the tradition of Humanism and the Enlightenment—the “ideal imagined Austrian,” if you will—when he reflects on the turbulent history of Serbia and the suffering of its people. Through the toponymy described, he illustrates how Serbia’s precarious geopolitical position was fatal for the history of the country: “Semlin,” in Croatian “Zemun,” Hungarian “Zimony,” comes, according to Zunkovi#, from “Sem” (meaning “limiting point”). Belgrade, (again, according to Zunkovi#) has nothing to do with beo, beli, i.e., white—it can be traced back to vel. Vel emphasizes, among similar things or people, one as especially important:—a main castle, or a capital; &abac is, again, “border.” Sava, Savoy belong to the same group. Ni! means defense point—exactly the same as Nizza (Nice) and Neisse. Palanka—guardhouse; Vranja—defending place; braniti; Branibor, same as Brandenburg. I could go through the entire “Etymological Lexicon of Toponyms” by the royal and imperial lieutenant Zunkovi# and prove that the name of each Serbian city means battleground, boundary wall, bulwark, fortress. Territory soaked in blood. Semlin, kroatisch Zemun, magyarisch Zimony, kommt (nach Zunkovic) von Sem (gleich „Grenzpunkt“) her. […] Belgrad hat (wiederum nach Zunkovic) nichts mit beo, beli, weiß zu tun—es geht auf vel zurück. Vel hebt unter gleichartigen Dingen oder Menschen eines oder einen als besonders wichtig hervor: Velegrad— Hauptburg, Hauptstadt; […] Schabatz ist widerum „Grenze“. Hierher gehören Sawe, Savoyen. Nisch heißt Verteidigungspunkt—genau wie Palanka—Wachhaus; […]. Vranja—Verteidigungsort; braniti; Branibor gleich Brandenburg. Ich könnte das „Etymologische Ortsnamen-Lexikon“ des k.u.k. Oberleutnants Zunkovic plündern und nachweisen, daß der Name jeder serbischen Stadt Kampfplatz, Grenzwall, Bollwerk, Feste bedeutet. Blutgetränkter Boden. (39)

The display of compassion for the suffering of the Serbian people and the interest in their culture and history is part of the narrative strategy, which not

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only depicts the Austrians as a nation of culture, civilization, and reason, but also portrays the war as part of an ongoing civilizing mission. The traveler uses a lexicon of Serbian toponymy written by an Austro-Hungarian lieutenant that provides accurate information about Serbia, thus functioning as an educational tool not only for him, but potentially for the Serbs as well. Compassion is also a part of the ambivalent attitude that Roda demonstrates towards Serbia, which recurs alternately as accusation and empathy throughout the diary. For example, he always provides reminders of the original sin of the Serbs—their irrational hostility towards AustriaHungary— while sympathizing with Serbian peasants: The Serbian peasant, a marvelous man of nature, is the truly defeated one. He bleeds in the war propagated by the Serbian townspeople and incited by the rulers,—his cattle and crops fed the fleeing Serbian army and now feed the enemy. Serbia is done for. In eight, ten weeks, when the supplies of the secluded communities in the mountains have also been exhausted, mass starvation will follow. Der serbische Bauer, ein prachtvoller Naturmensch, ist der wahrhaft Besiegte. Er blutet in dem von den serbischen Städtern gepredigten, von den Machthabern angezettelten Krieg,—sein Vieh und Getreide ernährten die weichende serbische Armee und nun den Feind (Roda 149). Serbien ist fertig. In acht, zehn Wochen, wenn die Vorräte der abgelegenen Berggemeinden ebenfalls verbraucht sind, kommt die Hungersnot. (150)

After this grim picture of conditions in Serbia Roda compares it to BosniaHerzegovina, where, thanks to Habsburg agrarian policy, famine was not only allegedly avoided, but prospects existed that the province would become “a granary of the Monarchy” (151). As we saw in the chapter on Bosnia-Herzegovina, Austro-Hungarian rule in the region petrified the feudal agrarian system from Ottoman times and was thus unable to modernize agriculture. Also, the mountainous Bosnia-Herzegovina can never become a granary; its greatest resources are ore and minerals. It is clear that Roda follows previous interpretations of Austro-Serbian relations, which influenced his perspective of Serbia while he was in the country.6 In conclusion, Roda asks rhetorically who would take care of Serbia in the same way as the Monarchy did of Bosnia-Herzegovina (151). This rational, humanistic position, combined with the author’s clear compassion for the Serbian people, might seem somewhat out of place in the middle of a war in which the Austro-Hungarian army, with which the author is traveling, occupies one Serbian city after another. It reveals an unconscious sense of guilt which was elaborated on by Roda’s contemporary and compatriot Sigmund Freud (The Ego and the Id 39). The symptomology of Roda’s political guilt runs through the text, taking his Austrian readers into a different kind of historical narrative. At the

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beginning of the text Roda mentions centuries-old Austrian protection of the Serbs and, as in the paragraph above, talks about Bosnia-Herzegovina’s prosperity under the Austro-Hungarian government. Then he expresses concern that no one can help Serbia. Echoing the trope that structures Roth’s Trotta novels, he portrays Austria-Hungary as a father figure for Serbia,7 or even for the region, and Serbia as the runaway disobedient son. AustriaHungary stands for protection and guidance, but also for control and restraint. Serbia stands for irrational rebellion against the righteous father, and it is unfortunate that it must be punished for its evil deeds. The father does his duty and punishes the son not because he wants to, but because he has to. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Austria must be cruel only to be kind (Shakespeare 122). This is the reason why Roda repeats how carefully the military actions of the Austro-Hungarian army were conducted. In the description of the AustroHungarian occupation of Belgrade he emphasizes that the city was almost undamaged by the military action, except for the shop windows, which were shattered during the street fights (Roda 46). Then he states that the allied German and Austro-Hungarian armies had a Bosnian soldier standing in front of each and every shop in order to prevent soldiers from taking even “a nail” from the shops (46–47). This report marks the first example of a pattern repeated throughout the text. The Austro-Hungarian army is ethnically diverse but united and disciplined, and its treatment of the enemy’s country is civilized and humane. Both Pauley and Jelavich confirm Roda’s perception of unity in the AustroHungarian army. Pauley (43) mentions the Serbs and the Czechs (the latter only to a certain extent) as exceptions to this rule, whereas Jelavich (History of the Balkans 115) claims that even the Serbian detachments from the Military Frontier remained loyal to the Habsburg Army. The last entry in the diary is a description of a severe storm on the mountain of Metalica, where the Austro-Hungarian Army repeatedly encounters Serbian refugees and soldiers who have deserted, some of them alive, some of them frozen to death in the snow. Roda describes how illprepared the Serbian authorities were for the war, how they failed to take the Austrian mobilization on the border with Serbia seriously, how they lost their minds after the defeat by the Austro-Hungarian army, and how they terrified the Serbian population into thinking that the Austrians would kill everyone when they entered the country, thus creating thousands of refugees who abandoned their homes in panic (244–45).8 In Roda’s view the disobedient son obviously did not act according to the father’s expectations, but were those expectations realistic? And would it have benefited Austria if Serbia had been better prepared? The enlightened travel writer who cannot fail to notice Serbia’s destruction by the Austro-

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Hungarian Army must rationalize the reasons for the harm which AustriaHungary, the symbol of Enlightenment and civilization, inflicts on Serbia. The last sentence of the diary is a crescendo of compassion for the Serbian people and accusations against the Serbian authorities, displacing blame onto this Balkan authority. It is a variation of the truism that ordinary people suffer most in every war: Poor, poor Serbian nation of peasants! Your masters deceived you and betrayed you—and now you, peasant, suffer the punishment intended for your masters! Armes, armes serbisches Bauernvolk! Deine Herren haben dich betrogen und verraten—und nun duldest du, Bauer, eine Strafe, die deinen Herren gebührt! (251)

There is a striking similarity between this sentence and the closing line in Popovi!’s Patriots, quoted in the third chapter, as well as a general overlapping of the educational discourse of Enlightenment and the tone of reproach towards the Serbian upper or “educated” class in Popovi!’s play and Roda’s diary. Based on the satirical criticism in Popovi! plays, Sugar’s analysis of Eastern European nationalisms (Nationality and Society in Habsburg and Ottoman Europe)—both elaborated in the third chapter—and the course of history, we can safely assume that the inconsistent adoption of the European values of Enlightenment, Liberalism, and nation-building in mid-nineteenth century Serbia, combined with the rural infrastructure and the low rate of literacy inherited from Ottoman times, which led to a perpetuation of myths and their political ab/use, resulted in a politics of aggressive and expansionist nationalism by the end of the nineteenth century. Roda was thus not wrong in condemning the cities and the ruling class of Serbia for the hard lot of Serbian peasants. Yet, by overlooking the similarities between Balkan and European nationalisms and the degeneration of the ideas of Enlightenment in Europe at the turn of the century, which Kraus would decry in The Last Days of Mankind and which Roda himself demonstrates in this very diary by manipulating historical facts to construct his own causality, Roda again offers half-truths and leads his readers to the comfortable conclusion that Serbia bears the entire blame for the war.9 The Serbs to whom Roda talks during his journey are either pro-Austrian or pretend to be, something which Roda acknowledges himself. Their observations, however, are valuable because the way they are reported by Roda confirms, from the local point of view, the author’s depiction of Austria-Hungary as a force for civilization. An orthodox priest among the prisoners of war swears he is an ardent opponent of the Serbian government and claims that he stayed “in order to await and greet the culture” (117). The priest is outraged that the Serbian government had the audacity “to lead a war against the Scheschirdjije” (118). By “Scheschirdjije” ((e%ird$ije), as

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Roda explains, the priest understands people who wear hats, i.e., the civilized people, the master race (118). This is only one example in which Roda emphasizes the Serbian perception of Austria as a nation of culture. As we shall see, he always lets the locals express their feelings of admiration for Austria’s civilized state, which creates the impression that the statements are authentic. There is no way to examine the truthfulness of Roda’s reports on the locals’ sentiments towards Austria. One argument in favor of truthfulness can be the authenticity of the Serbian expressions used by the characters, like the word “Scheschirdjije.” However, even if we agree that the priest did indeed say the words in the above quotation, the explicit interpretation comes from Roda. He again leads readers to the conclusion, rather than letting them reach it for themselves. This is a perfect example of the wartime journalism which Kraus criticizes in his play. Three other examples of the local Serbs’ perception of Austria-Hungary vary the pattern of admiration and respect for the neighboring state. The member of the Liberal Party who speaks to Roda paraphrases what the priest says—“but Austria-Hungary is a state of culture” (166)—as he expresses doubts that the other father figure, Russia, can help the Serbs: “Russia is big, but the tzar is far away” (166). Both a merchant and a headmaster from a small Serbian town confirm and amplify the liberal’s position about Austria: the merchant claims that trade with Austria-Hungary is most sensible and useful for the Serbian economy (180), and the headmaster explains that the Serbs go to Austria, Switzerland, and Germany for higher education, not to Russia (182). In another instance of pro-Austrian sentiment, a retired Serbian general expresses remorse for the irrational Serbian politics towards Austria. Serbia insisted on fighting the Ottomans in Albania in order to take the territory, despite the knowledge that “Emperor Francis Joseph guaranteed the Albanians their independence” (190). The general repeats Roda’s observation that Serbia was fully unprepared for the war with Austria, attributing Serbian victories over the Austrians in 1914 solely to the endurance of the soldiers, not to the skills of the generals (194). He portrays the Chief of the Serbian General Staff, Putnik, who led the Serbian army to a victorious offensive against the Austrians on the mountain of Cer in 1914, as completely incompetent, which is why the Austrians let him go after capturing him:10 “The truth is: you are sly dogs. You released Putnik because you were convinced of his incredible incompetence.” “You are mistaken, Herr General!” I objected modestly. “I am not mistaken, you are sly dogs.”

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“Die Wahrheit ist: daß ihr Schlauköpfe seid. […] ihr habt Putnik freigelassen, weil ihr von seiner bodenlosen Unfähigkeit überzeugt seid.” “Sie irren, Herr General!” wandte ich bescheiden ein. “Ich irre nicht, Schlauköpfe seid ihr.” (Roda 191)

The general has full confidence in Austrian judgment and therefore rationalizes their reason for action—there must be a rational explanation for the decision of a civilized state. Roda then describes the tone of his response to the general as “modest.” One cannot be truly modest and be aware of it at the same time; hence it can only be false modesty. Roda is thus convinced of Austria’s superiority, but refuses to demonstrate it overtly before his interlocutor. The consistent perception of Austria as a force of reason and guarantor of culture and order, expressed by Roda’s Serbian interlocutors, is complemented by the self-perception of the Serbs as irrational (superstitious) people who struggle with the residue of the Orient. As the general puts it: “We Serbs are people of the Orient, only forty years ago we still had Turks among us—we are superstitious” (194). Again, readers are led to the conclusion that the only way for the Serbs to “become” more rational and occidental is to follow Austria’s advice or to adhere to its restrictions. Roda moves the model for cultural superiority further to the North in his description of the German Army and the Germans generally (especially the Northern Germans). He begins with a sentence that confirms his mental distinction between nations of culture and nations of nature: “Isn’t it unjust that engineers, painters, poets—people, Germans, are murdered by Balkan peasants?” (96). The order in which the victims are enumerated is significant. Engineers, painters, and poets are professions of a developed civilization and culture. They symbolize Germany, as we shall see, and possibly Austria. The noun “people” after the dash adds the additional information that all of them are primarily humans, the message being that the war destroys human lives, not just civilization and culture. What comes after the comma finally completes the message—all these are Germans (although it is unclear whether the Austrians also belong to this category), and it is unjust that Germans, who are civilized and cultured, should be killed by Balkan peasants, who are not civilized and cultured. Here, the latter classification is only implied, but it is confirmed elsewhere by the description of the Serbian peasant as “a marvelous man of nature” (151). We observe Roda’s admiration for the Germans throughout the diary: I have always loved Northern Germans and I love them twice as much after sixteen months of war. Three thousand bare blond heads, the foreheads are fair, the faces under the helmets tanned. A German battalion like this one does not consist of men, it is a living being with two thousand legs and two thousand arms, which stride and swing staccato in time, like clockwork—a war machine.

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Ich habe die Norddeutschen immer geliebt und liebe sie seit sechzehn Monaten Krieges doppelt. (133) Dreitausend Blondköpfe entblößen sich, die Stirnen sind hell, die Gesichter braun unter den Helmen. (146) Solch ein deutsches Bataillon besteht nicht aus Männern, es ist ein Lebewesen mit zweitausend Beinen und zweitausend Armen, die taktmäßig-abgehackt ausschreiten und schwingen, am Schnürchen gelenkt—eine Kriegsmaschine. (147)

If the Austrians represent culture and order for the Serbs, the Germans represent for Roda a perfectly functioning higher order to which he looks up. The most vivid demonstration of this order is the war machine. When this machine is at war, it functions flawlessly, with no traces of chaos and disorder. For Roda it is a great honor and pleasure when the German soldiers praise “the brilliance of the [Austrian] troops, the grit, and the intelligence of the leaders” (135). His final admiration and gratitude for the armies of the Central Powers is expressed through the Moslems of Novi Pazar.11 They await these armies as liberators from the vindictive actions of the Serbian and Montenegrin forces: “Are you satisfied with the new conditions? “We still don’t know, who will rule over us—we only hope it will not be the Serbs. Tell us, sir, for you know it: are those really the soldiers of Kaiser Wilhelm? Some of them looked in our courtyards. But we don’t blame them for that, they have customs different from ours. “Seid ihr mit den neuen Zuständen zufrieden?” “Wir wissen nicht, wer uns beherrschen wird—wenn es nur nicht der Serbe ist. Sag’ Herr, der du es weißt: Sind das hier wirklich Soldaten des Kaisers Wilhelm? Es guckten manche in unsre Höfe. Doch wir verübeln es ihnen nicht, sie haben eben andere Sitten als wir.” (232)

The wars in the Balkans, and war in general, are not fought ab ovo; rather, they stem from earlier wars and unresolved questions, in the same way texts stem from earlier texts. The Serbs were taking revenge on the Moslems for the violence perpetrated on them centuries ago during Ottoman rule, but also for the losses they suffered in the two Balkan Wars (1912 and 1913) which Serbia fought against the Turks. With the violence of the Serbs fresh in their memory, the Moslems offered the Germans and the Croats support against the Serbs in the two world wars. What these allegiances also show is that the conflicts in the Balkans have very little to do with Huntington’s clash of civilizations, although he uses the Balkans to illustrate some typical post-Cold War conflicts.12 The Moslems show understanding for the different customs of the Germans because they feel protected by this Western Christian culture. An important factor explaining the Moslem’s speech above is that rule from outside was

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considered a matter of course in the Balkans. For the greater part of the Balkans self-government was unthinkable until the early nineteenth century, as every nation, or ethnicity, could only wish for a ruling power which would support its interests. In his diary, then, Roda generally depicts Serbs as irrational and emotional people of nature. Serbia’s irrational hatred of Austria is to be blamed for the war, and it is unfortunate, but logical that Serbs have to suffer the consequences of the war, which is implied even by Serbs with whom he has contact. The opposite pole to the Serbs is the Austrian army, which represents the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a state and as a culture, and is depicted as a force of civilization and order. Its actions are well organized, precise, and executed with maximum caution with regard to civilians. Roda reinforces these stereotypical depictions and lends them authenticity by having his Serbian interlocutors confirm his perspective with what should be considered their own words. Thus, Roda’s depictions in the diary become themselves clichés and therefore may lure the reader to accept them without second thoughts. Roda’s is only one variation of a journalistic style which was created in Austria-Hungary with the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and which must be seen as nationalizing Austria’s imagined communities in particular ways. The newspapers began spreading anti-Serbism in Austria-Hungary in accordance with national politics. By showing compassion for the enemy and receiving confirmation of his views by the Serbian interlocutors, Roda guides the readers’ perspective in a way similar to that of a writer of fiction. He does not use the language of hatred, but rather employs a more subtle procedure to inculcate contempt for the Serbian state in his readers. It is therefore understandable that his style, alongside that of many other journalists and writers in World War I, is parodied in Kraus’ The Last Days of Mankind as one of the cultural forces that presages the apocalypse of his world. The Last Days of M ankind: Drama as a High Court of Justice Karl Kraus’ play Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind [1922]) (further quoted as LTM) is remembered primarily as a documentary drama. The dramatic form is combined with quotations and photographs, mostly from the press, a procedure known as montage. Edward Timms locates the reasons for this procedure in “the problem, for any author writing about World War I, […] to find a literary form commensurate with the unprecedented magnitude and horror of events” (Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 375). Kraus’ drama was one of the first examples of this genre, which began a new epoch in the history of the theater.

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Finding a form commensurate with the dimension of the events it aspired to depict also meant breaking with the dramatic conventions which up till that point were considered natural. In the LTM 500 characters appear in 220 scenes (Buck 50), one of the reasons why Kraus objected to its integral performance in the preface: The performance of this drama, whose scope of time by earthly measure would comprise about ten evenings, is intended for a theater on Mars. Theatergoers in this world would not be able to endure it. (Kraus, The Last Days 3) Die Aufführung des Dramas, dessen Umfang nach irdischem Zeitmaß etwa zehn Abende umfassen würde, ist einem Marstheater zugedacht. Theatergänger dieser Welt vermöchten ihm nicht standzuhalten. (Kraus, LTM 9)

Buck asks the insightful question of whether this play should be considered a documentary or a Martian theater, in other words whether it is merely a compilation of authentic facts or a closet play “for not quite normal mortals?” (56). He argues, furthermore, that the effect of the play devolves from a realm between absolute mimesis and ethical challenge and thus considers it to be a higher synthesis of Martian and documentary theater (56), something Kraus named a “Hochgericht auf Trümmern” (LTM 11).13 The German word “Hochgericht” has two meanings. The first one refers strictly to the medieval type of court for very serious crimes, and the second one means a place of execution (Deutsches Universal Wörterbuch 789). We shall see that Kraus implied both meanings in his drama, in which he exposed crimes against humanity but also demonstrated how human civilization was, as it were, executed. In order to establish this High Court of Justice on the ruins of human civilization, Kraus recurred to the theatrical forms of the Viennese theater tradition, the tradition of carnival, and the theatrical metaphor of the world as a stage (theatrum mundi).14 This combination of documentary play and typically Viennese genres makes the play unique, possibly a genre sui generis. Nonetheless, Kraus by no means attempts to revive or continue the Viennese theater tradition, or the metaphor of theatrum mundi. Rather, he uses the typically Viennese genre of operetta and carnival motifs as well as the concept of theatrum mundi in order to demonstrate their aesthetic inadequacy in the age of technology and mass destruction. The LTM thus becomes a symbolic warning about the intellectual and artistic inability of the time to interpret and depict such a changed reality. Kraus states explicitly in the preface: “[…] operetta figures enacted the tragedy of mankind” (Kraus, The Last Days 3). Kari Grimstad explains that Kraus saw in the operetta a genre that laid no claim to any ethical value, but merely aspired to entertain, one which, in achieving this goal, became a successful theater genre. Grimstad quotes Kraus’ description of the operetta:

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When the liberating effect of music merges with an irresponsible cheerfulness, which in this chaos gives us a sense of our real perversities, the operetta proves to be the only dramatic form that is entirely in proportion with theatrical possibilities. Action and singing are capable of uniting most harmoniously into a Gesamtkunstwerk in the operetta, which takes a world as given in which nonsense is selfevident and in which nonsense never provokes a reaction from reason.15 Vereinigt sich die lösende Wirkung der Musik mit einer verantwortungslosen Heiterkeit, die in diesem Wirrsal ein Bild unserer realen Verkehrtheiten ahnen läßt, so erweist sich die Operette als die einzige dramatische Form, die den theatralischen Möglichkeiten vollkommen ebenmäßig ist. […] Zu einem Gesamtkunstwerk im harmonischsten Geiste […] vermögen Aktion und Gesang in der Operette zu verschmelzen, die eine Welt als gegeben nimmt, in der sich der Unsinn von selbst versteht und in der er nie die Reaktion der Vernunft herausfordert. (Grimstad 65)

The operetta is thus for Kraus a genre of nonsense which excludes reason and contemplation on the part of the audience. This characteristic makes it an ideal genre to convey the victory of madness over reason in the Austrian society of World War I to which Kraus refers explicitly in the preface, where he speaks of “[s]entences whose insanity is indelibly imprinted on the ear” and which “grow into a refrain that stays with one forever” (Kraus, The Last Days 3). Kraus depicts the Austrian propaganda of World War I as a specific type of insanity, one that is disguised and functions by means of theatricality. A good example of this procedure is the enactment of soldiers’ life in the trenches that takes place in the Viennese amusement park Wurstelprater: Wurstelprater. The scene represents a trench in which provincial actors are taking firing practice, talking on the phone, sleeping, eating, reading the paper. The trench is decorated with flags. An audience of thousand is standing in rows, crowded closely together, numerous officials, dignitaries, and reporters are standing in the foreground. THE ENTREPRENEUR:—and hereby I give you the trench, which is designed to clearly show up the p.t. audience what life in a real trench is like, for the noble purpose of patriotic war relief, and I make the most humble request to His Royal Highness to declare the trench open. A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE WILHELM CORRESPONDENCE (to his colleague): Among the military and civilian notables were, among others— HIS COLLEAGUE (writing): Angelo Eisner v. Eisenhof, Flora Dub, Privy Councilor Black-Yellow and his wife— THE REPRESENTATIVE: But I don’t see them— HIS COLLEAGUE: Nope, but I know. THE VOICE OF ARCHDUKE CHARLES FRANCIS JOSEPH: I was happy to come here to see the trench. I am, after all, a soldier myself.16 Der Wurstelprater. Die Szene stellt einen Schützengraben dar, in welchem Provinzschauspieler Schießübungen vornehmen, telephonieren, schlafen, essen und Zeitung lesen. Der Schützengraben trägt Flaggenschmuck. Das tausendköpfige

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? Publikum steht in dichten Reihen davor, zahlreiche Funktionäre, Würdenträger und Reporter im Vordergrund. DER ENTREPRENEUR:—und hiermit empfehle ich den Schützengraben, welcher dem p.t. Publikum das Leben im echten Schützengraben täuschend vor Augen führen soll, dem edlen Zwecke der patriotischen Kriegsfürsorge und richte an seine kaiserliche Hoheit das alleruntertänigste Ersuchen, den Schützengraben für eröffnet zu erklären. EIN VERTRETER DER KORRESPONDENZ WILHELM (zu seinem Kollegen): Unter den militärischen und zivilen Notabilitäten bemerkte man u.a.— DER KOLLEGE (schreibend): Angelo Eisner v. Eisenhof, Flora Dub, Hofrat und […] Hofrätin Schwarz-Gelber— DER VERTRETER: Aber ich seh die nicht— DER KOLLEGE: No ich weiß aber. […] DIE STIMME DES ERZHERZOGS KARLFRANZ JOSEPH: Ich bin gerne gekommen, den Schützengraben anzuschauen. Ich bin ja selbst Soldat. (Kraus, LTM 244–45)

This play within a play, which presents the war as theater and converts the visitors of the park into spectators, while retaining the entertaining character of the park, could be described most aptly by the German word Schauspiel, for which the most accurate English translation in this context would be “show.” The phrase “to declare the trench open” invites visitors to amuse themselves passively through observation, rather than by engaging in some kind of activity, which is the original idea of the park—and it turns a horrible reality into a display to be consumed rather than dealt with. Kraus’ reception of the operetta as a genre that treats nonsense as natural, requiring no intellectual effort from the audience, is also echoed in this performance, which proceeds from the assumption that it can entertain by showing soldiers in trenches. Any reflection about the real life of soldiers in trenches on the part of the audience would destroy the illusion of the show, because the illusion is based on the logic of operetta, which, as Kraus saw it, takes the world of nonsense for granted and does not require the involvement of reason. The multifold staging in public finds its fictional counterpart in this play within the play, which presents the authorities’ treatment of the war in public as a carefully orchestrated performance, void of any trace of morality or reason. In the preface to the LTM this procedure is described as a tragic carnival and a tragedy performed by operetta characters (Kraus, LTM 9). In Kraus’ play, however, the double staging most likely has exactly the opposite effect on the recipient (reader or spectator) from the one the authorities intend to achieve in public. The authorities’ intention is to achieve an anesthetized state of mind among the citizens by turning them into passive spectators of an everlasting performance that feeds on war, or as Kraus puts it, a tragic carnival. To watch and to be seen is the essence of the tragic carnival, which is why the

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journalists enlist certain “notables” in the list of spectators, although it is not clear whether they are indeed there. The disembodied voice of Archduke Charles Francis Joseph could be a parodic allusion to the voice of God used in Goethe’s Faust or to his absence from the show, which has to be covered by the voice of yet another actor in the all-embracing carnival. The procedure of staging a play within a play—or, as Schwanitz calls it, “self-duplication” (100)—deconstructs the ongoing official staging of the Austrian national cause in reality and is aimed at making the play’s recipients aware of the ultimate goal behind the incessant carnival—to represent reality in a way authorities would have it perceived by people, thus converting the latter into passive onlookers. It is thus only a seeming paradox that Kraus chose to expose the ubiquitous staging in reality precisely in a drama. Such self-duplication has a much stronger effect in drama than in prose or poetry, because in drama it also duplicates the situation of the spectator, so that the actors onstage turn into spectators watching another performance before the eyes of the “real” spectators in the audience (Schwanitz 100). In other words, both spectators and readers become fully aware of the difference between staged and non-staged reality. Even reading the LTM, in consequence, we are intended to become fully aware that the show in the Wurstelprater is precisely that—a show for entertainment, while those who are impersonated in it are dying in the real trenches. The systematic deployment of traditional theatrical forms, elements of carnival, and the metaphor of the world as a stage in the LTM has the function of generating an alternative public sphere, or “counterpublic” (Zorn 58). Zorn points to Bakhtin’s definition of public discourse as “represented and representing,” i.e., double-voiced language (Zorn 55–56). Bakhtin finds the analogue to public discourse in the theater as a site of enunciation where even the authoritarian, monarchic voice is unavoidably “undermined in its absoluteness” because it does not only represent but is also represented (Zorn 56), hence subjected to critical interpretation by the spectators. Therefore, the theatrical frame is an ideal form for a dissenter like Kraus, enabling him to make relative dominant public rhetoric and undermine its claim to authority (57). The aforementioned procedure of “self-duplication” is especially effective in theater because, as Zorn points out, the immediacy of the theater “lets us experience community performance in an artificial, yet common real space,” whilst providing the frame for a symbolic meaning of characters and action and thus creating distance between audience and play (57). Kraus draws on the tradition of the theatrum mundi only to deconstruct it and announce its inadequacy in the age of technology. Konersmann reports on Kraus’ objection to this metaphor in his critical response to the performance of Hofmannsthal’s The Great World Theater of Salzburg (Das Salzburger große Welttheater) in 1922. Kraus believed that the metaphor of

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theatrum mundi was incapable of representing, much less coping with the misery of his time. He criticized Hofmannsthal for being oblivious to reality and described his use of the theatrum mundi metaphor as an escapade into the “mythological starry heavens of Europe” (Konersmann 129). Kraus considers the old metaphor to be, above all, ethically inadequate. The rhetorical content of Christianity as a foundation of the theatrum mundi presupposes the existence of an ultimate moral authority. Yet the war, as an instance of human suffering of previously unimagined dimensions, destroyed the possibility of imagining that moral authority. Konersmann clarifies further that Kraus’ main objection to the use of this metaphor in Hofmannsthal’s play was not the fact that it shows the world in the theater, but that it represents the world as theater (139). In Kraus’ view the reason why the world cannot be represented as stage anymore is, again, the war: The war ended one epoch and sealed the doom of the metaphor of being. It [the war] remains impenetrable to any compensatory rhetorical efforts, because it is neither comprehensible, nor is it pardonable in accordance with, say, a providence beyond human insight. There is no theory of the world which could provide it with a justification, as a matter of fact it has placed the justification of any theory of the world in question for all time.17 Der Krieg, […], hat eine Epoche beendet und den Niedergang der Daseinsmetapher besiegelt. Rhetorischen Kompensationsbemühungen bleibt er unzugänglich, denn weder ist er verständlich noch, etwa nach Maßgabe einer dem Einblick des Menschen entzogenen Providenz, verzeihlich. Es gibt keine Weltformel, die ihm zu irgendeinem Recht verhelfen könnte, ja er hat für immer die Berechtigung von Weltformeln überhaupt in Frage gestellt. (Konersmann 140)

Kraus lived in a time when modern technology and especially the printing press began more aggressively than ever before to change both the human perception and the human imagination of reality. Reality could no longer be represented by metaphors like the theatrum mundi, which presupposes order, hierarchy, and an ultimate authority as a guarantor of morality. The media, with their omnipresence and capacity to transmit “reality” from one place to another, replaced the role of God. Or, in Luhmann’s words: “[…] we can speak of the reality of the mass media in another sense, in the sense of what appears to them, or through them to others, to be reality. Put in Kantian terms: the mass media generate a transcendental illusion” (4). After the experience of World War I, in Kraus’ view, the metaphor of the theatrum mundi could not be logically sustained, either. As we saw in the above example, the ubiquitous staging and, more importantly, the incessant spreading of images and information by the media, as I elaborate further on, annihilated the difference between reality and stage on which the theater metaphor was based, or again as Luhmann puts it:

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What is at issue here is no longer the old ontological duality of appearance and reality, which was thought of in principle as being ontologically separable or which as religion made reference to the hidden God. (84) The reality of the mass media is the reality of the second-order observation. […] The marking of the difference between what one knows from the mass media and what one has really seen (and photographed) […], is itself a product of the mass media, through which they make themselves invisible as the ground of culture. (85–86)

And yet, the LTM ends with the voice of the hidden God uttering the sentence: “I did not want this” (Kraus, LTM 770), which echoes the baroque totality of the theatrum mundi. We shall see, however, that Kraus evoked the baroque totality of the theatrum mundi in the LTM only to announce the end of its metaphorical capacity to represent the world. The last words in the LTM, which also allude to God’s words in the last scene in Faust I, are uttered by God in the play, to be sure, but they are actually a quotation of what Wilhelm II allegedly said at the end of the war in order to avoid responsibility for its consequences (Buck 66). The end of the LTM thus annihilates the idea of the world as a stage, with God as the final moral authority, by assigning God’s role to a leading politician, a representative of those who in the age of technology have the power to destroy the world, but not the moral power to lead. The idea of the stage as a micro-version of the world is also annihilated by the quotation, which does not belong to the inner reality of the drama, but comes from the press, which presents it as reality. Kraus criticizes Hofmannsthal for ignoring this breach in the European tradition, but he also endeavors to find the apt artistic form to represent it. Thus, the frame of the LTM is not the baroque totality of the theatrum mundi. For one, the prelude at the beginning of the LTM, which Buck rightly considers to be a reference to Goethe’s Faust (64), cannot function as a complement to the final words of God at the end, as the prelude in Faust does, because any claim to final moral authority is absent from it. Instead, the prelude begins with a newsboy shouting on the Ringstrasse promenade in Vienna, informing the citizens of Francis Ferdinand’s assassination in Sarajevo: Vienna. The Ringstrasse promenade at the Sirk Corner. A summer holiday evening. Lively goings-on. The crowd breaks up into small groups. A NEWSBOY: Extra-a-a! Extra-a-a! Assassination of the heir to the throne! The offender is arrested! Wien. Ringstraßenkorso. Sirk-Ecke. Ein Sommerfeiertagabend. Leben und Treiben. Es bilden sich Gruppen. EIN ZEITUNGSAUSRUFER: Extraausgabee—! Ermordung des Thronfolgers! Da Täta verhaftet! (Kraus, LTM 45)

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In Kraus’ depiction, news from the press replaces the religious moral authority which was present in Faust I.18 Every act in the play begins with a variation of this scene—the newsboy shouting the latest news from the battlefields throughout Europe. The repetition of this scene functions as a symbol of the fractured reality which the media introduced and presented as a totality and eliminates the harmony-evoking metaphor of the world as one stage. There is, nonetheless, a broader frame structure in the LTM, one that completely abandons the theater tradition and introduces the technique of montage, thus modifying the metaphor of the world as a stage. Both before the beginning and after the end of the play there is a photograph without a caption. The photograph at the beginning shows a hanged man surrounded by a group of grinning men, both civilians and soldiers. The photograph at the end shows a wayside crucifix with the cross missing, but the figure of Christ still intact. The hanged man on the photograph at the beginning is Cesare Battisti, an Italian-speaking irredentist who had fought on the enemy side and was nominally guilty of treason. This was a propaganda photograph, printed and circulated by the authorities as a picture postcard (Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 331–32). These images are two complementary and opposing parts of one message: the execution of men as a reproducible commodity annihilates the idea of Christ’s sacrifice for the salvation of humankind, because the photograph offers a new form of sacrifice. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ took place so that God could forgive humankind its sins. Thus the son of God plays the symbolic role of “sacrificial substitution” (Girard 5) offering himself as a sacrifice so that humankind can be spared and, more importantly, so that no other human sacrifice should ever take place. The crucifix remains as a symbol that represents this sacrifice. The photograph captures the executed man; it does not represent him symbolically. It is thus consciously reproduced by means of technology for the purpose of intimidation—a perverted version of the original function of sacrificial rituals “to restore harmony to the community, to reinforce the social fabric” (Girard 8). Restoring harmony during war would be to go back to the pre-war state, or to reestablish peace. But the photograph perpetuates the state of war as a warning to all those who refuse to fight for the “right side.” The worst moral corruption, however, is reflected in the possibilities created by technology to reproduce the execution as a postcard, for the purpose of entertainment, and to possess it as a commodity. The photographed execution becomes technologically reproducible sacrifice.19 The reproduction and distribution of the image thus reintroduce the metaphor of the world as a stage, but this metaphor conceives of the stage as a place of execution and of the people as curious onlookers, not actors.

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Acting is replaced by passive gazing, which liberates the onlookers from direct moral responsibility. Another important feature is the portrayal of the hangmen. The character of the Grumbler (der Nörgler), who might be considered a verbal instance of morality in the play and the voice of the author, describes the hangman’s grinning face: The Austrian visage of the Viennese hangman, a triumphant stuffed dummy of satisfied coziness named “We-are-Austrians.” Grinning faces of civilians and men, whose last possession is their honor, squeeze closely around the corpse, so that they can all appear on the postcard. The postcard is a monument to the gallows humor of our hangmen, transformed into a scalp of Austrian culture. OPTIMIST: But surely the witnesses to the execution did not have themselves photographed deliberately?! GRUMBLER: The crowd broke up into small groups. And this was not only because they wanted to be present at one of the most bestial of executions, but also because they wanted to be remembered as having been here; and everybody made a friendly face. Das österreichische Antlitz […] des Wiener Henkers, […] ein triumphierender Ölgötze der befriedigten Gemütlichkeit, der “Mir-san-mir” heißt. Gesichter von Zivilisten und solchen, deren letzter Besitz die Ehre ist, drängen sich dicht um den Leichnam, damit sie nur ja alle auf die Ansichtskarte kommen. [Die Ansichtskarte] […] ist […] ein Denkmal des Galgenhumors unserer Henker, umgewertet zum Skalp österreichischer Kultur. (Kraus, LTM 507) DER OPTIMIST: Aber die Zeugen der Hinrichtung haben sich doch nicht absichtlich mitphotographieren lassen?! DER NÖRGLER: Es bildeten sich Gruppen. Und zwar, um nicht nur bei einer der viehischsten Hinrichtungen dabei zu sein, sondern auch dabei zu bleiben; und alle machten ein freundliches Gesicht. (508)

The witnesses and the hangman insist on being photographed because they derive their existence from the photograph, as Barthes explains it, from the knowledge that they are being seen, thus transforming themselves from subjects into objects of gaze (Barthes, Camera Lucida 11–13). The photographic images become the new idols of worship, whether they show the hangman, described by Kraus as “a triumphant stuffed dummy,” the grinning crowd, the victim, or all of them together. However, as Bischoff explains, the attempt at forcible self-ennoblement and self-deification through the photographed murder is annihilated by the impression of banality and uniformity (136). Since everybody and everything on the photograph become objects of observation, including the act of execution, or death, the latter no longer appears as the unrepresentable other of the cultural representation, but rather itself becomes readable as a paradigmatic sign of a culture which denounces itself (Bischoff 137).

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This is the watershed in the European tradition which invalidates both the rhetoric of Christianity as well as the aesthetic use of the traditional metaphor of the world as a stage derived from it. Death used to be represented symbolically onstage as part of the metaphor which represented the world as a stage. On the photograph, the execution is not represented by an artistic metaphor, but captured by technology. The act of photographing, however, presupposes posing, hence some kind of staging, which means that it is not reality either. Bischoff describes the process accurately when she says that the staged and the natural become interchangeable through the power of signs which edit reality forcibly, disallowing the possibility of recognizing a residue of that which cannot be symbolized and which could be signified by the radical unfamiliarity of death (138). In the eyes of the Grumbler the “gallows humor” (Kraus, LTM 507) of the hangmen who triumph over the hanged victim in the photograph receives the opposite value—the photograph becomes the execution of the culture which allows it to happen. The postcard is the scalp of Austrian culture because it represents a trophy with which technology demonstrates its victory over the tradition of symbolic cultural representations, which are based on a system of moral norms. The postcard marks the beginning of a technological construction of reality in the media which aspires to show that which had been considered unimaginable and thus impossible to represent from a moral point of view. A culture that uses technology to capture an execution in order to show triumph, to intimidate the enemy, and to entertain, executes itself. In the LTM, then, the stage functions as a metaphor of a courtroom in which humankind is accused of destroying its own civilization. The following section examines Kraus’ critique of all the abovementioned media procedures specifically in relation to Serbia, Austria’s sworn enemy from the Balkans. Austrian Spectators Become Actors in the Theater of World War I Kraus first became aware of the dangerously seductive style of war journalism when reports on the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) began appearing in the Austrian press. Austria’s geopolitical position proved to be advantageous for the production of daily news regarding these wars. Timms provides an illustrative description of Austria’s relationship to the Balkans engaged in war: In this miniature theater of war the representatives of the leading Austrian newspapers enjoyed the status of privileged spectators. And in their reports, their subjective impressions of the experience take priority over the sobering reporting of facts. ‘Österreich ist auf dem Balkan durch Impressionisten vertreten,’20 Kraus writes in November 1912. And he devotes fourteen pages of Die Fackel21 to the

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reprinting of excerpts from the writings of Austrian war correspondents. (Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 154)

In his journal Die Fackel, Kraus expresses deep concern about the subjective and quasi-poetic style of these reports. He criticizes the predictable clichés and the abundance of colorful adjectives which aspire to achieve aesthetic effects instead of reporting factually on the events (Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 154). This style provoked a corresponding reaction among the reading audience, who, in Kraus’ view, “responds to the wars in the Balkans in the same way it responds to the latest operetta; in both it finds an entertaining source of diversion” (156). It is now clear why in the preface to the LTM Kraus refers to the war as a tragedy with operetta characters. In the group of glosses published in 1913 and titled Die Katastrophe der Phrasen, (The Catastrophy of Phrases), Kraus argued that the clichés and distortions of newspaper coverage threatened to turn the Balkan crisis into a European catastrophe and that words were no longer passive reflections of events, but had become active agents of disaster (156). This reception of the reports on the Balkan Wars is included in the criticism of wartime journalism generally in the LTM and is condensed in the expression from the preface to the LTM: “Rhetoric stands on two legs—men have kept only one” (Kraus, LTM 9).22 In the preface, Kraus claims: “The most glaring inventions are quotations” (Kraus, The Last Days 3). From the wide variety of quotations he includes in the play I will mention only a few to demonstrate their style and their effect on the public. The newsboys spread news of the assassination of Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo by shouting and selling newspapers on the streets of Vienna. As a consequence, people begin gathering and forming groups (the phrase “The crowd breaks up into small groups” recurs numerous times to illustrate the repetitive and meaningless journalistic style of the time) and then repeat the phrases from the press. With the repetition the words are distorted, and the phrases become shorter and absurd, but also more effective in inciting violence: THIRD OFFICER: You know, the paper said, the whole thing is incapable. OFFICER: Inescapable, you mean. THIRD OFFICER: Yes, of course—inescapable. I must have read it wrong. (Kraus, The Last Days 9) VIENNESE: We are leading a holy war of pretense, we are! Like a phoenix we’re standing here, a phoenix they will not break, accordingly—we are Austrians; Austria will rise from the dead like a phalanx from the conflagration I tell you! […] and therefore I tell you also, Serbia—must die! DER DRITTE: Weißt, in der Zeitung steht, es war unanwendbar. (Kraus, LTM 70) DER ZWEITE: Unabwendbar steht.

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? DER DRITTE: Natürlich, unabwendbar, weißt ich hab mich nur verlesen. […] (7071) EIN WIENER: Mir führen einen heiligen Verteilungskrieg führen mir! […] Wiar ein Phönix stehma da, den s’ nicht durchbrechen wern, dementsprechend—mir san mir, Österreich wird auferstehn wie ein Phallanx ausm Weltbrand sag ich! (71) […] und darum sage ich auch, Serbien—muß sterbien! (71)

The comical effect achieved through substitution of the original word in the newspaper by an approximate homophone with an unrelated or opposite meaning demonstrates the hypnotic effect that the phrases in the papers achieve in public with their seemingly educated, yet in actuality agitating rhetoric. The Freudian slip in the Viennese’s reasoning (Verteilungskrieg, i.e., a war of distribution, instead of Verteidigungskrieg, i.e., a war of defense) is used to show how the rhetoric in the papers attained its goal of mobilizing the primordial aggressive instincts in readers. Kraus’ favorite target of satire are intellectuals, or those who consider themselves intellectuals and are capable at least of reproducing what they read accurately, because they fail to see through the emptiness of the phrases and their use for propaganda purposes: INTELLECTUAL: […] This morning’s editorial says, “living is a joy.” Brilliant, when he says that all the glory of classical greatness sheds its radiance upon our time. (10) EIN INTELLEKTUELLER: […] Heute steht im Leitartikel, daß eine Lust is zu leben. Glänzend wie er sagt, der Glanz antiker Größe durchleuchtet unsere Zeit. (72)

Such hollow rhetoric attempts to present warmongering as a continuation of the most valuable experiences of the ancient European civilizations. Readers who fail to see through this attempt demonstrate the inability of education to unite logic and morality and to resist the shallow, but seductive style. Roda’s nation of engineers, poets, and painters is presented here, indeed, as an uneducated, semiliterate mob mixed with a few would-be intellectuals who fall pray to cheap propaganda. Kraus’ real disillusionment with intellectuals and scholars stemmed from a legal process related to the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. After the annexation, the Austrian army was mobilized and poised to invade Serbia. Since no moral justification for declaration of war on Serbia existed, Count Aehrenthal, the Austrian foreign minister, decided to orchestrate a press campaign and found an ally in the historian Heinrich Friedjung. The Neue Freie Presse, the daily newspaper mercilessly criticized and mocked in the LTM, published an article by Friedjung justifying military action. Friedjung accused members of the Croatian Diet of treasonable conspiracy with the hostile government in Belgrade. After Serbia, under

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Russian pressure, accepted Austria’s sovereignty over Bosnia-Herzegovina, the threat of war receded, and the Austrian Foreign Office had to take responsibility for its unjust accusations. Members of the Croatian Diet brought a libel action against Friedjung that Kraus attended in person. The Neue Freie Presse ardently supported the authorities and Friedjung, but the documents submitted to prove the conspiracy had to be recognized by the Court as forgeries (Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 151). Kraus attacked the irresponsibility of the Austrian Foreign Office and Count Aehrenthal, but mostly the gullibility of Austrian public opinion, which “[…] is the most willing victim of publicity, in that it not only believes what it sees in print, but also believes the opposite, if it sees that too in print” (152). He also analyzed Friedjung as an example of a politically corrupt intellectual and, since it became apparent during the court case that Friedjung had acted in good faith, explained Friedjung’s motivation as zeal to create a public enemy through patriotism founded in clichés, criticizing […] this readiness, if the need should arise, to fight for the fatherland with clichés and ‘if it should come to a passage of arms with the enemy,’ to cross the river Sava in Neue Freie Presse and ‘to do battle with the Serbs.‘ (Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 152) […] diese Bereitschaft, wenn es sein muß, für das Vaterland mit Phrasen zu kämpfen und “wenn es zu einem Waffengang mit dem Feind kommen sollte,” in der Neuen Freien Presse die Save zu überschreiten und “dem Serben eine Schlacht zu liefern.” (Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 152)

In the LTM, Friedjung appears in a scene in which an angry mob destroys a barbershop because it belongs to a Serb: In front of a barbershop in the Habsburgergasse. A crowd of people, extremely agitated. CROWD: Down with them! Beat them all up! MAN: (trying to calm the crowd): But people, the man didn’t do anything! The violin salesman next door is his enemy— BARBER: I’m innocent—I’m a court barber—how would I even think of— THIRD MAN: Down! Down with the Serbian throat cutter! CROWD: Doown!—! (The shop is smashed to pieces.) (At the corner appear the historians Friedjung and Brockhausen talking to one another.) BROCKHAUSEN: Just today I published a felicitous comment on this topic in the newspaper, dear colleague, listen: “In the Viennese streets one has indeed never heard the strident yelling of the cheap flagwaving patriotism. From the beginning of the war, this old state has embraced the most beautiful German virtues: tenacious self-confidence and deep inner faith in the victory of the good and just cause.” (Hands him the clipping.) FRIEDJUNG: Indeed a splendid view, dear colleague, which takes the nail and hits the cake on the head. Oh, look—right there we have an example of this! A

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? crowd glowing with patriotism, expressing their feelings in a moderate way, suaviter in re, fortiter in modo, as it befits the Viennese tradition. CROWD SHOUTING: “Suspicious Serbian dog!” “I’ll bring the sponge to my missus!” “I saved all the perfumes!” “Gimme a couple of those!” FRIEDJUNG: It’s indeed strange how good people’s sense is when it comes to an assault on the intact standard of living of the kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Assembly. Unless I am very much mistaken, we should discover in this barbershop the documents about the great-Serbian conspiracy of Slovensky Jug which I tracked down as early as 1908. CROWD SHOUTING: “What do those two Jews want here?” “They look like they’re from the Balkans!” “They’re only missing a kaftan!” “They are Serbs!” “Two Serbs!” “Traitors!” “Kill them!” Vor einem Friseurladen in der Habsburgergasse. Eine Menschenmenge in größter Erregung. DIE MENGE: Nieda! Hauts alles zsamm! EINER (der zu beschwichtigen sucht): Aber Leuteln, der Mann hat ja nix tan! Der Geigenhändler von nebenan, der is sein Feind— DER FRISEUR: Ich bin unschuldig— DRITTER: […]! Nieda! Nieda mit dem serbischen Gurgelabschneider! DIE MENGE: Niedaa!—! (Das Lokal wird zertrümmert.) (An der Ecke tauchen die Historiker Friedjung und Brockhausen im Gespräch auf.) (Kraus, LTM 91) BROCKHAUSEN: Just heute habe ich in der Presse eine treffende Anmerkung zu diesem Thema beigesteuert […] Herr Kollega, […] hören Sie: “ […] In den Wiener Straßen hat sich allerdings nie das schrille Johlen eines billigen Hurrapatriotismus vernehmbar gemacht […] Dieser alte deutsche Staat hat seit Kriegsbeginn sich die schönsten deutschen Volkstugenden zu eigen gemacht: das zähe Selbstvertrauen und die tiefinnere Gläubigkeit an den Sieg der guten und gerechten Sache.” (Er überreicht ihm den Ausschnitt.) FRIEDJUNG: Fürwahr, eine treffliche Ansicht, Herr Kollega, die gerade—den Nagel abschießt und den Vogel auf den Kopf trifft. […] Ei sieh—da hätten wir gleich ein Beispiel! Eine patriotisch durchglühte Menge, die in maßvoller Weise ihren Gefühlen Ausdruck gibt, suaviter in re, fortiter in modo, wie’s der Wiener Tradition geziemt. (92) RUFE AUS DER MENGE: […] “Serbischer Hund vardächtiga!” […] “Den Schwamm bring i meiner Alten!” “Alle Parfüms hab i g’rettet!” “Gib her a paar!” […] FRIEDJUNG: Es ist doch merkwürdig, welch feine Witterung das Volk gegenüber einem Anschlag auf den unversehrten Besitzstand der im Reichsrat vertretenen Königsreiche und Länder hat. Ich müßte mich sehr täuschen, wenn sich bei diesem Friseur nicht die Dokumente über jene großserbische Verschwörung des Slovensky Jug vorfinden sollten, der ich schon im Jahre 1908 auf die Spur gekommen bin. (93) RUFE AUS DER MENGE: “Was wolln denn die zwa Juden do?” “Die schaun aa so aus wie zwa vom Balkan!” “Fehlt ihnen nur der Kaftan!” “Serben sans!” “Zwa Serben!” “Hochverräter!” “Hauts es!” (94)

This excerpt from the LTM exemplifies artistic procedures that are applied throughout the play. As Timms rightly observes, the predominant technique in the play is the juxtaposition of scenes and the ubiquitous presence of

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contrasts and discrepancies (Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 378). Above, we see a World War I variant of a lynch mob, which feels fully justified in attacking a barber because he is a Serb. The mob’s behavior must be viewed in the context of previous examples of anti-Serbian hysteria spread through the press, the most illustrative one being the newsboy shouting on the streets of Vienna at the beginning of the prelude: “Neue Freie Presse! Bloody deed in Sarajevo! The offender is a Serb!” (Kraus, The Last Days 45). We see people on the streets of Vienna repeating the anti-Serbian propaganda from the press throughout the Prelude and the first part of Act I, so that the above scene functions as a logical culmination of the mass-hysteria. In contrast to the angry mob we see two intellectuals talking to one other in a calm tone and well articulated standard German. The conversation of the intellectuals is, nonetheless, only in seeming opposition to the unarticulated shouting of the mob in Viennese jargon. Brockhausen begins the conversation by reading his own comment in the daily press, full of hollow phrases that vary the stereotype of Austrians as nation of culture that we saw in Roda’s diary and present an uncontrolled mob as a group of educated patriots. By contrasting the mob on the streets with the rhetoric in the daily press, Kraus not only demonstrates the striking discrepancy between the description, or rather prescription of reality in the newspapers and the reality which is happening on the streets, he also deconstructs the seemingly analytical and elaborate style of the intellectuals as propaganda which corresponds to the vandalizing in the streets. The intellectuals and the people of the streets are all captives of the language in the daily press, which veils reality and paralyzes common sense. The lack of common sense is best revealed in Kraus’ carnivalesque language techniques. Friedjung uses preposterous language (in the literal sense of the Latin etymon that the thing which is placed at the beginning— prae-/before—should be placed at the end—posterus/after): “die geradezu den Nagel abschießt und den Vogel auf den Kopf trifft,” and “suaviter in re, fortiter in modo.” Both phrases are proverbs, i.e., idiomatic expressions with fixed word order. The change of word order creates a strong comical effect because the logic of the sentence is reversed. The Latin proverb should be: suaviter in modo, fortiter in re (gently in manner, strongly in deed). The reversal of word order is a procedure inherited from the carnival tradition. As Bakhtin tells us, the logic of the carnival is the logic of reversal—what should be up is down and vice versa. This logic can be observed in gestures, body movements, and change of appearance, but also in language.23 Carnivalesque use of language should, however, be restricted to the time of carnival. What happens with language in World War I Vienna is a permanent reversal of logic, thus a permanent or, as Kraus defines it himself, a tragic carnival (Kraus, LTM 9). Timms claims that Kraus’ concept

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of tragic carnival is the exact opposite of the Bakhtinian idea of carnivalesque liberation. The characters of tragic carnival are condemned to remain trapped for all eternity wearing their masks made of ideology (Timms, “Kraus: Die letzten Tage der Menschheit” 150). In the above scene Kraus presents Friedjung as an educated fool, another carnival trope. Friedjung fully justifies the mob’s looting of the barber because it supposedly expropriates him of documents which belong legally to the Crownlands of the Monarchy and which Friedjung claims he tracked during the trial in 1908. Kraus’ mockery also has a moral dimension, for Friedjung cannot possibly be so stupid as to believe that the mob is searching for documents from the trial of 1908. Kraus’ implication is that Friedjung chooses to be stupid and blind, like all others who choose to participate in the tragic carnival, or tragic operetta, switching off both reasoning and moral responsibility, or indeed acting like operetta characters in a tragedy of humankind. The last part of the scene, in which the mob suspects Friedjung and Brockhausen first of being Jews and then Serbs, moving towards them in order to attack them, can to a certain extent be regarded as fictional revenge in the name of poetic justice. But more than that, it is a forewarning that, for the mob, scapegoats are replaceable and that the perpetrators of today can become the victims of tomorrow. One of Kraus’ objects of mockery in the LTM is Conrad von Hötzendorf, Chief of the General Staff of the Austrian army. Since his first appointment to this position in 1906 he had been one of the most forceful advocates of Austria’s military engagement in the Balkans. When he was reappointed in 1912, photographs appeared in the Austrian press showing von Hötzendorf gazing worriedly at the map of the Balkans. “Inspired” by Hötzendorf’s posturing, Kraus reconstructed a dialogue between Hötzendorf and the photographer and published it in his journal Die Fackel (Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 159). As early as the beginning of the twentieth century Kraus grasped the nature of press photography, on which Roland Barthes elaborates in his Image—Music—Text of 1977. Barthes refutes the widely accepted definition of photography as literal reality, or a message without a code, as opposed to the plastic arts, whose interpretation is derived both from their denotation, which is the analogous representation of reality, and from their connotation, which is the aesthetics of the ideological treatment of the image and reflects a certain culture of the society receiving that message (Image—Music—Text 17). He explains that both the status of the photograph as a mechanical analogue of reality and its first-order message, completely filling its substance and not allowing for development of a second-order message, are mythical. He claims that the photographic message generally, and especially

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in the press, is connoted (18–19). Among the connotation procedures Barthes enlists are trick effects (in order to pass off a heavily connoted message as merely denoted), posing, choice of objects, and photogenia (the informational structure of the photograph in which the connoted message is the image itself, sublimated by techniques of lighting, exposure, and printing) (21–24). In the two examples from the LTM I now offer we will see Kraus deconstructing these procedures of connotation. The reconstructed dialogue between von Hötzendorf and the photographer of 1912 was expanded, updated, and included as a scene in the LTM. The object of mockery in the dialogue is not so much von Hötzendorf‘s warmongering attitude as his addiction to drawing attention to himself through the media. In this scene, moreover, he appears to be so indifferent to the war and the Balkans that he replaces the map of the Balkans with the map of Italy, simply “for a change”: (In the Chief of Staff’s quarters. Conrad von Hötzendorf alone. His arms crossed, weight on one leg, pensive.) CONRAD (raising his eyes to heaven): If only Skolik were here now! MAJOR (entering): Your excellency, reporting respectfully, Skolik is here. CONRAD: Skolik? Who’s he? MAJOR: Oh, the court photographer Skolik from Vienna, the man who at the time of the Balkan War took that fine photograph in which Your Excellency is immersed in the study of the map of the Balkans. CONRAD: Oh yes, I now remember dimly. MAJOR: No, not dimly, sir, quite clear, Your Excellency and well lighted. […] MAJOR: He claims that your excellency sent for him. (52) CONRAD: Well, I wouldn’t actually say “sent for him,” but I did drop him a hint […] CONRAD: […] All right, let Skolik in! Wait a minute—should we try it again, studying that map of the Balkans—that was quite extraordinary—but I think for a change, maybe the Italian—[…] (Conrad von Hätzendorf spreads out the map and tries several different poses. As the photographer and the Major come in, he is already preoccupied studying the map of the Italian war theater. The photographer bows deeply. The Major positions himself next to the table) CONRAD: Now, what is it? […] SKOLIK: Only one little feature shot, Your Excellency, if I may. […] CONRAD: Here I am working in the cause of world history and there— SKOLIK: Actually, I’m supposed to do—for Interest—and so— CONRAD: I see, as a remembrance of this era— SKOLIK: Yes, and also for The Week. (52) CONRAD: But I may end up getting my picture among those of our generals, I know that all too well, I’d much rather— SKOLIK: […] With the immortal name that Your Excellency enjoys, it goes without saying that Your Excellency should appear all by himself. […] CONRAD: I’ll let you know in confidence, and strictly off the record (you must not tell anybody), I’m just now studying the map of the Balkans—uh, what am I saying, of the Italian war theater—[…]

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CONRAD: Should I continue studying the map of the—er, uh, yes, of Italy? SKOLIK: Free and easy. Just be nonchalant, Your Excellency, just continue your study of the map—that’s it—relax—completely unaffected—that’s it—no, that’d be a bit unnatural, in the end one might think it was posed […] Your Excellency, let’s have a fiend-ly expression!—hold it! Now—I thank you! (55)

(Zimmer des Generalstabschefs. Conrad v. Hötzendorf allein. Haltung: die Arme gekreuzt, Standfuß und Spielfuß, sinnend.) CONRAD (mit einem Blick gen Himmel): Wann nur jetzt der Skolik da wär! EIN MAJOR (kommt): Exlenz melde gehorsamst, der Skolik is da. CONRAD: Was den für ein Skolik? MAJOR: Na der Hofphotograph Skolik aus Wien, der seinerzeit, während des Balkankriegs, die schöne Aufnahme gemacht hat, wie Exlenz in das Studium der Balkankarte vertieft sind. CONRAD: Ach ja, ich erinnere mich dunkel. (174) MAJOR: Nein, ganz hell, Exlenz, volle Beleuchtung. […] MAJOR: Er beruft sich darauf, daß ihn Exlenz wieder bestellt haben. CONRAD: No bestellt kann man grad nicht sagen, aber eine Anregung hab ich ihm zukommen lassen […] CONRAD: […] Also herein mit dem Skolik! Warten Sie—sollen wir wieder beim Studium der Balkankarte—das war ja außerordentlich—aber ich denk, zur Abwechslung vielleicht die italienische—[…] (Conrad v. Hötzendorf breitet die Karte aus und versucht verschiedene Stellungen. Er ist, wie der Photograph mit dem Major eintritt, bereits in das Studium der Karte vom italienischen Kriegsschauplatz vertieft. Der Photograph verbeugt sich tief. Der Major stellt sich neben den Tisch. Er und Conrad blicken starr auf die Karte.) CONRAD: Was gibt’s denn schon wieder? […] SKOLIK: Nur eine Spezialaufnahme Exzellenz, wenn ich bitten dürfte. CONRAD: Ich arbeite gerade für die Weltgeschichte da— SKOLIK: Ich soll nämlich für das interessante Blatt und da— CONRAD: Aha, zur Erinnerung an die Epoche—(175) SKOLIK: Ja, auch für die Woche. CONRAD: Aber da kommt man am End zwischen unsere Generäle, das kenn ich schon, da möcht ich lieber— SKOLIK: […] Bei dem unsterblichen Namen, den Exzellenz haben, versteht sich das von selbst, daß Exzellenz ganz separat erscheinen. CONRAD: […] ich sag’s Ihnen im Vertrauen, Sie dürfen’s nicht weiter sagen, ich bin nämlich grad beim Studium der Karte vom Balkan—ah was sag ich, von Italien—(176) […] CONRAD: Soll ich also das Studium der Karte vom—also von Italien —fortsetzen? SKOLIK: Ungeniert, Exzellenz, setzen nur das Studium der Karte fort—so—ganz leger—ganz ungezwungen—so—nein, das wär bißl unnatürlich, könnt man am End glauben, es is gstellt […] machen Exzellenz ein feindliches Gesicht!— bitte! jetzt—ich danke! (177)

Von Hötzendorf embodies for Kraus the theatrical acting and posing through which the media and politicians construct a second-order reality. Von Hötzendorf’s posing when he is alone in the room described in the stage

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directions also shows that he has become addicted to the media role he acquired in 1912. Being natural becomes for him yet another role to play. First he pretends he did not summon the photographer, then he repeats his role from 1912 with a variation in his choice of map (an object of connotation). Again, we have something similar to a play within a play, which exposes the discrepancy between von Hötzendorf the person and von Hötzendorf the poseur. In addition to the stage directions, the voice of the author also intervenes in the exchanges of the major and the photographer with von Hötzendorf in order to mock the poseur and expose the person behind the mask as vain, greedy, and not very bright. The culmination of the scene occurs when the photographer, speaking for the ironic author, encourages von Hötzendorf to look natural so that people will not think that it is actually a pose. In Barthes’ terminology, the trick effect of connotation must look like an analogue of reality. The Grumbler and the Optimist discuss yet another photograph related to the Balkans. The photograph shows Count Leopold Berchtold posing selfappreciatively in uniform, with his hands resting on his hips and a saber hanging at the side of his trousers.24 The Optimist is impressed by Berchtold’s intention, as the Neue Freie Presse reports, to fight on the front against the Italians. The Grumbler responds: GRUMBLER: […] If however, Berchtold, against all odds, should not get the opportunity to lay eyes on the sworn enemy, […] then our former Minister of Foreign Affairs has by all means done his duty; because he certainly struck a pose. OPTIMIST: Here you have it in Die Woche, Count Berchtold in uniform. This picture— GRUMBLER:—is the cause of the war. OPTIMIST: In what way? After all, the picture was taken later than the ultimatum— (The Last Days 124) GRUMBLER: Certainly, another Austrian visage shows the accomplished deed, even before it happened; and yet, they are both identical.25 The Serbs could not accept the ultimatum because they were thinking of this photograph. Austria’s fear that they might just accept the ultimatum was completely groundless. […] OPTIMIST: I don’t understand you. So this photograph tells you— GRUMBLER:—that a racetrack dandy led the world to its death! (124) GRUMBLER: One is convinced by this plain uniform that the man would put up with life even in a trench. A modest, yet spirited sergeant, who says to the sworn enemy, hands on hips, winking, “Look me in the eye!” and the enemy should feel free to come, if he dare. He doesn’t really mean it, but if necessary he can get the job done, and thanks to his own resolution of August 1914 that must be famously known. GRUMBLER: Displayed in front of piles of corpses, whose background was provided by the charming model himself, it inflicts us with a mortal wound.

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? How about confronting it with the pictures of those countless martyrs waiting in Siberia, or those who decomposed on the roadside on their death march from Serbian into Italian captivity. Weren’t such pictures taken for domestic and international audiences? DER NÖRGLER: […] Sollte aber der Berchtold wider Erwarten keine Gelegenheit und den Erbfeind nicht zu Gesicht bekommen, […] so hat unser ehemaliger Minister des Äußeren jedenfalls seine Pflicht erfüllt; denn er hat sich ja gestellt. (LTM 408) DER OPTIMIST: […] Hier haben sie in der ‘Woche,’ den Grafen Berchtold in feldmäßiger Adjustierung. Dieses Bild— DER NÖRGLER:—ist der Kriegsgrund. DER OPTIMIST: Wieso? Die Photographie wurde doch später als das Ultimatum— DER NÖRLGER: Gewiß, ein andres österreichisches Antlitz, ehe sie geschehen, ein anderes zeigt die vollbrachte Tat; und doch sind beide identisch. Die Serben konnten das Ultimatum nicht annehmen, weil ihnen die Photographie vorgeschwebt hat. Die Furcht Österreichs, daß sie es vielleicht doch annehmen würden, war ganz grundlos. […] DER OPTIMIST: Ich verstehe Sie nicht. Diese Photographie sagt Ihnen also— DER NÖRGLER:—daß ein Renngigerl die Welt in den Tod geführt hat! (409) DER NÖRGLER: […] man ist vor dieser schlichten Uniform überzeugt, daß der Mann auch im Schützengraben vorlieb nehmen würde. Ein schlichter, wenngleich beherzter Zugsführer, […], der mit den Händen an den Hüften, zwinkernd “Schau mir ins Auge!” zum Erbfeind sagt, der nur herkommen woll, wann er sich traut. […] Er meint nicht so, aber er stellt, wenn’s sein muß, seinen Mann, und danke seiner eigenen Entschließung vom August 1914 muß es bekanntlich sein. […] (410) DER NÖRGLER: Ausgestellt vor den Leichenfeldern, deren Hintergrund das sympathische Modell selbst beigestellt hat, trifft sie uns tödlich. […] Wie wär’s, wenn wir es mit dem Bilde jener ungezählten Märtyrer konfrontierten, die in Sibirien warten, […] oder die vom Todeszug aus der serbischen Gefangenschaft in die italienische am Straßenrand verwest sind. […] Ward nichts dergleichen für Welt und Haus photographiert? […] (412)

The photograph’s function is not only to intimidate the enemy, but also to offer a role model for the soldiers who really fight in the trenches. It does not denote, but connotes a fearless soldier (“He doesn’t really mean it, but if necessary he can be that man”). Once again, the Grumbler reveals the discrepancy between the representation and the reality of war when he describes the images of the victims after describing the photograph of Berchtold. Photographs like the one showing Berchtold represent the war as an aesthetic experience, devoid of suffering and violence, and the military power behind the war as civilized and dominant. Victims and destruction have no place in this representational concept. Naturally, photographs of Austrian victims would have had a sobering and demoralizing effect on the public. We must remember, however, that Roda Roda dedicates quite a few lines to the description of Serbian victims in his diary, never omitting the alleged reasons for their suffering—the failed

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politics of their state: “The starving Serbian Army caught up with the starving refugees, took their bread, their sheep, and their coats” (Roda 245). Then he describes how he and the Austrian Army personally helped Serbian refugees, putting mothers with children on the army vehicles and giving them bread (248). Kraus presents the victims in the LTM on a screen as silent moving images, speaking for themselves without using words. There is no narrative comment, and there are very few exchanges: Narrow mountain path to Mitrovica.26 Snow flurries. Among thousands of carts, an incalculable mass of human beings: old people and women, children, half-naked, holding the hands of their mothers, many of whom also carry an infant in their arms. A little boy, at the side of a peasant woman from the Moravian valley,27 holds out his little hand and says: Uncle, give me bread— The scene is supplanted by another picture. The Balkan train is speeding across the landscape. It gradually slows down. One sees the dining car. Both War Correspondents are leaning out the windows; they appear to be drinking to their counterparts in the dining hall. One of them calls out: Say what you will, there’s something beautiful about the war!— Now the first apparition returns. […] A peasant woman with a deathly pale face sits leaning against a fir tree—she is the one from the Moravian valley. In her arms she holds a small lifeless body at whose head, with a flickering light, a tiny wax candle burns. (222) Schmaler Bergpfad nach Mitrovica. Schneegestöber. Zwischen tausenden von Karren eine unübersehbare Menschenmasse, Greise und Frauen, Kinder, halbnackt, an der Hand der Mütter, deren manche auch einen Säugling im Arme tragen. Ein kleiner Junge an der Seite einer Bäuerin aus dem Moravatal, streckt sein Händchen aus und sagt: Tschitscha, daj mi hleba— Die Szene wird von einem anderen Bilde verdrängt. Durch die Landschaft rast der Balkanzug. Das Tempo verlangsamt sich. Man sieht den Speisewagen, aus dessen Fenstern sich die beiden Kriegsberichterstatter beugen, sie scheinen ihren Ebenbildern im Saal zuzutrinken. Einer ruft: Es ist doch etwas Schönes um den Krieg!— Nun ist wieder das andere Bild. […] Mit totenblassem Antlitz, an einen Tannenbaum gelehnt, sitzt eine Bäuerin—es ist jene aus dem Moravatal—in den Armen einen leblosen kleinen Körper, zu dessen Häupten, mit zitterndem Licht, eine kleine Wachskerze brennt. (710–11)

Roda’s reports on the suffering of civilians in Serbia are similar to Kraus’ depictions above, but the former’s comments identifying Serbian politicians as the only guilty parties also exonerate both Austrian politicians and the Austrian public of moral responsibility. The line in which the war correspondent glorifies the aesthetics of war despite its ubiquitous horrors may seem like an extreme artistic invention on Kraus’ part. But that is

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Kraus’ moral response to the aesthetic representation of war exemplified by the photograph showing Berchtold, or Roda’s reporting on the battle for Belgrade, which General Field Marshal von Mackensen described as “the most beautiful deed of the war” (Roda 35). Kraus also paints a very different picture of the moral conduct of the Austrian army from that offered by Roda. A captain from Graz tells about the crimes he committed throughout the battlefields of World War I: […] I like going after Czechs the best. Whomever I met in Serbia, I shot down on the spot. Twenty people, among them civilians and prisoners, I killed with my own hands; at least one hundred and fifty I had shot. […] I always struck my subordinates in the face, either with my cane or my fist. But I also did a lot for them. In Serbia I raped a Serbian girl, but then I turned her over to the soldiers, and the next day I had the girl and her mother hanged from the grating of a bridge. The rope broke and the girl fell into the water, still alive. I drew my revolver and shot at the girl until she disappeared under the water, dead. I have always fulfilled my duty to the last breath of man and beast. (226–27) […] Am liebsten gehe ich auf Tschechen. Wer mir in Serbien begegnet ist, den habe ich auf der Stelle niedergeknallt. Zwanzig Menschen, darunter Zivilisten und Gefangene, habe ich mit eigener Hand getötet, mindestens hundertfünfzig habe ich erschießen lassen. […] Ich habe meine Untergebenen immer ins Gesicht geschlagen, sei es mit dem Stock, sei es mit der Faust. Aber ich habe auch viel für sie getan. In Serbien habe ich ein serbisches Mädchen vergewaltigt, aber dann den Soldaten überlassen und am nächsten Tag das Mädchen und seine Mutter auf einem Brückengitter aufhängen lassen. Die Schnur riß und das Mädchen fiel noch lebend in das Wasser. Ich zog meinen Revolver und shoß auf das Mädchen so lange, bis es tot unter dem Wasser verschwand. Ich habe stets meine Pflicht erfüllt, bis zum letzten Hauch von Mann und Roß. (714–15)

In this passage the army which Roda presents as a symbol of order and Austrian culture, both through his own descriptions of carefully conducted military actions and through the statements of locals who confirm his perspective, is depicted as a horde of killers who violate all laws of civilization. The killing and other atrocities in Kraus’ presentation become an end in themselves. Thus the captain’s report in the LTM annihilates the purported difference between the concept of “Kulturnation,” represented by the Austrians, and that of “Naturmenschen,” represented by the Serbs, which Roda borrows from the Austrian press and varies throughout his diary. Kraus’ position is very similar to Freud’s in his essay Zeitgemäßes über Krieg und Tod (Contemporary Thoughts on War and Death [1915]), where the latter elaborates on the culture shock and disappointment experienced by the Austrian public in World War I. It is important to reiterate here that Kraus sensed the danger of war precisely in the attitude of Austrian journalists towards the Balkan Wars, as if they were a theatrical performance, and in what he termed the “impressionistic” style of their war

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reports (Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 154). In his essay Freud reminds us of the rare pre-World-War-I warnings that war could also occur among nations of culture. Although people refused to believe this, they still imagined war as a “chivalric passage of arms” (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur 138). Kraus’ intention in the LTM is to demonstrate from possibly every angle the disparity between the imagination and representation of war, conducted by means of modern technology, as a chivalric passage of arms and the crude reality of war, which is diametrically opposed to the imaginary concept of chivalry and civilization. The above scene is only one of many examples in the LTM that illustrate this disparity. Roda appears as a character in the LTM, cheerfully singing the tune of O Christmas Tree with altered words: The Rose Tree, 28 The Rose Tree, Reporter of finest papers. I see everything Personally, Then I can know everything. Why, the military, I’m used to it; For my battle reports I jump from one front To another And make world history.29 Today I’m At the Battle of the Vistula And tomorrow at the Isonzo. Der Rosenbaum, der Rosenbaum, Vertritt die schönsten Blätter. […] Ich seh mir alles Selber an, Dann kann ich alles wissen. […] (272) Das Militär Bin ich gewohnt; Für meine Schlachtberichte Spring ich von der Zu jener Front Und mache Weltgeschichte. Heut bin ich in Der Weichselschlacht Und morgen am Isonzo. […] (273)

Here, Kraus mocks both Roda, specifically, and the arrogance of all war correspondents, generally, who claim to possess the ultimate truth about the

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war on the basis of their presence on the lines; aspire to create history with their daily reports; experience the war as an adventure in progress; and travel wherever the excitement is. The criticism implied verbally in the above song is presented theatrically through the character of Alice Schalek, a historical war correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse during World War I, who in the LTM becomes a symbol of everything that Kraus condemns about wartime journalism. Like the singing Roda, Schalek also travels from one frontline and battlefield to another, writes in an “impressionistic” style, and “participates” in history: Belgrade. Destroyed houses. Schalek appears. SCHALEK: Here I’m interested, as always, in the universal human factor. You call this a culture? These houses are as bad as the worst business houses in Fünfhaus and therefore deserved the bombardment. The desolation of this place is so great, that you can forget about a photographic reproduction. What I find especially revolting is that the city was not even paved. This might have facilitated the decision to level it to the ground.30 What kind of king is that anyway, that owns a porcelain table service by Wahliss! I have come to the firm conviction that no true individuals could possibly live in a city like this. Belgrad. Zerstörte Häuser. Die Schalek tritt auf. DIE SCHALEK: […] Hier interessiert mich wie immer das allgemein menschliche Moment. Das soll eine Kultur sein? Diese Häuser sind mit den letzten Geschäftshäusern in Fünfhaus zu vergleichen, sie haben deshalb die Bombardierung verdient. Die Trostlosigkeit dieser Stätte ist so groß, daß an eine photographische Wiedergabe überhaupt nicht zu denken ist. Was mich aber immer wieder empört, ist, daß die Stadt nicht einmal gepflastert war. Das mag dem Entschluß, sie dem Erdboden gleich zu machen, zu Hilfe gekommen sein. […] Was ist das auch für ein König, der eine Porzellanservice von Wahliß hat! […] Ich habe mich zur Überzeugung durchgerungen, daß in einer solchen Stadt keine Individualitäten wohnen konnten. (286–87)

Schalek expresses explicitly what Roda implies in his diary: Serbia, unlike Austria, is uncivilized and possesses nothing of cultural value (the king himself shows a lack of good taste), for which reason the destruction of the city cannot really be considered such. No personalities (or engineers, painters, or poets, as Roda puts it) can ever come from a country without culture. The enemy must be destroyed rhetorically in the media in parallel with the military destruction. This is the simple message that Kraus sends by exposing Schalek’s arrogant rhetoric. Photography becomes pointless in view of the fact that the scene is neither spectacular nor threatening. A photograph would show the degree of destruction the Austrian Army caused in an unattractive Balkan city, something which does not send a message of heroism to the public. Kraus again uses the technique of juxtaposition in the service of poetic justice, or rather poetic revenge, against Schalek to show that people with a

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certain type of culture do in fact live in the destroyed city, a culture which in Kraus’ presentation becomes a moral judge of the Austrian media and military campaign: (A few Serbian women appear laughing at her. One of them strokes Schalek’s cheek caressingly. Then a brisk conversation flares up between them, and they all laugh again, loudly, clearly, and happily. Schalek aside:) This laughter, about whose cause I cannot inquire, is getting on my nerves, because every possibility on the stepladder of human feelings is conceivable today, except for laughter, for which Belgrade, shot to pieces, does not offer any occasion whatsoever. (One of the Serbian women offers Schalek confection and laughs.) An irritating enigma. INTERPRETER: (after talking to the women): They say, they only need to endure a few more horrible days. The citizens of Belgrade consider the conquest of their city as only an intermezzo. They believe that we will soon be out, and so are laughing maliciously.31 SCHALEK: That cannot be the only reason. Ask them what they feel and why she gives me confection. INTERPRETER: (after talking to the woman): She says, nothing can override Serbian hospitality. SCHALEK: But why confection of all things? INTERPRETER: (after talking to the woman): She says, they wanted to show that they are women, and confection is the realm of women. (Einige serbische Frauen erscheinen, die ihr entgegenlachen. Eine streicht kosend über die Wange der Schalek. Dann zuckt ein rasches Gespräch zwischen ihnen hin und her, und wieder lachen sie alle, laut, hell und froh. Die Schalek beiseite:) Dieses Lachen, dessen Ursache ich nicht erfragen kann, reißt an meinen Nerven, denn jede Möglichkeit auf der Stufenleiter menschlicher Gefühle ist heute denkbar, bis gerade auf das Lachen, für welches das zerschossene Belgrad keine Gelegenheit bietet. (Eine der serbischen Frauen bietet der Schalek Eingemachtes an und lacht.) Ein irritierendes Rätsel. […] DER DOLMETSCH: (nachdem er mit den Frauen gesprochen hat): Sie sagen, es heiße nur ein paar furchtbare Tage durchhalten. Die Eroberung ihrer Stadt halten die Belgrader für ein Intermezzo. Sie glauben, daß wir wieder bald draußen sein werden, und so lachen sie schadenfroh. DIE SCHALEK: Das kann nicht der einzige Grund sein. Fragen Sie, was sie empfinden und warum sie mir Eingemachtes gibt. DER DOLMETSCH: (nachdem er mit der Frau gesprochen hat): Sie sagt, nichts könne serbische Gastfreundschaft außer Wirkung setzen. DIE SCHALEK: Aber warum gerade Eingemachtes? DER DOLMETSCH (nachdem er mit der Frau gesprochen hat): Sie sagt, sie wollten zeigen, daß sie Frauen seien, und Eingemachtes sei das Gebiet der Frauen. […] (286–88)

The scene represents a misunderstanding caused by two different cultural codes. Schalek interprets the laughter of the local women as demonic and

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irrational, because to her it is “inconceivable” in such a difficult situation. The women say to the interpreter that they are laughing because soon everything will be over and the Austrians will be out of their country. It is a laughter in anticipation of relief, based on a centuries-old collective memory of conquests of Belgrade. The interpreter erroneously “interprets” the laughter as a sign of Schadenfreude. The comments, however, do not describe the laughter as “malicious,” thus distancing the interpreter’s “interpretation” from the presentation and giving a hint to the readers that they, too, should distance themselves from it. The interpretation does not satisfy Schalek, either, who doubts that Schadenfreude is the reason for the uncanny laughter. The laughter is related to the women’s gesture of offering Schalek confection and their explanation that homemade food is the realm of women. The primary cultural signifier of the gesture is hospitality, something which is presented in the scene as typical of Serbian culture, and which Schalek can only understand through the translation. However, hospitality is not visible in the poor architecture of the city. In other words, the country does not lack culture, rather it has a different culture from the one Schalek considers to be the only possible culture. The secondary implication is that the realm of women is the domestic sphere, not the war and the public sphere of the media. The women are in actuality laughing at Schalek, who in their view should be sitting at home instead of traveling with the military and reporting from the lines. Just as Schalek judges the city of Belgrade and Serbian culture by Austrian standards, the women judge the Austrian female reporter by the standards of their patriarchal culture. Barry Smith concludes pointedly in his article on Kraus that Schalek is an “incarnation of everything that Kraus opposed,” a “male-female perversion” in opposition to Kraus’ longing “for a golden age when everything could be relied upon to remain in its natural place” (96). The Grumbler describes Schalek as “the most peculiar phenomenon of this apocalypse” (Kraus, The Last Days 157). He also considers her to be an ephemeral phenomenon related to tragic carnival, after which he hopes to meet her “somewhere behind the lines,” and then, he says: “I will believe her to be a woman” (157). Kraus’ conservative attitude towards women should be kept separate from his critique of the media’s language and representational methods. He is overall a conservative who does not depreciate women. The Grumbler can see Schalek, in the private sphere behind the lines, as a woman and a person, not as a media attraction. The private sphere is culturally relative; in early twentieth-century Serbia, it was the home and was symbolized by women. In post-World War I Austria, the Grumbler hopes, it will be simply any place

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behind the lines uncorrupted by media reports on the war. After the media shock of World War I not only women, but also everybody else needs to retreat to the safe haven of the private sphere and attempt to resume traditional face-to-face interaction. Kraus finds the model for this utopian secluded space in the Serbian hospitality symbolized by the food made by the women, who neutralize physical destruction and media propaganda by the gesture of offering. Schalek is therefore doubly guilty in Kraus’ eyes: first for her arrogant illusion that she participates in history by reporting from the lines, and second for ruining the private sphere as a woman reporter. Smith calls Schalek “an early incarnation of what, in the era of CNN, has become a commonplace: a journalist who is herself a star and places herself at the very center of events” (97). Indeed, reporting for the media does not mean empowerment and equality for women. Rather, news reporting displaces women from the traditionally limited space of the private sphere and uses them in the public sphere as an attraction which sells the news better. The media rely on the audience’s cultural awareness of the discrepancy between the private sphere as the traditional space of the woman and the public sphere of the news report. The greater this discrepancy, which is most striking when women report from the frontline, the better the news will sell. Both women and news thus become commodities, but the audience is not aware of that anymore. People want to see the media star first and then maybe hear, or see, the news. Kraus anticipated the age of electronic media, which fully deprive humankind of the private sphere, a phenomenon fraught with severe moral consequences. As Smith notes, “Schalek, like her CNN successors, brings the war into your living room.” This is yet another form of the tragic carnival, because things are “no longer […] in [their] proper place” (Smith 97). The virtual proximity of the war and the omnipresence of killing and destruction desensitize the audience and change their perception of reality. In Handke’s eyes this process, which began in World War I, continues in even more dehumanizing ways in our present time, reaching its culmination in media coverage of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Handke’s Voyage by Dugout: The Balkans as a Dystopian Utopia During the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia from 1990–2001 the Balkans began once again filling pages in the press and appearing on television news in prime time. It was a conflict covered constantly in the Western European media, both with words and with images, the latter very often in disturbing detail, and, most importantly, accompanied by moral judgments of unprecedented scale. The media coverage provoked numerous reactions among prominent European intellectuals, who in a more

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sophisticated and elaborate way continued the moral discourse which the media had begun.32 The Balkans correspondent for the Financial Times, Laura Silber, and the BBC correspondent, Allan Little, claim that the international community must have had knowledge of the scale of atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina as early as May 1992, and that the only possible way to get the Western powers to take action against them was to show devastating images on television: “a recurring characteristic of the foreign-policy making of the main western powers with regard to Bosnia [was] driven substantially by television coverage” (Silber and Little 252–53). However, the events in practice refute such a notion. Despite the continuous display of horrific images for over three years, the intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina by NATO did not take place until 1995. Silber’s assertion, nonetheless, which implies that politicians had to be frightened into action by public opinion, ascribes great moral responsibility to the media because it also implies their agency in politics. Furthermore, since one of the essential functions of the media is building public opinion, they should be viewed as the most influential instruments of public morality in our digital age.33 The conflicts in the former Yugoslavia provided the media with a perfect topic of coverage for both news and in-depth reports.34 The longevity of the conflicts and the ambivalent character of the region as both known and unknown to Western Europeans constantly produced high viewer ratings and numbers of newspaper readers. A theatrical situation, similar to that during the Balkan Wars, was created in which journalists were presenting and interpreting the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and Western European viewers and readers were watching and debating them. Coverage of the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the Western European news and in-depth reports reveal contemporary media to be essentially a system of second-order observation. The media drew images and symbols from the already established complex of representations of the Balkans and thus interpreted the extremely complex character of the conflict with plausible, but also simplified and shifting explanations which were offered as ultimate reality.35 At the same time, the media presentations were highly detailed because of the persistence of memory of historical interactions between Western Europe and the Balkans. Two examples related to Handke’s protest against the media illustrate the media’s tactics described above. Oppen (205) informs us that Handke was most outraged by the writings of the editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine, Johann Georg Reißmüller. She explains that “it is impossible to measure [Reißmüller’s] influence in political terms, but there is no doubt that he has made an enormous contribution towards making the Croats, and to lesser extent the Slovenes, familiar to German readers” (205–06).

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Reißmüller evoked the border between Central Europe and the Balkans in order to explain the conflict. He consistently marked out commonalities between Croats and Germans, in contrast to Serbs and Germans, and implied that the boundary between Croatia and Serbia, which is the former boundary between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, is the present-day boundary between Europe and the Orient (Oppen 206–07). He presented Croatia as a Central European country, which shares a common culture with Western Europe. Western culture, he claimed, is based on the common cause against the Turks and later against Communist rule, which he referred to as oriental despotism. Accordingly, Moslems were rarely mentioned in Reißmüller’s accounts (Oppen 207).36 Media coverage became even more questionable with British network ITN’s forged presentation of what was supposed to be a Serbian extermination camp in the Northern Bosnian village of Trnopolje, where Moslems and Croats were tortured and eventually murdered. This report again fueled Handke’s outrage against “Western” media (Ebmeyer 348)37 and was therefore included as a direct allusion in the play Voyage by Dugout (98). The reporters of ITN used the symbol of holocaust to identify clearly, and once and for all, the roles of “goodies” and “baddies” for Western European viewers. The connoted message of the footage showing the purported extermination camp was that Serbs aimed at the extermination of Moslems and Croats, just as Nazis had aimed at the extermination of Jews. This message contains a surplus of symbolic value, which was not part of the primarily rational and eventually self-destructive plan of Serbian president Milo%evi! to “use nationalism as a vehicle to achieve power and then to strengthen his control over Serbia and then over Yugoslavia,” (Silber and Little 25). The message should therefore be viewed in the context of the power game within the former Yugoslavia and between the Balkans and the West played out in the media. As the ethnic cleansing of Moslems in BosniaHerzegovina was being conducted by Serbian forces and different solutions were negotiated, the media pursued symbolic punishment of the perpetrators by incessantly broadcasting images of victims. Apart from assigning roles borrowed from European history to the current conflict in the Balkans, these images perpetuated the stigma of the Balkans as an eternal, or at least a recurring dystopia, and they created an audience of moral judges in Europe on the basis of a pre-interpreted reality. Handke’s play Voyage by Dugout (Die Fahrt im Einbaum [1999]) henceforth quoted as VD, addresses among other things the interdependence of imagery of victimization in the media and the morality arising from the reception of this imagery. A quote by Ivo Andri! placed before the beginning of the play’s action prepares for the fictional elaboration on moral judgments that follows in the play:

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? The moral indignation caused by other people’s flaws, which overshadows our own comparable flaws, allows us to assume the strict and solemn attitude of judge and victim at once and induces in us a state of moral euphoria.38 […] (Handke, VD 7) Die moralische Enttäuschung, verursacht durch die Fehler der andern, welche ganz und gar vergleichbare Fehler bei uns selbst anschwärzt, gestattet uns, die strenge und noble Haltung zugleich des Richters und des Opfers einzunehmen, und ruft in uns einen Zustand der moralischen Euphorie hervor. […] (Handke, VD 7) A moralno ogor%enje zbog tih tu"ih mana, koje potpuno zakloni sli%ne nedostatke u nama, omogu#uje nam da zauzmemo strog i uzvi!en stav sudije i $rtve u isto vreme, i izaziva u nama stanje moralne euforije. (Andri#, Znakovi pored puta 87)

In this instance Handke, like Kraus, decides to present and criticize the media reports in a play, rather than discussing them in essayistic form as in A Journey to the Rivers (1996). The explanation for this decision is given in the play’s dedication: “dedicated […] (to the theater as free medium)” (Handke, VD 5).39 The freedom of the theater, i.e., the physicality of the theatrical performance, is opposed to electronic news and in-depth reporting, which are “declared and perceived as the most direct portrayal of reality” (Luhmann 78). Furthermore, drama as a genre allows for the procedure of overtly assigning multiple roles to each of the dramatis personae and for the exchange of roles among the actors, which Handke uses in order to deconstruct the roles of “goodies” and “baddies” assigned by the media. It also demonstrates the multilayered identity of the peoples in the region. Dialogue, as the language of theater, also coincides with Handke’s intention to deconstruct the petrified discourse of binaries in the language of the media. Scott Abbott describes Handke’s style of argumentation as a “double form, […] [an] ongoing dialectic that aims at wholeness through fragments” (368–69). Abbott points out that Handke “raises red flags for readers used to undialectical dualisms […] with appetites for shocking images” (369). In dramatic dialogue the dialectic procedure is even more visible, as the exchanges between the First International and the Greek reporter demonstrate: FIRST INTERNATIONAL: Aren’t you so attached to this country simply because the whole world hates it so much? GREEK: The country is close to my heart. ERSTER INTERNATIONALER: Hängst du so an dem Land hier nicht bloß deshalb, weil alle Welt es so haßt? DER GRIECHE: Das Land liegt mir am Herzen. (Handke, VD 82)

The Greek, here echoing Handke’s response to his critics, does not like Serbia because the entire world hates the country, as the International claims, echoing Handke’s critics, but because it is close to his heart. Language

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operating with arguments and aspiring to establish logical causality based on binaries cannot explain the condition of the in-between. When the Second International requires arguments from the Greek, he responds: “There is no better argument than liking” (82). This argument does not aspire to causality or rational explanation of things impossible to explain in a rational way. It is the alternative to the rhetoric of forced causal attribution in the media, and the dramatic exchange allows for direct juxtaposition of these two styles. Handke has been consistently sincere in his sympathy for the Serbs. His open support for the Serbs and imagining himself to be a Serb, as Doubt puts it aptly (127), brings us back to Thucydides and the question of objective perception and interpretation. The narrator there consciously and intentionally moves from the position of a reflecting outsider to that of a third-person participant in the narrated world, “veiling” his gaze (Handke, Thucydides 7) in order to abandon the “Medusa-like” (7) gaze which exposes others. The implied message is that there is no possibility for entirely neutral and objective perception; one can only be a participant, or, at once, a moralizing judge and imagined victim, a fact at which the above quote by Andri! hints. In VD, Handke stages a film production as part of the performance, thus establishing his original version of the theatrical self-duplication (Schwanitz 100) that was also used by Kraus in the LTM in its traditional form, as a play within a play. Just like the play within a play presents spectators and performance onstage, thus reminding the spectators in the audience of the fictionality of the performance, the process of film-making within the play, as depicted by Handke, reminds the audience of the fictional procedures in the media coverage and historiography. The setting of the play is “the dining room of a big provincial hotel somewhere in the deepest or innermost Balkans” (Handke, VD 9). Here, two directors, the American John O’Hara, who impersonates the legendary director of Western films John Ford, and the Spaniard Luis Machado, who at the end of the play implies that he is the grandson of the poet Antonio Machado (126),40 are making a film on the Yugoslav wars, “approximately a decade after the, for the time being, last war” (8): JOHN O’HARA: Welcome to Acapulco, to the assigning of roles, heroes and villains for our joint European-American film about the war! JOHN O’HARA: […] Willkommen hier in Acapulco beim Bestimmen der Darsteller, der Helden und der Schurken für unseren europäischamerikanischen Gemeinschaftsfilm vom Krieg! (11)

Historical reality does not exist in itself, but is always fictionalized and interpreted—this implication can be deduced very easily from the above

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quote. Elsewhere in the same play, the character by the name of Historian puts it explicitly: “There is no history. […] What we call history is one big fabrication. No one knows the true history. Every now and then someone intuits it […]” (41). This truism of postmodernity seems to create enormous moral problems. Doubt claims that Handke “embraces the postmodern epistemology that insists upon the randomness of what we assume we understand and disavows any principled character of discourse” (126), thus rescinding the possibility of truthfulness and thereby introducing dangerous moral relativity. Yet Handke’s positions have never been difficult to define; much to the contrary, they have been interpreted as ostensive assertions, and precisely for that reason they have provoked a flood of outraged responses. What is perceived as scandalous is Handke’s insisting on including the perspective of all actors in the wars, also that of the greatest or, as many claim, the only culprit. Including this perspective corresponds to Handke’s dialectic procedure of achieving wholeness through fragments, based on the fact that different fragments will contradict one another. For anyone used to linear reports given by the media this procedure inevitably seems morally outrageous. Handke, thus, follows Kraus in the aspiration to create “an alternative public space or “counterpublic” which questions contemporary public discourse and its claims to truth” (Zorn 58). The dramatic form that allows different actors to confront one another is also used to simulate something that I will term “pre-emplotment” mode of presentation, drawing on White’s essay The Historical Text as Literary Artifact. White deconstructs the concept of historiography as a discursive writing without a fictional element, or a mythic plot structure, introduced by Frye (1714). He argues, instead, as follows: [H]istories gain part of their explanatory effect by their success in making stories out of mere chronicles; and stories in turn are made out of chronicles by an operation which I have elsewhere called “emplotment.” And by emplotment I mean simply the encodation of the facts contained in the chronicle as components of specific kinds of plot structures, in precisely the way that Frye has suggested is the case with “fictions” in general. (White 1714)

The actors in VD are therefore often presented as they negotiate a possible, future common plot, despite the existing emplotment created by the Western media. The latter is also included in the actors’ interactions, not as a valid interpretation of events, but rather as a superimposed and inauthentic code from outside. The play thus transforms both the linear mode of the chronicle and the discursive/fictional mode of historiography into a theatrical form in order to demonstrate the tensions and contradictions between these two modes, thus annulling the possibility of emplotment. Truth is for Handke,

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therefore, a process, a search, not a discourse, as Doubt rightly claims. Yet this does not mean that Handke rescinds the possibility of truthfulness, rather he presents truthfulness as a dialectical process in which each actor can examine and reevaluate “the truth” of the other actor. As Abbott points out, following Nietzsche, Handke has asserted that truth is made rather than found because it is a construct of language (“The Material Idea of a Volk” 480). However, theater offers other possibilities. Dramatic dialogue, especially in Handke’s plays, demonstrates the process of arriving at conclusions through both language and acting, rather than offering finite thruths a priori. Thus, dramatic dialogue does not dismiss the idea of truth but incites everyone to take part in the process of dialogic search and arrive at his or her own conclusion. Therefore, the initial idea to have experts “explain” the dream to the American and the Spaniard is prevented by the Announcer: ANNOUNCER: The order in which the possible protagonists of the film will introduce themselves does not correspond to the course of history. The scenes which they will perform should merely put you in the right mood for your joint film. It should become your film! There are only certain guidelines drawn up by the World Committee for Ethics, the International Institute of Aesthetics, etcetera. O’HARA: Who is the author? MACHADO: Where is the author? Where is he hiding? ANNOUNCER: He is a local; someone from here. He has vanished without a trace; lost. DER ANSAGER: […] Die Reihenfolge, in der die möglichen Akteure des Films sich vorstellen werden, stimmt nicht überein mit dem Verlauf der Geschichte. Die Szenen, die sie spielen werden, sollen Ihnen bloße Einstimmungen sein zu Ihrer beider Film. Es soll Ihr Film werden! Es bestehen nur gewisse Richtlinien, gezogen durch das Weltkomitee für Ethik, das Internationale Ästhetik-Institut, undsoweiter. O’HARA: Wer ist der Autor? MACHADO: Wo ist der Autor? Wo versteckt er sich? ANSAGER: Er ist ein Einheimischer; einer von hier. Er ist spurlos verschwunden; verschollen. (14)

The announcement is a manifesto of the artistic approach in the play. Linear presentation and causal explanation of events will be abandoned, and spectators, both in the fictional reality of the play as well as the recipients, will have to come to their own interpretation (“It should become your film”). The disappearance of the author, “a local,” represents the untold story of the absent locals—possibly the victims, both dead and alive, who will remain unheard—which is different from the story offered by the media. Yet the disappearance of the author also points to the meaning created in the mind of the recipient solely by observing the performative act in the moment of the

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performance in Barthes’ sense (“The Death of the Author” 1466), as opposed to already interpreted meaning offered by official history and media. This is also a contemporary version of the metaphor of theatrum mundi, insofar as the role of the vanished author, in the original baroque metaphor assigned to God, who had created the world and then observed the people as they acted their assigned roles, is now assigned to the inscrutable history, the contemporary deus absconditus, as the Historian explains it in another passage (41).41 The fictional spectators are thus encouraged to create their story, while remaining aware of the fact that it will be different from the unknown history, by watching the actors, both local and international. The latter are stock characters, in the style of the medieval allegories and the characters of theatrum mundi, thus representing not individuals but principles of moral conduct and modes of observation.42 When interpreting the actors’ actions, the spectators should follow the guidelines of ethics and aesthetics, a contemporary version of the Christian principle of grace from the baroque metaphor. Through the employment of the framework of theatrum mundi Handke attempts to transform the judging, yet passive media consumers of shocking images into conscious and active participants based on the model of the fictional spectators in VD. He thus replaces the digital, simulated totality of the media with the metaphorical totality of the baroque theater,43 in which there are only actors and no judges. Handke draws on Calderón’s sacramental morality play The Great Theater of the World (El gran teatro del mundo [1633–1636]) but he adjusts the baroque form and symbolism to the contemporary context and the Balkan setting. As Shergold explains, in Calderón’s text God has devised a play in which time is said to be the “engineer,” and the whole of human history is presented under the metaphor of a stage play, the three acts of which correspond to the three different kinds of law: the “natural law”, the “written law,” and the “law of grace,” which are also the three ages of the world (164). The “play of human history” ends with fire, or Dies irae (165). Both Kraus and Handke, who alludes to Kraus’ title in VD (125), draw on this topos with the phrase “the last days of humankind.” The “play of history” embraces past, present, and future, i.e., totality of time, yet it has the brevity and the illusionary quality of a theatrical performance. The “play of history” is followed by the “play of life,” which is also a part of the “play of history,” forming yet another play within a play. The characters in the “play of life” are not possessed of the corporeal senses, nor do they enjoy the knowledge of good and evil (Shergold 165–66). Since the play can have no rehearsal and cannot be learned beforehand, God provides help in the form of a prompter, who is the personified “law of grace,” corresponding to the third of the three ages of the world, in which Act III of the “play of history,” and, inside it, the “play of life,” are set (166).

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In VD history and God are merged in the role of the absolute creator whose plan remains unfathomable. Just like The Great Theater of the World, VD too demonstrates that history is inscrutable and superior to human life, whilst creating an illusion of a linear and clear structure, understandable for the human mind. The spectators in VD are encouraged to act like the characters in The Great Theater of the World: as if they were not possessed of corporeal senses, because the latter are misleading, and as if they did not enjoy the pre-interpreted knowledge of good and evil, so that they can pass their own judgments as they observe the actors in the play. These instructions are given by the Announcer, a character who is a contemporary version of the prompter, replacing the baroque concept of grace with the contemporary concepts of ethics and aesthetics. The Announcer also links the inner and the outer reality of the fictional play in VD with the reality of the non-fictional recipients. As Ben-Shaul points out, the metaphor of theatrum mundi “has characterized both the world and the theater as a global space” (165). When these global concepts are displaced to a local culture, as Handke does in VD, then, according to Ben-Shaul, both the local and the global are undermined, creating “a liminal, glocalized space” (165). The “catachrestic” (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 237), postmodern use of the global metaphor unveils and deconstructs power relations in reality through the principle of analogy with the fictional play (Ben-Shaul 165). In VD the interactions between the directors and the actors, as central elements of the theater, are related metaphorically to the tensions and misunderstandings between the Western and the local protagonists within the fictional play, implying a relation of imposed foreign power and local resistance, while referring to “conflicting forces in the actual, non-fictional, local space” (Ben-Shaul 165). Once it is clear that the author of the local story will not be heard, the Announcer begins introducing the characters in the film in a language “understandable” for “Westerners,” which begins as an advertising gobbledygook intended for tourists and gradually becomes the story of the war as told in the pompous-pathetic language of the media. The story is concluded with one of the simplified explanations for the conflict as a war between the westernized, urban, elite culture in the Balkans and the rural Serbian culture, stereotypically represented by curses, alcohol, and folkmusic: ANNOUNCER: An old man, before the war, a tour guide, broadly educated, fluent in German and English, soaked in Central European culture, steeped in European culture and oriental wisdom— No, this was not a war of religions or nations, rather a war of the backcountry against the city, a backcountry which is a single gigantic mountain, thousandfold fissured, against the only city here which deserves that name. Country against city. Mountain against valley. Hillbilly barbarism against the elite of

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? the plains! Country music, Schnaps, Drina-March, and I’ll-fuck-your-mother against Beethoven, Ingmar Bergman, The Pursuit of Happiness, Sah ein Knab ein Röslein stehn, Parlez-moi d’amour, I Want to Hold Your Hand, and Besame mucho! ANSAGER: Ein Greis, vor dem Krieg Fremdenführer […] umfassend gebildet, spricht fließend Deutsch und Englisch, durchtränkt von mitteleuropäischer Kultur, gebadet in orientalischer Weisheit—(15) Nein, das hier war kein Krieg der Religionen oder der Völker, vielmehr ein Krieg des Hinterlandes gegen die Stadt, eines Hinterlandes, das ein einziges Riesengebirge ist, ein vieltausendfach zerklüftetes, gegen die einzige Stadt da, die den Namen verdient. Land gegen Stadt. Berg gegen Tal. Bergler-Barbarei gegen Ebenen-Elite! Dorfschlager, Drina-Marsch, Schnaps und Ich-fick-deineMutter gegen Beethoven, The Pursuit of Happiness, Sah ein Knab ein Röslein stehn, Parlez-moi d’amour, I Want to Hold Your Hand und Besame mucho! (17)

The difference between the media and the local actors is presented as a difference in language, the latter understood as a conglomeration of cultural and historical quotations. After the elaboration on the origins of the war in the language of the media, a character named Ranger demonstrates onstage the essence of a primitive Serb, letting out unarticulated cries (Urlaute) and drinking alcohol straight from the bottle (17–18). The Tour Guide responds to him in the same unarticulated language, which, however, turns out to be a normal language, as it slowly becomes understandable for everyone in the conversation: RANGER: Haven’t seen you for a long time. TOUR GUIDE: Hello, neighbor.44 When will I see you again at the market, your homegrown tobacco, wild honey, and mushrooms? RANGER: The demining hasn’t been finished yet—even ten years after the war. But in May I’ll bring you the first strawberries. TOUR GUIDE: What did you do in the war? RANGER: A couple of times I appeared on television, like this, with the bottle in my hand, as the third villain in the second row from the left. But mainly I trembled, and I’m still trembling. And after the war I spent five years in a prison in Germany, sentenced by a German judge, as an accessory to genocide.45 ANNOUNCER: I was an amateur radio operator in three enclaves, first in one, then in another, then on the third warring side. And every time I appeared in the world news with one of my radio messages, and meanwhile all three have long been included as facts in the respective history books. Let imagination rule! TOUR GUIDE: And I continued guiding foreigners through the city during the entire war, more than ever before, and different foreigners than before: who right away felt as much at home in the city at war as they probably never felt in their own home; and whom I served as a transitional character, from the image sequence with the beasts in the mountains to the next one with the cosmopolitan passersby on the urban plane tree mall: I, as the sonorous

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silhouette of the transcontinental city-civilization, which keeps swinging even in war. WALDLÄUFER: Schon lange nicht mehr gesehen. FREMDENFÜHRER: Hallo, Nachbar. Wann begegnet man dir wieder auf dem Markt, mit deinem selbstangebauten Tabak, dem Waldhonig und den Pilzen? WALDLÄUFER: Die Entminung ist immer noch nicht ganz beendet—und das zehn Jahre nach dem Krieg. Aber im Mai bringe ich dir die ersten Erdbeeren, in die Hand. (18) […] FREMDENFÜHRER: Was habt ihr im Krieg gemacht? WALDLÄUFER: Ein paarmal bin ich im internationalen Fernsehen aufgetreten, so mit der Flasche in der Hand, als der dritte Böse in der zweiten Reihe von links. Aber hauptsächlich habe ich gezittert und zittere immer noch. Und nach dem Krieg war ich fünf Jahre in einem Gefängnis in Deutschland, verurteilt von einem deutschländischen Richter, wegen Hilfe beim Volksmord. ANSAGER: Ich war Amateurfunker in drei Enklaven, erst der einen, dann der anderen, dann der dritten Kriegsseite. Und jedesmal kam ich mit einem meiner Funksprüche in die Weltnachrichten, und alle drei stehen inzwischen längst als Fakten in den jeweiligen Geschichtsbüchern. Die Phantasie an die Macht! […] FREMDENFÜHRER: Und ich habe während des ganzen Krieges weiterhin Fremde durch die Stadt geführt, mehr als je zuvor, und andere Fremde als zuvor: die in der Kriegsstadt gleich so zuhause waren wie daheim wohl nie; und denen ich als Überleitfigur diente, von der Bildsequenz mit den Bestien in den Bergen zur nächsten mit den kosmopolitanen Passanten auf der urbanen Platanenpromenade: ich als die sonore Silhouette der selbst im Krieg weiterswingenden transkontinentalen City-Civilisation. (19–20)

The three characters in the conversation could be considered representatives of the three nations at war in Bosnia-Herzegovina—the Serbs, the Croats, and the Bosniaks. But their nationalities remain purposefully unmentioned here because the conversation is intended to demonstrate the existence of a common language, understood as a conglomeration of cultural and historical quotations, indeed a sort of a code, among the peoples of the Balkans. The beginning of the conversation captures a typical, authentic model of communication in the Balkans. The use of the word neighbor (see note 44), the complaint about the slow de-mining, which is skillfully employed to embed the common habit of the Balkan peoples of complaining about the defects of their dysfunctional states in the context of the war, and the phrases showing special treatment of the neighbor reveal Handke’s detailed perception of the region. This moment of verbal exchange exhibits centuries of shared experience, which are condensed in a seemingly trivial conversation. Such is the authenticity of the locality that corresponds to Handke’s short, tellable spaces (Handke and Gamper 151), which in Thucydides are presented as short interactions without verbal communication. This dialogue of mutual understanding among former

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enemies anticipates the utopian concept of the Balkans later constructed by a local character as a voyage by dugout (VD 114). Standing in contrast to the shared cultural code of the Balkan peoples are the roles and discourses created by the Western media. The “sonorous transition silhouette” of the Tour Guide and his speech exemplify the gap between the codes of the locals and the Western media. The statement “they felt right away so much at home in the city at war,46 as they, indeed, never felt in their own home” is an example of Bakhtin’s concept of diglossia, i.e., the use of someone else’s speech in order to insert in it meaning directly opposed to the meaning of the speech in the original text (Probleme der Poetik Dostojevskij 215–16). Handke’s places the local and media codes next to each other, thus illustrating their incompatibility, but also the awareness of this incompatibility on the part of the local characters. The Tour Guide displays rhetorical skills similar to those of David in Ko#i!’s play The Badger in Court, which also demonstrate the continuous state of “double consciousness” (Gilroy 1) of the Balkan peoples, who have learned to shift between the local and external codes. The American and the Spanish director, however, do not possess the skill of shifting between codes and are perplexed by the language and the story of the Balkan people. O’Hara asks for something “told nicely, in sequence,” whereas Machado begins to wonder whether the linear approach is suitable for the Balkans: “‘Nicely, in sequence’: does this do justice to this war?” (22). In the course of the film-making, as the local characters assert their story more and more, both O’Hara and Machado begin to understand that they do not understand: MACHADO: What haunts me most is that the people here, again and again, wanted to say something entirely different from what they uttered. O’HARA: It seems to me, everyone here needs a translator. No God, but a translator—a simultaneous translator. There were translators once. But they say they are all dead. MACHADO: All of them? O’HARA: All of them. We need new translators. And the first rule of such new translating is: thou shalt not take anything literally! MACHADO: Was mir am stärksten nachgeht; daß die Leute hier mit dem, was sie geäußert haben, immer wieder etwas grundanderes sagen wollten. […] O’HARA: Mir scheint, jeder hier bräuchte zeitweise einen Übersetzer. Keinen Gott, aber einen Übersetzer—einen Simultanübersetzer. Es gab wohl einmal die guten Übersetzer. Aber die, sagt man, sind tot. MACHADO: Alle? O’HARA: Alle. Neue Übersetzer werden gebraucht. […] Und die erste Regel für solch neues Übersetzen: Du sollst nichts wörtlich nehmen! (121–22)

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A translator in O’Hara’s sense is someone who is aware of the fact that language is always a conglomeration of shared cultural and historical quotations, someone who can mediate between cultures. Especially noteworthy is O’Hara’s impression that everyone in the Balkans needs a translator. It implies that besides one common code shared by all peoples in the Balkans, each Balkan community (people) has an additional code, different from the common code and from those of the other communities. To translate all these codes in a language understandable for a broad audience from a different cultural setting seems to be an impossible task for O’Hara and Machado. Thus, they eventually give up on the idea of making the film (122–23). The dead translators could refer to the politicians who managed to bridge the differences between the different communities, or the authors who understood them. Among the latter Handke would certainly number Andri!, who plays an important role in the play, disguised, but easily recognizable, as the character of the Chronicler. In an antagonistic dialogue between the Chronicler and the Historian, in which the latter echoes both the then Croatian president Tu)man and a causal-logical historical discourse opposed to the literary discourse employed by the Chronicler, the difference in the codes used in the Balkans is discussed as a difference in “secular time” and is identified as one of the reasons for the wars: CHRONICLER: Every single one of us, from homestead to homestead, from the settler on this hill to the settler on the hill on the other side of the ravine, had their own way of reckoning time. By this I don’t mean simply the different holidays of the different religions—no, it was secular time that gradually disintegrated horribly in our village. HISTORIAN: Isn’t it the same currently everywhere in the world? What is so horrible about it? CHRONICLER: It’s horrible because this asynchrony led to war. HISTORIAN: The lack of simultaneity from one village house to another started the war in the entire country? CHRONICLER: It added to it. CHRONIST: […] Jeder einzelne von uns, von Gehöft zu Gehöft, vom Siedler dieses Berghügels zum Siedler des Berghügels jenseits der Schlucht, hatte seine eigene Zeitrechnung. Damit meine ich nicht bloß die verschiedenen Feste der verschiedenen Religionen—nein, die profane Zeit war es, die in unserem Dorf allmählich furchtbar auseinanderfiel. HISTORIKER: Ist das nicht gegenwärtig überall auf der Welt so? Was ist so furchtbar daran? CHRONIST: Furchtbar, weil diese Ungleichzeitigkeit zum Krieg geführt hat. […] HISTORIKER: Das mangelnde Simultan von Dorfhaus zu Dorfhaus brach den Krieg vom Zaun im ganzen Land? CHRONIST: Trug dazu bei. (28)

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It is no coincidence that O’Hara advocates “simultaneous translators,” or that the Historian calls the incongruity between the different times a “lack of simultaneity.” The different codes of the communities reflect different collective memories and different interpretations of the past as well of the present. Gerhard Scheit claims that Handke comes closest to explaining the origins of the Yugoslav wars through the concept of asynchrony, which in Scheit’s view refers to the disintegration of productivity in the economic relations between the different ethnicities of the former Yugoslavia and makes evident the unequal distance of the individual regions in the country to the world market (3). This is a very good example of misreading Handke’s literary texts. Scheit projects an economic explanation he very likely received from the media onto a dialogue between an historian and a chronicler that revolves around the misunderstanding between different identities represented by peasant communities in the play. I argue that the Chronicler echoes Andri!’s depiction of Bosnia-Herzegovina (which can be applied to the Balkans generally) as a space of constant tension among the different communities caused by the repeated changes in ruling powers. Every community has a different memory and interpretation of the different foreign powers and thus a different interpretation of the present. More importantly, the Chronicler says that the difference in secular time contributed to the outbreak of the war, not that it was the only reason for it. The focus here is on the question of how yesterday’s neighbors became each other’s executioners, rather than on the genesis of the conflict from a geopolitical and economic perspective. In actuality, VD does refer in another passage to the historical-political origins of the Yugoslav wars as well as to the reasons for Western Europe’s puzzlement and shock over the escalation of violence in the Balkans. In accord with his dialectical procedure, Handke lets one of the Internationals elaborate on the origins of the wars: The peoples here reinvented war on the planet Earth. They simply shoved away the mask of civilization from their landscape. And they elected war against one another, yes elected, in a free election that does us Westerners proud! The peoples here elected the war, and not only the few powerful individuals—they only whipped the war into shape afterwards, in accordance with the election of their respective peoples. And that’s why I hate all the peoples here. They are victims, but not innocent ones. They voted in favor of their children’s death. When the war in our spheres was practiced on an almost yearly basis, it was considered to be “the realm of coincidence:” Here, however, the peoples elected coincidence as their ruler, and this was the novelty of this war: their war was the freely elected relapse into the blindest coincidence you can imagine. I didn’t know this country before—not even by hearsay—and then, at first sight, saw it as nothing more than a war zone. A zone of evil coincidence. And the zone of coincidence also revived the war in me.

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Die Völker hier haben den Krieg auf dem Planeten Erde neu erfunden. Sie haben von ihrer Landschaft die Maske der Zivilisation […] einfach weggestupst. Und sie haben den Krieg gegen einander gewählt, ja gewählt, in freier, unserer westlichen Ehre machender Wahl! Die Völker hier haben den Krieg gewählt, und nicht etwa nur die paar einzelnen Mächtigen—die haben den Krieg dann nur, getreu der Wahl ihres jeweiligen Volks, auf Vordermann gebracht. Und deshalb hasse ich sämtliche hiesige Völker. Sie sind Opfer, aber keine unschuldigen. Sie haben für den Tod ihrer eigenen Kinder gestimmt […] Als der Krieg noch in unseren Sphären das fast alljährliche Gang und Gäbe war, galt er als “das Gebiet Zufalls:” Hier nun haben die Völker zu ihrem Regenten, und das war das Neue an diesem Krieg, den Zufall gewählt: ihr Krieg war der freigewählte Rückfall in den allerblindesten Zufall. Ich kannte das Land vorher nicht—nicht einmal vom Hörensagen—und sah in ihm dann vom ersten Blick an nichts als Kriegsgebiet […] ein Gebiet des bösen Zufalls. Und das Zufallsgebiet hat auch neubelebt den Krieg in mir. (60–61)

Handke reminds us of a fact which was forgotten, neglected, or downplayed in the media: the democratically elected politicians on each of the warring sides offered an exclusively national/ist paradigm, which particularly in Bosnia-Herzegovina was also closely related to the religious affiliation of each nation, and thus automatically excluded the other nations. The political parties with inclusive and non-nationalist paradigms lost the elections. Thus the phrase “they elected the war” gives the most accurate explanation of the critical moment in which the course of history took an ominous turn. The other important element of the Yugoslav tragedy, which was also consistently neglected or downplayed by the mainstream Western media, is the perilous character of democracy. Yugoslavia was a country comprised of parts of two multiethnic and multi-religious empires from, roughly speaking, two different cultural systems. These empires fell apart mainly as a result of the nation-building process accelerated by Liberalism and democracy (in the Habsburg Monarchy) and, in addition to nation-building, by the influence of the Western European powers (in the Ottoman Empire). The introduction of democracy, whose most important element is free elections, to a country with such historical legacies almost inevitably had to lead to wars over the purported right to territory of each nation. The euphoria surrounding the reunification of Germany, celebrated as the victory of democracy over an authoritarian regime, hid the flipside of this important Western value, i.e., its destructive potential in countries with ethnic tensions and different cultural legacies. The description of war as “an evil coincidence” by the International should be viewed in relation to Handke’s concept of history, which he explains in the ZDF program Literatour of 1975: I hope that a lot remains coincidental, that it never looks political in hindsight, it always remains coincidental, because I believe that the big effort is to maintain the

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? coincidental in writing, and to show that when a community, or a harmony comes about, it is always a coincidence. This is also my pessimistic concept of all history. Ich hoffe, dass sehr viel Zufälliges immer bleibt, das nie im Nachhinein politisch aussieht, es immer zufällig bliebt, weil ich glaube, die große Anstrengung ist, beim Schreiben das Zufällige zu halten, und das zu zeigen, dass wenn eine Gemeinschaft, oder eine Harmonie zustande kommt, das immer Zufall ist. Das ist meine pessimistische Anschauung überhaupt der ganzen Geschichte. (“‘Mehrheitsfähig wollte ich nie sein…’—Peter Handke im Gespräch mit Volker Panzer”)

In VD, the International claims that despite the many centuries of war in Europe, war is considered to be a coincidence. The author’s implication, however, is that it is the rule (“practiced on an almost yearly basis”), and the above excerpt from the ZDF program confirms Handke’s pessimistic view that in history only harmony happens as coincidence.47 Following this logic, we must consider the deliberate “election” of war in the Balkans, which the International interprets as a relapse into “the blindest coincidence,” a historical necessity. There is therefore nothing new about this particular war, except its uncanny ability to remind Europeans, who have lived in peace for the longest time in history, that peace, and not war, is a coincidence. Yet once the Balkans were declared a war zone, as many times before, they were used as a projection screen for the repressed fighting instincts and war memories of the Europeans (“revived also the war in me”). The clashes on the battlefields were taken over by the media, rhetorically and through images, and reporters continued the war digitally with their simplistic and emotional interpretations. In contrast to the shocking media images stands Handke’s perception of the local communities, which he relates through the character of the Greek during his visit in Belgrade: In the middle of the night, a glowing there on the square in front of Parliament: ten thousand lit TAXI signs, seemingly all of the taxis ready to take passengers, but in actuality lined up there to protest the murder of one of their colleagues. They were protesting in front of the government building, where there was no one, except maybe the night watchmen, against the death of one of their peers, silently, with only myriads of lit TAXI signs. And in this way, since the beginning of the war, more and more groups have called directly upon those in power, in each and every matter—and these have grown increasingly powerless and incompetent in more and more areas, or have indeed been out of the game for a long time. For just as the people here call upon their pseudo government, knowing that they don’t have anyone else—any authority, and at the same time still feel the need to call upon someone, more and more peoples of the Earth will do the same in the future: hopelessly silent mass gatherings on the central squares of states that are no longer out to storm parliaments, but rather to quietly resign from life—that’s how I saw things last night.

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Mitten in der Nacht ein Leuchten dort auf dem Platz vor dem Parlament: zehntausende von beleuchteten TAXI-Schildern, scheinbar alle die Taxen frei zum Einsteigen, in Wirklichkeit aber da zum Protest gegen den Mord an einem Kollegen. Sie protestierten vor ihrem Regierungsgebäude, in dem niemand war, außer vielleicht die Nachtwächter, gegen den Tod eines der Ihren, stumm, nur mit myriadenhaft beleuchteten TAXI-Freizeichen. Und so wenden sich hier in dem Land seit dem Krieg mehr und mehr Gruppen des Volks, in jeder, jeder Sache unmittelbar an die Regierenden—die wiederum in mehr und mehr Sparten zunehmend machtlos und unzuständig oder überhaupt längst schon aus dem Spiel sind. […] Denn so wie das Volk hier sich wendet an seine Scheinregierung im Bewußstsein, daß es ohnedies niemanden sonst—keine Instanz—hat, und dabei doch das Bedürfnis hat, sich irgendwohin zu wenden, so werden das in Zukunft mehr und mehr Völker der Erde tun: hoffnungslos stumme Massenversammlungen auf den Zentralplätzen der Staaten, die auf keinerlei Parlamentserstürmungen mehr aus sind, sondern auf sang- und klanglose Lebensabdankung—so sah ich es gestern nacht. (81–82)

Handke finds a new type of humanity in the joint reaction of a group of people who are not identified as a nation, but rather as a professional group, almost a guild, to the murder of one of their colleagues. Yet he uses the word Volk. This is indeed a new concept of the Volk, not an ethnic one driven by nationalist goals, but Volk as a community alienated from the dysfunctional state and politicians who get entangled in a game far beyond their capabilities and comprehension and who have become themselves “increasingly powerless” puppets, deaf to the silent cry of the citizens, who for their part know they are abandoned, yet do not give up.48 Only today, when the gap between the people, democracy, and the logic of the global markets has become painfully visible, when elected politicians have indeed become powerless puppets of the global economy, and people have increasingly expressed their anger and frustration through passive or active resistance on the streets, does this uncanny prediction of 1999 reveal its full significance. This is a dystopian utopia, a model of utopian social activism based on genuine, spontaneous solidarity originating in a dystopian historical moment, very similar to Kraus’ depiction of the laughing Serbian women who, in an expression of archaic hospitality, offer Schalek homemade jam (Kraus, LTM 286–88), helping the author to imagine a future of true, face-toface interaction between human individuals. But Handke does not paint an idyll, for a feeling of helplessness is present amidst the solidarity, and the future is uncertain, a state described by O’Hara as “the time after the last days of humankind” (Handke, VD 125). The other, more elaborate, utopian project offered in this play is the voyage by dugout, an imaginary state of harmony for the Balkans: FUR-WOMAN: This is a dugout. And once we drove through the land in this dugout.

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SOMEONE as an INTERNATIONAL: Like James Bond’s cars? FUR-WOMAN: The dugout was before 007 and will be long after him. It was before the Romans, went down with the expansion of their great empire and reemerged after its disappearance. The Romans were there only in the meantime. Emona and Sirmium went down, and the dugout rose again from the moor of Ljubljana, glided into the Ljubljanica, gained great momentum in the Danube, steered uphill into the Drina, crossed over to the mountains of Montenegro, shot down from there into the Macedonian-Albanian Ohrid Lake, turned around and lay anchored without an anchor for centuries in the geographical center of the Balkans, in Sremska Mitrovica, the erstwhile Roman metropolis of Sirmium. The mountain meadows with beeches and birches; the green mountain rivers and the soundless streams with individuals scattered on the riverbanks; that is the Balkan! Where two butterflies dance around each other and appear to be three: that is the Balkan! Other lands’ shrines are castles or temples. Our shrine is the dugout. Standing at the river: that is peace. Standing at the rivers: that will be peace. ANOTHER INQUIRER: in the cadence of the INTERNATIONALS: And where can I find the dugout again? And how? FUR-WOMAN: On the border between sleeping and waking. INQUIRER: Isn’t everyone alone when they are half asleep? FUR-WOMAN: No, you ignoramus: on this border there still exists a We as nowhere else. FELLFRAU: […] Das ist ein Einbaum. Und einmal sind wir in diesem Einbaum durch das Land gefahren. EINER als INTERNATIONALER: Wie die Autos von James Bond? FELLFRAU: […] Der Einbaum war vor 007 und wird sein lang nach ihm. Er war vor den Römern, ging unter mit der Entfaltung ihres Großreiches und tauchte nach dessen Verschwinden neu auf. Die Römer gab es nur in der Zwischenzeit. […] Emona und Sirmium gingen unter, und der Einbaum hob sich wieder aus dem Moor von Ljubljana, glitt in die Ljubljanica, kam auf große Fahrt in der Donau, steuerte bergauf in die Drina, setzte über in die Gebirge von Montenegro, schoß von dort hinab in den mazedonisch-albanischen Ohridsee, kehrte um und lag ohne Anker vor Anker jahrhundertlang im geographischen Zentrum des Balkan, in Sremska Mitrovica, der einstigen römischen Weltstadt Sirmium. Die Bergwiesen mit den Buchen und Birken; die grünen Gebirgsflüsse und die lautlosen Ströme mit den Einzelmenschen verstreut an den Ufern; das ist der Balkan! Wo zwei Schmetterlinge einander umtanzen und als drei erscheinen: das ist der Balkan! Anderer Herren Länder haben als Heiligtum ein Schloß oder einen Tempel. Unser Heiligtum hier ist der Einbaum. Am Fluß stehen: das ist Frieden. An den Flüssen stehen: das wird Frieden sein. […] ANDERER FRAGER: im Tonfall der INTERNATIONALEN: Und wo finde ich den Einbaum jemals wieder? Und wie? FELLFRAU: An der Grenze zwischen Schlafen und Wachen. […] FRAGER: Ist im Halbschlaf nicht jeder allein? FELLFRAU: Nein, du Ignorant: an dieser Grenze existiert noch ein Wir wie sonst nirgends mehr. (114–18)

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The dugout as a product of handicraft emphasizes local, traditional skills and is opposed to the technology and engineering of the big empires, symbolized ironically by James Bond’s cars. Yet it is also a much more comprehensive symbol of the marginalized existence of local populations, parallel to the public sphere of big empires, which manages to reemerge after the fall of every empire. The voyage by dugout, which of course can only take place in water, in rivers or lakes, thus replaces the anxiety-laden history of disruption and recurrent bloody clashes with the concept of the common identity of small peoples, all of whom once belonged to larger empires—an identity which, like a river, adjusts and persists. Through the concept of fluid boundaries symbolized by the water, the voyage also nullifies the dangerous nationalist logic of Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil) and the claim of each nation to its own territory. In this voyage Handke also revisits the space of the former Yugoslavia treated in Thucydides, which he traversed in 1987. He ends his travelogue with the defeatist conclusion that he has lost his way, implying that he has ceased to be a neutral traveler and become an observer with a political perspective (Handke, Thucydides 90). This imaginary space, however, focuses entirely on nature, an important element of Handke’s perception in Thucydides, and through nature Handke again draws the contours of the former Yugoslavia in VD, communicating a political message to the careful reader: “Standing at the river: that is peace. Standing at the rivers: that will be peace.” The singular river bank functions as an almost metaphysical space where the individual understands the wisdom of the river, to adjust and to persist, and the multiple river banks symbolize a collective of many such individuals, former enemies, who have created a new collective of We, or indeed a new Volk. We can safely assume that the rivers are not only the already mentioned Drina and Danube, but also the Sava and the Morava, two more rivers from Handke’s first journey to the war zone (Journey to the Rivers), all of which can both divide and connect the former warring sides. Handke’s utopian Balkans also represent a vision of the region as a four dimensional space, with empires and great powers as temporal parts which “perdure” in the Balkans, i.e., are confined to intervals of time, never “enduring,” never being “wholly present” (Sider 197). This is why the destroyed bridge from Andri!’s novel, as a metaphor for a failed attempt to connect the East and the West through imperial engineering, is replaced with the dugout as a metaphor for moveable, adjustable, and durable local code created against the backdrop of imperial legacies. To imagine utopian peace in the midst of war—the premiere of the play was on June 9, 1999, when NATO representatives announced that their seventy-eight-day bombing of Yugoslavia would cease (Abbot 381)—seems unexpected.49 Yet this imaginary space based on existing landscapes has

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inherently realistic and pragmatic dimensions. Building on the common cultural code condensed in the word neighbor and on the common history of small nations within larger empires, Handke offers intuitively, or perhaps consciously, what in the EU is known as a regional approach which supports cultural similarity as opposed to rigid national identity and develops economic, cultural, and various forms of political cooperation among the countries and nations of the same region. The year in which VD was premièred, 1999, was also the year of the first mass anti-globalization protest in Seattle, which Richard Rorty used to put forward the case for a renewal of utopian energies made in his book Philosophy and Social Hope (Hayden and el-Ojeili 1–9). In the context of contemporary utopias and globalization Ronaldo Munck proposes a subversion of exclusively Western-centric utopian thinking through the development of liminality and hybridity as a critical lens for uncovering the utopian potential in local/global transnational spaces. He draws on Bhabha’s definition of the liminal as space on the border, or the threshold, as well as Bhabha’s conclusion that “to privilege liminality is to undermine familiar solid structure in favor of unexpected hybrid cultural formations” (Hayden and el-Ojeili 208). Munck understands the meaning of liminality, furthermore, “as a threshold moving beyond the limits of what we are, into what we are to be as an analogy for utopian thinking and practice” (209), arguing that the binary opposition of global universalism versus local particularism is “based on an unsustainable ontological dualism” (213). He concludes that we need “to shift from the center to the margins” and “talk […] about alternative ways of thinking about alternatives” (218), i.e., “develop a glocalization of the left which is fully cognizant of the complexity and potential of the local/global interface or liminal spaces” (219). Handke consistently adheres to the above principles of utopia for liminal and hybrid spaces in an increasingly globalizing world. His utopian Balkans undermine the familiar solid structures of nation and state as well as the petrified discourses that define Central/European identity as the sum of shared mainstream cultural values and official histories of empires, offering instead local/global trans-nationality as an interaction between persisting local identities and transitory empires. Handke’s future peace, as a state of mind characterized by half-sleep, is an analogy for utopian vision as future practice, a model of imagining what we are to be, and his conscious shift from the center to the margins, explicitly mentioned by the Fur-Woman, highlights the complexity and potential of liminal spaces: Where were you more awake and more of sound mind than on the borders? Don’t you know what the Sultan said to the people back then in Constantinople when they requested money from him? “Go to the borders, there you will get paid!”

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Wo warst du je wacher und mehr bei Verstand als an den Grenzen […]? Weißt du denn nicht mehr, was der Sultan damals in Konstantinopel zu dem Volk sagte, als es Geld von ihm wollte? “Geht an die Grenzen, dort werdet ihr bezahlt!” (Handke, VD 117)

Handke’s vision of the Balkans symbolized in the voyage by dugout and the half-a-sleep state of mind corresponds to Dirlik’s vision of the local “as a site of promise […]; adjustment to nature against the urge to conquer it; […] heterogeneity over homogeneity; […]; ‘local knowledge’ against universal scientific rationality; […] and ‘politics of location’” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 463; 465). Yet both Handke and Dirlik are aware of the tensions between the local as “a site of promise” and “a site of predicament” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin 463). Dirlik poignantly reminds us that “[i]t is indeed ironic that the local should emerge as a site of promise at a historical moment when localism of the most conventional kind has reemerged as a source of genocidal conflict around the world” (463). Handke does not ignore the reality of violence and its persistence in the region, yet he attempts to depict it from the perspective of “local knowledge” that should also lead to genuine reconciliation of the former enemies. Therefore, he lets the Chronicler describe the war as a process which begins with the erosion of the concept of neighbor and results in an eventual lapse into violence that feeds off itself: I lost the face of the other. It was already shapeless before I beat it to a bloody pulp—and all of us neighbors became angry. From faces growing invisible allaround, to general asynchrony and a reversal of our everyday chores, to the outbreak of the war. In my thoughts I had eliminated my neighbor, whom I burned to death in his house on the very first day of the war, at least ten times in the previous years. I have strangled people to death, and not only my closest neighbor. With the people in the village and with the people from the surrounding villages I still put on a mask puts a mask on, later not anymore takes the mask off. And then the other gets ahead of you—and for a moment you see an incredibly gentle human face, a lost, horribly lonely human face—the most beautiful thing on Earth you can encounter. Ich habe das Gesicht des anderen verloren. Es hatte keine Form mehr, schon lange bevor ich es zu Brei trat—[…] Und alle wir Nachbarn wurden böse. […] Von dem allseitigen Unsichtbarwerden der Gesichter zur allgemeinen Ungleichzeitigkeit und Gegenläufigkeit der täglichen profanen Verrichtungen zum Ausbruch des Krieges. Den Nachbarn, den ich gleich am ersten Kriegstag in seinem Haus verbrannte, hatte ich in den Jahren zuvor gedankenweise schon mindestens zehnmal beseitigt. […] Ich habe getötet. Ich habe erwürgt, und nicht nur meinen unmittelbaren Nachbarn. Bei den Leuten im Dorf und bei den Leuten der umgebenden Dörfer habe ich mir noch eine Maske aufgesetzt er setzt sich eine Maske auf, später dann nicht mehr Maske ab. […] Und dann überholt dich der Fremde—und du siehst für einen Augenblick ein unglaublich sanftes Menschengesicht, ein verlorenes,

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Rather than putting the blame on the masterminds who planned the war, Handke takes an approach that combines what in film terminology are called the extreme close-up and the extreme long shot. In other words, he lets the local tell his story of murdering his closest neighbors against the background of a collective memory of repeated and alternate ethnic cleansings and mass murders among the ethnicities of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Balkans. It is of course no coincidence that the Chronicler, aka the writer Ivo Andri!, tells this story in the play, but the atrocities of World Wars I and II, which are not part of Andri!’s narrative, are also implied in the Chronicler’s memory. The brief instance of a return to the “normal” perception of the neighbor as a human being unfolds further in the same scene, ending with a moment of total recognition of the enemy as the former neighbor: CHRONICLER: approaches the HISTORIAN; with a changed voice. Who are you? He takes the HISTORIAN’S mask off—it was one. They are standing now as two people from the same village. Neighbor! HISTORIAN: Neighbor! RANGER: Neighbor! For a moment it seems as if they wanted to hug one another— impossible. ANNOUNCER: No reconciliation! That was not planned in the tentative scenario, and of course a premature reconciliation like this one even less so. CHRONIST: tritt nah an den HISTORIKER heran; mit veränderter Stimme. Wer bist du? Er nimmt dem HISTORIKER die Maske ab—es war eine. Sie stehen nun da als zwei aus demselben Dorf. Nachbar! HISTORIKER: Nachbar! WALDLÄUFER: Nachbar! […] Für einen Augenblick scheint es als wollten sie einander umarmen—unmöglich. […] ANSAGER: […] Keine Versöhnung! Sie ist im provisorischen Szenario nicht vorgesehen, und natürlich schon gar nicht eine so voreilige wie die etwa jetzt. (39–40)

The mask does not symbolize civilized behavior in accordance with the cliché “when the masks fall,” but rather the barbaric conduct of murderers in a civil war, which, however, is not authentic for the locals. It is a forced and, according to Handke, ephemeral conduct that will give way to the authentic code of the neighbors, who help and privilege one another before anyone or anything else, including the nation. But the “tentative scenario,” which could be understood as the history of the Balkans, where political decisions and solutions are always tentative and also imposed on the locals by “global players,” does not allow for reconciliation yet. It is very clear that Handke does not idealize the Balkan reality. Reconciliation and peace are rather understood in the play as a process consisting of many moments of facing the

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present enemy and former neighbor and understanding your own responsibility and guilt: FUR-WOMAN: Let’s say, I’m from here. Let’s assume, I am the relative, the fiancée, the sister, the mother of a victim. And the man there, the perpetrator, an accessory, comes to see me, but he stammers, and I stammer back—, and in this way, only in this way, everything becomes crystal clear for both of us—but “the world,” the straight talk people, are the others? The RANGER grabs her unexpectedly by the hair, hits her head against the table, bends her back and takes hold of her face, as if he were about to tear off a mask, whereafter he pushes her away from him together with the chair. Her face is the opposite of a mask. He hits his own head against the table and takes hold of his face, more fiercely than hers, as if he were about to tear off a mask … FELLFRAU: Sagen wir, ich bin von hier. Ich bin, angenommen, die Angehörige, die Verlobte, die Schwester, die Mutter eines Opfers. Und der da, Täter, Mitschuldiger, sucht mich auf—stammelt aber nur—und ich stammle zurück —, und uns beiden wird so, nur so, alles sonnenklar—“die Welt” aber, die Klartextleute, das sind die anderen? Der WALDLÄUFER packt sie unversehens an den Haaren, schlägt ihren Kopf auf den Tisch, biegt sie zurück und faßt ihr ins Gesicht, wie um ihr eine Maske herabzureißen, wonach er sie samt ihrem Stuhl weit von sich wegstößt. Ihr Gesicht ist das Gegenteil von einer Maske. Er schlägt seinerseits den Kopf auf den Tisch und faßt sich ins Gesicht, heftiger als ihr, wie um sich eine Maske … (55)

In an encounter which becomes a secular analogue of the epiphany, understanding begins with an act of violence as a habit inherited from years of hostility. Sometime during the violent interaction the perpetrator comes back to his true self and begins to see the neighbor behind the enemy, at which point his own warring mask falls off. All this happens silently; the only language that the enemies/neighbors can find is stammering. This moment of mutual recognition is yet another utopian island, like the gathering of the taxi-drivers in Belgrade and the voyage by dugout. If we ordered these three utopian islands on a temporal axis, the first one would be the protest of the taxi-drivers, in which they act as a community of human beings, showing the potential to see everyone else as a human being; the second would be the above moment of recognition based on the potential to see the other, even the enemy, as a human being; and the third would be the new collective of We, individuals who manage to see the enemy as a human being and build a new society of individuals who have undergone this process. As in Thucydides, Handke finds authenticity, which in this case possibly leads to unconscious reconciliation, in short encounters without verbal exchange. Verbal language, which was an expression of reason and understanding in the Enlightenment (exemplified in Arabella), has lost its power in the age of digital media. Genuine, direct face-to-face

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communication has been replaced by public discourses of nation, democracy, and human rights (“straight talk”), all of which are for Handke less authentic than the one-to-one interaction between the locals. Just like the silent gathering of taxi-drivers in Belgrade, the silent communication of the enemies/neighbors creates authenticity in the spontaneous reaction of the present. This act of reconciliation also refers to the framework of theatrum mundi. In Calderón’s The Great Theater of the World reason and free will are insufficient in themselves to discern and obey the Eternal Law of God because they are obscured by original sin. Man must, therefore, perform an act of grace, which has to be accepted as well as offered (Shergold 169–70). The act of grace in VD is the mutual recognition of the neighbor, which is not disturbed by verbal metanarratives and interpretations imposed from outside. Instead, it entails in a condensed form centuries of shared cultural experience in the Balkans, thus representing the totality of time in the postmodern version of the baroque “play of human history.” Handke’s extreme close-up utilized in the interpretation of the Yugoslav wars may be interpreted as naïve and dangerously relative because it does not name entire nations as victims or perpetrators, but rather sees all peoples of the region as both. Yet careful analyses of the intricate history of the region as well as a detailed perception of the most recent wars lead to the same conclusion: the roles of victims and perpetrators shift constantly, even within the same war. This realization must be reached by each nation in the region because it is the only successful recipe for a long-term peace. Otherwise, despite the ceasefire and peace agreements, we will have, as Handke put it, a “fauler Frieden” (false peace) (“Nachtstudio”). Recognition of the enemy as a former neighbor and a human being restores the locality as the basic cell of every society. Without a genuinely functioning locality, all comprehensive discourses of democracy, human rights, and nation remain ideologies void of substance. The Balkans and Europe in the Axis of Utopia and Dystopia The concept of utopia is complex and contradictory in itself. Foucault, for example, defines utopias as “sites with no real place [but] with a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space […] which they present […] in a perfected form” (24). This definition explains Thomas More’s original concept of utopia of 1516, which, as Beilharz and Ellem explain, is “both the good place and no place” (Hayden and el-Ojeili 13), combining the ancient Greek prefixes () (good) and *) (no), blended in the English u. Yet Hayden claims that the concept of utopia constantly transgresses its original semantic field and becomes “more than an alternative society,” following Bloch’s recognition that “utopia conveys a

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powerful impulse or drive that is simultaneously critical of present sociopolitical realities and anticipatory of positive alternative futures” and that it remains “a basic human aspiration” (Hayden and el-Ojeili 51). On the other hand, we must consider that communities and spaces that we are used to perceiving as real have an inherently utopian quality, i.e., they do not exist as such. Hayden gives the example of the nation as imagined community in Anderson’s sense (54), and Foucault compares the mirror to a utopia “since it is a placeless place” (24). Foucault introduces the concept of heterotopia to describe the ambivalent and dubious nature of the mirror and other places, which function on the same principle. In the mirror we see ourselves where we are not, in a virtual space that opens up behind the surface and enables us to see ourselves where we are absent. The mirror does, nonetheless, exist in reality and, as such, functions as a heterotopia insofar as it makes the place that we occupy at the moment when we look at ourselves at once absolutely real, connected with the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through the virtual point which is “over there”, not “here,” where we are (24). The analogy between the mirror and the media as places that show absent reality as present is very obvious. In this sense, Friedrich Kittler’s comparison of Plato’s allegory of the cave50 to present-day technical media functions as a comparison of two different kinds of simulations of reality. According to Kittler, Plato’s allegory primarily implements a certain type of perception and experience, namely that of a culture which knows only theater, architecture, and sculpture. In this context, every shadow on the wall in the cave functions as a signified, its name spoken by the men passing along as the signifier, and the entire allegory as a system of signs of an oral culture. The chained people watch and discuss what they see, incapable of seeing through the simulacrum of the framework conditions. There is constant coming and going and incessant talking because they cannot write anything down. The message of this allegory, according to Kittler, is to learn reading Plato’s works in order to overcome oral captivity (211). Standing in seeming opposition to the cave allegory are technical media that for the first time make storage possible and hence control of reality perceived through senses as well. Reading thereby loses its relation to ideal meaning beyond mere signifiers, as was required by Plato; just like listening to records and watching films, it becomes yet another conditioned reflex. Only two differences distinguish the cave allegory from the present-day condition. First, the signified, which was the only thing capable of being stored in an oral culture, has been replaced by pure signifiers (212). Second, the TV set has no guide or exit,51 things that Plato provided people in the cave with to bring them into the sunlight of truth. Data processing knows no beyond (212), it merely simulates totality.

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In the context of utopia, the cave allegory, as interpreted by Kittler, admonishes us readers and media consumers of the digital age to come back to a Platonic reading related to ideal meaning that will replace the passive consumption of simulated reality as a conditioned reflex; or, paraphrasing Kittler, it encourages us to relearn to read in the Platonic sense in order to overcome our visual captivity. Literary utopias are based on hypothetical, imagined ideal conditions that only function imaginatively and can therefore provide alternative models for the interpretation of reality. Utopias and dystopias stem from the same desire to rebel against a reality perceived as defective, oppressive, unjust, and without prospects for a better future, or against presentations of reality perceived as fraudulent and misleading, as is the case, for example, with Kraus’ The Last Days of Mankind. Fogg also points out that one and the same condition or phenomenon can be considered both as utopia and dystopia, as illustrated by the saying “One man’s utopia is another man’s dystopia,” which is especially true for the technological progress of the twentieth century (Richter 66). In the literary depictions of the Balkans we can establish another pattern that brings utopia and dystopia together. The Bridge on the Drina, by far the most dystopian literary work analyzed in this study, leaves at the end a very vague glimmer of hope with utopian quality, expressed through the thoughts of the dying Alihod$a, who hopes that noble individuals with great visions will continue the struggle to make the world better (Andri!, The Bridge 314). Since Alihod$a is dying on a bridge cruelly cut in half, we should interpret his vision of the world against the background of the metaphorical significance of the bridge and its fictional destruction in the novel. The bridge, as already mentioned, functions as theatrum mundi in which the locals play their roles parabolically within the larger framework of history. The combination of historical factors and the interaction between local and global actors results this time in a disastrous breach of communication and violence between the locals symbolized by the destruction of the bridge. “This time” is both an ahistorical and a pan-historical moment, insofar as it could refer equally to all the conflicts between the locals during Ottoman rule, to the outbreak of World War I, to the fratricidal wars during World War II, and, as an uncanny clairvoyance, even to the most recent wars at the end of the twentieth century, or to all of these together, always remaining in the same locality of Vi%egrad, which in this way becomes a paradigm of dystopia. We must consider the very brief utopian hope expressed by Alihod$a, which can easily go unnoticed, in relation to the above concept of historical time. By having the bridge explode, in contrast to the historical reality of its continuous existence, Andri! “explode[s] the continuum of history,” which is

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the utopian function of what Bloch calls the now-time (Jetzt-Zeit) of literature (218). Yet exploding the continuum of history, does not mean also to explode the context, which is called the “current,” the “tendency” of history […] For only within this tendency of the course […] cracks the crust, the corresponding points of the now sparkle and transmit each other. Therefore, to explode, in this instance, does not mean to focus on one point […] Rather, to explode is a liberating act that frees all essentially related, utopian moments from before and after within the respective dawning of now-time […] Only this actual emphasis and messianic content (as Benjamin called the flowing, ultimate ending) can finally make the distinction between the partiality of the true point of the now-time and the historicism of collected dead pasts that are to be done away with again. And the respective now-time, if it really is one in this sense, understands itself either as a connecting corridor that has been prepared again, much better prepared, or even as the first stop of a time that has to be fulfilled, that is, one wherein appears what has not appeared, was not yet able to appear. (Bloch 218)

In a seemingly dystopian, and essentially utopian procedure, Andri! condenses all essentially related dystopian moments from before and after, only to do with them again in order to much better prepare for something that has not occurred for a long time, namely the messianic time expressed in Alihod$a’s hope that individuals with great humane visions will come again, and that this time people will be much better prepared to turn their vision into reality. Thus, the essentially pessimistic metaphor of the broken bridge expresses an optimistic message for the future in accordance with Bloch’s interpretation that “[n]ow time in the past cannot be a possession: it is help and warning” and “the misunderstanding [must] remain far away on the margins, as if the historical novel were a step toward the intended way of thinking […]” (216). We should also read Roth’s imaginary Slovenia and Hofmannsthal’s imaginary Slavonia in the context of literary now-time as a corridor between the dead historical past and that, which has to be fulfilled, a time in which there appears what has not appeared heretofore. Roth’s imaginary Slovenia reaches beyond the imagination and wishful thinking of his naïve character who confuses it with Bosnia-Herzegovina. The imaginary Slovenia of The Radetzky March is a condensed vision of an ideal pan-European communication of different cultures and nations, including those from the Balkans, that may have been intended, but was never really achieved in the Habsburg Monarchy, a vision conceived against the background of an increasingly divided Europe on its way to another devastating war. Hofmannsthal consciously borrows the now-time of the past from the historical novel and employs it in a play that can absorb it without contradictions because its structure is based on the totality of the baroque theater and the metaphor of theatrum mundi. Following performative logic, he gives messianic time a body and personifies it in the character of the

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fortune-teller. This ahistorical character, who has the first line in the play, stating that a better hand has been dealt than the last time (Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke in zehn Einzelbänden: Operndichtungen, 513), explodes the continuum of history by embedding the play in the framework of an ideal historical moment, the utopian now-time symbolized by the good hand. This framework gives the characters in the play a chance to learn from their mistakes, thus correcting the past and preparing for what has not yet appeared, namely mutual understanding between the Balkans and Europe symbolized by the marriage of Mandryka and Arabella. Handke’s utopian vision of the Balkans is conceived differently than the above literary models of utopian now-time. The voyage by dugout follows Holz’s “real philosophical history [which] is not inscribed into the linear time any longer, but […] is a kind of concentric time that in perspective rounds itself around the present […]” following Benjamin’s observation that “[…] basically it is the same time that reappears in the form of holidays […]” (Bloch 218). This voyage is in actuality both a utopia and a heterotopia, or a utopian heterotopia. Foucault defines heterotopias as “counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, […] are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality” (24). The voyage by dugout combines two principles, hence two different types of heterotopia. First, with its periodic reemergence after the demise of every empire, it is linked to time “in its most fleeting, transitory, precarious aspect, to time in the mode of the festival,” meaning that it is not oriented towards the eternal, but that it is absolutely temporal (Foucault 26). This concept of time corresponds to Holz’s concentric time, which wraps around history, and to Benjamin’s time, which reappears in the form of holidays. Second, being distinct from the monumental buildings and technological inventions of the empires as well as from the populated areas on solid ground, it functions “in relation to all the space that remains,” creating “a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as [the surrounding space] is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled” (Foucault 27). Foucault sees an embodiment of the paradigmatic heterotopia of this kind in the boat, which he defines as “a floating piece of space, a place without a place that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea […]” (27). In this way, the dugout functions as a utopian alternative space, a sanctuary where historical linearity is suspended and time is concentric, with a periodic structure identical to the cycles of holidays and seasons. Harmony, symbolized by the voyage by dugout, can be expected to appear periodically as a coincidence in agreement with Handke’s aforementioned concept of history. The absence of

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historical linearity eliminates the possibility of historical disruptions caused by the interference of empires from outside as well as the recurrence of bloody conflicts caused by antagonistic interpretations of history among the Balkan populations, who attempt to correct historical injustice by evoking the past in the present. In an age in which literature is mercilessly dominated by the electronic and digital media, it remains, paradoxically, the only instrument which defies their dangerously simplifying logic. This logic perpetuates and intensifies centuries-old prejudices in the omnipresent digital reality of the global village. The dominance of the simplified style in the media has also changed the literary reception and the expectations that modern individuals have from literature. The metaphorical and metonymic logic of literature, which never claims a one-to-one analogy to reality and always allows for more voices to be heard, has been interpreted by media consumers in a linear way that allows perception of only one voice and an analogy to reality only as depicted by media. Yet the gap between reality and staging in the media, which Kraus discussed using the photograph of the hanged Cesare Battisti, has become even larger in the digital age. Handke is therefore right when, following Kraus, he designates our present time “the time after the last days of mankind,” especially when one bears in mind that people remain largely unaware of this gap. The next chapter discusses another kind of constructed reality, the reality of the public sphere with the public personae of statesmen and their influence on the individual identity.

Notes 1

The media are thus not unlike fiction, which, as we have seen in Hamburger’s analysis of fictional narrative, differs from historical narrative in that it creates the appearance of characters acting here and now (150). The difference between the media and fiction is that, as readers of fiction, we remain aware of the appearance, or illusion, of present action, whereas with the media we believe we are witnessing absolute reality. 2 All translations of Die Fahrt im Einbaum are mine. 3 All translations of Roda’s text are mine. 4 Promitzer explains: Austrian sympathy for Serbia decreased following the Congress of Berlin, when Austria occupied the former Ottoman province of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which Serbia also claimed. […] In this period several journalistic publications on Serbia began to reflect the arrogance and sense of power that would dominate Austrian journalism before the First World War. (Wingfield 192) Further along Promitzer also points out that “the Viennese press also propagated a radical anti-Serbism that dominated the years prior to 1914.” The press became obsessed with the threat from Serbia and described the Serbs as “Austro-phobic” (Wingfield 193).

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5

Glenny calls Macedonia “the nemesis of the Ottoman Empire” and explains that BosniaHerzegovina was as fatal for the Habsburg Empire as Macedonia was for the Ottoman (251). Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were typical micro versions of the two supranational multiethnic empires and an ideal prey for the Balkan states, which had liberated themselves earlier from the Ottoman Empire. They perfectly illustrate the postcolonial character of the region, in which the borders of the former empires do not coincide with the ethnic borders. This lack of coincidence gave the independent Balkan states the perfect excuse to wage war with the aging empires over these two territories. 6 Promitzer gives the example of an Austrian journalist (Leopold Mandl) who wrote that if Serbia had remained “under Austria’s tutelage […], its cities would now be flourishing. But the turn to Russia had made it dependent on the Tzarist ambassador” (Wingfield 193). Roda’s perspective in his on-the-spot reporting was doubtless heavily influenced by such Austrian media propaganda. 7 Roda did not invent this concept on the spot. His perception of Serbia and its people was preshaped by the representations of the Serbs in Austrian newspapers. As Promitzer writes, the Austrian attitude towards the Serbs was “paternalistic.” Austria made efforts to modernize Serbia from 1804–1878 (from the First Serbian Uprising until the Congress of Berlin) and considered itself a civilized and civilizing force which observed “how hard another people was working to abandon its traditional ‘barbarian’ behavior in order to meet European standards” (Wingfield 191). 8 Jelavich quotes a Yugoslav history book to illustrate the degree of absurdity in the Balkan part of World War I: In the battle of Ma%kov Kamen in September 1914 the fighting was between the Fourth Regiment of U$ice [Serbian] and a regiment from Lika [then a Habsburg territory, today Croatia] that included a large number of Serbs from that area whose forebears had for centuries been the most faithful soldiers of the Habsburg emperors. Commander Puri# of the U$ice regiment led his men in fourteen charges, to which the men from Lika responded with lightening-like countercharges. In one of these Puri# shouted to the enemy, “Surrender, don’t die so stupidly,” to which they replied, “Have you ever heard of Serbs surrendering?” (Jelavich, History of the Balkans 116). 9 Schindler offers a revisionist perspective on the military campaign of the Austro-Hungarian army in Serbia in 1914 that contradicts Roda’s assertions about both Serbian and AustroHungarian military capabilities. He points out that the Austro-Hungarian army in summer 1914 was not capable of fighting a two-front struggle, namely in Serbia and in Russia, and that this fact was “fudged by self-deception at the highest level” (Schindler 161). He describes the Serbian army as “an impressive, if comparatively small force” (164), which, despite its peasant origins, was well-equipped and “in many cases notably better supplied with modern weaponry” than the Habsburg adversary (165). He also claims that the experience of irregular warfare against the Ottomans and the military campaigns in the Balkan Wars “gave the Serbian army an advantage over the Habsburg military, unblooded for two generations,” concluding that the “test of war had produced a force which was tactically proficient, well organized, equipped, and administered” (165). Seen from this perspective, Roda belonged to the politicized journalism that had the function of reinforcing in public the self-deceptive image of the Habsburg army created amongst the highest military ranks. 10 The Serbian general Putnik was interned in Budapest by the Habsburg authorities after his visit to Gleichenberg in summer 1914, immediately after the outbreak of the war. Schindler considers his release one of the most fatal strategic mistakes of Francis Ferdinand, who issued

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the order for release, because in Schindler’s view Putnik was “an able tactician and strategist [and] architect of Serbia’s victories” in the Balkan Wars (165). There is indeed a logical contradiction in the claim of Roda’s interlocutor that General Putnik was completely incompetent after Putnik’s victorious campaign against the Austro-Hungarian army on the mountain Cer in 1914. 11 Novi Pazar was an administrative region of the Ottoman Empire until 1913 (the Second Balkan War), when it was divided between Serbia and Montenegro. Its population is almost entirely Moslem. 12 Huntington claims the following: In the former Yugoslavia, Russia backs Orthodox Serbia, Germany promotes Catholic Croatia, Muslim countries rally to the support of the Bosnian government, and the Serbs fight Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanian Muslims. Overall, the Balkans have once again been Balkanized along the religious lines. (127) What Huntington overlooks is that Croatian Catholics and Bosnian Moslems were fighting together against Orthodox Serbs, that Protestant Americans were bombing Orthodox Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina and protecting Bosnian Moslems, and that in 1991 Moslem Turkey unconditionally recognized the independence of Macedonia, which has a majority Orthodox Christian Macedonian population. The Balkans were not once again Balkanized along religious lines; rather, the imperial legacies again became clearly visible, which re-confirmed the permanently postcolonial character of the region. To Huntington’s credit we must concede that the imperial and religious lines largely coincide—but not entirely. The ethnic minorities within every Balkan state, varying according to religion and/or culture, are an imperial legacy and a permanent source of excuses for wars. 13 I translated the phrase as “High Court of Justice on (the) Ruins (of human civilization).” It is omitted in the English translation. 14 The metaphor of the world as a theater conceives of men as actors who merely play roles assigned to them by God. Men can neither choose their roles, since the role is a metaphor for every man’s destiny, nor can they grasp the meaning of the drama, which nonetheless exists (Schwanitz 115). 15 Translation mine. 16 Translation mine. The abridged translation does not include this scene. Unless otherwise noted, the translations of the LTM from the original German are mine. 17 Translation mine. 18 The Prologue in Heaven in Faust I does not function as an overarching frame either. It is the second, subordinate frame of the triadic structure of the play: Prologue in the Theater— Prologue in Heaven—fictional play. The totality of the theatrum mundi, including the voice of God at the end of the work, is therefore to be understood only as part of the fiction, hence aesthetically, and not as a metaphor of a moral order residing in the reality outside of the play. Seen from this perspective, what Kraus considers to be the end of the metaphor is only a phase of a process that had begun in the Early Modern Age. Once the fictional medieval imagination of the world as a finite and secluded place was shaken by the public presentation of scientific discoveries, the metaphor began to change its representational power. Moreover, the metaphor of the theatrum mundi is inherently dualistic: on the one hand it presupposes the existence of a creator who is also the ultimate moral authority, on the other it is used to depict the world as false or illusory. The latter concept was typical for the transitional period between the Renaissance and Baroque and was used against the backdrop of the Copernican revolution, which undermined the notion of a definite center (Ben-Shaul 167).

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The novelty in Kraus’ treatment of the framework of theatrum mundi in the LTM lies in the replacement of the framework by photographs and phrases from newspapers. The latter emphasize the fragmentation of reality through the media, which, consequently, cannot be presented as a finite and secluded place with an ultimate moral authority. Furthermore, because photography aspires to capture human death and trauma as real, as I will demonstrate in subsequent analysis, Kraus views it as nullification of metaphorical representation generally. 19 Benjamin considers the invention of photography to be the most important stage in the transition of art from unique object to reproducible copy. The consequences are far-reaching, for the content of the work of art as well as for the role of art in society: For the first time in the process of pictorial reproduction, photography freed the hand of the important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens. Since the eye perceives more swiftly than the hand can draw, the process of pictorial reproduction was accelerated so enormously that it could keep pace with speech. […] [This] […] made predictable a situation which Paul Valéry pointed up in this sentence: “Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.” (Benjamin, Work of Art 1168) Mit der Photographie war die Hand im Prozeß bildlicher Reproduktion zum ersten Mal von den wichtigsten künstlerischen Obliegenheiten entlastet, welche nunmehr dem ins Objektiv blickenden Auge allein zufallen. Da das Auge schneller erfaßt, als die Hand zeichnet, so wurde der Prozeß bildlicher Reproduktion so ungeheuer beschleunigt, daß er mit dem Sprechen Schritt halten konnte. […] [Dies hat] eine Situation absehbar gemacht, die Paul Valéry mit dem Satz kennzeichnet: “Wie Wasser, Gas und elektrischer Strom von weither auf einen fast unmerklichen Handgriff hin in unsere Wohnungen kommen, um uns zu bedienen, so werden wir mit Bildern oder mit Tonfolgen versehen werden, die sich, auf einen kleinen Griff, fast ein Zeichen einstellen und ebenso wieder verlassen.” (Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk 10–11) New technology makes possible quick and massive art reproduction, thus turning the work of art into a commodity similar to water and gas, as Valéry aptly puts it. It is only one step from this stage to reproducing executions on postcards as a means of entertainment. 20 Austria is represented in the Balkans by impressionists. Translation mine. 21 Die Fackel was a journal founded and almost entirely financed by Karl Kraus. Kraus founded the journal as a protest against state control of the press and managed to become “a champion of public morality” (Timms, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist 36). 22 Translation mine. The sentence is omitted from the otherwise complete preface in the abridged English edition. 23 The oral comic genre of coq-a-l’âne (cock-and-bull-story), which draws on carnival logic, is based on language free of all norms and common sense (Bakhtin, Stvarala#tvo Fransoa Rablea 428; 440). 24 Leopold Berchtold was Austria’s foreign minister from 1912–1915. Pauley claims that it was the misfortune of the Habsburg Monarchy to have a foreign minister like him in those decisive moments. He was pleasant-mannered and took pride in being the best-dressed man in

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the Monarchy, but he also had a reputation of being indecisive, insecure, and shy. Conrad von Hötzendorf put great pressure on Berchtold to take military action against Serbia. It took Vienna almost a month to decide on a policy towards Serbia after the assassination of Francis Ferdinand. The decision was the infamous ultimatum which Berchtold purposely wrote so as to virtually guarantee its rejection and which was issued under circumstances far less favorable for Austria than those immediately after the assassination (Pauley 39–40). 25 The Grumbler called the hangman in the photograph showing the hanged Battisti “das österreichische Antlitz” (Kraus, LTM 507). The allusion to the “Austrian visage” in this excerpt implies that the connoted message of the executioner’s and Berchtold’s faces is identical—both faces are arrogant, threatening, and intimidating, although Berchtold’s threatening and intimidating expression is not noticeable at first glance because of his elegant posing and the aesthetics of his apparel, which lend the photograph the artistic quality of a painted portrait. The photograph thus gave visual expression to the political decision for war with Serbia implied in the unrealistic ultimatum and anticipated the aesthetic treatment of horrors concealed by the means of presentation. 26 A town in western Vojvodina. 27 A river in southwestern Serbia. 28 An allusion to Roda’s official change of his surname in 1899 from Rosenbaum (rose tree) to Roda. 29 In the following quotation we can see that Roda was indeed convinced he was directly taking part in history and made an effort to convey that conviction to his readers in an “impressionistic” style: Here, at the headquarters on the hill, it is just like in a maneuver. You stand unconcerned, freely observe world history through binoculars, you smoke—and you wait. You wait for the next hour, pretending to be calm, yet secretly trembling with excitement.

30

Hier auf dem Stabshügel ist es wie im Manöver. Man steht ungeniert, betrachtet freien Auges und durch Gläser die Weltgeschichte, raucht—und wartet. Wartet mit gemachter Ruhe und heimlich zitternder Spannung der nächsten Stunde entgegen. (Roda 97) Roda is not impressed by the look of Belgrade’s fortress either: The ferrymen are smoking, laughing, looking up at the steep battlements rising on the other side: so this is Belgrade. The overhang of the old, very old fortress—with its naïve bastions, lunettes, galleries, does not deserve the name fortress at all. Die Fährleute rauchen, lachen, schauen auf die steilen Zinnen, die da drüben aufsteigen: das also ist Belgrad. Die Felsnase der alten, uralten Festung—mit ihren naiven Bastionen, Lünetten, Galerien verdient sie den Namen einer Festung gar nicht. (42)

Roda’s depreciation of the architectural style of the fortress is yet another variation of the binary paradigm he uses to compare Austria and Serbia, the former as a nation of culture, the latter as a nation of peasants and nature. His, and by extension the Austrian, idea of a fortress is something much more monumental and less “naïve,” the product of a developed civilization, as opposed to the very old, run-down construction surrounding Belgrade.

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31

Roda experiences something similar to Schalek when he talks to a Serbian woman who is walking parallel to the Austrian military unit marching on a country road in Serbia, indifferent to the soldiers: “So, you aren’t afraid of our soldiers?” The Serbian woman looks at me with a half defiant, half questioning look and responds hesitantly: “Sir, God is above all things, then comes Austria. Your soldiers can’t do anything to us against God’s will.”

“Ihr fürchtet euch also nicht vor unseren Soldaten?” Die Serbin sieht mich halb trotzig, halb fragend an und erwidert zaghaft: “Herr, zuoberst ist Gott, dann erst kommt Österreich. Eure Soldaten können uns nichts gegen Gottes Willen tun.” (62–63) 32 Karoline von Oppen gives an illuminating analysis of the moral debates on the wars in the former Yugoslavia among German intellectuals. 33 Luhmann conceives of the selection criteria for “newsworthiness” being two-sided. The presentation of discontinuity and conflict as main selection criteria and newsworthy topics necessitates compensation for underexposing conformity and assent, as antonyms of discontinuity and conflict. The media provide compensation for under-representing conformity and assent by their preference for moral judgments. Luhmann terms the process of instilling morality through the media “tele-socialization” (78). The roles of “goodies” and “baddies” must be clearly distinguished in tele-socialization. Through morality, the media promote consensus and resolution of conflicts as positive values (78). In the case of the former Yugoslavia it became clear very early that consensus and quick resolution of the conflict were impossible, which is why the media promoted punishment of the perpetrators as a positive value. 34 News and in-depth reporting, as Luhmann points out, are both said and perceived to be the most immediate portrayal of reality and are produced according to the criteria of discontinuity and conflict. Unrest is preferred to peace in the news, because that type of presentation stimulates society into constant innovation. In other words, conflicts generate problems that require solutions, and solutions create new problems, and so forth (78). 35 Luhmann suggests that we should conceive of the media as a system with a memory that produces and reproduces knowledge of the world (76). The media generate a description of reality for which they use “forms of selection which work in […] hidden ways and are simultaneously unavoidable” (77). Such forms of selection are “categorizations of every kind” used “for the presentation of concrete facts in more general terms.” Meaning is communicable only in the context of generalizations, and causality can only be presented by singling out particular causes or particular effects. Simplifying causal attributions in the news and in-depth reporting generate judgments, emotions, calls, and protests (77). 36 The border between the West and the East also became an obsession for the former Croatian president Tu"man. He was a historian who used historical arguments for his policy towards Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. MacDonald claims that if Tu"man was not Serbophobic, he was most certainly “Balkanophobic.” He argued that the Serbs had more in common with the Albanians and the Turks, because they all belonged to the “Byzantine culture,” than with the Croats (MacDonald 117–18). Tu"man asserted: Based on its geopolitical position, its fourteen-centuries-long history, civilization and culture, Croatia belongs to the central European and Mediterranean circle in

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Europe. Our political links with the Balkans between 1918 and 1990 were just a short episode in the Croatian history and we are determined not to repeat that episode ever again! (MacDonald 118) The irony was that the more Tu"man called attention to Croatia’s European legacy, the less he acted in accordance with the official policy of present-day Europe, which promotes human rights and awareness of multicultural identity, and more in the style which the Western media instantly defined as typically Balkan—ethnic rivalry, resentment, and hatred (Kaplan xxiii). Milo!evi# and Tu"man were negotiating the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina as early as 1991 (MacDonald 220). Tu"man supported a nationalist historiography of Croatia that focused on presenting the Moslems in Bosnia-Herzegovina as “long-suffering Croats, desperately in need of ‘rediscovering’ their true ethnicity” (MacDonald 227). After Croatian troops took control of Herzegovina in 1995, Tu"man used the colonial rhetoric of mission civilisatrice to disguise his nationalist motives: “Croatia accepts the task of Europeanization of Bosnian Moslems at the behest of the Western European powers” (MacDonald 228). In actuality, when Tu"man involved Croatia in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina he also brought it closer to the Balkans and further away from Western Europe. 37 An elaborate description of the forged report is given by the German journalist Deichmann who first pointed to its existence (228–58). 38 Translation from the Serbian original mine. 39 All translations from the German original of VD are mine. 40 Abbott considers Machado to be Luis Buñuel (382). The character could symbolize both artists and, by extension, the Spanish poetic and film traditions. O’Hara, on the other hand, sees him and his argumentation as essentially European: MACHADO: But isn’t there a difference between a war film and our film about the war? O’HARA: Don’t start with your European quibbles. MACHADO: […] Aber ist nicht ein Unterschied zwischen einem Kriegsfilm und unser beider Film vom Krieg? O’HARA: Laß deine europäischen Spitzfindigkeiten. (21) 41 This procedure also echoes Ivo Andri#’s narrative strategy in The Bridge on the Drina, where the bridge is the stage (theatrum mundi) on which the townspeople of Vi!egrad play their roles parabolically (Burkhart 177), unaware of the force of history made somewhere else. 42 All of the characters refer partly to real prototypes. Some of them will be mentioned further below in my analysis, while others are discussed by Fiedler in his analysis of Handke’s political views on the wars in the former Yugoslavia. At the same time each figure is also a stock character, with general meaning, as their names suggest (Historian, Chronicler, etc.). 43 In this Handke follows Hofmannsthal, rather than Kraus. Kraus evokes in the LTM the metaphor of the theatrum mundi only to argue its unsustainability in the modern era because of the simulation of reality by the media that annihilates the possibility of metaphorical representation. Hofmannsthal, on the other hand, uses this metaphor as a political tool in Arabella, employing it to transform the recipients into active protagonists. The recipients should follow the guidelines of the fortune-teller, who instructs them to move beyond the fictional time and act in the reality off stage in the same way as the fictional characters do in the play. 44 The most commonly used word for neighbor in the Balkans is the Ottoman/Turkish word kom$u, which in the Slavic languages in the Balkans is most often pronounced kom#ija (! is

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pronounced as the English -sh-). The word kom#ija conveys a cultural concept reaching beyond the simple meaning of someone living in the vicinity. A kom#ija is someone who helps in good times and bad, someone with whom one drinks coffee, a social activity involving chatting and exchanging good and bad news, indeed a variant of coffee house activity. People therefore do not use personal names when they address their neighbors, but rather the word kom#ija, which hints at a special relationship. The concept of kom#ija was able to bridge the ethnic and religious differences that were otherwise always present in the background. Handke captures the broad and dense socio-cultural semantic field of the word by using it in the greeting of one of the local characters. By this means, as we shall see later, he describes the beginning of hostilities between the ethnicities as the moment in which the neighbor becomes invisible, thus indicating that the socio-cultural fabric which held the communities together has been torn in the name of the larger community of ethnicity/nation which destroyed the concept of neighbor. 45 See Fiedler (319–21) on the prototype of the character Ranger, Novislav D$aji#, his trial by the Criminal Law Chamber of the Bavarian Supreme Court, and Handke’s objections to the sentence. 46 The city at war is Sarajevo, whose three-year besiegement by Serbian forces was broadcast daily by European networks, thus creating spectators who believed they identified with the suffering of the Sarajevan citizens. Handke questions the moral justification of this belief by mocking the “foreigners,” most likely journalists and internationals, who visited the city, for their illusion that they have become one with the unfortunate Sarajevan citizens. 47 Part of Handke’s dialectical procedure is to have the characters utter contradictory theses in the same speech, thus showing that all history is but a web of contradictory perceptions and interpretations. The meaning of the International’s speech should be sought in the space between his claim that war is considered to be a coincidence and his unconscious admission that war is practiced on an almost yearly basis. 48 Abbott points to Handke’s continuing effort to reconstitute certain words, among which also the word Volk. He strives to reconstruct the material idea of the word Volk (Abbot assumes that by material Handke means non-metaphysical), which had been imbued with Nazi ideology, by working “beyond that into a dialectic, or a “weaving,” as he puts it, to introduce lost words onto the literary stage” (Abbot, “The Material Idea of a Volk” 480). In VD the Volk is constituted through a momentary and spontaneous action, it is not rooted in the ideological basis of the word, and is defined only through acting, thus representing a community of individuals united through solidarity. 49 Handke never ceased thinking about peace and pondering the possibilities of both achieving and preserving it. As already mentioned in the second chapter, Thucydides is, among other things, a narrative of a landscape at peace, whose literary imagery resists the war reports. By the end of A Journey to the Rivers Handke claims that determining the evil facts is not enough for peace, because peace requires something else, something no less important than facts, yet he does not say what that is (Handke, Eine Reise nach Serbien 133). He appears to give his answer with the utopian project from VD. 50 Plato’s allegory of the cave is a fictional dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brother Glaukon, in which Socrates describes the existence of humans beings in a cave deprived of sunlight. This allegory represents the delusive perception of reality of these people. Socrates asks Glaukon to imagine human beings living in an underground cave, whose mouth opens towards the light and reaches all along the cave. They have been there since childhood and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move and can only see in front of them, being prevented from turning their heads by the chains. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised pathway. A low

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wall is built along the pathway, resembling the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets. Socrates then asks Glaukon to imagine men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, statues, and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials that appear over the wall. Some of the men carrying the statues are talking, while others are silent. (Kittler 211) 51 The second difference that Kittler mentions refers specifically to the change in the reading process under conditions of developed technology, but it can be applied without alteration to the changes in the visual perception of TV viewers.

VII. Myth and Memory in the Habsburg

Monarchy and the Balkans Yugoslavia was created after World War I from lands which previously belonged to the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Thus, the country encompassed parts of both Central Europe and the Balkans, inheriting the border between these two cultural spaces that meet in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It also inherited the complex and complicated mixture of cultures and peoples from the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Inter-war Yugoslavia was a parliamentary monarchy ruled by the Serbian dynasty of Kara)or)evi! until 1929, when King Alexander declared a royal dictatorship that lasted until the German occupation in 1941. The inter-war period was characterized by strong tensions between the Serbs, on the one hand, and the Croats and Slovenes on the other, who felt threatened by the Serbian tendency for domination and hegemony. The other peoples who lived in inter-war Yugoslavia—Moslems, Montenegrins, Albanians, and Macedonians—were not recognized either as ethnicities or as nations. Post-World-War II Yugoslavia (1943–1990), also known as Tito’s Yugoslavia, was a communist country in which tensions among the different cultural legacies and nations were disguised by communist ideology and the personality of the charismatic leader Marshal Tito. However, Josip Broz Tito had more than a charismatic personality and ideology at his disposal to combat the threat of nationalisms. His approach towards the nationalities displayed many similarities to that of the Habsburg Monarchy in its acknowledgment of diversity and its continuous attempts to find the form of state adequate to it. The Macedonians and the Montenegrins were recognized as nations immediately, the Bosnian Moslems were given the opportunity to declare themselves as an ethnicity and later as a nation, and the ethnic Albanians were granted the status of a nationality. Vojvodina and Kosovo were given the status of autonomous provinces within Serbia, which reflected their cultural and ethnic differences from the territories of Serbia populated almost entirely by Serbs. In his essay Joseph Roth and Tito: Notes on Sadness (Joseph Roth und Tito: Notizen über die Traurigkeit [1998]) Ivan Ivanji seeks an answer to the question regarding the similarities between the former Yugoslavia and the Habsburg Monarchy and between Tito (1892–1980) and Francis Joseph (1830–1916). He reminds readers that some journalists called Tito “the last Habsburg” (5), and that the leader did not mind this comparison at all. If we

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compare the historical and political circumstances under which these two statesmen worked, we see many similarities in the cultural and ethnic composition of the former Yugoslavia and the Habsburg Monarchy, in their attempts to achieve unity in diversity, and finally in their failure to do so. Moreover, the former Yugoslavia inherited the most difficult problem of the Habsburg Monarchy: the nation-building process which shook the foundation of the supranational Monarchy during Francis Joseph’s reign (1848–1916) and continued in the multinational state of Yugoslavia. Tito’s solutions for the question of nationality in the former Yugoslavia, especially in the two autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo as well as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, should be compared both to Habsburg politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Vojvodina and to Austro-Marxist approaches to nationalism. The Habsburg slogan Unity in Diversity was adapted to the communist system and changed to Brotherhood and Unity. Furthermore, Habsburg identity politics for Bosnia-Herzegovina, which acknowledged the Moslem cultural identity and integrated it into the religious and cultural web of the Monarchy under the rule of the Christian Apostolic Majesty, was the basis during Tito’s rule for the introduction of the category “Moslem” as a national affiliation. During his roughly thirty-five years of rule Tito seems to have applied the “personality principle,” a model of nationality developed by Slovenian Social Democratic leader and intellectual Etbin Kristanof in 1898 and adopted by Austro-Marxist thinkers Karl Renner and Otto Bauer (Bene% 299–300).1 The “personality principle,” which proposed accommodation of national autonomy “beneath the umbrella of the all-Austrian party and national allegiance […] based on individual choice, rather like religious loyalty in a pluralistic and tolerant society” (299), was applied to the entire territory of the former Yugoslavia as well as to each of the six republics and two autonomous provinces. This principle was intended to lend coherence both to the supranational state and to each of the republics and provinces as well as to do justice to the individual national identities. For example, a citizen of Bosnia-Herzegovina had the option of declaring himself a Moslem, a Croat, a Serb, a Bosnian, or a Yugoslav, while maintaining sole citizenship in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Each of the respective republics and provinces, with exception of Slovenia, included substantial minority/ies (or nationality/ies, according to the former Yugoslav terminology), but it also had elements of statehood and clear boundaries established at the Anti-Fascist Council of the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia in the Bosnian town Jajce in 1943. Supranational identity and loyalty to the Yugoslav state were to be achieved through all forms of artistic production,2 culminating in the presentations and public appearances of the state president, much like the role of the public persona of Francis Joseph.

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The personalities of the two statesmen, one a monarch, the other a communist leader, have been objects of scholarly analyses, artistic presentations, and interpretations. They both endeavored to resist nationalism and to preserve the respective state structure not only through adaptation of state institutions, but also through the authority and the symbolic value of their personalities. Thus they are an intrinsic part of the collective memory of the Habsburg Monarchy and the former Yugoslavia. This chapter will analyze and compare the commonalities and differences in the preservation of the myth and memory of these two statesmen in Joseph Roth’s novella Die Büste des Kaisers (The Emperor’s Monument [1934]) and the film Tito and Me (Tito i ja [1992]) by the Serbian director Goran Markovi! (born 1946). Joseph Roth’s Ambivalent Reminiscence of the Habsburg Myth Roth’s novella The Emperor’s Monument can easily be misinterpreted as an exclusively idealized reminiscence of the Habsburg Monarchy and an apotheosis of its last emperor, Francis Joseph. At the beginning of the novella the third-person narrator asks the reader to overlook the historicalpolitical explanation found there, which he feels obliged to give because of “the recent unnatural caprices of world history, which compel me to offer such an explanation” (Roth, Collected Stories 227). The narrator then clarifies that the unnatural caprices of world history changed the village Lopatyny, where the story takes place, from a Habsburg territory to a Polish one. However, the narrator will later distance himself from the main character, Count Morstin, in whose eyes the Habsburg Monarchy appears as the natural order and its dissolution and division into different nation-states as artificial and unnatural. Ursula Renner equates Count Morstin’s and Roth’s perspectives and claims that the narrator also shares it to a certain extent. In her view, the story develops a backward-looking utopia of the Habsburg Monarchy which could not withstand critical examination. She then questions both the narrator’s and the author’s sympathy for the main character, who attributes downright mystical sanctity to the past and refuses to abandon it (130–31). From this point of departure she expounds a psychoanalytical interpretation of the text based on Roth’s personal life—his childhood without a father is interpreted as the origin of his need to project a father figure onto Francis Joseph and a home onto the Habsburg Monarchy. The above interpretation is possible only if the narrator’s irony and distance from the character of Count Morstin are not taken into account. These are, however, discreetly present, as Bruce Thompson rightly observes: “The narrative voice is distinctly conservative and monarchic, but again there is a satirical tinge. The count’s delight in the uniformity of the empire’s institutions has comical touches. […] In a similar vein Roth satirizes the

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count’s frantic preparations for the visit of Franz Joseph […] the count himself is seen in the area as a “comic figure” […]. As with the district captain in The Radetzky March, the object of satire here is the emperor’s admirer, not the figure of the emperor himself […] (262).” Thus, we can say that the combination of “sentimentality and idealization with the satirical edge” (265), which Thompson ascribes to Roth’s novel The Radetzky March (similar to my observation in the fifth chapter, which addresses the ambivalence between nostalgia and irony in the novel) is also found in The Emperor’s Monument. It is Roth’s idiosyncrasy to include both tones in the narration and to thereby create an ambivalent feeling towards the Monarchy and its emperor in the reader. Another analysis of the novella, however, can focus on the relationship between the construction of the individual and state identity in the Habsburg Monarchy. Through the example of Count Morstin’s character I will look into the consequences of the equation of individual and Habsburg identity after the disappearance of the Monarchy as well as into the persistence of memory and myth in individual identity. In the nineteenth century the Habsburg Monarchy had to face the challenge of economic transition in order to keep pace with industrialized Western European countries as well as the challenge of accommodating the rising national identities within its supranational state structure. In the end, the Monarchy did not rise to these challenges, but it succeeded in something else that makes it unique among empires. As Katherine Arens puts it: […] a flawed economic and administrative unit still managed to produce a workable cultural identity for a multiethnic and a multi-religious state until forcibly brought to a military and political end—an identity recoverable in the literatures in the far corners of the empires, from Schnitzler to Jokai and beyond. […] In the nineteenth century, Austria-Hungary, without external colonies, sought to evolve national symbols to divorce issues of ethnicity and specific geography from national selfimage […] it created a public sphere that functioned as the basis of its imperialism in a different way than had England or France […]. Its unique strategy was to construct a national consciousness based on the psychology of individual entitlement and representation within a contractual empire. (Arens, “Central Europe and the Nationalist Paradigm” 3)

Count Morstin in The Emperor’s Monument is a personification of the multiethnic identity of the Habsburg Empire. He is of an ancient Polish lineage which originated in Italy, but considers himself neither Polish nor Italian: No, along with so many others like him in the former Crownlands of AustriaHungary, he belonged to the noblest and purest type of Austrian there can be, which is to say: he was a man beyond nationality and also an aristocrat in the true sense. (Roth, Collected Stories 227–28)

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Nein: wie so viele seiner Standesgenossen in den früheren Kronländern der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie war er einer der edelsten und reinsten Typen des Österreichers schlechthin, das heißt also: ein übernationaler Mensch und ein Adeliger echter Art. (Roth, Die Büste 3–4)

Count Morstin has entirely internalized the language and symbols of the public sphere which determined the typically Habsburg national consciousness. Thus, the third-person narration that relates his thoughts and feelings of Count Morstin functions simultaneously as the “narrative of selfjustification that allowed Austria-Hungary to exist” (Arens, “Central Europe and the Nationalist Paradigm” 3), i.e., as the metalanguage of the public sphere which created the Habsburg supranational consciousness. This narrative reality is also the cause of peculiarity in the character of Count Morstin, who possesses neither an entirely private language nor an entirely private identity, because his personal identity is based on the metalanguage of the Habsburg state: If one had asked him, for instance—but who would have wanted to ask such a nonsensical question—to which “nationality” or people he felt he belonged, the Count would have looked blankly and uncomprehendingly at the questioner, or perhaps even with a measure of irritation. (Roth, Collected Stories 228) Hätte man ihn zum Beispiel gefragt—aber wem wäre eine so sinnlose Frage eingefallen?—, welcher “Nation” oder welchem Volke er sich zugehörig fühle: der Graf wäre ziemlich verständnislos, sogar verblüfft vor dem Frager geblieben und wahrscheinlich auch gelangweilt und etwas indigniert. (Roth, Die Büste 4)

The narrator thus distances himself from the character through irony when he refers to the question of nationality as senseless and puts the word “nationality” in quotation marks. The narrated time, the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, is precisely the period in which such national affiliation became an issue in the Habsburg Monarchy. In accordance with Habsburg identity, however, which was constructed as supranational, Count Morstin considers it an absurd and nonexistent question. The following lines constitute one of the most illustrative examples of the Habsburg narrative of self-justification: Now, the Dual Monarchy was like this colorful world in parvo, and that was why it was the only possible homeland for the Count. […] As he traveled around the center of his multitudinous fatherland, what he responded to most were certain specific and unmistakable manifestations that recurred, […] on every railway station, every kiosk, every public building, every school and church in all the Crownlands of the Empire. All over, the policemen wore the same feathered hats […]; all over, the wooden doors of the K. and K. stores were painted in black and yellow diagonals; in every garrison town, there were the same blue uniform tunics and black saloon pants of infantry officers strolling on the Corso, […]; all over this

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The above passage is a fictional representation of the construction of national identity on which I elaborate in the fourth chapter. It offers the specifically Habsburg procedure of “‘cultural representations’ through which an imagined community is interpreted” (Wodak 22), a process which Stuart Hall defines as the essence of the nation. The third-person narrator describes the Habsburg construction of national identity, known as Einheit in der Vielfalt (Unity in Diversity), as seen through the eyes of an individual who internalizes it entirely and considers it to be the only natural and authentic reality for himself and his region. The cultural representations of the Habsburg nation encompass architecture, uniforms, and symbolic images as well as role models for physical appearance in certain professions. The Habsburg model of unity in diversity also presupposed the retention of a certain degree of otherness which Count Morstin accommodates as willingly as every other element of

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Habsburg identity (“In this way what was foreign came to be homey to him, without losing its timbre, and home had the reliable charm of the exotic”). We have seen that such carefully planned construction of the Bosnian as well as of the Bosnian/Habsburg identities failed because the balance between the different identities did not work in practice as had been planned in theory. In Hofmannsthal’s Arabella we observed the difficult process of negotiation between different identities, which could have ended in disaster. Roth’s Count Morstin, by contrast, is not aware of any of these threats because he accepts Habsburg identity as natural, not as constructed. Thus, the story of Count Morstin answers both the question of what “the nationconstructs do on an everyday level to the individual citizen” (Arens, “Central Europe and the Nationalist Paradigm” 8) as well as the question of what happens to the individual after the deconstruction of the national identity which he internalizes as his personal identity. As CDA tells us, “the concept of identity […] never signifies anything static, unchanging, or substantial, but rather always an element situated in the flow of time, ever changing, something involved in process” (Wodak 11). This applies to both personal and social identities. Ricœur distinguishes between identity as sameness (in Latin idem, in German Selbigkeit) and identity as selfhood (in Latin ipse, in German Selbstheit). He defines sameness as “a concept of relation and as a relation of relations” (Wodak 11– 12). The first relation of sameness is numerical identity, i.e., when a relation of identity among an indefinite number of things is established and the same identity is recognized in each of these things. Thus, numerical identity is associated with the category of quantity, whereas the second relation of sameness, extreme resemblance, is a relation of quality. In order to overcome the differences between the first and last stages of development in the identity of sameness, the category of uninterrupted continuity is introduced, which incorporates changes in identity as continuity of transformation (11– 12). Identity as sameness can be applied both to individuals and to communities of different kinds, including the nation. The passage from The Emperor’s Monument quoted above displays all categories of identity as sameness applied to the Habsburg nation. The repetition of identical things (“certain specific manifestations”) in all corners of the monarchy, such as the officers’ uniforms, the melody of the tattoo, the black-yellow stripes on the wooden doors of the tobacco factories, the coffeehouses, etc., creates the numerical national identity of the Habsburg Monarchy. The similar-looking, blond, bosomy barmaids and the ancient waiters looking like Francis Joseph’s servants fulfill the criterion of extreme resemblance. The continuity of transformation is in the case of the Habsburg Monarchy a spatial as well as temporal category. Unity in diversity, which demonstrates the capacity of

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the Monarchy to incorporate different identities without assimilating them, is the nineteenth-century Habsburg version of the category of continuity in transformation, which began much earlier. The principle of uninterrupted continuity is, according to Marie Tanner, at the core of the “creation and evolution of the imperial image in the West” (1). In her study, Tanner argues that this image “underwent a seamless development from its origins in antiquity to its consolidation by the Hapsburgs in the sixteenth century” (1).3 The Roman roots of the Western imperial tradition were synthesized with Gentile and Jewish divine history, creating theocratic imagery in the Christian era (2) as well as continuous cultural identity that was defined as directly opposed to that of Islam.4 The Habsburg veneration of the cross and the cult of the Eucharist, which were part of the theocratic image of the Western emperor beginning in the Middle Ages, underwent further development and became core symbols of the House of Austria by the middle of the seventeenth century (Tanner 221): Begun as a dynastic convention, the House of Austria’s link to the Holy Blood so deeply penetrated public consciousness that it gradually grew from a familial to a national prerogative. As late as the eve of World War I, these concepts were kept alive by the repetition of the old miracles. (222)

The Corpus Christi Procession depicted in The Radetzky March was the most typical public display of such repetitions, which not only confirmed, but also attempted to vary the cultural identity of Habsburg subjects in accordance with the principle of continuity in transformation. However, this scene also shows the challenges to Habsburg identity construction that occurred in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The old symbols and myths that preserved continuity through variation are modified by the incorporation of the Ottoman territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina: The blood-red fezzes on the heads of the azure Bosnians burned in the sun like tiny bonfires lit by Islam in honor of His Apostolic Majesty. In black lacquered carriages sat the gold-decked Knights of the Golden Fleece and the black-clad-red-cheeked municipal councilors. (Roth, The Radetzky March 195) Die blutroten Feze auf den Köpfen der hellblauen Bosniaken brannten in der Sonne wie kleine Freudenfeuerchen, angezündet vom Islam zu Ehren seiner Apostolischen Majestät. In den schwarzen, lackierten Karossen saßen die goldgezierten Ritter des Vlieses und die schwarzen, rotbäckigen Gemeinderäte. (Roth, Radetzkymarsch 234)

While incorporating Islam and putting it on a par with the other state religions of the Habsburg Monarchy was an enormously progressive and constructive political decision on the part of Francis Joseph’s administration, having the Moslems pray to the Apostolic Majesty and participate in the

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Catholic Corpus Christi Procession demonstrates the discrepancy between the political will and the inadequacy of the symbols in the Monarchy. Yet neither Carl Joseph in The Radetzky March nor Count Morstin in The Emperor’s Monument is aware of the contradiction in the symbolic imagery, which tends to unite diverging identities. This speaks for their full identification with the constructed Habsburg identity. The concept of identity as sameness operates in a dialectical relationship to that of identity as selfhood. Ricœr holds that the latter is far more difficult to grasp than the former. In Wodak’s interpretation selfhood is “very closely associated with what is frequently referred to as ‘ego identity’ in other identity theories […]” (13). According to Goffman, ego identity is one’s own subjective feeling about one’s own continuity and uniqueness, whereas in Mead’s view ego-identity mediates between the various “me”-forms, all of which mean the idea or picture that others have of me, or the internalization of the expectations of others. Dreitzel considers ego identity as the authority which enables people to direct their own behavior, and it includes their ability to shape social roles and distance themselves from their own internalizations (Wodak 13). The concept of selfhood in CDA includes Freud’s concept of both the ego and the super-ego. Freud’s concept of ego occupies the middle part of his tripartite division of the human mind into id, ego, and super-ego. The ego fulfills mainly the function of a repressive force directed against the desires of the id, which are socially unacceptable: Moreover, the ego seeks to bring the influence of the external world to bear upon the id and its tendencies, and endeavors to substitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle which reigns unrestrictedly in the id. For the ego, perception plays the part which in the id falls to instinct (Freud, The Ego and the Id 37).

The different “me”-forms, or different social roles, which are mentioned as part of selfhood identity, are realized through an awareness of social norms and restrictions that in Freud’s theory is part of the ego. A part of selfhood identity consists of internalization of the expectations of others, which in Freud’s theory is ascribed to the super-ego. The superego is based on the individual’s earliest identification with figures of authority, hence with the parents, especially the father. The super-ego evolves as a result of the conflict between the child’s libidinal desires and the father’s prohibition of their realization. Once the prohibition is established within the child’s psyche, i.e., is internalized, it becomes the child’s superego, or ego ideal (Freud, The Ego and the Id 49). Selfhood identity is, then, a balance between the ego and the ego ideal, a negotiation between social roles and internalizations of the expectations of others, on the one hand, and the ability of individuals to distance themselves

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from their own internalizations, on the other. We shall see that Count Morstin fails to do the latter, which constitutes his uniqueness as a character. Ricœur introduces the category of “narrative identity” as an intermediary between sameness and selfhood identities: By means of narrative operation, a dynamic concept of identity is formed which includes the concept of transformation. […] Narrative identity allows various, different, partly contradictory circumstances to be integrated into a coherent temporal structure, thus making it possible to sketch a person’s identity against the background of a dynamic constancy model […]. Thus the concept of narrative identity […] can take into account the idea that the self can never be grasped without the other, without change. (Wodak 14)

In Martin’s interpretation of Ricœur’s concept of narrative identity the individual draws his or her identity from that of the story’s plot. Narrative identity also leaves room for variations in the past, since the plot can always be “revisited,” as well as for initiatives in the future. Wodak points to the internalization process as an integral part of narrated identity: The narrated self, however, is also an ‘other’ to the extent that at least a part of an individual narrative arises from the internalized attitudes, values, and […] patterns of actions taken from important role models […]. The authority of the ‘conscience,’ or in psychoanalysis the super-ego, is constituted by means of the internalization process. (Wodak 14–15)

Count Morstin has shaped his ego identity on the basis of two internalizations that play the role of super-ego authority in his consciousness: that of Habsburg national identity and that of the figure of Francis Joseph as its most comprehensible symbol. His different “me”-forms are the typical Habsburg professions and patterns of action. He is a nobleman and an officer, a status and a profession that were key symbols in the Habsburg narrative of self-justification. Moreover, he uses his privileges as a nobleman to help people from Lopatyny by pulling strings within the bureaucratic apparatus of the monarchy—a pattern of action typical of the nepotistic mentality of the Habsburg state apparatus. The narrator explains: How happy he was to do all this! […] Moreover, his decided willingness to be of assistance was really Count Morstin’s only avocation and distraction. To the rather tedious life of an aristocrat who, unlike his neighbors and fellow noblemen, had no interest even in hunting, it gave some content, and a constant and agreeable reminder of his influence. If he had helped one person to a Trafik store, another to an official permit, a third to a job, and a fourth to a hearing, he felt his conscience so appeased, and his pride as well. Equally, if his intersection on behalf of one of his protégés happened to fail, his conscience picked him, and his pride was injured. (Roth, Collected Stories 230)

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Wie gerne erledigte er dies alles! […] Im übrigen war die heftige Hilfsbereitschaft des Grafen Morstin seine einzige Tätigkeit und seine Zerstreuung. Sie gab seinem ziemlich müßigen Leben eines Grandseigneurs, den, zum Unterschied von seinen Nachbarn und Standesgenossen, nicht mal die Jagd interessierte, ein Ziel und einen Inhalt und eine ständig wohltuende Bestätigung seiner Macht. Hatte er diesem eine Tabakfabrik, jenem eine Lizenz, dem dritten einen Posten, dem vierten eine Audienz verschafft, so fühlte er sein Gewissen, aber auch seinen Stolz befriedigt. Mißlang ihm aber eine Vermittlung für den und jenen seiner Schutzbefohlenen, so war sein Gewissen unruhig und sein Stolz verletzt. (Roth, Die Büste 7–8)

In his mediation between the people and the state Morstin takes both success and failure personally, for his ego identity consists entirely of the internalized expectations which he thinks the village people have of him as the most representative symbol of the Habsburg state in the village. He does not possess the ability to shape any other social roles, for example, typically aristocratic leisure activities like hunting, except those related to the state and the emperor. He is also unable to distance himself from his own internalizations. The narrator then reveals the other part of the super-ego in Morstin’s consciousness: As much as he felt himself obliged to help the weak, so he felt respect, reverence, and obedience toward people of higher rank than himself. The person of His Royal and Imperial Majesty, whom he had served, remained for him unlike any other. It would have been quite impossible for the Count to view the Emperor as a simple mortal. The belief in the traditional hierarchy was so powerfully rooted in the soul of Franz Xaver that he loved his Emperor, not for his human qualities but because of his Imperial traits. (231) Und ebenso wie er den Schwächeren zu helfen sich verpflichtet fühlte, ebenso empfand er Hochachtung, Respekt und Gehorsam gegenüber denjenigen, die höhergestellt waren als er. Die Person Seiner kaiser- und königlichen Majestät, der er gedient hatte, war für ihn immer eine außerhalb alles Gewöhnlichen bleibende Erscheinung. Es wäre dem Grafen zum Beispiel unmöglich gewesen, den Kaiser als einen Menschen schlechthin zu sehen. Der Glaube an die überlieferte Hierarchie war so seßhaft und stark in der Seele Franz Xavers, daß er den Kaiser nicht etwa wegen seiner menschlichen, sondern wegen seiner kaiserlichen Eigenschaften liebte. (9)

The emperor is the ultimate super-ego authority from which all of Count Morstin’s actions should be observed and judged. &i$ek differentiates between imaginary and symbolic, or “constituted” and “constitutive,” identification, or ideal ego (Idealich) and ego-ideal (Ich-Ideal): […] imaginary identification is identification with the image in which we appear likable to ourselves, with the image representing ‘what we would like to be,’ and symbolic identification, identification with the very place from where we are being

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observed, from where we look at ourselves so that we appear to ourselves likable, worthy of love. (105)

The two types of self-observation and identification are ultimately inseparable, because “imaginary identification is always identification on behalf of a certain gaze in the Other” (106), and “it is the symbolic identification (the point from which we are observed) which dominates and determines the image, the imaginary form in which we appear to ourselves likable” (108). However, the difference between them remains as a difference in imitation: […] in imaginary identification we imitate the other at the level of resemblance— we identify ourselves with the image of the other insomuch as we are ‘like him,’ while in symbolic identification we identify ourselves with the other precisely at a point at which he is inimitable, at the point which eludes resemblance. (109)

Everything Count Morstin does is measured by the symbolic gaze of the emperor, who incorporates a whole complex of values, as the ego-ideal always does. When Morstin helps the people, when he prepares the village for the visit of the emperor, and even when he loathes the appearance of nations and nationalism, the gaze of the emperor is always the point of view from which Morstin, both consciously and unconsciously, passes judgments and then acts accordingly. The point at which the emperor is inimitable and eludes resemblance to Morstin is his symbolic position at the top of the state hierarchy as an emperor, not as a person. As we saw in the above citation: “The belief in the traditional hierarchy was so powerfully rooted in the soul of Franz Xaver that he loved his Emperor, not for his human qualities but because of his Imperial traits” (Roth, Collected Stories 231). The symbolic order of the imperial hierarchy always remains the natural order for Morstin, and his duty to preserve that hierarchy is sacrosanct. He does not imitate the emperor, but fulfills the symbolic identification “by assuming a certain ‘mandate,’ by occupying a certain place in the intersubjective symbolic network” (&i$ek 110), i.e., by protecting the hierarchy. With all this in mind, Morstin’s impulsive reaction to the travesty involving the Crown of St. Stephen in the American Bar in Zurich, as atypical as it is for the well-mannered and civilized gentleman, is only seemingly unexpected. Such mockery of the symbol of the Habsburg Empire violates the symbolic order on which Morstin’s identity is based: It was as though he, who had unquestioningly assumed that everyone quite naturally had decency, in that instant learned the great error of his life, the error of any noble heart: namely, the granting of limitless credit. And his sudden insight filled him with that fastidious embarrassment that is a true sister of fastidious rage. […] An

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unbelievable thing happened: For the first time in his life, he made a complete fool of himself. He armed himself with his half-empty champagne bottle and a blue soda siphon, and walked up to the strangers. Then, with his left hand he doused down the company, […] and with his right he brought down the bottle against the dancer’s head. The banker fell to the floor. (Roth, Collected Stories 239) Es war, als erführe er, der alle Menschen, ohne sie zu prüfen, von vornherein die selbstverständliche Eigenschaft, Anstand zu besitzen, zugetraut hatte, in dieser Sekunde erst den Irrtum seines Lebens, den Irrtum jedes noblen Herzens: nämlich den, Kredit zu gewähren, schrankenlosen Kredit. Und seine plötzliche Erkenntnis erfüllte ihn mit jener vornehmen Scham, die eine treue Schwester des vornehmen Zornes ist. […] Es geschah das Unglaubliche: er wurde zum erstenmal in seinem Leben lächerlich und kindisch. Er bewaffnete sich mit der halbgeleerten Sektflasche und mit einem blauen Siphon, trat nahe an die Fremden heran, während er mit der Linken das Sodawasser gegen die Tischgesellschaft verspritzte, […] hieb er mit der Rechten die Flasche gegen den Kopf des Tänzers. Der Bankier fiel zu Boden. (Roth, Die Büste 20–22)

The narrator’s description of Morstin as a noble character is unironic— Morstin’s belief in the symbolic value of the crown and the symbolic order of the Empire is not ridiculed. But the character displays features which can nonetheless be interpreted as comical. Morstin’s inability to distance himself from his own internalizations, which makes him look “‘a bit peculiar,’” as if there were “‘something unworldly about him’” (Roth, Collected Stories 232) in the eyes of his peers even before the dissolution of the Monarchy, gets him into the embarrassing situation in the American Bar. He is ridiculous and childish because his behavior is a paradigm of comical discrepancy between the intent and result—his chivalrous attempt to protect the most venerated symbol of his internalized symbolic order is out of place because the symbolic order has ceased to exist in reality.5 Morstin’s reaction to the mockery of what has become his private symbolic order is to retreat into privacy and into the past, when the symbolic order on which his identity is based existed in reality. In other words, he ignores actual reality—he comes back to Lopatyny and lives his life as if World War I had not happened. He takes out his old Habsburg uniform and begins to wear it in public, places the emperor’s monument in front of his house and salutes it, as if it were alive. He does all this consciously: I was always an oddity—he proceeded to think—both in my village, and beyond. I will remain an oddity. (240) Ich war immer ein Sonderling—so dachte er weiter—in meinem Dorfe und in der Umgebung. Ich werde ein Sonderling bleiben. (22)

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But despite Morstin’s reputation as an oddity, or precisely because of it, he begins to fulfill the same symbolic function for the people of Lopatyny that the emperor fulfilled for him. Symbolic identification, as the assumption of a certain mandate and occupation of a certain place in the intersubjective symbolic network (&i$ek 110), happens to Morstin when the village people, inspired by the odd behavior for which he is known, begin to develop their own version of belief in the past symbolic order: But the people of Lopatyny and its environs still believed in him, as they believed in Emperor Franz Joseph, whose bust they habitually greeted. To the peasants and the Jews of Lopatyny and its environs, Count Morstin seemed not at all ridiculous, but venerable. They venerated his lean, bony frame, his grey hair, […] his eyes, that seemed to be fixed on a limitless distance, and no wonder: they were looking at a lost past. (244) Aber das Volk von Lopatyny und Umgebung glaubte an ihn, immer noch, wie es an den Kaiser Franz Joseph glaubte, dessen Büste er zu grüßen pflegte. Den Bauern und den Juden von Lopatyny und Umgebung erschien der Graf Morstin keineswegs lächerlich, sondern ehrfurchtsvoll. Man verehrte seine hagere, dürre Gestalt, sein graues Haar, […] seine Augen, die in eine Weite ohne Grenzen zu blicken schienen; kein Wunder: sie blickten nämlich in die verlorene Vergangenheit. (28)

The past as Golden Age, as a backward-looking utopia (Renner 130), also evokes associations with childhood as an ontogenetic Golden Age, thus exerting a comforting psychological effect on one’s experience of reality. After the destruction of World War I and the substantial political changes that took place in Central Europe, it was logical that reality would be perceived as a dystopia, when compared to the centuries-old Habsburg order. Working hard to re-invoke that order, Morstin symbolizes it and the past utopia for the villagers. After the Duke of Lemberg gives instructions to the local authorities to have the emperor’s monument removed from the front of the house, Morstin realizes that the moment has come in which the past has to make way for the present: Oh, there was no point any more in shutting one’s eyes to this new world of newminted republics, new bankers and crown wearers, new ladies and gentlemen, new rulers of the world. It was time to bury the old world. But it had to be buried with dignity. (245) Ach! Es hatte keinen Sinn mehr, die Augen vor der neuen Welt der neuen Republiken, der neuen Bankiers und Kronenträger, der neuen Damen und Herren, der neuen Herrscher der Welt zu schließen. Man mußte die alte Welt begraben. Aber man mußte sie würdig begraben. (30)

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To bury the old world means to bury the symbols of the old order, but also to “revisit” the plot of one’s narrative identity and to re-narrate the past. That narrative identity will place the past in a continuum of dynamics and transformation which will take both the present and the future into account. Morstin explains his decision to the people of Lopatyny: So Count Franz Xaver Morstin summoned the ten eldest inhabitants of Lopatyny to his house […]. And when they were all assembled, Count Morstin addressed them as follows: “My dear fellow citizens, You have all known the old monarchy, your old fatherland. It has been dead for years—and there is no sense in not admitting it. Perhaps one day it will be resurrected, but we old folks will not see that day. And now we have been ordered to remove the bust of the Emperor Franz Joseph the First, God rest his soul, forthwith. My friends, let us do more than simply remove it! If the old times are dead, let us do with them what is done with the dead: let us bury them.” (245) Und der Graf Franz Xaver Morstin berief zehn der ältesten Einwohner des Dorfes Lopatyny in sein Haus […]. Und als sie alle versammelt waren, begann der Graf Morstin folgende Rede: “Meine lieben Mitbürger, Ihr alle habt noch die alte Monarchie gekannt, Euer altes Vaterland. Seit Jahren ist es tot—und ich habe eingesehen—es hat keinen Sinn, nicht einzusehen, daß es tot sei. Vielleicht wird es einmal auferstehen, wir Alten werden es kaum noch erleben. Man hat uns aufgetragen, die Büste Seiner hochseligen Majestät, des Kaisers Franz des Ersten, ehestens wegzuschaffen. Wir wollen sie nicht wegschaffen, meine Freunde! Wenn die alte Zeit tot sein soll, so wollen wir mit ihr verfahren, wie man eben mit Toten verfährt: wir wollen sie begraben.” (30)

The burial of the emperor’s monument is the performative, fictional counterpart of the literary, narrative revisiting of the Habsburg myth that Roth undertakes in this novella. The act and the narration merge into one another in order to evoke the past through the depiction of the burial and, simultaneously, to overcome the regressive urge to remain in the past and ignore the present. This cathartic moment is captured in the following lines: The grave had been dug. The coffin was lowered into it, the flag spread over it—and Franz Xaver Morstin stood, sword aloft, and saluted his Emperor for the last time. Thereupon, a sobbing was heard in the crowd, as if this were indeed the burial of Emperor Franz Joseph, of the old monarchy, and the old country. (246) Das Grab war bereit. Man ließ den Sarg hinab, breitete die Fahne über ihn—und Franz Xaver Morstin grüßte zum letzten Mal mit dem Säbel den Kaiser. Da erhob sich ein Schluchzen in der Menge, als hätte man jetzt erst den Kaiser Franz Joseph begraben, die alte Monarchie und die alte Heimat. (32)

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The burial of a monument of a long dead emperor indeed seems absurd. Yet in the novella this act is not meant to ridicule Count Morstin’s childishly naïve behavior, as Renner claims (143–44). Rather, the burial has both a liberating and a future-oriented function for the readers, the characters, and the author. Through the performative act, readers are drawn into the ambivalent act of reliving, or indeed reenacting the past, with the goal of embedding it in the narrative of the present and the future. Therefore, the cathartic reaction of sobbing is not intended to demonstrate Morstin’s and Roth’s inability to change (“Wandlungsunfähigkeit,” Renner 144) or the narrator’s satisfaction over the father’s failure (Renner 144), but it is rather analogous to the postmodern procedure of retaining, rather than repressing, the past next to the present in the same way psychoanalysis deals with posttraumatic stress disorders by working through the past (Lyotard 1613). The ceremonial farewell to the past acknowledges its validity for the future, which becomes apparent if we read the novella in light of the revival of the idea of Central Europe in the 1980s and the idea and, meanwhile, jeopardized reality of the European Union. The character of Count Morstin plays an important role in the treatment of the past. He is a two-dimensional character who embodies ambivalence in the memory not only of the Habsburg myth, but also of any national myth. On the one hand, he illustrates the danger of the confusing ego identity and symbolic order through his comically absurd behavior and struggle to maintain his personal identity even after that symbolic order has disappeared. On the other hand, he displays tragic features in his attempts to honor a world in which he believed and which he saw destroyed before his very eyes. It is not illogical at all that after World War I a nobleman of mixed origin like Morstin would have preferred the old Habsburg supranational identity to any national identity. Moreover, his obdurate insistence on the Habsburg legacy after the Monarchy has ceased to exist illustrates how in times of historical turmoil the shift from one national identity to another can be a painful emotional process which may jeopardize individuals’ ego identity. Morstin’s character does exhibit rigidness, and thus Renner’s description of him as “wandlungsunfähig” is to a certain extent justified. His wish to be buried in the same grave as the emperor’s monument (Roth, Die Büste 33) certainly confirms Renner’s view. However, a full equation of Roth and Count Morstin is misleading. By depicting Morstin as incapable of distancing himself from his internalizations, Roth automatically distances himself from his own internalizations and idealization of the Habsburg myth; as an author, in other words, he does overcome the conflict between his past and present ego identities. Furthermore, writing the novella for Roth the author fulfills the same function as does the burial of the monument for Morstin: it enables Roth to “revisit” the plot of his narrative identity and to

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re-narrate the past. Thus, the third-person narrator depicts Morstin as strange and funny only after Roth the author first imagined and composed the character in this way. The distance between narrator and character must thus also be considered a distance between author and character. Roth’s treatment of the memory of the Habsburg myth and the symbolic weight of the Habsburg emperor in this novella can be considered exemplary. Symbols continue to be a necessary part of the construction of national and cultural identities. The memory of past symbols, however, is not exclusively the problem of individuals like Morstin. When historical and political events cause the deconstruction of a national identity, the treatment of past symbols becomes important for the future national identity. The complete dismissal of a father figure from the past does not necessarily bring liberation and maturing of individuals and the nation. Very often, the old father figure is dismissed so that a new leader can replace him, as was the case with Hitler in post-Habsburg Austria and with some leaders of the nations of the former Yugoslavia after the death of Marshal Tito. The Emperor’s Monument can thus be read both as a critique (maybe even selfcritique on the part of the author) of hyper-identification with symbols and myths as well as a warning to preserve the past in order to build the future. The film Tito and Me by Serbian director Goran Markovi! addresses questions of identification with a statesman similar to those raised by Roth’s The Emperor’s Monument, but the film offers a very different model for revisiting the past and constructing the memory of a deceased leader. Tito and M e: A Late Example of Poetic Resistance to Idolatry The film Tito and Me (Tito i ja [1992]) is a comedy that directs a strong satirical thrust against the regime of the former Yugoslavia and its cult of the leader. The plot of the film unfolds in the former Yugoslavia in 1954. A tenyear-old boy from Belgrade develops a strong affection for the president, Josip Broz Tito, and wins first prize in a Belgrade school contest for the best composition dedicated to Tito. The prize is a field trip to the birthplace of the president. The trip becomes an educational journey for the boy, revealing him growing more and more disillusioned with a regime that nourishes the cult of the leader, and ends with the boy’s public disavowal of his composition, in which he had written that he loved Tito more than his own parents. The director uses a narrative technique that allows the ten-year-old protagonist Zoran to tell the story from his perspective. The child’s naïve narrative tone motivates the viewer to complete the story with his/her knowledge of the sociopolitical situation in the former Yugoslavia in the 1950s. The viewer also gets hints from the adults in the film, who either comment on or act out their reactions to the child’s fascination with Tito.

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The opening credits of the film show authentic footage of Tito’s public appearances in the 1950s, with masses of people greeting him and shaking his hand. These reappear throughout the film as visual, but silent comments on the plot. The film begins with Zoran describing his home and family members. Two families and a grandmother share one apartment, and each family has only one room, or as the child puts it, he lives in one big room, which belongs only to him and his parents. To him, that is a natural situation, because he has never lived any other way. The luxurious look of the apartment and the manners of the adult family members hint, however, that the family has seen better days,6 although this is never stated explicitly. The first scene in which the adults show their contempt for Tito and the regime is when Zoran asks his mother, a ballet-dancer who participates regularly in performances for Tito’s private entertainment, to describe the leader. Her description reveals a regime of control and a communist leader who lives like a king, surrounded by a circle of confidants of the regime: Zoran: Momma, tell me what comrade Tito is like. Mirjana: Well, I don’t really know that myself. First, before you start dancing, they literally strip-search you. Second, while you are performing, there are at least ten of them observing you with their finger on the trigger. Uncle: And in their nose. Mirjana: And after the performance you can’t approach him anymore because he is literally surrounded by those who want to kiss his butt.7 Zoran: Mama, pri%aj mi kakav je drug Tito. Mirjana: Pa, ustvari ni sama ne znam. Prvo, pre nego !to po%ne! da igra! pretresaju te do gole ko$e. […] Drugo, dok nastupa! posmatra te bar desetak njih sa prstom na obara%u. Te%a: I u nosu. Mirjana: E, a posle igre ne mo$e! vi!e da mu pri"e!, jer je bukvalno opsednut onima !to mu se uvla%e u dupe.

This is the only explicit comment on Tito made in Zoran’s presence, because all the adults are extremely cautious in openly criticizing the leader in front of the children. But the comment does not have any impact on the boy’s growing fascination with the leader. Through Zoran’s eyes viewers follow the regime’s strategies of shaping Tito’s public image. Footage of his public speeches is presented in the cinema, his photograph is present in every newspaper, and his framed picture, like Francis Joseph’s in the Habsburg Monarchy, hangs on the walls of every public institution. The story of Tito’s childhood is printed in textbooks and told again and again by schoolteachers. In addition to the inner reality of the film, documentary footage showing how the regime consolidated the state’s identity through Tito’s public image is inserted in the plot. The documentaries show Tito both in Yugoslavia and

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abroad, in the countries of the Non-Alignment movement, which was established as an alternative to the NATO Alliance and the Soviet Bloc and in which Tito played an important role. Everywhere, he is received by cheering crowds, and very often he mingles with the locals, thus strengthening the image of a leader who is close to the people. Also, he is very stylish, dressed either in a fancy uniform or in an elegant suit, an image atypical for the communist leaders of the Soviet Bloc. An important piece of documentary footage in the film shows young people running and carrying “Tito’s Torch of Youth,” a ritual which, in Erdei’s words, “embodied key images of the time—youth in action, the ideology of brotherhood and unity, the cult of the leader, enthusiasm and undivided support from the people” (Lampe and Mazower 154). Zoran’s admiration for the leader leads to an identification typical for his age, which is a step short of the symbolic identification of Count Morstin. Zoran first imitates Tito’s appearance, especially the gestures he has observed in the cinema, and then, like teenagers who adore pop and film stars, begins to cut out his pictures from the newspapers. When he falls in love with a girl from his school and observes her in the schoolyard, he imagines Tito descending from the picture on the wall, approaching the window, and showing his approval of her with a gesture. Zoran obviously ignores the authority of his family, looking up to an idol and seeking approval from him instead. Thus, he replaces the symbolic order of his family with the authority of the leader. However, he has no awareness of the symbolic order represented by Tito—he has not internalized the ideals of communism (which his family loathes, but does not discuss in front of him) and he does not desire to possess power like Tito—an identification recognizable in many leaders of the republics of the former Yugoslavia in the post-communist period. When Zoran comes to understand the symbolic order behind the leader on the field trip, he experiences complete alienation from the leader. Zoran’s imaginary and symbolic identification with the leader (his wish to look and behave like him) is similar to the teenage identification with celebrities and is based on his wish to be loved not only by his family, but by everyone, as he believes to be the case with Tito (in his composition he writes that Tito is loved by the whole world). This identification is typical for Zoran’s age and the insecurities in self-perception every child feels on the way to becoming an adult. He is short and chubby and falls in love with a very tall and thin girl who is a child of partisans killed in the war and is brought up in a special orphanage for such children, strictly in the spirit of the revolution and the regime’s ideology. The regime fosters this type of identification with the leader among children. The school assignment for which Zoran wins first prize is titled:

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“Do You Love Comrade Tito, and Why?” This comically absurd title only seemingly offers a choice between a positive and a negative answer. In actuality, the word “why” demands a positive answer, thus indirectly molding children’s psychology into adoration and obedience. A very important detail is the teacher’s mention of the members of the committee that evaluates the compositions: The decision about the winner will be made by a special committee consisting of our renowned writers for children, like Mira Ale%kovi#, Dobrica (osi# … indeed, indeed, and many, many others. Odluku o pobedniku done#e poseban $iri sastavljen od na!ih najpoznatijih pisaca za decu, kao !to su Mira Ale%kovi#, Dobrica (osi# … jeste, jeste, kao i mnogi, mnogi drugi.

Mira Ale#kovi! (1924–2008) was a Serbian writer and the author of a poem entitled “Dru$e Tito, mi ti se kunemo” (“Comrade Tito We Swear to You”) which became the most popular song dedicated to Tito in the former Yugoslavia. Dobrica "osi! (born 1921) is a Serbian writer and theorist who was a close associate of Tito in the first two decades of the former Yugoslavia, but who later disagreed on Tito’s policy on nationalities, which granted autonomy to the Serbian regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina.8 The mention of "osi!’s name implies that he participated in the regime’s creation and perpetuation of the leader’s cult and that he did not put up any resistance to it whatsoever. His later dismissal of Tito and his policy is thus unconvincing because it disguises his responsibility in sustaining the regime. This poetic revenge against the lies and pretenses of the regime and its leader raises two important issues. The first is general and applies to all authoritarian regimes and structures as well as to the responsibility and capacity for resistance of the individual, and especially the intellectual. If obedience to authoritarian regimes is a matter of survival, then participation in the ideology of the cult of the leader is at least to a certain extent a matter of personal choice. The second issue follows logically from the first, but applies specifically to Yugoslavia. "osi! initially participated in building up the cult of communist leader Tito, and then distanced himself from the leader in the name of an unfulfilled desire for the realization of Serbian national goals. Through his nationalist program he later contributed to the rise of another communist leader, Slobodan Milo%evi!, subsequently distancing himself from this leader as well. Such actions reveal an obvious pattern of alternating idolatry of, and alienation from the idol. This pattern can also be recognized in the nations of the former Yugoslavia, which filled the void left by Tito’s death with new leaders, who, for their part, completely abandoned Tito’s

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legacy, intending to take his place as undisputed leader in the symbolic order.9 Zoran is motivated to write a good composition, which, by his own admission, is not his habit, both by his adoration of Tito and by the fact that the first prize is a field trip to Kumrovec, the birthplace of the leader, in which the girl with whom he is in love also plans to participate. Zoran’s composition is actually a poem, and its content deserves attention because it shows in a nutshell the interplay between the construction of the leader’s public image and the child’s perception of it: You ask me if I love Tito, You must know, one never asks that All the people in the world love him equally Chinese, Spanish, Indians, Japanese, Blacks Every child on this planet The marching soldier thinks of him The young shepherd playing the flute The grass thinks of him while growing And the little cows grazing on it He is everywhere in good reputation Even the first swallows sing of him And when I face difficult times When the sun goes down on me When I go to bed sad in the late hours I close my eyes and think of Tito I would say then, should someone ask me, I love Tito more than mom and dad. Pitate me dali volim Tita, Znajte, tako ne!to se ne pita Njega vole svi ljudi na svetu podjednako Kinezi, &panci, Indijanci, Japanci, Crnci Svako dete na ovoj planeti Na njega misli vojnik dok mar!ira Mali pastir dok u frulu svira Njega trava ima u vidu kad raste I kravice kad po njoj pasu Svuda je on na dobrome glasu O njemu pevaju %ak i prve laste A kad meni do"u te!ki %asi Kada sunce po%ne da se gasi Tu$an legnem ja u kasne sate Sklopim o%i i mislim na Tita Rekao bih tada, da me neko pita Njega volim vi!e od mame i tate.

The poem sounds like it was written by a child, and because of that it is a convenient means to ridicule the style of the myriad poems written in Tito’s

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honor. Adoration verging on the absurd is not invented here by Zoran. In the poetry of the former Yugoslavia Tito was indeed attributed with supernatural powers and was presented as a divinity, loved and venerated by the entire world. The verses proclaiming that even the grass and cows think of Tito are certainly an ironic exaggeration, but they evoke associations with the heroicpathetic-trivial style of the poetry actually written to honor the leader. Zoran’s disillusion with the leader begins on the field trip to Kumrovec. The director of the film remains within the genre of satirical comedy in his presentation of the absurdities and ruthlessness of the authoritarian regime, which on the field trip become apparent through perception of Zoran as a child. Such satire, with its subversive and antiauthoritarian structure, is the most appropriate genre for a critique of an authoritarian regime and the cult of the leader. Markovi!’s skill is showing all the weaknesses of the regime without tragic undertones. The field trip is explicitly planned by the authorities to be an educational journey, or even an ideological pilgrimage, for the participants, during which they are to internalize the values of the revolution and return home as reformed, ideologically conscious members of socialist society.10 The “class conscious” teacher leading the group of children is a comical character par-excellence. His stupidity is the stuff of caricature, and his clumsy attempts to assert his authority fail due to the discrepancy between his limited intellectual capacity and his wish to impress. He, too, imitates Tito with his gesture of a raised arm to show the pioneers the right way to march, as the leader would do. When he eavesdrops and follows the pioneers to see what they are doing, he reflects in a comical way the omnipresent secret service and the regime’s control of the citizens, thus becoming the author’s satirical tool. Zoran feels miserable throughout the journey because he is not used to the teacher’s rude behavior, the physically strenuous marching, and the hierarchy of the group, which privileges a boy who becomes the teacher’s spy. The group of children led by the uncouth teacher thus reflects on a micro-plane the structure of communist society. Zoran thus becomes disillusioned with regard to every single aspect of the leader and the ideology behind him. Shortly before arriving at the leader’s birth house, he goes to the local church to atone for ridiculing and neglecting God and writes a letter to his family in which he describes the journey. The teacher follows him, intercepts the letter, orders the boy to step in front of the class, and embarrasses him before the group by reading parts of the letter, which are intended only for Zoran’s family. The letter does not paint a negative picture of the teacher, but merely by depicting his behavior11 it reveals the infantile character of the would-be leader and thus embarrasses him, not Zoran. After this, the teacher concludes that Zoran’s behavior does

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not comply with that expected from one of Tito’s pioneers and orders him to take the train back to Belgrade without visiting Tito’s house, as punishment. The satirical style allows the film a certain degree of liberty in regard to depicting reality. Both Zoran’s fascination with Tito and the teacher’s stupidity are at times on the verge of incredibility, but they are still realistic. The film transcends the boundary between the real and the imaginary when Zoran refuses the teacher’s order to get on the train to Belgrade, and all the children, except for the girl in whom Zoran had been in love, stand behind him and confront the teacher. Zoran’s reaction is unimaginable in an authoritarian regime that punishes any attempt at resistance, verbal or political, as indicated by the cautiousness with which his parents talk about Tito before Zoran. If there were some justification for Zoran’s reaction because of his age, the teacher’s acceptance of the situation and eventual resignation would most certainly be impossible in reality. From this moment on the film uses poetic license, becoming an expression of the director’s wish to go back in time and change past reality through different behavior. When the group finally reaches Tito’s house, Zoran’s disillusion is complete. A silent scene follows, which shows his gaze wandering from a heap of dung on the road to the statue of Tito, symbolizing his moment of realization. When he is brought to a platform and told by the two secret service men to recite his poem, Zoran holds a speech instead: Dear Comrade Tito, I have to explain something to you here, before your house. There has been a big misunderstanding. Namely, I was given the honor of representing my school on this glorious march. But I didn’t deserve that honor. Much to the contrary, I did something which does not speak in favor of a Tito pioneer. In my school composition I wrote something which was not true. I lied that I love you more than I love my parents. Everybody who knows me knows that I love mom and dad more than anyone else in the world. I also love my grandmother more than you, all the family members in my house, my uncle, my aunt […]. I would especially like to emphasize that my friends are much dearer to me than you are. One more thing: I also love Johnny Weissmuller in the role of Tarzan and Gary Cooper in all his roles more than you. I actually love all people around me, people you don’t know, and you can’t imagine how good and interesting they are and how much they mean to me. Dragi dru$e Tito, Moram ovde, pred tvojom ku#om, da ti ne!to objasnim. Radi se o jednom velikom nesporazumu. Naime, meni je pripala ta velika %ast da svoju !kolu pretstavljam na ovom veli%anstvenom mar!u. Ali ja tu %ast nisam zaslu$io. Naprotiv, poslu$io sam se ne%im !to ne ide na %ast ni jednom Titovom pioniru. U svom !kolskom zadatku na zadatu temu, ja sam napisao jednu neistinu. Lagao sam da tebe volim vi!e nego svoje roditelje. Svako ko me poznaje, zna da ja mamu i tatu volim vi!e od bilo koga na svetu. Vi!e od tebe volim i svoju baku, svoje uku#ane, te%u, tetku […] Naro%ito bih hteo da naglasim da su mi od tebe dra$i moji drugovi, […]. I jo! ne!to: od tebe

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? vi!e volim i D$onija Vajsmilera u ulozi Tarzana, Gari Kupera u svim ulogama […]. U stvari ja volim sve ljude koji su oko mene, sve one koje ti ne zna!, i nema! pojma koliko su dobri i interesantni i koliko mi zna%e.

The disillusion with the leader is simultaneously a self-realization—Zoran realizes only now that he lied. He comes back to his “true” self as he speaks and becomes a “normal” child again, with “normal” feelings for his family and “normal” idols, like film stars. Thus the process of socialization steered by the regime, which reduces children to one personality and molds them according to ideological values, is implicitly presented as abnormal and delusional. After Zoran’s speech, the crowd of children begins to cheer and surrounds him, expressing their agreement and support. The micro-version of society finds its way out of the authoritarian structure through the courage of one member to speak the truth. This unrealistic, utopian, poetic way to freedom from oppression implicitly raises the question of the responsibility of the individual in totalitarian societies. The final blow of poetic revenge against the regime is struck when all the pioneers who participated in the march are personally invited by Tito to his residence to celebrate his birthday. Zoran does not wear the pioneer’s Tito cap and red scarf, a symbolic gesture showing that he has renounced the regime’s ideology. Before the meeting with Tito one of the pioneers tells Zoran that the teacher who took them on the field trip has committed suicide—an act which implies his realization of the absurdness of the regime. When Zoran finally gets to see the leader in the flesh, he observes him from a greater physical distance than the other children, which alludes to his inner distance from his one-time hero. He now sees the regime for what it is—a carefully controlled performance staged to sustain the cult of the leader. Zoran sees that Tito is not admirable or amiable in reality, but that he acts very convincingly to appear that way. Tito’s cheerfulness and love for children, which were an important part of his public image, are presented as a part of his role. This is skillfully demonstrated by the way Tito is shown posing for the photographers. When a picture is being taken, the actor impersonating Tito very quickly changes his facial expression from the calculation and drive to dominate that truly characterizes him to feigned smiling and generosity. The last scene in the film shows Zoran, who has left the room where Tito and the other pioneers are being photographed, in a room containing a stunning variety of cakes and cookies baked for the President’s birthday. He begins to taste the cakes with his finger, thus coming back to his true passion, food, and abandoning his admiration for the leader. This scene merges into documentary footage of Tito surrounded by fascinated pioneers

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congratulating him on his birthday, a scene we now observe from a different perspective. In this film Goran Markovi! not only deconstructs the cult of Tito, but also raises questions about the cult of the statesman, about the possibility of the individual to distance himself from the cult and his responsibility to resist authoritarian regimes or institution. Therefore, the film can also be interpreted as an act of resistance against totalitarian structures generally, despite its obvious references to one particular leader, one historical period, and one country. The film gains even greater significance when we consider the fact that new leaders have appeared on the soil of the country once ruled by Tito, a few of whom have also nourished the cult of personality and have sustained totalitarian structures, and that among their supporters there have very often been people who previously supported the communist regime and Tito. It offers yet another perspective on the debates about the dissolution of Yugoslavia as well as on frequently discussed questions of nationalism and the transition from a one-party system to democracy. The void left by Tito’s death was felt most strongly precisely during the chaotic days of transition, and the appearance of the new leaders with new symbols and a seemingly new rhetoric was an attempt to fill the void. The film does not, however, address the question of the large number of people who truly identified with Tito and cherished his memory, refusing to replace him with one of the new leaders.12 The publicist Ivan Ivanji, who was Tito’s close associate, is one of them. He, too, cannot fully grasp his incurable nostalgia for Yugoslavia and Tito: Isn’t it wonderful with how much love, how much emotion the Polish Jew Roth treats that ruined aristocrat Taittinger? No, my titoistic protocol officers were no Taittingers. They were country boys who became officers in the partisan war, the dazzling white cuffs could not hide their sturdy wrists, they learned foreign languages with endless diligence and spent long nights with dated books to learn how to hold their hat when the anthem is played, when to wear a tailcoat, and when a tuxedo. Their master, their idol, their emperor Tito knew all that perfectly well as a former royal and imperial sergeant and thanks to his natural talent, but they had to learn it and they tried very hard not to make any notably big mistakes. Why do I love them so much afterwards, even though I, a Banat Jew, don’t have much more in common with them, than Roth had with the Taittingers? Ist es nicht wunderbar, mit welcher Liebe, mit welcher Rührung der polnische Jude Roth diesen verkommenen Aristokraten Taittinger behandelt? Nein, meine titoistischen Protokollbeamten waren keine Taittingers. Es waren Bauernburschen, die im Partisanenkrieg Offiziere geworden waren, die blendend weißen Manschetten konnten ihre derben Handgelenke nicht verbergen, mit unendlichem Fleiß lernten sie Sprachen und verbrachten lange Nächte mit veralteten Büchern, um festzustellen, wie man einen Hut hält, wenn die Hymne gespielt wird, wann man einen Frack und wann einen Smoking trägt. Ihr Herr, ihr Idol, ihr Kaiser Tito wußte

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Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? das alles bestens als ehemaliger k.u.k. Feldwebel und dank seines natürlichen Talents, aber sie mußten es lernen, und sie bemühten sich entsetzlich, keine besonders großen Fehler zu machen. Warum liebe ich sie nachträglich so sehr, auch wenn ich, der Banater Jud, nicht viel mehr mit ihnen gemeinsam habe, als Roth mit den Taittingers? (6–7)

Why indeed? Ivanji’s recourse to the Habsburg Monarchy and Roth may be enlightening in answering the question. A Jew, like Ivanji, from Banat (a formerly Habsburg region shared by Serbia (Vojvodina), Romania, and Hungary), must of necessity have a strongly developed awareness of the similarities between the multinational character of Yugoslavia and that of the Habsburg Monarchy as well as of Tito’s endeavors to construct a common Yugoslav identity strong enough to hold together the complex ethnic and cultural mixture. He is therefore inclined to remember the centripetal forces that strengthened the common identity, rather than the centrifugal ones that focused on the weaknesses and injustices of the regime. Ivanji is indeed a living, former Yugoslav variant of Joseph Roth’s characters who retain their respect for the Habsburg dynasty and Monarchy and cherish their memory, thus creating a continuum in the Balkan history of disruption and recurrence. This history, on the other hand, is embodied in the model of memory presented in Markovi!’s film, which dismisses the possibility of a positive integration of the common Yugoslav past in the history of each nation-state emerging from the former Yugoslavia. The question then remains open whether Tito’s personality and politics indeed created a basis for a longlasting supranational and regional common identity among the small successor states to the former Yugoslavia. From Habsburg to Tito and Beyond It is very likely that Tito, despite his communist persuasion and the authoritarian regime over which he presided, inherited his general approach towards the treatment of nationalities from the Habsburg Monarchy. Here we must add, however, that although he was ready to make changes in the constitution to adjust the state form to reality, his authoritarian rule repressed every attempt at open discussion of nationalist sentiments. Just as the Central European identity never fully disappeared despite the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, it is also clear that the Yugoslav identity constructed under Tito’s rule still exists in the memory of all those who lived in that country, despite, or perhaps precisely because of the fratricidal wars in the 1990s. Compared to those difficult times, and even to present-day life in the successor states to the former Yugoslavia, life in Tito’s Yugoslavia did indeed have utopian qualities. Ivanji’s nostalgia for the enthusiastic country boys who tried hard to learn the norms of the state

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protocol is thus based on nostalgia for the times in which Yugoslav identity was strongest. For many who think historically, Tito’s split with Stalin reaffirmed the authenticity of Yugoslav identity as one of cultural multi-belonging, i.e., one that is communist, but also intrinsically related to Western Europe, and an identity which is multinational and multicultural, unifying Central Europe and the Balkans. Except for communist ideology, all traits of the Yugoslav identity were found in the Habsburg Monarchy. Paradoxically, the memory of the longest reigning Habsburg emperor and the most famous symbol of the Empire, Francis Joseph, was preserved in the public image of the communist leader Tito. This is the reason for Tito’s pompous and ritualized public appearances in stylish uniforms, and this is why the protocol officials looked up to him as “their emperor.” Both the Habsburg identity and that of Tito’s Yugoslavia have been criticized as inauthentic and incapable of holding the mixture of peoples and cultures together. However, these identities did not disappear with the dissolution of the states in which they originated. Both Roth and Ivanji remind us that constructed identities “become” natural and persist in the collective memory. Even the satirical deconstruction of Tito’s cult in Markovi!’s film twelve years after the former’s death affirms the persistence of the memory of this charismatic and controversial leader. Moreover, Markovi!’s film is only an attempt different from the one by Roth to “revisit” the plot of his narrative identity and to re-narrate the past. Despite the weaknesses of the former Yugoslavia, this supranational state has come closest to accommodating the disjunctive cultural legacies and identities from the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, thus creating a juncture between Europe and the Balkans. Its bloody dissolution, on the other hand, only ten years after the death of its strongest symbol, Marshal Tito, demonstrates the inadequacy of the Yugoslav socialist ideology in providing a durable framework for the Balkan-Central-European mixture. However, the wars of dissolution of the former Yugoslavia also proved that the successor nation-states were not capable of absorbing the hybrid Balkan structure and subsuming it under the metanarrative of the nation. As Dirlik points out, capitalism, socialism, and nationalism are all products of modernization, thus inevitably suppressing local heterogeneity (464–65), which in the Balkans and Central Europe has an inherently postmodern character, as this study has argued. The literary utopian projects offer an alternative model for the Balkans that is built precisely upon the hybrid locale and directed towards a non-national, regional structure. These utopias are not merely imaginary and idealistic, they also entail specific elements of the local reality that are imagined beyond the boundaries of the singular locale, as they interact with other related, yet not identical, regional

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locales, without losing the distinctions under the influence of a superimposed metanarrative. The utopias correspond to the protean structure of the Balkans that adjusts global discourses to local settings and integrates them into new local peculiarities. The locales are, moreover, the only authentic and selfsustaining structures, independent of discursive identity constructions that proved to be of limited duration and in contradiction with the elusive nature of the region. In this sense, the Balkans should be viewed as a paradigmatic heterotopia, a place that possesses a real, yet dormant potential, which can be awoken through utopian imagination.

1

Notes

For Austro-Marxist approaches to nationalities see Bene! 299–323. 2 The construction of the supranational Yugoslav identity through artistic production, its different phases, and its eventual failure is laid out in detail in Wachtel’s book, Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia. 3 Vergil’s Aeneid claims a divine origin for the Romans based on an interpretation of the Trojan myth according to which Aeneas “retraces his ancestors’ steps to lead the Trojan race back to its native home in Italy” (Tanner 11). In his epic, Vergil incorporated not only the Trojan myth, as conveyed by Homer, but also the older Argonautic legend that tells the story of the quest for the Golden Fleece. The capture of the Fleece and the first destruction of Troy by the Argonauts prepares for Vergil’s scheme of European domination over Asia and the rotation of empires that paves the way for the return of the Golden Age on earth, a scheme which will be varied after the Christianization of Europe (17). 4 Philip II of Spain (son of Emperor Charles V) dreamt of capturing Constantinople from the Ottomans and delivering the Holy Land with a galley called “Argo” (like the ship of the Argonauts) at the head of the fleet (Tanner 5). 5 A scene comparable to the one in the American Bar is Carl Joseph’s outrage in The Radetzky March at the sight of the emperor’s portrait hanging on a wall in a brothel in a small Galician town (Roth, Radetzkymarsch 93–94). He proceeds similarly to Count Morstin and takes the portrait out of the frame. The portrait was omnipresent in the Monarchy because of its symbolic value of unity under the Habsburg Crown. But its presence in a brothel, a place that annuls any hierarchy and thus any symbolic order, deconstructs the symbolic value of the portrait. It shows tacitly that the consciousness of the symbolic order was fading and that it was a mechanical, automatic gesture to hang the portrait on any wall. Carl Joseph, who has internalized the symbolic order, grasps this intuitively and attempts to reestablish the order by “saving” the symbol from the disgraceful situation. This scene also has elements of a comical discrepancy between aim and result. Dr. Demant compares Carl Joseph to his grandfather, who saved the emperor’s life. Carl Joseph replies that, regretfully, he did not have the same opportunity. The implication is that he saves the symbol instead, which, however, is devoid of symbolic value. 6 The communist regime in the former Yugoslavia introduced the phrase “expropriation of the expropriators” to justify the confiscation of property from the wealthier families and its redistribution among the “masses.” The explanation was that wealth was unjustly distributed under the past capitalist regime and that the workers were deprived of the means of production by the ruling class. Thus, the confiscation of property from wealthy families only returned to the previously expropriated what the expropriators had taken from them. In reality, the new

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owners were not the masses, but people in the regime. A hint of this dynamics of power is the scene in which Zoran visits a friend whose father is a member of the secret service. They are a family of three but own a luxurious apartment in which they live alone. 7 All translations from the film are mine. 8 (osi# was associated with the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts that was issued in 1986 and protested the alleged conspiracy against Serbia on the part of Slovenia and Croatia and the genocide of the Serbs conducted by the Kosovo Albanians (Silber and Little 31–32). With his theoretical work (osi# contributed to the rise of Serbian leader Slobodan Milo!evi#, hoping that Milo!evi# would realize the Serbian national program he himself had designed. He distanced himself from Milo!evi# in 1993 when it became clear that the latter was not “a genuine” nationalist, but merely a power-hungry dictator. 9 Ivan Ivanji makes a comparison between the Nazis in Austria and the leaders of postcommunist Yugoslavia: Austria prevailed over the nationalist comrades. At least I hope that it’s over for good. The people in the former Yugoslavia will also one day prevail over theirs. This is not merely a hope, this is certainty. Österreich hat die Volksgenossen überwunden. Zumindest hoffe ich, daß das endgültig ist. Die Menschen im ehemaligen Jugoslawien werden die ihrigen auch eines Tages überwunden haben. Das ist nicht nur eine Hoffnung, das ist Gewißheit. (8) (Translation mine) 10 Field trips like the one presented in the film were a part of the regular activities of the socalled Pioneer organization, a communist, ideologically influenced counterpart to the Scout organization, which included all boys and girls in the nation. Erdei gives a detailed description of the structure and the ideological goals of the Pioneer organization: In every country where the Pioneer organization existed, its members were considered pioneering builders of the future, who would move the society forward, finding new paths to socialist goals. Their whole upbringing and education, both in and after school, was created with reference to the Communist party, under the supervision of ideologically and class conscious teachers and Pioneer leaders, who monitored and controlled the “correct” way of growing up. […] The “difference” between the former (child) and future (pupil/Pioneer) status was dramatically emphasized through the ritual of the reception into the Pioneer organization […]. In that way, the state of socialist Yugoslavia took an active part in molding childhood, separate from the family’s natural responsibility for early socialization (Lampe and Mazower 155). The fundamental program aims, organization forms and symbols of membership to the Pioneer’s organization had been created in wartime. In numerous Pioneers’ groups “Tito” caps with red stars were worn, and some elements of the admission ritual to the organization were recorded now and then (a formal song, the oath) (161). The red scarf stood as a token of belonging to the organization and a reminder of moral obligations which were to be fulfilled at all times. Thus the scarf “forces a Pioneer to be well-behaved” and becomes a powerful method of control and self-control. This shows how the state used different methods, both explicit and implicit, to convey desired messages and to shape the habitus of children by regulating their body-space relations and prescribing proper behavior in every possible situation (163–64).

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Zoran tells his family that the teacher dressed up like a ghost when they spent the night in a castle in Croatia, which had been turned into a museum. The teacher did this in order to scare the children, who believed that the castle was haunted by ghosts. He caused such a panic among the children that they began to run chaotically and destroyed a valuable collection of medieval armors. The curator of the castle, who was its owner before the war and from whom it was “expropriated,” was infuriated and complained to the two men from the secret service who followed the group all the way from Belgrade. They questioned the teacher for hours but did not do anything to restore the damage and warned the curator to be silent about it. 12 The film presents the most difficult years of the former Yugoslavia during the transition to the communist regime. In these years a new identity of the nation was constructed based on communist ideology, the brotherhood and unity of the different nationalities, and Tito’s cult. People were unjustly deprived of their property in the name of social equality, and during the conflict between Tito and Stalin many communists who did not approve of Tito’s split with the Soviet Bloc were severely punished, serving time on the notorious island of Goli Otok. However, in the late fifties a new era began. Yugoslavia opened itself to the West, received financial aid from both the United States and Western Europe, and its citizens were free to travel throughout the world. In the sixties and seventies life was comfortable and carefree because the country retained the socialist system and had zero unemployment. Tito became a symbol of this era of abundance and freedom of movement and remained such in the memory of many citizens of the former Yugoslavia.

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Wingfield, Nancy M., ed. Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe. 5. New York: Berghahn, 2003. Print. Wodak, Ruth, Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl, and Karin Liebhart. The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Trans. Angelika Hirsch and Richard Mitten. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1999. Print. Zöllner, Erich. Geschichte Österreichs: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1990. Print. Zorn, Christa. “Staging the Public Sphere: Karl Kraus’ and Romain Rolland’s Critical Theater in World War I.” Text and Presentation. Ed. Kiki Gounaridou. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. 54–68. Print. 'i$ek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso, 1989. Print.

Index Abbott, Scott, 238, 241, 268n40, 270n48 Acocella, Joan, 173 Aehrenthal, Count Alois Lexa, 198, 220–21 agrarian reform, 142n19, 143n27, 203 Albania, 11, 273 Ale%kovi#, Mira, 292 Alexander I, King of Yugoslavia, 273 Alexander the Great, 5 Anderson, Benedict, 12, 50, 69, 84n22, 155, 259 Andrássy, Gyula, 93, 140n7 Andri#, Ivo, 80, 113, 117, 142n20, 198, 237–39, 248, 256 Bosnian Chronicle, 117 The Bridge on the Drina, 88, 116–36, 143nn28&30, 144n35, 145nn41–43, 146n46, 253, 260–61, 268n41 character in Handke’s play, 247 influence on Handke, 145n44 Miss, 117 Yugoslavism, 144n40 Apis, Dragutin Dimitrijevi#, 197 Arens, Katherine, 43n4, 155–58, 167, 276 Aristotle, 69, 83n20 Arnez, John, 149–53 Austria annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (1908), 198, 220 bridge between Europe and Asia, 157, 172 efforts to modernize Serbia, 264n7 excluded from German Confederation, 190n4 fascism and xenophobia, 43n4 geopolitical position, 191n6, 218 perceived as the old Habsburg Empire, 173–74 post World War I, 156 wartime journalism, 218–19 World War I society, 211 . see also Austria-Hungary; Habsburg Monarchy/Empire Austria-Hungary army, 204, 209, 230 historical relationship with the Balkans, 201 newspapers, 209 treatment of enemies, 204 war against Serbia (1915), 200–03 Bach, Alexander, 84n22 Bakhtin, Mikhail carnivalesque, 161, 223 comical genres, 72 contemporaneity and the “low” present, 52 diglossia, 106, 246 “epic,” 82n7 the “hybrid,” 62, 105 logic of reversal, 223

316

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

the Modern Age, 57 novelistic language, 133 parody, 106 rebounding empathy and detachment, 135 “represented and representing” (double-voiced language), 213 theory of the novel, 50–51, 82n7 the Balkans ambiguity of geography and names, 5–7 Americanization, 43n7 architectural remains, 23 balance of national, religious, cultural, linguistic and state identities, 24 “balkanization”/disintegration, 131 “Balkanized along religious lines,” 265n12 boundary with Central Europe, 237 collective anxieties, 95 constant tension, 248 cultural disparity/hybridity, 95, 104 dangers of nationalism, 79 discontent towards Western Europe, 172 effect of Treaty of Passarowitz, 81n1 “election” of war, 250 ethnic cleansing, 256 fear of the “other,” 138, 146n49 in fictional utopias, 189, 246, 286, 299–300 fit with postmodern theory, 13–14, 140n2, 299 four dimensionalism: Sub-Balkans, 7–11, 24 historical relationship with Austria-Hungary, 201 identity politics, 174 influence of Austro-Hungarian Empire, 9, 12, 24 Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, 2, 8–12, 15n4, 24, 104 Catholic and Orthodox churches, 91 Central Europe, 20–21 Communism, 40 Fascism and Nazism, 17–18, 28 Habsburg Monarchy/Empire, 2, 5, 8–12, 14n1, 24, 29–30, 45–47, 52–54, 63– 65, 86–89, 154–55 Liberalism, 131 Ottoman Empire/Islam, 30–31, 40, 45–46, 86–90, 140n4, 145n45, 154 Western European intellectual history, 129 languages/communication in, 245–47, 269n44 locality of culture, 32, 79 media correspondents, 236–37, 244, 246 multiplex character, 13 names for “European Turkey,” 7 Haemus mountain, 7 Rumelia, 7 “Southeastern Europe,” 7 nationalism, 131, 155 new cultural paradigm, 103–4 official languages, 118, 143n28, 146n47 perceived/conceived as

Index

317

ab-normal no-place (ou-topia), 1 “Asia,” 14n1 “a space of permeation and overlapping,” 7–8 beginning in Vienna/Rennweg, 1, 5, 15n6 “cradle of the European civilization,” 5 dystopian utopia; eternal/recurring dystopia; “utopian dystopia”; heterotopia, 1, 235–37, 251, 253, 257–58, 259, 262, 300 in Europe and of it, 104 Europe’s Twin “Br/Other,” 17 imaginary space, 1 “incomplete and anomalous,” 14n2 marginalized from the “West,” 34 non-European “other” space, 5, 14n2 “the original” Third World, 18 part of Europe, but “not of it,” 6 “permanently postcolonial,” 91, 94, 265n12 “quasi-colonial,” 91 resembling the structure of the unconscious, 23 “semicolonial,” 88–89 Southeastern Europe, 10 “Turkey in Europe,” 10 unbelonging vs. double or multiple belonging, 13, 15n3, 27, 38–40, 79, 84n25, 103, 148, 246, 299 permanent potential for conflict, 139, 208, 268n36 post/colonialism, 90, 103–04, 109, 121 postmodern geography, 1–16, 104 religious assimilation, 92 role of education, 79–80, 85n30 simplified explanation for conflict, 243–44 stereotypical presentations, 200 stigmatized in media, 195–96, 263n4, 264n6 supranational identities, 274, 298, 300n2 wars (1912–1913), 218–19, 230 World War I, 264n8–264n9 . see also Albania; Bosnia-Herzegovina; Bulgaria; Croatia; Macedonia; Montenegro; Romania; Serbia; Slavonia; Slovenia; the former Yugoslavia Barthes, Roland, 42, 217, 224, 227, 242 Batakovi#, Du%an, 100 Battisti, Cesare, 216, 263, 267n25 Bauer, Otto, 274 Bäuerle, Adolf, 82n8 Beilharz, Peter, 258 Belgrade Austro-Hungarian occupation World War I, 202–04 German occupation World War II, 30–32 Treaty of Belgrade (1739), 47 Beller, Steven, 153–54 Benjamin, Walter, 162, 186, 262, 266n19 Ben-Shaul, Daphna, 243 Berchtold, Count Leopold, 227–30, 266n24, 267n25 Berlin, Treaty of, 197 Berman, Nina, 168–69 Bhabha, Homi K.

318

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

ambivalent discourse of the nation, 54 “containment of cultural difference,” 35, 62 cultural diversity, 15n3 cultural “in-betweenness,” 103–07 “liminality,” 254 “locality of culture,” 32, 71 “staging the past,” 123 Bibó, István, 127 Bischoff, Doerte, 217–18 Black George, 48 Bla$evi#, Zrinka, 6–8, 23 Bloch, Ernst, 258, 261 Boarov, Dimitrije, 84n22 Bogert, Ralph, 132, 145n43 Bogosavljevi#, Sr)an, 171 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 9, 11–13, 24 agrarian reform/social revolution, 142n19 annexation by Austria (1908), 220 Austrian perception of, 127 Bogumils’ acceptance of Islam, 91–92 civil war (1992), 131 civil war during World War II, 130 claimed by Austria-Hungary and Serbia, 81, 197–98 common cultural identity (bo"nja"tvo), 94–102, 115, 144n31 compared to Serbia, 203–04 compared to Vojvodina, 137–39 conflict and disintegration, 131, 137–39 constant tension in, 248 Croatian population, 147 ethnic cleansing of Moslems, 237, 256 “Ethnic Moslem” category, 101–02 ethnic religious groups, 102 fatal for Habsburg Monarchy/Empire, 264n5 fictional utopia, 189 history and myth, 96 influence of Habsburg Monarchy/Empire, 86–90, 93, 96–101, 104–06, 109, 111–12, 115–20, 124–27, 131, 137–39, 140n5, 141nn8&9&16, 142n19 Orthodox and Catholic churches, 86, 90–91, 98–99, 126, 131 Ottoman Empire and Islam, 86–89, 92, 95–96, 99, 104–05, 111, 119–20, 126–27, 131, 137–39, 140nn4&5, 141n8, 145nn41&42, 145n45, 183 integration during World War II, 94 land reform/social revolution, 142n20 military conscription, 142n24 national autonomy under Tito, 273–74 national identity, 141n11, 146n48, 279 national language, 117–18, 141n10, 146n47 NATO intervention (1995), 236 not at home (uncanny) feeling, 102 occupation by Austria-Hungary (1878), 93 post/colonialism, 90, 105, 111 secular education in, 113 Serbian nationalism in, 100, 112

Index sevdah (musical genre), 144n31 State Museum (Landesmuseum), 97–98 three nations at war, 245 tithe taxation, 142n25 urban planning, 97–98 writers, 80 Young Bosnia, 116, 140n6, 198 Bottenberg, Joanna, 191n13 Brankovi#, )or"e, 85n29 Brecht, Bertolt, 8, 160 Brennan, Timothy, 50, 55 Brown, L. Carl, 4–5 Brozovi#, Dalibor, 141n10 Bucharest, Treaty of, 82n5 Buck, Theo, 210, 215 Budapest, 30 Bukharin, Nikolai, 25 Bulgaria, 11, 143n27 Buñuel, Luis, 268n40 Burckhardt, Carl J., 168 Burkhart, Dagmar, 118–19, 123, 132, 144n32 Butler, Thomas, 144nn35&40 Byzantine Empire, 2–4 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 242–43, 258 (arnojevi#, Arsenije, 47, 85n29 Carolingian Empire, 2–3 Catholicism, 173 Central Europe, 10–12, 20–21, 25–26, 30, 33 Charles Francis Joseph, Archduke (Charles I of Austria), 213 Cold War, 10 (osi#, Dobrica, 292, 301n8 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), 96, 279–81 Croatia, 9–11, 24, 43n9 ambivalent cultural position, 147 Austro-Hungarian legacy, 20 Balkan identity, 21, 148 Central European, 11, 237 claim to Herzegovina, 94 Illyrian Province, 150 influence of Central Europe, 148 French culture, 150 German, Venetian and Hungarian cultures, 149 Habsburg Monarchy/Empire, 148, 150 national language, 143n28, 146n47 NDH (Independent State of Croatia), 21, 42n2 president “Balkanophobic,” 268n36 religious freedom/persecution, 21 Yugoslavism, 151 Czechoslovakia, 151 the Danube, 30

319

320

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

De#anski, Stephen, 82n6 Deichmann, Thomas, 268n37 Detrez, Raymond, 89–91 Dirlik, Arif, 255, 299 Donia, Robert J., 88, 94, 113 Dor, Milo Central Europe, Myth or Reality, 16, 24–34, 43nn4–6 Doubt, Keith, 239–41 Douglas, Mary, 103 Drakuli#, Slavenka, 19–21 drama: genre, theory and technique, 52–53, 57–58, 61–62 Aristotelian tragedy, 69, 83n20 carnivalesque, 169 contrasts and discrepancies, 222 conversational play, 63 creation of “counterpublic” space, 240 diglossia (speech aside), 107–15, 246 documentary drama, 209 “double consciousness,” 107, 175, 246 double staging/play within a play/“self-duplication,” 212–13, 227, 239 double structure: interplay between Schein (appearance) and Sein (being), 160, 162, 171 dramatic irony, 163, 192n17 educational role of theater, 80, 158 “emplotment” mode of presentation, 240 explicit simile, 114 Haupt- und Staatsaktion, 162, 192n15 “in-betweenness,” 107 juxtaposition of scenes, 222, 232 language systems, 56–57, 60–65, 107–11, 223, 238–39 Martian theater, 210 metaphor, 7, 32, 34, 54, 72, 77, 88, 104–06, 120, 161, 210, 213–18, 253, metonymy, 7–8, 34, 40 montage, 209–10, 216 multiple roles for dramatis personae, 238 operetta, 210–12, 224, 265–66nn14&18, 269n43 parody, 72, 213 poetic justice/revenge, 232, 296 poetic license, 295 post-Enlightenment version of theatrum mundi, 161 “pre-emplotment” mode of presentation, 240 representation of social norms, 83n19 Rollenfigur, 106 sacramental morality play, 242–43 satire, 220, 294–95 Schauspiel, 212 sentimental comedy, 69–70 simultaneity, 69 sui generis, 210 theatrum mundi, 210, 213–18, 242–43, 258–61, 265nn14&18, 268n41, 269n43 traditional comedy structure, 66 traditional genre expectations, 161 tragic carnival, 212–13, 223–24, 235 the uncanny (das Unheimliche) “other,” 164–67, 192n19

Index

321

use of homophones for comical effect, 220 use of quotations, 219–20 use of technology (photography), 216–18, 225–28 utopian spaces, 156, 159, 169, 171–72 “Wendung”: double language, 162 Zeitgeist, 69 . see also postcolonial/colonial theory; postmodern theory Dreitzel, Hans Peter, 281 Du Bois, W. E. B., 103 Du%an, Tzar, 81, 85nn28&31 Dusini, Arno, 35, 43n13 Eastern Crisis, 197 Edwards, Lovett F., 146n46 Eliot, T.S., 62 Ellem, Christine, 258 Erdei, Ildiko, 291, 301n10 Eugene, Prince of Savoy, 201 Ferdinand I, Emperor of Austria, 28, 84n22 Fiedler, Theodore, 268n42, 270n45 film. see drama: genre, theory and technique Fine, John V.A., 94 Fogg, Walter L., 260 Ford, John, 239 Foteva, Ana, 168 Foucault, Michel, 40, 98, 258–59, 262 Francis Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, 16–17, 80, 94, 140n6, 186, 197–99, 215, 219, 264n10, 266n24 Francis Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, 49, 155, 206, 273–75, 280, 282, 290, 299 Fraser, Robert, 123 French Revolution, 53, 82n2 Freud, Sigmund Contemporary Thoughts on War and Death, 230–31 heimlich and unheimlich (uncanny), 102, 165–66 id, ego, and super-ego, 281–83 interpretation of dreams, 14 “narcissism of minor differences,” 137–38 structure of the unconscious, 23 unconscious sense of guilt, 203 Friedjung, Heinrich, 220–24 Frye, Northrop, 58, 83n13, 145n43, 240 Gaj, Ljudevit, 143n28, 147 Gamper, Herbert, 37 Gara%anin, Ilija, 81 Gellner, Ernest, 155 Germany, 30–32, 149, 155, 190n4, 207–08, 215 Gilroy, Paul, 84n25, 103, 107, 175, 246 Glenny, Mischa, 6, 264n5 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Faust, 213–16, 265n18 Goffman, Erving, 281 Goldstein, Ivo, 150–53, 189n1 Greece, 11

322

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

Grimstad, Kari, 210 Habsburg, Otto von, 43n4, 190n3 Habsburg Monarchy/Empire agrarian policy, 203 boundary with Ottoman Empire, 237 Christian traditions, 280 claims to Bosnia-Herzegovina, 197–98, 280 colonial power, 89 continuity in transformation, 280 creation of ethnic stereotypes, 159 cultural ambiguity, 5 dissolution, 86, 154, 193n24 economic challenges, 276 Enlightened Absolutism, 139n1 enlightened reforms, 171 Enlightenment principles, 48 foreign minister, 266n24 German identity, 155 heir to Holy Roman Empire, 156, 173 idealized reminiscence of, 275 influence on culture, 49–50, 53–54, 144n40 legacy/myth, 288–89, 299 metalanguage, 277 nationalism within, 71, 81, 81n1, 153 post-World War II, 25–29 relations with the Balkans, 2 rise of nations and nationalisms, 188 role model for cultural and ethnic diversity, 182–86, 261, 276 rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 141n16, 142nn19&25 Second Battle of Mohács (1687), 9 Slavic athletic associations, 151 supranational/national identity (unity in diversity), 172–73, 178, 189, 277–80, 288, 298 territory gained from Ottoman Empire, 190n2, 280 war against Ottomans (1716), 46–47 World War I, 264n9 . see also Francis Joseph I, Emperor of Austria Hajdarevi#, Had$em, 145n41 Hajdarpa%i#, Edin, 145n45 Halecki, Oskar, 15n4 Hall, Stuart, 96, 278 Halliwell, Stephen, 83n20 Hamburger, Käte, 132, 263n1 Handke, Peter, 43n4, 189 Dreamer’s Farewell to the Ninth Land, 44n20 A Journey to the Rivers, 238, 253, 270n49 The Material Idea of a Volk, 241 Once Again for Thucydides, 16, 33–42, 43nn8–10, 44nn14,15,17&19, 136, 145n44, 239, 246, 253, 257, 270n49 political views, 268n42 Voyage by Dugout, 41–42, 43n12, 44n16, 195–96, 235–58, 262–63, 269nn43&44, 270nn45,47,48&49 Hárs, Endre, 37, 41, 43nn10,11,&13

Index Hayden, Patrick, 258–59 Heraclitus, 41 Hillach, Ansgar, 106 Hitler, Adolf, 25, 28, 173, 289 Hobsbawm, Eric, 51, 55, 60, 143n28 Hoernes, Moritz, 127 Hoffman, Michael, 173 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 215 Arabella, 149, 153–72, 189, 191nn5,6,&13, 192n19, 257, 261–62, 269n43, 279 The Great World Theater of Salzburg, 213–14 The Tale of the Cavalry (Reitergeschichte), 168 Holz, Hans Heinz , 262 Hötzendorf, Conrad von, 224–27, 266n24 Hribar, Ivan, 151 Hristi#, Jovan, 69 Hungary, 10, 28, 31 Catholicism in, 91 dissolution of kingdom (1918), 81n1 First Battle of Mohács (1526), 150 nationalism, 72–75, 79, 84nn22&23, 198 . see also Austria-Hungary Huntington, Samuel P., 4, 104, 208, 265n12 Hunyadi, Janos, 201 Illyrian Provinces, 150 IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization), 17 Inalcik, Halil, 31 Ingrao, Charles, 81n1, 139n1 Istria, 26–28, 33, 36–37 Ivanji, Ivan, 31, 273, 297–99, 301n9 Izetbegovi#, Alija, 18 Jauß, Hans Robert, 57, 61 Jelavich, Barbara, 204, 264n8 Jelavich, Charles, 204 Jesus Christ, 216 Joseph II of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor, 21, 48, 60, 82n2, 84n22, 139n1 Jovanovi#, Peter, 49 Judaism, 26, 173, 182 Judson, Pieter M., 153, 155 Juraga, Dubravka, 119–20 Juri%i#, &elimir, 144n40 Kállay, Benjamin von, 96–100, 117, 140n7, 141n12, 142n25 Kant, Immanuel, 214 Kaplan, Robert T., 17–24, 201 Balkan Ghosts, 15n7, 17–21, 24, 27, 34, 42nn2&3, 43n4, 148 Karad$i#, Vuk, 20, 60–61, 118 Kara"or"evi# dynasty, 273 Kittler, Friedrich, 259–60, 271n51 Klotz, Völker, 52–55, 69, 82n8 Ko%i#, Petar, 80, 117, 142nn19&20 The Badger in the Court, 86, 105–11, 114–16, 142n24, 246

323

324

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

Konersmann, Ralf, 213–14 Kosovo, 11, 22, 24, 42n3, 80, 273, 292 battle of (1389), 46, 68–69, 196 Kossuth, Lajos, 84nn22&23 Kotzebue, August von, 82n8 Kova%evi#, Uro%, 61 Kraus, Karl Die Fackel, 219, 224, 266n21 Die Katastrophe der Phrasen (The Catastrophy of Phrases), 219 The Last Days of Mankind, 189, 195–96, 205–42, 251, 260, 263, 265n18, 269n43 Kristanof, Etbin, 274 Krle$a, Miroslav, 144n40 Kuchuk Kainardji, Treaty of (1774), 82n4 Kundera, Milan, 10, 20, 25, 31, 33, 43n7, 138, 146n49 Landstraße, 15n6 Lazar, Tzar, 68–69 Lehfeldt, Werner, 141n10 Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, 47, 85n29, 139 Le Rider, Jacques, 156–57, 173 Lipa, Aida, 97, 100, 118, 141n11 Little, Allan, 236 Longinovi#, Tomislav, 144n40 Luhmann, Niklas, 195, 214, 268nn33&35 Lukács, György, 119–20 Lyotard, Jean-François, 14 MacDonald, David Bruce, 268n36 Macedonia, 11, 24, 43n9, 80, 264n5, 273 Machado, Antonio, 239 Mackensen, August von, 202, 230 Magris, Claudio, 144n40, 159, 191n13 Mandl, Leopold, 264n6 Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria, 28, 48, 60, 85n29, 139n1 Markovi#, Goran: Tito and Me, 275, 289–301 Masaryk, Jan, 25 Matvejevi#, Predrag, 20–21 Maul, Otto, 10 Mazower, Mark, 4, 6, 15n4, 104 Mead, George Herbert, 281 the media, 236–37, 268n35 Meierhoffer (Austrian consul in Belgrade), 84n22 Metternich, Klemens von, 1, 5, 14n1, 49, 189 Milo%, Prince, 81 Milo%evi#, Slobodan, 11, 18–21, 32, 148, 237, 268n36, 292, 301n8 Montenegro, 11, 24, 118, 273 More, Thomas, 258 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: The Magic Flute, 171 Munck, Ronaldo, 254 nationalism, 85n31 NATO, 42n3, 236, 253 Nazism, 17–18, 28, 32, 301n9

Index

325

Nestroy, Johann, 82n8, 106 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 241 Nolte, Claire E., 151 novel: theory and technique, 50–51, 82n7 double consciousness/identity crisis (heimlich and unheimlich), 175, 180, 204 dramatic irony, 125, 172, 180 history/chronicle, 119–21, 145n43 implicit simile/analogy, 123–26 juxtaposition: presence/absence, performative art/technology, tradition/modernity, 186 metaphor, 253 myth, 123–24 nostalgia, 172 symbolic simile, 130 symbolic topos, 181 synthesis in language, 122 third-person narration, 125, 128–29, 132–36, 144n35, 239, 277 utopian spaces, 181–85, 189, 275 . see also postcolonial/colonial theory; postmodern theory novella. see novel: theory and technique Novi Pazar, 208, 265n11 Obradovi#, Dositej, 20, 60 Obrenovi#, Aleksandar, 196–97 Obrenovi#, Mihailo, 196 Obrenovi#, Milo%, 196 Okey, Robin, 14n1, 74, 115 Oppen, Karoline von, 268n32 Orientalism, 14n2 Osterhammel, Jürgen, 109 Ostmitteleuropa, 3 Ottoman Empire, 2–5, 46–47 boundary with Habsburg Monarchy/Empire, 237 Byzantine elements in state structure, 4 measurement of time, 83n15 millet, 12, 45, 99–102, 137–38, 141n8, national identity, 96 nationalism within, 81 New Order (Tanzimat), 48 Russian rebellions, 82n4 sand&ak, 95 “tax in blood” (dev'irme), 119, 130, 133–34 Treaty of Bucharest, 82n5 Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji (1774), 82n4 war with Serbia, 49 Palácky, Franti%ek, 154 Pa%i#, Muhidin, 145n41 Pa%i#, Nikola, 199 Passarowitz, Treaty of, 81n1, 83n18 Pauley, Bruce F., 193n24, 199, 204, 266n24 Pavlovi#, Miodrag, 20 Petkovi#, Nikola, 12, 88, 91 Pfister, Manfred, 192n17

326

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

Philip II, King of Spain, 300n4 photography, 224–25, 266n19 Plato, 259–60, 270n50 Popovi#, Jovan Sterija, 54, 70, 137 Belgrade Once and Now, 46, 52, 62–63, 71, 80, 83n11, 127 The Death of Stephen De&anski, 50 Evil Woman, 83n13 Parvenue, 46, 52, 55–71, 80, 83n11 Patriots, 46, 52, 71–80, 205 political stance, 85n26 Popper, Karl, 26 postcolonial/colonial theory, 14, 86–88, 96, 103–5, 109–11, 123, 140n2 . see also drama: genre, theory and technique; novel: theory and technique postmodern theory, 240, 243 deconstruction, 14 ideal ego/ego ideal (imaginary/symbolic identification), 283–88 identity as sameness/identity as selfhood, 279–82 liminality and hybridity, 254 localism, 255 narrative identity, 282–83 pastiche and bricolage, 14 retaining/repressing the past, 288 uninterrupted continuity, 280 utopias/dystopias/heterotopias, 258–62, 300 . see also drama: genre, theory and technique; novel: theory and technique Princip, Gavrilo, 16, 198–99 Pri%tina, 23 Promitzer, Christian, 263n4, 264nn6&7 Prosvjeta, 141n12 Putnik, Radomir, 264n9 Reifowitz, Ian, 173, 184 Reinhard, Wolfgang, 89 Reisigl, Martin, 282 Reißmüller, Johann Georg, 236–37 Renner, Karl, 274, 288 Renner, Ursula, 275 Rennweg, 5, 15n6 Reynolds, Diana, 98 Richter, Peyton E., 146n48 Ricœur, Paul, 279–82 Riemen, Alfred, 173 Rizvi#, Muhsin, 55 Roda, Alexander character in Kraus’ play, 231–32 name change, 267n28 Serbian Diary, 195, 199–209, 220, 223, 228–32, 264nn6&9, 267nn29&30, 268n31 Rogoff, Irit, 6–8, 13, 34, 94, 102–03 Roman Empire, 4–5 Romania, 10–11 Rorty, Richard, 254 Roth, Joseph, 204 characters who cherish Habsburg dynasty, 298

Index The Emperor’s Monument, 275–89, 299 The New Diary (Das neue Tagebuch), 173 The Radetzky March, 149, 153, 155, 172–89, 261, 276, 280–81, 300n5 Rudolf, Prince, 98 Russia integration of Church and state, 4 non-European “other,” 10 rebellions against Ottomans, 82n4 Ruthner, Clemens, 89, 104, 109, 140n2 Said, Edward, 14n2, 18, 103, 140n2, 141n8 Samard$i#, Nikola, 81n1 (anti#, Aleksa, 144n31 Sarajevo, 270n46 Schäfer, Rudolf, 161, 170, 192nn14&21, 193n22 Schalek, Alice, 232, 268n31 Scheit, Gerhard, 248 Schiller, Friedrich, 69 Schindler, John R., 264nn9&10 Scholsser, Jan, 174–75 Schöpflin, George, 2–4, 118 Schulz, Bruno, 144n40 Schwanitz, Dietrich, 83n19, 213 Schwarz, Egon, 1 Selim III, Sultan of Ottoman Empire, 48 Serbia, 11, 24, 94 ambivalent/in-between cultural position, 64–65, 71, 75–79 annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (1908), 201 Austria’s threatened invasion (1908), 220 Austro-Hungarian war (1915), 200–06, 209 Balkan Wars (1912 and 1913), 208, 264n10, 265n11 benefit from Central Europe, 20 Black Hand, 140n6, 198–99 civil code (1844), 67 claims to Bosnia-Herzegovina, 197–98 compared to Bosnia-Herzegovina, 203–04 culture, 231–33 first uprising (1804), 48 genocide, 301n8 independence from Ottoman Empire (1830), 49 influence of French culture, 70, 84n21 Habsburg Monarchy/Empire, 45–52, 65–67, 70–71, 264nn6&7 Ottoman Empire, 45–47, 64–65, 70, 207–8 Slavic Orthodox culture, 45–46 theater, 67–69 Western culture, 71 inter-war and post-World War II, 273 land reform, 143n27 low literacy rate, 52 marginalized between East and West, 54 medieval state, 85n28 nationalism, 72, 80–81, 84n22, 85nn27&31, 139, 141n11, 196

327

328

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna?

national language, 60–61, 117, 143n28, 146n47 perception of Austria-Hungary, 206 precarious geopolitical position, 202 purported extermination camp, 237 self-perception, 207 toponymy, 202–03 Treaty of Bucharest, 82n5 Unification or Death organization, 198 women, 234–35 World War I, 264nn9&10 writers, 292 Yugoslavism, 152 Shakespeare, William, 69, 204 Shergold, N.D., 242 Sider, Theodore, 8 Silber, Laura, 236 Simonek, Stefan, 105 Slavonia, 158–59, 191n6, 193n22 Slovenia, 9, 11, 24, 177–78, 182–83, 189, 189n1 ambivalent cultural position, 147 Illyrian Province, 150 influence of French culture, 150 German and Italian cultures, 149 Habsburg Monarchy/Empire, 150–52 language equality, 150 related to the Balkans, 148 Smith, Barry, 234–35 Socrates, 270n50 Soja, Edward, 6, 8, 23–24 Sokollu (Sokolovi#), Mehmet, 119, 130 Stachel, Peter, 127, 141n9 Stalin, Joseph, 25, 301n12 Stepinac, Alojz, 21 Stern, Martin, 157 Stoffel, Hans-Peter, 144n40 Stoj%i#, Mile, 145n42 Strabo (Greek historian), 7 Stratimirovi#, Stefan, 82n3 Strauss, Richard, 191n13 Sugar, Peter, 85n31, 91, 98, 113, 140n5, 141n16, 142n25, 205 Svevo, Italo, 144n40 Szondi, Peter, 52, 63, 82n7 Szücs, Jenö, 2–4, 10, 25, 30, 127 Táncsics, Mihály, 84n23 Tanner, Marie, 280 Thompson, Bruce, 275–76 Thucydides, 35, 43n13 Timms, Edward, 174, 209, 222–23 Tito, Josip Broz, 20, 24–25, 101–02, 138, 148 cult of the leader, 289, 292–97, 301nn10&12 documentary film footage, 290–91, 296

Index influence of Habsburg Monarchy/Empire, 298–99 “personality principle,” 273 split with Stalin, 299 Todorova, Nikolaeva Mariia, 2, 4–10, 86–89, 103, 140n4, 147 Transleithania, 84n22 Trotsky, Leon, 25 Tu"man, Franjo, 18, 21, 247, 268n36 Tumler, Franz, 170 Turrini, Peter, 33 Uhl, Heidemarie, 140n2 Valéry, Paul, 266n19 Váry, András, 159 Vergil: Aeneid, 300n3 Vienna, 1, 5, 15n6, 30–31 Josefstadt (eighth district), 32–33 Ottoman siege (1683), 46 role in Central Europe, 24–25 theater tradition, 53–54, 83n9 Villari, Lucio, 144n40 Vojvodina, 9, 24, 27–31, 43n6, 47, 80, 83n16, 273–74, 292 compared to Bosnia-Herzegovina, 137–39 linguistic and cultural diversity, 55–57, 61 marginalized between Vienna and Belgrade, 54 populations in 1848, 83n10 revolution of 1848, 70–71, 74–77, 84n22, 85n26 Wachtel, Andrew Baruch, 300n1 Wallas, Armin, 182 Wank, Solomon, 154 Weiß, Gerhard, 159–61, 191n6 White, Hayden, 145n43, 240 Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany, 215 Wilpert, Gero von, 192n15 Wodak, Ruth, 281–82 women, 234–35 World War I, 130, 199, 214, 223, 230, 264nn8&10 World War II, 10, 94, 130, 199 the former Yugoslavia, 9–13, 18, 24–32, 37, 42, 138 asynchrony as origin of wars, 248 common identity, 101–02 communist regime, 20, 40, 105, 152, 294–96, 300n6, 301n12 contradictions, 23 cult of the leader, 289, 292 cultural multibelonging, 38–40, 249, 299 “elected the war,” 249 ethnic divisions, 153, 249 imaginary space in nature, 253 influence of Habsburg Monarchy/Empire, 101, 249, 273–74, 299 Liberalism and democracy, 249

329

330

Do the Balkans Begin in Vienna? Ottoman Empire, 249, 273, 299 meaning of name, 182 media reports on the wars, 196, 250, 268nn33&34 most famous novel, 118, 144n40 national autonomy under Tito, 274, 298–99 national identity, 95 NATO intervention (1999), 42n3, 253 original idea of, 25 Pioneer organization, 301n10 poetry, 294 post-communist era, 301nn9&12 reconciliation, 256–58 solution for violence, tensions and contradictions, 131–32, 249 supranational identity, 300n2 wars and dissolution (1990-2001), 24, 35–36, 41, 81, 94, 131, 137, 143n30, 148, 190n3, 235–37, 268n32, 297–99

Zalaznik, Mira Miladinovi#, 182 Zöllner, Erich, 199 Zorn, Christa, 213 &i$ek, Slavoj, 283

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