Analysis
Slavic tribes in Southeastern Europe developed their cultures separately beginning in the tenth century. Only in the second decade of the twentieth century were they united in one state called Yugoslavia. Even then, Yugoslav literatures went their own ways despite the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural kinship. For that reason, it is best to discuss fiction of Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, and Macedonian literatures separately.
Serbian fiction did not fully develop, or show worthwhile results, until the nineteenth century. The main reason is that the Serbs were militarily occupied by the Turks from the end of the fourteenth century almost to the middle of the nineteenth century. Little literature, except for oral epics, was possible. The earlier forms resembling fiction, biographies of saints and kings, the folk epics, and the translations of medieval novels were either not novels or not original creations and therefore belong to the prehistory of the Serbian novel. The Serbs, who had migrated to Austrian lands in the north, slowly began to revive cultural activity in the late eighteenth century. The first novelist of significance was Milovan Vidaković (1780-1841), a writer of limited skill but unlimited ambition. Imitating both the European baroque adventure novel and the Greek love novels of late antiquity, he wrote several of his own that, though of meager artistic value, were very popular with the readers. The ensuing Romanticism, lasting approximately four decades (1830-1870), emphasized poetry and drama and showed little interest in the novel. The Serbian novel came into its own in the second half of the nineteenth century. The writer most responsible for this development was Jakov Ignjatović (1822-1889). He began by writing historical novels but soon turned to the realistic depiction of the life of his people in Austro-Hungary. Even though he wrote most of his novels when Romanticism was still dominating Serbian letters, it was his interest in everyday life and his attention to minute detail (which he acquired during his stay in Paris and through contacts with French realists) that made him the founder of the realist novel in Serbian literature. He possessed sharp observation, keen understanding of the life around him, and boundless energy. His glaring artistic weaknesses prevented him from becoming an outstanding novelist in the mold of Honoré de Balzac. Nevertheless, Ignjatović’s works formed the firm basis for further development of the Serbian novel.
It was not until the last decade of the nineteenth century that other realist novelists appeared. For the most part, they depicted the Serbian village, following the lead of the short story. Furthermore, they tended to emphasize their own region, drawing from its rich folklore and thus bringing that region into the limelight. These writers—Janko Veselinović (1862-1905), Simo Matavulj (1852-1908), Stevan Sremac (1855-1906), and Svetolik Ranković (1863-1899)—brought the Serbian novel closer to the European realistic novel, though not to the same artistic level. They were also very much concerned with social problems, which began to preoccupy the Serbian society, and through their psychological probings they revealed the influence of the nineteenth century Russian realists.
In the twentieth century, the fragile realistic tradition continued while new modernistic tendencies began to make inroads, not dramatic at first but increasingly evident. While Borisav Stanković (1876-1927) and IvoĆipiko (1869-1923) also wrote about provincial regions, Milutin Uskoković (1884-1915) attempted to write a city novel about Belgrade, in contrast to the existing literature, which was almost entirely about either village or small-town life. The true modernists, however, appeared after World War I, spurred by their traumatic war experiences and keeping in step with the dramatic changes in their country. A noticeably enhanced artistic value of their novels, imbued with a pronounced poetic atmosphere, as manifested in the novels of Rastko Petrović (1898-1949) and Miloš Crnjanski (1893-1977), finally brought the Serbian novel to the level of world fiction after a century of lagging behind.
The culmination of this advance is embodied in the three novels by Ivo Andrić (1892-1975) published in 1945. His magnum opus, Na Drini ćuprija (1945; The Bridge on the Drina, 1959), combines the epic tradition with modern approaches to the novel, notably those of psychological penetration and mythmaking. Andrić stands at the watershed of the preceding century and the contemporary period. After World War II, the Serbian novel was characterized by increased output, improved artistic quality, and the tradition adapting to developments in other literatures.
The leading contemporary novelists are Dobrica Ćosić, Meša Selimović, Danilo Kiš, and Milorad Pavić.Ćosić (born 1921) deals in the four-volume Vreme smrti (1972-1979; A Time of Death, 1978; Reach to Eternity, 1980; South to Destiny, 1981; also known as This Land, This Time, 1983 [includes Into the Battle, A Time of Death, Reach to Eternity, and South to Destiny]) with the momentous event in Serbian history, World War I, and with the struggle of the Serbian army against overwhelming enemies. In the three volumes of Vreme zla (1985-1990; a time of evil), he dissects the experience of Serbs with Communism, tracing the painful road from the early idealism of true believers to the internecine fight symptomatic of totalitarian movements. In the two-volume Vreme vlasti (1996, 2007; a time of power), he follows that experience to the next logical step, the inevitable corruption of power and painful betrayal of initial goals. Even thoughĆosić bases his novels on historical and political themes, he creates strong, credible characters and builds skillful plots. He represents best the neorealistic trend in contemporary Serbian novels, using the political scene as a background to underscore the need for morality in everyday life.
In one of the best contemporary Serbian novels, Derviš i smrt (1966; Death and the Dervish, 1996), Selimović (1910-1982) grapples with some of the basic ethical problems. Drawing from his personal experience—the loss of his brother at the hands of his Communist brethren—he weaves a powerful story of love and loyalty. His philosophical musings and psychological probing lead to a charming fusion of the East and the West and to a thoughtful quest for the meaning of life within a Muslim frame of mind.
Among the younger writers, Kiš (1935-1989) impressed critics and readers, both at home and abroad, with his novels Bašta, pepeo (1965; Garden, Ashes, 1975) and Grobnica za Borisa Davidoviča (1976; A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, 1978). In his early works he dealt with the tragic loss of his Jewish father at the hands of the Nazis, creating in him an almost mythical character. In his later novels he used a modernistic approach to deal with burning political and ideological questions of the time. A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, consisting of seven loosely related stories yet with an organic unity, follows the crisscrossing paths of several victims of the totalitarian Communist ideology. It was illogical to Kiš to oppose one form of dictatorship, Nazism, while disregarding or even supporting its sibling, Communism. In Enciklopedija mrtvih (1983; The Encyclopedia of the Dead, 1989), which is similarly a collection of nine loosely related stories but is treated also as a novel, he deals mostly with the syndrome of death, intertwining documentary and fictitious material. Kiš’s insistence on authenticity of his subject matter, which he achieved by meticulously studying historical documents, led to a peculiar mixture of fact and fiction, transformed by the author’s unmistakable artistry into internationally acclaimed works of fiction.
Pavić (born 1929), a leading representative of postmodernism in Serbian fiction, achieved significant international success with his Hazarski rečnik: Roman leksikon u 100,000 reči (1984; Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words, 1988) as well as with other novels. In Dictionary of the Khazars, Pavić employs dazzling flights of imagination, spanning centuries and bringing together a colorful array of characters, in order to show that reality and fantasy are constantly interchanged and that their borderlines are therefore deliberately blurred. This pervasive relativity is underscored by the fact that the story is presented in three versions—the Christian, the Islamic, and the Hebrew. Laden with many possible interpretations, the novel is a perfect example of postmodernism, which has taken a strong hold among Serbian novelists. Pavić continues in a similar vein in Predeo slikan čajem (1988; Landscape Painted with Tea, 1990), and Unutrašnja strana vetra: Ili, Roman o Heri i Leandru (1991; The Inner Side of the Wind: Or, The Novel of Hero and Leander, 1993), using striking metaphors, similes, paradoxes, hyperboles, maxims, and other tropes, making the novel just as complex yet delightful to read. Pavić has become most representative of the present trends in Serbian long fiction.
Other significant novelists are Mihailo Lalić (1914-1992), Branko Ćopić (1915-1984), Aleksandar Tišma (1924-2003), Miodrag Bulatović (1930-1991), Dragoslav Mihailović (born 1930), Borislav Pekić (1930-1992), Živojin Pavlović (1933-1998), and Slobodan Selenić (1933-1995). Each has contributed at least one memorable novel, such as Lalić’s Lelejska gora (1952, revised 1962, 1990; The Wailing Mountain, 1965), Bulatović’s Crveni petao leti prema nebu (1959; The Red Cock Flies to Heaven, 1962), Tišma’s Upotreba čoveka (1976; The Use of Man, 1988), Mihailović’s Kad su cvetale tikve(1968; When Pumpkins Blossomed, 1971), Pekić’s Vreme čuda (1965; The Time of Miracles, 1976), and Selenić’s Ubistvo s predumišljajem (Premeditated Murder, 1996). While following their own paths, they have contributed to a sophisticated, innovative, and lasting brand of fiction. They are not reluctant to explore the formalistic possibilities of the modern novel while having their characters persistently cope with the dilemmas and difficulties of everyday life.
Serbian novelists of a younger generation are preoccupied with the difficult situation in which Serbs find themselves, especially after the war in Bosnia. Even though writers such as Pavić and Pekić tend to use the extraneous events only as a distant background for their novels, others use the everyday events as direct stimuli. Among the more successful ones are Vladimir Arsenijević (born 1965) and Radoslav Petković (born 1953). Arsenijević enjoyed great success with the first of his five novels, U potpalublju (1995; In the Hold, 1996), in which he uses the war between the Serbs and the Croats in 1991 as a background governing the fate of all the characters involved and their efforts to avoid being drawn into and destroyed in the war’s vortex. Arsenijević does not limit himself to the depiction of the war; he delves into Belgrade’s drug culture, black marketeering, and crime, along with desperate flights into emigration of the young people and suicides. The author’s control over the subject matter, his subliminal moral messages, and the novel’s high literary quality make it not only excellent literature but also a harbinger of a new spirit in Serbian fiction. The novel was translated into twenty languages, making Arsenijević one of the most widely read Serbian writers outside his native country.
Petković, in his most successful novel, Sudbina i komentari (1994; destiny and comments), traces in a wide sweep covering more than three hundred years the destinies of several characters to establish the connections between events in the past and the present. Using a postmodernist technique, he probes the relationship between history and literature, thus lending the modern Serbian novel a much wider and more universal scope.