Liminal Balkans

Ne, kažem.Znam, kad kažem „ne“, to je to s nama, čist račun, rekli smo, karte na stolu, vino, keksi, humor – presuhi; klima, poljupci, zemlja za cvijeće – prevlažni. Dogovori umjesto sapunica kao kod drugih. Ne gubimo vrijeme na stvari koje nikoga ne zanimaju, čak ih ni na televiziji ne gledamo, nemamo televizor, imamo pametnijeg posla, i zabavljamo se jer znamo da se svijet ne može spasiti, mi smo spašeni samo privremeno, vremena je malo i nikada ne bismo skočili, ali osjećali smo se tako živima dok su nam se noge klatile preko ograde na terasi zgrade. Gledala sam vrhove svojih tenisica, stražnja svjetla automobila koji su se tamo dolje redali jedan za drugim poput crvenih mrava, gurali se u kolonama kroz uske ulice, noge mi još nikada nisu djelovale toliko kratko.Kao na moru na madracu na napuhavanje, rekla sam i ugrizla se za jezik, koji je viski razvezao jer nisi izgledao kao da imaš madrac na napuhavanje.Samo te voda nosi kad padneš, objasnio si, zrak te ne nosi, a ipak si bio tak...

Beginning with the concept of "nesting orientalism" introduced by Milica Bakić-Hayden in the sense of patterns of representation used to describe the Other by all ethnic groups in former Yugoslavia, this paper examines four views of "nesting balkanism" in post-Yugoslav literature. First, there is a chronotopic view from the post-Yugoslav exile back to the past, in which the Balkans function as a contextual synonym for the "former homeland," always used in a context of "war," "violence," "primitivism," "disorder" and "cruelty". The second view refers to several Slovenian authors, starting with Slavoj Žižek, Aleš Debeljak and the young novelist Goran Vojnović, who show specific balkanistic representation connected with sevdah and turbofolk music. The third view is connected with travelling and trains, as a frequent topic of orientalistic representation inherited from the Orient Express novels. Finally, the fourth view draws on examples from Dubravka Ugrešić’s descriptions of her "fellow-...

In Croatia, the political changes involving most of Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s included a war fought between 1991 and 1995. This paper aims, by examining the press releases and newspaper articles published in the Italian daily La Stampa in 1995, to show how this influential newspaper worked on shaping Italian public opinion about the war in Croatia, and to examine the extent to which well-rooted stereotypes about the Balkans played a role in the process. The application of the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis on the material has confirmed the occurrence of stereotypes expressed through several types of polarized representations, for example, the one between the good (Italy/Europe/West) and the bad (Croatia/the Balkans – associated with “primitive” nationalism and chaos). It has also shown that Italy (as part of Europe), largely saw itself as the “appointed” Western civilized neighbour towards one of its Balkan neighbours, Croatia, and worked on trying, as To...

“C'mon, let's go people, it's the coppers,” she would shout sometimes, out of the blue, but for the most part, Gracijela was saying things to herself on a loop and dragging her feet in shabby men's shoes. The day was cut off by a sharp siren – an air raid. On that note, all the doors opened. People came out of lunch-infused kitchens and headed towards our street. With her hair combed, Mrs. Doma straightened her skirt and calmly locked her green wooden door. Jelka limped fast from her street, so they met at the corner and walked together. Old men, Schmatte and Owl, both awarded the People's Liberation Movement medals for serving in the Second World War, tapped their canes across their rain-soaked courtyards. The 48 Prosciutto walked slowly with hands behind his back and seemingly indifferent, just going out for a walk, no intention of hiding from the planes. He was just passing through the street and saying hi to the neighbors: “You good, Mrs. Jele?”“All right, all right, Mr. Schmatte.”

Onoga dana kad sam navršila osam godina, moja sestra – koja nije podnosila da i na sekundu maknu pogled s nje – iskapila je cijelu šalicu izbjeljivača. Abi je imala tri godine. Prvo se osmjehnula, možda baš od gađenja, zatim je nabrala lice u preplašenu grimasu bola. Kad je mama ugledala praznu šalicu kako joj visi iz ruke, problijedjela je kao i ona.„Abi-moj-bože”, bilo je sve što je mama rekla. „Abi-moj-bože.” I još je prošlo nekoliko sekundi prije nego što se pokrenula.Prodrmala ju je za ramena, ali Abi nije reagirala. Povikala je na nju, ali Abi ni tada nije reagirala. Otrčala je do telefona i nazvala tatu, a kad je dotrčala natrag, Abi je i dalje stajala, sa šalicom što joj je visjela iz ruke. Mama joj je istrgnula šalicu i bacila je u sudoper. Otvorila je hladnjak, izvadila mlijeko i nalila ga u čašu. Zagledala se u čašu, potom je pogledala Abi pa uopet čašu te je na kraju bacila i čašu u sudoper. Tata, koji je radio jako blizu kuće, smjesta je stigao, ali mama je svejedno stigla...

5 June 192312 June 192317 June 192319 June 192319 June 1923Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow in 1892 and began to publish in her teens, to multiple good reviews by Russian literary critics. She was a working contemporary of Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak and Rainer Maria Rilke, all of whom were important to her as rival, lover, correspondent and mentor, respectively, and as they should have been, in her view, from time to time, as her views of their roles in her life were changeable.Tsvetaeva left the Soviet Union in 1922 to reunite with her husband after a four-year wartime separation during the Russian Revolution. She lived as an exile in Berlin, Prague and Paris through 1939. The period of exile in Prague, lasting from August of 1922 to May of 1925, was a very productive period, with new poems arriving every other day or so, or sometimes two poems a day, until her son Georgy (nicknamed Mur) was born in 1924, when the poems slowed to a relative trickle.