Krinka Vidakovic-Petrov

The reasons for researching the works of Yugoslav author Magda Bošan Simin are several: (1) her novel When the Sour Cherries Bloom (1958) was probably the  rst literary representation of the Holocaust written by a woman author in Yugoslavia; (2) Bošan Simin represents the Holocaust in multiple formats (documentary prose, memoir, autobiographical novel); (3) the book Why They Said Nothing: Mother and Daughter on One and the Same War (2009, English edition 2015) is a narrative comprised of texts written by both Magda Bošan Simin as a Holocaust survivor and her daughter Nevena Simin as a sec- ond-generation Holocaust survivor. The research focuses on Holocaust survi- vors and their post-Holocaust children, issues of memory in Holocaust repre- sentation, types of memory, memory mediation, author’s intentionality, gender and identity issues.

ROMANI NAĐE TESIĆ: AUTOFIKCIJA, ROD I FILM

U radu nastojimo da predstavimo dela autorke Nađe Tešić (1939, Užice – 2014, Njujork) pozicionirajući ih u kontekst književnosti imigranata koju su autori srpskog porekla pisali na engleskom jeziku. Nađa Tešić je bila jedina upečatljiva ženska spisateljica među svojim kolegama Čarlsom Simićem i Stivom Tešićem. Rad se dalje bavi tekstovima Borac u senci (1989) i Umreti u Čikagu (2010), koji su okarakterisani kao autobiografski romani. Analiza ovih dela potcrtava sledeće teme: autofikciju, rod i film. Tekst nastoji da pokaže kako se ova dva romana objavljuju kao autofikcija, kako se brojna pitanja koja se tiču roda, a koja su implicitna u narativu, slivaju u portret umetnice kao mlade žene, kao i da identifikuje brojne funkcije filma kao autoreferentne vrednosti autorkinog stila.

Ratnik u slici i reči is a recently discovered Serbian-American illustrated magazine published in the USA, first in New York and later in Detroit. It was a semi-monthly launched on March 1, 1916. The editor was Plavša Leskovac, who also owned the Ratnik Publishing Company where it was printed.
This publication, advertised as  “The only Serbo-Croatian semi-monthly illustrated magazine in America”, sought to address the Serbian and Croatian immigrant reading public in the USA. Therefore, early issues were printed in the Roman alphabet used mostly by Croatians, but also Serbs. However, since most Serbian immigrants were reluctant to “read and support newspapers and books unless they were printed in the Cyrillic alphabet”, the editor decided to print the magazine in Cyrillic with “the only exception of articles on South Slavs (Yugoslavs) and Slavs in general” that were printed in the Roman alphabet.
This paper seeks to analyze the editorial policy of this publication, the contents of the contributions, the typology of the latter, the relationship between textual and graphic material, advertisements, as well as the position of the magazine in the framework of Serbian immigrant periodical publications in the USA of that period.

The Whetstone, Aleksandar Petrov’s second collection of poems (1979), is the most experimental book in his poetic opus. The discontinuity with the poetics of his first poetry book is indicated by several markers: the shift from an apocalyptic to a ludic perspective, the forging of a metapoetic framework, the exploration of the semantic potential of language, the use of various levels of intertextuality, the focus on public life (social and political as well as artistic), the contextualization of poetry (social and political rebellion, civil rights, sexual revolution, Cold War, Detante, criticism of socialism, new art, new media), and the poetic elaboration of autobiography (transformation of biographical places into poetic toponyms of varying status).
The Whetstone intertwines three semantic threads – poetic, erotic and political – against the background of two unifying ideas: (1) that of interacting powers of articulating and subverting order, and (2) that of freedom, identified with poetry and eroticism, subverting and circumventing values of the establishment imposed by various forms and degrees of repression.
The book begins with stepping into ludic space and ends with stepping out. The Whetstone may be considered as a representative of what Petrov himself has called “the humorous avant-garde” in modern Serbian poetry, a poetic type relying on humour, irony and the absurd. This book also emphasizes the premise (forwarded by R. Barthes) that it is impossible to live outside “the text”. The relationship between body and text is based on three types of bodies: the erotic (represented by the human, gendered, sexual body), the abstract (represented by the cube, a geometrical body), and the symbolic (the sphere, the perfect both organic and inorganic form, represented by cosmic bodies, the sun, the natural apple, and the human inner eye able to see dreams, fantasies, imaginary constructs, illusions, and emotions).
The analysis of The Whetstone’s macrostructure (organization in poetic cycles), individual poems (their structure, themes, motifs, poetic techniques, imagery) and the biographical and social context provide the elements for the consideration of the relationship between body and text in Petrov’s book. Special reference is made to the analogy with visual images of the Belgian avant-garde painter R. Magritte expressing the continuum of contradictory elements (body-dress, substance-form, living-dead, private-public, covered-uncovered) and the use of the oxymoron and metaphor.

Examining lesser known historical events about the Spanish siege and Ottoman resiege of Herceg Novi in 1537–1538 and comparing it to the bugarštica ballad from the Eastern Adriatic, the author investigates the process of folksong creation and the relationship between fact and fiction. It has been argued that this particular event inspired the historical background of the song " How the Natives of Perast Punished the Spanish Duke Don Karlo Who Disgraced Two Orphan Maidens of Perast in the Year 1537 ". However , historical facts were changed and adapted according to a specific local song tradition. Although celebrated in literature, the heroic Spanish resistance in Herceg Novi failed to carve deep mark in Spanish popular memory, being episodic and on the margin of Spanish mainstream history. On the other hand, in the bugarštica ballad the historical elements were reduced or disregarded, the context was changed and the military conflict was presented as a social one. The author shows that the transition from history to fiction (pseudohistory) is parallel to the shift from epic to ballad form, and concludes that the bugarštica in question was not contemporary with the historical episode of the Spanish presence in Herceg Novi.

J. A. Kolonomos (born 1922) is a Sephardic author from Bitola/Monastir (Macedonia). She has published various books, but the focus of the analysis is on Monastir sin Djudios (2006) i.e. the English version published under the title Monastir without Jews. Recollections of a Jewish Partisan in Macedonia (2008). The latter is important as one of the very few first-hand accounts of the Holocaust in Macedonia; a unique example of Sephardic women's writing in Macedonia; as an expression of the collective memory of a lost community; as an expression of the subjective and personal aspect of individual experience; as a literary text. The article highlights the literary quality of some segments and shows how the feminine perspective is articulated in the narrative. It also argues that this essentially eclectic narrative moves from the genre of memoir/autobiography towards the genre of memorial book.

The article is dedicated to the research of riddles from the oral tradition of the Macedonian Sephardim, specifically the corpus collected by the American linguist Max A. Luria in Monastir in 1927 (published in 1930). The analysis is focused on various aspects of the riddle as a minor folkloric genre, the status of this genre in the Sephardic folkloric system, and the comparison of Sephardic riddles from Monastir with Serbian riddles (including Kosovo and Metohija).

The research is focused on various aspects of gender in traditional, pre-modern society, specifically the Sephardic community of Macedonia prior to the 20th century. The analysis of social hierarchies and the interaction between religious and secular categories, public and private/family domains, symbolic spaces within the home, especially the kitchen as a gender-marked space involving food and cooking (transition from “raw” to ”cooked”) leads to the topic of food (for the body and the spirit) and women. A selection of proverbs containing food and/or women motifs will be analyzed to see how various identities (Jewish and gender marked) and perspectives (male and female) interact in order to articulate the overall meaning of the text as a representative of tradition wisdom.

The book edited by K. Vidakovic Petrov is about Serbia in the Great War 1914-1918, the relations between the Kingdom of Serbia and the United States and the role played by the Serbian diaspora in America during the war. It includes sections on diplomatic relations, the war waged for public opinion (mainstream American as well as that of immigrants from Austria-Hungary in America), the volunteer movement, humanitarian activities, the role of clergy in war, women in war and the theme of art and war.

Кринка Видаковић Петров Фото П. Павловић Srbi u Americi i njihova periodika naslov je najnovije knjige Krinke Vidaković Petrov, objavljene nedavno u izdanju Instituta za književnost i umetnost iz Beograda. Reč je o prvom tomu studije koja, prema rečima autorke, poznati istoričar i kritičar književnosti, ima za cilj da pruži pregled srpske periodike u razdoblju 1893–1941, s naglaskom na godine pre Prvog svetskog rata. Knjiga " Srbi u Americi i njihova periodika " vrvi dragocenim podacima o pokretačima listova, njihovim urednicima i o uslovima, kako kaže naša sagovornica, u kojima se srpska periodika u Americi razvijala. Koliko je obrađivana tema srpske periodike u iseljeništvu, da li su joj više pažnje posvećivali istraživači iz matice ili Amerike? U istraživanju periodičkih publikacija, novina, časopisa, godišnjaka, u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama bio je učinjen prvi korak izradom bibliografija, često nepotpunih, posebno kada je u pitanju rana periodika, jer je ona većini istraživača bila i ostala delimično ili sasvim nedostupna. Domaći bibliografi, Vuk Dragović u " Srpskoj štampi između dva rata 1915–1945 (1956) " i Milica Kisić i Branka Bulatović u " Srpskoj štampi 1768–1995 (1996) " obrađivali su je u okviru srpske periodike uopšte, dok su američki bibliografi Robert P. Gaković i Milan Radović u " Serbs in the United States and Canada. A Comprehensive Bibliography (1976) " to učinili u okviru opšte bibliografije Srba u Severnoj Americi. Suštinski je, ipak, ostao neistražen taj značajni " kontinent " srpske kulture u dijaspori. Priča o srpskoj periodici u Americi počinje u San Francisku, gde je 1880. osnovana prva izrazito srpska organizacija – Srpsko-crnogorsko literarno i dobrotvorno društvo. Ono je 1883. pokrenulo prvi srpski list u Americi – " Slobodu ". Od tada do danas izlazilo je više od sto srpskih periodičkih publikacija, koje pružaju obilje građe za proučavanje svih oblasti istorije srpskog iseljeništva u Americi. Kakav je, kroz period od jednog veka, bio odnos matice i iseljenika? Tokom devetnaestog veka pa do uspostavljanja Jugoslavije većina srpskih iseljenika u Americi poticala je iz krajeva pod tuđinskom vlašću, a tek manji broj iz slobodne Srbije, koja je tada bila zemlja imigracije, a ne emigracije. Tadašnja Srbija nije mogla da pomaže iseljenicima, jer je bila relativno siromašna država, zaokupljena borbom za oslobođenje, a potom borbom za opstanak i ujedinjenje. Iseljenici su u svakom pogledu bili prepušteni sami sebi, jer o njima nisu brinule ni Austrougarska, kao država iseljavanja, ni SAD