Depicting Borders: Representations of Bosnia in the Literary Works
of Three Native
Bosnian Writers
Mitani, Keiko Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and
Sociology, The University of Tokyo
Abstract
As a cultural space, Bosnia was formed on the borders of Western
and Eastern Chris- tianity, Islam, and Judaism. Religious diversity
in the heartland of the Balkans did not cause serious conflict, but
rather fostered coexistence, until the end of the Ottoman regime.
However, the nationalism that emerged in surrounding areas during
the nine- teenth century penetrated Bosnia, where the question of
national belongings became increasingly pressing in the twentieth
century. The collapse of Yugoslavia under the slogan of the
“brotherhood and unity” was followed by war; multiethnic Bosnia
disinte- grated into three ethnic components, those of the
Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs, and two political entities, the
Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Republika
Srpska.
This paper deals with the representation of Bosnia in the literary
works of native Bosnian writers; it focuses on the polysemic
feature of “the border” and reveals that the diverse portrayal of
Bosnia in these works reflects each writer’s experience and the
more general social situation.
In his short story, “Letter from the Year 1920,” Ivo Andri presents
Bosnia as “a land of hatred” and profiles its religious diversity
as generating intercultural conflicts. The depiction of Bosnia as
demarked by multiple cultural borders is characteristic of Andric’s
compositions; this short story reveals a striking picture of such a
Bosnia, one that echoes the writer’s experience in the two
disastrous wars of the first half of the twen- tieth century.
Hasan, a character in Meša Selimovi’s novel The Dervish and Death,
which was published in 1966, describes the Bosnian as an
in-between, unfinished creature, deprived of any particular
cultural identity. In this depiction, Hasan discloses the inter-
nal state of Selimovi, an atheistic communist who values
traditional Muslim culture.
Keywords: Bosnian literature, Andri, Selimovi, Karahasan,
Borders
18
At the same time, the Bosnian depicted by Hasan reflects the
condition of the Muslims of Yugoslavia until the end of 1960s, when
they remained a vague ethnic group without any official
nationality.
Andris character Maks Levenfeld, who depicts Bosnia as a land of
hatred, reap- pears in Devad Karahasan’s “Letter from the Year
1993,” first published in 1996. In contrast to Andris Maks,
Karahasan’s character describes Bosnia as a multicultural space in
which people “jealously” maintain their cultural diversity. Bosnia
here is concep- tualized as a domain of intercultural
communication, and the borders once featured by Andri as dividing
lines are profiled as interstitial spheres that create a society
with inter- nal cultural diversity. By reversing the picture
represented in the letter of Andris Maks, Karahasan tries to
recover his Bosnia, whose society is balanced by cultural
diversity.
The different presentations of Bosnia in three writers correspond
to diverse concep- tualizations of “the border”—Andris as dividing
lines; Selimovis as in-between places where people without clear
identification dwell; and Karahasans as interstitial spaces that
can generate intercultural relationships. Each also reflects a
different phase in the history of Bosnia, from the time immediately
after World War II, through the Yugoslav regime, to the collapse of
the multinational state.
1989Šahrijarov prsten1994Sara i Serafina
1999Izvještaji iz tamnog vilajeta2007Sjeme smrti2013
Dnevnik selidbe33
34
33 Sarajevo. Exodus of A City. Kodansha Globe, 1995 34 178–187 35
1922–2010
26
njegovanje razlike
‘’
’
……
27
38
‘’‘’
4 4 4 4
‘’
39 sedada A.…… …… Hangi, 1906, 21
40 25
41 19 42 Selimovi 1983, 353 43 ibid.
29
44
45
4748
49 60
1908
50
100
……
1
44 1993 45 Jergovi, M. (1994) Sarajevski Marlboro. Zagreb: Durieux
46 Hemon, A. (2002) Nowhere man. London: Picador 47 Hemon, A.
(2013) The book of my lives. London: Picador 48 1992
49 Hemon, A. (2008) The Lazarus Project. London: Picador 50
1908Roth, Kraus, 1998
30
100
1966 1972 1982 1983 1997 /2008 2013 2012 7–39
JJV.A.1995
2013 Arsenijevi, D. (2010), Forgotten Future: the politics of
poetry in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Baden-Baden:
Nomos. Bhabha, H.K. (1994), The Location of Culture. London:
Routledge. Bringa, T. (1995), Being Muslim the Bosnian way.
Identity and community in a central Bosnian village.
Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. Hangi, A. (1906), ivot
i obiaji Muslimana u Bosni i Hercegovini. Sarajevo: Naklada Daniela
A. Kajona. Hawkesworth, C. (1984), Ivo Andri. Bridge between East
and West. London: Athlone Press. Hodel, R. (2011), Andri i
Selimovi. Forme aktuelnosti. Sarajevo: Dobra knjiga. Jakiša, M.
(2009), Bosnientexte. Ivo Andri, Meša Selimovi, Devad Karahasan.
Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang. Karahasan, D. (1995), Sarajevo, exodus
of a city. New York: Kodansha International. (2008), Pripovijedati
grad. Sarajevska sveska. br. 21–22. 156–178. Kazaz, E. (2004),
Bošnjaki roman XX vijeka. Zagreb-Sarajevo: Zoro. Langacker, R.W.
(1987), Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. I. Theoretical
prerequisites. Stanford, CA. Lovrenovi, I. (2001), Bosnia. A
cultural history. New York: New York University Press. Maek, I.
(2000), War within. Everyday life in Sarajevo under siege. Uppsala:
Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. (2009), Sarajevo under Siege.
Anthropology in wartime. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press. Malcom, N. (1996), Bosnia. A short history. London:
Papermac. Mønnesland, S. (ed.) (2005), Jezik u Bosni i Hercegovini.
Saraevo-Oslo. Nehrig, G.-D. (2005), Razvoj standardnog jezika za
vrijeme austro-ugarske monarhije, in Mønnesland (ed.), 303–
319. Okuka, M. (2005), Knjievni jezici bosanskih Srba. in
Mønnesland (ed.), 260–299. Roth, W., Kraus, J. (1998), An
Accidental Anarchist. San Francisco, CA: Rudi Pub. Selimovi, M.
(2006 [1976]), Sjeanja. Memoarska proza. Sabrana dela u seset
knjiga. Beograd. (1983) Krug. Beograd: BIGZ. Šami, M. (1962),
Istorijski izvori Travnike hronike Ive Andria i njihova umjetnika
transpozicija. Sarajevo:
Veselin Masleša.
31
Vajzovi, H. (2005), Alhamijado knjievnosti. in Mønnesland (ed.),
175–215. Wachtel, A. (1998), Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation.
Literature and cultural politics in Yugoslavia.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Weller, S.C., Romney, A.K.
(1988), Systematic Data Collection. Newbury Park, Calif: Sage
Publications. , .. (1993), . .
.. 18, 45.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1961/press.html