The years which Bosnia-Herzegovina spent under Austrian-Hungarian rule (and the years I shall be looking at here fit neatly into the middle of the 1878–1908 pe-riod of the Occupation) were marked by extremely dynamic processes of nation al identity formation amongst the ethnic groups living on the Bosnian soil, and these processes have to a large extent defined the modern identities of the three main ethnic groups living in Bosnia today: Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. As Stijn Vervaet has shown in his study of the relationship between Austro-Hungarian co-lonial discourse and the formation of national identities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the development of identity formation can be particularly well observed in the rich material of the literary and cultural journals, which were flourishing at this time.1 It is also important that these processes, although well under way before the Occupation, were also fairly new: when the Bosnian Franciscan and Bosnia’s first travel writer Ivan Franjo Jukić was travelling in Bosnia in the 1840s (so, only some 30 to 40 years before the Austro-Hungarian Empire occupied Bosnia), he divided up its population not into Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks (as they were already star-ting to identify themselves at the time of the Occupation), but, according to their religion, into “kristjani” (Catholics), “rišćani” (Orthodox) and “Turci” (Turks, or Muslims), considering all of them as Bosnians (or, rather, “Bošnjaci”, Bosniaks).2 Therefore, Austro-Hungarian attempts to thwart the budding Serbian and Cro-atian nationalisms by encouraging the formation of an inclusive all-Bosnian na-tion were not entirely far-fetched, although they were heavily criticised by both Serbian and Croatian nationalists at the time (as well as by later Yugoslav histori-ans) as an Imperial strategy to prevent the formation of links between Croats and Serbs from Bosnia with their “motherlands” both within and outside of Imperial borders, and thus to keep these ethnic groups under firm control. The Austro-Hungarian project of the Bosnian nation seems to change its shape according to
1 Vervaet, Stijn: Centar i periferija u Austro-Ugarskoj. Dinamika izgradnje nacionalnih iden-titeta u Bosni i Hercegovini od 1878. do 1918. godine na primjeru književnih tekstova, Zagreb, Sarajevo 2013, S. 65.
2 Lešić, Zdenko: Ivan Franjo Jukić – književnik, in: Novi Izraz 39/2008, S. 66–83, here S. 68–69.
the context in which it was later viewed, and this is part of the reason why the first part of this chapter is devoted to an analysis of the secondary literature.
As for the main corpus I shall be analysing in this paper: among several impor-tant journals of greater or lesser literary inclinations and mostly clearly defined (if often complex and meandering3) national programmes (the Serbian journals Bosanska vila and Zora, Muslim/Bosniak Bošnjak, Behar, Biser and Gajret, and Franciscan/Croat journals Glasnik jugoslavenskih franjevaca and Novi prijatelj Bosne) one journal stood out: Nada (Hope), conceived by Benjámin Kállay (the omnipotent governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina at the time, otherwise the joint Finance Minister in Vienna), lavishly funded by the Land Government, artisti-cally ambitious and modern in its orientation and cosmopolitan in its outlook, effectively edited by the talented poet Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević and having as its nominal editor the ubiquitous (and clearly very able and charming, if rather devious) implementer of Kállay’s cultural policies, Kosta Hörmann. The reasons why Nada stands out are highly complex, and are to do with the conscious aim of its founders and funders to thwart the national programmes of the other journals and to provide a multicultural and supranational Imperial cultural and ideologi-cal framework for both its writers and its readership, on the one hand, as well as with the equally conscious aim of its literary editor Kranjčević to run a modern literary journal of high quality, on the other. The aim of this chapter would be to analyse at least some of the aspects of Nada’s special status amongst the literary journals of its time, and the way it functioned as a platform for performing and exhibiting multiple identities as a showcase of both Austro-Hungarian cultural superiority, as well as a platform for practicing literary and artistic modernity.
Literature Review: Artistic Superiority and Production Values as a Devious Imperial Strategy
However, before I turn to the specific examples of Nada’s handling of complex identities and modernity in the Imperial context, it is also important to note the equally complex history of scholarly (as well as popular) reception of Nada (and what it represented in the Austro-Hungarian cultural ambitions for Bos-nia) through the various historical and cultural contexts from its inception to this day. The material which illustrates the changes of viewpoints through which
3 As the best illustration for the complex and meandering nature of some of these national programmes, without the need to go into details, can serve Vervaet’s title of the chapter in his book which deals with Bosniak/Muslim national journals: “Muslimani između srpstva, hrvatstva i panislamisma” (“Muslims in between Serbdom, Croatdom and Panislamism”) (Vervaet, Centar i periferija, S. 307–331).
Nada was perceived spans several crucial stages in the development of Bos-nian-Herzegovinian identity strategies and cultural policy, interlinked with con-crete historical and political contexts, some of them Imperial, some not. I have only been able to scratch the surface of the main corpus, the nine years and the 216 issues of the journal itself,4 and have not really looked directly and system-atically at the other publications of the time (relying instead on the secondary literature which describes it). However, for my purposes, the representative first issue of the journal shall provide ample material for the kind of close analysis I wish to attempt here. The next major stage of the development of the ideas surrounding Nada are the 1970s, the era of the great monographs dedicated to the literary journals of the Austro-Hungarian period,5 with Boris Ćorić’s mon-umental „Nada“: književnoistorijska monografija (1978) providing not just very detailed cultural-historical background as well as biographical information on the major players surrounding Nada, but also establishing the need to grasp the unspoken, Socialist and Yugoslav, assumptions behind Ćorić’s interpretation of events and his assessment of their political and cultural implications. The next stage, the troubled years of the late 1980s and the early 1990s, provide two other sources, Zdenko Lešić’s Pripovjedačka Bosna I, dedicated to the development of the short story in the pre-WWI journals, and the manuscript of Josip Lešić’s biographical novel Moj Silvije, based on archival as well as published sources on Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević. Both those books, written within a few short years of each other (and whose publication or non-publication history is a curiosity in itself, which I shall not have the time to go into here), reflect to a greater or lesser extent (albeit in both cases from a strongly anti-nationalist position) the radical break with the Socialist Yugoslav past and the re-emergence of national and na-tionalist politics that the change of political regime and the wars of 1991–1995 have brought. The final stage reflects also the place where we find ourselves:
the post-war, post-Yugoslav, and still troubled, times, marked, at least within the scholarly field that interests me here, by an ironic detachment from identity pol-itics. This current period is represented in this paper by Stijn Vervaet’s already mentioned study from 2013 and Anisa Avdagić’s 2014 postcolonial and post-structuralist study of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian short story of the period as a vehicle of identity representation.6
4 I am, however, grateful to Dragan Golubović of Sarajevo’s Mediacentar, who provided me with the digitalised version of the journal. They have also digitalised, for those who wish to know, almost all of the major literary journals of the Austro-Hungarian period, and their archive of early Bosnian printed publications can be accessed (via a subscription) at: http://
www.infobiro.ba/archives/1, Letzter Zugriff: 19.5. 2020.
5 Stijn Vervaet’s bibliography is very detailed on this point.
6 Avdagić, Anisa: Narativni pregovori. BH pripovijetka u procesima evropeizacije. Diskurzivni pristup reprezentaciji identiteta, Sarajevo 2014.
So, what, firstly, can be learnt from the secondary sources? Boris Ćorić’s monograph, both in its unspoken assumptions and in its explicit statements, can teach us the following: the journal Nada was founded, as I mentioned already, at the initiative of Benjámin Kállay himself, and elaborated by Kosta Hörmann (probably the most influential administrative/cultural figure in Bosnia-Herzego-vina under Kállay’s rule7), with a two-fold (and, according to Ćorić, duplicitous) purpose of providing Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Balkans as a whole with a modern, educational, first-rate and world-class magazine which would promote progress and the arts whilst avoiding entering into national conflicts. The jour-nal was meant also to serve as a subtle propaganda vehicle for Kállay’s concept of Bosnian nationhood, and thus to minimise the influence of Croatian and Ser-bian national journals on Bosnian soil, thereby promoting Austro-Hungarian in-terests.8 Ćorić’s argumentation, based on extensive archival research, and closely reflecting the arguments of the time, is worth reproducing here in full:
Ciljeve koje je Kállay stavio pred novi časopis Hörmann je pretvorio u načela kojih će se redakcija držati pri uređivanju. Časopis će donositi priloge na strogo moralnoj os-novi, izbjegavajući svako povređivanje religiozne osjetljivosti, pa čak i svako dodirivanje religioznih pitanja. Isto tako redakcija će izbjegavati nacionalno izjašnjavanje. Neće učestvovati u nacionalnim sukobima Hrvata i Srba, ali će se koristiti svakom mo-gućnošću za isticanje bosanske individualnosti i objektivnom i dobronamjernom kritičkom ocjenom kulturnih nastojanja Hrvata i Srba, u Hrvatskoj i Srbiji, naravno, i ostalih Slavena.9
The aims which Kállay had put before the new journal were turned by Hörmann into principles which the editorial board was to follow. The journal was to publish articles on a strictly moral basis, avoiding any injury to religious sensibilities, and even any
7 Vgl. “Hormann, sada direktor Zemaljskog muzeja i urednik Glasnika Zemaljskog muzeja, našao se u ulozi promicatelja Kallayeve kulturne politike. [...] Postavljanjem za urednika Nade Hormann je postao neka vrsta ministra za prosvjetu i nauku - jer je skoro sve što se odnosilo na kulturu i nauku imao pod svojom upravom.“ (Ćorić, Boris: Nada: književnohis-torijska monografija, Sarajevo 1978, S. 137.) (“Hörmann, at this point the director of the Lands Museum [Zemaljski muzej] and the editor of its publication Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja, found himself in the role of the propagandist of Kállay’s cultural policy [...] By being placed as the chief editor of Nada, Hörmann effectively became a sort of Culture and Science Min-ister, since he had under his management almost everything that had to do with culture and science.” - All translations are mine, A.L.)
8 It is worthwhile to note at this point that Stijn Vervaet, although he tells a very similar story of the journal’s foundation and covert programme, nevertheless notes that Nada managed to rise above its assigned role as a tool of Imperial power and “contribute significantly to the cultural life in Bosnia” (Vervaet, Centar i periferija, S. 88–90).
9 Ćorić, Nada, S. 139.
touching of religious questions. The editors were also to avoid any kind of national dec-laration. It was expected to refrain from participation in the national conflicts between Croats and Serbs, but was expected instead to use any opportunity to proclaim Bosnian individuality, as well as to criticise, objectively and benevolently, cultural aspirations of Croats and Serbs, in Croatia and Serbia, of course, as well as of the other Slavs.
Moreover:
Zadaci časopisa kako ih je Kállay postavio i Kosta Hörmann u program pretvorio [...]
pokazuju jedinstvenost u koncepciji svrhe radi čijeg ostvarenja je časopis pokrenut i u koncepciji konkretnog programa koji će činiti njegov sadržaj. [...] Bosanskoj publici tre-balo je ponuditi sve ono što joj nude listovi i časopisi izvan Bosne, i to upravo sa svrhom da to isto čitateljstvo ne traži zadovoljavanje svojih duhovnih potreba na strani, odakle može doći uvijek i ono što je u suprotnosti sa bosanskom politikom. Činjenica da je Nada nastala kao rezultat potrebe čitateljstva i režima nije dovoljno isticana, a u osnovi dala je fizionomiju nacrtu časopisa i poslužila za kasniju njegovu transformaciju u kn-jiževni list, što ne bi bilo moguće izvesti da je časopis bio zasnovan na manje suptilnoj osnovi i da se u publici nije osjećala stvarna potreba upravo za književnim glasilom.10 The aims of the journal, as Kállay established them and Kosta Hörmann turned into a programme [...], show the unity between the conception of the purpose to which the journal was founded and the conception of the concrete programme which was to make up its content. [...] Bosnian reading public was to be offered all that magazines and journals outside of Bosnia had to offer, with the purpose that that public would not try to satisfy its intellectual needs elsewhere, in places where it could also come across ideas which were contrary to the policy of „Bosnianness“ [bosanska politika]. The fact that Nada was conceived as the result of the needs of both the reading public and the regime has not been stressed enough, but that has in effect given the journal’s concept its phys-iognomy, and served as a basis for its later transformation into a literary journal, which would have been impossible without the less subtle basis and without the need that the public felt precisely for a literary journal.
In short:
U tome je smisao ovog vladinog poduhvata - ponuditi kvalitet koji mora naići na prih-vaćanje i priznanje. Jednom riječju, vlast je izbjegla grubu propagandu i nudeći stvarne umjetničke vrijednosti, tražila priznanje na kulturnom i korist na političkom planu.
Ova dvoličnost vidljiva je i u organizacionom postupku oko formiranja časopisa.11 This was the aim of this government project: to offer quality which had to meet with recognition and acceptance. In a word, the government eschewed crude propaganda, and, by offering real artistic values, sought cultural recognition and political benefit.
10 Ćorić, Nada, S. 148–149.
11 Ćorić, Nada, S. 158.
This duplicity is also visible in the organisational procedures which surrounded the founding of the journal.
The “duplicity”, as Ćorić sees it, is actually manifold: Nada (“Hope”, hope, as Ćorić paraphrases Hörmann’s elaboration of the journal’s title, in national (cul-tural) progress and hope in the development of Bosnia according to Kállay’s vision)12 was to provide covert Austro-Hungarian propaganda under the cover of undoubted artistic achievement; it was to give real intellectual and spiritual nourishment to the Slav peoples of the Balkans by enlisting the cooperation of their best writers and artists in an enterprise which was to showcase the superi-ority of the ability of Austro-Hungarian Empire to provide them with just such a cultural platform; it was to enable the local cultural forces to flourish and thus, sneakily, to convince them of their need for Austro-Hungarian rule.
The unspoken assumptions behind these rather convoluted arguments are what really interests me here. I must first make clear that I believe Ćorić’s state-ments reflect not only the context of the time which he discusses, but also his position in his own context (that of a Yugoslav scholar for whom all empires which enslaved South Slav nations were bad, and all resistance to such empires was good; Yugoslavia as a union of South Slav peoples and the Serbo-Croat lan-guage as a recognised common lanlan-guage of most of those peoples are a natural and desired outcome of all such conflicts with the empire; all struggle against the empire which helped bring that about, regardless of its initial aims, was good, because it served that purpose; whilst anything which delayed it was bad; I am aware that these are crude simplifications, but I do not think they are thereby, in the most basic sense, untrue).
This double perspective is, for example, visible when Ćorić details the prob-lems which the journal faced in attracting writers from both Croatia and Serbia.
In Zagreb, as Ćorić puts it, Hörmann initially had little success in attracting con-tributors, as Croatian intellectuals saw him as the “spiritual father of Bosnian nationality and Bosnian language” (“duhovnim ocem bosanske nacionalnosti i bosanskog jezika”), and thus somebody who participated in the de-Croatisatian of Bosnian Croats; moreover: “[...] Croatian literary circles considered Zagreb the centre of Croat literary activity, and believed that any literary project in Bos-nia should be managed from Zagreb.”13
12 Ćorić, Nada, S. 144.
13 “[...] u hrvatskim [se] književnim krugovima smatralo da je Zagreb središte hrvatske kn-jiževne aktivnosti i da se svakim književnim poduhvatom u Bosni ima upravljati iz Zagreba.“
Ćorić, Nada, S. 147.
The promised co-operation of writers from Serbia stalled because a preeminent Serb poet from Vojvodina (and, thus, also living in Austro-Hungarian Empire, which holds its own delicious irony), Jovan Jovanović Zmaj, publicly refused to write for Nada:
Kada se [Hormann] nadao da će sve biti koliko-toliko u redu, Zmaj Jovan Jovanović javno je odbio saradnju u listu koji izbjegava upotrebu nacionalnog imena za jezik i naziva ga zemaljskim. Zmaj je, odbijajući učestvovanje, izrazio negodovanje zbog aus-trijske politike odnarođivanja, nastojanja da poznatim političkim smicalicama odvoji Bosnu od Hrvatske i Srbije, od uticaja političkih stranaka. U stvari, Kallay nastoji uspo-riti nacionalno osvješćivanje Bosanaca. Zmaj je to shvatio i javno reagirao. 14
Just as [Hörmann] had hoped that everything would be more or less all right,15 Zmaj Jovan Jovanović publicly refused the cooperation with the journal which avoided the usage of the national name of the language, calling it Lands [zemaljski]. Zmaj had, by refusing to contribute, expressed his protest at the Austrian policy of denationalisation [odnarođivanje], the attempt, by well-known political trickery, to separate Bosnia from Croatia and Serbia, and from the influence of political parties. In fact, Kállay was try-ing16 to slow down the national awakening of Bosnians. Zmaj understood that and re-acted publicly.
Although it is not entirely clear how it is possible to denationalise a nation which hasn’t yet woken up to its national identity, and although even Ćorić is perfectly content at that point to refer to the inhabitants of Bosnia as simply “Bosnians”, it wasn’t just Zmaj amongst the Serbs who saw Nada as an Austrian “trickery”
[smicalica]. Novi Sad journal Zastava, which published Zmaj’s open letter, called for all the Serb writers to boycott Nada and: “[...] to follow the example of Jovan Jovanović, to come together around the journal Bosanska vila and thus help a true patriotic journal, the one which is not able to seduce anyone with honorar-iums of forty forints per copy.”17
So those perfidious Austrians were even willing to go so far as to pay the writers well;18 as for Nikola Kašiković, the editor of Bosanska vila (also published in
Sa-14 Ćorić, Nada, S. 156.
15 This is a literal translation; there are moments in Ćorić’s account which read almost like a thriller.
16 This sentence was in the original in the present tense, giving it great urgency; see footnote above.
17 “[...] da slijede primjer Jovana Jovanovića, da se zbiju oko Bosanske vile i tako pomognu pravi patriotski list, koji ne može nikoga mamiti honorarima od četrdeset forinti po tabaku.“
Ćorić, Nada, S. 93.
18 The result of this campaign was not that the Serbian writers were completely unwilling to
18 The result of this campaign was not that the Serbian writers were completely unwilling to