Background: Slovene Reception of Postmodernism
TOMO VIRK
It is always a bit risky to speak about literary postm odernism . Strong efforts have been m ade especially in the 1980s and 90s to determine the essence and extent o f it, and to be able to use the term in a literary, historical and theoretical discourse at least so reliably and reasonably as other traditional terms o f literary history, such as, for example, romanticism, realism, symbolism , existentialism or modernism . In the mid 90s, extensive international research was initiated by the Inter
national Comparative Literature A ssociation with the purpose o f finally establishing a term that seemed so evasive. The result was a large volume with the prom ising title, International Postmodernism.
Theory and Literary Practice, issued in 1997 and covering, so to speak, postmodernism in alm ost every single literature o f the world.
But the result o f this enterprise, as stated by the editors o f the volume, Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema, was a bit frustrating. Despite all efforts, it had to be acknowledged that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as “postm odernism ”, that we can at the most speak o f postmodemisms, o f “endless varieties o f postm odernism ” (Bertens- Fokkema 1997: ix). Postm odernism in the U.S., for example, differs considerably from Russian postm odernism , and both o f these are completely different from the literature labeled “postm odernism ” in China.
Nevertheless, I shall take the risk. In this paper, I shall use the term postmodernism. I will not quarrel about its “true” m eaning and extent;
I will not argue in favour o f any particular theory o f postm odernism . I shall simply take its most accepted understanding, as expressed in the
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above-m entioned International Postmodernism (at least by its editors), despite its cautiously uttered skepticism. This means that I shall understand as postm odernist any type o f literature that questions all stable truths and values, all identities and certainties using well-re
cognizable devices such as m etafiction, intertextuality, rewriting, self- referentiality, etc.. In this paper, however, my point o f interest is not postm odernism , but an interesting reception phenomenon which I have exem plified on (Slovene) postmodernism.
According to Hans Bertens and Douwe Fokkema (I am relying on International Postmodernism as a reference), “the early postmodernist texts seem to express an attitude o f ‘anything goes’ ..., whereas the later postm odernist texts apparently distance themselves from that notion and are more open to political and ideological commitments”
(Bertens-Fokkem a 1997: vii). This statement ascertains a fact that is quite obvious and not very difficult to prove. For example, the early postm odernist texts o f John Barth (e.g., Lost in the Funhouse, 1968), Robert Coover (Pricksongs & Descants, 1969), Richard Brautigan (In Watermelon Sugar, 1968), Donald Barthelme (Snow White, 1967), Ronald Sukenick (The Death o f the Novel and Other Stories, 1969), Italo Calvino (Le cosmicomiche, 1965) and, o f course, Jorge Luis Borges (Ficciones, 1944), to name only a few, certainly show the playful attitude o f ‘anything goes’ and more or less exhaust them selves in self-referentiality. The distinctive feature of these works is the extensive use o f metafictional and intertextual devices, which em phasize the fictional character o f the text and indirectly draw attention to the fictionality o f our so-called “real” world, our everyday reality, our existence, and our experiences as well. This emphasizing o f universal fictionality is a common range o f early self-referential postm odernism . Thus, considering the more “mature” works of postm odernism , such as those o f the later John Barth (Sabbathical, 1982), Um berto Eco (II поте della rosa, 1980), Toni Morrison (Beloved, 1987) or, say, Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children, 1980), we can observe a shift precisely in the attitude towards “political and ideological com m itm ents”, as Bertens and Fokkema say.
This developm ent seems absolutely logical. The first phase of a new literary phenom enon is m ore experimental, m ore radical in the use o f new artistic devices, while the second phase is more “mature”, classical, and m oderate. M etafiction and intertextuality are no longer used m erely to stress self-referentiality and fictionality, but as a means
of supporting the “classical” referentiality connected, to quote again, with “political and ideological com m itm ents”.
In Slovene postm odernist fiction (as well as in the fiction o f some other Slavic literatures),1 however, this process goes the other way round. Slovene postm odernist fiction started in the early 80’s and ended about ten years later (cf. Kos 1995: 86-87, 90 -9 2; Virk 2000:
194-199). It can be divided into two currents represented by two different literary generations. The early postm odernist texts were written by some authors o f established literary generations: Drago Jancar (bom in 1948) in some o f his short stories (e.g. Smrt pri Mariji Snežni [Death o f M ary-of-the-Snow s], 1985) and Dimitrij Rupel (bom in 1946) in his novelistic trilogy on M ax and M axism (first novel Maks 1983; second novel Povabljeni pozabljeni [The Invited, the Forgotten], 1985). Both authors m ake extensive use o f established postmodernist devices such as m etafiction and intertextuality (re
writing, citations, allusions, parody, ironic imitation, m ise en abyme, regressus ad infinitum, etc.), yet at the sam e time show an explicitly political attitude. Drago Jancar constantly deals with political tota
litarianism and repression. His postm odernist short fiction works, for example, discuss (Soviet and Slovene) Stalinism, South Am erican dictatorship, post-war terror in som e socialist European countries, the
“violence o f history” in general, etc. (cf. Virk 1995: 207 ff.). Simi
larly, Dimitrij Rupel treats, in the above-m entioned postm odernist novels, the post-war (W W II) socialist Slovene society with an openly critical political attitude. Let m e give some examples o f this early Slovene postm odernism to illustrate its “political and ideological commitment”.
Drago Jancar begins his short story Death o f Mary-of-the-Snows as follows:
In the great and terrible year o f 1918, a young doctor, Aleksei Vasiylevich Turbin, almost lost his life simply because he had forgotten to remove an officer’s cockade from his fur hat. Mikhail Bulgakov depicts the event somewhere in his novel The White Guard(The Day Tito Died: 7).
Cf. Articles on Croatian, Czech and Polish postmodemisms in Старикова 2004.
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The first sentence is a precise citation from B ulgakov’s above- m entioned novel, from which the hero Turbin is also borrowed. The author him self points to this fact in the second sentence o f the story.
H ere we are obviously dealing with typical postmodernist inter- textuality. The author does not communicate any real or authentic experience, nor does he wish to give any such impression. On the contrary, he explicitly tells us that his hero and his story are borrowed from another literary text. For the sake o f my argument, I do not need to go into a detailed analysis o f the story. Let me just conclude that this implies that all reality is actually textual, nonreal, fictional — which is a radical postmodernist implication. At the same time, how
ever, Jancar’s story also reveals an opposite tendency. After reading the story to the end, one discovers that it is — despite the above- m entioned postm odernist implications — not at all about imagined, fictional life, but about the real tragic destiny o f an individual, a victim o f revolutionary terror, exemplified on a parallel, fictional life- destiny o f a well-known literary hero. To sum up: Jancar only uses postm odernist devices to develop a tragic story which in reality lacks an exem plary postm odernist world view.
M y other example is Dimitrij R upel’s second trilogy-novel, The Invited, The Forgotten (1985). The novel makes extensive use of all postm odernist devices; among others, it also alludes to Umberto Eco’s theory o f postm odernist citation, as presented in his Postille a II поте della rosa. Particularly witty is the motto at the beginning of the novel, which reads: “The reader will write his own ending.” And, in fact, the novel has alternative endings, such as in, e.g., The French Lieutant’s Woman by John Fowles, and the reader can actually choose the one he prefers. This is very m uch in accordance with the playful attitude o f radical experimental postmodernism, as well as with what Linda Hutcheon calls “the metafictional paradox” (Hutcheon 1984).
But again, this does not have only the playful postmodernist implica
tions o f all-textuality and all-fictionality. It is actually a slightly changed, famous quotation o f the greatest Slovene fiction writer and playwright, Ivan Cankar. The original text has an explicitly political attitude: “The nation will write its own destiny” (Cankar 1910). At the time when Rupel wrote his novel, this was a standard slogan at political m eetings o f the Slovene Communist Party (the only party allowed in the then nondem ocratic regime). R upel’s quote was a parodist persiflage o f this slogan, and the novel in general was —
despite all its undoubtedly postm odernist features — actually a witty, but merciless critique o f the Slovene society and the political regim e (cf. Virk 2000: 227; Zorn 1988: 171).
This short analysis shows that the m ost prom inent early Slovene post
modernists accepted the established postm odernist devices (Jancar mostly under the influence o f Jorge Luis Borges2 and Rupel under the influence o f A m erican m etafiction3), but used them m erely as a kind of “technical” device. The first reception o f postm odernism in Slo
venia was not at all a radical one. This is very m uch in accordance with the traditional Slovene reception o f foreign literary influences.
These were never received in their extrem e, radical and experim ental forms, but were always m oderated with specific features o f traditional Slovene fiction, such as lyricism, support for a national idea, attach
ment to empirical social life or to the existential dim ension o f the individual and his fate, etc.4 A ccording to some Slovene literary histo
rians, this is due to the fact that the Slovene nation did not achieve national independence for a very long time (having only becom e an independent state in 1991; before that, it was first a part o f the Austro- Hungarian M onarchy, and later a republic o f Yugoslavia), even though it had desperately strove for it (cf. Virk 2004). This m eant that all national activities w ere subordinated to the “sacred goal” o f national independence, and for this reason literature could not be ju st a matter of aesthetics, but also a kind o f political struggle. This explains why the traditional Slovene reception o f western literary influences was never radical.
But in the case o f the Slovene reception o f postm odernism , national independence is not the only reason. To this we m ay also add the lack o f political dem ocracy and liberty. Gerda Elisabeth M oser
2
In his short stories, Janõar often quotes Borges and manifestly borrows from him (cf. Virk 1995: 213-216).
Rupel studied in the USA and translated K. Vonnegut.
Cf. Kos, 1975: 210-211. He states the same for Central European litera
tures in general: “One o f the typological specifics o f Central European literary space is the fact that those literary currents and directions which are familiar to us from the development o f so-called Western literature com e to our literatures with a constant delay o f several years, and not in their radical, straight forms, but adjusted to the specific traditions o f these literatures” (Kos 1990: 20).
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rightly observes, when answering the question, why Austrian post
m odernism is so strictly self-referential and radically apolitical (ac
cording to Bertens and Fokkema: pertaining to the first wave of inter
national postmodernism ): “The play o f signifiers is thus possible — and this is for me the point o f postmodernism and its literature — only in periods o f wealth, social security and freedom, when political freedom is also granted” (Moser 1994: 246). In other words: when literature can sim ply be literature and does not need to substitute for those political institutions that are lacking.
Slovenia gained national independence and political democracy at the beginning o f the 1990s, that is, in the period when the second Slovene postmodernist generation, bom in the 1960s, emerged (Andrej Blatnik, Biographies o f the Nameless, 1989, Aleksa Šušulic, Who Kills the Tales and Other Stories, 1989). This generation deci
sively broke with the established traditional reception pattern and developed postmodernism in its extreme form as completely self- referential, self-reflective fiction having no connection with any reality outside o f literature. Even more: this generation pushed post
modernism to the extreme by parodying it, and never abandoning its specific literary devices (metafiction, intertextuality, etc.) and aesthetic ideology (cf. Virk 2000: 197-198). It is quite obvious, I believe, that this reversal in the Slovene reception of postmodernism is due to the socio-cultural and political circumstances connected with the implementation o f a political democracy and the attainment of national independence. This could also be sustained with the parallel developm ent o f the reception o f postmodernism in some other Slavic (Eastern) literatures. The most prom inent examples of early Serb postm odernism (Danilo Kiš, The Vault o f Boris Davidovich, 1976;
M ilorad Pavic, Khazars Dictionary, 1982) are both written under the direct influence o f experimental Western postmodernism, making extensive use o f m etafiction and intertextuality, yet at the same time expressing political criticism. The second phase began with The Encyclopedia o f the Death by Danilo Kiš (1984), and continued with the short fiction works o f Filip David and David Albahari, which were much m ore self-referential and written in an ‘anything goes’ attitude.
A nother illustrative example is Russian postmodernism in the early postm odernist novel o f Andrei B itov’s The Pushkin’s House, 1978, which undoubtedly belongs to “political” postmodernism, in contrast to the “playful” Russian postm odernism o f the 90s, which followed
after the changes in the political system (cf. Л ейдерман-Л иповецкий 2003: 379; Epstein-G enis-V ladiv-G lover 1999: 215; Kraševec 1996:
292). It seems, that the same could easily be dem onstrated for Croatian, C zech and Latin A m erican literatures.5
All the above observations necessarily im ply the following conclu
sions: Owing to the socio-political circum stances, early postm odernist writers, particularly in som e Eastern European literatures — despite their acceptance o f radical postm odernist formal devices (various types o f m etafiction and intertextuality) — were unable to write completely self-referential literature. In these literatures and cultures, the first reception o f postm odernism was specific with regard to the
“original”, W estern postm odernism . W hile in W estern literatures the
“anything goes postm odernism ” was followed by “postm odernism o f political com m itm ent”, in m any Eastern European literatures this process went the other way round. The absence o f political freedom and social justice urged literature — even postm odernist literature, which is by definition a self-referential language gam e — to renounce being a mere aesthetic artifact and to do the “political” jo b in place o f the absent institutions o f political democracy. This is particularly true of Slavic postm odernism and o f the reception o f W estern influences in some Eastern European literatures.
But if this is so (and a great deal seems to point in this direction), then what im plications can we draw from the circum stance that, in the so-called “W estern literatures”, the second wave o f postm odernism becomes political?
For Croatian, cf. N em ec 2001; for Czech, cf. Шерлаимова 2004. For Latin American literatures with their boom- and post-boom postmodemisms I, refer to Williams 1995: IX.
6 Discussing the Slovene “political” novels o f the 80’s, Marko Juvan observes that “these texts not only functioned as intraliterary, but also as an allegory or ‘weapon’ (in the sense o f B. Brecht’s word) employed by critical intelligence to fight the ruling ideology and political elite. In this way, they evoked the (bad) conscience o f politics and, similarly to the nation-constitu- tional function o f Slovene and other ‘sm all’ literatures in the 19th century, replaced the missing institutions o f ‘normal’ political pluralism” (Juvan 1988/89: 49).
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