BELGRADE (22 page)

The ascension of King Peter to the Serbian throne coincided with, or perhaps in some way stimulated, a sudden growth in cultural activity and a rush towards modernity. The nineteenth-century village stories of Laza Lazarević and the Realists became a thing of the past. Greater literary contacts opened up between Belgrade and the wider world, especially Paris.

Most writers at the beginning of the twentieth century regarded a stay in the French capital as a necessary part of their literary education. Furthermore, Belgrade was beginning to attract people whose professional lives were tightly bound to the cultural life of the city. Some were book-binders and printers, with commercial interests in the production and sale of journals and books. Others were editors and critics interested in the promotion of culture, aesthetic values and literary tastes. The founding of the University of Belgrade was an important development, giving added impetus to the education of future generations who would continue to support and contribute to the arts.

Two of the foremost names in this field were themselves professors of literature at the new university: Bogdan Popović (1864–1944) and Jovan Skerlić (1877–1914). Both men were born in Belgrade, and their work signalled the city’s leadership of Serbian cultural aspirations, rather than the Vojvodina community of Serbs. Popović studied literature in the Great School and in Paris. Returning home in 1893, he took up the position of Professor of Literature in his alma mater, and then transferred to the new university when it opened in 1905 and stayed until his retirement in 1934. He was a man of great learning and analytical consistency. His approach was to examine the internal working of the text, what makes art a special category of human experience and of creative expression. He had a deep and sincere belief in the influence of literature on the soul and mind as a source of inspiration. For him, this was the realm where language was able to reveal not empirical truths but symbolic truths that might point to greater understanding of the human condition. In his teaching and writing he tried to develop these qualities in his students and the reading public, to raise their aesthetic awareness. In the twentieth century Popović’s legacy has reasserted itself on occasions as a contrast to the Yugoslav communists’ utilitarian approaches towards culture and the purpose of art in society.

Popović published his
Anthology of Modern Serbian Lyric
(Antologija novije srpske lirike) in 1911, the first attempt to create a literary canon of the most significant poems down the ages. He chose examples that reveal a consistent and highly developed poetic expression as the hallmark of Serbian literary achievement. He distanced poetry from the folk heritage, proposing an alternative view of sophisticated forms with a broad poetic range and insight into the kind of understanding art offers. He founded the
Serbian Literary Herald
(Srpski književni glasnik) in 1901, the most noted journal for literature and art of its day. It ceased publication for the duration of the First World War, but continued after the liberation of Belgrade until the beginning of the Second World War. All important writers published their work in its pages, while the magazine also included reviews, criticism and general articles on film, foreign literature, feminism and women’s writing. Popović believed in a broad church and provided a forum for all tastes and movements in literature and art, committing his life and work to nurturing this area of human activity.

Jovan Skerlić was much younger and died suddenly on the eve of the First World War. He was one of Popović’s pupils in the Great School until leaving for Lausanne from where he returned with a doctorate in French literature. He first taught French at the institution where he had been educated, before becoming Professor of Serbian Literature when the university was established. He collaborated with his mentor on the editorial board of the
Serbian Literary Herald
, becoming chief editor for a time.

Skerlić’s opinions differed in some ways from those of Popović. While also appreciating the finer points of art and aesthetics, he placed greater emphasis on the moral and social influence of literature as one of the vital weapons in the armoury of the nation. Skerlić was more of a political animal, taking an active role as a member of the National Assembly and helping to shape the society of which he was a part. He published scholarly articles and books, including the most thorough history of Serbian literature at that time,
History of Modern Serbian Literature
(Istorija nove srpske književnosti, 1914).

In this historical study Skerlić dates the beginnings of modern Serbian literature from the cultural achievements of the Serbs in Vojvodina during the eighteenth century, and in particular the role of Dositej Obradović. He closes his vast work with an analysis of contemporary culture and the strong affinities between Serbs and Croats. For him, the study of the history of literature was an important part of history in general, touching on matters of cultural and national identity. He considered that there was a future for the South Slavs in a political union, although there would have to be compromises on all sides if this state was to come into existence. He recognized the historic, linguistic and other affinities between Serbs and Croats, and also their differences. Yet it was the common identity that was crucial, underpinned by both communities as members of the same European family of nations, and thus capable of living together in cultural and political union. He was an idealist in his vision and a pragmatist in debate whose ideas were both realized and undone during the twentieth century.

Belgrade entered the modern age very much under the cultural and literary direction of these two men. They produced an image of Serbia as an urban, sophisticated and cosmopolitan land, confident in the new architectural contours of the city and its busy streets. Its literature, for so long dragging behind the western models that most writers aspired to follow, was put on an equal footing with more established centres in France, Russia, Germany and Britain.

The contribution of Popović and Skerlić was essential not only in the sphere of literary output and attention to critical detail but also for the development of the modern language. The Serbian language was codified according to the norms proposed by Vuk Karadžić in the middle of the nineteenth century. Yet the drive towards a sense of European modernity reinvigorated the whole idiom of the contemporary Serbian language. Its vocabulary was extended, expression was clarified, sentence structures became simpler, and the focus fell on the need to produce a logically developed syntactic flow. Word order was liberated from the stifling tendency to place verbs at the end of their clause or sentence. This older tendency produced a somewhat staccato effect in the rhythm of the standard written form that was not at all natural to the language, being imported from the written and spoken norms of German. In short, the Serbian language became capable of more flexible expression, more urban and more urbane, an instrument fit for a complex social organization. This reformed way of writing and speaking was termed the Belgrade style (beogradski stil) and is regarded as one of the signs marking the passage of Serbian culture and society into the twentieth century.

Belgrade literature developed at a rapid pace at the turn of the twentieth century. Its first poets in the new age were influenced by French trends and styles, but very quickly found their own idiom. Two distinct camps appeared with, on the one hand, Jovan Dučić (1874–1943) and Milan Rakić (1876–1939); on the other, Sima Pandurović (1883–1960) and Vladislav Petković–Dis (1880–1917). The first two were employed in the diplomatic service and wrote harmonious poems with great attention to the intricacies of metre and rhythm. They were known for their chiselled verses and finely tuned lines. For them, poetry was a challenge to create a sense of melody and elegance in language.

The second pair, from a slightly younger generation, were the
enfants terribles
of their literary world. Vladislav Petković chose his appellation “Dis” as a repetition of the middle syllable of his first name, but also as the name of the Roman god of the underworld. He was a frequent evening visitor to the city’s kafanas in Skadarlija and elsewhere where he would drink and compose new verses at the same time. Both Pandurović and Dis were great poets, concerned to capture and project the poetic image even at the expense of the harmony sought by Dučić and Rakić. Their work was also decidedly pessimistic, open to the darker sides of humanity. In one of his more censorious moments Skerlić judged their poetry to be harmful to the health of the national community for whom it was more important to face the future with optimism. Popović was less inclined to dismiss the work of the young poets and included in his 1911
Anthology
two of Pandurović’s poems, one of which has the title “Svetkovina” meaning a holiday, particularly a religious festival. The lines evoke a scene in a lunatic asylum, beginning with the sonorously disturbing: “We went out of our minds one fine day” (Sišli smo s uma u sjajan dan). The poem was published in a collection called
Funereal Honours
(Posmrtne počasti) from 1908. Dis’s 1911 collection
Drowned Souls
(Utopljene duše) has an odd sense of foreboding as the poet himself died when a boat on which he was travelling in the Adriatic Sea in 1917 was torpedoed by an Italian warship.

Besides poetry, new prose writers in Belgrade helped expand urbanized literary tastes with themes more in tune with their day, for example Radoje Domanović (1873–1908). Writing humorous and satirical stories, he is particularly remembered for his “Prince Marko for the Second Time among the Serbs” (Kraljević Marko po drugi put među Srbima). Re-inventing the folk hero Prince Marko, Domanović places him in the modern world. Hearing the wails and laments of his fellow Serbs, Marko asks permission from God to return to earth that he might help them. His wish is granted, and the brave and strong Marko finds himself in Belgrade. Unfortunately, his way of dealing with situations—by striking his enemies with his heavy mace—is not appreciated either by the authorities or by ordinary men and women in the street.

Writers were beginning to produce an independent expression of their own urban experience in these new works, and it was not long before the term “Belgrade prose” (beogradska proza) was adopted to refer to this trend in which the city played an important function, not just as the setting for action but almost as an actor itself.

Large numbers of people were attracted to the capital city in the decade before the First World War taking advantage of the new institutions of higher learning, looking for employment, and chasing dreams. The writer Milutin Uskoković (1884–1915) was one such in-comer, working as a journalist on
Politika
and publishing stories and novels. His novel
The Newcomers
(Došljaci) appeared in 1910 and was the first serious attempt to give literary form to these events and to utilize the contemporary city as a setting. Jovan Skerlić in his history of Serbian literature welcomed this development and commented on Uskoković’s achievement in glowing terms: “In
The Newcomers
he has given the hitherto best Belgrade novel, with faithful reproductions of various Belgrade scenes, troubled life in a young capital, the feverish struggle in a society not yet properly ordered, beautiful and vibrant descriptions of the Belgrade landscape.”

The city is a magnet attracting unsuspecting men and women from the provinces with its vague promise of a better life, only then to destroy their hopes by making them live in a way for which they are hardly prepared. Uskoković focuses on this new life waiting for them, the development of Belgrade as a metropolitan centre with none of the comforting securities of a smaller community. Belgrade itself is a key symbol in the clash between urban and patriarchal civilizations in the new Serbia.

One of the characters from a small Serbian provincial town says,

We all, more or less, came here with honest intentions. But we were all also, more or less, without means. The temptation was still greater, because we did not know the world around us. We thought that no-one knows us and so it was easier for us to do things of which we would have been ashamed in our town, in our own home.

Miloš is the main character in
The Newcomers
, arriving from Užice to take a job as a reporter on a Belgrade newspaper. One day he is sent to cover the story of a young woman who has committed suicide but while visiting the house where she lived and researching her story, he meets another young woman, Zorka, and they begin a secret affair. This is the first time that sexual attraction is a motivating factor in the action of a Serbian novel. They meet in parks and public places, confident that a large city promises them anonymity and that they are unlikely to be recognized by a casual passer-by. The sheer mass of the population allows them their clandestine liaisons, in contrast to predominantly village locations in earlier literature.

Miloš has literary ambitions and writes a play that is hugely successful, but in which Zorka recognizes his resistance to the idea of their marriage. As an act of extreme self-sacrifice she commits suicide by throwing herself into the Danube. Miloš decides that Belgrade is an environment too hostile to newcomers, encouraging depravity, dishonesty and the break-up of family values. He feels defeated by the city and wants to return home, to his provincial small town and slower pace of life. At the end of the novel he walks with a friend to the railway station and observes the crowds filling the streets, simply commenting, “The large shop windows of the fashionable Belgrade stores were luxuriously illuminated.” This is a world in which life spills out into the streets, parks and public squares in all the corners of the city. He once regarded this carnival atmosphere as an attractive opportunity, but now sees it as a lonely and alienating experience, a faceless existence. Belgrade takes an active role in determining the limits of human agency. Characters are forced to confront its challenges, adapt to its values, and struggle to understand its multi-accented landscape.