Zagreb, a Cultural and Literary History
By Marcus Tanner
Why people pass by Zagreb is down to a several things. One is the lack of a brand identity. While Belgrade is clearly “Balkan”, and Ljubljana equally clearly a nugget-sized slice of Austria-Hungary, Zagreb is neither one nor the other, and though its inhabitants love to call it a “little Vienna”, I never felt I was in Vienna’s lost twin sister when I was there.The city authorities are also to blame for Zagreb’s wallflower status. Hostile to budget travellers, they have fostered the relentless spread of astronomically priced hotels that send cash-strapped students, artists and writers running in the opposite direction. Croatian tourist officials, meanwhile, remain obsessed with funnelling foreigners towards the coast.
Whether Celia Hawkesworth’s cultural guide will help stir up fresh interest in this neglected and little known European capital is unclear. A devoted admirer of the exiled, Yugoslav/Croatian writer, Dubravka Ugresic, whose books she has translated, she views the Croats through the same hyper-critical lens, and takes a stern view of the country’s independence struggle. Comparisons between the Croatian war of independence and the Partisan struggle are dismissed as “hollow”; the Croatian army, she explains, was tainted by association with the symbols of the Ustasha.
The early part of the book, which takes the form of a walk round the old town, sheds light on the Medieval and Renaissance periods, though I was disappointed to find nothing on Janus Pannonius. Surely the most brilliant Latinist the country ever produced merited a decent mention. He may not have been born in Zagreb, but he certainly died there, in the bishop’s fortress at Medvedgrad in 1472.
The section on the NDH was a letdown. If any era of Zagreb’s history deserves more study it is this, but there aren’t many insights. It was not the “official policy” of the fascist Independent State of Croatia, the NDH, to kill a third of the Serbs, baptise a third and expel a third. This quote – surely more a summary of the results of NDH activity rather than a “policy” – is usually attributed to the NDH culture minister Mile Budak, but has never been convincingly sourced.
The Italians did not “ban” the Ustasha from their occupation zone. They disarmed them, to ensure their own military superiority in Dalmatia, while lending occasional tactical aid to the Chetniks: divide and rule. The Nazis were not “horrified” by the NDH pogroms of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.
This tiresome cliché, which pops up everywhere, ought to be laid to rest. The Nazis, then embarking on the Holocaust of European Jewry, were scarcely conscience stricken over the sufferings of minorities in the NDH. What angered the Germans was the NDH’s incompetence, not its thoroughness, when it came to ethnic cleansing – its habit of wilfully stirring up conflicts with the Serbs that they could not control and which the Germans then had to deal with.
The last part of the book is taken up with the Tudjman years: a clunky subheading entitled “Distortions and Provocations of the Tudjman Years” sets the tone. Language disputes, the rows over renaming streets and the trials and tribulations of Ms Ugresic and her fellow “witches”, as the tabloid media dubbed her anti-nationalist feminist writers, are followed in some detail.
The author maintains Ugresic was a voice of sanity at a time of hysteria; her writing, a “courageous and defiant witness to the madness of war and the whole nationalist endeavour”. Well, perhaps, but I’m still not sure it was a good idea to rely so much on the views of someone who left Zagreb more than a decade ago, and who seems to regard Croatia as a provincial hellhole.
If the test of a good cultural guide is that it makes you yearn to go there, this doesn’t pass with flying colours. I didn’t feel serenaded round Zagreb; more dragged round by a disapproving schoolteacher. These books are best written by people who not only live in the cities they describe but who combine a deep knowledge of the city’s history with an instinctive feel for what makes the people tick. They capture the spirit of the place on a page. What Zagreb’s spirit is I can’t say I ever knew, but after reading this I didn’t feel much the wiser.
‘Zagreb A Cultural and Literary History’ by Celia Hawkesworth forms part of the ‘Cities of the Imagination’ series, published by Signal Books. See www.signalbooks.co.uk
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Although it is not customary for reviewers to disclose anything about themselves or their previous work, in this case I think the reviewer, Marcus Tanner, needed to in some way disclose to readers that he is the author of 'Croatia: A Nation Forged in War'. While certainly well-researched, Tanner's book presents a rather different interpretation of Croatian history, the NDH years, Croatia's role in the Yugoslav wars of secession, and Croatian society's ongoing problematic relationship with fascism, to the interpretation of the same by Hawkesworth. (I am familiar with much of Hawkesworth's scholarly work and the views she is said to present in this current book are certainly consistent with what she has written elsewhere.) Theoretically people with different understandings of the same events should be able to comment objectively on each other's work, but this doesn't appear to be the case here.
I'm not sure why Tanner thinks that detailing the reality of the Tudjman years (language issues, changing of street names, etc.) and the case of Ugresic and her fellow 'witches' is out of place - for this is surely what the 'tone' of his review implies. It is my personal view that the Zagreb of Ugresic and other liberal Croatian intellectuals and artists - Predrag Matvejevic, Slobodan Snajder, Darko Rundek, to name a handful - all of whom left the city during the nineties, is the fascinating and brilliant Zagreb which is of most interest and in most need of championing in a cultural and literary history of the city. By questioning the relevance of Ugresic's inclusion and spending a good part of his review trying to dampen Hawkesworth's detailing of Croatian fascism, it could be argued that it is Tanner who inadvertantly helps turn Zagreb into a ‘provincial hellhole’. I would suggest that the critical positions taken by Ugresic and other émigré writers and artists towards the post-independence provincialisation of Zagreb (and mainstream Croatian intellectual life) is actually a sign of their compassion, and dare I say it, love, for the city. Tanner's suggestion that Ugresic's physical absence from Zagreb makes her of questionable relevance to any discussion of the city's cultural and literary history places him in the finest nationalist company - it's a suggestion that would warm the long dead heart of Antun Soljan, not to mention the unfortunately vital heart of Ivan Aralica. But I can’t understand why one would want to hang out in such company.
Having read the Balkan Crisis Report/Balkan Insight for almost a decade now, this is the first time I have been moved to comment on an article, and it's actually the first time I've been truly disappointed by what I've read. I guess this means that I really appreciate the generally excellent work you all do, and with the exception of the above review, this also includes the work of Marcus Tanner.
Best wishes,
David Williams